Title: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry
Author: Pike, Albert, 1809-1891
Language: English
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                             MORALS AND DOGMA
                                  OF THE
                   ANCIENT AND ACCEPTED SCOTTISH RITE
                                    OF
                               FREEMASONRY


                             PREPARED FOR THE
               SUPREME COUNCIL OF THE THIRTY-THIRD DEGREE
                                 FOR THE
               SOUTHERN JURISDICTION OF THE UNITED STATES
                                   AND
                      PUBLISHED BY ITS AUTHORITY.



CHARLESTON A.'. M.'. 5632

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by ALBERT PIKE,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. Entered
according to Act of Congress, in the year 1906, by THE SUPREME COUNCIL
OF THE SOUTHERN JURISDICTION, A. A. S. R., U. S. A.,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, L. H.
Jenkins, Inc. Edition Book Manufacturers Richmond. Va. Reprinted,
February, 1944.



PREFACE.


of the Thirty-third Degree, for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United
States, by the Grand Commander, and is now published by its direction.
It contains the Lectures of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in
that jurisdiction, and is specially intended to be read and studied by
the Brethren of that obedience, in connection with the Rituals of the
Degrees. It is hoped and expected that each will furnish himself with a
copy, and make himself familiar with it; for which purpose, as the cost
of the work consists entirely in the printing and binding, it will be
furnished at a price as moderate as possible. No _individual_ will
receive pecuniary profit from it, except the agents for its sale.

It has been copyrighted, to prevent its republication elsewhere, and the
copyright, like those of all the other works prepared for the Supreme
Council, has been assigned to Trustees for that Body. Whatever profits
may accrue from it will be devoted to purposes of charity.

The Brethren of the Rite in the United States and Canada will be
afforded the opportunity to purchase it, nor is it _forbidden_ that
other Masons shall; but they will not be solicited to do so.

In preparing this work, the Grand Commander has been about equally
Author and Compiler; since he has extracted quite half its contents from
the works of the best writers and most philosophic or eloquent thinkers.
Perhaps it would have been better and more acceptable if he had
extracted more and written less.

Still, perhaps half of it is his own; and, in incorporating here the
thoughts and words of others, he has continually changed and added to
the language, often intermingling, in the same sentences, his own words
with theirs. It not being intended for the world at large, he has felt
at liberty to make, from all accessible sources, a Compendium of the
Morals and Dogma of the Rite, to re-mould sentences, change and add to
words and phrases, combine them with his own, and use them as if they
_were_ his own, to be dealt with at his pleasure and so availed of as to
make the whole most valuable for the purposes intended. He claims,
therefore, little of the merit of authorship, and has not cared to
distinguish his own from that which he has taken from other sources,
being quite willing that every portion of the book, in turn, may be
regarded as borrowed from some old and better writer.

The teachings of these Readings are not sacramental, so far as they go
beyond the realm of Morality into those of other domains of Thought and
Truth. The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite uses the word "Dogma" in
its true sense, of _doctrine_, or _teaching_; and is not _dogmatic_ in
the odious sense of that term. Every one is entirely free to reject and
dissent from whatsoever herein may seem to him to be untrue or unsound.
It is only required of him that he shall weigh what is taught, and give
it fair hearing and unprejudiced judgment. Of course, the ancient
theosophic and philosophic speculations are not embodied as part of the
_doctrines_ of the Rite; but because it is of interest and profit to
know what the Ancient Intellect thought upon these subjects, and because
nothing so conclusively proves the radical difference between our human
and the animal nature, as the capacity of the human mind to entertain
such speculations in regard to itself and the Deity. But as to these
opinions themselves, we may say, in the words of the learned Canonist,
Ludovicus Gomez: _"Opiniones secundum varietatem, temporum senescant et
intermoriantur, aliæque diversæ vel prioribus contrarioe renescantur et
deinde pubescant."_

Titles of Degrees as herein given have in some instances been changed.
Correct titles are as follows:

1°--Apprentice.
2°--Fellow-craft.
3°--Master.
4°--Secret Master.
5°--Perfect Master.
6°--Intimate Secretary.
7°--Provost and Judge.
8°--Intendant of the Building.
9°--Elu of the Nine.
10°--Elu of the Fifteen.
11°--Elu of the Twelve.
12°--Master Architect.
13°--Royal Arch of Solomon.
14°--Perfect Elu.
15°--Knight of the East.
16°--Prince of Jerusalem.
17°--Knight of the East and West.
18°--Knight Rose Croix.
19°--Pontiff.
20°--Master of the Symbolic Lodge.
21°--Noachite or Prussian Knight.
22°--Knight of the Royal Axe or Prince of Libanus.
23°--Chief of the Tabernacle.
24°--Prince of the Tabernacle.
25°--Knight of the Brazen Serpent.
26°--Prince of Mercy.
27°--Knight Commander of the Temple.
28°--Knight of the Sun or Prince Adept.
29°--Scottish Knight of St. Andrew.
30°--Knight Kadosh.
31°--Inspector Inquisitor
32°--Master of the Royal Secret.



MORALS AND DOGMA.

LODGE OF PERFECTION.



MORALS AND DOGMA.

[Illustration]

I.

APPRENTICE.

THE TWELVE-INCH RULE AND THE COMMON GAVEL.


Force, unregulated or ill-regulated, is not only wasted in the void,
like that of gunpowder burned in the open air, and steam unconfined by
science; but, striking in the dark, and its blows meeting only the air,
they recoil and bruise itself. It is destruction and ruin. It is the
volcano, the earthquake, the cyclone;--not growth and progress. It is
Polyphemus blinded, striking at random, and falling headlong among the
sharp rocks by the impetus of his own blows.

The blind Force of the people is a Force that must be economized, and
also managed, as the blind Force of steam, lifting the ponderous iron
arms and turning the large wheels, is made to bore and rifle the cannon
and to weave the most delicate lace. It must be regulated by Intellect.
Intellect is to the people and the people's Force, what the slender
needle of the compass is to the ship--its soul, always counselling the
huge mass of wood and iron, and always pointing to the north. To attack
the citadels built up on all sides against the human race by
superstitions, despotisms, and prejudices, the Force must have a brain
and a law. Then its deeds of daring produce permanent results, and there
is real progress. Then there are sublime conquests. Thought is a force,
and philosophy should be an energy, finding its aim and its effects in
the amelioration of mankind. The two great motors are Truth and Love.
When all these Forces are combined, and guided by the Intellect, and
regulated by the RULE of Right, and Justice, and of combined and
systematic movement and effort, the great revolution prepared for by the
ages will begin to march. The POWER of the Deity Himself is in
equilibrium with His WISDOM. Hence the only results are HARMONY.

It is because Force is ill regulated, that revolutions prove failures.
Therefore it is that so often insurrections, coming from those high
mountains that domineer over the moral horizon, Justice, Wisdom, Reason,
Right, built of the purest snow of the ideal after a long fall from rock
to rock, after having reflected the sky in their transparency, and been
swollen by a hundred affluents, in the majestic path of triumph,
suddenly lose themselves in quagmires, like a California river in the
sands.

The onward march of the human race requires that the heights around it
should blaze with noble and enduring lessons of courage. Deeds of daring
dazzle history, and form one class of the guiding lights of man. They
are the stars and coruscations from that great sea of electricity, the
Force inherent in the people. To strive, to brave all risks, to perish,
to persevere, to be true to one's self, to grapple body to body with
destiny, to surprise defeat by the little terror it inspires, now to
confront unrighteous power, now to defy intoxicated triumph--these are
the examples that the nations need and the light that electrifies them.

There are immense Forces in the great caverns of evil beneath society;
in the hideous degradation, squalor, wretchedness and destitution, vices
and crimes that reek and simmer in the darkness in that populace below
the people, of great cities. There disinterestedness vanishes, every one
howls, searches, gropes, and gnaws for himself. Ideas are ignored, and
of progress there is no thought. This populace has two mothers, both of
them stepmothers--Ignorance and Misery. Want is their only guide--for
the appetite alone they crave satisfaction. Yet even these may be
employed. The lowly sand we trample upon, cast into the furnace, melted,
purified by fire, may become resplendent crystal.

They have the brute force of the HAMMER, but their blows help on the
great cause, when struck within the lines traced by the RULE held by
wisdom and discretion.

Yet it is this very Force of the people, this Titanic power of the
giants, that builds the fortifications of tyrants, and is embodied in
their armies. Hence the possibility of such tyrannies as those of which
it has been said, that "Rome smells worse under Vitellius than under
Sulla. Under Claudius and under Domitian there is a deformity of
baseness corresponding to the ugliness of the tyranny. The foulness of
the slaves is a direct result of the atrocious baseness of the despot. A
miasma exhales from these crouching consciences that reflect the master;
the public authorities are unclean, hearts are collapsed, consciences
shrunken, souls puny. This is so under Caracalla, it is so under
Commodus, it is so under Heliogabalus, while from the Roman senate,
under Cæsar, there comes only the rank odor peculiar to the eagle's
eyrie."

It is the force of the people that sustains all these despotisms, the
basest as well as the best. That force acts through armies; and these
oftener enslave than liberate. Despotism there applies the RULE. Force
is the MACE of steel at the saddle-bow of the knight or of the bishop in
armor. Passive obedience by force supports thrones and oligarchies,
Spanish kings, and Venetian senates. Might, in an army wielded by
tyranny, is the enormous sum total of utter weakness; and so Humanity
wages war against Humanity, in despite of Humanity. So a people
willingly submits to despotism, and its workmen submit to be despised,
and its soldiers to be whipped; therefore it is that battles lost by a
nation are often progress attained. Less glory is more liberty. When the
drum is silent, reason sometimes speaks.

Tyrants use the force of the people to chain and subjugate--that is,
_enyoke_ the people. Then they plough with them as men do with oxen
yoked. Thus the spirit of liberty and innovation is reduced by bayonets,
and principles are struck dumb by cannonshot; while the monks mingle
with the troopers, and the Church militant and jubilant, Catholic or
Puritan, sings Te Deums for victories over rebellion.

The military power, not subordinate to the civil power, again the HAMMER
or MACE of FORCE, independent of the RULE, is an armed tyranny, born
full-grown, as Athene sprung from the brain of Zeus. It spawns a
dynasty, and begins with Cæsar to rot into Vitellius and Commodus. At
the present day it inclines to _begin_ where formerly dynasties _ended_.

Constantly the people put forth immense strength, only to end in immense
weakness. The force of the people is exhausted in indefinitely
prolonging things long since dead; in governing mankind by embalming old
dead tyrannies of Faith; restoring dilapidated dogmas; regilding faded,
worm-eaten shrines; whitening and rouging ancient and barren
superstitions; saving society by multiplying parasites; perpetuating
superannuated institutions; enforcing the worship of symbols as the
actual means of salvation; and tying the dead corpse of the Past, mouth
to mouth, with the living Present. Therefore it is that it is one of the
fatalities of Humanity to be condemned to eternal struggles with
phantoms, with superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, the
formulas of error, and the pleas of tyranny. Despotisms, seen in the
past, become respectable, as the mountain, bristling with volcanic rock,
rugged and horrid, seen through the haze of distance is blue and smooth
and beautiful. The sight of a single dungeon of tyranny is worth more,
to dispel illusions, and create a holy hatred of despotism, and to
direct FORCE aright, than the most eloquent volumes. The French should
have preserved the Bastile as a perpetual lesson; Italy should not
destroy the dungeons of the Inquisition. The Force of the people
maintained the Power that built its gloomy cells, and placed the living
in their granite sepulchres.

The FORCE of the people cannot, by its unrestrained and fitful action,
maintain and continue in action and existence a free Government once
created. That Force must be limited, restrained, conveyed by
distribution into different channels, and by roundabout courses, to
outlets, whence it is to issue as the law, action, and decision of the
State; as the wise old Egyptian kings conveyed in different canals, by
sub-division, the swelling waters of the Nile, and compelled them to
fertilize and not devastate the land. There must be the _jus et norma_,
the law and _Rule_, or _Gauge_, of constitution and law, within which
the public force must act. Make a breach in either, and the great
steam-hammer, with its swift and ponderous blows, crushes all the
machinery to atoms, and, at last, wrenching itself away, lies inert and
dead amid the ruin it has wrought.

The FORCE of the people, or the popular will, in action and exerted,
symbolized by the GAVEL, regulated and guided by and acting within the
limits of LAW and ORDER, symbolized by the TWENTY-FOUR-INCH RULE, has
for its fruit LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and FRATERNITY,--liberty regulated by
law; equality of rights in the eye of the law; brotherhood with its
duties and obligations as well as its benefits.

You will hear shortly of the _Rough_ ASHLAR and the _Perfect_ ASHLAR, as
part of the jewels of the Lodge. The rough Ashlar is said to be "a
stone, as taken from the quarry, in its rude and natural state." The
perfect Ashlar is said to be "a stone made ready by the hands of the
workmen, to be adjusted by the working-tools of the Fellow-Craft." We
shall not repeat the explanations of these symbols given by the York
Rite. You may read them in its printed monitors. They are declared to
allude to the self-improvement of the individual craftsman,--a
continuation of the same superficial interpretation.

The rough Ashlar is the PEOPLE, as a mass, rude and unorganized. The
perfect Ashlar, or cubical stone, symbol of perfection, is the STATE,
the rulers deriving their powers from the consent of the governed; the
constitution and laws speaking the will of the people; the government
harmonious, symmetrical, efficient,--its powers properly distributed and
duly adjusted in equilibrium.

If we delineate a cube on a plane surface thus: [Illustration:] we have
visible _three_ faces, and _nine_ external lines, drawn between _seven_
points. The complete cube has _three_ more faces, making _six_; _three_
more lines, making _twelve_; and _one_ more point, making _eight_. As
the number 12 includes the sacred numbers, 3, 5, 7, and 3 times 3, or 9,
and is produced by adding the sacred number 3 to 9; while its own two
figures 1, 2, the unit or monad, and duad, added together, make the
same sacred number 3; it was called the perfect number; and the cube
became the symbol of perfection.

Produced by FORCE, acting by RULE; hammered in accordance with lines
measured by the Gauge, out of the rough Ashlar, it is an appropriate
symbol of the Force of the people, expressed as the constitution and law
of the State; and of the State itself the three visible faces represent
the three departments,--the Executive, which executes the laws; the
Legislative, which makes the laws; the Judiciary, which interprets the
laws, applies and enforces them, between man and man, between the State
and the citizens. The three invisible faces, are Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity,--the threefold soul of the State--its vitality, spirit, and
intellect.

       *       *       *       *       *

Though Masonry neither usurps the place of, nor apes religion, prayer is
an essential part of our ceremonies. It is the aspiration of the soul
toward the Absolute and Infinite Intelligence, which is the One Supreme
Deity, most feebly and misunderstandingly characterized as an
"ARCHITECT." Certain faculties of man are directed toward the
Unknown--thought, meditation, prayer. The unknown is an ocean, of which
conscience is the compass. Thought, meditation, prayer, are the great
mysterious pointings of the needle. It is a spiritual magnetism that
thus connects the human soul with the Deity. These majestic irradiations
of the soul pierce through the shadow toward the light.

It is but a shallow scoff to say that prayer is absurd, because it is
not possible for us, by means of it, to persuade God to change His
plans. He produces foreknown and foreintended effects, by the
instrumentality of the forces of nature, all of which are _His_ forces.
Our own are part of these. Our free agency and our will are forces. We
do not absurdly cease to make _efforts_ to attain wealth or happiness,
prolong life, and continue health, because we cannot by any effort
change what is predestined. If the effort also is predestined, it is not
the less _our_ effort, made of _our free will_. So, likewise, we pray.
Will is a force. Thought is a force. Prayer is a force. Why should it
not be of the law of God, that prayer, like Faith and Love, should have
its effects? Man is not to be comprehended as a starting-point, or
progress as a goal, without those two great forces, Faith and Love.
Prayer is sublime. Orisons that beg and clamor are pitiful. To deny the
efficacy of prayer, is to deny that of Faith, Love, and Effort. Yet the
effects produced, when our hand, moved by our will, launches a pebble
into the ocean, never cease; and every uttered word is registered for
eternity upon the invisible air.

Every Lodge is a Temple, and as a whole, and in its details symbolic.
The Universe itself supplied man with the model for the first temples
reared to the Divinity. The arrangement of the Temple of Solomon, the
symbolic ornaments which formed its chief decorations, and the dress of
the High-Priest, all had reference to the order of the Universe, as then
understood. The Temple contained many emblems of the seasons-the sun,
the moon, the planets, the constellations Ursa Major and Minor, the
zodiac, the elements, and the other parts of the world. It is the Master
of this Lodge, of the Universe, Hermes, of whom Khūrūm is the
representative, that is one of the lights of the Lodge.

For further instruction as to the symbolism of the heavenly bodies, and
of the sacred numbers, and of the temple and its details, you must wait
patiently until you advance in Masonry, in the mean time exercising your
intellect in studying them for yourself. To study and seek to interpret
correctly the symbols of the Universe, is the work of the sage and
philosopher. It is to decipher the writing of God, and penetrate into
His thoughts.

This is what is asked and answered in our catechism, in regard to the
Lodge.

       *       *       *       *       *

A "Lodge" is defined to be "an assemblage of Freemasons, duly
congregated, having the sacred writings, square, and compass, and a
charter, or warrant of constitution, authorizing them to work." The room
or place in which they meet, representing some part of King Solomon's
Temple, is also called the Lodge; and it is that we are now considering.

It is said to be supported by three great columns, WISDOM, FORCE or
STRENGTH, and BEAUTY, represented by the Master, the Senior Warden, and
the Junior Warden; and these are said to be the columns that support the
Lodge, "because Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty, are the perfections of
everything, and nothing can endure without them." "Because," the York
Rite says, "it is necessary that there should be Wisdom to conceive,
Strength to support, and Beauty to adorn, all great and important
undertakings." "Know ye not," says the Apostle Paul, "that ye are the
temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man
desecrate the temple of God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of
God is holy, which temple ye are."

The Wisdom and Power of the Deity are in equilibrium. The laws of
nature and the moral laws are not the mere despotic mandates of His
Omnipotent will; for, then they might be changed by Him, and order
become disorder, and good and right become evil and wrong; honesty and
loyalty, vices; and fraud, ingratitude, and vice, virtues. Omnipotent
power, infinite, and existing alone, would necessarily not be
constrained to consistency. Its decrees and laws could not be immutable.
The laws of God are not obligatory on us because they are the enactments
of His POWER, or the expression of His WILL; but because they express
His infinite WISDOM. They are not right because they are His laws, but
His laws because they are right. From the equilibrium of infinite wisdom
and infinite force, results perfect harmony, in physics and in the moral
universe. Wisdom, Power, and Harmony constitute one Masonic triad. They
have other and profounder meanings, that may at some time be unveiled to
you.

As to the ordinary and commonplace explanation, it may be added, that
the wisdom of the Architect is displayed in combining, as only a
skillful Architect can do, and as God has done everywhere,--for example,
in the tree, the human frame, the egg, the cells of the
honeycomb--strength, with grace, beauty, symmetry, proportion,
lightness, ornamentation. That, too, is the perfection of the orator and
poet--to combine force, strength, energy, with grace of style, musical
cadences, the beauty of figures, the play and irradiation of imagination
and fancy; and so, in a State, the warlike and industrial force of the
people, and their Titanic strength, must be combined with the beauty of
the arts, the sciences, and the intellect, if the State would scale the
heights of excellence, and the people be really free. Harmony in this,
as in all the Divine, the material, and the human, is the result of
equilibrium, of the sympathy and opposite action of contraries; a single
Wisdom above them holding the beam of the scales. To reconcile the moral
law, human responsibility, free-will, with the absolute power of God;
and the existence of evil with His absolute wisdom, and goodness, and
mercy,--these are the great enigmas of the Sphynx.

You entered the Lodge between two columns. They represent the two which
stood in the porch of the Temple, on each side of the great eastern
gateway. These pillars, of bronze, four fingers breadth in thickness,
were, according to the most authentic account--that in the First and
that in the Second Book of Kings, confirmed in Jeremiah--eighteen cubits
high, with a capital five cubits high. The shaft of each was four cubits
in diameter. A cubit is one foot 707/1000. That is, the shaft of each
was a little over thirty feet eight inches in height, the capital of
each a little over eight feet six inches in height, and the diameter of
the shaft six feet ten inches. The capitals were enriched by
pomegranates of bronze, covered by bronze net-work, and ornamented with
wreaths of bronze; and appear to have imitated the shape of the
seed-vessel of the lotus or Egyptian lily, a sacred symbol to the Hindus
and Egyptians. The pillar or column on the right, or in the south, was
named, as the Hebrew word is rendered in our translation of the Bible,
JACHIN: and that on the left BOAZ. Our translators say that the first
word means, "_He shall establish_;" and the second, "_In it is
strength._"

These columns were imitations, by Khūrūm, the Tyrian artist, of the
great columns consecrated to the Winds and Fire, at the entrance to the
famous Temple of Malkarth, in the city of Tyre. It is customary, in
Lodges of the York Rite, to see a celestial globe on one, and a
terrestrial globe on the other; but these are not warranted, if the
object be to imitate the original two columns of the Temple. The
symbolic meaning of these columns we shall leave for the present
unexplained, only adding that Entered Apprentices keep their
working-tools in the column JACHIN; and giving you the etymology and
literal meaning of the two names.

The word _Jachin_, in Hebrew, is [Hebrew]. It was probably pronounced
_Ya-kayan_, and meant, as a verbal noun, _He that strengthens_; and
thence, _firm, stable, upright_.

The word _Boaz_ is [Hebrew] Baaz. [Hebrew] means _Strong, Strength,
Power, Might, Refuge, Source of Strength, a Fort_. The [Hebrew] prefixed
means "_with_" or "_in_," and gives the word the force of the Latin
gerund, _roborando--Strengthening_.

The former word also means _he will establish_, or _plant in an erect
position_--from the verb [Hebrew] _Kūn, he stood erect_. It probably
meant _Active_ and _Vivifying Energy_ and _Force_; and _Boas, Stability,
Permanence_, in the _passive_ sense.

The Dimensions of the Lodge, our Brethren of the York Rite say, "are
unlimited, and its covering no less than the canopy of Heaven." "To this
object," they say, "the mason's mind is continually directed, and
thither he hopes at last to arrive by the aid of the theological ladder
which Jacob in his vision saw ascending from earth to Heaven; the three
principal rounds of which are denominated Faith, Hope, and Charity; and
which admonish us to have Faith in God, Hope in Immortality, and Charity
to all mankind." Accordingly a ladder, sometimes with nine rounds, is
seen on the chart, resting at the bottom on the earth, its top in the
clouds, the stars shining above it; and this is deemed to represent that
mystic ladder, which Jacob saw in his dream, set up on the earth, and
the top of it reaching to Heaven, with the angels of God ascending and
descending on it. The addition of the three principal rounds to the
symbolism, is wholly modern and incongruous. The ancients counted seven
planets, thus arranged: the Moon, Mercury, Venus, the Sun, Mars,
Jupiter, and Saturn. There were seven heavens and seven spheres of these
planets; on all the monuments of Mithras are seven altars or pyres,
consecrated to the seven planets, as were the seven lamps of the golden
candelabrum in the Temple. That these represented the planets, we are
assured by Clemens of Alexandria, in his Stromata, and by Philo Judaeus.
To return to its source in the Infinite, the human soul, the ancients
held, had to ascend, as it had descended, through the seven spheres. The
Ladder by which it reascends, has, according to Marsilius Ficinus, in
his Commentary on the Ennead of Plotinus, seven degrees or steps; and in
the Mysteries of Mithras, carried to Rome under the Emperors, the
ladder, with its seven rounds, was a symbol referring to this ascent
through the spheres of the seven planets. Jacob saw the Spirits of God
ascending and descending on it; and above it the Deity Himself. The
Mithraic Mysteries were celebrated in caves, where gates were marked at
the four equinoctial and solstitial points of the zodiac; and the seven
planetary spheres were represented, which souls needs must traverse in
descending from the heaven of the fixed stars to the elements that
envelop the earth; and seven gates were marked, one for each planet,
through which they pass, in descending or returning. We learn this from
Celsus, in Origen, who says that the symbolic image of this passage
among the stars, used in the Mithraic Mysteries, was a ladder reaching
from earth to Heaven, divided into seven steps or stages, to each of
which was a gate, and at the summit an eighth one, that of the fixed
stars. The symbol was the same as that of the seven stages of Borsippa,
the Pyramid of vitrified brick, near Babylon, built of seven stages, and
each of a different color. In the Mithraic ceremonies, the candidate
went through seven stages of initiation, passing through many fearful
trials and of these the high ladder with seven rounds or steps was the
symbol. You see the Lodge, its details and ornaments, by its Lights. You
have already heard what these Lights, the greater and lesser, are said
to be, and how they are spoken of by our Brethren of the York Rite. The
Holy Bible, Square, and Compasses, are not only styled the Great Lights
in Masonry, but they are also technically called the Furniture of the
Lodge; and, as you have seen, it is held that there is no Lodge without
them. This has sometimes been made a pretext for excluding Jews from our
Lodges, because they cannot regard the New Testament as a holy book. The
Bible is an indispensable part of the furniture of a Christian Lodge,
only because it is the sacred book of the Christian religion. The Hebrew
Pentateuch in a Hebrew Lodge, and the Koran in a Mohammedan one, belong
on the Altar; and one of these, and the Square and Compass, properly
understood, are the Great Lights by which a Mason must walk and work.
The obligation of the candidate is always to be taken on the sacred book
or books of his religion, that he may deem it more solemn and binding;
and therefore it was that you were asked of what religion you were. We
have no other concern with your religious creed. The Square is a right
angle, formed by two right lines. It is adapted only to a plane surface,
and belongs only to geometry, earth-measurement, that trigonometry which
deals only with planes, and with the earth, which the ancients supposed
to be a plane. The Compass describes circles, and deals with spherical
trigonometry, the science of the spheres and heavens. The former,
therefore, is an emblem of what concerns the earth and the body; the
latter of what concerns the heavens and the soul. Yet the Compass is
also used in plane trigonometry, as in erecting perpendiculars; and,
therefore, you are reminded that, although in this Degree both points of
the Compass are under the Square, and you are now dealing only with the
moral and political meaning of the symbols, and not with their
philosophical and spiritual meanings, still the divine ever mingles with
the human; with the earthly the spiritual intermixes; and there is
something spiritual in the commonest duties of life. The nations are not
bodies-politic alone, but also souls-politic; and woe to that people
which, seeking the material only, forgets that it has a soul. Then we
have a race, petrified in dogma, which presupposes the absence of a soul
and the presence only of memory and instinct, or demoralized by lucre.
Such a nature can never lead civilization. Genuflexion before the idol
or the dollar atrophies the muscle which walks and the will which moves.
Hieratic or mercantile absorption diminishes the radiance of a people,
lowers its horizon by lowering its level, and deprives it of that
understanding of the universal aim, at the same time human and divine,
which makes the missionary nations. A free people, forgetting that it
has a soul to be cared for, devotes all its energies to its material
advancement. If it makes war, it is to subserve its commercial
interests. The citizens copy after the State, and regard wealth, pomp,
and luxury as the great goods of life. Such a nation creates wealth
rapidly, and distributes it badly. Thence the two extremes, of monstrous
opulence and monstrous misery; all the enjoyment to a few, all the
privations to the rest, that is to say, to the people; Privilege,
Exception, Monopoly, Feudality, springing up from Labor itself: a false
and dangerous situation, which, making Labor a blinded and chained
Cyclops, in the mine, at the forge, in the workshop, at the loom, in the
field, over poisonous fumes, in miasmatic cells, in unventilated
factories, founds public power upon private misery, and plants the
greatness of the State in the suffering of the individual. It is a
greatness ill constituted, in which all the material elements are
combined, and into which no moral element enters. If a people, like a
star, has the right of eclipse, the light ought to return. The eclipse
should not degenerate into night.

The three lesser, or the Sublime Lights, you have heard, are the Sun,
the Moon, and the Master of the Lodge; and you have heard what our
Brethren of the York Rite say in regard to them, and why they hold them
to be Lights of the Lodge. But the Sun and Moon do in no sense light the
Lodge, unless it be symbolically, and then the lights are not they, but
those things of which they are the symbols. Of what they are the symbols
the Mason in that Rite is not told. Nor does the Moon in any sense rule
the night with regularity.

The Sun is the ancient symbol of the life-giving and generative power of
the Deity. To the ancients, light was the cause of life; and God was the
source from which all light flowed; the _essence_ of Light, the
_Invisible_ Fire, developed as Flame _manifested_ as light and splendor.
The Sun was His manifestation and visible image; and the Sabæans
worshipping the Light-God, _seemed_ to worship the Sun, in whom they saw
the manifestation of the Deity.

The Moon was the symbol of the passive capacity of nature to produce,
the female, of which the life-giving power and energy was the male. It
was the symbol of Isis, Astarte, and Artemis, or Diana. The "_Master of
Life_" was the Supreme Deity, above both, and manifested through both;
Zeus, the Son of Saturn, become King of the Gods; Horus, son of Osiris
and Isis, become the Master of Life; Dionusos or Bacchus, like Mithras,
become the author of Light and Life and Truth.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Master of Light and Life, the Sun and the Moon, are symbolized in
every Lodge by the Master and Wardens: and this makes it the duty of the
Master to dispense light to the Brethren, by himself, and through the
Wardens, who are his ministers.

"Thy sun," says ISAIAH to Jerusalem, "shall no more go down, neither
shall thy moon withdraw itself; for the LORD shall be thine everlasting
light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended. Thy people also
shall be all righteous; they shall inherit the land forever." Such is
the type of a free people.

Our northern ancestors worshipped this triune Deity; ODIN, the Almighty
FATHER; FREA, his wife, emblem of universal matter; and THOR, his son,
the mediator. But above all these was the Supreme God, "the author of
everything that existeth, the Eternal, the Ancient, the Living and Awful
Being, the Searcher into concealed things, the Being that never
changeth." In the Temple of Eleusis (a sanctuary lighted only by a
window in the roof, and representing the Universe), the images of the
Sun, Moon, and Mercury, were represented.

"The Sun and Moon," says the learned Bro.'. DELAUNAY, "represent the two
grand principles of all generations, the active and passive, the male
and the female. The Sun represents the actual light. He pours upon the
Moon his fecundating rays; both shed their light upon their offspring,
the Blazing Star, or HORUS, and the three form the great Equilateral
Triangle, in the centre of which is the omnific letter of the Kabalah,
by which creation is said to have been effected."

The ORNAMENTS of a Lodge are said to be "the Mosaic Pavement, the
Indented Tessel, and the Blazing Star." The Mosaic Pavement, chequered
in squares or lozenges, is said to represent the ground-floor of King
Solomon's Temple; and the Indented Tessel "that beautiful tesselated
border which surrounded it." The Blazing Star in the centre is said to
be "an emblem of Divine Providence, and commemorative of the star which
appeared to guide the wise men of the East to the place of our Saviour's
nativity." But "there was no stone seen" within the Temple. The walls
were covered with planks of cedar, and the floor was covered with planks
of fir. There is no evidence that there was such a pavement or floor in
the Temple, or such a bordering. In England, anciently, the
Tracing-Board was surrounded with an indented border; and it is only in
America that such a border is put around the Mosaic pavement. The
tesseræ, indeed, are the squares or lozenges of the pavement. In
England, also, "the indented or denticulated border" is called
"tesselated," because it has four "tassels," said to represent
Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, and Justice. It was termed the Indented
Trassel; but this is a misuse of words. It is a _tesserated_ pavement,
with an indented border round it.

The pavement, alternately black and white, symbolizes, whether so
intended or not, the Good and Evil Principles of the Egyptian and
Persian creed. It is the warfare of Michael and Satan, of the Gods and
Titans, of Balder and Lok; between light and shadow, which is darkness;
Day and Night; Freedom and Despotism; Religious Liberty and the
Arbitrary Dogmas of a Church that thinks for its votaries, and whose
Pontiff claims to be infallible, and the decretals of its Councils to
constitute a gospel.

The edges of this pavement, if in lozenges, will necessarily be indented
or denticulated, toothed like a saw; and to complete and finish it a
bordering is necessary. It is completed by tassels as ornaments at the
corners. If these and the bordering have any symbolic meaning, it is
fanciful and arbitrary.

To find in the BLAZING STAR of five points an allusion to the Divine
Providence, is also fanciful; and to make it commemorative of the Star
that is said to have guided the Magi, is to give it a meaning
comparatively modern. Originally it represented SIRIUS, or the Dog-star,
the forerunner of the inundation of the Nile; the God ANUBIS, companion
of Isis in her search for the body of OSIRIS, her brother and husband.
Then it became the image of HORUS, the son of OSIRIS, himself symbolized
also by the Sun, the author of the Seasons, and the God of Time; Son of
Isis, who was the universal nature, himself the primitive matter,
inexhaustible source of Life, spark of uncreated fire, universal seed of
all beings. It was HERMES, also, the Master of Learning, whose name in
Greek is that of the God Mercury. It became the sacred and potent sign
or character of the Magi, the PENTALPHA, and is the significant emblem
of Liberty and Freedom, blazing with a steady radiance amid the
weltering elements of good and evil of Revolutions, and promising serene
skies and fertile seasons to the nations, after the storms of change and
tumult.

In the East of the Lodge, over the Master, inclosed in a triangle, is
the Hebrew letter YŌD [Hebrew] or [Hebrew]. In the English and
American Lodges the Letter G.'. is substituted for this, as the initial
of the word GOD, with as little reason as if the letter D., initial of
DIEU, were used in French Lodges instead of the proper letter. YŌD
is, in the Kabalah, the symbol of Unity, of the Supreme Deity, the first
letter of the Holy Name; and also a symbol of the Great Kabalistic
Triads. To understand its mystic meanings, you must open the pages of
the Sohar and Siphra de Zeniutha, and other kabalistic books, and ponder
deeply on their meaning. It must suffice to say, that it is the Creative
Energy of the Deity, is represented as a _point_, and that point in the
centre of the _Circle_ of immensity. It is to us in this Degree, the
symbol of that unmanifested Deity, the Absolute, who has no name.

Our French Brethren place this letter YŌD in the centre of the
Blazing Star. And in the old Lectures, our ancient English Brethren
said, "The Blazing Star or Glory in the centre refers us to that grand
luminary, the Sun, which enlightens the earth, and by its genial
influence dispenses blessings to mankind." They called it also in the
same lectures, an emblem of PRUDENCE. The word _Prudentia_ means, in its
original and fullest signification, _Foresight_; and, accordingly, the
Blazing Star has been regarded as an emblem of Omniscience, or the
All-seeing Eye, which to the Egyptian Initiates was the emblem of
Osiris, the Creator. With the YŌD in the centre, it has the
kabalistic meaning of the Divine Energy, manifested as Light, creating
the Universe.

The Jewels of the Lodge are said to be six in number. Three are called
"_Movable_," and three "_Immovable_." The SQUARE, the LEVEL, and the
PLUMB were anciently and properly called the Movable Jewels, because
they pass from one Brother to another. It is a modern innovation to call
them immovable, because they must always be present in the Lodge. The
immovable jewels are the ROUGH ASHLAR, the PERFECT ASHLAR or CUBICAL
STONE, or, in some Rituals, the DOUBLE CUBE, and the TRACING-BOARD, or
TRESTLE-BOARD.

Of these jewels our Brethren of the York Rite say: "The _Square_
inculcates Morality; the _Level_, Equality; and the _Plumb_, Rectitude
of Conduct." Their explanation of the immovable Jewels may be read in
their monitors.

       *       *       *       *       *

Our Brethren of the York Rite say that "there is represented in every
well-governed Lodge, a certain point, within a circle; the point
representing an individual Brother; the Circle, the boundary line of his
conduct, beyond which he is never to suffer his prejudices or passions
to betray him."

This is not to _interpret_ the symbols of Masonry. It is said by some,
with a nearer approach to interpretation, that the point within the
circle represents God in the centre of the Universe. It is a common
Egyptian sign for the Sun and Osiris, and is still used as the
astronomical sign of the great luminary. In the Kabalah the point is
YŌD, the Creative Energy of God, irradiating with light the circular
space which God, the universal Light, left vacant, wherein to create the
worlds, by withdrawing His substance of Light back on all sides from one
point.

Our Brethren add that, "this circle is embordered by two perpendicular
parallel lines, representing Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the
Evangelist, and upon the top rest the Holy Scriptures" (an open book).
"In going round this circle," they say, "we necessarily touch upon these
two lines as well as upon the Holy Scriptures; and while a Mason keeps
himself circumscribed within their precepts, it is impossible that he
should materially err."

It would be a waste of time to comment upon this. Some writers have
imagined that the parallel lines represent the Tropics of Cancer and
Capricorn, which the Sun alternately touches upon at the Summer and
Winter solstices. But the tropics are not perpendicular lines, and the
idea is merely fanciful. If the parallel lines ever belonged to the
ancient symbol, they had some more recondite and more _fruitful_
meaning. They probably had the same meaning as the twin columns Jachin
and Boaz. That meaning is not for the Apprentice. The adept may find it
in the Kabalah. The JUSTICE and MERCY of God are in equilibrium, and the
result is HARMONY, because a Single and Perfect Wisdom presides over
both.

The Holy Scriptures are an entirely modern addition to the symbol, like
the terrestrial and celestial globes on the columns of the portico. Thus
the ancient symbol has been denaturalized by incongruous additions, like
that of Isis weeping over the broken column containing the remains of
Osiris at Byblos.

       *       *       *       *       *

Masonry has its decalogue, which is a law to its Initiates. These are
its Ten Commandments:

I. [Symbol: Earth]: God is the Eternal, Omnipotent, Immutable WISDOM
      and Supreme INTELLIGENCE and Exhaustless LOVE.
    Thou shalt adore, revere, and love Him!
    Thou shalt honor Him by practising the virtues!

II. [Symbol: Full moon]: Thy religion shall be, to do good because
      it is a pleasure to thee, and not merely because it is a duty.
    That thou mayest become the friend of the wise man, thou
      shalt obey his precepts!
    Thy soul is immortal! Thou shalt do nothing to degrade it!

III. [Symbol: Earth]: Thou shalt unceasingly war against vice!
    Thou shalt not do unto others that which thou wouldst not
      wish them to do unto thee!
    Thou shalt be submissive to thy fortunes, and keep burning
      the light of wisdom!

IV. [Symbol: Full moon]: Thou shalt honor thy parents!
    Thou shalt pay respect and homage to the aged!
    Thou shalt instruct the young!
    Thou shalt protect and defend infancy and innocence!

V. [Symbol: Earth]: Thou shalt cherish thy wife and thy children!
    Thou shalt love thy country, and obey its laws!

VI. [Symbol: Full moon]: Thy friend shall be to thee a second self!
    Misfortune shall not estrange thee from him!
    Thou shalt do for his memory whatever thou wouldst do for him, if he
       were living!

VII. [Symbol: Earth]: Thou shalt avoid and flee from insincere
      friendships!
    Thou shalt in everything refrain from excess.
    Thou shalt fear to be the cause of a stain on thy memory!

VIII. [Symbol: Full moon]: Thou shalt allow no passions to become thy
       master!
    Thou shalt make the passions of others profitable lessons
      to thyself!
    Thou shalt be indulgent to error!

IX. [Symbol: Earth]: Thou shalt hear much: Thou shalt speak little: Thou
      shalt act well!
    Thou shalt forget injuries!
    Thou shalt render good for evil!
    Thou shalt not misuse either thy strength or thy superiority!

X. [Symbol: Full moon]: Thou shalt study to know men; that thereby thou
      mayest learn to know thyself!
    Thou shalt ever seek after virtue!
    Thou shalt be just!
    Thou shalt avoid idleness!

But the great commandment of Masonry is this: "A new commandment give I
unto you: that ye love one another! He that saith he is in the light,
and hateth his brother, remaineth still in the darkness."

Such are the moral duties of a Mason. But it is also the duty of Masonry
to assist in elevating the moral and intellectual level of society; in
coining knowledge, bringing ideas into circulation, and causing the mind
of youth to grow; and in putting, gradually, by the teachings of axioms
and the promulgation of positive laws, the human race in harmony with
its destinies.

To this duty and work the Initiate is apprenticed. He must not imagine
that he can effect nothing, and, therefore, despairing, become inert. It
is in this, as in a man's daily life. Many great deeds are done in the
small struggles of life. There is, we are told, a determined though
unseen bravery, which defends itself, foot to foot, in the darkness,
against the fatal invasion of necessity and of baseness. There are noble
and mysterious triumphs, which no eye sees, which no renown rewards,
which no flourish of trumpets salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation,
abandonment, poverty, are battle-fields, which have their
heroes,--heroes obscure, but sometimes greater than those who become
illustrious. The Mason should struggle in the same manner, and with the
same bravery, against those invasions of necessity and baseness, which
come to nations as well as to men. He should meet _them_, too, foot to
foot, even in the darkness, and protest against the national wrongs and
follies; against usurpation and the first inroads of that hydra,
Tyranny. There is no more sovereign eloquence than the truth in
indignation. It is more difficult for a people to keep than to gain
their freedom. The Protests of Truth are always needed. Continually, the
right must protest against the fact. There is, in fact, Eternity in the
Right. The Mason should be the Priest and Soldier of that Right. If his
country should be robbed of her liberties, he should still not despair.
The protest of the Right against the Fact persists forever. The robbery
of a people never becomes prescriptive. Reclamation of its rights is
barred by no length of time. Warsaw can no more be Tartar than Venice
can be Teutonic. A people may endure military usurpation, and subjugated
States kneel to States and wear the yoke, while under the stress of
necessity; but when the necessity disappears, if the people is fit to be
free, the submerged country will float to the surface and reappear, and
Tyranny be adjudged by History to have murdered its victims.

Whatever occurs, we should have Faith in the Justice and overruling
Wisdom of God, and Hope for the Future, and Loving-kindness for those
who are in error. God makes visible to men His will in events; an
obscure text, written in a mysterious language. Men make their
translations of it forthwith, hasty, incorrect, full of faults,
omissions, and misreadings. We see so short a way along the arc of the
great circle! Few minds comprehend the Divine tongue. The most
sagacious, the most calm, the most profound, decipher the hieroglyphs
slowly; and when they arrive with their text, perhaps the need has long
gone by; there are already twenty translations in the public square--the
most incorrect being, as of course, the most accepted and popular. From
each translation, a party is born; and from each misreading, a faction.
Each party believes or pretends that it has the only true text, and each
faction believes or pretends that it alone possesses the light.
Moreover, factions are blind men, who aim straight, errors are excellent
projectiles, striking skillfully, and with all the violence that springs
from false reasoning, wherever a want of logic in those who defend the
right, like a defect in a cuirass, makes them vulnerable.

Therefore it is that we shall often be discomfited in combating error
before the people. Antæus long resisted Hercules; and the heads of the
Hydra grew as fast as they were cut off. It is absurd to say that
_Error, wounded, writhes in pain, and dies amid her worshippers_. Truth
conquers slowly. There is a wondrous vitality in Error. Truth, indeed,
for the most part, shoots over the heads of the masses; or if an error
is prostrated for a moment, it is up again in a moment, and as vigorous
as ever. It will not die when the brains are out, and the most stupid
and irrational errors are the longest-lived.

Nevertheless, Masonry, which is Morality and Philosophy, must not cease
to do its duty. We never know at what moment success awaits our
efforts--generally when most unexpected--nor with what effect our
efforts are or are not to be attended. Succeed or fail, Masonry must not
bow to error, or succumb under discouragement. There were at Rome a few
Carthaginian soldiers, taken prisoners, who refused to bow to Flaminius,
and had a little of Hannibal's magnanimity. Masons should possess an
equal greatness of soul. Masonry should be an energy; finding its aim
and effect in the amelioration of mankind. Socrates should enter into
Adam, and produce Marcus Aurelius, in other words, bring forth from the
man of enjoyments, the man of wisdom. Masonry should not be a mere
watch-tower, built upon mystery, from which to gaze at ease upon the
world, with no other result than to be a convenience for the curious. To
hold the full cup of thought to the thirsty lips of men; to give to all
the true ideas of Deity; to harmonize conscience and science, are the
province of Philosophy. Morality is Faith in full bloom. Contemplation
should lead to action, and the absolute be practical; the ideal be made
air and food and drink to the human mind. Wisdom is a sacred communion.
It is only on that condition that it ceases to be a sterile love of
Science, and becomes the one and supreme method by which to unite
Humanity and arouse it to concerted action. Then Philosophy becomes
Religion.

And Masonry, like History and Philosophy, has eternal duties--eternal,
and, at the same time; simple--to oppose Caiaphas as Bishop, Draco or
Jefferies as Judge, Trimalcion as Legislator, and Tiberius as Emperor.
These are the symbols of the tyranny that degrades and crushes, and the
corruption that defiles and infests. In the works published for the use
of the Craft we are told that the three great tenets of a Mason's
profession, are Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth. And it is true that a
Brotherly affection and kindness should govern us in all our intercourse
and relations with our brethren; and a generous and liberal philanthropy
actuate us in regard to all men. To relieve the distressed is peculiarly
the duty of Masons--a sacred duty, not to be omitted, neglected, or
coldly or inefficiently complied with. It is also most true, that Truth
is a Divine attribute and the foundation of every virtue. To be true,
and to seek to find and learn the Truth, are the great objects of every
good Mason.

As the Ancients did, Masonry styles Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, and
Justice, the four cardinal virtues. They are as necessary to nations as
to individuals. The people that would be Free and Independent, must
possess Sagacity, Forethought, Foresight, and careful Circumspection,
all which are included in the meaning of the word Prudence. It must be
temperate in asserting its rights, temperate in its councils, economical
in its expenses; it must be bold, brave, courageous, patient under
reverses, undismayed by disasters, hopeful amid calamities, like Rome
when she sold the field at which Hannibal had his camp. No Cannæ or
Pharsalia or Pavia or Agincourt or Waterloo must discourage her. Let her
Senate sit in their seats until the Gauls pluck them by the beard. She
must, above all things, be just, not truckling to the strong and warring
on or plundering the weak; she must act on the square with all nations,
and the feeblest tribes; always keeping her faith, honest in her
legislation, upright in all her dealings. Whenever such a Republic
exists, it will be immortal: for rashness, injustice, intemperance and
luxury in prosperity, and despair and disorder in adversity, are the
causes of the decay and dilapidation of nations.



II.

THE FELLOW-CRAFT.


In the Ancient Orient, all religion was more or less a mystery and there
was no divorce from it of philosophy. The popular theology, taking the
multitude of allegories and symbols for realities, degenerated into a
worship of the celestial luminaries, of imaginary Deities with human
feelings, passions, appetites, and lusts, of idols, stones, animals,
reptiles. The Onion was sacred to the Egyptians, because its different
layers were a symbol of the concentric heavenly spheres. Of course the
popular religion could not satisfy the deeper longings and thoughts, the
loftier aspirations of the Spirit, or the logic of reason. The first,
therefore, was taught to the initiated in the Mysteries. There, also, it
was taught by symbols. The vagueness of symbolism, capable of many
interpretations, reached what the palpable and conventional creed could
not. Its indefiniteness acknowledged the abstruseness of the subject: it
treated that mysterious subject mystically: it endeavored to illustrate
what it could not explain; to excite an appropriate _feeling_, if it
could not develop an adequate _idea_; and to make the image a mere
subordinate conveyance for the conception, which itself never became
obvious or familiar.

Thus the knowledge now imparted by books and letters, was of old
conveyed by symbols; and the priests invented or perpetuated a display
of rites and exhibitions, which were not only more attractive to the eye
than words, but often more suggestive and more pregnant with meaning to
the mind.

Masonry, successor of the Mysteries, still follows the ancient manner of
teaching. Her ceremonies are like the ancient mystic shows,--not the
reading of an essay, but the opening of a problem, requiring research,
and constituting philosophy the arch-expounder. Her symbols are the
instruction she gives. The lectures are endeavors, often partial and
one-sided, to interpret these symbols. He who would become an
accomplished Mason must not be content merely to hear, or even to
understand, the lectures; he must, aided by them, and they having, as
it were, marked out the way for him, study, interpret, and develop these
symbols for himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

Though Masonry is identical with the ancient Mysteries, it is so only in
this qualified sense: that it presents but an imperfect image of their
brilliancy, the ruins only of their grandeur, and a system that has
experienced progressive alterations, the fruits of social events,
political circumstances, and the ambitious imbecility of its improvers.
After leaving Egypt, the Mysteries were modified by the habits of the
different nations among whom they were introduced, and especially by the
religious systems of the countries into which they were transplanted. To
maintain the established government, laws, and religion, was the
obligation of the Initiate everywhere; and everywhere they were the
heritage of the priests, who were nowhere willing to make the common
people co-proprietors with themselves of philosophical truth.

Masonry is not the Coliseum in ruins. It is rather a Roman palace of the
middle ages, disfigured by modern architectural improvements, yet built
on a Cyclopæan foundation laid by the Etruscans, and with many a stone
of the superstructure taken from dwellings and temples of the age of
Hadrian and Antoninus.

Christianity taught the doctrine of FRATERNITY; but repudiated that of
political EQUALITY, by continually inculcating obedience to Caesar, and
to those lawfully in authority. Masonry was the first apostle of
EQUALITY. In the Monastery there is _fraternity_ and _equality_, but no
_liberty_. Masonry added that also, and claimed for man the three-fold
heritage, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, and FRATERNITY.

It was but a development of the original purpose of the Mysteries, which
was to teach men to know and practice their duties to themselves and
their fellows, the great practical end of all philosophy and all
knowledge.

Truths are the springs from which duties flow; and it is but a few
hundred years since a new Truth began to be distinctly seen; that MAN IS
SUPREME OVER INSTITUTIONS, AND NOT THEY OVER HIM. Man has _natural_
empire over _all_ institutions. They are for him, according to his
development; not he for them. This seems to us a very simple statement,
one to which all men, everywhere, ought to assent. But once it was a
great new Truth,--not revealed until governments had been in existence
for at least five thousand years. Once revealed, it imposed new duties
on men. Man owed it to _himself_ to be free. He owed it to his _country_
to seek to give _her_ freedom, or maintain her in that possession. It
made Tyranny and Usurpation the enemies of the Human Race. It created a
general outlawry of Despots and Despotisms, temporal and spiritual. The
sphere of Duty was immensely enlarged. Patriotism had, henceforth, a new
and wider meaning. Free Government, Free Thought, Free Conscience, Free
Speech! All these came to be inalienable rights, which those who had
parted with them or been robbed of them, or whose ancestors had lost
them, had the right summarily to retake. Unfortunately, as Truths always
become perverted into falsehoods, and are falsehoods when misapplied,
_this_ Truth became the Gospel of Anarchy, soon after it was first
preached.

Masonry early comprehended this Truth, and recognized its own enlarged
duties. Its symbols then came to have a wider meaning; but it also
assumed the mask of Stone-masonry, and borrowed its working-tools, and
so was supplied with new and apt symbols. It aided in bringing about the
French Revolution, disappeared with the Girondists, was born again with
the restoration of order, and sustained Napoleon, because, though
Emperor, he acknowledged the right of the people to select its rulers,
and was at the head of a nation refusing to receive back its old kings.
He pleaded, with sabre, musket, and cannon, the great cause of the
People against Royalty, the right of the French people even to make a
Corsican General their Emperor, if it pleased them.

Masonry felt that this Truth had the Omnipotence of God on its side; and
that neither Pope nor Potentate could overcome it. It was a truth
dropped into the world's wide treasury, and forming a part of the
heritage which each generation receives, enlarges, and holds in trust,
and of necessity bequeaths to mankind; the personal estate of man,
entailed of nature to the end of time. And Masonry early recognized it
as true, that to set forth and develop a truth, or any human excellence
of gift or growth, is to make, greater the spiritual glory of the race;
that whosoever aids the march of a Truth, and makes the thought a thing,
writes in the same line with MOSES, and with Him who died upon the
cross; and has an intellectual sympathy with the Deity Himself.

The best gift we can bestow on man is manhood. It is that which Masonry
is ordained of God to bestow on its votaries: not sectarianism and
religious dogma; not a rudimental morality, that may be found in the
writings of Confucius, Zoroaster, Seneca, and the Rabbis, in the
Proverbs and Ecclesiastes; not a little and cheap common-school
knowledge; but manhood and science and philosophy.

Not that Philosophy or Science is in opposition to Religion. For
Philosophy is but that knowledge of God and the Soul, which is derived
from observation of the manifested action of God and the Soul, and from
a wise analogy. It is the intellectual guide which the religious
sentiment needs. The true religious philosophy of an imperfect being, is
not a system of creed, but, as SOCRATES thought, an infinite search or
approximation. Philosophy is that intellectual and moral progress, which
the religious sentiment inspires and ennobles.

As to Science, it could not walk alone, while religion was stationary.
It consists of those matured inferences from experience which all other
experience confirms. It realizes and unites all that was truly valuable
in both the old schemes of mediation,--one _heroic_, or the system of
action and effort; and the _mystical_ theory of spiritual, contemplative
communion. "Listen to me," says GALEN, "as to the voice of the
Eleusinian Hierophant, and believe that the study of Nature is a mystery
no less important than theirs, nor less adapted to display the wisdom
and power of the Great Creator. _Their_ lessons and demonstrations were
obscure, but _ours_ are clear and unmistakable."

We deem that to be the best knowledge we can obtain of the Soul of
another man, which is furnished by his actions and his life-long
conduct. Evidence to the contrary, supplied by what another man informs
us that this Soul has said to his, would weigh little against the
former. The first Scriptures for the human race were written by God on
the Earth and Heavens. The reading of these Scriptures is Science.
Familiarity with the grass and trees, the insects and the infusoria,
teaches us deeper lessons of love and faith than we can glean from the
writings of FÉNÉLON and AUGUSTINE. The great Bible of God is ever
open before mankind.

Knowledge is convertible into power, and axioms into rules of utility
and duty. But knowledge itself is not Power. Wisdom is Power; and her
Prime Minister is JUSTICE, which is the perfected law of TRUTH. The
purpose, therefore, of Education and Science is to make a man wise. If
knowledge does not make him so, it is wasted, like water poured on the
sands. To know the _formulas_ of Masonry, is of as little value, by
itself, as to know so many words and sentences in some barbarous African
or Australasian dialect To know even the _meaning_ of the symbols, is
but little, unless that adds to our wisdom, and also to our charity,
which is to justice like one hemisphere of the brain to the other.

Do not lose sight, then, of the true object of your studies in Masonry.
It is to add to your estate of wisdom, and not merely to your knowledge.
A man may spend a lifetime in studying a single specialty of
knowledge,--botany, conchology, or entomology, for instance,--in
committing to memory names derived from the Greek, and classifying and
reclassifying; and yet be no wiser than when he began. It is the great
truths as to all that most concerns a man, as to his rights, interests,
and duties, that Masonry seeks to teach her Initiates.

The wiser a man becomes, the less will he be inclined to submit tamely
to the imposition of fetters or a yoke, on his conscience or his person.
For, by increase of wisdom he not only better _knows_ his rights, but
the more highly _values_ them, and is more conscious of his worth and
dignity. His pride then urges him to assert his independence. He becomes
better _able_ to assert it also; and better able to assist others or his
country, when they or she stake all, even existence, upon the same
assertion. But mere knowledge makes no one independent, nor fits him to
be free. It often only makes him a more useful slave. Liberty is a curse
to the ignorant and brutal.

Political science has for its object to ascertain in what manner and by
means of what institutions political and personal freedom may be secured
and perpetuated: not license, or the mere right of every man to vote,
but entire and absolute freedom of thought and opinion, alike free of
the despotism of monarch and mob and prelate; freedom of action within
the limits of the general law enacted for all; the Courts of Justice,
with impartial Judges and juries, open to all alike; weakness and
poverty equally potent in those Courts as power and wealth; the avenues
to office and honor open alike to all the worthy; the military powers,
_in war or peace_, in strict subordination to the civil power; arbitrary
arrests for acts not known to the law as crimes, impossible; Romish
Inquisitions, Star-Chambers, Military Commissions, unknown; the means
of instruction within reach of the children of all; the right of Free
Speech; and accountability of all public officers, civil and military.

If Masonry needed to be justified for imposing political as well as
moral duties on its Initiates, it would be enough to point to the sad
history of the world. It would not even need that she should turn back
the pages of history to the chapters written by Tacitus: that she should
recite the incredible horrors of despotism under Caligula and Domitian,
Caracalla and Commodus, Vitellius and Maximin. She need only point to
the centuries of calamity through which the gay French nation passed; to
the long oppression of the feudal ages, of the selfish Bourbon kings; to
those times when the peasants were robbed and slaughtered by their own
lords and princes, like sheep; when the lord claimed the first-fruits of
the peasant's marriage-bed; when the captured city was given up to
merciless rape and massacre; when the State-prisons groaned with
innocent victims, and the Church blessed the banners of pitiless
murderers, and sang Te Deums for the crowning mercy of the Eve of St.
Bartholomew.

We might turn over the pages, to a later chapter,--that of the reign of
the Fifteenth Louis, when young girls, hardly more than children, were
kidnapped to serve his lusts; when _lettres de cachet_ filled the
Bastile with persons accused of no crime, with husbands who were in the
way of the pleasures of lascivious wives and of villains wearing orders
of nobility; when the people were ground between the upper and the
nether millstone of taxes, customs, and excises; and when the Pope's
Nuncio and the Cardinal de la Roche-Ayman, devoutly kneeling, one on
each side of Madame du Barry, the king's abandoned prostitute, put the
slippers on her naked feet, as she rose from the adulterous bed. Then,
indeed, suffering and toil were the two forms of man, and the people
were but beasts of burden.

The true Mason is he who labors strenuously to help his Order effect its
great purposes. Not that the Order can effect them by itself; but that
it, too, can help. It also is one of God's instruments. It is a Force
and a Power; and shame upon it, if it did not exert itself, and, if need
be, sacrifice its children in the cause of humanity, as Abraham was
ready to offer up Isaac on the altar of sacrifice. It will not forget
that noble allegory of Curtius leaping, all in armor, into the great
yawning gulf that opened to swallow Rome. It will TRY. It shall not be
_its_ fault if the day _never_ comes when man will no longer have to
fear a conquest, an invasion, a usurpation, a rivalry of nations with
the armed hand, an interruption of civilization depending on a
marriage-royal, or a birth in the hereditary tyrannies; a partition of
the peoples by a Congress, a dismemberment by the downfall of a dynasty,
a combat of two religions, meeting head to head, like two goats of
darkness on the bridge of the Infinite: when they will no longer have to
fear famine, spoliation, prostitution from distress, misery from lack of
work, and all the brigandages of chance in the forest of events: when
nations will gravitate about the Truth, like stars about the light, each
in its own orbit, without clashing or collision; and everywhere Freedom,
cinctured with stars, crowned with the celestial splendors, and with
wisdom and justice on either hand, will reign supreme.

In your studies as a Fellow-Craft you must be guided by REASON, LOVE and
FAITH.

We do not now discuss the differences between Reason and Faith, and
undertake to define the domain of each. But it is necessary to say, that
even in the ordinary affairs of life we are governed far more by what we
_believe_ than by what we _know_; by FAITH and ANALOGY, than by REASON.
The "Age of Reason" of the French Revolution taught, we know, what a
folly it is to enthrone Reason by itself as supreme. Reason is at fault
when it deals with the Infinite. There we must revere and believe.
Notwithstanding the calamities of the virtuous, the miseries of the
deserving, the prosperity of tyrants and the murder of martyrs, we
_must_ believe there is a wise, just, merciful, and loving God, an
Intelligence and a Providence, supreme over all, and caring for the
minutest things and events. A Faith is a necessity to man. Woe to him
who believes nothing!

We believe that the soul of another is of a certain nature and possesses
certain qualities, that he is generous and honest, or penurious and
knavish, that she is virtuous and amiable, or vicious and ill-tempered,
from the countenance alone, from little more than a glimpse of it,
without the means of _knowing_. We venture our fortune on the signature
of a man on the other side of the world, whom we never saw, upon the
belief that he is honest and trustworthy. We believe that occurrences
have taken place, upon the assertion of others. We believe that one will
acts upon another, and in the reality of a multitude of other phenomena
that Reason cannot explain.

But we ought _not_ to believe what Reason authoritatively denies, that
at which the sense of right revolts, that which is absurd or
self-contradictory, or at issue with experience or science, or that
which degrades the character of the Deity, and would make Him
revengeful, malignant, cruel, or unjust.

A man's Faith is as much his own as his Reason is. His Freedom consists
as much in his faith being free as in his will being uncontrolled by
power. All the Priests and Augurs of Rome or Greece had not the right to
require Cicero or Socrates to believe in the absurd mythology of the
vulgar. All the Imaums of Mohammedanism have not the right to require a
Pagan to believe that Gabriel dictated the Koran to the Prophet. All the
Brahmins that ever lived, if assembled in one conclave like the
Cardinals, could not gain a right to compel a single human being to
believe in the Hindu Cosmogony. No man or body of men _can_ be
infallible, and authorized to decide what other men shall believe, as to
any tenet of faith. Except to those who first receive it, every religion
and the truth of all inspired writings depend on _human_ testimony and
internal evidences, to be judged of by Reason and the wise analogies of
Faith. Each man must necessarily have the right to judge of their truth
for himself; because no one man can have any higher or better right to
judge than another of equal information and intelligence.

Domitian claimed to be the Lord God; and statues and images of him, in
silver and gold, were found throughout the known world. He claimed to be
regarded as the God of all men; and, according to Suetonius, began his
letters thus: "_Our Lord and God commands that it should be done so and
so_;" and formally decreed that no one should address him otherwise,
either in writing or by word of mouth. Palfurius Sura, the philosopher,
who was his chief delator, accusing those who refused to recognize his
divinity, however much _he_ may have believed in that divinity, had not
the right to demand that a single Christian in Rome or the provinces
should do the same.

Reason is far from being the only guide, in morals or in political
science. Love or loving-kindness must keep it company, to exclude
fanaticism, intolerance, and persecution, to all of which a morality too
ascetic, and extreme political principles, invariably lead. We must
also have faith in ourselves, and in our fellows and the people, or we
shall be easily discouraged by reverses, and our ardor cooled by
obstacles. We must not listen to Reason alone. Force comes more from
Faith and Love: and it is by the aid of these that man scales the
loftiest heights of morality, or becomes the Saviour and Redeemer of a
People. Reason must hold the helm; but these supply the motive power.
They are the wings of the soul. Enthusiasm is generally unreasoning; and
without it, and Love and Faith, there would have been no RIENZI, or
TELL, or SYDNEY, or any other of the great patriots whose names are
immortal. If the Deity had been merely and only All-wise and All-mighty,
He would never have created the Universe.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is GENIUS that gets Power; and its prime lieutenants are FORCE and
WISDOM. The unruliest of men bend before the leader that has the sense
to see and the will to do. It is Genius, that rules with God-like Power;
that unveils, with its counsellors, the hidden human mysteries, cuts
asunder with its word the huge knots, and builds up with its word the
crumbled ruins. At its glance fall down the senseless idols, whose
altars have been on all the high places and in all the sacred groves.
Dishonesty and imbecility stand abashed before it. Its single Yea or Nay
revokes the wrongs of ages, and is heard among the future generations.
Its power is immense, because its wisdom is immense. Genius is the Sun
of the political sphere. Force and Wisdom, its ministers, are the orbs
that carry its light into darkness, and answer it with their solid
reflecting Truth.

Development is symbolized by the use of the Mallet and Chisel; the
development of the energies and intellect, of the individual and the
people. Genius may place itself at the head of an unintellectual,
uneducated, unenergetic nation; but in a free country, to cultivate the
intellect of those who elect, is the only mode of securing intellect and
genius for rulers. The world is seldom ruled by the great spirits,
except after dissolution and new birth. In periods of transition and
convulsion, the Long Parliaments, the Robespierres and Marats, and the
semi-respectabilities of intellect, too often hold the reins of power.
The Cromwells and Napoleons come later. After Marius and Sulla and
Cicero the rhetorician, CÆSAR. The great intellect is often too sharp
for the granite of this life. Legislators may be very ordinary men; for
legislation is very ordinary work; it is but the final issue of a
million minds.

The power of the purse or the sword, compared to that of the spirit, is
poor and contemptible. As to _lands_, you may have agrarian laws, and
equal partition. But a man's intellect is all his own, held direct from
God, an inalienable fief. It is the most potent of weapons in the hands
of a paladin. If the people comprehend Force in the physical sense, how
much more do they reverence the intellectual! Ask Hildebrand, or Luther,
or Loyola. They fall prostrate before it, as before an idol. The mastery
of mind over mind is the only conquest worth having. The other injures
both, and dissolves at a breath; rude as it is, the great cable falls
down and snaps at last. But this dimly resembles the dominion of the
Creator. It does not need a subject like that of Peter the Hermit. If
the stream be but bright and strong, it will sweep like a spring-tide to
the popular heart. Not in word only, but in intellectual act lies the
fascination. It is the homage to the Invisible. This power, knotted with
Love, is the golden chain let down into the well of Truth, or the
invisible chain that binds the ranks of mankind together.

Influence of man over man is a law of nature, whether it be by a great
estate in land or in intellect. It may mean slavery, a deference to the
eminent human judgment. Society hangs spiritually together, like the
revolving spheres above. The free country, in which intellect and genius
govern, will endure. Where they serve, and other influences govern, the
national life is short. All the nations that have tried to govern
themselves by their smallest, by the incapables, or merely respectables,
have come to nought. Constitutions and Laws, without Genius and
Intellect to govern, will not prevent decay. In that case they have the
dry-rot and the life dies out of them by degrees.

To give a nation the franchise of the Intellect is the only sure mode of
perpetuating freedom. This will compel exertion and generous care for
the people from those on the higher seats, and honorable and intelligent
allegiance from those below. Then political public life will protect all
men from self-abasement in sensual pursuits, from vulgar acts and low
greed, by giving the noble ambition of just imperial rule. To elevate
the people by teaching loving-kindness and wisdom, with power to him who
teaches best: and so to develop the free State from the rough
ashlar:--this is the great labor in which Masonry desires to lend a
helping hand.

All of us should labor in building up the great monument of a nation,
the Holy House of the Temple. The cardinal virtues must not be
partitioned among men, becoming the exclusive property of some, like the
common crafts. ALL are apprenticed to the partners, Duty and Honor.

Masonry is a march and a struggle toward the Light. For the individual
as well as the nation, Light is Virtue, Manliness, Intelligence,
Liberty. Tyranny over the soul or body, is darkness. The freest people,
like the freest man, is always in danger of relapsing into servitude.
Wars are almost always fatal to Republics. They create tyrants, and
consolidate their power. They spring, for the most part, from evil
counsels. When the small and the base are intrusted with power,
legislation and administration become but two parallel series of errors
and blunders, ending in war, calamity, and the necessity for a tyrant.
When the nation feels its feet sliding backward, as if it walked on the
ice, the time has come for a supreme effort. The magnificent tyrants of
the past are but the types of those of the future. Men and nations will
always sell themselves into slavery, to gratify their passions and
obtain revenge. The tyrant's plea, necessity, is always available; and
the tyrant once in power, the necessity of providing for his safety
makes him savage. Religion is a power, and he must control that.
Independent, its sanctuaries might rebel. Then it becomes unlawful for
the people to worship God in their own way, and the old spiritual
despotisms revive. Men must believe as Power wills, or die; and even if
they may believe as they will, all they have, lands, houses, body, and
soul, are stamped with the royal brand. "_I am the State_," said Louis
the Fourteenth to his peasants; "_the very shirts on your backs are
mine, and I can take them if I will_."

And dynasties so established endure, like that of the Cæsars of Rome, of
the Cæsars of Constantinople, of the Caliphs, the Stuarts, the
Spaniards, the Goths, the Valois, until the race wears out, and ends
with lunatics and idiots, who _still_ rule. There is no concord among
men, to end the horrible bondage. The State falls inwardly, as well as
by the outward blows of the incoherent elements. The furious human
passions, the sleeping human indolence, the stolid human ignorance, the
rivalry of human castes, are as good for the kings as the swords of the
Paladins. The worshippers have all bowed so long to the old idol, that
they cannot go into the streets and choose another Grand Llama. And so
the effete State floats on down the puddled stream of Time, until the
tempest or the tidal sea discovers that the worm has consumed its
strength, and it crumbles into oblivion.

       *       *       *       *       *

Civil and religious Freedom must go hand in hand; and Persecution
matures them both. A people content with the thoughts made for them by
the priests of a church will be content with Royalty by Divine
Right,--the Church and the Throne mutually sustaining each other. They
will smother schism and reap infidelity and indifference; and while the
battle for freedom goes on around them, they will only sink the more
apathetically into servitude and a deep trance, perhaps occasionally
interrupted by furious fits of frenzy, followed by helpless exhaustion.

Despotism is not difficult in any land that has only known one master
from its childhood; but there is no harder problem than to perfect and
perpetuate free government by the people themselves; for it is not one
king that is needed: all must be kings. It is easy to set up Masaniello,
that in a few days he may fall lower than before. But free government
grows slowly, like the individual human faculties; and like the
forest-trees, from the inner heart outward. Liberty is not only the
common birth-right, but it is lost as well by non-user as by mis-user.
It depends far more on the universal effort than any other human
property. It has no single shrine or holy well of pilgrimage for the
nation; for its waters should burst out freely from the whole soil.

The free popular power is one that is only known in its strength in the
hour of adversity: for all its trials, sacrifices and expectations are
its own. It is trained to think for itself, and also to act for itself.
When the enslaved people prostrate themselves in the dust before the
hurricane, like the alarmed beasts of the field, the free people stand
erect before it, in all the strength of unity, in self-reliance, in
mutual reliance, with effrontery against all but the visible hand of
God. It is neither cast down by calamity nor elated by success.

This vast power of endurance, of forbearance, of patience, and of
performance, is only acquired by continual exercise of all the
functions, like the healthful physical human vigor, like the individual
moral vigor.

And the maxim is no less true than old, that eternal vigilance is the
price of liberty. It is curious to observe the universal pretext by
which the tyrants of all times take away the national liberties. It is
stated in the statutes of Edward II., that the justices and the sheriff
should no longer be elected by the people, on account of the riots and
dissensions which had arisen. The same reason was given long before for
the suppression of popular election of the bishops; and there is a
witness to this untruth in the yet older times, when Rome lost her
freedom, and her indignant citizens declared that tumultuous liberty is
better than disgraceful tranquillity.

       *       *       *       *       *

With the Compasses and Scale, we can trace all the figures used in the
mathematics of planes, or in what are called GEOMETRY and TRIGONOMETRY,
two words that are themselves deficient in meaning. GEOMETRY, which the
letter G in most Lodges is _said_ to signify, means _measurement_ of
_land_ or the earth--or Surveying; and TRIGONOMETRY, the measurement of
triangles, or figures with three sides or angles. The latter is by far
the most appropriate name for the science intended to be expressed by
the word "Geometry." Neither is of a meaning sufficiently wide: for
although the vast surveys of great spaces of the earth's surface, and of
coasts, by which shipwreck and calamity to mariners are avoided, are
effected by means of triangulation;--though it was by the same method
that the French astronomers measured a degree of latitude and so
established a scale of measures on an immutable basis; though it is by
means of the immense triangle that has for its base a line drawn in
imagination between the place of the earth now and its place six months
hence in space, and for its apex a planet or star, that the distance of
Jupiter or Sirius from the earth is ascertained; and though there is a
triangle still more vast, its base extending either way from us, with
and past the horizon into immensity, and its apex infinitely distant
above us; to which corresponds a similar infinite triangle belo _what is
above equalling what is below, immensity equalling immensity_;--yet the
Science of Numbers, to which Pythagoras attached so much importance, and
whose mysteries are found everywhere in the ancient religions, and most
of all in the Kabalah and in the Bible, is not sufficiently expressed by
either the word "_Geometry_" or the word "_Trigonometry_." For that
science includes these, with Arithmetic, and also with Algebra,
Logarithms, the Integral and Differential Calculus; and by means of it
are worked out the great problems of Astronomy or the Laws of the Stars.

       *       *       *       *       *

Virtue is but heroic bravery to _do_ the thing thought to be true, in
spite of all enemies of flesh or spirit, in despite of all temptations
or menaces. Man is accountable for the _up_rightness of his doctrine,
but not for the rightness of it. Devout enthusiasm is far easier than a
good action. The end of thought is action; the sole purpose of Religion
is an Ethic. Theory, in political science, is worthless, except for the
purpose of being realized in practice.

In every _credo_, religious or political as in the soul of man, there
are two regions, the Dialectic and the Ethic; and it is only when the
two are harmoniously blended, that a perfect discipline is evolved.
There are men who dialectically are Christians, as there are a multitude
who dialectically are Masons, and yet who are ethically Infidels, as
these are ethically of the Profane, in the strictest
sense:--intellectual believers, but practical atheists--men who will
write you "Evidences," in perfect faith in their logic, but cannot carry
out the Christian or Masonic doctrine, owing to the strength, or
weakness, of the flesh. On the other hand, there are many dialectical
skeptics, but ethical believers, as there are many Masons who have never
undergone initiation; and as ethics are the end and purpose of religion,
so are ethical believers the most worthy. He who _does_ right is better
than he who _thinks_ right.

But you must not act upon the hypothesis that all men are hypocrites,
whose conduct does not square with their sentiments. No vice is more
rare, for no task is more difficult, than systematic hypocrisy. When the
Demagogue becomes a Usurper it does not follow that he was all the time
a hypocrite. Shallow men only so judge of others.

The truth is, that creed has, in general, very little influence on the
conduct; in religion, on that of the individual; in politics, on that of
party. As a general thing, the Mahometan, in the Orient, is far more
honest and trustworthy than the Christian. A Gospel of Love in the
mouth, is an Avatar of Persecution in the heart. Men who believe in
eternal damnation and a literal sea of fire and brimstone, incur the
certainty of it, according to their creed, on the slightest temptation
of appetite or passion. Predestination insists on the necessity of good
works. In Masonry, at the least now of passion, one speaks ill of
another behind his back; and so far from the "Brotherhood" of Blue
Masonry being real, and the solemn pledges contained in the use of the
word "Brother" being complied with, extraordinary pains are taken to
show that Masonry is a sort of abstraction, which scorns to interfere in
worldly matters. The rule may be regarded as universal, that, where
there is a choice to be made, a Mason will give his vote and influence,
in politics and business, to the less qualified profane in preference to
the better qualified Mason. One will take an oath to oppose any unlawful
usurpation of power, and then become the ready and even eager instrument
of a usurper. Another will call one "Brother," and then play toward him
the part of Judas Iscariot, or strike him, as Joab did Abner, under the
fifth rib, with a lie whose authorship is not to be traced. Masonry does
not change human nature, and cannot make honest men out of born knaves.

While you are still engaged in preparation, and in accumulating
principles for future use, do not forget the words of the Apostle James:
"For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a
man beholding his natural face in a glass, for he beholdeth himself, and
goeth away, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was; but
whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth, he being
not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be
blessed in his work. If any man among you seem to be religious, and
bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's
religion is vain.... Faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being an
abstraction. A man is justified by works, and not by faith only.... The
devils believe,--and tremble.... As the body without the heart is dead,
so is faith without works."

       *       *       *       *       *

In political science, also, free governments are erected and free
constitutions framed, upon some simple and intelligible theory. Upon
whatever theory they are based, no sound conclusion is to be reached
except by carrying the theory out without flinching, both in argument on
constitutional questions and in practice. Shrink from the true theory
through timidity, or wander from it through want of the logical faculty,
or transgress against it through passion or on the plea of necessity or
expediency, and you have denial or invasion of rights, laws that offend
against first, principles, usurpation of illegal powers, or abnegation
and abdication of legitimate authority.

Do not forget, either, that as the showy, superficial, impudent and
self-conceited will almost always be preferred, even in utmost stress of
danger and calamity of the State, to the man of solid learning, large
intellect, and catholic sympathies, because he is nearer the common
popular and legislative level, so the highest truth is not acceptable to
the mass of mankind.

When SOLON was asked if he had given his countrymen the _best_ laws, he
answered, _"The best they are capable of receiving."_ This is one of the
profoundest utterances on record; and yet like all great truths, so
simple as to be rarely comprehended. It contains the whole philosophy of
History. It utters a truth which, had it been recognized, would have
saved men an immensity of vain, idle disputes, and have led them into
the clearer paths of knowledge in the Past. It means this,--that all
truths are _Truths of Period_, and not truths for eternity; that
whatever great fact has had strength and vitality enough to make itself
real, whether of religion, morals, government, or of whatever else, and
to find place in this world, has been a truth _for the time, and as good
as men were capable of receiving_.

So, too, with great men. The intellect and capacity of a people has a
single measure,--that of the great men whom Providence gives it, and
whom it _receives_. There have always been men too great for their time
or their people. Every people makes _such_ men only its idols, as it is
capable of comprehending.

To impose ideal truth or law upon an incapable and merely _real_ man,
must ever be a vain and empty speculation. The laws of sympathy govern
in this as they do in regard to men who are put at the head. We do not
know, as yet, what qualifications the sheep insist on in a leader. With
men who are too high intellectually, the mass have as little sympathy as
they have with the stars. When BURKE, the wisest statesman England ever
had, rose to speak, the House of Commons was depopulated as upon an
agreed signal. There is as little sympathy between the mass and the
highest TRUTHS. The highest truth, being incomprehensible to the man of
realities, as the highest man is, and largely above his level, will be a
great unreality and falsehood to an unintellectual man. The profoundest
doctrines of Christianity and Philosophy would be mere jargon and babble
to a Potawatomie Indian. The popular explanations of the symbols of
Masonry are fitting for the multitude that have swarmed into the
Temples,--being fully up to the level of their capacity. Catholicism
was a vital truth in its earliest ages, but it became obsolete, and
Protestantism arose, flourished, and deteriorated. The doctrines of
ZOROASTER were the best which the ancient Persians were fitted to
receive; those of CONFUCIUS were fitted for the Chinese; those of
MOHAMMED for the idolatrous Arabs of his age. Each was Truth for the
time. Each was a GOSPEL, preached by a REFORMER; and if any men are so
little fortunate as to remain content therewith, when others have
attained a higher truth, it is their misfortune and not their fault.
They are to be pitied for it, and not persecuted.

Do not expect easily to convince men of the truth, or to lead them to
think aright. The subtle human intellect can weave its mists over even
the clearest vision. Remember that it is eccentric enough to ask
unanimity from a jury; but to ask it from any large number of men on any
point of political faith is amazing. You can hardly get two men in any
Congress or Convention to agree;--nay, you can rarely get one to agree
with _himself_. The political church which chances to be supreme
anywhere has an indefinite number of tongues. How then can we expect men
to agree as to matters beyond the cognizance of the senses? How can we
compass the Infinite and the Invisible with any chain of evidence? Ask
the small sea-waves what they murmur among the pebbles! How many of
those words that come from the invisible shore are lost, like the birds,
in the long passage? How vainly do we strain the eyes across the long
Infinite! We must be content, as the children are, with the pebbles that
have been stranded, since it is forbidden us to explore the hidden
depths.

The Fellow-Craft is especially taught by this not to become wise in his
own conceit. Pride in unsound theories is worse than ignorance. Humility
becomes a Mason. Take some quiet, sober moment of life, and add together
the two ideas of Pride and Man; behold him, creature of a span, stalking
through infinite space in all the grandeur of littleness! Perched on a
speck of the Universe, every wind of Heaven strikes into his blood the
coldness of death; his soul floats away from his body like the melody
from the string. Day and night, like dust on the wheel, he is rolled
along the heavens, through a labyrinth of worlds, and all the creations
of God are flaming on every side, further than even his imagination can
reach. Is this a creature to make for himself a crown of glory, to deny
his own flesh, to mock at his fellow, sprung with him from that dust to
which both will soon return? Does the proud man not err? Does he not
suffer? Does he not die? When he reasons, is he never stopped short by
difficulties? When he acts, does he never succumb to the temptations of
pleasure? When he lives, is he free from pain? Do the diseases not claim
him as their prey? When he dies, can he escape the common grave? Pride
is not the heritage of man. Humility should dwell with frailty, and
atone for ignorance, error and imperfection.

Neither should the Mason be over-anxious for office and honor, however
certainly he may feel that he has the capacity to serve the State. He
should neither seek nor spurn honors. It is good to enjoy the blessings
of fortune; it is better to submit without a pang to their loss. The
greatest deeds are not done in the glare of light, and before the eyes
of the populace. He whom God has gifted with a love of retirement
possesses, as it were, an additional sense; and among the vast and noble
scenes of nature, we find the balm for the wounds we have received among
the pitiful shifts of policy; for the attachment to solitude is the
surest preservative from the ills of life.

But Resignation is the more noble in proportion as it is the less
passive. Retirement is only a morbid selfishness, if it prohibit
exertions for others; as it is only dignified and noble, when it is the
shade whence the oracles issue that are to instruct mankind; and
retirement of this nature is the sole seclusion which a good and wise
man will covet or command. The very philosophy which makes such a man
covet the _quiet_, will make him eschew the _inutility_ of the
hermitage. Very little praiseworthy would LORD BOLINGBROKE have seemed
among his haymakers and ploughmen, if among haymakers and ploughmen he
had looked with an indifferent eye upon a profligate minister and a
venal Parliament. Very little interest would have attached to his beans
and vetches, if beans and vetches had caused him to forget that if he
was happier on a farm he could be more useful in a Senate, and made him
forego, in the sphere of a bailiff, all care for re-entering that of a
legislator.

Remember, also, that there is an education which quickens the Intellect,
and leaves the heart hollower or harder than before. There are ethical
lessons in the laws of the heavenly bodies, in the properties of earthly
elements, in geography, chemistry, geology, and all the material
sciences. Things are symbols of Truths. Properties are symbols of
Truths. Science, not teaching moral and spiritual truths, is dead and
dry, of little more real value than to commit to the memory a long row
of unconnected dates, or of the names of bugs or butterflies.

Christianity, it is said, begins from the burning of the false gods by
the people themselves. Education begins with the burning of our
intellectual and moral idols: our prejudices, notions, conceits, our
worthless or ignoble purposes. Especially it is necessary to shake off
the love of worldly gain. With Freedom comes the longing for worldly
advancement. In that race men are ever falling, rising, running, and
falling again. The lust for wealth and the abject dread of poverty delve
the furrows on many a noble brow. The gambler grows old as he watches
the chances. Lawful hazard drives Youth away before its time; and this
Youth draws heavy bills of exchange on Age. Men live, like the engines,
at high pressure, a hundred years in a hundred months; the ledger
becomes the Bible, and the day-book the Book of the Morning Prayer.

Hence flow overreachings and sharp practice, heartless traffic in which
the capitalist buys profit with the lives of the laborers, speculations
that coin a nation's agonies into wealth, and all the other devilish
enginery of Mammon. This, and greed for office, are the two columns at
the entrance to the Temple of Moloch. It is doubtful whether the latter,
blossoming in falsehood, trickery, and fraud, is not even more
pernicious than the former. At all events they are twins, and fitly
mated; and as either gains control of the unfortunate subject, his soul
withers away and decays, and at last dies out. The souls of half the
human race leave them long before they die. The two greeds are twin
plagues of the leprosy, and make the man unclean; and whenever they
break out they spread until "they cover all the skin of him that hath
the plague, from his head even to his foot." Even the raw flesh of the
heart becomes unclean with it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Alexander of Macedon has left a saying behind him which has survived his
conquests: _"Nothing is nobler than work."_ Work only can keep even
kings respectable. And when a king is a king indeed, it is an honorable
office to give tone to the manners and morals of a nation; to set the
example of virtuous conduct, and restore in spirit the old schools of
chivalry, in which the young manhood may be nurtured to real greatness.
Work and wages _will_ go together in men's minds, in the most royal
institutions. We must ever come to the idea of real work. The rest that
follows labor should be sweeter than the rest which follows rest.

Let no Fellow-Craft imagine that the work of the lowly and uninfluential
is not worth the doing. There is no legal limit to the possible
influences of a good deed or a wise word or a generous effort. Nothing
is really small. Whoever is open to the deep penetration of nature knows
this. Although, indeed, no absolute satisfaction may be vouchsafed to
philosophy, any more in circumscribing the cause than in limiting the
effect, the man of thought and contemplation falls into unfathomable
ecstacies in view of all the decompositions of forces resulting in
unity. All works for all. Destruction is not annihilation, but
regeneration.

Algebra applies to the clouds; the radiance of the star benefits the
rose; no thinker would dare to say that the perfume of the hawthorn is
useless to the constellations. Who, then, can calculate the path of the
molecule? How do we know that the creations of worlds are not determined
by the fall of grains of sand? Who, then, understands the reciprocal
flow and ebb of the infinitely great and the infinitely small; the
echoing of causes in the abysses of beginning, and the avalanches of
creation? A fleshworm is of account; the small is great; the great is
small; all is in equilibrium in necessity. There are marvellous
relations between beings and things; in this inexhaustible Whole, from
sun to grub, there is no scorn: all need each other. Light does not
carry terrestrial perfumes into the azure depths, without knowing what
it does with them; night distributes the stellar essence to the sleeping
plants. Every bird which flies has the thread of the Infinite in its
claw. Germination includes the hatching of a meteor, and the tap of a
swallow's bill, breaking the egg; and it leads forward the birth of an
earth-worm and the advent of a Socrates. Where the telescope ends the
microscope begins. Which of them the grander view? A bit of mould is a
Pleiad of flowers--a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.

There is the same and a still more wonderful interpenetration between
the things of the intellect and the things of matter. Elements and
principles are mingled, combined, espoused, multiplied one by another,
to such a degree as to bring the material world and the moral world into
the same light. Phenomena are perpetually folded back upon themselves.
In the vast cosmical changes the universal life comes and goes in
unknown quantities, enveloping all in the invisible mystery of the
emanations, losing no dream from no single sleep, sowing an animalcule
here, crumbling a star there, oscillating and winding in curves; making
a force of Light, and an element of Thought; disseminated and
indivisible, dissolving all save that point without length, breadth, or
thickness. The MYSELF; reducing everything to the Soul-atom; making
everything blossom into God; entangling all activities, from the highest
to the lowest, in the obscurity of a dizzying mechanism; hanging the
flight of an insect upon the movement of the earth; subordinating,
perhaps, if only by the identity of the law, the eccentric evolutions of
the comet in the firmament, to the whirlings of the infusoria in the
drop of water. A mechanism made of mind, the first motor of which is the
gnat, and its last wheel the zodiac.

A peasant-boy, guiding Blücher by the right one of two roads, the other
being impassable for artillery, enables him to reach Waterloo in time to
save Wellington from a defeat that would have been a rout; and so
enables the kings to imprison Napoleon on a barren rock in mid-ocean. An
unfaithful smith, by the slovenly shoeing of a horse, causes his
lameness, and, he stumbling, the career of his world-conquering rider
ends, and the destinies of empires are changed. A generous officer
permits an imprisoned monarch to end his game of chess before leading
him to the block; and meanwhile the usurper dies, and the prisoner
reascends the throne. An unskillful workman repairs the compass, or
malice or stupidity disarranges it, the ship mistakes her course, the
waves swallow a Caesar, and a new chapter is written in the history of a
world. What we call accident is but the adamantine chain of indissoluble
connection between all created things. The locust, hatched in the
Arabian sands, the small worm that destroys the cotton-boll, one making
famine in the Orient, the other closing the mills and starving the
workmen and their children in the Occident, with riots and massacres,
are as much the ministers of God as the earthquake; and the fate of
nations depends more on them than on the intellect of its kings and
legislators. A civil war in America will end in shaking the world; and
that war may be caused by the vote of some ignorant prize-fighter or
crazed fanatic in a city or in a Congress, or of some stupid boor in an
obscure country parish. The electricity of universal sympathy, of
action and reaction, pervades everything, the planets and the motes in
the sunbeam. FAUST, with his types, or LUTHER, with his sermons, worked
greater results than Alexander or Hannibal. A single thought sometimes
suffices to overturn a dynasty. A silly song did more to unseat James
the Second than the acquittal of the Bishops. Voltaire, Condorcet, and
Rousseau uttered words that will ring, in change and revolutions,
throughout all the ages.

Remember, that though life is short, Thought and the influences of what
we do or say are immortal; and that no calculus has yet pretended to
ascertain the law of proportion between cause and effect. The hammer of
an English blacksmith, smiting down an insolent official, led to a
rebellion which came near being a revolution. The word well spoken, the
deed fitly done, even by the feeblest or humblest, cannot help but have
their effect. More or less, the effect is inevitable and eternal. The
echoes of the greatest deeds may die away like the echoes of a cry among
the cliffs, and what has been done seem to the human judgment to have
been without result. The unconsidered act of the poorest of men may fire
the train that leads to the subterranean mine, and an empire be rent by
the explosion.

The power of a free people is often at the disposal of a single and
seemingly an unimportant individual;--a terrible and truthful power; for
such a people feel with one heart, and therefore can lift up their
myriad arms for a single blow. And, again, there is no graduated scale
for the measurement of the influences of different intellects upon the
popular mind. Peter the Hermit held no office, yet what a work he
wrought!

       *       *       *       *       *

From the political point of view there is but a single principle,--the
sovereignty of man over himself. This sovereignty of one's self over
one's self is called LIBERTY. Where two or several of these
sovereignties associate, the State begins. But in this association there
is no abdication. Each sovereignty parts with a certain portion of
itself to form the common right. That portion is the same for all. There
is equal contribution by all to the joint sovereignty. This identity of
concession which each makes to all, is EQUALITY. The common right is
nothing more or less than the protection of all, pouring its rays on
each. This protection of each by all, is FRATERNITY.

Liberty is the summit, Equality the base. Equality is not all vegetation
on a level, a society of big spears of grass and stunted oaks, a
neighborhood of jealousies, emasculating each other. It is, civilly, all
aptitudes having equal opportunity; politically, all votes having equal
weight; religiously, all consciences having equal rights.

Equality has an organ;--gratuitous and obligatory instruction. We must
begin with the right to the alphabet. The primary school _obligatory_
upon all; the higher school _offered_ to all. Such is the law. From the
same school for all springs equal society. Instruction! Light! all comes
from Light, and all returns to it.

We must learn the thoughts of the common people, if we would be wise and
do any good work. We must look at men, not so much for what Fortune has
given to them with her blind old eyes, as for the gifts Nature has
brought in her lap, and for the use that has been made of them. We
profess to be equal in a Church and in the Lodge: we shall be equal in
the sight of God when He judges the earth. We may well sit on the
pavement together here, in communion and conference, for the few brief
moments that constitute life.

A Democratic Government undoubtedly has its defects, because it is made
and administered by men, and not by the Wise Gods. It cannot be concise
and sharp, like the despotic. When its ire is aroused it develops its
latent strength, and the sturdiest rebel trembles. But its habitual
domestic rule is tolerant, patient, and indecisive. Men are brought
together, first to differ, and then to agree. Affirmation, negation,
discussion, solution: these are the means of attaining truth. Often the
enemy will be at the gates before the babble of the disturbers is
drowned in the chorus of consent. In the Legislative office deliberation
will often defeat decision. Liberty can play the fool like the Tyrants.

Refined society requires greater minuteness of regulation; and the steps
of all advancing States are more and more to be picked among the old
rubbish and the new materials. The difficulty lies in discovering the
right path through the chaos of confusion. The adjustment of mutual
rights and wrongs is also more difficult in democracies. We do not see
and estimate the relative importance of objects so easily and clearly
from the level or the waving land as from the elevation of a lone peak,
towering above the plain; for each looks through his own mist.

Abject dependence on constituents, also, is too common. It is as
miserable a thing as abject dependence on a minister or the favorite of
a Tyrant. It is rare to find a man who can speak out the simple truth
that is in him, honestly and frankly, without fear, favor, or affection,
either to Emperor or People.

Moreover, in assemblies of men, faith in each other is almost always
wanting, unless a terrible pressure of calamity or danger from without
produces cohesion. Hence the constructive power of such assemblies is
generally deficient. The chief triumphs of modern days, in Europe, have
been in pulling down and obliterating; not in building up. But Repeal is
not Reform. Time must bring with him the Restorer and Rebuilder.

Speech, also, is grossly abused in Republics; and if the use of speech
be glorious, its abuse is the most villainous of vices. Rhetoric, Plato
says, is the art of ruling the minds of men. But in democracies it is
too common to _hide_ thought in words, to _overlay_ it, to babble
nonsense. The gleams and glitter of intellectual soap-and-water bubbles
are mistaken for the rainbow-glories of genius. The worthless pyrites is
continually mistaken for gold. Even intellect condescends to
intellectual jugglery, balancing thoughts as a juggler balances pipes on
his chin. In all Congresses we have the inexhaustible flow of babble,
and Faction's clamorous knavery in discussion, until the divine power of
speech, that privilege of man and great gift of God, is no better than
the screech of parrots or the mimicry of monkeys. The mere talker,
however fluent, is barren of deeds in the day of trial.

There are men voluble as women, and as well skilled in fencing with the
tongue: prodigies of speech, misers in deeds. Too much talking, like too
much thinking, destroys the power of action. In human nature, the
thought is only made perfect by deed. Silence is the mother of both. The
trumpeter is not the bravest of the brave. Steel and not brass wins the
day. The great doer of great deeds is mostly slow and slovenly of
speech. There are some men born and bred to betray. Patriotism is their
trade, and their capital is speech. But no noble spirit can plead like
Paul and be false to itself as Judas.

Imposture too commonly rules in republics; they seem to be ever in their
minority; their guardians are self-appointed; and the unjust thrive
better than the just. The Despot, like the night-lion roaring, drowns
all the clamor of tongues at once, and speech, the birthright of the
free man, becomes the bauble of the enslaved.

It is quite true that republics only occasionally, and as it were
accidentally, select their wisest, or even the less incapable among the
incapables, to govern them and legislate for them. If genius, armed with
learning and knowledge, will grasp the reins, the people will reverence
it; if it only modestly offers itself for office, it will be smitten on
the face, even when, in the straits of distress and the agonies of
calamity, it is indispensable to the salvation of the State. Put it upon
the track with the showy and superficial, the conceited, the ignorant,
and impudent, the trickster and charlatan, and the result shall not be a
moment doubtful. The verdicts of Legislatures and the People are like
the verdicts of juries,--sometimes right by accident.

Offices, it is true, are showered, like the rains of Heaven, upon the
just and the unjust. The Roman Augurs that used to laugh in each other's
faces at the simplicity of the vulgar, were also tickled with their own
guile; but no Augur is needed to lead the people astray. They readily
deceive themselves. Let a Republic begin as it may, it will not be out
of its minority before imbecility will be promoted to high places; and
shallow pretence, getting itself puffed into notice, will invade all the
sanctuaries. The most unscrupulous partisanship will prevail, even in
respect to judicial trusts; and the most unjust appointments constantly
be made, although every improper promotion not merely confers one
undeserved favor, but may make a hundred honest cheeks smart with
injustice.

The country is stabbed in the front when those are brought into the
stalled seats who should slink into the dim gallery. Every stamp of
Honor, ill-clutched, is stolen from the Treasury of Merit.

Yet the entrance into the public service, and the promotion in it,
affect both the rights of individuals and those of the nation. Injustice
in bestowing or withholding office ought to be so intolerable in
democratic communities that the least trace of it should be like the
scent of Treason. It is not universally true that all citizens of equal
character have an equal claim to knock at the door of every public
office and demand admittance. When any man presents himself for service
he has a right to aspire to the highest body at once, if he can show his
fitness for such a beginning,--that he is fitter than the rest who
offer themselves for the same post. The entry into it can only justly be
made through the door of merit. And whenever any one aspires to and
attains such high post, especially if by unfair and disreputable and
indecent means, and is afterward found to be a signal failure, he should
at once be beheaded. He is the worst among the public enemies.

When a man sufficiently reveals himself, all others should be proud to
give him due precedence. When the power of promotion is abused in the
grand passages of life whether by People, Legislature, or Executive, the
unjust decision recoils on the judge at once. That is not only a gross,
but a willful shortness of sight, that cannot discover the deserving. If
one will look hard, long, and honestly, he will not fail to discern
merit, genius, and qualification; and the eyes and voice of the Press
and Public should condemn and denounce injustice wherever she rears her
horrid head.

_"The tools to the workmen!"_ no other principle will save a Republic
from destruction, either by civil war or the dry-rot. They tend to
decay, do all we can to prevent it, like human bodies. If they try the
experiment of governing themselves by their smallest, they slide
downward to the unavoidable abyss with tenfold velocity; and there never
has been a Republic that has not followed that fatal course.

But however palpable and gross the inherent defects of democratic
governments, and fatal as the results finally and inevitably are, we
need only glance at the reigns of Tiberius, Nero, and Caligula, of
Heliogabalus and Caracalla, of Domitian and Commodus, to recognize that
the difference between freedom and despotism is as wide as that between
Heaven and Hell. The cruelty, baseness, and insanity of tyrants are
incredible. Let him who complains of the fickle humors and inconstancy
of a free people, read Pliny's character of Domitian. If the great man
in a Republic cannot win office without descending to low arts and
whining beggary and the judicious use of sneaking lies, let him remain
in retirement, and use the pen. Tacitus and Juvenal held no office. Let
History and Satire punish the pretender as they crucify the despot. The
revenges of the intellect are terrible and just.

Let Masonry use the pen and the printing-press in the free State against
the Demagogue; in the Despotism against the Tyrant. History offers
examples and encouragement. All history, for four thousand years, being
filled with violated rights and the sufferings of the people, each
period of history brings with it such protest as is possible to it.
Under the Cæsars there was no insurrection, but there was a Juvenal. The
arousing of indignation replaces the Gracchi. Under the Cæsars there is
the exile of Syene; there is also the author of the Annals. As the
Nero's reign darkly they should be pictured so. Work with the graver
only would be pale; into the grooves should be poured a concentrated
prose that bites.

Despots are an aid to thinkers. Speech enchained is speech terrible. The
writer doubles and triples his style, when silence is imposed by a
master upon the people. There springs from this silence a certain
mysterious fullness, which filters and freezes into brass in the
thoughts. Compression in the history produces conciseness in the
historian. The granitic solidity of some celebrated prose is only a
condensation produced by the Tyrant. Tyranny constrains the writer to
shortenings of diameter which are increases of strength. The Ciceronian
period, hardly sufficient upon Verres, would lose its edge upon
Caligula.

The Demagogue is the predecessor of the Despot. One springs from the
other's loins. He who will basely fawn on those who have office to
bestow, will betray like Iscariot, and prove a miserable and pitiable
failure. Let the new Junius lash such men as they deserve, and History
make them immortal in infamy; since their influences culminate in ruin.
The Republic that employs and honors the shallow, the superficial, the
base,

          "who crouch
    Unto the offal of an office promised,"

at last weeps tears of blood for its fatal error. Of such supreme folly,
the sure fruit is damnation. Let the nobility of every great heart,
condensed into justice and truth, strike such creatures like a
thunderbolt! If you can do no more, you can at least condemn by your
vote, and ostracise by denunciation.

It is true that, as the Czars are absolute, they have it in their power
to select the best for the public service. It is true that the beginner
of a dynasty generally does so; and that when monarchies are in their
prime, pretence and shallowness do not thrive and prosper and get power,
as they do in Republics. All do not gabble in the Parliament of a
Kingdom, as in the Congress of a Democracy. The incapables do not go
undetected there, _all_ their lives.

But dynasties speedily decay and run out. At last they dwindle down into
imbecility; and the dull or flippant Members of Congresses are at least
the intellectual peers of the vast majority of kings. The great man, the
Julius Caesar, the Charlemagne, Cromwell, Napoleon, reigns of right. He
is the wisest and the strongest. The incapables and imbeciles succeed
and are usurpers; and fear makes them cruel. After Julius came Caracalla
and Galba; after Charlemagne, the lunatic Charles the Sixth. So the
Saracenic dynasty dwindled out; the Capets, the Stuarts, the Bourbons;
the last of these producing Bomba, the ape of Domitian.

       *       *       *       *       *

Man is by nature cruel, like the tigers. The barbarian, and the tool of
the tyrant, and the civilized fanatic, enjoy the sufferings of others,
as the children enjoy the contortions of maimed flies. Absolute Power,
once in fear for the safety of its tenure, cannot but be cruel.

As to ability, dynasties invariably cease to possess any after a few
lives. They become mere shams, governed by ministers, favorites, or
courtesans, like those old Etruscan kings, slumbering for long ages in
their golden royal robes, dissolving forever at the first breath of day.
Let him who complains of the shortcomings of democracy ask himself if he
would prefer a Du Barry or a Pompadour, governing in the name of a Louis
the Fifteenth, a Caligula making his horse a consul, a Domitian, "that
most savage monster," who sometimes drank the blood of relatives,
sometimes employing himself with slaughtering the most distinguished
citizens before whose gates fear and terror kept watch; a tyrant of
frightful aspect, pride on his forehead, fire in his eye, constantly
seeking darkness and secrecy, and only emerging from his solitude to
make solitude. After all, in a free government, the Laws and the
Constitution are above the Incapables, the Courts correct their
legislation, and posterity is the Grand Inquest that passes judgment on
them. What is the exclusion of worth and intellect and knowledge from
civil office compared with trials before Jeffries, tortures in the dark
caverns of the Inquisition, Alva-butcheries in the Netherlands, the Eve
of Saint Bartholomew, and the Sicilian Vespers?

       *       *       *       *       *

The Abbé Barruel in his _Memoirs for the History of Jacobinism_,
declares that Masonry in France gave, as its secret, the words Equality
and Liberty, leaving it for every honest and religious Mason to explain
them as would best suit his principles; but retained the privilege of
unveiling in the higher Degrees the meaning of those words, as
interpreted by the French Revolution. And he also excepts English Masons
from his anathemas, because in England a Mason is a peaceable subject of
the civil authorities, no matter where he resides, engaging in no plots
or conspiracies against even the worst government. England, he says,
disgusted with an Equality and a Liberty, the consequences of which she
had felt in the struggles of her Lollards, Anabaptists, and
Presbyterians, had "purged her Masonry" from all explanations tending to
overturn empires; but there still remained adepts whom disorganizing
principles bound to the Ancient Mysteries.

Because true Masonry, unemasculated, bore the banners of Freedom and
Equal Rights, and was in rebellion against temporal and spiritual
tyranny, its Lodges were proscribed in 1735, by an edict of the States
of Holland. In 1737, Louis XV. forbade them in France. In 1738, Pope
Clement XII. issued against them his famous Bull of Excommunication,
which was renewed by Benedict XIV.; and in 1743 the Council of Berne
also proscribed them. The title of the Bull of Clement is, "The
Condemnation of the Society of Conventicles _de Liberi Muratari_, or of
the Freemasons, under the penalty of _ipso facto_ excommunication, the
absolution from which is reserved to the Pope alone, except at the point
of death." And by it all bishops, ordinaries, and inquisitors were
empowered to punish Freemasons, "as vehemently suspected of heresy," and
to call in, if necessary, the help of the secular arm; that is, to cause
the civil authority to put them to death.

       *       *       *       *       *

Also, false and slavish political theories end in brutalizing the State.
For example, adopt the theory that offices and employments in it are to
be given as rewards for services rendered to party, and they soon become
the prey and spoil of faction, the booty of the victory of faction;--and
leprosy is in the flesh of the State. The body of the commonwealth
becomes a mass of corruption, like a living carcass rotten with
syphilis. All unsound theories in the end develop themselves in one foul
and loathsome disease or other of the body politic. The State, like the
man, must use constant effort to _stay_ in the paths of virtue and
manliness. The habit of electioneering and begging for office
culminates in bribery _with_ office, and corruption _in_ office.

A chosen man has a visible trust from God, as plainly as if the
commission were engrossed by the notary. A nation cannot renounce the
executorship of the Divine decrees. As little can Masonry. It must labor
to do its duty knowingly and wisely. We must remember that, in free
States, as well as in despotisms, Injustice, the spouse of Oppression,
is the fruitful parent of Deceit, Distrust, Hatred, Conspiracy, Treason,
and Unfaithfulness. Even in assailing Tyranny we must have Truth and
Reason as our chief weapons. We must march into that fight like the old
Puritans, or into the battle with the abuses that spring up in free
government, with the flaming sword in one hand, and the Oracles of God
in the other.

The citizen who cannot accomplish well the smaller purposes of public
life, cannot compass the larger. The vast power of endurance,
forbearance, patience, and performance, of a free people, is acquired
only by continual exercise of all the functions, like the healthful
physical human vigor. If the individual citizens have it not, the State
must equally be without it. It is of the essence of a free government,
that the people should not only be concerned in making the laws, but
also in their execution. No man ought to be more ready to obey and
administer the law than he who has helped to make it. The business of
government is carried on for the benefit of all, and every co-partner
should give counsel and co-operation.

Remember also, as another shoal on which States are wrecked, that free
States always tend toward the depositing of the citizens in strata, the
creation of castes, the perpetuation of the _jus divinum_ to office in
families. The more democratic the State, the more sure this result. For,
as free States advance in power, there is a strong tendency toward
centralization, not from deliberate evil intention, but from the course
of events and the indolence of human nature. The executive powers swell
and enlarge to inordinate dimensions; and the Executive is always
aggressive with respect to the nation. Offices of all kinds are
multiplied to reward partisans; the brute force of the sewerage and
lower strata of the mob obtains large representation, first in the lower
offices, and at last in Senates; and Bureaucracy raises its bald head,
bristling with pens, girded with spectacles, and bunched with ribbon.
The art of Government becomes like a Craft, and its guilds tend to
become exclusive, as those of the Middle Ages.

Political science may be much improved as a subject of speculation; but
it should never be divorced from the actual national necessity. The
science of governing men must always be practical, rather than
philosophical. There is not the same amount of positive or universal
truth here as in the abstract sciences; what is true in one country may
be very false in another; what is untrue to-day may become true in
another generation, and the truth of to-day be reversed by the judgment
of to-morrow. To distinguish the casual from the enduring, to separate
the unsuitable from the suitable, and to make progress even possible,
are the proper ends of policy. But without actual knowledge and
experience, and communion of labor, the dreams of the political doctors
may be no better than those of the doctors of divinity. The reign of
such a caste, with its mysteries, its myrmidons, and its corrupting
influence, may be as fatal as that of the despots. Thirty tyrants are
thirty times worse than one.

Moreover, there is a strong temptation for the governing people to
become as much slothful and sluggards as the weakest of absolute kings.
Only give them the power to get rid, when caprice prompts them, of the
great and wise men, and elect the little, and as to all the rest they
will relapse into indolence and indifference. The central power,
creation of the people, organized and cunning if not enlightened, is the
perpetual tribunal set up by them for the redress of wrong and the rule
of justice. It soon supplies itself with all the requisite machinery,
and is ready and apt for all kinds of interference. The people may be a
child all its life. The central power may not be able to suggest the
best scientific solution of a problem; but it has the easiest means of
carrying an idea into effect. If the purpose to be attained is a large
one, it requires a large comprehension; it is proper for the action of
the central power. If it be a small one, it may be thwarted by
disagreement. The central power must step in as an arbitrator and
prevent this. The people may be too averse to change, too slothful in
their own business, unjust to a minority or a majority. The central
power must take the reins when the people drop them.

France became centralized in its government more by the apathy and
ignorance of its people than by the tyranny of its kings. When the
inmost parish-life is given up to the direct guardianship of the State,
and the repair of the belfry of a country church requires a written
order from the central power, a people is in its dotage. Men are thus
nurtured in imbecility, from the dawn of social life. When the central
government feeds part of the people it prepares all to be slaves. When
it directs parish and county affairs, they are slaves already. The next
step is to regulate labor and its wages.

Nevertheless, whatever follies the free people may commit, even to the
putting of the powers of legislation in the hands of the little
competent and less honest, despair not of the final result. The terrible
teacher, EXPERIENCE, writing his lessons on hearts desolated with
calamity and wrung by agony, will make them wiser in time. Pretence and
grimace and sordid beggary for votes will some day cease to avail. Have
FAITH, and struggle on, against all evil influences and discouragements!
FAITH is the Saviour and Redeemer of nations. When Christianity had
grown weak, profitless, and powerless, the Arab Restorer and Iconoclast
came, like a cleansing hurricane. When the battle of Damascus was about
to be fought, the Christian bishop, at the early dawn, in his robes, at
the head of his clergy, with the Cross once so triumphant raised in the
air, came down to the gates of the city, and laid open before the army
the Testament of Christ. The Christian general, THOMAS, laid his hand on
the book, and said, _"Oh God! IF our faith be true, aid us, and deliver
us not into the hands of its enemies!"_ But KHALED, _"the Sword of
God,"_ who had marched from victory to victory, exclaimed to his wearied
soldiers, _"Let no man sleep! There will be rest enough in the bowers of
Paradise; sweet will be the repose never more to be followed by labor."_
The faith of the Arab had become stronger than that of the Christian,
and he conquered.

The Sword is also, in the Bible, an emblem of SPEECH, or of the
utterance of thought. Thus, in that vision or apocalypse of the sublime
exile of Patmos, a protest in the name of the ideal, overwhelming the
real world, a tremendous satire uttered in the name of Religion and
Liberty, and with its fiery reverberations smiting the throne of the
Cæsars, a sharp two-edged sword comes out of the mouth of the Semblance
of the Son of Man, encircled by the seven golden candlesticks, and
holding in his right hand seven stars. "The Lord," says Isaiah, "hath
made my mouth like a sharp sword." "I have slain them," says Hosea, "by
the words of my mouth." "The word of God," says the writer of the
apostolic letter to the Hebrews, "is quick and powerful, and sharper
than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul
and spirit." "The sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God," says
Paul, writing to the Christians at Ephesus. "I will fight against them
with the sword of my mouth," it is said in the Apocalypse, to the angel
of the church at Pergamos.

       *       *       *       *       *

The spoken discourse may roll on strongly as the great tidal wave; but,
like the wave, it dies at last feebly on the sands. It is heard by few,
remembered by still fewer, and fades away, like an echo in the
mountains, leaving no token of power. It is nothing to the living and
coming generations of men. It was the _written_ human speech, that gave
power and permanence to human thought. It is this that makes the whole
human history but one individual life.

To write on the rock is to write on a solid parchment; but it requires a
pilgrimage to see it. There is but one copy, and Time wears even that.
To write on skins or papyrus was to give, as it were, but one tardy
edition, and the rich only could procure it. The Chinese stereotyped not
only the unchanging wisdom of old sages, but also the passing events.
The process tended to suffocate thought, and to hinder progress; for
there is continual wandering in the wisest minds, and Truth writes her
last words, not on clean tablets, but on the scrawl that Error has made
and often mended.

Printing made the movable letters prolific. Thenceforth the orator spoke
almost visibly to listening nations; and the author wrote, like the
Pope, his œcumenic decrees, _urbi et orbi_, and ordered them to be
posted up in all the market-places; remaining, if he chose, impervious
to human sight. The doom of tyrannies was thenceforth sealed. Satire and
invective became potent as armies. The unseen hands of the Juniuses
could launch the thunderbolts, and make the ministers tremble. One
whisper from this giant fills the earth as easily as Demosthenes filled
the Agora. It will soon be heard at the antipodes as easily as in the
next street. It travels with the lightning under the oceans. It makes
the mass one man, speaks to it in the same common language, and elicits
a sure and single response. Speech passes into thought, and thence
promptly into act. A nation becomes truly one, with one large heart and
a single throbbing pulse. Men are invisibly present to each other, as
if already spiritual beings; and the thinker who sits in an Alpine
solitude, unknown to or forgotten by all the world, among the silent
herds and hills, may flash his words to all the cities and over all the
seas.

Select the thinkers to be Legislators; and avoid the gabblers. Wisdom is
rarely loquacious. Weight and depth of thought are unfavorable to
volubility. The shallow and superficial are generally voluble and often
pass for eloquent. More words, less thought,--is the general rule. The
man who endeavors to say something worth remembering in every sentence,
becomes fastidious, and condenses like Tacitus. The vulgar love a more
diffuse stream. The ornamentation that does not cover strength is the
gewgaws of babble.

Neither is dialectic subtlety valuable to public men. The Christian
faith has it, had it formerly more than now; a subtlety that might have
entangled Plato, and which has rivalled in a fruitless fashion the
mystic lore of Jewish Rabbis and Indian Sages. It is not this which
converts the heathen. It is a vain task to balance the great thoughts of
the earth, like hollow straws, on the finger-tips of disputation. It is
not this kind of warfare which makes the Cross triumphant in the hearts
of the unbelievers; but the actual power that lives in the Faith.

So there is a political scholasticism that is merely useless. The
dexterities of subtle logic rarely stir the hearts of the people, or
convince them. The true apostle of Liberty, Fraternity and Equality
makes it a matter of life and death. His combats are like those of
Bossuet,--combats to the death. The true apostolic fire is like the
lightning: it flashes conviction into the soul. The true word is verily
a two-edged sword. Matters of government and political science can be
fairly dealt with only by sound reason, and the logic of common sense:
not the common sense of the ignorant, but of the wise. The acutest
thinkers rarely succeed in becoming leaders of men. A watchword or a
catchword is more potent with the people than logic, especially if this
be the least metaphysical. When a political prophet arises, to stir the
dreaming, stagnant nation, and hold back its feet from the irretrievable
descent, to heave the land as with an earthquake, and shake the
silly-shallow idols from their seats, his words will come straight from
God's own mouth, and be thundered into the conscience. He will reason,
teach, warn, and rule. The real "Sword of the Spirit" is keener than
the brightest blade of Damascus. Such men rule a land, in the strength
of justice, with wisdom and with power. Still, the men of dialectic
subtlety often rule well, because in practice they forget their
finely-spun theories, and use the trenchant logic of common sense. But
when the great heart and large intellect are left to the rust in private
life, and small attorneys, brawlers in politics, and those who in the
cities would be only the clerks of notaries, or practitioners in the
disreputable courts, are made national Legislators, the country is in
her dotage, even if the beard has not yet grown upon her chin.

In a free country, human speech must needs be free; and the State _must_
listen to the maunderings of folly, and the screechings of its geese,
and the brayings of its asses, as well as to the golden oracles of its
wise and great men. Even the despotic old kings allowed their wise fools
to say what they liked. The true alchemist will extract the lessons of
wisdom from the babblings of folly. He will hear what a man has to say
on any given subject, even if the speaker end only in proving himself
prince of fools. Even a fool will sometimes hit the mark. There is some
truth in all men who are not compelled to suppress their souls and speak
other men's thoughts. The finger even of the idiot may point to the
great highway.

A people, as well as the sages, must learn to forget. If it neither
learns the new nor forgets the old, it is fated, even if it has been
royal for thirty generations. To unlearn is to learn; and also it is
sometimes needful to learn again the forgotten. The antics of fools make
the current follies more palpable, as fashions are shown to be absurd by
caricatures, which so lead to their extirpation. The buffoon and the
zany are useful in their places. The ingenious artificer and craftsman,
like Solomon, searches the earth for his materials, and transforms the
misshapen matter into glorious workmanship. The world is conquered by
the head even more than by the hands. Nor will any assembly talk
forever. After a time, when it has listened long enough, it quietly puts
the silly, the shallow, and the superficial to one side,--it thinks, and
sets to work.

The human thought, especially in popular assemblies, runs in the most
singularly crooked channels, harder to trace and follow than the blind
currents of the ocean. No notion is so absurd that it may not find a
place there. The master-workman must train these notions and vagaries
with his two-handed hammer. They twist out of the way of the
sword-thrusts; and are invulnerable all over, even in the heel, against
logic. The martel or mace, the battle-axe, the great double-edged
two-handed sword must deal with follies; the rapier is no better against
them than a wand, unless it be the rapier of ridicule.

The SWORD is also the symbol of _war_ and of the _soldier_. Wars, like
thunder-storms, are often necessary to purify the stagnant atmosphere.
War is not a demon, without remorse or reward. It restores the
brotherhood in letters of fire. When men are seated in their pleasant
places, sunken in ease and indolence, with Pretence and Incapacity and
Littleness usurping all the high places of State, war is the baptism of
blood and fire, by which alone they can be renovated. It is the
hurricane that brings the elemental equilibrium, the concord of Power
and Wisdom. So long as these continue obstinately divorced, it will
continue to chasten.

In the mutual appeal of nations to God, there is the acknowledgment of
His might. It lights the beacons of Faith and Freedom, and heats the
furnace through which the earnest and loyal pass to immortal glory.
There is in war the doom of defeat, the quenchless sense of Duty, the
stirring sense of Honor, the measureless solemn sacrifice of
devotedness, and the incense of success. Even in the flame and smoke of
battle, the Mason discovers his brother, and fulfills the sacred
obligations of Fraternity.

Two, or the Duad, is the symbol of Antagonism; of Good and Evil, Light
and Darkness. It is Cain and Abel, Eve and Lilith, Jachin and Boaz,
Ormuzd and Ahriman, Osiris and Typhon.

Three, or the Triad, is most significantly expressed by the equilateral
and the right-angled triangles. There are _three_ principal colors or
rays in the rainbow, which by intermixture make _seven_. The three are
the _blue_, the _yellow_, and the _red_. The Trinity of the Deity, in
one mode or other, has been an article in all creeds. He creates,
preserves, and destroys. He is the generative _power_, the productive
_capacity_, and the _result_. The immaterial man, according to the
Kabalah, is composed of _vitality_, or _life_, the breath of life; of
_soul_ or _mind_, and _spirit_. Salt, sulphur, and mercury are the great
symbols of the alchemists. To them man was body, soul, and spirit.

Four is expressed by the square, or four-sided right-angled figure. Out
of the symbolic Garden of Eden flowed a river, dividing into _four_
streams,--PISON, which flows around the land of gold, or light; GIHON,
which flows around the land of Ethiopia or Darkness; HIDDEKEL, running
eastward to Assyria; and the EUPHRATES. Zechariah saw _four_ chariots
coming out from between two mountains of bronze, in the first of which
were _red_ horses; in the second, _black_; in the third, _white_; and in
the fourth, _grizzled_: "and these were the four winds of the heavens,
that go forth from standing before the Lord of all the earth." Ezekiel
saw the _four_ living creatures, each with _four_ faces and _four_
wings, the faces of a _man_ and a _lion_, an _ox_ and an _eagle_; and
the _four_ wheels going upon their _four_ sides; and Saint John beheld
the _four_ beasts, full of eyes before and behind, the LION, the young
OX, the MAN, and the flying EAGLE. _Four_ was the signature of the
Earth. Therefore, in the 148th Psalm, of those who must praise the Lord
on the land, there are _four_ times _four_, and _four_ in particular of
living creatures. Visible nature is described as the _four_ quarters of
the world, and the _four_ corners of the earth. "There are _four_," says
the old Jewish saying, "which take the first place in this world: _man_,
among the creatures; the _eagle_ among birds; the _ox_ among cattle; and
the _lion_ among wild beasts." Daniel saw _four_ great beasts come up
from the sea.

FIVE is the Duad added to the Triad. It is expressed by the five-pointed
or blazing star, the mysterious Pentalpha of Pythagoras. It is
indissolubly connected with the number _seven_. Christ fed His disciples
and the multitude with _five_ loaves and _two_ fishes, and of the
fragments there remained _twelve_, that is, _five_ and _seven_, baskets
full. Again He fed them with _seven_ loaves and a few little fishes, and
there remained _seven_ baskets full. The _five_ apparently small
planets, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, with the two greater
ones, the Sun and Moon, constituted the _seven_ celestial spheres.

SEVEN was the peculiarly sacred number. There were _seven_ planets and
spheres presided over by _seven_ archangels. There were _seven_ colors
in the rainbow; and the Phoenician Deity was called the HEPTAKIS or God
of _seven_ rays; _seven_ days of the week; and _seven_ and _five_ made
the number of months, tribes, and apostles. Zechariah saw a golden
candlestick, with _seven_ lamps and _seven_ pipes to the lamps, and an
olive-tree on each side. Since he says, "the _seven_ eyes of the Lord
shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel."
John, in the Apocalypse, writes _seven_ epistles to the _seven_
churches. In the _seven_ epistles there are _twelve_ promises. What is
said of the churches in praise or blame, is completed in the number
_three_. The refrain, "_who has ears to hear_," etc., has _ten_ words,
divided by _three_ and _seven_, and the _seven_ by _three_ and _four_;
and the _seven_ epistles are also so divided. In the seals, trumpets,
and vials, also, of this symbolic vision, the _seven_ are divided by
_four_ and _three_. He who sends his message to Ephesus, "holds the
_seven_ stars in his right hand, and walks amid the _seven_ golden
lamps."

In _six_ days, or periods, God created the Universe, and paused on the
_seventh_ day. Of clean beasts, Noah was directed to take by _sevens_
into the ark; and of fowls by _sevens_; because in _seven_ days the rain
was to commence. On the _seven_teenth day of the month, the rain began;
on the _seven_teenth day of the _seventh_ month, that ark rested on
Ararat. When the dove returned, Noah waited _seven_ days before he sent
her forth again; and again _seven_, after she returned with the
olive-leaf. Enoch was the _seventh_ patriarch, Adam included, and Lamech
lived 777 years.

There were _seven_ lamps in the great candlestick of the Tabernacle and
Temple, representing the _seven_ planets. _Seven_ times Moses sprinkled
the anointing oil upon the altar. The days of consecration of Aaron and
his sons were _seven_ in number. A woman was unclean _seven_ days after
child-birth; one infected with leprosy was shut up _seven_ days; _seven_
times the leper was sprinkled with the blood of a slain bird; and
_seven_ days afterwards he must remain abroad out of his tent. _Seven_
times, in purifying the leper, the priest was to sprinkle the
consecrated oil; and _seven_ times to sprinkle with the blood of the
sacrificed bird the house to be purified. _Seven_ times the blood of the
slain bullock was sprinkled on the mercy-seat; and _seven_ times on the
altar. The _seventh_ year was a Sabbath of rest; and at the end of
_seven_ times _seven_ years came the great year of jubilee. _Seven_ days
the people ate unleavened bread, in the month of Abib. _Seven_ weeks
were counted from the time of first putting the sickle to the wheat. The
Feast of the Tabernacles lasted _seven_ days.

Israel was in the hand of Midian _seven_ years before Gideon delivered
them. The bullock sacrificed by him was _seven_ years old. Samson told
Delilah to bind him with _seven_ green withes; and she wove the _seven_
locks of his head, and afterwards shaved them off. Balaam told Barak to
build for him _seven_ altars. Jacob served _seven_ years for Leah and
_seven_ for Rachel. Job had _seven_ sons and _three_ daughters, making
the perfect number _ten_. He had also _seven_ thousand sheep and _three_
thousand camels. His friends sat down with him _seven_ days and _seven_
nights. His friends were ordered to sacrifice _seven_ bullocks and
_seven_ rams; and again, at the end, he had _seven_ sons and _three_
daughters, and twice _seven_ thousand sheep, and lived an hundred and
forty, or twice _seven_ times _ten_ years. Pharaoh saw in his dream
_seven_ fat and _seven_ lean kine, _seven_ good ears and _seven_ blasted
ears of wheat; and there were _seven_ years of plenty, and _seven_ of
famine. Jericho fell, when _seven_ priests, with _seven_ trumpets, made
the circuit of the city on _seven_ successive days; once each day for
six days, and _seven_ times on the seventh. "The _seven_ eyes of the
Lord," says Zechariah, "run to and fro through the whole earth." Solomon
was _seven_ years in building the Temple. _Seven_ angels, in the
Apocalypse, pour out _seven_ plagues, from _seven_ vials of wrath. The
scarlet-colored beast, on which the woman sits in the wilderness, has
_seven_ heads and _ten_ horns. So also has the beast that rises up out
of the sea. _Seven_ thunders uttered their voices. _Seven_ angels
sounded _seven_ trumpets. _Seven_ lamps, of fire, the _seven_ spirits of
God, burned before the throne; and the Lamb that was slain had _seven_
horns and _seven_ eyes.

EIGHT is the first cube, that of _two_. NINE is the square of _three_,
and represented by the triple triangle.

TEN includes all the other numbers. It is especially _seven_ and
_three_; and is called the number of perfection. Pythagoras represented
it by the TETRACTYS, which had many mystic meanings. This symbol is
sometimes composed of dots or points, sometimes of commas or yōds, and
in the Kabalah, of the letters of the name of Deity. It is thus
arranged:

   ,
  , ,
 , , ,
, , , ,

The Patriarchs from Adam to Noah, inclusive, are _ten_ in number, and
the same number is that of the Commandments.

TWELVE is the number of the lines of equal length that form a cube. It
is the number of the months, the tribes, and the apostles; of the oxen
under the Brazen Sea, of the stones on the breast-plate of the high
priest.



III.

THE MASTER.


To understand literally the symbols and allegories of Oriental books as
to ante-historical matters, is willfully to close our eyes against the
Light. To translate the symbols into the trivial and commonplace, is the
blundering of mediocrity.

_All_ religious expression is symbolism; since we can _describe_ only
what we _see_, and the true objects of religion are THE SEEN. The
earliest instruments of education were symbols; and they and all other
religious forms differed and still differ according to external
circumstances and imagery, and according to differences of knowledge and
mental cultivation. All language is symbolic, so far as it is applied to
mental and spiritual phenomena and action. All _words_ have, primarily,
a _material_ sense, however they may afterward get, for the ignorant, a
spiritual _non_-sense. "To retract," for example, is to _draw back_, and
when applied to a _statement_, is symbolic, as much so as a picture of
an arm drawn back, to express the same thing, would be. The very word
"_spirit_" means "_breath,_" from the Latin verb _, breathe_.

To present a visible symbol to the eye of another is not necessarily to
inform him of the meaning which that symbol has to you. Hence the
philosopher soon superadded to the symbols explanations addressed to the
ear, susceptible of more precision, but less effective and impressive
than the painted or sculptured forms which he endeavored to explain. Out
of these explanations grew by degrees a variety of narrations, whose
true object and meaning were gradually forgotten, or lost in
contradictions and incongruities. And when these were abandoned, and
Philosophy resorted to definitions and formulas, its language was but a
more complicated symbolism, attempting in the dark to grapple with and
picture ideas impossible to be expressed. For as with the visible
symbol, so with the word: to utter it to you does not inform you of the
_exact_ meaning which it has to _me_; and thus religion and philosophy
became to a great extent disputes as to the meaning of words. The most
abstract expression for DEITY, which language can supply, is but a
_sign_ or _symbol_ for an object beyond our comprehension, and not more
truthful and adequate than the images of OSIRIS and VISHNU, or their
names, except as being less sensuous and explicit. We avoid sensuousness
only by resorting to simple negation. We come at last to define spirit
by saying that it is not matter. Spirit is--spirit.

A single example of the symbolism of _words_ will indicate to you one
branch of Masonic study. We find in the English Rite this phrase: "I
will always _hail_, ever conceal, and never reveal;" and in the
Catechism, these:

Q.'. "_I hail_."

A.'. "_I conceal_;"

and ignorance, misunderstanding the word "_hail_," has interpolated the
phrase, "From whence do you _hail_?"

But the word is really "_hele_," from the Anglo-Saxon verb Ðelan,
_helan_, to _cover, hide_, or _conceal_. And this word is rendered by
the Latin verb _tegere_, to _cover_ or _roof over_. "That ye fro me no
thynge woll hele," says Gower. "They _hele_ fro me no priuyte," says the
Romaunt of the Rose. "To _heal_ a house," is a common phrase in Sussex;
and in the west of England, he that covers a house with slates is called
a _Healer_. Wherefore, to "_heal_" means the same thing as to
"_tile_,"--itself symbolic, as meaning, primarily, to _cover_ a house
with _tiles_,--and means to _cover, hide_, or _conceal_. Thus language
too is symbolism, and words are as much misunderstood and misused as
more material symbols are.

Symbolism tended continually to become more complicated; and all the
powers of Heaven were reproduced on earth, until a web of fiction and
allegory was woven, partly by art and partly by the ignorance of error,
which the wit of man, with his limited means of explanation, will never
unravel. Even the Hebrew Theism became involved in symbolism and
image-worship, borrowed probably from an older creed and remote regions
of Asia,--the worship of the Great Semitic Nature-God AL or ELS and its
symbolical representations of JEHOVAH Himself were not even confined to
poetical or illustrative language. The priests were monotheists: the
people idolaters.

There are dangers inseparable from symbolism, which afford an impressive
lesson in regard to the similar risks attendant on the use of language.
The imagination, called in to assist the reason, usurps its place or
leaves its ally helplessly entangled in its web. Names which stand for
things are confounded with them; the means are mistaken for the end; the
instrument of interpretation for the object; and thus symbols come to
usurp an independent character as truths and persons. Though perhaps a
necessary path, they were a dangerous one by which to approach the
Deity; in which many, says PLUTARCH, "mistaking the sign for the thing
signified, fell into a ridiculous superstition; while others, in
avoiding one extreme, plunged into the no less hideous gulf of
irreligion and impiety."

It is through the Mysteries, CICERO says, that we have learned the first
principles of life; wherefore the term "initiation" is used with good
reason; and they not only teach us to live more happily and agreeably,
but they soften the pains of death by the hope of a better life
hereafter.

The Mysteries were a Sacred Drama, exhibiting some legend significant of
nature's changes, of the visible Universe in which the Divinity is
revealed, and whose import was in many respects as open to the Pagan as
to the Christian. Nature is the great Teacher of man; for it is the
Revelation of God. It neither dogmatizes nor attempts to tyrannize by
compelling to a particular creed or special interpretation. It presents
its symbols to us, and adds nothing by way of explanation. It is the
text without the commentary; and, as we well know, it is chiefly the
commentary and gloss that lead to error and heresy and persecution. The
earliest instructors of mankind not only adopted the lessons of Nature,
but as far as possible adhered to her method of imparting them. In the
Mysteries, beyond the current traditions or sacred and enigmatic
recitals of the Temples, few explanations were given to the spectators,
who were left, as in the school of nature, to make inferences for
themselves. No other method could have suited every degree of
cultivation and capacity. To employ nature's universal symbolism instead
of the technicalities of language, rewards the humblest inquirer, and
discloses its secrets to every one in proportion to his preparatory
training and his power to comprehend them. If their philosophical
meaning was above the comprehension of some, their moral and political
meanings are within the reach of all.

These mystic shows and performances were not the reading of a lecture,
but the opening of a problem. Requiring research, they were calculated
to arouse the dormant intellect. They implied no hostility to
Philosophy, because Philosophy is the great expounder of symbolism;
although its ancient interpretations were often ill-founded and
incorrect. The alteration from symbol to dogma is fatal to beauty of
expression, and leads to intolerance and assumed infallibility.

       *       *       *       *       *

If, in teaching the great doctrine of the divine nature of the Soul, and
in striving to explain its longings after immortality, and in proving
its superiority over the souls of the animals, which have no aspirations
Heavenward, the ancients struggled in vain to express the _nature_ of
the soul, by comparing it to FIRE and LIGHT, it will be well for us to
consider whether, with all our boasted knowledge, we have any better or
clearer idea of its nature, and whether we have not despairingly taken
refuge in having none at all. And if they erred as to its original place
of abode, and understood literally the mode and path of its descent,
these were but the accessories of the great Truth, and probably, to the
Initiates, mere allegories, designed to make the idea more palpable and
impressive to the mind.

They are at least no more fit to be smiled at by the self-conceit of a
vain ignorance, the wealth of whose knowledge consists solely in words,
than the _bosom_ of Abraham, as a home for the _spirits_ of the just
dead; the gulf of actual fire, for the eternal torture of _spirits_; and
the City of the New Jerusalem, with its walls of jasper and its edifices
of pure gold like clear glass, its foundations of precious stones, and
its gates each of a single pearl. "I knew a man," says PAUL, "caught up
to the third Heaven; ... that he was caught up into Paradise, and heard
ineffable words, which it is not possible for a man to utter." And
nowhere is the antagonism and conflict between the spirit and body more
frequently and forcibly insisted on than in the writings of this
apostle, nowhere the Divine nature of the soul more strongly asserted.
"With the mind," he says, "I serve the law of God; but with the flesh
the law of sin.... As many as are led by the Spirit of God, are the sons
of GOD.... The earnest expectation of the created waits for the
manifestation of the sons of God.... The created shall be delivered from
the bondage of corruption, of the flesh liable to decay, into the
glorious liberty of the children of God."

       *       *       *       *       *

Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood
and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful
through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy they are
so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the
greed for wealth. Experience will probably prove that these odious and
detestable vices will grow most rankly and spread most rapidly in a
Republic. When office and wealth become the gods of a people, and the
most unworthy and unfit most aspire to the former, and fraud becomes the
highway to the latter, the land will reek with falsehood and sweat lies
and chicane. When the offices are open to all, merit and stern integrity
and the dignity of unsullied honor will attain them only rarely and by
accident. To be able to serve the country well, will cease to be a
reason why the great and wise and learned should be selected to render
service. Other qualifications, less honorable, will be more available.
To adapt one's opinions to the popular humor; to defend, apologize for,
and justify the popular follies; to advocate the expedient and the
plausible; to caress, cajole, and flatter the elector; to beg like a
spaniel for his vote, even if he be a negro three removes from
barbarism; to profess friendship for a competitor and stab him by
innuendo; to set on foot that which at third hand shall become a lie,
being cousin-german to it when uttered, and yet capable of being
explained away,--who is there that has not seen these low arts and base
appliances put into practice, and becoming general, until success cannot
be surely had by any more honorable means?--the result being a State
ruled and ruined by ignorant and shallow mediocrity, pert self-conceit,
the greenness of unripe intellect, vain of a school-boy's smattering of
knowledge.

The faithless and the false in public and in political life, will be
faithless and false in private. The jockey in politics, like the jockey
on the race-course, is rotten from skin to core. Everywhere he will see
first to his own interests, and whoso leans on him will be pierced with
a broken reed. His ambition is ignoble, like himself; and therefore he
will seek to attain office by ignoble means, as he will seek to attain
any other coveted object,--land, money, or reputation.

At length, office and honor are divorced. The place that the small and
shallow, the knave or the trickster, is deemed competent and fit to
fill, ceases to be worthy the ambition of the great and capable; or if
not, these shrink from a contest, the weapons to be used wherein are
unfit for a gentleman to handle. Then the habits of unprincipled
advocates in law courts are naturalized in Senates, and pettifoggers
wrangle there, when the fate of the nation and the lives of millions are
at stake. States are even begotten by villainy and brought forth by
fraud, and rascalities are justified by legislators claiming to be
honorable. Then contested elections are decided by perjured votes or
party considerations; and all the practices of the worst times of
corruption are revived and exaggerated in Republics.

It is strange that reverence for truth, that manliness and genuine
loyalty, and scorn of littleness and unfair advantage, and genuine faith
and godliness and large-heartedness should diminish, among statesmen and
people, as civilization advances, and freedom becomes more general, and
universal suffrage implies universal worth and fitness! In the age of
Elizabeth, without universal suffrage, or Societies for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge, or popular lecturers, or Lycæa, the statesman, the
merchant, the burgher, the sailor, were all alike heroic, fearing God
only, and man not at all. Let but a hundred or two years elapse, and in
a Monarchy or Republic of the same race, nothing is _less_ heroic than
the merchant, the shrewd speculator, the office-seeker, fearing man
only, and God not at all. Reverence for greatness dies out, and is
succeeded by base envy of greatness. Every man is in the way of many,
either in the path to popularity or wealth. There is a general feeling
of satisfaction when a great statesman is displaced, or a general, who
has been for his brief hour the popular idol, is unfortunate and sinks
from his high estate. It becomes a misfortune, if not a crime, to be
above the popular level.

We should naturally suppose that a nation in distress would take counsel
with the wisest of its sons. But, on the contrary, great men seem never
so scarce as when they are most needed, and small men never so bold to
insist on infesting place, as when mediocrity and incapable pretence and
sophomoric greenness, and showy and sprightly incompetency are most
dangerous. When France was in the extremity of revolutionary agony, she
was governed by an assembly of provincial pettifoggers, and Robespierre,
Marat, and Couthon ruled in the place of Mirabeau, Vergniaud, and
Carnot. England was governed by the Rump Parliament, after she had
beheaded her king. Cromwell extinguished one body, and Napoleon the
other.

Fraud, falsehood, trickery, and deceit in national affairs are the
signs of decadence in States and precede convulsions or paralysis. To
bully the weak and crouch to the strong, is the policy of nations
governed by small mediocrity. The tricks of the canvass for office are
re-enacted in Senates. The Executive becomes the dispenser of patronage,
chiefly to the most unworthy; and men are bribed with offices instead of
money, to the greater ruin of the Commonwealth. The Divine in human
nature disappears, and interest, greed, and selfishness takes it place.
That is a sad and true allegory which represents the companions of
Ulysses changed by the enchantments of Circe into swine.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Ye cannot," said the Great Teacher, "serve God and Mammon." When the
thirst for wealth becomes general, it will be sought for as well
dishonestly as honestly; by frauds and overreachings, by the knaveries
of trade, the heartlessness of greedy speculation, by gambling in stocks
and commodities that soon demoralizes a whole community. Men will
speculate upon the needs of their neighbors and the distresses of their
country. Bubbles that, bursting, impoverish multitudes, will be blown up
by cunning knavery, with stupid credulity as its assistants and
instrument. Huge bankruptcies, that startle a country like the
earthquakes, and are more fatal, fraudulent assignments, engulfment of
the savings of the poor, expansions and collapses of the currency, the
crash of banks, the depreciation of Government securities, prey on the
savings of self-denial, and trouble with their depredations the first
nourishment of infancy and the last sands of life, and fill with inmates
the churchyards and lunatic asylums. But the sharper and speculator
thrives and fattens. If his country is fighting by a levy en masse for
her very existence, he aids her by depreciating her paper, so that he
may accumulate fabulous amounts with little outlay. If his neighbor is
distressed, he buys his property for a song. If he administers upon an
estate, it turns out insolvent, and the orphans are paupers. If his bank
explodes, he is found to have taken care of himself in time. Society
worships its paper-and-credit kings, as the old Hindus and Egyptians
worshipped their worthless idols, and often the most obsequiously when
in actual solid wealth they are the veriest paupers. No wonder men think
there ought to be another world, in which the injustices of this may be
atoned for, when they see the friends of ruined families begging the
wealthy sharpers to give alms to prevent the orphaned victims from
starving, until they may find ways of supporting themselves.

       *       *       *       *       *

States are chiefly avaricious of commerce and of territory. The latter
leads to the violation of treaties, encroachments upon feeble neighbors,
and rapacity toward their wards whose lands are coveted. Republics are,
in this, as rapacious and unprincipled as Despots, never learning from
history that inordinate expansion by rapine and fraud has its inevitable
consequences in dismemberment or subjugation. When a Republic begins to
plunder its neighbors, the words of doom are already written on its
walls. There is a judgment already pronounced of God upon whatever is
unrighteous in the conduct of national affairs. When civil war tears the
vitals of a Republic, let it look back and see if it has not been guilty
of injustices; and if it has, let it humble itself in the dust!

When a nation becomes possessed with a spirit of commercial greed,
beyond those just and fair limits set by a due regard to a moderate and
reasonable degree of general and individual prosperity, it is a nation
possessed by the devil of commercial avarice, a passion as ignoble and
demoralizing as avarice in the individual; and as this sordid passion is
baser and more unscrupulous than ambition, so it is more hateful, and at
last makes the infected nation to be regarded as the enemy of the human
race. To grasp at the lion's share of commerce, has always at last
proven the ruin of States, because it invariably leads to injustices
that make a State detestable; to a selfishness and crooked policy that
forbid other nations to be the friends of a State that cares only for
itself.

Commercial avarice in India was the parent of more atrocities and
greater rapacity, and cost more human lives, than the nobler ambition
for extended empire of Consular Rome. The nation that grasps at the
commerce of the world cannot but become selfish, calculating, dead to
the noblest impulses and sympathies which ought to actuate States. It
will submit to insults that wound its honor, rather than endanger its
commercial interests by war; while, to subserve those interests, it will
wage unjust war, on false or frivolous pretexts, its free people
cheerfully allying themselves with despots to crush a commercial rival
that has ared to exile its kings and elect its own ruler.

Thus the cold calculations of a sordid self-interest, in nations
commercially avaricious, always at last displace the sentiments and
lofty impulses of Honor and Generosity by which they rose to greatness;
which made Elizabeth and Cromwell alike the protectors of Protestants
beyond the four seas of England, against crowned Tyranny and mitred
Persecution; and, if they had lasted, would have forbidden alliances
with Czars and Autocrats and Bourbons to re-enthrone the Tyrannies of
Incapacity, and arm the Inquisition anew with its instruments of
torture. The soul of the avaricious nation petrifies, like the soul of
the individual who makes gold his god. The Despot will occasionally act
upon noble and generous impulses, and help the weak against the strong,
the right against the wrong. But commercial avarice is essentially
egotistic, grasping, faithless, overreaching, crafty, cold, ungenerous,
selfish, and calculating, controlled by considerations of self-interest
alone. Heartless and merciless, it has no sentiments of pity, sympathy,
or honor, to make it pause in its remorseless career; and it crushes
down all that is of impediment in its way, as its keels of commerce
crush under them the murmuring and unheeded waves.

A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for commercial
supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable, and more than aught
else demonstrates to what immeasurable depths of baseness men and
nations can descend. Commercial greed values the lives of men no more
than it values the lives of ants. The slave-trade is as acceptable to a
people enthralled by that greed, as the trade in ivory or spices, if the
profits are as large. It will by-and-by endeavor to compound with God
and quiet its own conscience, by compelling those to whom it sold the
slaves it bought or stole, to set them free, and slaughtering them by
hecatombs if they refuse to obey the edicts of its philanthropy.

Justice in no wise consists in meting out to another that exact measure
of reward or punishment which we think and decree his merit, or what we
call his crime, which is more often merely his error, deserves. The
justice of the father is not incompatible with forgiveness by him of the
errors and offences of his child. The Infinite Justice of God does not
consist in meting out exact measures of punishment for human frailties
and sins. We are too apt to erect our own little and narrow notions of
what is right and just into the law of justice, and to insist that God
shall adopt that as His law; to measure off something with our own
little tape-line, and call it God's love of justice. Continually we
seek to ennoble our own ignoble love of revenge and retaliation, by
misnaming it justice.

Nor does justice consist in strictly governing our conduct toward other
men by the rigid rules of legal right. If there were a community
anywhere, in which all stood upon the strictness of this rule there
should be written over its gates, as a warning to the unfortunates
desiring admission to that inhospitable realm, the words which DANTE
says are written over the great gate of Hell: "LET THOSE WHO ENTER HERE
LEAVE HOPE BEHIND!" It is not just to pay the laborer in field or
factory or workshop his current wages and no more, the lowest
market-value of his labor, for so long only as we need that labor and he
is able to work; for when sickness or old age overtakes him, that is to
leave him and his family to starve; and God will curse with calamity the
people in which the children of the laborer out of work eat the boiled
grass of the field, and mothers strangle their children, that they may
buy food for themselves with the charitable pittance given for burial
expenses. The rules of what is ordinarily termed "_Justice_," may be
punctiliously observed among the fallen spirits that are the aristocracy
of Hell.

       *       *       *       *       *

Justice, divorced from sympathy, is selfish indifference, not in the
least more laudable than misanthropic isolation. There is sympathy even
among the hair-like oscillatorias, a tribe of simple plants, armies of
which may be discovered, with the aid of the microscope, in the tiniest
bit of scum from a stagnant pool. For these will place themselves, as if
it were by agreement, in separate companies, on the side of a vessel
containing them, and seem marching upward in rows; and when a swarm
grows weary of its situation, and has a mind to change its quarters,
each army holds on its way without confusion or intermixture, proceeding
with great regularity and order, as if under the directions of wise
leaders. The ants and bees give each other mutual assistance, beyond
what is required by that which human creatures are apt to regard as the
strict law of justice.

Surely we need but reflect a little, to be convinced that the individual
man is but a fraction of the unit of society, and that he is
indissolubly connected with the rest of his race. Not only the actions,
but the will and thoughts of other men make or mar his fortunes,
control his destinies, are unto him life or death, dishonor or honor.
The epidemics, physical and moral, contagious and infectious, public
opinion, popular delusions, enthusiasms, and the other great electric
phenomena and currents, moral and intellectual, prove the universal
sympathy. The vote of a single and obscure man, the utterance of
self-will, ignorance, conceit, or spite, deciding an election and
placing Folly or Incapacity or Baseness in a Senate, involves the
country in war, sweeps away our fortunes, slaughters our sons, renders
the labors of a life unavailing, and pushes on, helpless, with all our
intellect to resist, into the grave.

These considerations ought to teach us that justice to others and to
ourselves is the same; that we cannot define our duties by mathematical
lines ruled by the square, but must fill with them the great circle
traced by the compasses; that the circle of humanity is the limit, and
we are but the point in its centre, the drops in the great Atlantic, the
atom or particle, bound by a mysterious law of attraction which we term
sympathy to every other atom in the mass; that the physical and moral
welfare of others cannot be indifferent to us; that we have a direct and
immediate interest in the public morality and popular intelligence, in
the well-being and physical comfort of the people at large. The
ignorance of the people, their pauperism and destitution, and consequent
degradation, their brutalization and demoralization, are all diseases;
and we cannot rise high enough above the people, nor shut ourselves up
from them enough, to escape the miasmatic contagion and the great
magnetic currents.

Justice is peculiarly indispensable to nations. The unjust State is
doomed of God to calamity and ruin. This is the teaching of the Eternal
Wisdom and of history. "Righteousness exalteth a nation; but wrong is a
reproach to nations." "The Throne is established by Righteousness. Let
the lips of the Ruler pronounce the sentence that is Divine; and his
mouth do no wrong in judgment!" The nation that adds province to
province by fraud and violence, that encroaches on the weak and plunders
its wards, and violates its treaties and the obligation of its
contracts, and for the law of honor and fair-dealing substitutes the
exigencies of greed and the base precepts of policy and craft and the
ignoble tenets of expediency, is predestined to destruction; for here,
as with the individual, the consequences of wrong are inevitable and
eternal.

A sentence is written against all that is unjust, written by God in the
nature of man and in the nature of the Universe, because it is in the
nature of the Infinite God. No wrong is really successful. The gain of
injustice is a loss; its pleasure, suffering. Iniquity often seems to
prosper, but its success is its defeat and shame. If its consequences
pass by the doer, they fall upon and crush his children. It is a
philosophical, physical, and moral truth, in the form of a threat, that
God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, to the third
and fourth generation of those who violate His laws. After a long while,
the day of reckoning always comes, to nation as to individual; and
always the knave deceives himself, and proves a failure.

Hypocrisy is the homage that vice and wrong pay to virtue and justice.
It is Satan attempting to clothe himself in the angelic vesture of
light. It is equally detestable in morals, politics, and religion; in
the man and in the nation. To do injustice under the pretence of equity
and fairness; to reprove vice in public and commit it in private; to
pretend to charitable opinion and censoriously condemn; to profess the
principles of Masonic beneficence, and close the ear to the wail of
distress and the cry of suffering; to eulogize the intelligence of the
people, and plot to deceive and betray them by means of their ignorance
and simplicity; to prate of purity, and peculate; of honor, and basely
abandon a sinking cause; of disinterestedness, and sell one's vote for
place and power, are hypocrisies as common as they are infamous and
disgraceful. To steal the livery of the Court of God to serve the Devil
withal; to pretend to believe in a God of mercy and a Redeemer of love,
and persecute those of a different faith; to devour widows houses, and
for a pretence make long prayers; to preach continence, and wallow in
lust; to inculcate humility, and in pride surpass Lucifer; to pay tithe,
and omit the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith; to
strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel; to make clean the outside of the
cup and platter, keeping them full within of extortion and excess; to
appear outwardly righteous unto men, but within be full of hypocrisy and
iniquity, is indeed to be like unto whited sepulchres, which appear
beautiful outward, but are within full of bones of the dead and of all
uncleanness.

The Republic cloaks its ambition with the pretence of a desire and duty
to "extend the area of freedom," and claims it as its "manifest destiny"
to annex other Republics or the States or Provinces of others to itself,
by open violence, or under obsolete, empty, and fraudulent titles. The
Empire founded by a successful soldier, claims its ancient or natural
boundaries, and makes necessity and its safety the plea for open
robbery. The great Merchant Nation, gaining foothold in the Orient,
finds a continual necessity for extending its dominion by arms, and
subjugates India. The great Royalties and Despotisms, without a plea,
partition among themselves a Kingdom, dismember Poland, and prepare to
wrangle over the dominions of the Crescent. To maintain the balance of
power is a plea for the obliteration of States. Carthage, Genoa, and
Venice, commercial Cities only, must acquire territory by force or
fraud, and become States. Alexander marches to the Indus; Tamerlane
seeks universal empire; the Saracens conquer Spain and threaten Vienna.

The thirst for power is never satisfied. It is insatiable. Neither men
nor nations ever have power enough. When Rome was the mistress of the
world, the Emperors caused themselves to be worshipped as gods. The
Church of Rome claimed despotism over the soul, and over the whole life
from the cradle to the grave. It gave and sold absolutions for past and
future sins. It claimed to be infallible in matters of faith. It
decimated Europe to purge it of heretics. It decimated America to
convert the Mexicans and Peruvians. It gave and took away thrones; and
by excommunication and interdict closed the gates of Paradise against
Nations. Spain, haughty with its dominion over the Indies, endeavored to
crush out Protestantism in the Netherlands, while Philip the Second
married the Queen of England, and the pair sought to win that kingdom
back to its allegiance to the Papal throne. Afterward Spain attempted to
conquer it with her "invincible" Armada. Napoleon set his relatives and
captains on thrones, and parcelled among them half of Europe. The Czar
rules over an empire more gigantic than Rome. The history of all is or
will be the same,--acquisition, dismemberment, ruin. There is a judgment
of God against all that is unjust.

To seek to subjugate the _will_ of others and take the _soul_ captive,
because it is the exercise of the highest power, seems to be the highest
object of human ambition. It is at the bottom of all proselyting and
propagandism, from that of Mesmer to that of the Church of Rome and the
French Republic. That was the apostolate alike of Joshua and of Mahomet.
Masonry alone preaches Toleration, the right of man to abide by his own
faith, the right of all States to govern themselves. It rebukes alike
the monarch who seeks to extend his dominions by conquest, the Church
that claims the right to repress heresy by fire and steel, and the
confederation of States that insist on maintaining a union by force and
restoring brotherhood by slaughter and subjugation.

It is natural, when we are wronged, to desire revenge; and to persuade
ourselves that we desire it less for our own satisfaction than to
prevent a repetition of the wrong, to which the doer would be encouraged
by immunity coupled with the profit of the wrong. To submit to be
cheated is to encourage the cheater to continue; and we are quite apt to
regard ourselves as God's chosen instruments to inflict His vengeance,
and for Him and in His stead to discourage wrong by making it fruitless
and its punishment sure. Revenge has been said to be "a kind of wild
justice;" but it is always taken in anger, and therefore is unworthy of
a great soul, which ought not to suffer its equanimity to be disturbed
by ingratitude or villainy. The injuries done us by the base are as much
unworthy of our angry notice as those done us by the insects and the
beasts; and when we crush the adder, or slay the wolf or hyena, we
should do it without being moved to anger, and with no more feeling of
revenge than we have in rooting up a noxious weed.

And if it be not in human nature not to take revenge by way of
punishment, let the Mason truly consider that in doing so he is God's
agent, and so let his revenge be measured by justice and tempered by
mercy. The law of God is, that the consequences of wrong and cruelty and
crime shall be their punishment; and the injured and the wronged and the
indignant are as much His instruments to enforce that law, as the
diseases and public detestation, and the verdict of history and the
execration of posterity are. No one will say that the Inquisitor who has
racked and burned the innocent; the Spaniard who hewed Indian infants,
living, into pieces with his sword, and fed the mangled limbs to his
bloodhounds; the military tyrant who has shot men without trial, the
knave who has robbed or betrayed his State, the fraudulent banker or
bankrupt who has beggared orphans, the public officer who has violated
his oath, the judge who has sold injustice, the legislator who has
enabled Incapacity to work the ruin of the State, ought not to be
punished. Let them be so; and let the injured or the sympathizing be the
instruments of God's just vengeance; but always out of a higher feeling
than mere personal revenge.

Remember that every moral characteristic of man finds its prototype
among creatures of lower intelligence; that the cruel foulness of the
hyena, the savage rapacity of the wolf, the merciless rage of the tiger,
the crafty treachery of the panther, are found among mankind, and ought
to excite no other emotion, when found in the man, than when found in
the beast. Why should the true man be angry with the geese that hiss,
the peacocks that strut, the asses that bray, and the apes that imitate
and chatter, although they wear the human form? Always, also, it remains
true, that it is more noble to forgive than to take revenge; and that,
in general, we ought too much to despise those who wrong us, to feel the
emotion of anger, or to desire revenge.

At the sphere of the _Sun_, you are in the region of LIGHT. The
Hebrew word for _gold_, ZAHAB, also means _Light_, of which the Sun is
to the Earth the great source. So, in the great Oriental allegory of the
Hebrews, the River PISON compasses the land of _Gold_ or _Light_; and
the River GIHON the land of _Ethiopia_ or _Darkness_.

What light _is_, we no more know than the ancients did. According to the
modern hypothesis, it is _not_ composed of luminous particles shot out
from the sun with immense velocity; but that body only impresses, on the
ether which fills all space, a powerful vibratory movement that extends,
in the form of luminous waves, beyond the most distant planets,
supplying them with light and heat. To the ancients, it was an
outflowing from the Deity. To us, as to them, it is the apt symbol of
truth and knowledge. To us, also, the upward journey of the soul through
the Spheres is symbolical; but we are as little informed as they whence
the soul comes, where it has its origin, and whither it goes after
death. They endeavored to have _some_ belief and faith, _some_ creed,
upon those points. At the present day, men are satisfied to think
nothing in regard to all that, and only to believe that the soul is a
_something_ separate from the body and out-living it, but whether
existing before it, neither to inquire nor care. No one asks whether it
emanates from the Deity, or is created out of nothing, or is generated
like the body, and the issue of the souls of the father and the mother.
Let us not smile, therefore, at the ideas of the ancients, until we have
a better belief; but accept their symbols as meaning that the soul is of
a Divine nature, originating in a sphere nearer the Deity, and returning
to that when freed from the enthrallment of the body; and that it can
only return there when purified of all the sordidness and sin which
have, as it were, become part of its substance, by its connection with
the body.

It is not strange that, thousands of years ago, men worshipped the Sun,
and that to-day that worship continues among the Parsees. Originally
they looked beyond the orb to the invisible God, of whom the Sun's
light, seemingly identical with generation and life, was the
manifestation and outflowing. Long before the Chaldæan shepherds watched
it on their plains, it came up regularly, as it now does, in the
morning, like a god, and again sank, like a king retiring, in the west,
to return again in due time in the same array of majesty. We worship
Immutability. It was that steadfast, immutable character of the Sun that
the men of Baalbec worshipped. His light-giving and life-giving powers
were secondary attributes. The one grand idea that compelled worship was
the characteristic of God which they saw reflected in his light, and
fancied they saw in its originality the changelessness of Deity. He had
seen thrones crumble, earthquakes shake the world and hurl down
mountains. Beyond Olympus, beyond the Pillars of Hercules, he had gone
daily to his abode, and had come daily again in the morning to behold
the temples they built to his worship. They personified him as BRAHMA,
AMUN, OSIRIS, BEL, ADONIS, MALKARTH, MITHRAS, and APOLLO; and the
nations that did so grew old and died. Moss grew on the capitals of the
great columns of his temples, and he shone on the moss. Grain by grain
the dust of his temples crumbled and fell, and was borne off on the
wind, and still he shone on crumbling column and architrave. The roof
fell crashing on the pavement, and he shone in on the Holy of Holies
with unchanging rays. It was not strange that men worshipped the Sun.

There is a water-plant, on whose broad leaves the drops of water roll
about without uniting, like drops of mercury. So arguments on points of
faith, in politics or religion, roll over the surface of the mind. An
argument that convinces one mind has no effect on another. Few
intellects, or souls that are the negations of intellect have any
logical power or capacity. There is a singular obliquity in the human
mind that makes the false logic more effective than the true with
nine-tenths of those who are regarded as men of intellect. Even among
the judges, not one in ten can argue logically. Each mind sees the
truth, distorted through its own medium. Truth, to most men, is like
matter in the spheroidal state. Like a drop of cold water on the surface
of a red-hot metal plate, it dances, trembles, and spins, and never
comes into contact with it; and the mind may be plunged into truth, as
the hand moistened with sulphurous acid may into melted metal, and be
not even warmed by the immersion.

       *       *       *       *       *

The word _Khairūm_ or _Khūrūm_ is a compound one. Gesenius
renders _Khūrūm_ by the word _noble_ or _free-born: Khūr_
meaning _white, noble_. It also means the opening of a window, the
socket of the eye. _Khri_ also means _white_, or an _opening_; and
_Khris_, the orb of the Sun, in _Job_ viii. 13 and x. 7. _Krishna_ is
the Hindu Sun-God. _Khur_, the Parsi word, is the literal name of the
Sun.

From _Kur_ or _Khur_, the Sun, comes Khora, a name of Lower Egypt. The
Sun, Bryant says in his Mythology, was called _Kur_; and Plutarch says
that the Persians called the Sun _Kūros. Kurios, Lord_, in Greek,
like _Adonaï, Lord_, in Phœnician and Hebrew, was applied to the Sun.
Many places were sacred to the Sun, and called _Kura, Kuria, Kuropolis,
Kurene, Kureschata, Kuresta_, and _Corusia_ in Scythia.

The Egyptian Deity called by the Greeks "_Horus_," was _Her-Ra_. or
_Har-oeris, Hor_ or _Har_, the Sun. _Hari_ is a Hindu name of the Sun.
_Ari-al, Ar-es, Ar, Aryaman, Areimonios_, the AR meaning _Fire_ or
_Flame_, are of the same kindred. _Hermes_ or _Har-mes_, (_Aram, Remus,
Haram, Harameias_), was Kadmos, the Divine Light or Wisdom. _Mar-kuri_,
says Movers, is _Mar_, the Sun.

In the Hebrew, AOOR, is Light, Fire, or the Sun. Cyrus, said Ctesias,
was so named from _Kuros_, the Sun. _Kuris_, Hesychius says, was Adonis.
Apollo, the Sun-god, was called _Kurraios_, from _Kurra_, a city in
Phocis. The people of _Kurene_, originally Ethiopians or Cuthites,
worshipped the Sun under the title of _Achoor_ and _Achōr_.

We know, through a precise testimony in the ancient annals of Tsūr,
that the principal festivity of _Mal-karth_, the incarnation of the Sun
at the Winter Solstice, held at Tsūr, was called his _rebirth_ or his
_awakening_, and that it was celebrated by means of a pyre, on which the
god was supposed to regain, through the aid of fire, a new life. This
festival was celebrated in the month _Peritius (Barith)_, the second day
of which corresponded to the 25th of December. KHUR-UM, King of Tyre,
_Movers_ says, first performed this ceremony. These facts we learn from
_Josephus, Servius_ on the Æneid, and the _Dionysiacs_ of _Nonnus_; and
through a coincidence that cannot be fortuitous, the same day was at
Rome the _Dies Natalis Solis Invicti_, the festal day of the invincible
Sun. Under this title, HERCULES, HAR-_acles_, was worshipped at Tsūr.
Thus, while the temple was being erected, the death and resurrection of
a Sun-God was annually represented at Tsūr, by Solomon's ally, at the
winter solstice, by the pyre of MAL-KARTH, the Tsūrian Haracles.

AROERIS or HAR-_oeris_, the elder HORUS, is from the same old root that
in the Hebrew has the form _Aūr_, or, with the definite article
prefixed, _Haūr_, Light, or _the_ Light, splendor, flame, the Sun and
his rays. The hieroglyphic of the younger HORUS was the point in a
circle; of the Elder, a pair of eyes; and the festival of the thirtieth
day of the month _Epiphi_, when the sun and moon were supposed to be in
the same right line with the earth, was called "_The birth-day of the
eyes of Horus_."

In a papyrus published by Champollion, this god is styled "_Har-oeri_,
Lord of the Solar Spirits, the beneficent eye of the Sun." Plutarch
calls him "_Har-pocrates_;" but there is no trace of the latter part of
the name in the hieroglyphic legends. He is the son of OSIRIS and ISIS;
and is represented sitting on a throne supported by _lions_; the same
word, in Egyptian, meaning _Lion_ and _Sun_. So Solomon made a great
throne of ivory, plated with gold, with six steps, at each arm of which
was a lion, and one on each side to each step, making seven on each
side.

Again, the Hebrew word [Hebrew], _Khi_, means "_living;_" and [Hebrew]
_râm, "was, or shall be, raised or lifted up_." The latter is the same
as [Hebrew], [Hebrew], [Hebrew], rōm, arōm, harūm, whence
_Aram_, for Syria, or _Aramæa, High_-land. _Khairūm_, therefore,
would mean "_was raised up to life, or living_."

So, in Arabic, _hrm_, an unused root, meant, _"was high," "made great,"
"exalted_;" and _Hîrm_ means an _ox_, the symbol of the Sun in Taurus,
at the Vernal Equinox.

KHURUM, therefore, improperly called _Hiram_, is KHUR-OM, the same as
_Her-ra_, _Her-mes_, and _Her-acles_, the "_Heracles Tyrius Invictus_,"
the personification of Light and the Son, the Mediator, Redeemer, and
Saviour. From the Egyptian word _Ra_ came the Coptic _Oūro_, and the
Hebrew _Aūr_, Light. _Har-oeri_, is _Hor_ or _Har_, the chief or
_master_. _Hor_ is also heat; and _hora_, season or hour; and hence in
several African dialects, as names of the Sun, _Airo, Ayero, eer, uiro,
ghurrah_, and the like. The royal name rendered _Pharaoh_, was PHRA,
that is, _Pai-ra_, the Sun.

The legend of the contest between _Hor-ra_ and _Set_, or _Set-nu-bi_,
the same as _Bar_ or _Bal_, is older than that of the strife between
_Osiris_ and _Typhon_; as old, at least, as the nineteenth dynasty. It
is called in the Book of the Dead, "The day of the battle between Horus
and Set." The later myth connects itself with Phoenicia and Syria. The
body of OSIRIS went ashore at _Gebal_ or _Byblos_, sixty miles above
Tsūr. You will not fail to notice that in the name of each murderer of
Khūrūm, that of the Evil God Bal is found.

       *       *       *       *       *

Har-oeri was the god of TIME, as well as of Life. The Egyptian legend
was that the King of Byblos cut down the tamarisk-tree containing the
body of OSIRIS, and made of it a column for his palace. Isis, employed
in the palace, obtained possession of the column, took the body out of
it, and carried it away. Apuleius describes her as "a beautiful female,
over whose divine neck her long thick hair hung in graceful ringlets;"
and in the procession female attendants, with ivory combs, seemed to
dress and ornament the royal hair of the goddess. The palm-tree, and the
lamp in the shape of a boat, appeared in the procession. If the symbol
we are speaking of is not a mere modern invention, it is to these things
it alludes.

[Illustration: Hieroglyph]

The identity of the legends is also confirmed by this hieroglyphic
picture, copied from an ancient Egyptian monument, which may also
enlighten you as to the Lion's grip and the Master's gavel.

[Hebrew: אב], in the ancient Phoenician character, [Symbols], and in the
Samaritan, [Symbols], A B, (the two letters representing the numbers 1,
2, or Unity and Duality, means _Father_, and is a primitive noun, common
to all the Semitic languages.)

It also means an Ancestor, Originator, Inventor, Head, Chief or Ruler,
Manager, Overseer, Master, Priest, Prophet.

[Hebrew: אבי] simply Father, when it is in construction, that is, when
it precedes another word, and in English the preposition "of" is
interposed, as [Hebrew: אבי-אל], Abi-Al, the Father of Al.

Also, the final Yōd means "my"; so that [Hebrew: אבי] by itself means
"My father." [Hebrew: דויד אבי], David my father, 2 _Chron._ ii. 3.

[Hebrew: ו], (Vav) final is the possessive pronoun "his"; and [Hebrew:
אביו], _Abiu_ (which we read "Abif") means "of my father's." Its full
meaning, as connected with the name of Khūrūm, no doubt is, "formerly
one of my father's servants," or "slaves."

The name of the Phoenician artificer is, in Samuel and Kings, [Hebrew:
הירם] and [Hebrew: הירום]--[_2 Sam._ v. 11; 1 _Kings_ v. 15; 1 _Kings_
vii. 40]. In Chronicles it is [Hebrew: הורם], with the addition of
[Hebrew: אבי] [_2 Chron._ ii. 12]; and of [Hebrew: אביו]. [_2 Chron._
iv. 16].

It is merely absurd to add the word "_Abif_" or "_Abiff_," as part of
the name of the artificer. And it is almost as absurd to add the word
"_Abi_," which was a _title_ and not part of the name. Joseph says
[_Gen._ xlv. 8], "God has constituted me _'Ab l'Paraah_, as Father to
Paraah, _i.e._, Vizier or Prime Minister." So Haman was called the
Second Father of Artaxerxes; and when King Khūrūm used the phrase
"Khūrūm Abi," he meant that the artificer he sent Schlomoh was the
principal or chief workman in his line at Tsūr.

A medal copied by Montfaucon exhibits a female nursing a child, with
ears of wheat in her hand, and the legend (Iao). She is seated on
clouds, a star at her head, and three ears of wheat rising from an altar
before her.

HORUS was the _mediator_, who was buried three days, was regenerated,
and triumphed over the evil principle.

The word HERI, in Sanscrit, means _Shepherd_, as well as _Saviour_.
CRISHNA is called _Heri_, as JESUS called Himself the _Good Shepherd_.

[Hebrew: הור], _Khūr_, means an aperture of a window, a cave, or the
eye. Also it means white. In Syriac, [Symbols].

[Hebrew: הר] also means an opening, and noble, free-born, high-born.
[Hebrew: הרם], KHURM means consecrated, devoted; in Æthiopic [Symbols]
It is the name of a city, [_Josh_. xix. 38]; and of a man, [_Ezr_. ii.
32, x. 31; _Neh_. iii. 11].

[Hebrew: היהה], _Khirah_, means nobility, a noble race.

Buddha is declared to comprehend in his own person the essence of the
Hindu Trimurti; and hence the tri-literal monosyllable _Om_ or _Aum_ is
applied to him as being essentially the same as Brahma-Vishnu-Siva. He
is the same as Hermes, Thoth, Taut, and Teutates. One of his names is
Heri-maya or Her-maya, which are evidently the same name as Hermes and
Khirm or Khūrm. Heri, in Sanscrit, means _Lord_.

A learned Brother places over the two symbolic pillars, from right to
left, the two words [Symbols] and [Symbols] [Hebrew: יהו] and [Hebrew:
בעל], IHU and BAL: followed by the hieroglyphic equivalent,
[Hieroglyphic: ] of the Sun-God, Amun-ra. Is it an accidental
coincidence, that in the name of each murderer are the two names of the
Good and Evil Deities of the Hebrews; for _Yu-bel_ is but _Yehu-Bal_ or
_Yeho-Bal?_ and that the three final syllables of the names, _a, o, um_,
make A.U.M. the sacred word of the Hindoos, meaning the Triune-God,
Life-giving, Life-preserving, Life-destroying: represented by the mystic
character [Mystic Character: Y].

The genuine _Acacia_, also, is the thorny tamarisk, the same tree which
grew up around the body of Osiris. It was a sacred tree among the Arabs,
who made of it the idol Al-Uzza, which Mohammed destroyed. It is
abundant as a bush in the Desert of Thur: and of it the "crown of
thorns" was composed, which was set on the forehead of Jesus of
Nazareth. It is a fit type of immortality on account of its tenacity of
life; for it has been known, when planted as a door-post, to take root
again and shoot out budding boughs over the threshold.

       *       *       *       *       *

Every commonwealth must have its periods of trial and transition,
especially if it engages in war. It is certain at some time to be wholly
governed by agitators appealing to all the baser elements of the popular
nature; by moneyed corporations; by those enriched by the depreciation
of government securities or paper; by small attorneys, schemers,
money-jobbers, speculators and adventurers--an ignoble oligarchy,
enriched by the distresses of the State, and fattened on the miseries of
the people. Then all the deceitful visions of equality and the rights of
man end; and the wronged and plundered State can regain a real liberty
only by passing through "great varieties of untried being," purified in
its transmigration by fire and blood.

In a Republic, it soon comes to pass that parties gather round the
negative and positive poles of some opinion or notion, and that the
intolerant spirit of a triumphant majority will allow no deviation from
the standard of orthodoxy which it has set up for itself. Freedom of
opinion will be professed and pretended to, but every one will exercise
it at the peril of being banished from political communion with those
who hold the reins and prescribe the policy to be pursued. Slavishness
to party and obsequiousness to the popular whims go hand in hand.
Political independence only occurs in a fossil state; and men's opinions
grow out of the acts they have been constrained to do or sanction.
Flattery, either of individual or people, corrupts both the receiver and
the giver; and adulation is not of more service to the people than to
kings. A Cæsar, securely seated in power, cares less for it than a free
democracy; nor will his appetite for it grow to exorbitance, as that of
a people will, until it becomes insatiate. The effect of liberty to
individuals is, that they may do what they please; to a people, it is to
a great extent the same. If accessible to flattery, as this is always
interested, and resorted to on low and base motives, and for evil
purposes, either individual or people is sure, in doing what it pleases,
to do what in honor and conscience should have been left undone. One
ought not even to risk congratulations, which may soon be turned into
complaints; and as both individuals and peoples are prone to make a bad
use of power, to flatter them, which is a sure way to mislead them, well
deserves to be called a crime.

The first principle in a Republic ought to be, "that no man or set of
men is entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from
the community, but in consideration of public services; which not being
descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislature, nor
judge, to be hereditary." It is a volume of Truth and Wisdom, a lesson
for the study of nations, embodied in a single sentence, and expressed
in language which every man can understand. If a deluge of despotism
were to overthrow the world, and destroy all institutions under which
freedom is protected, so that they should no longer be remembered among
men, this sentence, preserved, would be sufficient to rekindle the
fires of liberty and revive the race of free men.

But, to _preserve_ liberty, another must be added: "that a free State
does not confer office as a reward, especially for questionable
services, unless she seeks her own ruin; but all officers are _employed_
by her, in consideration solely of their will and ability to render
service in the future; and therefore that the best and most competent
are always to be preferred."

For, if there is to be any other rule, that of hereditary succession is
perhaps as good as any. By no other rule is it possible to preserve the
liberties of the State. By no other to intrust the power of making the
laws to those only who have that keen instinctive sense of injustice and
wrong which enables them to detect baseness and corruption in their most
secret hiding-places, and that moral courage and generous manliness and
gallant independence that make them fearless in dragging out the
perpetrators to the light of day, and calling down upon them the scorn
and indignation of the world. The flatterers of the people are never
such men. On the contrary, a time always comes to a Republic, when it is
not content, like Tiberius, with a single Sejanus, but must have a host;
and when those most prominent in the lead of affairs are men without
reputation, statesmanship, ability, or information, the mere hacks of
party, owing their places to trickery and _want_ of qualification, with
none of the qualities of head or heart that make great and wise men,
and, at the same time, filled with all the narrow conceptions and bitter
intolerance of political bigotry. These die; and the world is none the
wiser for what they have said and done. Their names sink in the
bottomless pit of oblivion; but their acts of folly or knavery curse the
body politic and at last prove its ruin.

Politicians, in a free State, are generally hollow, heartless, and
selfish. Their own aggrandisement is the end of their patriotism; and
they always look with secret satisfaction on the disappointment or fall
of one whose loftier genius and superior talents overshadow their own
self-importance, or whose integrity and incorruptible honor are in the
way of their selfish ends. The influence of the small aspirants is
always against the great man. _His_ accession to power may be almost for
a lifetime. One of themselves will be more easily displaced, and each
hopes to succeed him; and so it at length comes to pass that men
impudently aspire to and actually win the highest stations, who are
unfit for the lowest clerkships; and incapacity and mediocrity become
the surest passports to office.

The consequence is, that those who feel themselves competent and
qualified to serve the people, refuse with disgust to enter into the
struggle for office, where the wicked and jesuitical doctrine that all
is fair in politics is an excuse for every species of low villainy; and
those who seek even the highest places of the State do not rely upon the
power of a magnanimous spirit, on the sympathizing impulses of a great
soul, to stir and move the people to generous, noble, and heroic
resolves, and to wise and manly action; but, like spaniels erect on
their hind legs, with fore-paws obsequiously suppliant, fawn, flatter,
and actually beg for votes. Rather than descend to this, they stand
contemptuously aloof, disdainfully refusing to court the people, and
acting on the maxim, that "mankind has no title to demand that we shall
serve them in spite of themselves."

       *       *       *       *       *

It is lamentable to see a country split into factions, each following
this or that great or brazen-fronted leader with a blind, unreasoning,
unquestioning hero-worship; it is contemptible to see it divided into
parties, whose sole end is the spoils of victory, and their chiefs the
low, the base, the venal and the small. Such a country is in the last
stages of decay, and near its end, no matter how prosperous it may seem
to be. It wrangles over the volcano and the earthquake. But it is
certain that no government can be conducted by the men of the people,
and for the people, without a rigid adherence to those principles which
our reason commends as fixed and sound. These must be the tests of
parties, men, and measures. Once determined, they must be inexorable in
their application, and all must either come up to the standard or
declare against it. Men may betray: principles never can. Oppression is
one invariable consequence of misplaced confidence in treacherous man,
it is never the result of the working or application of a sound, just,
well-tried principle. Compromises which bring fundamental principles
into doubt, in order to unite in one party men of antagonistic creeds,
are frauds, and end in ruin, the just and natural consequence of fraud.
Whenever you have settled upon your theory and creed, sanction no
departure from it in practice, on any ground of expediency. It is the
Master's word. Yield it up neither to flattery nor force! Let no defeat
or persecution rob you of it! Believe that he who once blundered in
statesmanship will blunder again; that such blunders are as fatal as
crimes; and that political near-sightedness does not improve by age.
There are always more impostors than seers among public men, more false
prophets than true ones, more prophets of Baal than of Jehovah; and
Jerusalem is always in danger from the Assyrians.

Sallust said that after a State has been corrupted by luxury and
idleness, it may by its mere greatness bear up under the burden of its
vices. But even while he wrote, Rome, of which he spoke, had played out
her masquerade of freedom. Other causes than luxury and sloth destroy
Republics. If small, their larger neighbors extinguish them by
absorption. If of great extent, the cohesive force is too feeble to hold
them together, and they fall to pieces by their own weight. The paltry
ambition of small men disintegrates them. The want of wisdom in their
councils creates exasperating issues. Usurpation of power plays its
part, incapacity seconds corruption, the storm rises, and the fragments
of the incoherent raft strew the sandy shores, reading to mankind
another lesson for it to disregard.

[Illustration]

       *       *       *       *       *

The Forty-seventh Proposition is older than Pythagoras. It is this: "In
every right-angled triangle, the sum of the squares of the base and
perpendicular is equal to the square of the hypothenuse."

The square of a number is the product of that number, multiplied by
itself. Thus, 4 is the square of 2, and 9 of 3.

The first ten numbers are: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10;
their squares are          1, 4, 9,16,25,36,49,64,81,100;
and                           3, 5, 7, 9,11,13,15,17, 19
are the differences between each square and that which precedes
it; giving us the sacred numbers, 3, 5, 7, and 9.

Of these numbers, the square of 3 and 4, added together, gives the
square of 5; and those of 6 and 8, the square of 10; and if a
right-angled triangle be formed, the base measuring 3 or 6 parts, and
the perpendicular 4 or 8 parts, the hypothenuse will be 5 or 10 parts;
and if a square is erected on each side, these squares being subdivided
into squares each side of which is one part in length, there will be as
many of these in the square erected on the hypothenuse as in the other
two squares together.

Now the Egyptians arranged their deities in _Triads_; the FATHER or the
Spirit or Active Principle or _Generative Power_; the MOTHER, or Matter,
or the Passive Principle, or the _Conceptive_ Power; and the SON,
_Issue_ or _Product_, the Universe, proceeding from the two principles.
These were OSIRIS, ISIS, and HORUS. In the same way, PLATO gives us
_Thought_ the _Father_; Primitive _Matter_ the _Mother_; and _Kosmos_
the _World_, the _Son_, the Universe animated by a soul. Triads of the
same kind are found in the Kabalah.

PLUTARCH says, in his book _De Iside et Osiride_, "But the better and
diviner nature consists of three,--that which exists within the
Intellect only, and Matter, and that which proceeds from these, which
the Greeks call Kosmos; of which three, Plato is wont to call the
Intelligible, the 'Idea, Exemplar, and Father'; Matter, 'the Mother, the
Nurse, and the place and receptacle of generation'; and the issue of
these two, 'the Offspring and Genesis,'" the KOSMOS, "a word signifying
equally _Beauty_ and _Order_, or the Universe itself." You will not fail
to notice that Beauty is symbolized by the Junior Warden in the South.
Plutarch continues to say that the Egyptians compared the universal
nature to what they called the most beautiful and perfect triangle, as
Plato does, in that nuptial diagram, as it is termed, which he has
introduced into his Commonwealth. Then he adds that this triangle is
right-angled, and its sides respectively as 3, 4, and 5; and he says,
"We must suppose that the perpendicular is designed by them to
represent the masculine nature, the base the feminine, and that the
hypothenuse is to be looked upon as the offspring of both; and
accordingly the first of them will aptly enough represent OSIRIS, or the
prime cause; the second, ISIS, or the receptive capacity; the last,
HORUS, or the common effect of the other two. For 3 is the first number
which is composed of even and odd; and 4 is a square whose side is equal
to the even number 2; but 5, being generated, as it were, out of the
preceding numbers, 2 and 3, may be said to have an equal relation to
both of them, as to its common parents."

       *       *       *       *       *


The _clasped hands_ is another symbol which was used by PYTHAGORAS. It
represented the number 10, the sacred number in which all the preceding
numbers were contained; the number expressed by the mysterious
TETRACTYS, a figure borrowed by him and the Hebrew priests alike from
the Egyptian sacred science, and which ought to be replaced among the
symbols of the Master's Degree, where it of right belongs. The Hebrews
formed it thus, with the letters of the Divine name:

[Illustration]

The _Tetractys_ thus leads you, not only to the study of the Pythagorean
philosophy as to numbers, but also to the Kabalah, and will aid you in
discovering the True Word, and understanding what was meant by "The
Music of the Spheres." Modern science strikingly confirms the ideas of
Pythagoras in regard to the properties of numbers, and that they govern
in the Universe. Long before his time, nature had extracted her
cube-roots and her squares.

       *       *       *       *       *

All the FORCES at man's disposal or under man's control, or subject to
man's influence, are his _working tools_. The friendship and sympathy
that knit heart to heart are a force like the attraction of cohesion,
by which the sandy particles became the solid rock. If this law of
attraction or cohesion were taken away, the material worlds and suns
would dissolve in an instant into thin invisible vapor. If the ties of
friendship, affection, and love were annulled, mankind would become a
raging multitude of wild and savage beasts of prey. The sand hardens
into rock under the immense superincumbent pressure of the ocean, aided
sometimes by the irresistible energy of fire; and when the pressure of
calamity and danger is upon an order or a country, the members or the
citizens ought to be the more closely united by the cohesion of sympathy
and inter-dependence.

Morality is a force. It is the magnetic attraction of the heart toward
Truth and Virtue. The needle, imbued with this mystic property, and
pointing unerringly to the north, carries the mariner safely over the
trackless ocean, through storm and darkness, until his glad eyes behold
the beneficent beacons that welcome him to safe and hospitable harbor.
Then the hearts of those who love him are gladdened, and his home made
happy; and this gladness and happiness are due to the silent,
unostentatious, unerring monitor that was the sailor's guide over the
weltering waters. But if drifted too far northward, he finds the needle
no longer true, but pointing elsewhere than to the north, what a feeling
of helplessness falls upon the dismayed mariner, what utter loss of
energy and courage! It is as if the great axioms of morality were to
fail and be no longer true, leaving the human soul to drift helplessly,
eyeless like Prometheus, at the mercy of the uncertain, faithless
currents of the deep.

Honor and Duty are the pole-stars of a Mason, the Dioscuri, by never
losing sight of which he may avoid disastrous shipwreck. These Palinurus
watched, until, overcome by sleep, and the vessel no longer guided
truly, he fell into and was swallowed up by the insatiable sea. So the
Mason who loses sight of these, and is no longer governed by their
beneficent and potential force, is lost, and sinking out of sight, will
disappear unhonored and unwept.

The force of electricity, analogous to that of sympathy, and by means of
which great thoughts or base suggestions, the utterances of noble or
ignoble natures, flash instantaneously over the nerves of nations; the
force of growth, fit type of immortality, lying dormant three thousand
years in the wheat-grains buried with their mummies by the old
Egyptians; the forces of expansion and contraction, developed in the
earthquake and the tornado, and giving birth to the wonderful
achievements of steam, have their parallelisms in the moral world, in
individuals, and nations. Growth is a necessity for nations as for men.
Its cessation is the beginning of decay. In the nation as well as the
plant it is mysterious, and it is irresistible. The earthquakes that
rend nations asunder, overturn thrones, and engulf monarchies and
republics, have been long prepared for, like the volcanic eruption.
Revolutions have long roots in the past. The force exerted is in direct
proportion to the previous restraint and compression. The true statesman
ought to see in progress the causes that are in due time to produce
them; and he who does not is but a blind leader of the blind.

The great changes in nations, like the geological changes of the earth,
are slowly and continuously wrought. The waters, falling from Heaven as
rain and dews, slowly disintegrate the granite mountains; abrade the
plains, leaving hills and ridges of denudation as their monuments; scoop
out the valleys, fill up the seas, narrow the rivers, and after the
lapse of thousands on thousands of silent centuries, prepare the great
alluvia for the growth of that plant, the snowy envelope of whose seeds
is to employ the looms of the world, and the abundance or penury of
whose crops shall determine whether the weavers and spinners of other
realms shall have work to do or starve.

So Public Opinion is an immense force; and its currents are as
inconstant and incomprehensible as those of the atmosphere.
Nevertheless, in free governments, it is omnipotent; and the business of
the statesman is to find the means to shape, control, and direct it.
According as that is done, it is beneficial and conservative, or
destructive and ruinous. The Public Opinion of the civilized world is
International Law; and it is so great a force, though with no certain
and fixed boundaries, that it can even constrain the victorious despot
to be generous, and aid an oppressed people in its struggle for
independence.

Habit is a great force; it is second nature, even in trees. It is as
strong in nations as in men. So also are Prejudices, which are given to
men and nations as the passions are,--as forces, valuable, if properly
and skillfully availed of; destructive, if unskillfully handled.

Above all, the Love of Country, State Pride, the Love of Home, forces of
immense power. Encourage them all. Insist upon them in your public men.
Permanency of home is necessary to patriotism. A migratory race will
have little love of country. State pride is a mere theory and chimera,
where men remove from State to State with indifference, like the Arabs,
who camp here to-day and there to-morrow.

If you have Eloquence, it is a mighty force. See that you use it for
good purposes--to teach, exhort, ennoble the people, and not to mislead
and corrupt them. Corrupt and venal orators are the assassins of the
public liberties and of public morals.

The Will is a force; its limits as yet unknown. It is in the power of
the will that we chiefly see the spiritual and divine in man. There is a
seeming identity between his will that moves other men, and the Creative
Will whose action seems so incomprehensible. It is the men of _will_ and
_action_, not the men of pure intellect, that govern the world.

Finally, the three greatest moral forces are FAITH, which is the only
true WISDOM, and the very foundation of all government; HOPE, which is
STRENGTH, and insures success; and CHARITY, which is BEAUTY, and alone
makes animated, united effort possible. These forces are within the
reach of all men; and an association of men, actuated by them, ought to
exercise an immense power in the world. If Masonry does not, it is
because she has ceased to possess them.

Wisdom in the man or statesman, in king or priest, largely consists in
the due appreciation of these forces; and upon the general
_non_-appreciation of some of them the fate of nations often depends.
What hecatombs of lives often hang upon the not weighing or not
sufficiently weighing the force of an idea, such as, for example, the
reverence for a flag, or the blind attachment to a form or constitution
of government!

What errors in political economy and statesmanship are committed in
consequence of the over-estimation or under-estimation of particular
values, or the non-estimation of some among them! Everything, it is
asserted, is the product of human labor; but the gold or the diamond
which one accidentally finds without labor is not so. What is the value
of the labor bestowed by the husbandman upon his crops, compared with
the value of the sunshine and rain, without which his labor avails
nothing? Commerce carried on by the labor of man, adds to the value of
the products of the field, the mine, or the workshop, by their
transportation to different markets; but how much of this increase is
due to the rivers down which these products float, to the winds that
urge the keels of commerce over the ocean!

Who can estimate the value of morality and manliness in a State, of
moral worth and intellectual knowledge? These are the sunshine and rain
of the State. The winds, with their changeable, fickle, fluctuating
currents, are apt emblems of the fickle humors of the populace, its
passions, its heroic impulses, its enthusiasms. Woe to the statesman who
does not estimate these as values!

Even music and song are sometimes found to have an incalculable value.
Every nation has some song of a proven value, more easily counted in
lives than dollars. The Marseillaise was worth to revolutionary France,
who shall say how many thousand men?

Peace also is a great element of prosperity and wealth; a value not to
be calculated. Social intercourse and association of men in beneficent
Orders have a value not to be estimated in coin. The illustrious
examples of the Past of a nation, the memories and immortal thoughts of
her great and wise thinkers, statesmen, and heroes, are the invaluable
legacy of that Past to the Present and Future. And all these have not
only the values of the loftier and more excellent and priceless kind,
but also an actual _money_-value, since it is only when co-operating
with or aided or enabled by these, that human labor creates wealth. They
are of the chief elements of material wealth, as they are of national
manliness, heroism, glory, prosperity, and immortal renown.

       *       *       *       *       *

Providence has appointed the three great disciplines of _War_, the
_Monarchy_ and the _Priesthood_, all that the CAMP, the PALACE, and the
TEMPLE may symbolize, to train the multitudes forward to intelligent and
premeditated combinations for all the great purposes of society. The
result will at length be free governments among men, when virtue and
intelligence become qualities of the multitudes; but for ignorance such
governments are impossible. Man advances only by degrees. The removal of
one pressing calamity gives courage to attempt the removal of the
remaining evils, rendering men more sensitive to them, or perhaps
sensitive for the first time. Serfs that writhe under the whip are not
disquieted about their political rights; manumitted from personal
slavery, they become sensitive to political oppression. Liberated from
arbitrary power, and governed by the law alone, they begin to scrutinize
the law itself, and desire to be governed, not only by law, but by what
they deem the best law. And when the civil or temporal despotism has
been set aside, and the municipal law has been moulded on the principles
of an enlightened jurisprudence, they may wake to the discovery that
they are living under some priestly or ecclesiastical despotism, and
become desirous of working a reformation there also.

It is quite true that the advance of humanity is slow, and that it often
pauses and retrogrades. In the kingdoms of the earth we do not see
despotisms retiring and yielding the ground to self-governing
communities. We do not see the churches and priesthoods of Christendom
relinquishing their old task of governing men by imaginary terrors.
Nowhere do we see a populace that could be safely manumitted from such a
government. We do not see the great religious teachers aiming to
discover truth for themselves and for others; but still ruling the
world, and contented and compelled to rule the world, by whatever dogma
is already accredited; themselves as much bound down by this necessity
to govern, as the populace by their need of government. Poverty in all
its most hideous forms still exists in the great cities; and the cancer
of pauperism has its roots in the hearts of kingdoms. Men there take no
measure of their wants and their own power to supply them, but live and
multiply like the beasts of the field,--Providence having apparently
ceased to care for them. Intelligence never visits these, or it makes
its appearance as some new development of villainy. War has not ceased;
still there are battles and sieges. Homes are still unhappy, and tears
and anger and spite make hells where there should be heavens. So much
the more necessity for Masonry! So much wider the field of its labors!
So much the more need for it to begin to be true to itself, to revive
from its asphyxia, to repent of its apostasy to its true creed!

Undoubtedly, labor and death and the sexual passion are essential and
permanent conditions of human existence, and render perfection and a
millennium on earth impossible. Always,--it is the decree of Fate!--the
vast majority of men must toil to live, and cannot find time to
cultivate the intelligence. Man, knowing he is to die, will not
sacrifice the present enjoyment for a greater one in the future. The
love of woman cannot die out; and it has a terrible and uncontrollable
fate, increased by the refinements of civilization. Woman is the
veritable syren or goddess of the young. But society can be improved;
and free government is possible for States; and freedom of thought and
conscience is no longer _wholly_ utopian. Already we see that Emperors
prefer to be elected by universal suffrage; that States are conveyed to
Empires by vote; and that Empires are administered with something of the
spirit of a Republic, being little else than democracies with a single
head, ruling through one man, one representative, instead of an assembly
of representatives. And if Priesthoods still govern, they now come
before the laity to prove, by stress of argument, that they _ought_ to
govern. They are obliged to evoke the very reason which they are bent on
supplanting.

Accordingly, men become daily more free, because the freedom of the man
lies in his reason. He can reflect upon his own future conduct, and
summon up its consequences; he can take wide views of human life, and
lay down rules for constant guidance. Thus he is relieved of the tyranny
of sense and passion, and enabled at any time to live according to the
whole light of the knowledge that is within him, instead of being
driven, like a dry leaf on the wings of the wind, by every present
impulse. Herein lies the freedom of the man as regarded in connection
with the necessity imposed by the omnipotence and fore-knowledge of God.
So much light, so much liberty. When emperor and church appeal to reason
there is naturally universal suffrage.

Therefore no one need lose courage, nor believe that labor in the cause
of Progress will be labor wasted. There is no waste in nature, either of
Matter, Force, Act, or Thought. A Thought is as much the end of life as
an Action; and a single Thought sometimes works greater results than a
Revolution, even Revolutions themselves. Still there should not be
divorce between Thought and Action. The true Thought is that in which
life culminates. But all wise and true Thought produces Action. It is
generative, like the light; and light and the deep shadow of the passing
cloud are the gifts of the prophets of the race. Knowledge, laboriously
acquired, and inducing habits of sound Thought,--the reflective
character,--must necessarily be rare. The multitude of laborers cannot
acquire it. Most men attain to a very low standard of it. It is
incompatible with the ordinary and indispensable avocations of life. A
whole world of error as well as of labor, go to make one reflective
man. In the most advanced nation of Europe there are more ignorant than
wise, more poor than rich, more automatic laborers, the mere creatures
of habit, than reasoning and reflective men. The proportion is at least
a thousand to one. Unanimity of opinion is so obtained. It only exists
among the multitude who do not think, and the political or spiritual
priesthood who think for that multitude, who think how to guide and
govern them. When men begin to reflect, they begin to differ. The great
problem is to find guides who will not seek to be tyrants. This is
needed even more in respect to the heart than the head. Now, every man
earns his special share of the produce of human labor, by an incessant
scramble, by trickery and deceit. Useful knowledge, honorably acquired,
is too often used after a fashion not honest or reasonable, so that the
studies of youth are far more noble than the practices of manhood. The
labor of the farmer in his fields, the generous returns of the earth,
the benignant and favoring skies, tend to make him earnest, provident,
and grateful; the education of the market-place makes him querulous,
crafty, envious, and an intolerable niggard.

Masonry seeks to be this beneficent, unambitious, disinterested guide;
and it is the very condition of all great structures that the sound of
the hammer and the clink of the trowel should be always heard in some
part of the building. With faith in man, hope for the future of
humanity, loving-kindness for our fellows, Masonry and the Mason must
always work and teach. Let each do that for which he is best fitted. The
teacher also is a workman. Praiseworthy as the active navigator is, who
comes and goes and makes one clime partake of the treasures of the
other, and one to share the treasures of all, he who keeps the
beacon-light upon the hill is also at his post.

Masonry has already helped cast down some idols from their pedestals,
and grind to impalpable dust some of the links of the chains that held
men's souls in bondage. That there has been progress needs no other
demonstration than that you may now reason with men, and urge upon them,
without danger of the rack or stake, that no doctrines can be
apprehended as truths if they contradict each other, or contradict other
truths given us by God. Long before the Reformation, a monk, who had
found his way to heresy without the help of Martin Luther, not venturing
to breathe aloud into any living ear his anti-papal and treasonable
doctrines, wrote them on parchment, and sealing up the perilous record,
hid it in the massive walls of his monastery. There was no friend or
brother to whom he could intrust his secret or pour forth his soul. It
was some consolation to imagine that in a future age some one might find
the parchment, and the seed be found not to have been sown in vain. What
if the truth should have to lie dormant as long before germinating as
the wheat in the Egyptian mummy? Speak it, nevertheless, again and
again, and let it take its chance!

The rose of Jericho grows in the sandy deserts of Arabia and on the
Syrian housetops. Scarcely six inches high, it loses its leaves after
the flowering season, and dries up into the form of a ball. Then it is
uprooted by the winds, and carried, blown, or tossed across the desert,
into the sea. There, feeling the contact of the water, it unfolds
itself, expands its branches, and expels its seeds from their
seed-vessels. These, when saturated with water, are carried by the tide
and laid on the sea-shore. Many are lost, as many individual lives of
men are useless. But many are thrown back again from the sea-shore into
the desert, where, by the virtue of the sea-water that they have
imbibed, the roots and leaves sprout and they grow into fruitful plants,
which will, in their turns, like their ancestors, be whirled into the
sea. God will not be less careful to provide for the germination of the
truths you may boldly utter forth. "_Cast_," He has said, "_thy bread
upon the waters, and after many days it shall return to thee again_."

Initiation does not change: we find it again and again, and always the
same, through all the ages. The last disciples of Pascalis Martinez are
still the children of Orpheus; but they adore the realizer of the
antique philosophy, the Incarnate Word of the Christians.

Pythagoras, the great divulger of the philosophy of numbers, visited all
the sanctuaries of the world. He went into Judaea, where he procured
himself to be circumcised, that he might be admitted to the secrets of
the Kabalah, which the prophets Ezekiel and Daniel, not without some
reservations, communicated to him. Then, not without some difficulty, he
succeeded in being admitted to the Egyptian initiation, upon the
recommendation of King Amasis. The power of his genius supplied the
deficiencies of the imperfect communications of the Hierophants, and he
himself became a Master and a Revealer.

Pythagoras defined God: a Living and Absolute Verity clothed with
Light.

He said that the Word was Number manifested by Form.

He made all descend from the _Tetractys_, that is to say, from the
Quaternary.

God, he said again, is the Supreme Music, the nature of which is
Harmony.

Pythagoras gave the magistrates of Crotona this great religious,
political and social precept:

"There is no evil that is not preferable to Anarchy."

Pythagoras said, "Even as there are three divine notions and three
intelligible regions, so there is a triple word, for the Hierarchical
Order always manifests itself by threes. There are the word simple, the
word hieroglyphical, and the word symbolic: in other terms, there are
the word that expresses, the word that conceals, and the word that
signifies; the whole hieratic intelligence is in the perfect knowledge
of these three degrees."

Pythagoras enveloped doctrine with symbols, but carefully eschewed
personifications and images, which, he thought, sooner or later produced
idolatry.

The Holy Kabalah, or tradition of the children of Seth, was carried from
Chaldæa by Abraham, taught to the Egyptian priesthood by Joseph,
recovered and purified by Moses, concealed under symbols in the Bible,
revealed by the Saviour to Saint John, and contained, entire, under
hieratic figures analogous to those of all antiquity, in the Apocalypse
of that Apostle.

The Kabalists consider God as the Intelligent, Animated, Living
Infinite. He is not, for them, either the aggregate of existences, or
existence in the abstract, or a being philosophically definable. He is
_in_ all, _distinct_ from all, and _greater_ than all. His name even is
ineffable; and yet this name only expresses the human ideal of His
divinity. What God is in Himself, it is not given to man to comprehend.

God is the absolute of Faith; but the absolute of _Reason_ is BEING,
[Hebrew]. "_I am that I am_," is a wretched translation.

Being, Existence, is by itself, and because it Is. The reason of Being,
is Being itself. We may inquire, "Why does something exist?" that is,
"Why does such or such a thing exist?" But we cannot, without being
absurd, ask, "Why Is Being?" That would be to suppose Being before
Being. If Being had a cause, that cause would necessarily Be; that is,
the cause and effect would be identical.

Reason and science demonstrate to us that the modes of Existence and
Being balance each other in equilibrium according to harmonious and
hierarchic laws. But a hierarchy is synthetized, in ascending, and
becomes ever more and more monarchial. Yet the reason cannot pause at a
single chief, without being alarmed at the abysses which it seems to
leave above this Supreme Monarch. Therefore it is silent, and gives
place to the Faith it adores.

What is certain, even for science and the reason, is, that the idea of
God is the grandest, the most holy, and the most useful of all the
aspirations of man; that upon this belief morality reposes, with its
eternal sanction. This belief, then, is in humanity, the most real of
the phenomena of being; and if it were false, nature would affirm the
absurd; nothingness would give form to life, and God would at the same
time be and not be.

It is to this philosophic and incontestable reality, which is termed The
Idea of God, that the Kabalists give a name. In this name all others are
contained. Its cyphers contain all the numbers; and the hieroglyphics of
its letters express all the laws and all the things of nature.

BEING is BEING: the reason of Being is in Being: in the Beginning is the
Word, and the Word in logic formulated Speech, the spoken Reason; the
Word is in God, and is God Himself, manifested to the Intelligence. Here
is what is above all the philosophies. This we must believe, under the
penalty of never truly knowing anything, and relapsing into the absurd
skepticism of Pyrrho. The Priesthood, custodian of Faith, wholly rests
upon this basis of knowledge, and it is in its teachings we must
recognize the Divine Principle of the Eternal Word.

Light is not Spirit, as the Indian Hierophants believed it to be; but
only the instrument of the Spirit. It is not the body of the
Protoplastes, as the Theurgists of the school of Alexandria taught, but
the first physical manifestation of the Divine afflatus. God eternally
creates it, and man, in the image of God, modifies and seems to multiply
it.

The high magic is styled "The Sacerdotal Art," and "The Royal Art." In
Egypt, Greece, and Rome, it could not but share the greatnesses and
decadences of the Priesthood and of Royalty. Every philosophy hostile to
the national worship and to its mysteries, was of necessity hostile to
the great political powers, which lose their grandeur, if they cease, in
the eyes of the multitudes, to be the images of the Divine Power. Every
Crown is shattered, when it clashes against the Tiara.

Plato, writing to Dionysius the Younger, in regard to the nature of the
First Principle, says: "I must write to you in enigmas, so that if my
letter be intercepted by land or sea, he who shall read it may in no
degree comprehend it." And then he says, "All things surround their
King; they are, on account of Him, and He alone is the cause of good
things, Second for the Seconds and Third for the Thirds."

There is in these few words a complete summary of the Theology of the
Sephiroth. "The _King_" is AINSOPH, Being Supreme and Absolute. From
this centre, _which_ is _everywhere_, all things ray forth; but we
especially conceive of it in three manners and in three different
spheres. In the _Divine_ world (AZILUTH), which is that of the First
Cause, and wherein the whole Eternity of Things in the beginning existed
as Unity, to be afterward, during Eternity uttered forth, clothed with
form, and the attributes that constitute them matter, the First
Principle is Single and First, and yet not the VERY Illimitable Deity,
incomprehensible, undefinable; but Himself in so far as manifested by
the Creative Thought. To compare littleness with infinity,--Arkwright,
as inventor of the spinning-jenny, and not the _man_ Arkwright
_otherwise_ and _beyond that_. All we can know of the Very God is,
compared to His Wholeness, only as an infinitesimal fraction of a unit,
compared with an infinity of Units.

In the World of Creation, which is that of Second Causes [the Kabalistic
World BRIAH], the Autocracy of the First Principle is complete, but we
conceive of it only as the Cause of the Second Causes. Here it is
manifested by the Binary, and is the Creative Principle passive.
Finally: in the third world, YEZIRAH, or of Formation, it is revealed in
the perfect Form, the Form of Forms, the World, the Supreme Beauty and
Excellence, the Created Perfection. Thus the Principle is at once the
First, the Second, and the Third, since it is All in All, the Centre and
Cause of all. It is not _the genius of Plato_ that we here admire. We
recognize only _the exact knowledge of the Initiate_.

The great Apostle Saint John did not borrow from the philosophy of Plato
the opening of his Gospel. Plato, on the contrary, drank at the same
springs with Saint John and Philo; and John in the opening verses of his
paraphrase, states the first principles of a dogma common to many
schools, but in language especially belonging to Philo, whom it is
evident he had read. The philosophy of Plato, the greatest of human
Revealers, could _yearn toward_ the Word made man; the Gospel alone
could give him to the world.

Doubt, in presence of Being and its harmonies; skepticism, in the face
of the eternal mathematics and the immutable laws of Life which make the
Divinity present and visible everywhere, as the Human is known and
visible by its utterances of word and act,--is this not the most foolish
of superstitions, and the most inexcusable as well as the most dangerous
of all credulities? Thought, we know, is not a result or consequence of
the organization of matter, of the chemical or other action or reaction
of its particles, like effervescence and gaseous explosions. On the
contrary, the fact that Thought is manifested and realized in act human
or act divine, proves the existence of an Entity, or Unity, that thinks.
And the Universe is the Infinite Utterance of one of an infinite number
of Infinite Thoughts, which cannot but emanate from an Infinite and
Thinking Source. The cause is always equal, at least, to the effect; and
matter cannot think, nor could it cause itself, or exist without cause,
nor could nothing _produce_ either forces or things; for in void
nothingness no Forces can inhere. Admit a self-existent Force, and its
Intelligence, or an Intelligent cause of it is admitted, and at once GOD
Is.

The Hebrew allegory of the Fall of Man, which is but a special variation
of a universal legend, symbolizes one of the grandest and most universal
allegories of science.

Moral Evil is Falsehood in actions; as Falsehood is Crime in words.

Injustice is the essence of Falsehood; and every false word is an
injustice.

Injustice is the death of the Moral Being, as Falsehood is the poison of
the Intelligence.

The perception of the Light is the dawn of the Eternal Life, in Being.
The Word of God, which creates the Light, seems to be uttered by every
Intelligence that can take cognizance of Forms and will look. "Let the
Light BE! The Light", in fact, exists, in its condition of splendor, for
those eyes alone that gaze at it; and the Soul, amorous of the spectacle
of the beauties of the Universe, and applying its attention to that
luminous writing of the Infinite Book which is called "The Visible,"
seems to utter, as God did on the dawn of the first day, that sublime
and creative word, "BE! LIGHT!"

It is not beyond the tomb, but in life itself, that we are to seek for
the mysteries of death. Salvation or reprobation begins here below and
the terrestrial world too has its Heaven and its Hell. Always, even here
below, virtue is rewarded; always, even here below vice is punished; and
that which makes us sometimes believe in the impunity of evil-doers is
that riches, those instruments of good and of evil, seem sometimes to be
given them at hazard. But woe to unjust men, when they possess the key
of gold! It opens, for _them_, only the gate of the tomb and of Hell.

All the true Initiates have recognized the usefulness of toil and
sorrow. "Sorrow," says a German poet, "is the dog of that unknown
shepherd who guides the flock of men." To learn to suffer, to learn to
die, is the discipline of Eternity, the immortal Novitiate.

The allegorical picture of Cebes, in which the Divine Comedy of Dante
was sketched in Plato's time, the description whereof has been preserved
for us, and which many painters of the middle age have reproduced by
this description, is a monument at once philosophical and magical. It is
a most complete moral synthesis, and at the same time the most audacious
demonstration ever given of the Grand Arcanum, of that secret whose
revelation would overturn Earth and Heaven. Let no one expect us to give
them its explanation! He who passes behind the veil that hides this
mystery, understands that it is in its very nature inexplicable, and
that it is death to those who win it by surprise, as well as to him who
reveals it.

This secret is the Royalty of the Sages, the Crown of the Initiate whom
we see redescend victorious from the summit of Trials, in the fine
allegory of Cebes. The Grand Arcanum makes him master of gold and the
light, which are at bottom the same thing, he has solved the problem of
the quadrature of the circle, he directs the perpetual movement, and he
possesses the philosophical stone. Here the Adepts will understand us.
There is neither interruption in the toil of nature, nor gap in her
work. The Harmonies of Heaven correspond to those of Earth, and the
Eternal Life accomplishes its evolutions in accordance with the same
laws as the life of a dog. "God has arranged all things by weight,
number, and measure," says the Bible; and this luminous doctrine was
also that of Plato.

Humanity has never really had but one religion and one worship. This
universal light has had its uncertain mirages, its deceitful
reflections, and its shadows; but always, after the nights of Error, we
see it reappear, one and pure like the Sun.

The magnificences of worship are the life of religion, and if Christ
wishes poor ministers, His Sovereign Divinity does not wish paltry
altars. Some Protestants have not comprehended that worship is a
teaching, and that we must not create in the imagination of the
multitude a mean or miserable God. Those oratories that resemble
poorly-furnished offices or inns, and those worthy ministers clad like
notaries or lawyer's clerks, do they not necessarily cause religion to
be regarded as a mere puritanic formality, and God as a Justice of the
Peace?

We scoff at the Augurs. It is so easy to scoff, and so difficult well to
comprehend. Did the Deity leave the whole world without Light for two
score centuries, to illuminate only a little corner of Palestine and a
brutal, ignorant, and ungrateful people? Why always calumniate God and
the Sanctuary? Were there never any others than rogues among the
priests? Could no honest and sincere men be found among the Hierophants
of Ceres or Diana, of Dionusos or Apollo, of Hermes or Mithras? Were
these, then, all deceived, like the rest? Who, then, constantly deceived
them, without betraying themselves, during a series of centuries?--for
the cheats are not immortal! Arago said, that outside of the pure
mathematics, he who utters the word "impossible," is wanting in prudence
and good sense.

The true name of Satan, the Kabalists say, is that of Yahveh reversed;
for Satan is not a black god, but the negation of God. The Devil is the
personification of Atheism or Idolatry.

For the Initiates, this is not a _Person_, but a _Force_, created for
good, but which _may_ serve for evil. _It is the instrument of Liberty
or Free Will_. They represent this Force, which presides over the
physical generation, under the mythologic and horned form of the God
PAN; thence came the he-goat of the Sabbat, brother of the Ancient
Serpent, and the Light-bearer or _Phosphor_, of which the poets have
made the false Lucifer of the legend.

Gold, to the eyes of the Initiates, is Light condensed. They style the
sacred numbers of the Kabalah "golden numbers," and the moral teachings
of Pythagoras his "golden verses." For the same reason, a mysterious
book of Apuleius, in which an ass figures largely, was called "The
Golden Ass."

The Pagans accused the Christians of worshipping an ass, and they did
not invent this reproach, but it came from the Samaritan Jews, who,
figuring the data of the Kabalah in regard to the Divinity by Egyptian
symbols, also represented the Intelligence by the figure of the Magical
Star adored under the name of _Remphan_, Science under the emblem of
Anubis, whose name they changed to _Nibbas_, and the vulgar faith or
credulity under the figure of _Thartac_, a god represented with a book,
a cloak, and the head of an ass. According to the Samaritan Doctors,
Christianity was the reign of _Thartac_, blind Faith and vulgar
credulity erected into a universal oracle, and preferred to Intelligence
and Science.

Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemaïs, a great Kabalist, but of doubtful
orthodoxy, wrote:

"The people will always mock at things easy to be misunderstood; it must
needs have impostures."

"A Spirit," he said, "that loves wisdom and contemplates the Truth close
at hand, is forced to disguise it, to induce the multitudes to accept
it.... Fictions are necessary to the people, and the Truth becomes
deadly to those who are not strong enough to contemplate it in all its
brilliance. If the sacerdotal laws allowed the reservation of judgments
and the allegory of words, I would accept the proposed dignity on
condition that I might be a philosopher at home, and abroad a narrator
of apologues and parables.... In fact, what can there be in common
between the vile multitude and sublime wisdom? The truth must be kept
secret, and the masses need a teaching proportioned to their imperfect
reason."

Moral disorders produce physical ugliness, and in some sort realize
those frightful faces which tradition assigns to the demons.

The first Druids were the true children of the Magi, and their
initiation came from Egypt and Chaldæa, that is to say, from the pure
sources of the primitive Kabalah. They adored the Trinity under the
names of _Isis_ or _Hesus_, the Supreme Harmony; of _Belen_ or
_Bel_ which in Assyrian means Lord, a name corresponding to that of
ADONAÏ; and of _Camul_ or _Camaël_, a name that in the Kabalah
personifies the Divine Justice. Below this triangle of Light they
supposed a divine reflection, also composed of three personified rays:
first, _Teutates_ or _Teuth_, the same as the _Thoth_ of the Egyptians,
the Word, or the Intelligence formulated; then Force and Beauty, whose
names varied like their emblems. Finally, they completed the sacred
Septenary by a mysterious image that represented the progress of the
dogma and its future realizations. This was a young girl veiled, holding
a child in her arms; and they dedicated this image to "The Virgin who
will become a mother;--_Virgini pariturœ_."

Hertha or Wertha, the young Isis of Gaul, Queen of Heaven, the Virgin
who was to bear a child, held the spindle of the Fates, filled with wool
half white and half black; because she presides over all forms and all
symbols, and weaves the garment of the Ideas.

One of the most mysterious pantacles of the Kabalah, contained in the
Enchiridion of Leo III., represents an equilateral triangle reversed,
inscribed in a double circle. On the triangle are written, in such
manner as to form the prophetic Tau, the two Hebrew words so often found
appended to the Ineffable Name, [Hebrew: אלהמ] and [Hebrew: צבאוה],
ALOHAYIM, or the Powers, and TSABAOTH, or the starry Armies and their
guiding spirits; words also which symbolize the Equilibrium of the
Forces of Nature and the Harmony of Numbers. To the three sides of the
triangle belong the three great Names [Hebrew: ארני,יהוה], and [Hebrew:
אנלא], IAHAVEH, ADONAÏ, and AGLA. Above the first is written in Latin,
_Formatio_, above, the second _Reformatio_, and above the third,
_Transformatio_. So Creation is ascribed to the FATHER, Redemption or
Reformation to the SON, and Sanctification or Transformation to the HOLY
SPIRIT, answering unto the mathematical laws of Action, Reaction, and
Equilibrium. IAHAVEH is also, in effect, the Genesis or Formation of
dogma, by the elementary signification of the four letters of the Sacred
Tetragram; ADONAÏ is the realization of this dogma in the Human Form, in
the Visible LORD, who is the Son of God or the perfect Man; and AGLA
(formed of the initials of the four words _Ath Gebur Laulaïm Adonaï_)
expresses the synthesis of the whole dogma and the totality of the
Kabalistic science, clearly indicating by the hieroglyphics of which
this admirable name is formed the Triple Secret of the Great Work.

Masonry, like all the Religions, all the Mysteries, Hermeticism and
Alchemy, _conceals_ its secrets from all except the Adepts and Sages, or
the Elect, and uses false explanations and misinterpretations of its
symbols to mislead those who deserve only to be misled; to conceal the
Truth, which it calls Light, from them, and to draw them away from it.
Truth is not for those who are unworthy or unable to receive it, or
would pervert it. So God Himself incapacitates many men, by
color-blindness, to distinguish colors, and leads the masses away from
the highest Truth, giving them the power to attain only so much of it as
it is profitable to them to know. Every age has had a religion suited to
its capacity.

The Teachers, even of Christianity, are, in general, the most ignorant
of the true meaning of that which they teach. There is no book of which
so little is known as the Bible. To most who read it, it is as
incomprehensible as the Sohar.

So Masonry jealously conceals its secrets, and intentionally leads
conceited interpreters astray. There is no sight under the sun more
pitiful and ludicrous at once, than the spectacle of the Prestons and
the Webbs, not to mention the later incarnations of Dullness and
Commonplace, undertaking to "explain" the old symbols of Masonry, and
adding to and "improving" them, or inventing new ones.

To the Circle inclosing the central point, and itself traced between two
parallel lines, a figure purely Kabalistic, these persons have added the
superimposed Bible, and even reared on that the ladder with three or
nine rounds, and then given a vapid interpretation of the whole, so
profoundly absurd as actually to excite admiration.

[Illustration]



IV.

SECRET MASTER.


Masonry is a succession of allegories, the mere vehicles of great
lessons in morality and philosophy. You will more fully appreciate its
spirit, its object, its purposes, as you advance in the different
Degrees, which you will find to constitute a great, complete, and
harmonious system.

If you have been disappointed in the first three Degrees, _as you have
received them_, and if it has seemed to you that the performance has not
come up to the promise, that the lessons of morality are not new, and
the scientific instruction is but rudimentary, and the symbols are
imperfectly explained, remember that the ceremonies and lessons of those
Degrees have been for ages more and more accommodating themselves, by
curtailment and sinking into commonplace, to the often limited memory
and capacity of the Master and Instructor, and to the intellect and
needs of the Pupil and Initiate; that they have come to us from an age
when symbols were used, not to _reveal_ but to _conceal_; when the
commonest learning was confined to a select few, and the simplest
principles of morality seemed newly discovered truths; and that these
antique and simple Degrees now stand like the broken columns of a
roofless Druidic temple, in their rude and mutilated greatness; in many
parts, also, corrupted by time, and disfigured by modern additions and
absurd interpretations. They are but the entrance to the great Masonic
Temple, the triple columns of the portico.

You have taken the first step over its threshold, the first step toward
the inner sanctuary and heart of the temple. You are in the path that
leads up the slope of the mountain of Truth; and it depends upon your
secrecy, obedience, and fidelity, whether you will advance or remain
stationary.

Imagine not that you will become indeed a Mason by learning what is
commonly called the "work," or even by becoming familiar with our
traditions. Masonry has a history, a literature, a philosophy. Its
allegories and traditions will teach you much; but much is to be sought
elsewhere. The streams of learning that now flow full and broad must be
followed to their heads in the springs that well up in the remote past,
and you will there find the origin and meaning of Masonry.

A few rudimentary lessons in architecture, a few universally admitted
maxims of morality, a few unimportant traditions, whose real meaning is
unknown or misunderstood, will no longer satisfy the earnest inquirer
after Masonic truth. Let whoso is content with these, seek to climb no
higher. He who desires to understand the harmonious and beautiful
proportions of Freemasonry must read, study, reflect, digest, and
discriminate. The true Mason is an ardent seeker after knowledge; and he
knows that both books and the antique symbols of Masonry are vessels
which come down to us full-freighted with the intellectual riches of the
Past; and that in the lading of these argosies is much that sheds light
on the history of Masonry, and proves its claim to be acknowledged the
benefactor of mankind, born in the very cradle of the race.

Knowledge is the most genuine and real of human treasures; for it is
Light, as Ignorance is Darkness. It is the _development_ of the human
soul, and its acquisition the _growth_ of the soul, which at the birth
of man knows nothing, and therefore, in one sense, may be said to _be_
nothing. It is the seed, which has in it the _power_ to grow, to
acquire, and by acquiring to be developed, as the seed is developed into
the shoot, the plant, the tree. "We need not pause at the common
argument that by learning man excelleth man, in that wherein man
excelleth beasts; that by learning man ascendeth to the heavens and
their motions, where in body he cannot come, and the like. Let us rather
regard the dignity and excellency of knowledge and learning in that
whereunto man's nature doth most aspire, which is immortality or
continuance. For to this tendeth generation, and raising of Houses and
Families; to this buildings, foundations, and monuments; to this tendeth
the desire of memory, fame, and celebration, and in effect the strength
of all other human desires." That our influences shall survive us, and
be living forces when we are in our graves; and not merely that our
names shall be remembered; but rather that our works shall be read, our
acts spoken of, our names recollected and mentioned when we are dead, as
evidences that those influences live and rule, sway and control some
portion of mankind and of the world,--this is the aspiration of the
human soul. "We see then how far the monuments of genius and learning
are more durable than monuments of power or of the hands. For have not
the verses of Homer continued twenty-five hundred years or more, without
the loss of a syllable or letter, during which time infinite palaces,
temples, castles, cities, have decayed and been demolished? It is not
possible to have the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alexander,
Caesar, no, nor of the Kings or great personages of much later years;
for the originals cannot last, and the copies cannot but lose of the
life and truth. But the images of men's genius and knowledge remain in
books, exempted from the wrong of time, and capable of perpetual
renovation. Neither are they fitly to be called images, because they
generate still, and cast their seeds in the minds of others, provoking
and causing infinite actions and opinions in succeeding ages; so that if
the invention of the ship was thought so noble, which carrieth riches
and commodities from place to place, and consociateth the most remote
regions in participation of their fruits, how much more are letters to
be magnified, which, as ships, pass through the vast seas of time, and
make ages so distant to participate of the wisdom, illumination, and
inventions, the one of the other."

To learn, to attain knowledge, to be wise, is a necessity for every
truly noble soul; to teach, to communicate that knowledge, to share that
wisdom with others, and not churlishly to lock up his exchequer, and
place a sentinel at the door to drive away the needy, is equally an
impulse of a noble nature, and the worthiest work of man.

"There was a little city," says the Preacher, the son of David, "and few
men within it; and there came a great King against it and besieged it,
and built great bulwarks against it. Now there was found, in it a poor
wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city; yet no man remembered
that same poor man. Then, said I, wisdom is better than strength:
nevertheless, the poor man's wisdom is despised, and his words are not
heard." If it should chance to you, my brother, to do mankind good
service, and be rewarded with indifference and forgetfulness only,
still be not discouraged, but remember the further advice of the wise
King. "In the morning sow the seed, and in the evening withhold not thy
hand; for thou knowest not which shall prosper, this or that, or whether
both shall be alike good." Sow you the seed, whoever reaps. Learn, that
you may be enabled to do good and do so because it is right, finding in
the act itself ample reward and recompense.

To attain the truth, and to serve our fellows, our country, and
mankind--this is the noblest destiny of man. Hereafter and all your life
it is to be your object. If you desire to ascend to that destiny,
advance! If you have other and less noble objects, and are contented
with a lower flight, halt here! let others scale the heights, and
Masonry fulfill her mission.

If you will advance, gird up your loins for the struggle! for the way is
long and toilsome. Pleasure, all smiles, will beckon you on the one
hand, and Indolence will invite you to sleep among the flowers, upon the
other. Prepare, by secrecy, obedience, and fidelity, to resist the
allurements of both!

Secrecy is indispensable in a Mason of whatever Degree. It is the first
and almost the only lesson taught to the Entered Apprentice. The
obligations which we have each assumed toward every Mason that lives,
requiring of us the performance of the most serious and onerous duties
toward those personally unknown to us until they demand our aid,--duties
that must be performed, even at the risk of life, or our solemn oaths be
broken and violated, and we be branded as false Masons and faithless
men, teach us how profound a folly it would be to betray our secrets to
those who, bound to us by no tie of common obligation, might, by
obtaining them, call on us in their extremity, when the urgency of the
occasion should allow us no time for inquiry, and the peremptory mandate
of our obligation compel us to do a brother's duty to a base impostor.

The secrets of our brother, when communicated to us, must be sacred, if
they be such as the law of our country warrants us to keep. We are
required to keep none other, when the law that we are called on to obey
is indeed a law, by having emanated from the only source of power, the
People. Edicts which emanate from the mere arbitrary will of a despotic
power, contrary to the law of God or the Great Law of Nature,
destructive of the inherent rights of man, violative of the right of
free thought, free speech, free conscience, it is lawful to rebel
against and strive to abrogate.

For obedience to the Law does not mean submission to tyranny; nor that,
by a profligate sacrifice of every noble feeling, we should offer to
despotism the homage of adulation. As every new victim falls, we _may_
lift our voice in still louder flattery. We _may_ fall at the proud
feet, we _may_ beg, as a boon, the honor of kissing that bloody hand
which has been lifted against the helpless. We may do more: we may bring
the altar and the sacrifice, and implore the God not to ascend too soon
to Heaven. This we may do, for this we have the sad remembrance that
beings of a human form and soul have done. But this is all we can do. We
can constrain our tongues to be false, our features to bend themselves
to the semblance of that passionate adoration which we wish to express,
our knees to fall prostrate; but our heart we cannot constrain. There
virtue must still have a voice which is not to be drowned by hymns and
acclamations; there the crimes which we laud as virtues, are crimes
still, and he whom we have made a God is the most contemptible of
mankind; if, indeed, we do not feel, perhaps, that we are ourselves
still more contemptible.

But that law which is the fair expression of the will and judgment of
the people, is the enactment of the whole and of every individual.
Consistent with the law of God and the great law of nature, consistent
with pure and abstract right as tempered by necessity and the general
interest, as contra-distinguished from the private interest of
individuals, it is obligatory upon all, because it is the work of all,
the will of all, the solemn judgment of all, from which there is no
appeal.

In this Degree, my brother, you are especially to learn the duty of
obedience to that law. There is one true and original law, conformable
to reason and to nature, diffused over all, invariable, eternal, which
calls to the fulfillment of duty, and to abstinence from injustice, and
calls with that irresistible voice which is felt in all its authority
wherever it is heard. This law cannot be abrogated or diminished, or its
sanctions affected, by any law of man. A whole senate, a whole people,
cannot dissent from its paramount obligation. It requires no commentator
to render it distinctly intelligible: nor is it one thing at Rome,
another at Athens; one thing now, and another in the ages to come; but
in all times and in all nations, it is, and has been, and will be, one
and everlasting;--one as that God, its great Author and Promulgator,
who is the Common Sovereign of all mankind, is Himself One. No man can
disobey it without flying, as it were, from his own bosom, and
repudiating his nature; and in this very act he will inflict on himself
the severest of retributions, even though he escape what is regarded as
punishment.

It is our duty to obey the laws of our country, and to be careful that
prejudice or passion, fancy or affection, error and illusion, be not
mistaken for conscience. Nothing is more usual than to pretend
conscience in all the actions of man which are public and cannot be
concealed. The disobedient refuse to submit to the laws, and they also
in many cases pretend conscience; and so disobedience and rebellion
become conscience, in which there is neither knowledge nor revelation,
nor truth nor charity, nor reason nor religion. Conscience is tied to
laws. Right or sure conscience is right reason reduced to practice, and
conducting moral actions, while perverse conscience is seated in the
fancy or affections--a heap of irregular principles and irregular
defects--and is the same in conscience as deformity is in the body, or
peevishness in the affections. It is not enough that the conscience be
taught by nature; but it must be taught by God, conducted by reason,
made operative by discourse, assisted by choice, instructed by laws and
sober principles; and then it _is_ right, and it _may_ be sure. All the
general measures of justice, are the laws of God, and therefore they
constitute the general rules of government for the conscience; but
necessity also hath a large voice in the arrangement of human affairs,
and the disposal of human relations, and the dispositions of human laws;
and these general measures, like a great river into little streams, are
deduced into little rivulets and particularities, by the laws and
customs, by the sentences and agreements of men, and by the absolute
despotism of necessity, that will not allow perfect and abstract justice
and equity to be the sole rule of civil government in an imperfect
world; and that must needs be law which is for the greatest good of the
greatest number.

When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it. It is better thou
shouldest not vow than thou shouldest vow and not pay. Be not rash with
thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before
God: for God is in Heaven, and thou art upon earth; therefore let thy
words be few. Weigh well what it is you promise; but once the promise
and pledge are given remember that he who is false to his obligation
will be false to his family, his friends, his country, and his God.

_Fides servanda est_: Faith plighted is ever to be kept, was a maxim and
an axiom even among pagans. The virtuous Roman said, either let not that
which seems expedient be base, or if it _be_ base, let it not seem
expedient. What is there which that so-called expediency can bring, so
valuable as that which it takes away, if it deprives you of the name of
a good man and robs you of your integrity and honor? In all ages, he who
violates his plighted word has been held unspeakably base. The word of a
Mason, like the word of a knight in the times of chivalry, once given
must be sacred; and the judgment of his brothers, upon him who violates
his pledge, should be stern as the judgments of the Roman Censors
against him who violated his oath. Good faith is revered among Masons as
it was among the Romans, who placed its statue in the capitol, next to
that of Jupiter Maximus Optimus; and we, like them, hold that calamity
should always be chosen rather than baseness; and with the knights of
old, that one should always die rather than be dishonored.

Be faithful, therefore, to the promises you make, to the pledges you
give, and to the vows that you assume, since to break either is base and
dishonorable.

Be faithful to your family, and perform all the duties of a good father,
a good son, a good husband, and a good brother.

Be faithful to your friends; for true friendship is of a nature not only
to survive through all the vicissitudes of life, but to continue through
an endless duration; not only to stand the shock of conflicting
opinions, and the roar of a revolution that shakes the world, but to
last when the heavens are no more, and to spring fresh from the ruins of
the universe.

Be faithful to your country, and prefer its dignity and honor to any
degree of popularity and honor for yourself; consulting its interest
rather than your own, and rather than the pleasure and gratification of
the people, which are often at variance with their welfare.

Be faithful to Masonry, which is to be faithful to the best interests of
mankind. Labor, by precept and example, to elevate the standard of
Masonic character, to enlarge its sphere of influence, to popularize its
teachings, and to make all men know it for the Great Apostle of Peace,
Harmony, and Good-will on earth among men; of Liberty, Equality, and
Fraternity.

Masonry is useful to all men: to the learned, because it affords them
the opportunity of exercising their talents upon subjects eminently
worthy of their attention; to the illiterate, because it offers them
important instruction; to the young, because it presents them with
salutary precepts and good examples, and accustoms them to reflect on
the proper mode of living; to the man of the world, whom it furnishes
with noble and useful recreation; to the traveller, whom it enables to
find friends and brothers in countries where else he would be isolated
and solitary; to the worthy man in misfortune, to whom it gives
assistance; to the afflicted, on whom it lavishes consolation; to the
charitable man, whom it enables to do more good, by uniting with those
who are charitable like himself; and to all who have souls capable of
appreciating its importance, and of enjoying the charms of a friendship
founded on the same principles of religion, morality, and philanthropy.

A Freemason, therefore, should be a man of honor and of conscience,
preferring his duty to everything beside, even to his life; independent
in his opinions, and of good morals; submissive to the laws, devoted to
humanity, to his country, to his family; kind and indulgent to his
brethren, friend of all virtuous men, and ready to assist his fellows by
all means in his power.

Thus will you be faithful to yourself, to your fellows, and to God, and
thus will you do honor to the name and rank of SECRET MASTER; which,
like other Masonic honors, degrades if it is not deserved.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]



V.

PERFECT MASTER.


The Master Khūrūm was an industrious and an honest man. What he was
employed to do he did diligently, and he did it well and faithfully. _He
received no wages that were not his due_. Industry and honesty are the
virtues peculiarly inculcated in this Degree. They are common and homely
virtues; but not for that beneath our notice. As the bees do not love or
respect the drones, so Masonry neither loves nor respects the idle and
those who live by their wits; and least of all those parasitic acari
that live upon themselves. For those who are indolent are likely to
become dissipated and vicious; and perfect honesty, which ought to be
the common qualification of all, is more rare than diamonds. To do
earnestly and steadily, and to do faithfully and honestly that which we
have to do--perhaps this wants but little, when looked at from every
point of view, of including the whole body of the moral law; and even in
their commonest and homeliest application, these virtues belong to the
character of a Perfect Master.

Idleness is the burial of a living man. For an idle person is so useless
to any purposes of God and man, that he is like one who is dead,
unconcerned in the changes and necessities of the world; and he only
lives to spend his time, and eat the fruits of the earth. Like a vermin
or a wolf, when his time comes, he dies and perishes, and in the
meantime is nought. He neither ploughs nor carries burdens: all that he
does is either unprofitable or mischievous.

It is a vast work that any man may do, if he never be idle: and it is a
huge way that a man may go in virtue, if he never go out of his way by a
vicious habit or a great crime: and he who perpetually reads good
books, if his parts be answerable, will have a huge stock of knowledge.

St. Ambrose, and from his example, St. Augustine, divided every day into
these _tertias_ of employment: eight hours they spent in the necessities
of nature and recreation: eight hours in charity, in doing assistance to
others, dispatching their business, reconciling their enmities,
reproving their vices, correcting their errors, instructing their
ignorance, and in transacting the affairs of their dioceses; and the
other eight hours they spent in study and prayer.

We think, at the age of twenty, that life is much too long for that
which we have to learn and do; and that there is an almost fabulous
distance between our age and that of our grandfather. But when, at the
age of sixty, if we are fortunate enough to reach it, or unfortunate
enough, as the case may be, and according as we have profitably invested
or wasted our time, we halt, and look back along the way we have come,
and cast up and endeavor to balance our accounts with time and
opportunity, we find that we have made life much too short, and thrown
away a huge portion of our time. Then we, in our mind, deduct from the
sum total of our years the hours that we have needlessly passed in
sleep; the working-hours each day, during which the surface of the
mind's sluggish pool has not been stirred or ruffled by a single
thought; the days that we have gladly got rid of, to attain some real or
fancied object that lay beyond, in the way between us and which stood
irksomely the intervening days; the hours worse than wasted in follies
and dissipation, or misspent in useless and unprofitable studies; and we
acknowledge, with a sigh, that we could have learned and done, in half a
score of years well spent, more than we _have_ done in all our forty
years of manhood.

To learn and to do!--this is the soul's work here below. The soul grows
as truly as an oak grows. As the tree takes the carbon of the air, the
dew, the rain, and the light, and the food that the earth supplies to
its roots, and by its mysterious chemistry transmutes them into sap and
fibre, into wood and leaf, and flower and fruit, and color and perfume,
so the soul imbibes knowledge and by a divine alchemy changes what it
learns into its own substance, and grows from within outwardly with an
inherent force and power like those that lie hidden in the grain of
wheat.

The soul hath its senses, like the body, that may be cultivated,
enlarged, refined, as itself grows in stature and proportion; and he
who cannot appreciate a fine painting or statue, a noble poem, a sweet
harmony, a heroic thought, or a disinterested action, or to whom the
wisdom of philosophy is but foolishness and babble, and the loftiest
truths of less importance than the price of stocks or cotton, or the
elevation of baseness to office, merely lives on the level of
commonplace, and fitly prides himself upon that inferiority of the
soul's senses, which is the inferiority and imperfect development of the
soul itself.

To sleep little, and to study much; to say little, and to hear and think
much; to learn, that we may be able to do, and then to do, earnestly and
vigorously, whatever may be required of us by duty, and by the good of
our fellows, our country, and mankind,--these are the duties of every
Mason who desires to imitate the Master Khūrūm.

The duty of a Mason as an honest man is plain and easy. It requires of
us honesty in contracts, sincerity in affirming, simplicity in
bargaining, and faithfulness in performing. Lie not at all, neither in a
little thing nor in a great, neither in the substance nor in the
circumstance, neither in word nor deed: that is, pretend not what is
false; cover not what is true; and let the measure of your affirmation
or denial be the understanding of your contractor; for he who deceives
the buyer or the seller by speaking what is true, in a sense not
intended or understood by the other, is a liar and a thief. A Perfect
Master must avoid that which deceives, equally with that which is false.

Let your prices be according to that measure of good and evil which is
established in the fame and common accounts of the wisest and most
merciful men, skilled in that manufacture or commodity; and the gain
such, which, without scandal, is allowed to persons in all the same
circumstances.

In intercourse with others, do not do all which thou mayest lawfully do;
but keep something within thy power; and, because there is a latitude of
gain in buying and selling, take not thou the utmost penny that is
lawful, or which thou thinkest so; for although it be lawful, yet it is
not safe; and he who gains all that he can gain lawfully, this year,
will possibly be tempted, next year, to gain something unlawfully.

Let no man, for his own poverty, become more oppressing and cruel in his
bargain; but quietly, modestly, diligently, and patiently recommend his
estate to God, and follow his interest, and leave the success to Him.

Detain not the wages of the hireling; for every degree of detention of
it beyond the time, is injustice and uncharitableness, and grinds his
face till tears and blood come out; but pay him exactly according to
covenant, or according to his needs.

Religiously keep all promises and covenants, though made to your
disadvantage, though afterward you perceive you might have done better;
and let not any precedent act of yours be altered by any after-accident.
Let nothing make you break your promise, unless it be unlawful or
impossible; that is, either out of your nature or out of your civil
power, yourself being under the power of another; or that it be
intolerably inconvenient to yourself, and of no advantage to another; or
that you have leave expressed or reasonably presumed.

Let no man take wages or fees for a work that he cannot do, or cannot
with probability undertake; or in some sense profitably, and with ease,
or with advantage manage. Let no man appropriate to his own use, what
God, by a special mercy, or the Republic, hath made common; for that is
against both Justice and Charity.

That any man should be the worse for us, and for our direct act, and by
our intention, is against the rule of equity, of justice, and of
charity. We then do not that to others, which we would have done to
ourselves; for we grow richer upon the ruins of their fortune.

It is not honest to receive anything from another without returning him
an equivalent therefor. The gamester who wins the money of another is
dishonest. There should be no such thing as bets and gaming among
Masons: for no honest man should desire that for nothing which belongs
to another. The merchant who sells an inferior article for a sound
price, the speculator who makes the distresses and needs of others fill
his exchequer are neither fair nor honest, but base, ignoble, unfit for
immortality.

It should be the earnest desire of every Perfect Master so to live and
deal and act, that when it comes to him to die, he may be able to say,
and his conscience to adjudge, that no man on earth is poorer, because
he is richer; that what he hath he has honestly earned, and no man can
go before God, and claim that by the rules of equity administered in His
great chancery, this house in which we die, this land we devise to our
heirs, this money that enriches those who survive to bear our name, is
his and not ours, and we in that forum are only his trustees. For it is
most certain that God is just, and will sternly enforce every such
trust; and that to all whom we despoil, to all whom we defraud, to all
from whom we take or win anything whatever, without fair consideration
and equivalent, He will decree a full and adequate compensation.

Be careful, then, that thou receive no wages, here or elsewhere, that
are not thy due! For if thou dost, thou wrongst some one, by taking that
which in God's chancery belongs to him; and whether that which thou
takest thus be wealth, or rank, or influence, or reputation or
affection, thou wilt surely be held to make full satisfaction.

[Illustration] [Illustration]



VI.

INTIMATE SECRETARY.

[Confidential Secretary.]


You are especially taught in this Degree to be zealous and faithful; to
be disinterested and benevolent; and to act the peacemaker, in case of
dissensions, disputes, and quarrels among the brethren.

Duty is the moral magnetism which controls and guides the true Mason's
course over the tumultuous seas of life. Whether the stars of honor,
reputation, and reward do or do not shine, in the light of day or in the
darkness of the night of trouble and adversity, in calm or storm, that
unerring magnet still shows him the true course to steer, and indicates
with certainty where-away lies the port which not to reach involves
shipwreck and dishonor. He follows its silent bidding, as the mariner,
when land is for many days not in sight, and the ocean without path or
landmark spreads out all around him, follows the bidding of the needle,
never doubting that it points truly to the north. To perform that duty,
whether the performance be rewarded or unrewarded, is his sole care. And
it doth not matter, though of this performance there may be no
witnesses, and though what he does will be forever unknown to all
mankind.

A little consideration will teach us that Fame has other limits than
mountains and oceans; and that he who places happiness in the frequent
repetition of his name, may spend his life in propagating it, without
any danger of weeping for new worlds, or necessity of passing the
Atlantic sea.

If, therefore, he who imagines the world to be filled with his actions
and praises, shall subduct from the number of his encomiasts all those
who are placed below the flight of fame, and who hear in the valley of
life no voice but that of necessity; all those who imagine themselves
too important to regard him, and consider the mention of his name as a
usurpation of their time; all who are too much or too little pleased
with themselves to attend to anything external; all who are attracted by
pleasure, or chained down by pain to unvaried ideas; all who are
withheld from attending his triumph by different pursuits; and all who
slumber in universal negligence; he will find his renown straitened by
nearer bounds than the rocks of Caucasus; and perceive that no man can
be venerable or formidable, but to a small part of his fellow-creatures.
And therefore, that we may not languish in our endeavors after
excellence, it is necessary that, as Africanus counsels his descendants,
we raise our eyes to higher prospects, and contemplate our future and
eternal state, without giving up our hearts to the praise of crowds, or
fixing our hopes on such rewards as human power can bestow.

We are not born for ourselves alone; and our country claims her share,
and our friends their share of us. As all that the earth produces is
created for the use of man, so men are created for the sake of men, that
they may mutually do good to one another. In this we ought to take
nature for our guide, and throw into the public stock the offices of
general utility, by a reciprocation of duties; sometimes by receiving,
sometimes by giving, and sometimes to cement human society by arts, by
industry, and by our resources.

Suffer others to be praised in thy presence, and entertain their good
and glory with delight; but at no hand disparage them, or lessen the
report, or make an objection; and think not the advancement of thy
brother is a lessening of thy worth. Upbraid no man's weakness to him to
discomfit him, neither report it to disparage him, neither delight to
remember it to lessen him, or to set thyself above him; nor ever praise
thyself or dispraise any man else, unless some sufficient worthy end do
hallow it.

Remember that we usually disparage others upon slight grounds and little
instances; and if a man be highly commended, we think him sufficiently
lessened, if we can but charge one sin of folly or inferiority in his
account. We should either be more severe to ourselves, or less so to
others, and consider that whatsoever good any one can think or say of
us, we can tell him of many unworthy and foolish and perhaps worse
actions of ours, any one of which, done by another, would be enough,
with _us_, to destroy his reputation.

If we think the people wise and sagacious, and just and appreciative,
when they praise and make idols of _us_, let us not call them unlearned
and ignorant, and ill and stupid judges, when our neighbor is cried up
by public fame and popular noises.

Every man hath in his own life sins enough, in his own mind trouble
enough, in his own fortunes evil enough, and in performance of his
offices failings more than enough, to entertain his own inquiry; so that
curiosity after the affairs of others cannot be without envy and an ill
mind. The generous man will be solicitous and inquisitive into the
beauty and order of a well-governed family, and after the virtues of an
excellent person; but anything for which men keep locks and bars, or
that blushes to see the light, or that is either shameful in manner or
private in nature, this thing will not be his care and business.

It should be objection sufficient to exclude any man from the society of
Masons, that he is not disinterested and generous, both in his acts, and
in his opinions of men, and his constructions of their conduct. He who
is selfish and grasping, or censorious and ungenerous, will not long
remain within the strict limits of honesty and truth, but will shortly
commit injustice. He who loves himself too much must needs love others
too little; and he who habitually gives harsh judgment will not long
delay to give unjust judgment.

The generous man is not careful to return no more than he receives; but
prefers that the balances upon the ledgers of benefits shall be in his
favor. He who hath received pay in full for all the benefits and favors
that he has conferred, is like a spendthrift who has consumed his whole
estate, and laments over an empty exchequer. He who requites my favors
with ingratitude adds to, instead of diminishing, my wealth; and he who
cannot return a favor is equally poor, whether his inability arises from
poverty of spirit, sordidness of soul, or pecuniary indigence.

If he is wealthy who hath large sums invested, and the mass of whose
fortune consists in obligations that bind other men to pay him money, he
is still more so to whom many owe large returns of kindnesses and
favors. Beyond a moderate sum each year, the wealthy man merely
_invests_ his means: and that which he _never_ uses is still like
favors unreturned and kindnesses unreciprocated, an actual and real
portion of his fortune.

Generosity and a liberal spirit make men to be humane and genial,
open-hearted, frank, and sincere, earnest to do good, easy and
contented, and well-wishers of mankind. They protect the feeble against
the strong, and the defenceless against rapacity and craft. They succor
and comfort the poor, and are the guardians, under God, of his innocent
and helpless wards. They value friends more than riches or fame, and
gratitude more than money or power. They are noble by God's patent, and
their escutcheons and quarterings are to be found in heaven's great book
of heraldry. Nor can any man any more be a Mason than he can be a
gentleman, unless he is generous, liberal, and disinterested. To be
liberal, but only of that which is our own; to be generous, but only
when we have first been just; to give, when to give deprives us of a
luxury or a comfort, this is Masonry indeed.

He who is worldly, covetous, or sensual must change before he can be a
good Mason. If we are governed by inclination and not by duty; if we are
unkind, severe, censorious, or injurious, in the relations or
intercourse of life; if we are unfaithful parents or undutiful children;
if we are harsh masters or faithless servants; if we are treacherous
friends or bad neighbors or bitter competitors or corrupt unprincipled
politicians or overreaching dealers in business, we are wandering at a
great distance from the true Masonic light.

Masons must be kind and affectionate one to another. Frequenting the
same temples, kneeling at the same altars, they should feel that respect
and that kindness for each other, which their common relation and common
approach to one God should inspire. There needs to be much more of the
spirit of the ancient fellowship among us; more tenderness for each
other's faults, more forgiveness, more solicitude for each other's
improvement and good fortune; somewhat of brotherly feeling, that it be
not shame to use the word "_brother_."

Nothing should be allowed to interfere with that kindness and affection:
neither the spirit of business, absorbing, eager, and overreaching,
ungenerous and hard in its dealings, keen and bitter in its
competitions, low and sordid in its purposes; nor that of ambition,
selfish, mercenary, restless, circumventing, living only in the opinion
of others, envious of the good fortune of others, miserably vain of its
own success, unjust, unscrupulous, and slanderous.

He that does me a favor, hath bound me to make him a return of
thankfulness. The obligation comes not by covenant, nor by his own
express intention; but by the nature of the thing; and is a duty
springing up within the spirit of the obliged person, to whom it is more
natural to love his friend, and to do good for good, than to return evil
for evil; because a man may forgive an injury, but he must never forget
a good turn. He that refuses to do good to them whom he is bound to
love, or to love that which did him good, is unnatural and monstrous in
his affections, and thinks all the world born to minister to him; with a
greediness worse than that of the sea, which, although it receives all
rivers into itself, yet it furnishes the clouds and springs with a
return of all they need. Our duty to those who are our benefactors is,
to esteem and love their persons, to make them proportionable returns of
service, or duty, or profit, according as we can, or as they need, or as
opportunity presents itself; and according to the greatness of their
kindnesses.

The generous man cannot but regret to see dissensions and disputes among
his brethren. Only the base and ungenerous delight in discord. It is the
poorest occupation of humanity to labor to make men think worse of each
other, as the press, and too commonly the pulpit, changing places with
the hustings and the tribune, do. The duty of the Mason is to endeavor
to make man think better of his neighbor; to quiet, instead of
aggravating difficulties; to bring together those who are severed or
estranged; to keep friends from becoming foes, and to persuade foes to
become friends. To do this, he must needs control his own passions, and
be not rash and hasty, nor swift to take offence, nor easy to be
angered.

For anger is a professed enemy to counsel. It is a direct storm, in
which no man can be heard to speak or call from without; for if you
counsel gently, you are disregarded; if you urge it and be vehement, you
provoke it more. It is neither manly nor ingenuous. It makes marriage to
be a necessary and unavoidable trouble; friendships and societies and
familiarities, to be intolerable. It multiplies the evils of
drunkenness, and makes the levities of wine to run into madness. It
makes innocent jesting to be the beginning of tragedies. It turns
friendship into hatred; it makes a man lose himself, and his reason and
his argument, in disputation. It turns the desires of knowledge into an
itch of wrangling. It adds insolency to power. It turns justice into
cruelty, and judgment into oppression. It changes discipline into
tediousness and hatred of liberal institution. It makes a prosperous man
to be envied, and the unfortunate to be unpitied.

See, therefore, that first controlling your own temper, and governing
your own passions, you fit yourself to keep peace and harmony among
other men, and especially the brethren. Above all remember that Masonry
is the realm of peace, and that "_among Masons there must be no
dissension, but only that noble emulation, which can best work and best
agree_." Wherever there is strife and hatred among the brethren, there
is no Masonry; for Masonry is Peace, and Brotherly Love, and Concord.

Masonry is the great Peace Society of the world. Wherever it exists, it
struggles to prevent international difficulties and disputes; and to
bind Republics, Kingdoms, and Empires together in one great band of
peace and amity. It would not so often struggle in vain, if Masons knew
their power and valued their oaths.

Who can sum up the horrors and woes accumulated in a single war? Masonry
is not dazzled with all its pomp and circumstance, all its glitter and
glory. War comes with its bloody hand into our very dwellings. It takes
from ten thousand homes those who lived there in peace and comfort, held
by the tender ties of family and kindred. It drags them away, to die
untended, of fever or exposure, in infectious climes; or to be hacked,
torn, and mangled in the fierce fight; to fall on the gory field, to
rise no more, or to be borne away, in awful agony, to noisome and horrid
hospitals. The groans of the battle-field are echoed in sighs of
bereavement from thousands of desolated hearths. There is a skeleton in
every house, a vacant chair at every table. Returning, the soldier
brings worse sorrow to his home, by the infection which he has caught,
of camp-vices. The country is demoralized. The national mind is brought
down, from the noble interchange of kind offices with another people, to
wrath and revenge, and base pride, and the habit of measuring brute
strength against brute strength, in battle. Treasures are expended, that
would suffice to build ten thousand churches, hospitals, and
universities, or rib and tie together a continent with rails of iron. If
that treasure were sunk in the sea, it would be calamity enough; but it
is put to worse use; for it is expended in cutting into the veins and
arteries of human life, until the earth is deluged with a sea of blood.

Such are the lessons of this Degree. You have vowed to make them the
rule, the law, and the guide of your life and conduct. If you do so, you
will be entitled, because fitted, to advance in Masonry. If you do not,
you have already gone too far.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]



VII.

PROVOST AND JUDGE.


The lesson which this Degree inculcates is JUSTICE, in decision and
judgment, and in our intercourse and dealing with other men.

In a country where trial by jury is known, every intelligent man is
liable to be called on to act as a judge, either of fact alone, or of
fact and law mingled; and to assume the heavy responsibilities which
belong to that character.

Those who are invested with the power of judgment should judge the
causes of all persons uprightly and impartially, without any personal
consideration of the power of the mighty, or the bribe of the rich, or
the needs of the poor. That is the cardinal rule, which no one will
dispute; though many fail to observe it. But they must do more. They
must divest themselves of prejudice and preconception. They must hear
patiently, remember accurately, and weigh carefully the facts and the
arguments offered before them. They must not leap hastily to
conclusions, nor form opinions before they have heard all. They must not
presume crime or fraud. They must neither be ruled by stubborn pride of
opinion, nor be too facile and yielding to the views and arguments of
others. In deducing the motive from the proven act, they must not assign
to the act either the best or the worst motives, but those which they
would think it just and fair for the world to assign to it, if they
themselves had done it; nor must they endeavor to make many little
circumstances, that weigh nothing separately, weigh much together, to
prove their own acuteness and sagacity. These are sound rules for every
juror, also, to observe.

In our intercourse with others, there are two kinds of injustice: the
first of those who offer an injury; the second, of those who have it in
their power to _avert_ an injury from those to whom it is offered, and
yet do it not. So _active_ injustice may be done in two ways--by force
and by fraud,--of which force is lion-like, and fraud fox-like,--both
utterly repugnant to social duty, but fraud the more detestable.

Every wrong done by one man to another, whether it affect his person,
his property, his happiness, or his reputation, is an offense against
the law of justice. The field of this Degree is therefore a wide and
vast one; and Masonry seeks for the most impressive mode of enforcing
the law of justice, and the most effectual means of preventing wrong and
injustice.

To this end it teaches this great and momentous truth: that wrong and
injustice once done cannot be undone; but are eternal in their
consequences; once committed, are numbered with the irrevocable Past;
that the wrong that is done _contains_ its own retributive penalty as
surely and as naturally as the acorn contains the oak. Its consequences
are its punishment; it needs no other, and can have no heavier; they are
involved in its commission, and cannot be separated from it. A wrong
done to another is an injury done to our own Nature, an offence against
our own souls, a disfiguring of the image of the Beautiful and Good.
Punishment is not the execution of a sentence, but the occurrence of an
effect. It is ordained to follow guilt, not by the decree of God as a
judge, but by a law enacted by Him as the Creator and Legislator of the
Universe. It is not an arbitrary and artificial annexation, but an
ordinary and logical consequence; and therefore must be borne by the
wrong-doer, and through him may flow on to others. It is the decision of
the infinite justice of God, in the form of law.

There can be no interference with, or remittance of, or protection from,
the natural effects of our wrongful acts. God will not interpose between
the cause and its consequence; and in that sense there can be no
forgiveness of sins. The act which has debased our soul may be repented
of, may be turned from; but the injury is done. The debasement may be
redeemed by after-efforts, the stain obliterated by bitterer struggles
and severer sufferings; but the efforts and the endurance which might
have raised the soul to the loftiest heights are now exhausted in merely
regaining what it has lost. There must always be a wide difference
between him who only ceases to do evil, and him who has always done
well.

He will certainly be a far more scrupulous watcher over his conduct, and
far more careful of his deeds, who believes that those deeds will
inevitably bear their natural consequences, exempt from after
intervention, than he who believes that penitence and pardon will at any
time unlink the chain of sequences. Surely we shall do less wrong and
injustice, if the conviction is fixed and embedded in our souls that
everything done is done irrevocably, that even the Omnipotence of God
cannot _uncommit_ a deed, cannot make that _undone_ which has _been
done_; that every act of ours _must_ bear its allotted fruit, according
to the everlasting laws,--must remain forever ineffaceably inscribed on
the tablets of Universal Nature.

If you have wronged another, you may grieve, repent, and resolutely
determine against any such weakness in future. You may, so far as it is
possible, make reparation. It is well. The injured party may forgive
you, according to the meaning of human language; but the deed is _done_;
and all the powers of Nature, were they to conspire in your behalf,
could not make it _undone_; the consequences to the body, the
consequences to the soul, though no man may perceive them, _are there_,
are written in the annals of the Past, and must reverbrate throughout
all time.

Repentance for a wrong done, bears, like every other act, its own fruit,
the fruit of purifying the heart and amending the Future, but not of
effacing the Past. The commission of the wrong is an irrevocable act;
but it does not incapacitate the soul to do right for the future. Its
consequences cannot be expunged; but its course need not be pursued.
Wrong and evil perpetrated, though ineffaceable, call for no despair,
but for efforts more energetic than before. Repentance is still as valid
as ever; but it is valid to secure the Future, not to obliterate the
Past.

Even the pulsations of the air, once set in motion by the human voice,
cease not to exist with the sounds to which they gave rise. Their
quickly-attenuated force soon becomes inaudible to human ears. But the
waves of air thus raised perambulate the surface of earth and ocean, and
in less than twenty hours, every atom of the atmosphere takes up the
altered movement due to that infinitesimal portion of primitive motion
which has been conveyed to it through countless channels, and which
must continue to influence its path throughout its future existence. The
air is one vast library on whose pages is forever written all that man
has ever said or even whispered. There, in their mutable, but unerring
characters, mixed with the earliest, as well as the latest signs of
mortality, stand forever recorded, vows unredeemed, promises
unfulfilled; perpetuating, in the movements of each particle, all in
unison, the testimony of man's changeful will. God reads that book,
though we cannot.

So earth, air, and ocean are the eternal witnesses of the acts that we
have done. No motion impressed by natural causes or by human agency is
ever obliterated. The track of every keel which has ever disturbed the
surface of the ocean remains forever registered in the future movements
of all succeeding particles which may occupy its place. Every criminal
is by the laws of the Almighty irrevocably chained to the testimony of
his crime; for every atom of his mortal frame, through whatever changes
its particles may migrate, will still retain, adhering to it through
every combination, some movement derived from that very muscular effort
by which the crime itself was perpetrated.

What if our faculties should be so enhanced in a future life as to
enable us to perceive and trace the ineffaceable consequences of our
idle words and evil deeds, and render our remorse and grief as eternal
as those consequences themselves? No more fearful punishment to a
superior intelligence can be conceived, than to see still in action,
with the consciousness that it must continue in action forever, a cause
of wrong put in motion by itself ages before.

Masonry, by its teachings, endeavors to restrain men from the commission
of injustice and acts of wrong and outrage. Though it does not endeavor
to usurp the place of religion, still its code of morals proceeds upon
other principles than the municipal law; and it condemns and punishes
offences which neither that law punishes nor public opinion condemns. In
the Masonic law, to cheat and overreach in trade, at the bar, in
politics, are deemed no more venial than theft; nor a deliberate lie
than perjury; nor slander than robbery; nor seduction than murder.

Especially it condemns those wrongs of which the doer induces another to
partake. _He_ may repent; _he_ may, after agonizing struggles, regain
the path of virtue; _his_ spirit may reachieve its purity through much
anguish, after many strifes; but the weaker fellow-creature whom he led
astray, whom he made a sharer in his guilt, but whom he cannot make a
sharer in his repentance and amendment, whose downward course (the first
step of which _he_ taught) he cannot check, but is compelled to
witness,--what forgiveness of sins can avail him there? _There_ is his
perpetual, his inevitable punishment, which no repentance can alleviate,
and no mercy can remit.

Let us be just, also, in judging of other men's motives. We know but
little of the real merits or demerits of any fellow-creature. We can
rarely say with certainty that this man is more guilty than that, or
even that this man is very good or very wicked. Often the basest men
leave behind them excellent reputations. There is scarcely one of us who
has not, at some time in his life, been on the edge of the commission of
a crime. Every one of us can look back, and shuddering see the time when
our feet stood upon the slippery crags that overhung the abyss of guilt;
and when, if temptation had been a little more urgent, or a little
longer continued, if penury had pressed us a little harder, or a little
more wine had further disturbed our intellect, dethroned our judgment,
and aroused our passions, our feet would have slipped, and we should
have fallen, never to rise again.

We may be able to say--"_This_ man has lied, has pilfered, has forged,
has embezzled moneys intrusted to him; and _that_ man has gone through
life with clean hands." But we cannot say that the former has not
struggled long, though unsuccessfully, against temptations under which
the second would have succumbed without an effort. We can say which has
the cleanest _hands_ before _man_; but not which has the cleanest _soul_
before God. We may be able to say, _this_ man has committed adultery,
and _that_ man has been ever chaste; but we cannot tell but that the
innocence of one may have been due to the coldness of his heart, to the
absence of a motive, to the presence of a fear, to the slight degree of
the temptation; nor but that the fall of the other may have been
preceded by the most vehement self-contest, caused by the most
over-mastering frenzy, and atoned for by the most hallowing repentance.
Generosity as well as niggardliness may be a mere yielding to native
temperament; and in the eye of Heaven, a long life of beneficence in one
man may have cost less effort, and may indicate less virtue and less
sacrifice of interest, than a few rare hidden acts of kindness wrung by
duty out of the reluctant and unsympathizing nature of the other. There
may be more real merit, more self-sacrificing effort, more of the
noblest elements of moral grandeur, in a life of failure, sin, and
shame, than in a career, to our eyes, of stainless integrity.

When we condemn or pity the fallen, how do we know that, tempted like
him, we should not have fallen like him, as soon, and perhaps with less
resistance? How can we know what _we_ should do if we were out of
employment, famine crouching, gaunt, and hungry, on our fireless hearth,
and our children wailing for bread? _We fall not because we are not
enough tempted!_ He that _hath_ fallen may be at heart as honest as we.
How do we know that _our_ daughter, sister, wife, could resist the
abandonment, the desolation, the distress, the temptation, that
sacrificed the virtue of their poor abandoned sister of shame? Perhaps
they also have not fallen, because they have not been sorely tempted!
Wisely are we directed to pray that we may not be exposed to temptation.

Human justice must be ever uncertain. How many judicial murders have
been committed through ignorance of the phenomena of insanity! How many
men hung for murder who were no more murderers at heart than the jury
that tried and the judge that sentenced them! It may well be doubted
whether the administration of human laws, in every country, is not one
gigantic mass of injustice and wrong. God seeth not as man seeth; and
the most abandoned criminal, black as he is before the world, may yet
have continued to keep some little light burning in a corner of his
soul, which would long since have gone out in that of those who walk
proudly in the sunshine of immaculate fame, if they had been tried and
tempted like the poor outcast.

We do not know even the _outside_ life of men. We are not competent to
pronounce even on their _deeds_. We do not know half the acts of
wickedness or virtue, even of our most immediate fellows. We cannot say,
with certainty, even of our nearest friend, that he has not committed a
particular sin, and broken a particular commandment. Let each man ask
his own heart! Of how many of our best and of our worst acts and
qualities are our most intimate associates utterly unconscious! How many
virtues does not the world give us credit for, that we do not possess;
or vices condemn us for, of which we are not the slaves! It is but a
small portion of our evil deeds and thoughts that ever comes to light;
and of our few redeeming goodnesses, the largest portion is known to
God alone.

We shall, therefore, be just in judging of other men, only when we are
charitable; and we should assume the prerogative of judging others only
when the duty is forced upon us; since we are so almost certain to err,
and the consequences of error are so serious. No man need covet the
office of judge; for in assuming it he assumes the gravest and most
oppressive responsibility. Yet you have assumed it; we all assume it;
for man is ever ready to judge, and ever ready to condemn his neighbor,
while upon the same state of case he acquits himself. See, therefore,
that you exercise your office cautiously and charitably, lest, in
passing judgment upon the criminal, you commit a greater wrong than that
for which you condemn him, and the consequences of which must be
eternal.

The faults and crimes and follies of other men are not unimportant to
us; but form a part of our moral discipline. War and bloodshed at a
distance, and frauds which do not affect our pecuniary interest, yet
touch us in our feelings, and concern our moral welfare. They have much
to do with all thoughtful hearts. The public eye may look unconcernedly
on the miserable victim of vice, and that shattered wreck of a man may
move the multitude to laughter or to scorn. But to the Mason, it is the
form of sacred humanity that is before him; it is an erring
fellow-being; a desolate, forlorn, forsaken soul; and his thoughts,
enfolding the poor wretch, will be far deeper than those of
indifference, ridicule, or contempt. All human offences, the whole
system of dishonesty, evasion, circumventing, forbidden indulgence, and
intriguing ambition, in which men are struggling with each other, will
be looked upon by a thoughtful Mason, not merely as a scene of mean
toils and strifes, but as the solemn conflicts of immortal minds, for
ends vast and momentous as their own being. It is a sad and unworthy
strife, and may well be viewed with indignation; but that indignation
must melt into pity. For the stakes for which these gamesters play are
not those which they imagine, not those which are in sight. For example,
this man plays for a petty office, and gains it; but the real stake he
gains is sycophancy, uncharitableness, slander, and deceit.

Good men are too proud of their goodness. They are respectable; dishonor
comes not near them; their countenance has weight and influence; their
robes are unstained; the poisonous breath of calumny has never been
breathed upon their fair name. How easy it is for them to look down with
scorn upon the poor degraded offender; to pass him by with a lofty step;
to draw up the folds of their garment around them, that they may not be
soiled by his touch! Yet the Great Master of Virtue did not so; but
descended to familiar intercourse with publicans and sinners, with the
Samaritan woman, with the outcasts and the Pariahs of the Hebrew world.

Many men think themselves better, in proportion as they can detect sin
in others! When they go over the catalogue of their neighbor's unhappy
derelictions of temper or conduct, they often, amidst much apparent
concern, feel a secret exultation, that destroys all their own
pretensions to wisdom and moderation, and even to virtue. Many even take
actual pleasure in the sins of others; and this is the case with every
one whose thoughts are often employed in agreeable comparisons of his
own virtues with his neighbors' faults.

The power of gentleness is too little seen in the world; the subduing
influences of pity, the might of love, the control of mildness over
passion, the commanding majesty of that perfect character which mingles
grave displeasure with grief and pity for the offender. So it is that a
Mason should treat his brethren who go astray. Not with bitterness; nor
yet with good-natured easiness, nor with worldly indifference, nor with
the philosophic coldness, nor with a laxity of conscience, that accounts
everything well, that passes under the seal of public opinion; but with
charity, with pitying loving-kindness.

The human heart will not bow willingly to what is infirm and wrong in
human nature. If it yields to us, it must yield to what is divine in us.
The wickedness of my neighbor cannot submit to my wickedness; his
sensuality, for instance, to my anger against his vices. My faults are
not the instruments that are to arrest his faults. And therefore
impatient reformers, and denouncing preachers, and hasty reprovers, and
angry parents, and irritable relatives generally fail, in their several
departments, to reclaim the erring.

A moral offence is sickness, pain, loss, dishonor, in the immortal part
of man. It is guilt, and misery added to guilt. It is itself calamity;
and brings upon itself, in addition, the calamity of God's disapproval,
the abhorrence of all virtuous men, and the soul's own abhorrence. Deal
faithfully, but patiently and tenderly, with this evil! It is no matter
for petty provocation, nor for personal strife, nor for selfish
irritation.

Speak kindly to your erring brother! God pities him: Christ has died for
him: Providence waits for him: Heaven's mercy yearns toward him; and
Heaven's spirits are ready to welcome him back with joy. Let your voice
be in unison with all those powers that God is using for his recovery!

If one defrauds you, and exults at it, he is the most to be pitied of
human beings. He has done himself a far deeper injury than he has done
you. It is he, and not you, whom God regards with mingled displeasure
and compassion; and His judgment should be your law. Among all the
benedictions of the Holy Mount there is not one for this man; but for
the merciful, the peacemakers, and the persecuted they are poured out
freely.

We are all men of like passions, propensities, and exposures. There are
elements in us all, which might have been perverted, through the
successive processes of moral deterioration, to the worst of crimes. The
wretch whom the execration of the thronging crowd pursues to the
scaffold, is not worse than any one of that multitude might have become
under similar circumstances. He is to be condemned indeed, but also
deeply to be pitied.

It does not become the frail and sinful to be vindictive toward even the
worst criminals. We owe much to the good Providence of God, ordaining
for us a lot more favorable to virtue. We all had that within us, that
might have been pushed to the same excess. Perhaps we should have fallen
as he did, with less temptation. Perhaps we _have_ done acts, that, in
proportion to the temptation or provocation, were less excusable than
his great crime. Silent pity and sorrow for the victim should mingle
with our detestation of the guilt. Even the pirate who murders in cold
blood on the high seas, is such a man as you or I might have been.
Orphanage in childhood, or base and dissolute and abandoned parents; an
unfriended youth; evil companions; ignorance and want of moral
cultivation; the temptations of sinful pleasure or grinding poverty;
familiarity with vice; a scorned and blighted name; seared and crushed
affections; desperate fortunes; these are steps that might have led any
one among us to unfurl upon the high seas the bloody flag of universal
defiance; to wage war with our kind; to live the life and die the death
of the reckless and remorseless free-booter. Many affecting
relationships of humanity plead with us to pity him. His head once
rested on a mother's bosom. He was once the object of sisterly love and
domestic endearment. Perhaps his hand, since often red with blood, once
clasped another little loving hand at the altar. Pity him then; his
blighted hopes and his crushed heart! It is proper that frail and erring
creatures like us should do so; should feel the crime, but feel it as
weak, tempted, and rescued creatures should. It may be that when God
weighs men's crimes, He will take into consideration the temptations and
the adverse circumstances that led to them, and the opportunities for
moral culture of the offender; and it may be that our own offences will
weigh heavier than we think, and the murderer's lighter than according
to man's judgment.

On all accounts, therefore, let the true Mason never forget the solemn
injunction, necessary to be observed at almost every moment of a busy
life: "JUDGE NOT, LEST YE YOURSELVES BE JUDGED: FOR WHATSOEVER JUDGMENT
YE MEASURE UNTO OTHERS, THE SAME SHALL IN TURN BE MEASURED UNTO YOU."
Such is the lesson taught the Provost and Judge.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]



VIII.

INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING.


In this Degree you have been taught the important lesson, that none are
entitled to advance in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, who have
not by study and application made themselves familiar with Masonic
learning and jurisprudence. The Degrees of this Rite are not for those
who are content with the mere work and ceremonies, and do not seek to
explore the mines of wisdom that lie buried beneath the surface. You
still advance toward the Light, toward that star, blazing in the
distance, which is an emblem of the Divine Truth, given by God to the
first men, and preserved amid all the vicissitudes of ages in the
traditions and teachings of Masonry. How far you will advance, depends
upon yourself alone. Here, as everywhere in the world, Darkness
struggles with Light, and clouds and shadows intervene between you and
the Truth.

When you shall have become imbued with the morality of Masonry, with
which you yet are, and for some time will be exclusively occupied,--when
you shall have learned to practice all the virtues which it inculcates;
when they become familiar to you as your Household Gods; then will you
be prepared to receive its lofty philosophical instruction, and to scale
the heights upon whose summit Light and Truth sit enthroned. Step by
step men must advance toward Perfection; and each Masonic Degree is
meant to be one of those steps. Each is a development of a particular
duty; and in the present you are taught charity and benevolence; to be
to your brethren an example of virtue; to correct your own faults; and
to endeavor to correct those of your brethren.

Here, as in all the Degrees, you meet with the emblems and the names of
Deity, the true knowledge of whose character and attributes it has ever
been a chief object of Masonry to perpetuate. To appreciate His infinite
greatness and goodness, to rely implicitly on His Providence, to revere
and venerate Him as the Supreme Architect, Creator, and Legislator of
the universe, is the first of Masonic duties.

The Battery of this Degree, and the five circuits which you made around
the Lodge, allude to the five points of fellowship, and are intended to
recall them vividly to your mind. To go upon a brother's errand or to
his relief, even barefoot and upon flinty ground; to remember him in
your supplications to the Deity; to clasp him to your heart, and protect
him against malice and evil-speaking; to uphold him when about to
stumble and fall; and to give him prudent, honest, and friendly counsel,
are duties plainly written upon the pages of God's great code of law,
and first among the ordinances of Masonry.

The first sign of the Degree is expressive of the diffidence and
humility with which we inquire into the nature and attributes of the
Deity; the second, of the profound awe and reverence with which we
contemplate His glories; and the third, of the sorrow with which we
reflect upon our insufficient observance of our duties, and our
imperfect compliance with His statutes.

The distinguishing property of man is to search for and follow after
truth. Therefore, when relaxed from our necessary cares and concerns, we
then covet to see, to hear, and to learn somewhat; and we esteem
knowledge of things, either obscure or wonderful, to be the
indispensable means of living happily. Truth, Simplicity, and Candor are
most agreeable to the nature of mankind. Whatever is virtuous consists
either in Sagacity, and the Perception of Truth; or in the preservation
of Human Society, by giving to every man his due, and observing the
faith of contracts; or in the greatness and firmness of an elevated and
unsubdued mind; or in observing order and regularity in all our words
and in all our actions; in which consist Moderation and Temperance.

Masonry has in all times religiously preserved that enlightened faith
from which flow sublime Devotedness, the sentiment of Fraternity
fruitful of good works, the spirit of indulgence and peace, of sweet
hopes and effectual consolations; and inflexibility in the
accomplishment of the most painful and arduous duties. It has always
propagated it with ardor and perseverance; and therefore it labors at
the present day more zealously than ever. Scarcely a Masonic discourse
is pronounced, that does not demonstrate the necessity and advantages of
this faith, and especially recall the two constitutive principles of
religion, that _make_ all religion,--love of God, and love of neighbor.
Masons carry these principles into the bosoms of their families and of
society. While the Sectarians of former times enfeebled the religious
spirit, Masonry, forming one great People over the whole globe, and
marching under the great banner of Charity and Benevolence, preserves
that religious feeling, strengthens it, extends it in its purity and
simplicity, as it has always existed in the depths of the human heart,
as it existed even under the dominion of the most ancient forms of
worship, but where gross and debasing superstitions forbade its
recognition.

A Masonic Lodge should resemble a bee-hive, in which all the members
work together with ardor for the common good. Masonry is not made for
cold souls and narrow minds, that do not comprehend its lofty mission
and sublime apostolate. Here the anathema against lukewarm souls
applies. To comfort misfortune, to popularize knowledge, to teach
whatever is true and pure in religion and philosophy, to accustom men to
respect order and the proprieties of life, to point out the way to
genuine happiness, to prepare for that fortunate period, when all the
factions of the Human Family, united by the bonds of Toleration and
Fraternity, shall be but one household,--these are labors that may well
excite zeal and even enthusiasm.

We do not now enlarge upon or elaborate these ideas. We but utter them
to you briefly, as hints, upon which you may at your leisure reflect.
Hereafter, if you continue to advance, they will be unfolded, explained,
and developed.

Masonry utters no impracticable and extravagant precepts, certain,
because they are so, to be disregarded. It asks of its initiates nothing
that it is not possible and even easy for them to perform. Its teachings
are eminently practical; and its statutes can be obeyed by every just,
upright, and honest man, no matter what his faith or creed. Its object
is to attain the greatest practical good, without seeking to make men
perfect. It does not meddle with the domain of religion, nor inquire
into the mysteries of regeneration. It teaches those truths that are
written by the finger of God upon the heart of man, those views of duty
which have been wrought out by the meditations of the studious,
confirmed by the allegiance of the good and wise, and stamped as
sterling by the response they find in every uncorrupted mind. It does
not dogmatize, nor vainly imagine dogmatic certainty to be attainable.

Masonry does not occupy itself with crying down this world, with its
splendid beauty, its thrilling interests, its glorious works, its noble
and holy affections; nor exhort us to detach our hearts from this
earthly life, as empty, fleeting, and unworthy, and fix them upon
Heaven, as the only sphere deserving the love of the loving or the
meditation of the wise. It teaches that man has high duties to perform,
and a high destiny to fulfill, on this earth; that this world is not
merely the portal to another; and that this life, though not our only
one, is an integral one, and the particular one with which we are here
meant to be concerned; that the Present is our scene of action, and the
Future for speculation and for trust; that man was sent upon the earth
to live in it, to enjoy it, to study it, to love it, to embellish it, to
make the most of it. It is his country, on which he should lavish his
affections and his efforts. It is here his influences are to operate. It
is his house, and not a tent; his home, and not _merely_ a school. He is
sent into this world, not to be constantly hankering after, dreaming of,
preparing for another; but to do his duty and fulfill his destiny on
this earth; to do all that lies in his power to improve it, to render it
a scene of elevated happiness to himself, to those around him, to those
who are to come after him. His life here is _part_ of his immortality;
and this world, also, is among the stars.

And thus, Masonry teaches us, will man best prepare for that Future
which he hopes for. The Unseen cannot hold a higher Place in our
affections than the Seen and the Familiar. The law of our being is Love
of Life, and its interests and adornments; love of the world in which
our lot is cast, engrossment with the interests and affections of earth.
Not a low or sensual love; not love of wealth, of fame, of ease, of
power, of splendor. Not low worldliness; but the love of Earth as the
garden on which the Creator has lavished such miracles of beauty; as the
habitation of humanity, the arena of its conflicts, the scene of its
illimitable progress, the dwelling-place of the wise, the good, the
active, the loving, and the dear; the place of opportunity for the
development by means of sin and suffering and sorrow, of the noblest
passions, the loftiest virtues, and the tenderest sympathies.

They take very unprofitable pains, who endeavor to persuade men that
they are obliged wholly to despise this world, and all that is in it,
even whilst they themselves live here. God hath not taken all that pains
in forming and framing and furnishing and adorning the world, that they
who were made by Him to live in it should despise it. It will be enough,
if they do not love it too immoderately. It is useless to attempt to
extinguish all those affections and passions which are and always will
be inseparable from human nature. As long as the world lasts, and honor
and virtue and industry have reputation in the world, there will be
ambition and emulation and appetite in the best and most accomplished
men in it; and if there were not, more barbarity and vice and wickedness
would cover every nation of the world, than it now suffers under.

Those only who feel a deep interest in, and affection for, this world,
will work resolutely for its amelioration. Those who undervalue this
life, naturally become querulous and discontented, and lose their
interest in the welfare of their fellows. To serve them, and so to do
our duty as Masons, we must feel that the object is worth the exertion;
and be content with this world in which God has placed us, until He
permits us to remove to a better one. He is here with us, and does not
deem this an unworthy world.

It is a serious thing to defame and belie a whole world; to speak of it
as the abode of a poor, toiling, drudging, ignorant, contemptible race.
You would not so discredit your family, your friendly circle, your
village, your city, your country. The world is not a wretched and a
worthless one; nor is it a misfortune, but a thing to be thankful for,
to be a man. If life is worthless, so also is immortality.

In society itself, in that living mechanism of human relationships that
spreads itself over the world, there is a finer essence within, that as
truly moves it, as any power, heavy or expansive, moves the sounding
manufactory or the swift-flying car. The man-machine hurries to and fro
upon the earth, stretches out its hands on every side, to toil, to
barter, to unnumbered labors and enterprises; and almost always the
motive, that which moves it, is something that takes hold of the
comforts, affections, and hopes of social existence. True, the mechanism
often works with difficulty, drags heavily, grates and screams with
harsh collision. True, the essence of finer motive, becoming intermixed
with baser and coarser ingredients, often clogs, obstructs, jars, and
deranges the free and noble action of social life. But he is neither
grateful nor wise, who looks cynically on all this, and loses the fine
sense of social good in its perversions. That I can be a _friend_, that
I can _have_ a friend, though it were but one in the world; that fact,
that wondrous good fortune, we may set against all the sufferings of our
social nature. That there is such a place on earth as a _home_, that
resort and sanctuary of in-walled and shielded joy, we may set against
all the surrounding desolations of life. That one can be a true, social
man, can speak his true thoughts, amidst all the janglings of
controversy and the warring of opinions; that fact from within,
outweighs all facts from without.

In the visible aspect and action of society, often repulsive and
annoying, we are apt to lose the due sense of its invisible blessings.
As in Nature it is not the coarse and palpable, not soils and rains, nor
even fields and flowers, that are so beautiful, as the invisible spirit
of wisdom and beauty that pervades it; so in society, it is the
invisible, and therefore unobserved, that is most beautiful.

What nerves the arm of toil? If man minded himself alone, he would fling
down the spade and axe, and rush to the desert; or roam through the
world as a wilderness, and make that world a desert. His home, which he
sees not, perhaps, but once or twice in a day, is the invisible bond of
the world. It is the good, strong, and noble faith that men have in each
other, which gives the loftiest character to business, trade, and
commerce. Fraud occurs in the rush of business; but it is the exception.
Honesty is the rule; and all the frauds in the world cannot tear the
great bond of human confidence. If they could, commerce would furl its
sails on every sea, and all the cities of the world would crumble into
ruins. The bare character of a man on the other side of the world, whom
you never saw, whom you never will see, you hold good for a bond of
thousands. The most striking feature of the political state is not
governments, nor constitutions, nor laws, nor enactments, nor the
judicial power, nor the police; but the universal will of the people to
be governed by the common weal. Take off that restraint, and no
government on earth could stand for an hour.

Of the many teachings of Masonry, one of the most valuable is, that we
should not depreciate this life. It does not hold, that when we reflect
on the destiny that awaits man on earth, we ought to bedew his cradle
with our tears; but, like the Hebrews, it hails the birth of a child
with joy, and holds that his birthday should be a festival.

It has no sympathy with those who profess to have proved this life, and
found it little worth; who have deliberately made up their minds that it
is far more miserable than happy; because its employments are tedious,
and their schemes often baffled, their friendships broken, or their
friends dead, its pleasures palled, and its honors faded, and its paths
beaten, familiar, and dull.

Masonry deems it no mark of great piety toward God to disparage, if not
despise, the state that He has ordained for us. It does not absurdly set
up the claims of another world, not in comparison merely, but in
competition, with the claims of this. It looks upon both as parts of one
system. It holds that a man may make the best of this world and of
another at the same time. It does not teach its initiates to think
better of other works and dispensations of God, by thinking meanly of
these. It does not look upon life as so much time lost; nor regard its
employments as trifles unworthy of immortal beings; nor tell its
followers to fold their arms, as if in disdain of their state and
species; but it looks soberly and cheerfully upon the world, as a
theatre of worthy action, of exalted usefulness, and of rational and
innocent enjoyment.

It holds that, with all its evils, life is a blessing. To deny that is
to destroy the basis of all religion, natural and revealed. The very
foundation of all religion is laid on the firm belief that God is good;
and if this life is an evil and a curse, no such belief can be
rationally entertained. To level our satire at humanity and human
existence, as mean and contemptible; to look on this world as the
habitation of a miserable race, fit only for mockery and scorn; to
consider this earth as a dungeon or a prison, which has no blessing to
offer but escape from it, is to extinguish the primal light of faith and
hope and happiness, to destroy the basis of religion, and Truth's
foundation in the goodness of God. If it indeed be so, then it matters
not what else is true or not true; speculation is vain and faith is
vain; and all that belongs to man's highest being is buried in the ruins
of misanthropy, melancholy, and despair.

Our love of life; the tenacity with which, in sorrow and suffering, we
cling to it; our attachment to our home, to the spot that gave us birth,
to any place, however rude, unsightly, or barren, on which the history
of our years has been written, all show how dear are the ties of kindred
and society. Misery makes a greater impression upon us than happiness;
because the former is not the habit of our minds. It is a strange,
unusual guest, and we are more conscious of its presence. Happiness
lives with us, and we forget it. It does not excite us, nor disturb the
order and course of our thoughts. A great agony is an epoch in our life.
We remember our afflictions, as we do the storm and earthquake, because
they are out of the common course of things. They are like disastrous
events, recorded because extraordinary; and with whole and unnoticed
periods of prosperity between. We mark and signalize the times of
calamity; but many happy days and unnoted periods of enjoyment pass,
that are unrecorded either in the book of memory, or in the scanty
annals of our thanksgiving. We are little disposed and less able to call
up from the dim remembrances of our past years, the peaceful moments,
the easy sensations, the bright thoughts, the quiet reveries, the
throngs of kind affections in which life flowed on, bearing us almost
unconsciously upon its bosom, because it bore us calmly and gently.

Life is not only good; but it has been glorious in the experience of
millions. The glory of all human virtue clothes it. The splendors of
devotedness, beneficence, and heroism are upon it; the crown of a
thousand martyrdoms is upon its brow. The brightness of the soul shines
through this visible and sometimes darkened life; through all its
surrounding cares and labors. The humblest life may feel its connection
with its Infinite Source. There is something mighty in the frail inner
man; something of immortality in this momentary and transient being. The
mind stretches away, on every side, into infinity. Its thoughts flash
abroad, far into the boundless, the immeasurable, the infinite; far into
the great, dark, teeming future; and become powers and influences in
other ages. To know its wonderful Author, to bring down wisdom from the
Eternal Stars, to bear upward its homage, gratitude, and love, to the
Ruler of all worlds, to be immortal in our influences projected far into
the slow-approaching Future, makes life most worthy and most glorious.

Life is the wonderful creation of God. It is light, sprung from void
darkness; power, waked from inertness and impotence; being created from
nothing; and the contrast may well enkindle wonder and delight. It is a
rill from the infinite, overflowing goodness; and from the moment when
it first gushes up into the light, to that when it mingles with the
ocean of Eternity, that Goodness attends it and ministers to it. It is a
great and glorious gift. There is gladness in its infant voices; joy in
the buoyant step of its youth; deep satisfaction in its strong maturity;
and peace in its quiet age. There is good for the good; virtue for the
faithful; and victory for the valiant. There is, even in this humble
life, an infinity for those whose desires are boundless. There are
blessings upon its birth; there is hope in its death; and eternity in
its prospect. Thus earth, which binds many in chains, is to the Mason
both the starting-place and goal of immortality. Many it buries in the
rubbish of dull cares and wearying vanities; but to the Mason it is the
lofty mount of meditation, where Heaven, and Infinity and Eternity are
spread before him and around him. To the lofty-minded, the pure, and the
virtuous, this life is the beginning of Heaven, and a part of
immortality.

God hath appointed one remedy for all the evils in the world; and that
is a contented spirit. We may be reconciled to poverty and a low
fortune, if we suffer contentedness and equanimity to make the
proportions. No man is poor who doth not think himself so; but if, in a
full fortune, with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants
and his beggarly condition. This virtue of contentedness was the sum of
all the old moral philosophy, and is of most universal use in the whole
course of our lives, and the only instrument to ease the burdens of the
world and the enmities of sad chances. It is the great reasonableness of
complying with the Divine Providence, which governs all the world, and
hath so ordered us in the administration of His great family. It is fit
that God should dispense His gifts as He pleases; and if we murmur here,
we may, at the next melancholy, be troubled that He did not make us to
be angels or stars.

We ourselves make our fortunes good or bad; and when God lets loose a
Tyrant upon us, or a sickness, or scorn, or a lessened fortune, if we
fear to die, or know not how to be patient, or are proud, or covetous,
then the calamity sits heavy on us. But if we know how to manage a noble
principle, and fear not death so much as a dishonest action, and think
impatience a worse evil than a fever, and pride to be the greatest
disgrace as well as the greatest folly, and poverty far preferable to
the torments of avarice, we may still bear an even mind and smile at the
reverses of fortune and the ill-nature of Fate.

If thou hast lost thy land, do not also lose thy constancy; and if thou
must die sooner than others, or than thou didst expect, yet do not die
impatiently. For no chance is evil to him who is content, and to a man
nothing is miserable unless it be unreasonable. No man can make another
man to be his slave, unless that other hath first enslaved himself to
life and death, to pleasure or pain, to hope or fear; command these
passions, and you are freer than the Parthian Kings.

When an enemy reproaches us, let us look on him as an impartial relator
of our faults; for he will tell us truer than our fondest friend will,
and we may forgive his anger, whilst we make use of the plainness of his
declamation. The ox, when he is weary, treads truest; and if there be
nothing else in abuse, but that it makes us to walk warily, and tread
sure for fear of our enemies, that is better than to be flattered into
pride and carelessness.

If thou fallest from thy employment in public, take sanctuary in an
honest retirement, being indifferent to thy gain abroad, or thy safety
at home. When the north wind blows hard, and it rains sadly, we do not
sit down in it and cry; but defend ourselves against it with a warm
garment, or a good fire and a dry roof. So when the storm of a sad
mischance beats upon our spirits, we may turn it into something that is
good, if we resolve to make it so; and with equanimity and patience may
shelter ourselves from its inclement pitiless pelting. If it develop our
patience, and give occasion for heroic endurance, it hath done us good
enough to recompense us sufficiently for all the temporal affliction;
for so a wise man shall overrule his stars; and have a greater influence
upon his own content, than all the constellations and planets of the
firmament.

Compare not thy condition with the few above thee, but to secure thy
content, look upon those thousands with whom thou wouldst not, for any
interest, change thy fortune and condition. A soldier must not think
himself unprosperous, if he be not successful as Alexander or
Wellington; nor any man deem himself unfortunate that he hath not the
wealth of Rothschild; but rather let the former rejoice that he is not
lessened like the many generals who went down horse and man before
Napoleon, and the latter that he is not the beggar who, bareheaded in
the bleak winter wind holds out his tattered hat for charity. There may
be many who are richer and more fortunate; but many thousands who are
very miserable, compared to thee.

After the worst assaults of Fortune, there will be something left to
us,--a merry countenance, a cheerful spirit, and a good conscience, the
Providence of God, our hopes of Heaven, our charity for those who have
injured us; perhaps a loving wife, and many friends to pity, and some to
relieve us; and light and air, and all the beauties of Nature; we can
read, discourse, and meditate; and having still these blessings, we
should be much in love with sorrow and peevishness to lose them all, and
prefer to sit down on our little handful of thorns.

Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them, and the evils of it
bear patiently and calmly; for this day only is ours: we are dead to
yesterday, and we are not yet born to the morrow. When our fortunes are
violently changed, our spirits are unchanged, if they always stood in
the suburbs and expectation of sorrows and reverses. The blessings of
immunity, safeguard, liberty, and integrity deserve the thanksgiving of
a whole life. We are quit from a thousand calamities, every one of
which, if it were upon us, would make us insensible of our present
sorrow, and glad to receive it in exchange for that other greater
affliction.

Measure your desires by your fortune and condition, not your fortunes by
your desires: be governed by your needs, not by your fancy; by nature,
not by evil customs and ambitious principles. It is no evil to be poor,
but to be vicious and impatient. Is that beast better, that hath two or
three mountains to graze on, than the little bee that feeds on dew or
manna, and lives upon what falls every morning from the store-houses of
Heaven, clouds and Providence?

There are some instances of fortune and a fair condition that cannot
stand with some others; but if you desire this, you must lose that, and
unless you be content with one, you lose the comfort of both. If you
covet learning, you must have leisure and a retired life; if honors of
State and political distinctions, you must be ever abroad in public, and
get experience, and do all men's business, and keep all company, and
have no leisure at all. If you will be rich, you must be frugal; if you
will be popular, you must be bountiful; if a philosopher, you must
despise riches. If you would be famous as Epaminondas, accept also his
poverty, for it added lustre to his person, and envy to his fortune, and
his virtue without it could not have been so excellent. If you would
have the reputation of a martyr, you must needs accept his persecution;
if of a benefactor of the world, the world's injustice; if truly great,
you must expect to see the mob prefer lesser men to yourself.

God esteems it one of His glories, that He brings good out of evil; and
therefore it were but reason we should trust Him to govern His own world
as He pleases; and that we should patiently wait until the change
cometh, or the reason is discovered.

A Mason's contentedness must by no means be a mere contented
selfishness, like his who, comfortable himself, is indifferent to the
discomfort of others. There will always be in this world wrongs to
forgive, suffering to alleviate, sorrow asking for sympathy, necessities
and destitution to relieve, and ample occasion for the exercise of
active charity and beneficence. And he who sits unconcerned amidst it
all, perhaps enjoying his own comforts and luxuries the more, by
contrasting them with the hungry and ragged destitution and shivering
misery of his fellows, is not contented, but selfish and unfeeling.

It is the saddest of all sights upon this earth, that of a man lazy and
luxurious, or hard and penurious, to whom want appeals in vain, and
suffering cries in an unknown tongue. The man whose hasty anger hurries
him into violence and crime is not half so unworthy to live. He is the
faithless steward, that embezzles what God has given him in trust for
the impoverished and suffering among his brethren. The true Mason must
be and must have a right to be content with himself; and he can be so
only when he lives not for himself alone, but for others also, who need
his assistance and have a claim upon his sympathy.

"Charity is the great channel," it has been well said, "through which
God passes all His mercy upon mankind. For we receive absolution of our
sins in proportion to our forgiving our brother. This is the rule of our
hopes and the measure of our desire in this world; and on the day of
death and judgment, the great sentence upon mankind shall be transacted
according to our alms, which is the other part of charity. God himself
is love; and every degree of charity that dwells in us is the
participation of the Divine nature."

These principles Masonry reduces to practice. By them it expects you to
be hereafter guided and governed. It especially inculcates them upon him
who employs the labor of others, forbidding him to discharge them, when
to want employment is to starve; or to contract for the labor of man or
woman at so low a price that by over-exertion they must sell him their
blood and life at the same time with the labor of their hands.

These Degrees are also intended to teach _more_ than morals. The symbols
and ceremonies of Masonry have more than one meaning. They rather
_conceal_ than _disclose_ the Truth. They _hint_ it only, at least; and
their varied meanings are only to be discovered by reflection and study.
Truth is not only symbolized by Light, but as the ray of light is
separable into rays of different colors, so is truth separable into
kinds. It is the province of Masonry to teach _all_ truths--not moral
truth alone, but political and philosophical, and even religious truth,
so far as concerns the great and essential principles of each. The
sphynx was a symbol. To whom has it disclosed its inmost meaning? Who
knows the symbolic meaning of the pyramids?

You will hereafter learn who are the chief foes of human liberty
symbolized by the assassins of the Master Khūrūm; and in their
fate you may see foreshadowed that which we earnestly hope will
hereafter overtake those enemies of humanity, against whom Masonry has
struggled so long.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]



IX.

ELECT OF THE NINE.

[Elu of the Nine.]


Originally created to reward fidelity, obedience, and devotion, this
Degree was consecrated to bravery, devotedness, and patriotism; and your
obligation has made known to you the duties which you have assumed. They
are summed up in the simple mandate, "Protect the oppressed against the
oppressor; and devote yourself to the honor and interests of your
Country."

Masonry is not "speculative," nor theoretical, but experimental; not
sentimental, but practical. It requires self-renunciation and
self-control. It wears a stern face toward men's vices, and interferes
with many of our pursuits and our fancied pleasures. It penetrates
beyond the region of vague sentiment; beyond the regions where
moralizers and philosophers have woven their fine theories and
elaborated their beautiful maxims, to the very depths of the heart,
rebuking our littlenesses and meannesses, arraigning our prejudices and
passions, and warring against the armies of our vices.

It wars against the passions that spring out of the bosom of a world of
fine sentiments, a world of admirable sayings and foul practices, of
good maxims and bad deeds; whose darker passions are not only restrained
by custom and ceremony, but hidden even from itself by a veil of
beautiful sentiments. This terrible solecism has existed in all ages.
Romish sentimentalism has often covered infidelity and vice; Protestant
straightness often lauds spirituality and faith, and neglects homely
truth, candor, and generosity; and ultra-liberal Rationalistic
refinement sometimes soars to heaven in its dreams, and wallows in the
mire of earth in its deeds.

There may be a world of Masonic sentiment; and yet a world of little or
no Masonry. In many minds there is a vague and general sentiment of
Masonic charity, generosity, and disinterestedness, but no practical,
active virtue, nor habitual kindness, self-sacrifice, or liberality.
Masonry plays about them like the cold though brilliant lights that
flush and eddy over Northern skies. There are occasional flashes of
generous and manly feeling, transitory splendors, and momentary gleams
of just and noble thought, and transient coruscations, that light the
Heaven of their imagination; but there is no vital warmth in the heart;
and it remains as cold and sterile as the Arctic or Antarctic regions.
They _do_ nothing; they gain no victories over themselves; they make no
progress; they are still in the Northeast corner of the Lodge, as when
they first stood there as Apprentices; and they do not cultivate
Masonry, with a cultivation, determined, resolute, and regular, like
their cultivation of their estate, profession, or knowledge. Their
Masonry takes its chance in general and inefficient sentiment,
mournfully barren of results; in words and formulas and fine
professions.

Most men have _sentiments_, but not _principles_. The former are
temporary sensations, the latter permanent and controlling impressions
of goodness and virtue. The former are general and involuntary, and do
not rise to the character of virtue. Every one feels them. They flash up
spontaneously in every heart. The latter are rules of action, and shape
and control our conduct; and it is these that Masonry insists upon.

We approve the right; but pursue the wrong. It is the old story of human
deficiency. No one abets or praises injustice, fraud, oppression,
covetousness, revenge, envy, or slander; and yet how many who condemn
these things, are themselves guilty of them. It is no rare thing for him
whose indignation is kindled at a tale of wicked injustice, cruel
oppression, base slander, or misery inflicted by unbridled indulgence;
whose anger flames in behalf of the injured and ruined victims of wrong;
to be in some relation unjust, or oppressive, or envious, or
self-indulgent, or a careless talker of others. How wonderfully
indignant the penurious man often is, at the avarice or want of public
spirit of another!

A great Preacher well said, "Therefore thou art inexcusable. O Man,
whosoever thou art, that judgest; for wherein thou judgest another, thou
condemnest thyself: for thou that judgest, doest the same things." It is
amazing to see how men can talk of virtue and honor, whose life denies
both. It is curious to see with what a marvellous facility many bad men
quote Scripture. It seems to comfort their evil consciences, to use good
words; and to gloze over bad deeds with holy texts, wrested to their
purpose. Often, the more a man talks about Charity and Toleration, the
less he has of either; the more he talks about Virtue, the smaller stock
he has of it. The mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart; but
often the very reverse of what the man practises. And the vicious and
sensual often express, and in a sense feel, strong disgust at vice and
sensuality. Hypocrisy is not so common as is imagined.

Here, in the Lodge, virtue and vice are matters of reflection and
feeling only. There is little opportunity here, for the practice of
either; and Masons yield to the argument here, with facility and
readiness; because nothing is to follow. It is easy, and safe, here, to
_feel_ upon these matters. But to-morrow, when they breathe the
atmosphere of worldly gains and competitions, and the passions are again
stirred at the opportunities of unlawful pleasure, all their fine
emotions about virtue, all their generous abhorrence of selfishness and
sensuality, melt away like a morning cloud.

For the time, their emotions and sentiments are sincere and real. Men
may be really, in a certain way, interested in Masonry, while fatally
deficient in virtue. It is not always hypocrisy. Men pray most fervently
and sincerely, and yet are constantly guilty of acts so bad and base, so
ungenerous and unrighteous, that the crimes that crowd the dockets of
our courts are scarcely worse.

A man may be a good sort of man in general, and yet a very bad man in
particular: good in the Lodge and bad in the world; good in public, and
bad in his family; good at home, and bad on a journey or in a strange
city. Many a man earnestly desires to be a good Mason. He says so, and
is sincere. But if you require him to resist a certain passion, to
sacrifice a certain indulgence, to control his appetite at a particular
feast, or to keep his temper in a dispute, you will find that he does
not wish to be a good Mason, _in that particular case_; or, wishing, is
not able to resist his worse impulses.

The _duties_ of life are more than life. The law imposeth it upon every
citizen, that he prefer the urgent service of his country before the
safety of his life. If a man be commanded, saith a great writer, to
bring ordnance or munition to relieve any of the King's towns that are
distressed, then he cannot for any danger of tempest justify the
throwing of them overboard; for there it holdeth which was spoken by the
Roman, when the same necessity of weather was alleged to hold him from
embarking: "_Necesse est ut eam, non ut vivam_:" it needs that I go: it
is not necessary I should live.

How ungratefully he slinks away, who dies, and does nothing to reflect a
glory to Heaven! How barren a tree he is, who lives, and spreads, and
cumbers the ground, yet leaves not one seed, not one good work to
generate another after him! All cannot leave alike; yet all may leave
_something_, answering their proportions and their kinds. Those are dead
and withered grains of corn, out of which there will not one ear spring.
He will hardly find the way to Heaven, who desires to go thither alone.

Industry is never wholly unfruitful. If it bring not joy with the
incoming profit, it will yet banish mischief from thy busied gates.
There is a kind of good angel waiting upon Diligence that ever carries a
laurel in his hand to crown her. How unworthy was that man of the world
who never did aught, but only lived and died! That we have liberty to do
anything, we should account it a gift from the favoring Heavens; that we
have minds sometimes inclining us to use that liberty well, is a great
bounty of the Deity.

Masonry is action, and not inertness. It requires its Initiates to WORK,
actively and earnestly, for the benefit of their brethren, their
country, and mankind. It is the patron of the oppressed, as it is the
comforter and consoler of the unfortunate and wretched. It seems to it a
worthier honor to be the instrument of advancement and reform, than to
enjoy all that rank and office and lofty titles can bestow. It is the
advocate of the common people in those things which concern the best
interests of mankind. It hates insolent power and impudent usurpation.
It pities the poor, the sorrowing, the disconsolate; it endeavors to
raise and improve the ignorant, the sunken, and the degraded.

Its fidelity to its mission will be accurately evidenced, by the extent
of the efforts it employs, and the means it sets on foot, to improve the
people at large and to better their condition; chiefest of which,
within its reach, is to aid in the education of the children of the
poor. An intelligent people, informed of its rights, will soon come to
know its power, and cannot long be oppressed; but if there be not a
sound and virtuous populace, the elaborate ornaments at the top of the
pyramid of society will be a wretched compensation for the want of
solidity at the base. It is never safe for a nation to repose on the lap
of ignorance: and if there ever was a time when public tranquillity was
insured by the absence of knowledge, that season is past. Unthinking
stupidity cannot sleep, without being appalled by phantoms and shaken by
terrors. The improvement of the mass of the people is the grand security
for popular liberty; in the neglect of which, the politeness,
refinement, and knowledge accumulated in the higher orders and wealthier
classes will some day perish like dry grass in the hot fire of popular
fury.

It is not the mission of Masonry to engage in plots and conspiracies
against the civil government. It is not the fanatical propagandist of
any creed or theory; nor does it proclaim itself the enemy of kings. It
is the apostle of liberty, equality, and fraternity; but it is no more
the high-priest of republicanism than of constitutional monarchy. It
contracts no entangling alliances with any sect of theorists, dreamers,
or philosophers. It does not know those as its Initiates who assail the
civil order and all lawful authority, at the same time that they propose
to deprive the dying of the consolations of religion. It sits apart from
all sects and creeds, in its own calm and simple dignity, the same under
every government. It is still that which it was in the cradle of the
human race, when no human foot had trodden the soil of Assyria and
Egypt, and no colonies had crossed the Himalayas into Southern India,
Media, or Etruria.

It gives no countenance to anarchy and licentiousness; and no illusion
of glory, or extravagant emulation of the ancients inflames it with an
unnatural thirst for ideal and Utopian liberty. It teaches that in
rectitude of life and sobriety of habits is the only sure guarantee for
the continuance of political freedom; and it is chiefly the soldier of
the sanctity of the laws and the rights of conscience.

It recognizes it as a truth, that necessity, as well as abstract right
and ideal justice, must have its part in the making of laws, the
administration of affairs, and the regulation of relations in society.
It sees, indeed, that necessity rules in all the affairs of man. It
knows that where any man, or any number or race of men, are so imbecile
of intellect, so degraded, so incapable of self-control, so inferior in
the scale of humanity, as to be unfit to be intrusted with the highest
prerogatives of citizenship, the great law of necessity, for the peace
and safety of the community and country, requires them to remain under
the control of those of larger intellect and superior wisdom. It trusts
and believes that God will, in his own good time, work out his own great
and wise purposes; and it is willing to wait, where it does not see its
own way clear to some certain good.

It hopes and longs for the day when all the races of men, even the
lowest, will be elevated, and become fitted for political freedom; when,
like all other evils that afflict the earth, pauperism, and bondage or
abject dependence, shall cease and disappear. But it does not preach
revolution to those who are fond of kings, nor rebellion that can end
only in disaster and defeat, or in substituting one tyrant for another,
or a multitude of despots for one.

Wherever a people is fit to be free and to govern itself, and generously
strives to be so, there go all its sympathies. It detests the tyrant,
the lawless oppressor, the military usurper, and him who abuses a lawful
power. It frowns upon cruelty, and a wanton disregard of the rights of
humanity. It abhors the selfish employer, and exerts its influence to
lighten the burdens which want and dependence impose upon the workman,
and to foster that humanity and kindness which man owes to even the
poorest and most unfortunate brother.

It can never be employed, in any country under Heaven, to teach a
toleration for cruelty, to weaken moral hatred for guilt, or to deprave
and brutalize the human mind. The dread of punishment will never make a
Mason an accomplice in so corrupting his countrymen, and a teacher of
depravity and barbarity. If anywhere, as has heretofore happened, a
tyrant should send a satirist on his tyranny to be convicted and
punished as a libeller, in a court of justice, a Mason, if a juror in
such a case, though in sight of the scaffold streaming with the blood of
the innocent, and within hearing of the clash of the bayonets meant to
overawe the court, would rescue the intrepid satirist from the tyrant's
fangs, and send his officers out from the court with defeat and
disgrace.

Even if all law and liberty were trampled under the feet of Jacobinical
demagogues or a military banditti, and great crimes were perpetrated
with a high hand against all who were deservedly the objects of public
veneration; if the people, overthrowing law, roared like a sea around
the courts of justice, and demanded the blood of those who, during the
temporary fit of insanity and drunken delirium, had chanced to become
odious to it, for true words manfully spoken, or unpopular acts bravely
done, the Masonic juror, unawed alike by the single or the many-headed
tyrant, would consult the dictates of duty alone, and stand with a noble
firmness between the human tigers and their coveted prey.

The Mason would much rather pass his life hidden in the recesses of the
deepest obscurity, feeding his mind even with the visions and
imaginations of good deeds and noble actions, than to be placed on the
most splendid throne of the universe, tantalized with a denial of the
practice of all which can make the greatest situation any other than the
greatest curse. And if he has been enabled to lend the slightest step to
any great and laudable designs; if he has had any share in any measure
giving quiet to private property and to private conscience, making
lighter the yoke of poverty and dependence, or relieving deserving men
from oppression; if he has aided in securing to his countrymen that best
possession, peace; if he has joined in reconciling the different
sections of his own country to each other, and the people to the
government of their own creating; and in teaching the citizen to look
for his protection to the laws of his country, and for his comfort to
the good-will of his countrymen; if he has thus taken his part with the
best of men in the best of their actions, he may well shut the book,
even if he might wish to read a page or two more. It is enough for his
measure. He has not lived in vain.

Masonry teaches that all power is delegated for the good, and not for
the injury of the People; and that, when it is perverted from the
original purpose, the compact is broken, and the right ought to be
resumed; that resistance to power usurped is not merely a duty which man
owes to himself and to his neighbor, but a duty which he owes to his
God, in asserting and maintaining the rank which He gave him in the
creation. This principle neither the rudeness of ignorance can stifle
nor the enervation of refinement extinguish. It makes it base for a man
to suffer when he ought to act; and, tending to preserve to him the
original destinations of Providence, spurns at the arrogant assumptions
of Tyrants and vindicates the independent quality of the race of which
we are a part.

The wise and well-informed Mason will not fail to be the votary of
Liberty and Justice. He will be ready to exert himself in their defence,
wherever they exist. It cannot be a matter of indifference to him when
his own liberty and that of other men, with whose merits and capacities
he is acquainted, are involved in the event of the struggle to be made;
but his attachment will be to the cause, as the cause of man; and not
merely to the country. Wherever there is a people that understands the
value of political justice, and is prepared to assert it, that is his
country; wherever he can most contribute to the diffusion of these
principles and the real happiness of mankind, that is his country. Nor
does he desire for any country any other benefit than justice.

The true Mason identifies the honor of his country with his own. Nothing
more conduces to the beauty and glory of one's country than the
preservation against all enemies of its civil and religious liberty. The
world will never willingly let die the names of those patriots who in
her different ages have received upon their own breasts the blows aimed
by insolent enemies at the bosom of their country.

But also it conduces, and in no small measure, to the beauty and glory
of one's country, that justice should always be administered there to
all alike, and neither denied, sold, nor delayed to any one; that the
interest of the poor should be looked to, and none starve or be
houseless, or clamor in vain for work; that the child and the feeble
woman should not be overworked, or even the apprentice or slave be
stinted of food or overtasked or mercilessly scourged; and that God's
great laws of mercy, humanity, and compassion should be everywhere
enforced, not only by the statutes, but also by the power of public
opinion. And he who labors, often against reproach and obloquy, and
oftener against indifference and apathy, to bring about that fortunate
condition of things when that great code of divine law shall be
everywhere and punctually obeyed, is no less a patriot than he who bares
his bosom to the hostile steel in the ranks of his country's soldiery.

For fortitude is not only seen resplendent on the field of battle and
amid the clash of arms, but he displays its energy under every
difficulty and against every assailant. He who wars against cruelty,
oppression, and hoary abuses, fights for his country's honor, which
these things soil; and her honor is as important as her existence.
Often, indeed, the warfare against those abuses which disgrace one's
country is quite as hazardous and more discouraging than that against
her enemies in the field; and merits equal, if not greater reward.

For those Greeks and Romans who are the objects of our admiration
employed hardly any other virtue in the extirpation of tyrants, than
that love of liberty, which made them prompt in seizing the sword, and
gave them strength to use it. With facility they accomplish the
undertaking, amid the general shout of praise and joy; nor did they
engage in the attempt so much as an enterprise of perilous and doubtful
issue, as a contest the most glorious in which virtue could be
signalized; which infallibly led to present recompense; which bound
their brows with wreaths of laurel, and consigned their memories to
immortal fame.

But he who assails hoary abuses, regarded perhaps with a superstitious
reverence, and around which old laws stand as ramparts and bastions to
defend them; who denounces acts of cruelty and outrage on humanity which
make every perpetrator thereof his personal enemy, and perhaps make him
looked upon with suspicion by the people among whom he lives, as the
assailant of an established order of things of which he assails only the
abuses, and of laws of which he attacks only the violations,--he can
scarcely look for present recompense, nor that his living brows will be
wreathed with laurel. And if, contending against a dark array of
long-received opinions, superstitions, obloquy, and fears, which most
men dread more than they do an army terrible with banners, the Mason
overcomes, and emerges from the contest victorious; or if he does _not_
conquer, but is borne down and swept away by the mighty current of
prejudice, passion, and interest; in either case, the loftiness of
spirit which he displays merits for him more than a mediocrity of fame.

He has already lived too long who has survived the ruin of his country;
and he who can enjoy life after such an event deserves not to have lived
at all. Nor does he any more deserve to live who looks contentedly upon
abuses that disgrace, and cruelties that dishonor, and scenes of misery
and destitution and brutalization that disfigure his country; or sordid
meanness and ignoble revenges that make her a by-word and a scoff among
all generous nations; and does not endeavor to remedy or prevent either.

Not often is a country at war; nor can every one be allowed the
privilege of offering his heart to the enemy's bullets. But in these
patriotic labors of peace, in preventing, remedying, and reforming
evils, oppressions, wrongs, cruelties, and outrages, every Mason can
unite; and every one can effect something, and share the honor and glory
of the result.

For the cardinal names in the history of the human mind are few and
easily to be counted up; but thousands and tens of thousands spend their
days in the preparations which are to speed the predestined change, in
gathering and amassing the materials which are to kindle and give light
and warmth, when the fire from Heaven shall have descended on them.
Numberless are the sutlers and pioneers, the engineers and artisans, who
attend the march of intellect. Many move forward in detachments, and
level the way over which the chariot is to pass, and cut down the
obstacles that would impede its progress; and these too have their
reward. If they labor diligently and faithfully in their calling, not
only will they enjoy that calm contentment which diligence in the
lowliest task never fails to win; not only will the sweat of their brows
be sweet, and the sweetener of the rest that follows; but, when the
victory is at last achieved, they will come in for a share in the glory;
even as the meanest soldier who fought at Marathon or at King's Mountain
became a sharer in the glory of those saving days; and within his own
household circle, the approbation of which approaches the nearest to
that of an approving conscience, was looked upon as the representative
of all his brother-heroes; and could tell such tales as made the tear
glisten on the cheek of his wife, and lit up his boy's eyes with an
unwonted sparkling eagerness. Or, if he fell in the fight, and his place
by the fireside and at the table at home was thereafter vacant, that
place was sacred; and he was often talked of there in the long winter
evenings; and his family, was deemed fortunate in the neighborhood,
because it had had a hero in it, who had fallen in defence of his
country.

Remember that life's length is not measured by its hours and days, but
by that which we have done therein for our country and kind. A useless
life is short, if it last a century; but that of Alexander was long as
the life of the oak, though he died at thirty-five. We may do much in a
few years, and we may do nothing in a lifetime. If we but eat and drink
and sleep, and let everything go on around us as it pleases; or if we
live but to amass wealth or gain office or wear titles, we might as well
not have lived at all; nor have we any right to expect immortality.

Forget not, therefore, to what you have devoted yourself in this Degree:
defend weakness against strength, the friendless against the great, the
oppressed against the oppressor! Be ever vigilant and watchful of the
interests and honor of your country! and may the Grand Architect of the
Universe give you that strength and wisdom which shall enable you well
and faithfully to perform these high duties!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]



X.


ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN.

[Elu of the Fifteen.]


This Degree is devoted to the same objects as those of the Elu of Nine;
and also to the cause of Toleration and Liberality against Fanaticism
and Persecution, political and religious; and to that of Education,
Instruction, and Enlightenment against Error, Barbarism, and Ignorance.
To these objects you have irrevocably and forever devoted your hand,
your heart, and your intellect; and whenever in your presence a Chapter
of this Degree is opened, you will be most solemnly reminded of your
vows here taken at the altar.

Toleration, holding that every other man has the same right to his
opinion and faith that we have to ours; and liberality, holding that as
no human being can with certainty say, in the clash and conflict of
hostile faiths and creeds, what is truth, or that _he_ is _surely_ in
possession of it, so every one should feel that it is quite possible
that another equally honest and sincere with himself, and yet holding
the contrary opinion, may himself be in possession of the truth, and
that whatever one firmly and conscientiously believes, _is_ truth, _to
him_--these are the mortal enemies of that fanaticism which persecutes
for opinion's sake, and initiates crusades against whatever it, in its
imaginary holiness, deems to be contrary to the law of God or verity of
dogma. And education, instruction, and enlightenment are the most
certain means by which fanaticism and intolerance can be rendered
powerless.

No true Mason scoffs at honest convictions and an ardent zeal in the
cause of what one believes to be truth and justice. But he does
absolutely deny the right of any man to assume the prerogative of Deity,
and condemn another's faith and opinions as deserving to be punished
because heretical. Nor does he approve the course of those who endanger
the peace and quiet of great nations, and the best interest of their own
race by indulging in a chimerical and visionary philanthropy--a luxury
which chiefly consists in drawing their robes around them to avoid
contact with their fellows, and proclaiming themselves holier than they.

For he knows that such follies are often more calamitous than the
ambition of kings; and that intolerance and bigotry have been infinitely
greater curses to mankind than ignorance and error. Better _any_ error
than persecution! Better _any_ opinion than the thumb-screw, the rack,
and the stake! And he knows also how unspeakably absurd it is, for a
creature to whom himself and everything around him are mysteries, to
torture and slay others, because they cannot think as he does in regard
to the profoundest of those mysteries, to understand which is utterly
beyond the comprehension of either the persecutor or the persecuted.

Masonry is not a religion. He who makes of it a religious belief,
falsifies and denaturalizes it. The Brahmin, the Jew, the Mahometan, the
Catholic, the Protestant, each professing his peculiar religion,
sanctioned by the laws, by time, and by climate, must needs retain it,
and cannot have two religions; for the social and sacred laws adapted to
the usages, manners, and prejudices of particular countries, are the
work of men.

But Masonry teaches, and has preserved in their purity, the cardinal
tenets of the old primitive faith, which underlie and are the foundation
of all religions. All that ever existed have had a basis of truth; and
all have overlaid that truth with errors. The primitive truths taught by
the Redeemer were sooner corrupted, and intermingled and alloyed with
fictions than when taught to the first of our race. Masonry is the
universal morality which is suitable to the inhabitants of every clime,
to the man of every creed. It has taught no doctrines, except those
truths that tend directly to the well-being of man; and those who have
attempted to direct it toward useless vengeance, political ends, and
Jesuitism, have merely perverted it to purposes foreign to its pure
spirit and real nature.

Mankind outgrows the sacrifices and the mythologies of the childhood of
the world. Yet it is easy for human indolence to linger near these
helps, and refuse to pass further on. So the unadventurous Nomad in the
Tartarian wild keeps his flock in the same close-cropped circle where
they first learned to browse, while the progressive man roves ever forth
"to fresh fields and pastures new."

The latter is the true Mason; and the best and indeed the only good
Mason is he who with the power of business does the work of life; the
upright mechanic, merchant, or farmer, the man with the power of
thought, of justice, or of love, he whose whole life is one great act of
performance of Masonic duty. The natural use of the strength of a strong
man or the wisdom of a wise one, is to do the _work_ of a strong man or
a wise one. The natural work of Masonry is practical life; the use of
all the faculties in their proper spheres, and for their natural
function. Love of Truth, justice, and generosity as attributes of God,
must appear in a life marked by these qualities; that is the only
effectual ordinance of Masonry. A profession of one's convictions,
joining the Order, assuming the obligations, assisting at the
ceremonies, are of the same value in science as in Masonry; the natural
form of Masonry is goodness, morality, living a true, just,
affectionate, self-faithful life, from the motive of a good man. It is
loyal obedience to God's law.

The good Mason does the good thing which comes in his way, and because
it comes in his way; from a love of duty, and not merely because a law,
enacted by man or God, commands his _will_ to do it. He is true to his
mind, his conscience, heart, and soul, and feels small temptation to do
to others what he would not wish to receive from them. He will deny
himself for the sake of his brother near at hand. His _desire_ attracts
in the line of his _duty_, both being in conjunction. Not in vain does
the poor or the oppressed look up to him. You find such men in all
Christian sects, Protestant and Catholic, in all the great religious
parties of the civilized world, among Buddhists, Mahometans, and Jews.
They are kind fathers, generous citizens, unimpeachable in their
business, beautiful in their daily lives. You see their Masonry in their
work and in their play. It appears in all the forms of their activity,
individual, domestic, social, ecclesiastical, or political. True Masonry
within must be morality without. It must become _eminent_ morality,
which is philanthropy. The true Mason loves not only his kindred and his
country, but all mankind; not only the good, but also the evil, among
his brethren. He has more goodness than the channels of his daily life
will hold. It runs over the banks, to water and to feed a thousand
thirsty plants. Not content with the duty that lies along his track, he
goes out to seek it; not only _willing_, he has a salient _longing_ to
do good, to spread his truth, his justice, his generosity, his Masonry
over all the world. His daily life is a profession of his Masonry,
published in perpetual good-will to men. He _can_ not be a persecutor.

Not more naturally does the beaver build or the mocking-bird sing his
own wild, gushing melody, than the true Mason lives in this beautiful
outward life. So from the perennial spring swells forth the stream, to
quicken the meadow with new access of green, and perfect beauty bursting
into bloom. Thus Masonry does the work it was meant to do. The Mason
does not sigh and weep, and make grimaces. He lives right on. If his
life is, as whose is not, marked with errors, and with sins, he ploughs
over the barren spot with his remorse, sows with new seed, and the old
desert blossoms like a rose. He is not confined to set forms of thought,
of action, or of feeling. He accepts what his mind regards as true, what
his conscience decides is right, what his heart deems generous and
noble; and all else he puts far from him. Though the ancient and the
honorable of the Earth bid him bow down to them, his stubborn knees bend
only at the bidding of his manly soul. His Masonry is his freedom before
God, not his bondage unto men. His mind acts after the universal law of
the intellect, his conscience according to the universal moral law, his
affections and his soul after the universal law of each, and so he is
strong with the strength of God, in this four-fold way communicating
with Him.

The old theologies, the philosophies of religion of ancient times, will
not suffice us now. The duties of life are to be done; we are to do
them, consciously obedient to the law of God, not atheistically, loving
only our selfish gain. There are sins of trade to be corrected.
Everywhere morality and philanthropy are needed. There are errors to be
made way with, and their place supplied with new truths, radiant with
the glories of Heaven. There are great wrongs and evils, in Church and
State, in domestic, social, and public life, to be righted and outgrown.
Masonry cannot in our age forsake the broad way of life. She must
journey on in the open street, appear in the crowded square, and teach
men by her deeds, her life more eloquent than any lips.

This Degree is chiefly devoted to TOLERATION; and it inculcates in the
strongest manner that great leading idea of the Ancient Art, that a
belief in the one True God, and a moral and virtuous life, constitute
the only religious requisites needed to enable a man to be a Mason.

Masonry has ever the most vivid remembrance of the terrible and
artificial torments that were used to put down new forms of religion or
extinguish the old. It sees with the eye of memory the ruthless
extermination of all the people of all sexes and ages, because it was
their misfortune not to know the God of the Hebrews, or to worship Him
under the wrong name, by the savage troops of Moses and Joshua. It sees
the thumb-screws and the racks, the whip, the gallows, and the stake,
the victims of Diocletian and Alva, the miserable Covenanters, the
Non-Conformists, Servetus burned, and the unoffending Quaker hung. It
sees Cranmer hold his arm, now no longer erring, in the flame until the
hand drops off in the consuming heat. It sees the persecutions of Peter
and Paul, the martyrdom of Stephen, the trials of Ignatius, Polycarp,
Justin, and Irenaeus; and then in turn the sufferings of the wretched
Pagans under the Christian Emperors, as of the Papists in Ireland and
under Elizabeth and the bloated Henry. The Roman Virgin naked before the
hungry lions; young Margaret Graham tied to a stake at low-water mark,
and there left to drown, singing hymns to God until the savage waters
broke over her head; and all that in all ages have suffered by hunger
and nakedness, peril and prison, the rack, the stake, and the sword,--it
sees them all, and shudders at the long roll of human atrocities. And it
sees also the oppression still practised in the name of religion--men
shot in a Christian jail in Christian Italy for reading the Christian
Bible; in almost every Christian State, laws forbidding freedom of
speech on matters relating to Christianity; and the gallows reaching its
arm over the pulpit.

The fires of Moloch in Syria, the harsh mutilations in the name of
Astarte, Cybele, Jehovah; the barbarities of imperial Pagan Torturers;
the still grosser torments which Roman-Gothic Christians in Italy and
Spain heaped on their brother-men; the fiendish cruelties to which
Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, England, Scotland, Ireland,
America, have been witnesses, are none too powerful to warn man of the
unspeakable evils which follow from mistakes and errors in the matter of
religion, and especially from investing the God of Love with the cruel
and vindictive passions of erring humanity, and making blood to have a
sweet savor in his nostrils, and groans of agony to be delicious to his
ears.

Man never had the right to usurp the unexercised prerogative of God, and
condemn and punish another for his belief. Born in a Protestant land, we
are of that faith. If we had opened our eyes to the light under the
shadows of St. Peter's at Rome, we should have been devout Catholics;
born in the Jewish quarter of Aleppo, we should have contemned Christ as
an imposter; in Constantinople, we should have cried "_Allah il Allah_,
God is great and Mahomet is his prophet!" Birth, place, and education
give us our faith. Few believe in any religion because they have
examined the evidences of its authenticity, and made up a formal
judgment, upon weighing the testimony. Not one man in ten thousand knows
anything about the _proofs_ of his faith. We believe what we are taught;
and those are most fanatical who know least of the evidences on which
their creed is based. Facts and testimony are not, except in very rare
instances, the ground-work of faith. It is an imperative law of God's
Economy, unyielding and inflexible as Himself, that man shall accept
without question the belief of those among whom he is born and reared;
the faith so made a part of his nature resists all evidence to the
contrary; and he will disbelieve even the evidence of his own senses,
rather than yield up the religious belief which has grown up in him,
flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone.

What is truth to _me_ is not truth to _another_. The same arguments and
evidences that convince one mind make no impression on another. This
difference is in men at their birth. No man is entitled positively to
assert that _he_ is right, where other men, equally intelligent and
equally well-informed, hold directly the opposite opinion. Each thinks
it impossible for the other to be sincere, and each, as to that, is
equally in error. "_What is truth_?" was a profound question, the most
suggestive one ever put to man. Many beliefs of former and present times
seem incomprehensible. They startle us with a new glimpse into the human
soul, that mysterious thing, more mysterious the more we note its
workings. Here is a man superior to myself in intellect and learning;
and yet he sincerely believes what seems to me too absurd to merit
confutation; and I cannot conceive, and sincerely do not believe, that
he is both sane and honest. _And yet he is both_. His reason is as
perfect as mine, and he is as honest as I.

The fancies of a lunatic are realities, _to him_. Our dreams are
realities _while they last_; and, in the Past, no more _un_real than
what we have acted in our waking hours. No man can say that he hath as
sure possession of the truth as of a chattel. When men entertain
opinions diametrically opposed to each other, and each is honest, who
shall decide which hath the Truth; and how can either say with certainty
that _he_ hath it? We know not what _is_ the truth. That we ourselves
believe and feel absolutely certain that our own belief is true, is in
reality not the slightest proof of the fact, seem it never so certain
and incapable of doubt to us. No man is responsible for the rightness of
his faith; but only for the _up_rightness of it.

Therefore no man hath or ever had a right to persecute another for his
belief; for there cannot be two antagonistic rights; and if one can
persecute another, because he himself is satisfied that the belief of
that other is erroneous, the other has, for the same reason, equally as
certain a right to persecute him.

The truth comes to us tinged and colored with our prejudices and our
preconceptions, which are as old as ourselves, and strong with a divine
force. It comes to us as the image of a rod comes to us through the
water, bent and distorted. An argument sinks into and convinces the mind
of one man, while from that of another it rebounds like a ball of ivory
dropped on marble. It is no merit in a man to have a particular faith,
excellent and sound and philosophic as it may be, when he imbibed it
with his mother's milk. It is no more a merit than his prejudices and
his passions.

The sincere Moslem has as much right to persecute us, as we to persecute
him; and therefore Masonry wisely requires no more than a belief in One
Great All-Powerful Deity, the Father and Preserver of the Universe.
Therefore it is she teaches her votaries that toleration is one of the
chief duties of every good Mason, a component part of that charity
without which we are mere hollow images of true Masons, mere sounding
brass and tinkling cymbals.

No evil hath so afflicted the world as intolerance of religious opinion.
The human beings it has slain in various ways, if once and together
brought to life, would make a nation of people; left to live and
increase, would have doubled the population of the civilized portion of
the globe; among which civilized portion it chiefly is that religious
wars are waged. The treasure and the human labor thus lost would have
made the earth a garden, in which, but for his evil passions, man might
now be as happy as in Eden.

No man truly obeys the Masonic law who _merely_ tolerates those whose
religious opinions are opposed to his own. Every man's opinions are his
own private property, and the rights of all men to maintain each his own
are perfectly equal. Merely to _tolerate_, to _bear with_ an opposing
opinion, is to assume it to be heretical; and assert the _right_ to
persecute, if we would; and claim our _toleration_ of it as a merit. The
Mason's creed goes further than that. No man, it holds, has any right in
any way to interfere with the religious belief of another. It holds that
each man is absolutely sovereign as to his own belief, and that belief
is a matter absolutely foreign to all who do not entertain the same
belief; and that, if there were any right of persecution at all, it
would in all cases be a mutual right; because one party has the same
right as the other to sit as judge in his own case; and God is the only
magistrate that can rightfully decide between them. To that great Judge,
Masonry refers the matter; and opening wide its portals, it invites to
enter there and live in peace and harmony, the Protestant, the Catholic,
the Jew, the Moslem; every man who will lead a truly virtuous and moral
life, love his brethren, minister to the sick and distressed, and
believe in the ONE, _All-Powerful, All-Wise, everywhere-Present_ GOD,
_Architect, Creator_, and _Preserver of all things_, by whose universal
law of Harmony ever rolls on this universe, the great, vast, infinite
circle of successive Death and Life:--to whose INEFFABLE NAME let all
true Masons pay profoundest homage! for whose thousand blessings poured
upon us, let us feel the sincerest gratitude, now, henceforth, and
forever!

We may well be tolerant of each other's creed; for in every faith there
are excellent moral precepts. Far in the South of Asia, Zoroaster taught
this doctrine:

     "On commencing a journey. The Faithful should turn his thoughts
     toward Ormuzd, and confess him, in the purity of his heart, to be
     King of the World; he should love him, do him homage, and serve
     him. He must be upright and charitable, despise the pleasures of
     the body, and avoid pride and haughtiness, and vice in all its
     forms, and especially falsehood, one of the basest sins of which,
     man can be guilty. He must forget injuries and not avenge himself.
     He must honor the memory of his parents and relatives. At night,
     before retiring to sleep, he should rigorously examine his
     conscience, and repent of the faults which weakness or ill-fortune
     had caused him to commit."

He was required to pray for strength to persevere in the Good, and to
obtain forgiveness for his errors. It was his duty to confess his faults
to a Magus, or to a layman renowned for his virtues, or to the Sun.
Fasting and maceration were prohibited; and, on the contrary, it was his
duty suitably to nourish the body and to maintain its vigor, that his
soul might be strong to resist the Genius of Darkness; that he might
more attentively read the Divine Word, and have more courage to perform
noble deeds.

And in the North of Europe the Druids taught devotion to friends,
indulgence for reciprocal wrongs, love of deserved praise, prudence,
humanity, hospitality, respect for old age, disregard of the future,
temperance, contempt of death, and a chivalrous deference to woman.
Listen to these maxims from the Hava Maal, or Sublime Book of Odin:

     "If thou hast a friend, visit him often; the path will grow over
     with grass, and the trees soon cover it, if thou dost not
     constantly walk upon it. He is a faithful friend, who, having but
     two loaves, gives his friend one. Be never first to break with thy
     friend; sorrow wrings the heart of him who has no one save himself
     with whom to take counsel. There is no virtuous man who has not
     some vice, no bad man who has not some virtue. Happy he who obtains
     the praise and good-will of men; for all that depends on the will
     of another is hazardous and uncertain. Riches flit away in the
     twinkling of an eye; they are the most inconstant of friends;
     flocks and herds perish, parents die, friends are not immortal,
     thou thyself diest; I know but one thing that doth not die, the
     judgment that is passed upon the dead. Be humane toward those whom
     thou meetest on the road. If the guest that cometh to thy house is
     a-cold, give him fire; the man who has journeyed over the mountains
     needs food and dry garments. Mock not at the aged; for words full
     of sense come often from the wrinkles of age. Be moderately wise,
     and not over-prudent. Let no one seek to know his destiny, if he
     would sleep tranquilly. There is no malady more cruel than to be
     discontented with our lot. The glutton eats his own death; and the
     wise man laughs at the fool's greediness. Nothing is more injurious
     to the young than excessive drinking; the more one drinks the more
     he loses his reason; the bird of forgetfulness sings before those
     who intoxicate themselves, and wiles away their souls. Man devoid
     of sense believes he will live always if he avoids war; but, if the
     lances spare him, old age will give him no quarter. Better live
     well than live long. When a man lights a fire in his house, death
     comes before it goes out."

And thus said the Indian books:

     "Honor thy father and mother. Never forget the benefits thou hast
     received. Learn while thou art young. Be submissive to the laws of
     thy country. Seek the company of virtuous men. Speak not of God but
     with respect. Live on good terms with thy fellow-citizens. Remain
     in thy proper place. Speak ill of no one. Mock at the bodily
     infirmities of none. Pursue not unrelentingly a conquered enemy.
     Strive to acquire a good reputation. Take counsel with wise men.
     The more one learns, the more he acquires the faculty of learning.
     Knowledge is the most permanent wealth. As well be dumb as
     ignorant. The true use of knowledge is to distinguish good from
     evil. Be not a subject of shame to thy parents. What one learns in
     youth endures like the engraving upon a rock. He is wise who knows
     himself. Let thy books be thy best friends. When thou attainest an
     hundred years, cease to learn. Wisdom is solidly planted, even on
     the shifting ocean. Deceive no one, not even thine enemy. Wisdom is
     a treasure that everywhere commands its value. Speak mildly, even
     to the poor. It is sweeter to forgive than to take vengeance.
     Gaming and quarrels lead to misery. There is no true merit without
     the practice of virtue. To honor our mother is the most fitting
     homage we can pay the Divinity. There is no tranquil sleep without
     a clear conscience. He badly understands his interest who breaks
     his word."

Twenty-four centuries ago these were the Chinese Ethics:

     "The Philosopher [Confucius] said, 'SAN! my doctrine is simple, and
     easy to be understood.' THSENG-TSEU replied, 'that is certain.' The
     Philosopher having gone out, the disciples asked what their master
     had meant to say. THSENG-TSEU responded, 'The doctrine of our
     Master consists solely in being upright of heart, and loving our
     neighbor as we love ourself.'"

About a Century later, the Hebrew law said,

     "If any man hate his neighbor ... then shall ye do unto him, as he
     had thought to do unto his brother ... Better is a neighbor that
     is near, than a brother afar off ... Thou shalt love thy neighbor
     as thyself."

In the same fifth century before Christ, SOCRATES the Grecian said,
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Three generations earlier, ZOROASTER had said to the Persians:

     "Offer up thy grateful prayers to the Lord, the most just and pure
     Ormuzd, the supreme and adorable God, who thus declared to his
     Prophet Zerdusht: 'Hold it not meet to do unto others what thou
     wouldst not desire done unto thyself; do that unto the people,
     which, when done to thyself, is not disagreeable unto thee.'"

The same doctrine had been long taught in the schools of Babylon,
Alexandria, and Jerusalem. A Pagan declared to the Pharisee HILLEL, that
he was ready to embrace the Jewish religion, if he could make known to
him in a few words a summary of the whole law of Moses. "That which thou
likest not done to thyself," said Hillel, "do it not unto thy neighbor.
Therein is all the law: the rest is nothing but the commentary upon it."

     "Nothing is more natural," said CONFUCIUS, "nothing more simple,
     than the principles of that morality which I endeavor, by salutary
     maxims, to inculcate in you ... It is humanity; which is to say,
     that universal charity among all of our species, without
     distinction. It is uprightness; that is, that rectitude of spirit
     and of heart, which makes one seek for truth in everything, and
     desire it, without deceiving one's self or others. It is, finally,
     sincerity or good faith; which is to say, that frankness, that
     openness of heart, tempered by self-reliance, which excludes all
     feints and all disguising, as much in speech as in action."

To diffuse useful information, to further intellectual refinement, sure
forerunner of moral improvement, to hasten the coming of the great day,
when the dawn of general knowledge shall chase away the lazy, lingering
mists of ignorance and error, even from the base of the great social
pyramid, is indeed a high calling, in which the most splendid talents
and consummate virtue may well press onward, eager to bear a part. From
the Masonic ranks ought to go forth those whose genius and not their
ancestry ennoble them, to open to all ranks the temple of science, and
by their own example to make the humblest men emulous to climb steps no
longer inaccessible, and enter the unfolded gates burning in the sun.

The highest intellectual cultivation is perfectly compatible with the
daily cares and toils of working-men. A keen relish for the most sublime
truths of science belongs alike to every class of mankind. And, as
philosophy was taught in the sacred groves of Athens, and under the
Portico, and in the old Temples of Egypt and India, so in our Lodges
ought Knowledge to be dispensed, the Sciences taught, and the Lectures
become like the teachings of Socrates and Plato, of Agassiz and Cousin.

Real knowledge never permitted either turbulence or unbelief; but its
progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration.
Whoso dreads these may well tremble; for he may be well assured that
their day is at length come, and must put to speedy flight the evil
spirits of tyranny and persecution, which haunted the long night now
gone down the sky. And it is to be hoped that the time will soon arrive,
when, as men will no longer suffer themselves to be led blindfolded in
ignorance, so will they no more yield to the vile principle of judging
and treating their fellow-creatures, not according to the intrinsic
merit of their _actions_, but according to the accidental and
involuntary coincidence of their _opinions_.

Whenever we come to treat with entire respect those who conscientiously
differ from ourselves, the only practical effect of a difference will
be, to make us enlighten the ignorance on one side or the other, from
which it springs, by instructing them, if it be theirs; ourselves, if it
be our own; to the end that the only kind of unanimity may be produced
which is desirable among rational beings,--the agreement proceeding from
full conviction after the freest discussion.

The Elu of Fifteen ought therefore to take the lead of his
fellow-citizen, not in frivolous amusements, not in the degrading
pursuits of the ambitious vulgar; but in the truly noble task of
enlightening the mass of his countrymen, and of leaving his own name
encircled, not with barbaric splendor, or attached to courtly gewgaws,
but illustrated by the honors most worthy of our rational nature;
coupled with the diffusion of knowledge, and gratefully pronounced by a
few, at least, whom his wise beneficence has rescued from ignorance and
vice.

We say to him, in the words of the great Roman: "Men in no respect so
nearly approach to the Deity, as when they confer benefits on men. To
serve and do good to as many as possible,--there is nothing greater in
your fortune than that you should be able, and nothing finer in your
nature, than that you should be desirous to do this." This is the true
mark for the aim of every man and Mason who either prizes the enjoyment
of pure happiness, or sets a right value upon a high and unsullied
renown. And if the benefactors of mankind, when they rest from their
noble labors, shall be permitted to enjoy hereafter, as an appropriate
reward of their virtue, the privilege of looking down upon the blessings
with which their exertions and charities, and perhaps their toils and
sufferings have clothed the scene of their former existence, it will
not, in a state of exalted purity and wisdom, be the founders of mighty
dynasties, the conquerors of new empires, the Cæsars, Alexanders, and
Tamerlanes; nor the mere Kings and Counsellors, Presidents and Senators,
who have lived for their party chiefly, and for their country only
incidentally, often sacrificing to their own aggrandizement or that of
their faction the good of their fellow-creatures;--it will not be they
who will be gratified by contemplating the monuments of their inglorious
fame; but those will enjoy that delight and march in that triumph, who
can trace the remote effects of their enlightened benevolence in the
improved condition of their species, and exult in the reflection, that
the change which they at last, perhaps after many years, survey, with
eyes that age and sorrow can make dim no more,--of Knowledge become
Power,--Virtue sharing that Empire,--Superstition dethroned, and Tyranny
exiled, is, if even only in some small and very slight degree, yet still
in _some_ degree, the fruit, precious if costly, and though late repaid
yet long enduring, of their own self-denial and strenuous exertion, of
their own mite of charity and aid to education wisely bestowed, and of
the hardships and hazards which they encountered here below.

Masonry requires of its Initiates and votaries nothing that is
impracticable. It does not demand that they should undertake to climb to
those lofty and sublime peaks of a theoretical and imaginary unpractical
virtue, high and cold and remote as the eternal snows that wrap the
shoulders of Chimborazo, and at least as inaccessible as they. It asks
that alone to be done which is easy to be done. It overtasks no one's
strength, and asks no one to go beyond his means and capacities. It does
not expect one whose business or profession yields him little more than
the wants of himself and his family require, and whose time is
necessarily occupied by his daily vocations, to abandon or neglect the
business by which he and his children live, and devote himself and his
means to the diffusion of knowledge among men. It does not expect him to
publish books for the people, or to lecture, to the ruin of his private
affairs, or to found academies and colleges, build up libraries, and
entitle himself to statues.

But it does require and expect every man of us to do something, within
and according to his means; and there is no Mason who _cannot_ do _some_
thing, if not alone, then by combination and association.

If a Lodge cannot aid in founding a school or an academy it can still do
something. It can educate one boy or girl, at least, the child of some
poor or departed brother. And it should never be forgotten, that in the
poorest unregarded child that seems abandoned to ignorance and vice
_may_ slumber the virtues of a Socrates, the intellect of a Bacon or a
Bossuet, the genius of a Shakespeare, the capacity to benefit mankind of
a Washington; and that in rescuing him from the mire in which he is
plunged, and giving him the means of education and development, the
Lodge that does it may be the direct and immediate means of conferring
upon the world as great a boon as that given it by John Faust the boy of
Mentz; may perpetuate the liberties of a country and change the
destinies of nations, and write a new chapter in the history of the
world.

For we never know the importance of the act we do. The daughter of
Pharaoh little thought what she was doing for the human race, and the
vast unimaginable consequences that depended on her charitable act, when
she drew the little child of a Hebrew woman from among the rushes that
grew along the bank of the Nile, and determined to rear it as if it were
her own.

How often has an act of charity, costing the doer little, given to the
world a great painter, a great musician, a great inventor! How often has
such an act developed the ragged boy into the benefactor of his race! On
what small and apparently unimportant circumstances have turned and
hinged the fates of the world's great conquerors. There is no law that
limits the returns that shall be reaped from a single good deed. The
widow's mite may not only be as acceptable to God, but may produce as
great results as the rich man's costly offering. The poorest boy, helped
by benevolence, may come to lead armies, to control senates, to decide
on peace and war, to dictate to cabinets; and his magnificent thoughts
and noble words may be law many years hereafter to millions of men yet
unborn.

But the opportunity to effect a great good does not often occur to any
one. It is worse than folly for one to lie idle and inert, and expect
the accident to befall him, by which his influences shall live forever.
He can expect that to happen, only in consequence of one or many or all
of a long series of acts. He can expect to benefit the world only as men
attain other results; by continuance by persistence, by a steady and
uniform habit of laboring for the enlightenment of the world, to the
extent of his means and capacity.

For it is, in all instances, by steady labor, by giving enough of
application to our work, and having enough of time for the doing of it,
by regular pains-taking, and the plying of constant assiduities, and not
by any process of legerdemain, that we secure the strength and the
staple of real excellence. It was thus that Demosthenes, clause after
clause, and sentence after sentence, elaborated to the uttermost his
immortal orations. It was thus that Newton pioneered his way, by the
steps of an ascending geometry, to the mechanism of the Heavens, and Le
Verrier added a planet to our Solar System.

It is a most erroneous opinion that those who have left the most
stupendous monuments of intellect behind them, were not differently
exercised from the rest of the species, but only differently gifted;
that they signalized themselves only by their talent, and hardly ever by
their industry; for it is in truth to the most strenuous application of
those commonplace faculties which are diffused among all, that they are
indebted for the glories which now encircle their remembrance and their
name.

We must not imagine it to be a vulgarizing of genius, that it should be
lighted up in any other way than by a direct inspiration from Heaven;
nor overlook the steadfastness of purpose, the devotion to some single
but great object, the unweariedness of labor that is given, not in
convulsive and preternatural throes, but by little and little as the
strength of the mind may bear it; the accumulation of many small
efforts, instead of a few grand and gigantic, but perhaps irregular
movements, on the part of energies that are marvellous; by which former
alone the great results are brought out that write their enduring
records on the face of the earth and in the history of nations and of
man.

We must not overlook these elements, to which genius owes the best and
proudest of her achievements; nor imagine that qualities so generally
possessed as patience and pains-taking, and resolute industry, have no
share in upholding a distinction so illustrious as that of the
benefactor of his kind.

We must not forget that great results are most ordinarily produced by an
aggregate of many contributions and exertions; as it is the invisible
particles of vapor, each separate and distinct from the other, that,
rising from the oceans and their bays and gulfs, from lakes and rivers,
and wide morasses and overflowed plains, float away as clouds, and
distill upon the earth in dews, and fall in showers and rain and snows
upon the broad plains and rude mountains, and make the great navigable
streams that are the arteries along which flows the life-blood of a
country.

And so Masonry can do much, if each Mason be content to do his share,
and if their united efforts are directed by wise counsels to a common
purpose. "It is for God and for Omnipotency to do mighty things in a
moment; but by degrees to grow to greatness is the course that He hath
left for man."

If Masonry will but be true to her mission, and Masons to their promises
and obligations--if, re-entering vigorously upon a career of
beneficence, she and they will but pursue it earnestly and
unfalteringly, remembering that our contributions to the cause of
charity and education then deserve the greatest credit when it costs us
something, the curtailing of a comfort or the relinquishment of a
luxury, to make them--if we will but give aid to what were once
Masonry's great schemes for human improvement, not fitfully and
spasmodically, but regularly and incessantly, as the vapors rise and the
springs run, and as the sun rises and the stars come up into the
heavens, then we may be sure that great results will be attained and a
great work done. And then it will most surely be seen that Masonry is
not effete or impotent, nor degenerated nor drooping to a fatal decay.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]



XI.

SUBLIME ELECT OF THE TWELVE;
OR
PRINCE AMETH.

[Elu of the Twelve.]


The duties of a Prince Ameth are, to be earnest, true, reliable, and
sincere; to protect the people against illegal impositions and
exactions; to contend for their political rights, and to see, as far as
he may or can, that those bear the burdens who reap the benefits of the
Government.

You are to be true unto all men.

You are to be frank and sincere in all things.

You are to be earnest in doing whatever it is your duty to do.

And no man must repent that he has relied upon your resolve, your
profession, or your word.

The great distinguishing characteristic of a Mason is sympathy with his
kind. He recognizes in the human race one great family, all connected
with himself by those invisible links, and that mighty net-work of
circumstance, forged and woven by God.

Feeling that sympathy, it is his first Masonic duty to serve his
fellow-man. At his first entrance into the Order, he ceases to be
isolated, and becomes one of a great brotherhood, assuming new duties
toward every Mason that lives, as every Mason at the same moment assumes
them toward him.

Nor are those duties on his part confined to Masons alone. He assumes
many in regard to his country, and especially toward the great,
suffering masses of the common people; for they too are his brethren,
and God hears them, inarticulate as the moanings of their misery are. By
all proper means, of persuasion and influence, and otherwise, if the
occasion and emergency require, he is bound to defend them against
oppression, and tyrannical and illegal exactions.

He labors equally to defend and to improve the people. He does not
flatter them to mislead them, nor fawn upon them to rule them, nor
conceal his opinions to humor them, nor tell them that they can never
err, and that their voice is the voice of God. He knows that the safety
of every free government, and its continuance and perpetuity depend upon
the virtue and intelligence of the common people; and that, unless their
liberty is of such a kind as arms can neither procure nor take away;
unless it is the fruit of manly courage, of justice, temperance, and
generous virtue--unless, being such, it has taken deep root in the minds
and hearts of the people at large, there will not long be wanting those
who will snatch from them by treachery what they have acquired by arms
or institutions.

He knows that if, after being released from the toils of war, the people
neglect the arts of peace; if their peace and liberty be a state of
warfare; if war be their only virtue, and the summit of their praise,
they will soon find peace the most adverse to their interests. It will
be only a more distressing war; and that which they imagined liberty
will be the worst of slavery. For, unless by the means of knowledge and
morality, not frothy and loquacious, but genuine, unadulterated, and
sincere, they clear the horizon of the mind from those mists of error
and passion which arise from ignorance and vice, they will always have
those who will bend their necks to the yoke as if they were brutes; who,
notwithstanding all their triumphs, will put them up to the highest
bidder, as if they were mere booty made in war; and find an exuberant
source of wealth and power, in the people's ignorance, prejudice, and
passions.

The people that does not subjugate the propensity of the wealthy to
avarice, ambition, and sensuality, expel luxury from them and their
families, keep down pauperism, diffuse knowledge among the poor, and
labor to raise the abject from the mire of vice and low indulgence, and
to keep the industrious from starving in sight of luxurious festivals,
will find that it has cherished, in that avarice, ambition, sensuality,
selfishness, and luxury of the one class, and that degradation, misery,
drunkenness, ignorance, and brutalization of the other, more stubborn
and intractable despots at home than it ever encountered in the field;
and even its very bowels will be continually teeming with the
intolerable progeny of tyrants.

These are the first enemies to be subdued; this constitutes the campaign
of Peace; these are triumphs, difficult indeed, but bloodless; and far
more honorable than those trophies which are purchased only by slaughter
and rapine; and if not victors in this service, it is in vain to have
been victorious over the despotic enemy in the field.

For if any people thinks that it is a grander; a more beneficial, or a
wiser policy, to invent subtle expedients by stamps and imposts, for
increasing the revenue and draining the life-blood of an impoverished
people; to multiply its naval and military force; to rival in craft the
ambassadors of foreign states; to plot the swallowing up of foreign
territory; to make crafty treaties and alliances; to rule prostrate
states and abject provinces by fear and force; than to administer
unpolluted justice to the people, to relieve the condition and raise the
estate of the toiling masses, redress the injured and succor the
distressed and conciliate the discontented, and speedily restore to
every one his own; then that people is involved in a cloud of error, and
will too late perceive, when the illusion of these mighty benefits has
vanished, that in neglecting these, which it thought inferior
considerations, it has only been precipitating its own ruin and despair.

Unfortunately, every age presents its own special problem, most
difficult and often impossible to solve; and that which this age offers,
and forces upon the consideration of all thinking men, is this--how, in
a populous and wealthy country, blessed with free institutions and a
constitutional government, are the great masses of the manual-labor
class to be enabled to have steady work at fair wages, to be kept from
starvation, and their children from vice and debauchery, and to be
furnished with that degree, not of mere reading and writing, but of
_knowledge_, that shall fit them intelligently to do the duties and
exercise the privileges of freemen; even to be intrusted with the
dangerous right of suffrage?

For though we do not know why God, being infinitely merciful as well as
wise, has so ordered it, it seems to be unquestionably his law, that
even in civilized and Christian countries, the large mass of the
population shall be fortunate, if, during their whole life, from infancy
to old age, in health and sickness, they have enough of the commonest
and coarsest food to keep themselves and their children from the
continual gnawing of hunger--enough of the commonest and coarsest
clothing to protect themselves and their little ones from indecent
exposure and the bitter cold; and if they have over their heads the
rudest shelter.

And He seems to have enacted this law--which no human community has yet
found the means to abrogate--that when a country becomes populous,
capital shall concentrate in the hands of a limited number of persons,
and labor become more and more at its mercy, until mere manual labor,
that of the weaver and ironworker, and other artisans, eventually ceases
to be worth more than a bare subsistence, and often, in great cities and
vast extents of country, not even that, and goes or crawls about in
rags, begging, and starving for want of work.

While every ox and horse can find work, and is worth being fed, it is
not always so with man. To be employed, to have a chance to work at
anything like fair wages, becomes the great engrossing object of a man's
life. The capitalist can live without employing the laborer, and
discharges him whenever that labor ceases to be profitable. At the
moment when the weather is most inclement, provisions dearest, and rents
highest, he turns him off to starve. If the day-laborer is taken sick,
his wages stop. When old, he has no pension to retire upon. His children
cannot be sent to school; for before their bones are hardened they must
get to work lest they starve. The man, strong and able-bodied, works for
a shilling or two a day, and the woman shivering over her little pan of
coals, when the mercury drops far below zero, after her hungry children
have wailed themselves to sleep, sews by the dim light of her lonely
candle, for a bare pittance, selling her life to him who bargained only
for the work of her needle.

Fathers and mothers slay their children, to have the burial-fees, that
with the price of one child's life they may continue life in those that
survive. Little girls with bare feet sweep the street crossings, when
the winter wind pinches them, and beg piteously for pennies of those who
wear warm furs. Children grow up in squalid misery and brutal ignorance;
want compels virgin and wife to prostitute themselves; women starve and
freeze, and lean up against the walls of workhouses, like bundles of
foul rags, all night long, and night after night, when the cold rain
falls, and there chances to be no room for them within; and hundreds of
families are crowded into a single building, rife with horrors and
teeming with foul air and pestilence; where men, women and children
huddle together in their filth; all ages and all colors sleeping
indiscriminately together; while, in a great, free, Republican State, in
the full vigor of its youth and strength, one person in every seventeen
is a pauper receiving charity.

How to deal with this apparently inevitable evil and mortal disease is
by far the most important of all social problems. What is to be done
with pauperism and over-supply of labor? How is the life of any country
to last, when brutality and drunken semi-barbarism vote, and hold
offices in their gift, and by fit representatives of themselves control
a government? How, if not wisdom and authority, but turbulence and low
vice are to exalt to senatorships miscreants reeking with the odors and
pollution of the hell, the prize-ring, the brothel, and the
stock-exchange, where gambling is legalized and rascality is laudable?

Masonry will do all in its power, by direct exertion and co-operation,
to improve and inform as well as to protect the people; to better their
physical condition, relieve their miseries, supply their wants, and
minister to their necessities. Let every Mason in this good work do all
that may be in his power.

For it is true now, as it always was and always will be, that to be free
is the same thing as to be pious, to be wise, to be temperate and just,
to be frugal and abstinent, and to be magnanimous and brave; and to be
the opposite of all these is the same as to be a slave. And it usually
happens, by the appointment, and, as it were, retributive justice of the
Deity, that people which cannot govern themselves, and moderate their
passions, but crouch under the slavery of their lusts and vices, are
delivered up to the sway of those whom they abhor, and made to submit to
an involuntary servitude.

And it is also sanctioned by the dictates of justice and by the
constitution of Nature, that he who, from the imbecility or derangement
of his intellect, is incapable of governing himself, should, like a
minor, be committed to the government of another.

Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great
brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore
bound to sympathize with each other.

For no tower of Pride was ever yet high enough to lift its possessor
above the trials and fears and frailities of humanity. No human hand
ever built the wall, nor ever shall, that will keep out affliction,
pain, and infirmity. Sickness and sorrow, trouble and death, are
dispensations that level everything. They know none, high nor low. The
chief wants of life, the great and grave necessities of the human soul,
give exemption to none. They make all poor, all weak. They put
supplication in the mouth of every human being, as truly as in that of
the meanest beggar.

But the principle of misery is not an evil principle. We err, and the
consequences teach us wisdom. All elements, all the laws of things
around us, minister to this end; and through the paths of painful error
and mistake, it is the design of Providence to lead us to truth and
happiness. If erring only taught us to err; if mistakes confirmed us in
imprudence; if the miseries caused by vicious indulgence had a natural
tendency to make us more abject slaves of vice, then suffering would be
wholly evil. But, on the contrary, all tends and is designed to produce
amendment and improvement. Suffering is the discipline of virtue; of
that which is infinitely better than happiness, and yet embraces in
itself all essential happiness. It nourishes, invigorates, and perfects
it. Virtue is the prize of the severely-contested race and hard-fought
battle; and it is worth all the fatigue and wounds of the conflict. Man
should go forth with a brave and strong heart, to battle with calamity.
He is to master it, and not let it become _his_ master. He is not to
forsake the post of trial and of peril; but to stand firmly in his lot,
until the great word of Providence shall bid him fly, or bid him sink.
With resolution and courage the Mason is to do the work which it is
appointed for him to do, looking through the dark cloud of human
calamity, to the end that rises high and bright before him. The lot of
sorrow is great and sublime. None suffer forever, nor for nought, nor
without purpose. It is the ordinance of God's wisdom, and of His
Infinite Love, to procure for us infinite happiness and glory.

Virtue is the truest liberty; nor is he free who stoops to passions; nor
he in bondage who serves a noble master. Examples are the best and most
lasting lectures; virtue the best example. He that hath done good deeds
and set good precedents, in sincerity, is happy. Time shall not outlive
his worth. He lives truly after death, whose good deeds are his pillars
of remembrance; and no day but adds some grains to his heap of glory.
Good works are seeds, that after sowing return us a continual harvest;
and the memory of noble actions is more enduring than monuments of
marble.

Life is a school. The world is neither prison nor penitentiary, nor a
palace of ease, nor an amphitheatre for games and spectacles; but a
place of instruction, and discipline. Life is given for moral and
spiritual training; and the entire course of the great school of life is
an education for virtue, happiness, and a future existence. The periods
of Life are its terms; all human conditions, its forms; all human
employments, its lessons. Families are the primary departments of this
moral education; the various circles of society, its advanced stages;
Kingdoms and Republics, its universities.

Riches and Poverty, Gayeties and Sorrows, Marriages and Funerals, the
ties of life bound or broken, fit and fortunate, or untoward and
painful, are all lessons. Events are not blindly and carelessly flung
together. Providence does not school one man, and screen another from
the fiery trial of its lessons. It has neither rich favorites nor poor
victims. One event happeneth to all. One end and one design concern and
urge all men.

The prosperous man has been at school. Perhaps he has thought that it
was a great thing, and he a great personage; but he has been merely a
pupil. He thought, perhaps, that he was Master, and had nothing to do,
but to direct and command; but there was ever a Master above him, the
Master of Life. _He_ looks not at our splendid state, or our many
pretensions, nor at the aids and appliances of our learning; but at our
learning itself. He puts the poor and the rich upon the same form; and
knows no difference between them, but their progress.

If from prosperity we have learned moderation, temperance, candor,
modesty, gratitude to God, and generosity to man, then we are entitled
to be honored and rewarded. If we have learned selfishness,
self-indulgence, wrong-doing, and vice, to forget and overlook our less
fortunate brother, and to scoff at the providence of God, then we are
unworthy and dishonored, though we have been nursed in affluence, or
taken our degrees from the lineage of an hundred noble descents; as
truly so, in the eye of Heaven, and of all right-thinking men, as though
we lay, victims of beggary and disease, in the hospital, by the hedge,
or on the dung-hill. The most ordinary human equity looks not at the
school, but at the scholar; and the equity of Heaven will not look
beneath that mark.

The poor man also is at school. Let him take care that he learn, rather
than complain. Let him hold to his integrity, his candor, and his
kindness of heart. Let him beware of envy, and of bondage, and keep his
self-respect. The body's toil is nothing. Let him beware of the mind's
drudgery and degradation. While he betters his condition if he can, let
him be more anxious to better his soul. Let him be willing, while poor,
and even if always poor, to learn poverty's great lessons, fortitude,
cheerfulness, contentment, and implicit confidence in God's Providence.
With these, and patience, calmness, self-command, disinterestedness, and
affectionate kindness, the humble dwelling may be hallowed, and made
more dear and noble than the loftiest palace. Let him, above all things,
see that he lose not his independence. Let him not cast himself, a
creature poorer than the poor, an indolent, helpless, despised beggar,
on the kindness of others. Every man should choose to have God for his
Master, rather than man; and escape not from this school, either by
dishonesty or alms-taking, lest he fall into that state, worse than
disgrace, where he can have no respect for himself.

The ties of Society teach us to love one another. That is a miserable
society, where the absence of affectionate kindness is sought to be
supplied by punctilious decorum, graceful urbanity, and polished
insincerity; where ambition, jealousy, and distrust rule, in place of
simplicity, confidence, and kindness.

So, too, the social state teaches modesty and gentleness; and from
neglect, and notice unworthily bestowed on others, and injustice, and
the world's failure to appreciate us, we learn patience and quietness,
to be superior to society's opinion, not cynical and bitter, but gentle,
candid, and affectionate still.

Death is the great Teacher, stern, cold, inexorable, irresistible; whom
the collected might of the world cannot stay or ward off. The breath,
that parting from the lips of King or beggar, scarcely stirs the hushed
air, cannot be bought, or brought back for a moment, with the wealth of
Empires. What a lesson is this, teaching our frailty and feebleness, and
an Infinite Power beyond us! It is a fearful lesson, that never becomes
familiar. It walks through the earth in dread mystery, and lays its
hands upon all. It is a universal lesson, that is read everywhere and by
all men. Its message comes every year and every day. The past years are
crowded with its sad and solemn mementoes; and death's finger traces its
handwriting upon the walls of every human habitation.

It teaches us Duty; to act our part well; to fulfill the work assigned
us. When one is dying, and after he is dead, there is but one question:
_Has he lived well?_ There is no evil in death but that which life
makes.

There are hard lessons in the school of God's Providence; and yet the
school of life is carefully adjusted, in all its arrangements and tasks,
to man's powers and passions. There is no extravagance in its teachings;
nor is anything done for the sake of present effect. The whole course of
human life is a conflict with difficulties; and, if rightly conducted, a
progress in improvement. It is never too late for man to learn. Not part
only, but the whole, of life is a school. There never comes a time, even
amidst the decays of age, when it is fit to lay aside the eagerness of
acquisition, or the cheerfulness of endeavor. Man walks, all through the
course of life, in patience and strife, and sometimes in darkness; for,
from patience is to come perfection; from strife, triumph is to issue;
from the cloud of darkness the lightning is to flash that shall open the
way to eternity.

Let the Mason be faithful in the school of life, and to all its lessons!
Let him not learn nothing, nor care not whether he learns or not. Let
not the years pass over him, witnesses of only his sloth and
indifference; or see him zealous to acquire everything but virtue. Nor
let him labor only for himself; nor forget that the humblest man that
lives is his brother, and hath a claim on his sympathies and kind
offices; and that beneath the rough garments which labor wears may beat
hearts as noble as throb under the stars of princes.

    God, who counts by souls, not stations,
      Loves and pities you and me;
    For to Him all vain distinctions
      Are as pebbles on the sea.

Nor are the other duties inculcated in this Degree of less importance.
Truth, a Mason is early told, is a Divine attribute and the foundation
of every virtue; and frankness, reliability, sincerity,
straightforwardness, plain-dealing, are but different modes in which
Truth develops itself. The dead, the absent, the innocent, and those
that trust him, no Mason will deceive willingly. To all these he owes a
nobler justice, in that they are the most certain trials of human
Equity. Only the most abandoned of men, said Cicero will deceive him,
who would have remained uninjured if he had not trusted. All the noble
deeds that have beat their marches through succeeding ages have
proceeded from men of truth and genuine courage. The man who is always
true is both virtuous and wise; and thus possesses the greatest guards
of safety: for the law has not power to strike the virtuous; nor can
fortune subvert the wise.

The bases of Masonry being morality and virtue, it is by studying one
and practising the other, that the conduct of a Mason becomes
irreproachable. The good of Humanity being its principal object,
disinterestedness is one of the first virtues that it requires of its
members; for that is the 'source of justice and beneficence.

To pity the misfortunes of others; to be humble, but without meanness;
to be proud, but without arrogance; to abjure every sentiment of hatred
and revenge; to show himself magnanimous and liberal, without
ostentation and without profusion; to be the enemy of vice; to pay
homage to wisdom and virtue; to respect innocence; to be constant and
patient in adversity, and modest in prosperity; to avoid every
irregularity that stains the soul and distempers the body--it is by
following these precepts that a Mason will become a good citizen, a
faithful husband, a tender father, an obedient son, and a true brother;
will honor friendship, and fulfill with ardor the duties which virtue
and the social relations impose upon him.

It is because Masonry imposes upon us these duties that it is properly
and significantly styled _work_; and he who imagines that he becomes a
Mason by merely taking the first two or three Degrees, and that he may,
having leisurely stepped upon that small elevation, thenceforward
worthily wear the honors of Masonry, without labor or exertion, or
self-denial or sacrifice, and that there is nothing to be _done_ in
Masonry, is strangely deceived.

Is it true that nothing remains to be done in Masonry?

Does one Brother no longer proceed by law against another Brother of his
Lodge, in regard to matters that could be easily settled within the
Masonic family circle?

Has the duel, that hideous heritage of barbarism, interdicted among
Brethren by our fundamental laws, and denounced by the municipal code,
yet disappeared from the soil we inhabit? Do Masons of high rank
religiously refrain from it; or do they not, bowing to a corrupt public
opinion, submit to its arbitrament, despite the scandal which it
occasions to the Order, and in violation of the feeble restraint of
their oath?

Do Masons no longer form uncharitable opinions of their Brethren, enter
harsh judgments against them, and judge themselves by one rule and their
Brethren by another?

Has Masonry any well-regulated system of charity? Has it done that which
it should have done for the cause of education? Where are its schools,
its academies, its colleges, its hospitals, and infirmaries?

Are political controversies now conducted with no violence and
bitterness?

Do Masons refrain from defaming and denouncing their Brethren who differ
with them in religious or political opinions?

What grand social problems or useful projects engage our attention at
our communications? Where in our Lodges are lectures habitually
delivered for the real instruction of the Brethren? Do not our sessions
pass in the discussion of minor matters of business, the settlement of
points of order and questions of mere administration, and the admission
and advancement of Candidates, whom after their admission we take no
pains to instruct?

In what Lodge are our ceremonies explained and elucidated; corrupted as
they are by time, until their true features can scarcely be
distinguished; and where are those great primitive truths of revelation
taught, which Masonry has preserved to the world?

We have high dignities and sounding titles. Do their possessors qualify
themselves to enlighten the world in respect to the aims and objects of
Masonry? Descendants of those Initiates who governed empires, does your
influence enter into practical life and operate efficiently in behalf of
well-regulated and constitutional liberty?

Your debates should be but friendly conversations. You need concord,
union, and peace. Why then do you retain among you men who excite
rivalries and jealousies; why permit great and violent controversy and
ambitious pretensions? How do your own words and acts agree? If your
Masonry is a nullity, how can you exercise any influence on others?

Continually you praise each other, and utter elaborate and high-wrought
eulogies upon the Order. Everywhere you assume that you are what you
should be, and nowhere do you look upon yourselves as you are. Is it
true that all our actions are so many acts of homage to virtue? Explore
the recesses of your hearts; let us examine ourselves with an impartial
eye, and make answer to our own questioning! Can we bear to ourselves
the consoling testimony that we always rigidly perform our duties; that
we even _half_ perform them?

Let us away with this odious self-flattery! Let us be men, if we cannot
be sages! The laws of Masonry, above others excellent, cannot wholly
change men's natures. They enlighten them, they point out the true way;
but they can lead them in it, only by repressing the fire of their
passions, and subjugating their selfishness. Alas, these conquer, and
Masonry is forgotten!

After praising each other all our lives, there are always excellent
Brethren, who, over our coffins, shower unlimited eulogies. Every one of
us who dies, however useless his life, has been a model of all the
virtues, a very child of the celestial light. In Egypt, among our old
Masters, where Masonry was more cultivated than vanity, no one could
gain admittance to the sacred asylum of the tomb until he had passed
under the most solemn judgment. A grave tribunal sat in judgment upon
all, even the kings. They said to the dead, "Whoever thou art, give
account to thy country of thy actions! What hast thou done with thy time
and life? The law interrogates thee, thy country hears thee, Truth sits
in judgment on thee!" Princes came there to be judged, escorted only by
their virtues and their vices. A public accuser recounted the history of
the dead man's life, and threw the blaze of the torch of truth on all
his actions. If it were adjudged that he had led an evil life, his
memory was condemned in the presence of the nation, and his body was
denied the honors of sepulture. What a lesson the old Masonry taught to
the sons of the people!

Is it true that Masonry is effete; that the acacia, withered, affords no
shade; that Masonry no longer marches in the advance-guard of Truth? No.
Is freedom yet universal? Have ignorance and prejudice disappeared from
the earth? Are there no longer enmities among men? Do cupidity and
falsehood no longer exist? Do toleration and harmony prevail among
religious and political sects? There are works yet left for Masonry to
accomplish, greater than the twelve labors of Hercules; to advance ever
resolutely and steadily; to enlighten the minds of the people, to
reconstruct society, to reform the laws, and improve the public morals.
The eternity in front of it is as infinite as the one behind. And
Masonry cannot cease to labor in the cause of social progress, without
ceasing to be true to itself, without ceasing to be Masonry.

[Illustration]

[Illustration: T.D.I.C.G.]



XII.

GRAND MASTER ARCHITECT.

[Master Architect.]


The great duties that are inculcated by the lessons taught by the
working-instruments of a Grand Master Architect, demanding so much of
us, and taking for granted the capacity to perform them faithfully and
fully, bring us at once to reflect upon the dignity of human nature, and
the vast powers and capacities of the human soul; and to that theme we
invite your attention in this Degree. Let us begin to rise from earth
toward the Stars.

Evermore the human soul struggles toward the light, toward God, and the
Infinite. It is especially so in its afflictions. Words go but a little
way into the depths of sorrow. The thoughts that writhe there in
silence, that go into the stillness of Infinitude and Eternity, have no
emblems. Thoughts enough come there, such as no tongue ever uttered.
They do not so much want human sympathy, as higher help. There is a
loneliness in deep sorrow which the Deity alone can relieve. Alone, the
mind wrestles with the great problem of calamity, and seeks the solution
from the Infinite Providence of Heaven, and thus is led directly to God.

There are many things in us of which we are not distinctly conscious. To
waken that slumbering consciousness into life, and so to lead the soul
up to the Light, is one office of every great ministration to human
nature, whether its vehicle be the pen, the pencil, or the tongue. We
are unconscious of the intensity and awfulness of the life within us.
Health and sickness, joy and sorrow, success and disappointment, life
and death, love and loss, are familiar words upon our lips; and we do
not know to what depths they point within us.

We seem never to know what _any_ thing means or is worth until we have
lost it. Many an organ, nerve, and fibre in our bodily frame performs
its silent part for years, and we are quite unconscious of its value. It
is not until it is injured that we discover that value, and find how
essential it was to our happiness and comfort. We never know the full
significance of the words, "property," "ease," and "health;" the wealth
of meaning in the fond epithets, "parent," "child," "beloved," and
"friend," until the thing or the person is taken away; until, in place
of the bright, visible being, comes the awful and desolate shadow, where
_nothing_ is: where we stretch out our hands in vain, and strain our
eyes upon dark and dismal vacuity. Yet, in that vacuity, we do not
_lose_ the object that we loved. It becomes only the more real to us.
Our blessings not only brighten when they depart, but are fixed in
enduring reality; and love and friendship receive their everlasting seal
under the cold impress of death.

A dim consciousness of infinite mystery and grandeur lies beneath all
the commonplace of life. There is an awfulness and a majesty around us,
in all our little worldliness. The rude peasant from the Apennines,
asleep at the foot of a pillar in a majestic Roman church, seems not to
hear or see, but to dream only of the herd he feeds or the ground he
tills in the mountains. But the choral symphonies fall softly upon his
ear, and the gilded arches are dimly seen through his half-slumbering
eyelids.

So the soul, however given up to the occupations of daily life, cannot
quite lose the sense of where it is, and of what is above it and around
it. The scene of its actual engagements may be small; the path of its
steps, beaten and familiar; the objects it handles, easily spanned, and
quite worn out with daily uses. So it may be, and amidst such things
that we all live. So we live our little life; but Heaven is above us and
all around and close to us; and Eternity is before us and behind us; and
suns and stars are silent witnesses and watchers over us. We are
enfolded by Infinity. Infinite Powers and Infinite spaces lie all around
us. The dread arch of Mystery spreads over us, and no voice ever pierced
it. Eternity is enthroned amid Heaven's myriad starry heights; and no
utterance or word ever came from those far-off and silent spaces. Above,
is that awful majesty; around us, everywhere, it stretches off into
infinity; and beneath it is this little struggle of life, this poor
day's conflict, this busy ant-hill of Time.

But from that ant-hill, not only the talk of the streets, the sounds of
music and revelling, the stir and tread of a multitude, the shout of joy
and the shriek of agony go up into the silent and all-surrounding
Infinitude; but also, amidst the stir and noise of visible life, from
the inmost bosom of the visible man, there goes up an imploring call, a
beseeching cry, an asking, unuttered, and unutterable, for revelation,
wailingly and in almost speechless agony praying the dread arch of
mystery to break, and the stars that roll above the waves of mortal
trouble, to speak; the enthroned majesty of those awful heights to find
a voice; the mysterious and reserved heavens to come near; and all to
tell us what they alone know; to give us information of the loved and
lost; to make known to us what we are, and whither we are going.

Man is encompassed with a dome of incomprehensible wonders. In him and
about him is that which should fill his life with majesty and
sacredness. Something of sublimity and sanctity has thus flashed down
from heaven into the heart of every one that lives. There is no being so
base and abandoned but hath some traits of that sacredness left upon
him; something, so much perhaps in discordance with his general repute,
that he hides it from all around him; some sanctuary in his soul, where
no one may enter; some sacred inclosure, where the memory of a child is,
or the image of a venerated parent, or the remembrance of a pure love,
or the echo of some word of kindness once spoken to him; an echo that
will never die away.

Life is no negative, or superficial or worldly existence. Our steps are
evermore haunted with thoughts, far beyond their own range, which some
have regarded as the reminiscences of a pre-existent state. So it is
with us all, in the beaten and worn track of this worldly pilgrimage.
There is more here, than the world we live in. It is not all of life to
live. An unseen and infinite presence is here; a sense of something
greater than we possess; a seeking, through all the void wastes of life,
for a good beyond it; a crying out of the heart for interpretation; a
memory of the dead, touching continually some vibrating thread in this
great tissue of mystery.

We all not only have better intimations, but are capable of better
things than we know. The pressure of some great emergency would develop
in us powers, beyond the worldly bias of our spirits; and Heaven so
deals with us, from time to time, as to call forth those better things.
There is hardly a family in the world so selfish, but that, if one in it
were doomed to die--one, to be selected by the others,--it would be
utterly impossible for its members, parents and children, to choose out
that victim; but that each would say, "I will die; but I cannot choose."
And in how many, if that dire extremity had come, would not one and
another step forth, freed from the vile meshes of ordinary selfishness,
and say, like the Roman father and son, "Let the blow fall on me!" There
are greater and better things in us all, than the world takes account
of, or than _we_ take note of; if we would but find them out. And it is
one part of our Masonic culture to _find_ these traits of power and
sublime devotion, to revive these faded impressions of generosity and
self-sacrifice, the almost squandered bequests of God's love and
kindness to our souls; and to induce us to yield ourselves to their
guidance and control.

Upon all conditions of men presses down one impartial law. To all
situations, to all fortunes, high or low, the _mind_ gives their
character. They are, in effect, not what they are in themselves, but
what they are to the feeling of their possessors. The King may be mean,
degraded, miserable; the slave of ambition, fear, voluptuousness, and
every low passion. The Peasant may be the real Monarch, the moral master
of his fate, a free and lofty being, more than a Prince in happiness,
more than a King in honor.

Man is no bubble upon the sea of his fortunes, helpless and
irresponsible upon the tide of events. Out of the same circumstances,
different men bring totally different results. The same difficulty,
distress, poverty, or misfortune, that breaks down one man, builds up
another and makes him strong. It is the very attribute and glory of a
man, that he can bend the circumstances of his condition to the
intellectual and moral purposes of his nature, and it is the power and
mastery of his will that chiefly distinguish him from the brute.

The faculty of moral will, developed in the child, is a new element of
his nature. It is a new power brought upon the scene, and a ruling
power, delegated from Heaven. Never was a human being sunk so low that
he had not, by God's gift, the power to rise. Because God commands him
to rise, it is certain that he _can_ rise. Every man has the power, and
should use it, to make all situations, trials, and temptations
instruments to promote his virtue and happiness; and is so far from
being the creature of circumstances, that _he_ creates and controls
_them_, making them to be all that they are, of evil or of good, to him
as a moral being.

Life is what we make it, and the world is what we make it. The eyes of
the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation;
but very different are the aspects which it bears to them. To the one,
it is all beauty and gladness; the waves of ocean roll in light, and the
mountains are covered with day. Life, to him, flashes, rejoicing, upon
every flower and every tree that trembles in the breeze. There is more
to him, everywhere, than the eye sees; a presence of profound joy on
hill and valley, and bright, dancing water. The other idly or mournfully
gazes at the same scene, and everything wears a dull, dim, and sickly
aspect. The murmuring of the brooks is a discord to him, the great roar
of the sea has an angry and threatening emphasis, the solemn music of
the pines sings the requiem of his departed happiness; the cheerful
light shines garishly upon his eyes and offends him. The great train of
the seasons passes before him like a funeral procession; and he sighs,
and turns impatiently away. The eye makes that which it looks upon; the
ear makes its own melodies and discords; the world without reflects the
world within.

Let the Mason never forget that life and the world are what we make them
by our social character; by our adaptation, or want of adaptation to the
social conditions, relationships, and pursuits of the world. To the
selfish, the cold, and the insensible, to the haughty and presuming, to
the proud, who demand more than they are likely to receive, to the
jealous, ever afraid they shall not receive enough, to those who are
unreasonably sensitive about the good or ill opinions of others, to all
violators of the social laws, the rude, the violent, the dishonest, and
the sensual,--to all these, the social condition, from its very nature,
will present annoyances, disappointments, and pains, appropriate to
their several characters. The benevolent affections will not revolve
around selfishness; the cold-hearted must expect to meet coldness; the
proud, haughtiness; the passionate, anger; and the violent, rudeness.
Those who forget the rights of others, must not be surprised if their
own are forgotten; and those who stoop to the lowest embraces of sense
must not wonder, if others are not concerned to find their prostrate
honor, and lift it up to the remembrance and respect of the world.

To the gentle, many will be gentle; to the kind, many will be kind. A
good man will find that there is goodness in the world; an honest man
will find that there is honesty in the world; and a man of principle
will find principle and integrity in the minds of others.

There are no blessings which the mind may not convert into the bitterest
of evils; and no trials which it may not transform into the noblest and
divinest blessings. There are no temptations from which assailed virtue
may not gain strength, instead of falling before them, vanquished and
subdued. It is true that temptations have a great power, and virtue
often falls; but the might of these temptations lies not in themselves,
but in the feebleness of our own virtue, and the weakness of our own
hearts. We rely too much on the strength of our ramparts and bastions,
and allow the enemy to make his approaches, by trench and parallel, at
his leisure. The offer of dishonest gain and guilty pleasure makes the
honest man more honest, and the pure man more pure. They raise his
virtue to the height of towering indignation. The fair occasion, the
safe opportunity, the tempting chance become the defeat and disgrace of
the tempter. The honest and upright man does not wait until temptation
has made its approaches and mounted its batteries on the last parallel.

But to the impure, the dishonest, the false-hearted, the corrupt, and
the sensual, occasions come every day, and in every scene, and through
every avenue of thought and imagination. He is prepared to capitulate
before the first approach is commenced; and sends out the white flag
when the enemy's advance comes in sight of his walls. He _makes_
occasions; or, if opportunities come not, evil _thoughts_ come, and he
throws wide open the gates of his heart and welcomes those bad visitors,
and entertains them with a lavish hospitality.

The business of the world absorbs, corrupts, and degrades one mind,
while in another it feeds and nurses the noblest independence,
integrity, and generosity. Pleasure is a poison to some, and a healthful
refreshment to others. To one, the world is a great harmony, like a
noble strain of music with infinite modulations; to another, it is a
huge factory, the clash and clang of whose machinery jars upon his ears
and frets him to madness. Life is substantially the same thing to all
who partake of its lot. Yet some rise to virtue and glory; while others,
undergoing the same discipline, and enjoying the same privileges, sink
to shame and perdition.

Thorough, faithful, and honest endeavor to improve, is always
successful, and the highest happiness. To sigh sentimentally over human
misfortune, is fit only for the mind's childhood; and the mind's misery
is chiefly its own fault; appointed, under the good Providence of God,
as the punisher and corrector of its fault. In the long run, the mind
will be happy, just in proportion to its fidelity and wisdom. When it is
miserable, it has planted the thorns in its own path; it grasps them,
and cries out in loud complaint; and that complaint is but the louder
_confession_ that the thorns which grew there, _it_ planted.

A certain kind and degree of spirituality enter into the largest part of
even the most ordinary life. You can carry on no business, without some
faith in man. You cannot even dig in the ground, without a reliance on
the unseen result. You cannot think or reason or even step, without
confiding in the inward, spiritual principles of your nature. All the
affections and bonds, and hopes and interests of life centre in the
spiritual; and you know that if that central bond were broken, the world
would rush to chaos.

Believe that there is a God; that He is our father; that He has a
paternal interest in our welfare and improvement; that He has given us
powers, by means of which we may escape from sin and ruin; that He has
destined us to a future life of endless progress toward perfection and a
knowledge of Himself--believe this, as every Mason should, and you can
live calmly, endure patiently, labor resolutely, deny yourselves
cheerfully, hope steadfastly, and be conquerors in the great struggle of
life. Take away any one of these principles, and what remains for us?
Say that there is no God; or no way opened for hope and reformation and
triumph, no heaven to come, no rest for the weary, no home in the bosom
of God for the afflicted and disconsolate soul; or that God is but an
ugly blind _Chance_ that stabs in the dark; or a _some_what that is,
when attempted to be defined, a _no_what, emotionless, passionless, the
Supreme _Apathy_ to which all things, good and evil, are alike
indifferent; or a jealous God who revengefully visits the sins of the
fathers on the children, and when the fathers have eaten sour grapes,
sets the children's teeth on edge; an arbitrary supreme _Will_, that has
made it _right_ to be virtuous, and wrong to lie and steal, because IT
_pleased_ to _make_ it so rather than otherwise, retaining the power to
reverse the law; or a fickle, vacillating, inconstant Deity, or a cruel,
bloodthirsty, savage Hebrew or Puritanic one; and we are but the sport
of chance and the victims of despair; hapless wanderers upon the face of
a desolate forsaken, or accursed and hated earth; surrounded by
darkness, struggling with obstacles, toiling for barren results and
empty purposes, distracted with doubts, and misled by false gleams of
light; wanderers with no way, no prospect, no home; doomed and deserted
mariners on a dark and stormy sea, without compass or course, to whom no
stars appear; tossing helmless upon the weltering, angry waves, with no
blessed haven in the distance whose guiding-star invites us to its
welcome rest.

The religious faith thus taught by Masonry is indispensable to the
attainment of the great ends of life; and must therefore have been
designed to be a part of it. We are made for this faith; and there must
be something, somewhere, for us to believe in. We cannot grow
healthfully, nor live happily, without it. It is therefore _true_. If we
could cut off from any soul all the principles taught by Masonry, the
faith in a God, in immortality, in virtue, in essential rectitude, that
soul would sink into sin, misery, darkness, and ruin. If we could cut
off all sense of these truths, the man would sink at once to the grade
of the animal.

No man can suffer and be patient, can struggle and conquer, can improve
and be happy, otherwise than as the swine are, without conscience,
without hope, without a reliance on a just, wise, and beneficent God. We
must, of necessity, embrace the great truths taught by Masonry, and live
by them, to live happily. "_I put my trust in God_," is the protest of
Masonry against the belief in a cruel, angry, and revengeful God, to be
feared and not reverenced by His creatures.

Society, in its great relations, is as much the creation of Heaven as is
the system of the Universe. If that bond of gravitation that holds all
worlds and systems together, were suddenly severed, the universe would
fly into wild and boundless chaos. And if we were to sever all the moral
bonds that hold society together; if we could cut off from it every
conviction of Truth and Integrity, of an authority above it, and of a
conscience within it, it would immediately rush to disorder and
frightful anarchy and ruin. The religion we teach is therefore as really
a principle of things, and as certain and true, as gravitation.

Faith in moral principles, in virtue, and in God, is as necessary for
the guidance of a man, as instinct is for the guidance of an animal. And
therefore this faith, as a principle of man's nature, has a mission as
truly authentic in God's Providence, as the principle of instinct. The
pleasures of the soul, too, must depend on certain principles. They must
recognize a soul, its properties and responsibilities, a conscience, and
the sense of an authority above us; and these are the principles of
faith. No man can suffer and be patient, can struggle and conquer, can
improve and be happy, without conscience, without hope, without a
reliance on a just, wise, and beneficent God. We must of necessity
embrace the great truths taught by Masonry, and live by them, to live
happily. Everything in the universe has fixed and certain laws and
principles for its action;--the star in its orbit, the animal in its
activity, the physical man in his functions. And he has likewise fixed
and certain laws and principles as a spiritual being. His soul does not
die for want of aliment or guidance. For the rational soul there is
ample provision. From the lofty pine, rocked in the darkening tempest,
the cry of the young raven is heard; and it would be most strange if
there were no answer for the cry and call of the soul, tortured by want
and sorrow and agony. The total rejection of all moral and religious
belief would strike out a principle from human nature, as essential to
it as gravitation to the stars, instinct to animal life, the circulation
of the blood to the human body.

God has ordained that life shall be a social state. We are members of a
civil community. The life of that community depends upon its moral
condition. Public spirit, intelligence, uprightness, temperance,
kindness, domestic purity, will make it a happy community, and give it
prosperity and continuance. Wide-spread selfishness, dishonesty,
intemperance, libertinism, corruption, and crime, will make it
miserable, and bring about dissolution and speedy ruin. A whole people
lives one life; one mighty heart heaves in its bosom; it is one great
pulse of existence that throbs there. One stream of life flows there,
with ten thousand intermingled branches and channels, through all the
homes of human love. One sound as of many waters, a rapturous jubilee or
a mournful sighing, comes up from, the congregated dwellings of a whole
nation.

The Public is no vague abstraction; nor should that which is done
against that Public, against public interest, law, or virtue, press but
lightly on the conscience. It is but a vast expansion of individual
life; an ocean of tears, an atmosphere of sighs, or a great whole of joy
and gladness. It suffers with the suffering of millions; it rejoices
with the joy of millions. What a vast crime does he commit,--private man
or public man, agent or contractor, legislator or magistrate, secretary
or president,--who dares, with indignity and wrong, to strike the bosom
of the Public Welfare, to encourage venality and corruption, and
shameful sale of the elective franchise, or of office; to sow
dissension, and to weaken the bonds of amity that bind a Nation
together! What a huge iniquity, he who, with vices like the daggers of a
parricide, dares to pierce that mighty heart, in which the ocean of
existence is flowing!

What an unequalled interest lies in the virtue of every one whom we
love! In his virtue, nowhere but in his virtue, is garnered up the
incomparable treasure. What care we for brother or friend, compared with
what we care for his honor, his fidelity, his reputation, his kindness?
How venerable is the rectitude of a parent! How sacred his reputation!
No blight that can fall upon a child, is like a parent's dishonor.
Heathen or Christian, every parent would have his child do well; and
pours out upon him all the fullness of parental love, in the one desire
that he _may_ do well; that he may be worthy of his cares, and his
freely bestowed pains; that he may walk in the way of honor and
happiness. In that way he cannot walk one step without virtue. Such is
life, in its relationships. A thousand ties embrace it, like the fine
nerves of a delicate organization; like the strings of an instrument
capable of sweet melodies, but easily put out of tune or broken, by
rudeness, anger, and selfish indulgence.

If life could, by any process, be made insensible to pain and pleasure;
if the human heart were hard as adamant, then avarice, ambition, and
sensuality might channel out their paths in it, and make it their beaten
way; and none would wonder or protest. If we could be patient under the
load of a mere worldly life; if we could bear that burden as the beasts
bear it; then, _like_ beasts, we might bend all our thoughts to the
earth; and no call from the great Heavens above us would startle us
from our plodding and earthly course.

But we art _not_ insensible brutes, who can refuse the call of reason
and conscience. The soul is capable of remorse. When the great
dispensations of life press down upon us, we weep, and suffer and
sorrow. And sorrow and agony desire other companionships than
worldliness and irreligion. We are not willing to bear those burdens of
the heart, fear, anxiety, disappointment, and trouble, without any
object or use. We are not willing to suffer, to be sick and afflicted,
to have our days and months lost to comfort and joy, and overshadowed
with calamity and grief, without advantage or compensation; to barter
away the dearest treasures, the very sufferings, of the heart; to sell
the life-blood from failing frame and fading cheek, our tears of
bitterness and groans of anguish, for nothing. Human nature, frail,
feeling, sensitive, and sorrowing, cannot bear to suffer for nought.

Everywhere, human life is a great and solemn dispensation. Man,
suffering, enjoying, loving, hating, hoping, and fearing, chained to the
earth and yet exploring the far recesses of the universe, has the power
to commune with God and His angels. Around this great action of
existence the curtains of Time are drawn; but there are openings through
them which give us glimpses of eternity. God looks down upon this scene
of human probation. The wise and the good in all ages have interposed
for it, with their teachings and their blood. Everything that exists
around us, every movement in nature, every counsel of Providence, every
interposition of God, centres upon one point--the fidelity of man. And
even if the ghosts of the departed and remembered could come at midnight
through the barred doors of our dwellings, and the shrouded dead should
glide through the aisles of our churches and sit in our Masonic Temples,
their teachings would be no more eloquent and impressive than the dread
realities of life; than those memories of misspent years, those ghosts
of departed opportunities, that, pointing to our conscience and
eternity, cry continually in our ears, "_Work while the day lasts! for
the night of death cometh, in which no man can work_."

There are no tokens of public mourning for the calamity of the soul. Men
weep when the body dies; and when it is borne to its rest, they follow
it with sad and mournful procession. But for the dying soul there is no
open lamentation; for the lost soul there are no obsequies.

And yet the mind and soul of man have a value which nothing else has.
They are worth a care which nothing else is worth; and to the single,
solitary individual, they ought to possess an interest which nothing
else possesses. The stored treasures of the heart, the unfathomable
mines that are in the soul to be wrought, the broad and boundless realms
of Thought, the freighted argosy of man's hopes and best affections, are
brighter than gold and dearer than treasure.

And yet the mind is in reality little known or considered. It is _all_
which man permanently _is_, his inward being, his divine energy, his
immortal thought, his boundless capacity, his infinite aspiration; and
nevertheless, few value it for what it is worth. Few see a brother-mind
in others, through the rags with which poverty has clothed it, beneath
the crushing burdens of life, amidst the close pressure of worldly
troubles, wants and sorrows. Few acknowledge and cheer it in that humble
blot, and feel that the nobility of earth, and the commencing glory of
Heaven are there.

Men do not feel the worth of their own souls. They are proud of their
mental powers; but the intrinsic, inner, infinite _worth_ of their own
minds they do not perceive. The poor man, admitted to a palace, feels,
lofty and immortal being as he is, like a mere ordinary thing amid the
splendors that surround him. He sees the carriage of wealth roll by him,
and forgets the intrinsic and eternal dignity of his own mind in a poor
and degrading envy, and feels as an humbler creature, because others are
above him, not in mind, but in mensuration. Men respect themselves,
according as they are more wealthy, higher in rank or office, loftier in
the world's opinion, able to command more votes, more the favorites of
the people or of Power.

The difference among men is not so much in their nature and intrinsic
power, as in the faculty of communication. Some have the capacity of
uttering and embodying in words their thoughts. All men, more or less,
_feel_ those thoughts. The glory of genius and the rapture of virtue,
when rightly revealed, are diffused and shared among unnumbered minds.
When eloquence and poetry speak; when those glorious arts, statuary,
painting, and music, take audible or visible shape; when patriotism,
charity, and virtue speak with a thrilling potency, the hearts of
thousands glow with kindred joy and ecstasy. If it were not so, there
would be no eloquence; for eloquence is that to which other hearts
respond; it is the faculty and power of _making_ other hearts respond.
No one is so low or degraded, as not sometimes to be touched with the
beauty of goodness. No heart is made of materials so common, or even
base, as not sometimes to respond, through every chord of it, to the
call of honor, patriotism, generosity, and virtue. The poor African
Slave will die for the master or mistress, or in defence of the
children, whom he loves. The poor, lost, scorned, abandoned, outcast
woman will, without expectation of reward, nurse those who are dying on
every hand, utter strangers to her, with a contagious and horrid
pestilence. The pickpocket will scale burning walls to rescue child or
woman, unknown to him, from the ravenous flames.

Most glorious is this capacity! A power to commune with God and His
Angels; a reflection of the Uncreated Light; a mirror that can collect
and concentrate upon itself all the moral splendors of the Universe. It
is the soul alone that gives any value to the things of this world; and
it is only by raising the soul to its just elevation above all other
things, that we can look rightly upon the purposes of this earth. No
sceptre nor throne, nor structure of ages, nor broad empire, can compare
with the wonders and grandeurs of a single thought. That alone, of all
things that have been made, comprehends the Maker of all. That alone is
the key which unlocks all the treasures of the Universe; the power that
reigns over Space, Time, and Eternity. That, under God, is the Sovereign
Dispenser to man of all the blessings and glories that lie within the
compass of possession, or the range of possibility. Virtue, Heaven, and
Immortality exist not, nor ever will exist for us except as they exist
and will exist, in the perception, feeling, and thought of the glorious
mind.

My Brother, in the hope that you have listened to and understood the
Instruction and Lecture of this Degree, and that you feel the dignity of
your own nature and the vast capacities of your own soul for good or
evil, I proceed briefly to communicate to you the remaining instruction
of this Degree.

The Hebrew word, in the old Hebrew and Samaritan character, suspended in
the East, over the five columns, is ADONAÏ, one of the names of God,
usually translated Lord; and which the Hebrews, in reading, always
substitute for the True Name, which is for them ineffable.

The five columns, in the five different orders of architecture, are
emblematical to us of the five principal divisions of the Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite:

1.--The _Tuscan_, of the three blue Degrees, or the primitive Masonry.

2.--The _Doric_, of the ineffable Degrees, from the fourth to the
fourteenth, inclusive.

3.--The _Ionic_, of the fifteenth and sixteenth, or second temple
Degrees.

4.--The _Corinthian_, of the seventeenth and eighteenth Degrees, or
those of the new law.

5.--The _Composite_, of the philosophical and chivalric Degrees
intermingled, from the nineteenth to the thirty-second, inclusive.

The North Star, always fixed and immutable for us, represents the point
in the centre of the circle, or the Deity in the centre of the Universe.
It is the especial symbol of duty and of faith. To it, and the seven
that continually revolve around it, mystical meanings are attached,
which you will learn hereafter, if you should be permitted to advance,
when you are made acquainted with the philosophical doctrines of the
Hebrews.

The Morning Star, rising in the East, Jupiter, called by the Hebrews
Tsadōc or Tsydyk, _Just_, is an emblem to us of the ever-approaching
dawn of perfection and Masonic light.

The three great lights of the Lodge are symbols to us of the Power,
Wisdom, and Beneficence of the Deity. They are also symbols of the first
three _Sephiroth_, or Emanations of the Deity, according to the Kabalah,
_Kether_, the omnipotent divine _will_; _Chochmah_, the divine
intellectual _power_ to _generate_ thought, and _Binah_, the divine
intellectual _capacity_ to _produce_ it--the two latter, usually
translated _Wisdom_ and _Understanding_, being the _active_ and the
_passive_, the _positive_ and the _negative_, which we do not yet
endeavor to explain to you. They are the columns Jachin and Boaz, that
stand at the entrance to the Masonic Temple.

In another aspect of this Degree, the Chief of the Architects [[Hebrew:
רב בנים], Rab Banaim,] symbolizes the constitutional executive head and
chief of a free government; and the Degree teaches us that no free
government can long endure, when the people cease to select for their
magistrates the best and the wisest of their statesmen; when, passing
these by, they permit factions or sordid interests to select for them
the small, the low, the ignoble, and the obscure, and into such hands
commit the country's destinies. There is, after all, a "divine right" to
govern; and it is vested in the ablest, wisest, best, of every nation.
"Counsel is mine, and sound wisdom: I am understanding: I am power: by
me kings do reign, and princes decree justice; by me princes rule, and
nobles, even all the magistrates of the earth."

For the present, my Brother, let this suffice. We welcome you among us,
to this peaceful retreat of virtue, to a participation in our
privileges, to a share in our joys and our sorrows.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]



XIII.

ROYAL ARCH OF SOLOMON.


Whether the legend and history of this Degree are historically true, or
but an allegory, containing in itself a deeper truth and a profounder
meaning, we shall not now debate. If it be but a legendary myth, you
must find out for yourself what it means. It is certain that the word
which the Hebrews are not now permitted to pronounce was in common use
by Abraham, Lot, Isaac, Jacob, Laban, Rebecca, and even among tribes
foreign to the Hebrews, before the time of Moses; and that it recurs a
hundred times in the lyrical effusions of David and other Hebrew poets.

We know that for many centuries the Hebrews have been forbidden to
pronounce the Sacred Name; that wherever it occurs, they have for ages
read the word _Adonaï_ instead; and that under it, when the masoretic
points, which represent the vowels, came to be used, they placed those
which belonged to the latter word. The possession of the true
pronunciation was deemed to confer on him who had it extraordinary and
supernatural powers; and the Word itself, worn upon the person, was
regarded as an amulet, a protection against personal danger, sickness,
and evil spirits. We know that all this was a vain superstition, natural
to a rude people, necessarily disappearing as the intellect of man
became enlightened; and wholly unworthy of a Mason.

It is noticeable that this notion of the sanctity of the Divine Name or
Creative Word was common to all the ancient nations. The Sacred Word HOM
was supposed by the ancient Persians (who were among the earliest
emigrants from Northern India) to be pregnant with a mysterious power;
and they taught that by its utterance the world was created. In India it
was forbidden to pronounce the word AUM or OM, the Sacred Name of the
One Deity, manifested as Brahma, Vishna, and Seeva.

These superstitious notions in regard to the efficacy of the Word, and
the prohibition against pronouncing it, could, being errors, have formed
no part of the pure primitive religion, or of the esoteric doctrine
taught by Moses, and the full knowledge of which was confined to the
Initiates; unless the whole was but an ingenious invention for the
concealment of some other Name or truth, the interpretation and meaning
whereof was made known only to the _select few_. If so, the common
notions in regard to the Word grew up in the minds of the people, like
other errors and fables among all the ancient nations, out of original
truths and symbols and allegories misunderstood. So it has always been
that allegories, intended as vehicles of truth, to be understood by the
sages, have become or bred errors, by being literally accepted.

It is true, that before the masoretic points were invented (which was
after the beginning of the Christian era), the pronunciation of a word
in the Hebrew language could not be known from the characters in which
it was written. It was, therefore, _possible_ for that of the name of
the Deity to have been forgotten and lost. It is certain that its true
pronunciation is not that represented by the word Jehovah; and therefore
that _that_ is not the true name of Deity, nor the Ineffable Word.

The ancient symbols and allegories always had more than one
interpretation. They always had a _double_ meaning, and sometimes _more_
than two, one serving as the envelope of the other. Thus the
_pronunciation_ of the word was a symbol; and that pronunciation and the
word itself were lost, when the knowledge of the true nature and
attributes of God faded out of the minds of the Jewish people. That is
_one_ interpretation--_true, but not the inner and profoundest one_.

Men were figuratively said to forget the _name_ of God, when they lost
that _knowledge_, and worshipped the heathen deities, and burned incense
to them on the high places, and passed their children through the fire
to Moloch.

Thus the attempts of the ancient Israelites and of the Initiates to
ascertain the True Name of the Deity, and its pronunciation, and the
loss of the True Word, are an allegory, in which are represented the
general ignorance of the true nature and attributes of God, the
proneness of the people of Judah and Israel to worship other deities,
and the low and erroneous and dishonoring notions of the Grand Architect
of the Universe, which all shared except a few favored persons; for even
Solomon built altars and sacrificed to Astarat, the goddess of the
Tsidunim, and Malcūm, the Aamūnite god, and built high places for Kamūs,
the Moabite deity, and Malec the god of the Beni-Aamūn. The true nature
of God was unknown to them, like His name; and they worshipped the
calves of Jeroboam, as in the desert they did that made for them by
Aarūn.

The mass of the Hebrews did not believe in the existence of one only God
until a late period in their history. Their early and popular ideas of
the Deity were singularly low and unworthy. Even while Moses was
receiving the law upon Mount Sinai, they forced Aarūn to make them an
image of the Egyptian god Apis, and fell down and adored it. They were
ever ready to return to the worship of the gods of the Mitzraim; and
soon after the death of Joshua they became devout worshippers of the
false gods of all the surrounding nations. "Ye have borne," Amos, the
prophet, said to them, speaking of their forty years' journeying in the
desert, under Moses, "the tabernacle of your Malec and Kaiūn your idols,
the star of your god, which ye made to yourselves".

Among them, as among other nations, the conceptions of God formed by
individuals varied according to their intellectual and spiritual
capacities; poor and imperfect, and investing God with the commonest and
coarsest attributes of humanity, among the ignorant and coarse; pure and
lofty among the virtuous and richly gifted. These conceptions gradually
improved and became purified and ennobled, as the nation advanced in
civilization--being lowest in the historical books, amended in the
prophetic writings, and reaching their highest elevation among the
poets.

Among _all_ the ancient nations there was one faith and one idea of
Deity for the enlightened, intelligent, and educated, and another for
the common people. To this rule the Hebrews were no exception. Yehovah,
to the mass of the people, was like the gods of the nations around them,
except that he was the _peculiar_ God, first of the family of Abraham,
of that of Isaac, and of that of Jacob, and afterward the _National_
God; and, as they believed, _more powerful_ than the other gods of the
same nature worshipped by their neighbors--"Who among the Baalim is
like unto thee, O Yehovah?"--expressed their whole creed.

The Deity of the early Hebrews talked to Adam and Eve in the garden of
delight, as he walked in it in the cool of the day; he conversed with
Kayin; he sat and ate with Abraham in his tent; that patriarch required
a visible token, before he would believe in his positive promise; he
permitted Abraham to expostulate with him, and to induce him to change
his first determination in regard to Sodom; he wrestled with Jacob; he
showed Moses his person, though not his face; he dictated the minutest
police regulations and the dimensions of the tabernacle and its
furniture, to the Israelites; he insisted on and delighted in sacrifices
and burnt-offerings; he was angry, jealous, and revengeful, as well as
wavering and irresolute; he allowed Moses to reason him out of his fixed
resolution utterly to destroy his people; he commanded the performance
of the most shocking and hideous acts of cruelty and barbarity. He
hardened the heart of Pharaoh; he repented of the evil that he had said
he would do unto the people of Nineveh; and he did it not, to the
disgust and anger of Jonah.

Such were the popular notions of the Deity; and either the priests had
none better, or took little trouble to correct these notions; or the
popular intellect was not enough enlarged to enable them to entertain
any higher conceptions of the Almighty.

But such were not the ideas of the intellectual and enlightened few
among the Hebrews, It is certain that _they_ possessed a knowledge of
the true nature and attributes of God; as the same class of men did
among the other nations--Zoroaster, Menu, Confucius, Socrates, and
Plato. But their doctrines on this subject were esoteric; they did not
communicate them to the people at large, but only to a favored few; and
as they were communicated in Egypt and India, in Persia and Phœnicia, in
Greece and Samothrace, in the greater mysteries, to the Initiates.

The communication of this knowledge and other secrets, some of which are
perhaps lost, constituted, under other names, what we now call
_Masonry_, or _Free_ or _Frank-Masonry_. That knowledge was, in one
sense, _the Lost Word_, which was made known to the Grand Elect,
Perfect, and Sublime Masons. It would be folly to pretend that the
_forms_ of Masonry were the same in those ages as they are now. The
present name of the Order, and its titles, and the names of the Degrees
now in use, were not then known. Even Blue Masonry cannot trace back
its _authentic_ history, _with its present Degrees_, further than the
year 1700, _if so far_. But, by whatever _name_ it was known in this or
the other country, Masonry existed as it now exists, the same in spirit
and at heart, not only when Solomon builded the temple, but centuries
before--before even the first colonies emigrated into Southern India,
Persia, and Egypt, from the cradle of the human race.

The Supreme, Self-existent, Eternal, All-wise, All-powerful, Infinitely
Good, Pitying, Beneficent, and Merciful Creator and Preserver of the
Universe was the same, by whatever name he was called, to the
intellectual and enlightened men of all nations. The name was nothing,
if not a symbol and representative hieroglyph of his nature and
attributes. The name AL represented his remoteness _above_ men, his
_inaccessibility_; BAL and BALA, his _might_; ALOHIM, his various
_potencies_; IHUH, _existence_ and the _generation_ of things. None of
his names, among the Orientals, were the symbols of a divinely infinite
love and tenderness, and all-embracing mercy. As MOLOCH or MALEK he was
but an omnipotent _monarch_, a tremendous and irresponsible _Will_; as
ADONAÏ, only an arbitrary LORD and _Master_; as AL _Shadaï_, _potent_
and a DESTROYER.

To communicate true and correct ideas in respect of the Deity was one
chief object of the mysteries. In them, Khūrūm the King, and Khūrūm the
Master, obtained their knowledge of him and his attributes; and in them
that knowledge was taught to Moses and Pythagoras.

Wherefore nothing forbids you to consider the whole legend of this
Degree, like that of the Master's, an allegory, representing the
perpetuation of the knowledge of the True God in the sanctuaries of
initiation. By the subterranean vaults you may understand the places of
initiation, which in the ancient ceremonies were generally under ground.
The Temple of Solomon presented a symbolic image of the Universe; and
resembled, in its arrangements and furniture, all the temples of the
ancient nations that practised the mysteries. The system of numbers was
intimately connected with their religions and worship, and has come down
to us in Masonry; though the esoteric meaning with which the numbers
used by us are pregnant is unknown to the vast majority of those who use
them. Those numbers were especially employed that had a reference to the
Deity, represented his attributes, or figured in the frame-work of the
world, in time and space, and formed more or less the bases of that
frame-work. These were universally regarded as sacred, being the
expression of order and intelligence, the utterances of Divinity
Himself.

The Holy of Holies of the Temple formed a cube; in which, drawn on a
plane surface, there are 4+3+2=9 _lines_ visible, and three sides or
faces. It corresponded with the number _four_, by which the ancients
presented _Nature_, it being the number of substances or corporeal
forms, and of the elements, the cardinal points and seasons, and the
_secondary_ colors. The number _three_ everywhere represented the
Supreme Being. Hence the name of the Deity, engraven upon the
_triangular_ plate, and that sunken into the _cube_ of agate, taught the
ancient Mason, and teaches us, that the true knowledge of God, of His
nature and His attributes, is written by Him upon the leaves of the
great Book of Universal Nature, and may be read there by all who are
endowed with the requisite amount of intellect and intelligence. This
knowledge of God, so written there, and of which Masonry has in all ages
been the interpreter, is _the Master Mason's Word_.

Within the Temple, all the arrangements were mystically and symbolically
connected with the same system. The vault or ceiling, starred like the
firmament, was supported by twelve columns, representing the twelve
months of the year. The border that ran around the columns represented
the zodiac, and one of the twelve celestial signs was appropriated to
each column. The brazen sea was supported by twelve oxen, three looking
to each cardinal point of the compass.

And so in our day every Masonic Lodge represents the Universe. Each
extends, we are told, from the rising to the setting sun, from the South
to the North, from the surface of the Earth to the Heavens, and from the
same to the centre of the globe. In it are represented the sun, moon,
and stars; three great torches in the East, West, and South, forming a
triangle, give it light; and, like the Delta or Triangle suspended in
the East, and inclosing the Ineffable Name, indicate, by the
mathematical equality of the angles and sides, the beautiful and
harmonious proportions which govern in the aggregate and details of the
Universe; while those sides and angles represent, by their number,
three, the Trinity of Power, Wisdom, and Harmony, which presided at the
building of this marvellous work. These three great lights also
represent the great mystery of the three principles, of creation,
dissolution or destruction, and reproduction or regeneration,
consecrated by all creeds in their numerous Trinities.

The luminous pedestal, lighted by the perpetual flame within, is a
symbol of that light of _Reason_, given by God to man, by which he is
enabled to read in the Book of Nature the record of the thought, the
revelation of the attributes of the Deity.

The three Masters, Adoniram, Joabert, and Stolkin, are types of the True
Mason, who seeks for knowledge from pure motives, and that he may be the
better enabled to serve and benefit his fellow-men; while the
discontented and presumptuous Masters who were buried in the ruins of
the arches represent those who strive to acquire it for unholy purposes,
to gain power over their fellows, to gratify their pride, their vanity,
or their ambition.

The Lion that guarded the Ark and held in his mouth the key wherewith to
open it, figuratively represents Solomon, the Lion of the Tribe of
Judah, who preserved and communicated the key to the true knowledge of
God, of His laws, and of the profound mysteries of the moral and
physical Universe.

ENOCH [[Hebrew: חנוך], Khanōc], we are told, walked with God three
hundred years, after reaching the age of sixty-five--"walked with God,
and he was no more, for God had taken him." His name signified in the
Hebrew, INITIATE or INITIATOR. The legend of the columns, of granite and
brass or bronze, erected by him, is probably symbolical. That of bronze,
which survived the flood, is supposed to symbolize the mysteries, of
which Masonry is the legitimate successor--from the earliest times the
custodian and depository of the great philosophical and religious
truths, unknown to the world at large, and handed down from age to age
by an unbroken current of tradition, embodied in symbols, emblems, and
allegories.

The legend of this Degree is thus, partially, interpreted. It is of
little importance whether it is in anywise historical. For its value
consists in the lessons which it inculcates, and the duties which it
prescribes to those who receive it. The parables and allegories of the
Scriptures are not less valuable than history. Nay, they are more so,
because ancient history is little instructive, and truths are concealed
in and symbolized by the legend and the myth. There are profounder
meanings concealed in the symbols of this Degree, connected with the
philosophical system of the Hebrew Kabalists, which you will learn
hereafter, if you should be so fortunate as to advance. They are
unfolded in the higher Degrees. The _lion_ [[Hebrew: אריה,ארי] _Arai_,
_Araiah_, which also means the _altar_] still holds in his mouth the key
of the enigma of the sphynx.

But there is one application of this Degree, that you are now entitled
to know; and which, remembering that Khūrūm, the Master, is the symbol
of human freedom, you would probably discover for yourself.

It is not enough for a people to _gain_ its liberty. It must _secure_
it. It must not intrust it to the keeping, or hold it at the pleasure,
of any one man. The keystone of the Royal Arch of the great Temple of
Liberty is a fundamental law, charter, or constitution; the expression
of the fixed habits of thought of the people, embodied in a written
instrument, or the result of the slow accretions and the consolidation
of centuries; the same in war as in peace; that cannot be hastily
changed, nor be violated with impunity, but is sacred, like the Ark of
the Covenant of God, which none could touch and live.

A permanent constitution, rooted in the affections, expressing the will
and judgment, and built upon the instincts and settled habits of thought
of the people, with an independent judiciary, an elective legislature of
two branches, an executive responsible to the people, and the right of
trial by jury, will guarantee the liberties of a people, if it be
virtuous and temperate, without luxury, and without the lust of conquest
and dominion, and the follies of visionary theories of impossible
perfection.

Masonry teaches its Initiates that the pursuits and occupations of this
life, its activity, care, and ingenuity, the predestined developments of
the nature given us by God, tend to promote His great design, in making
the world; and are not at war with the great purpose of life. It teaches
that everything is beautiful in its time, in its place, in its appointed
office; that everything which man is put to do, if rightly and
faithfully done, naturally helps to work out his salvation; that if he
obeys the genuine principles of his calling, he will be a good man: and
that it is only by neglect and non-performance of the task set for him
by Heaven, by wandering into idle dissipation, or by violating their
beneficent and lofty spirit, that he becomes a bad man. The appointed
action of life is the great training of Providence; and if man yields
himself to it, he will need neither churches nor ordinances, except for
the _expression_ of his religious homage and gratitude.

For there is a religion of toil. It is not all drudgery, a mere
stretching of the limbs and straining of the sinews to tasks. It has a
meaning and an intent. A living heart pours life-blood into the toiling
arm; and warm affections inspire and mingle with man's labors. They are
the _home_ affections. Labor toils a-field, or plies its task in cities,
or urges the keels of commerce over wide oceans; but home is its centre;
and thither it ever goes with its earnings, with the means of support
and comfort for others; offerings sacred to the thought of every true
man, as a sacrifice at a golden shrine. Many faults there are amidst the
toils of life; many harsh and hasty, words are uttered; but still the
toils go on, weary and hard and exasperating as they often are. For in
that home is age or sickness, or helpless infancy, or gentle childhood,
or feeble woman, that must not want. If man had no other than mere
selfish impulses, the scene of labor which we behold around us would not
exist.

The advocate who fairly and honestly presents his case, with a feeling
of true self-respect, honor, and conscience, to help the tribunal on
towards the right conclusion, with a conviction that God's justice
reigns there, is acting a religious part, leading that day a religious
life; or else right and justice are no part of religion. Whether, during
all that day, he has once appealed, in form or in terms, to his
conscience, or not; whether he has once spoken of religion and God, or
not; if there has been the inward purpose, the conscious intent and
desire, that sacred justice should triumph, he has that day led a good
and _religious_ life, and made a most essential contribution to that
religion of life and of society, the cause of equity between man and
man, and of truth and right action in the world.

Books, to be of religious tendency in the Masonic sense, need not be
books of sermons, of pious exercises, or of prayers. Whatever inculcates
pure, noble, and patriotic sentiments, or touches the heart with the
beauty of virtue, and the excellence of an upright life, accords with
the religion of Masonry, and is the Gospel of literature and art. That
Gospel is preached from many a book and painting, from many a poem and
fiction, and review and newspaper; and it is a painful error and
miserable narrowness, not to recognize these wide-spread agencies of
Heaven's providing; not to see and welcome these many-handed
coadjutors, to the great and good cause. The oracles of God do not speak
from the pulpit alone.

There is also a religion of society. In business, there is much more
than sale, exchange, price, payment; for there is the sacred faith of
man in man. When we repose perfect confidence in the integrity of
another; when we feel that he will not swerve from the right, frank,
straightforward, conscientious course, for any temptation; his integrity
and conscientiousness are the image of God to us; and when we believe in
_it_, it is as great and generous an act, as when we believe in the
rectitude of the Deity.

In gay assemblies for amusement, the good affections of life gush and
mingle. If _they_ did not, these gathering-places would be as dreary and
repulsive as the caves and dens of outlaws and robbers. When friends
meet, and hands are warmly pressed, and the eye kindles and the
countenance is suffused with gladness, there is a religion between their
hearts; and each loves and worships the True and Good that is in the
other. It is not policy, or self-interest, or selfishness that spreads
such a charm around that meeting, but the halo of bright and beautiful
affection.

The same splendor of kindly liking, and affectionate regard, shines like
the soft overarching sky, over all the world; over all places where men
meet, and walk or toil together; not over lovers' bowers and
marriage-altars alone, not over the homes of purity and tenderness
alone; but over all tilled fields, and busy workshops, and dusty
highways, and paved streets. There is not a worn stone upon the
sidewalks, but has been the altar of such offerings of mutual kindness;
nor a wooden pillar or iron railing against which hearts beating with
affection have not leaned. How many soever other elements there are in
the stream of life flowing through these channels, _that_ is surely here
and everywhere; honest, heartfelt, disinterested, inexpressible
affection.

Every Masonic Lodge is a temple of religion; and its teachings are
instruction in religion. For here are inculcated disinterestedness,
affection, toleration, devotedness, patriotism, truth, a generous
sympathy with those who suffer and mourn, pity for the fallen, mercy for
the erring, relief for those in want, Faith, Hope, and Charity. Here we
meet as brethren, to learn to know and love each other. Here we greet
each other gladly, are lenient to each other's faults, regardful of each
other's feelings, ready to relieve each other's wants. This is the true
religion revealed to the ancient patriarchs; which Masonry has taught
for many centuries, and which it will continue to teach as long as time
endures. If unworthy passions, or selfish, bitter, or revengeful
feelings, contempt, dislike, hatred, enter here, they are intruders and
not welcome, strangers uninvited, and not guests.

Certainly there are many evils and bad passions, and much hate and
contempt and unkindness everywhere in the world. We cannot refuse to see
the evil that is in life. But _all_ is not evil. We still see God in the
world. There is good amidst the evil. The hand of mercy leads wealth to
the hovels of poverty and sorrow. Truth and simplicity live amid many
wiles and sophistries. There are good hearts underneath gay robes, and
under tattered garments also.

Love clasps the hand of love, amid all the envyings and distractions of
showy competition; fidelity, pity, and sympathy hold the long
night-watch by the bedside of the suffering neighbor, amidst the
surrounding poverty and squalid misery. Devoted men go from city to city
to nurse those smitten down by the terrible pestilence that renews at
intervals its mysterious marches. Women well-born and delicately
nurtured nursed the wounded soldiers in hospitals, before it became
fashionable to do so; and even poor lost women, whom God alone loves and
pities, tend the plague-stricken with a patient and generous heroism.
Masonry and its kindred Orders teach men to love each other, feed the
hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the sick, and bury the friendless
dead. Everywhere God finds and blesses the kindly office, the pitying
thought, and the loving heart.

There is an element of good in all men's lawful pursuits and a divine
spirit breathing in all their lawful affections. The ground on which
they tread is holy ground. There is a natural religion of life,
answering, with however many a broken tone, to the religion of nature.
There is a beauty and glory in Humanity, in man, answering, with however
many a mingling shade, to the loveliness of soft landscapes, and
swelling hills, and the wondrous glory of the starry heavens.

Men may be virtuous, self-improving, and religious _in_ their
employments. Precisely for that, those employments were made. All their
social relations, friendship, love, the ties of family, were made to be
holy. They may be religious, not by a kind of protest and resistance
against their several vocations; but by conformity to their true spirit.
Those vocations do not _exclude_ religion; but _demand_ it, for their
own perfection. They may be religious laborers whether in field or
factory; religious physicians, lawyers, sculptors, poets, painters, and
musicians. They may be religious in all the toils and in all the
amusements of life. Their life may be a religion; the broad earth its
altar; its incense the very breath of life; its fires ever kindled by
the brightness of Heaven.

Bound up with our poor, frail life, is the mighty thought that spurns
the narrow span of all visible existence. Ever the soul reaches outward,
and asks for freedom. It looks forth from the narrow and grated windows
of sense, upon the wide immeasurable creation; it knows that around it
and beyond it lie outstretched the infinite and everlasting paths.

Everything within us and without us ought to stir our minds to
admiration and wonder. We are a mystery encompassed with mysteries. The
connection of mind with matter is a mystery; the wonderful telegraphic
communication between the brain and every part of the body, the power
and action of the will. Every familiar step is more than a story in a
land of enchantment. The power of movement is as mysterious as the power
of thought. Memory, and dreams that are the indistinct echoes of dead
memories are alike inexplicable. Universal harmony springs from infinite
complication. The momentum of every step we take in our dwelling
contributes in part to the order of the Universe. We are connected by
ties of thought, and even of matter and its forces, with the whole
boundless Universe and all the past and coming generations of men.

The humblest object beneath our eye as completely defies our scrutiny as
the economy of the most distant star. Every leaf and every blade of
grass holds within itself secrets which no human penetration will ever
fathom. No man can tell what is its principle of life. No man can know
what his power of secretion is. Both are inscrutable mysteries. Wherever
we place our hand we lay it upon the locked bosom of mystery. Step where
we will, we tread upon wonders. The sea-sands, the clods of the field,
the water-worn pebbles on the hills, the rude masses of rock, are traced
over and over, in every direction, with a handwriting older and more
significant and sublime than all the ancient ruins and all the
overthrown and buried cities that past generations have left upon the
earth; for it is the handwriting of the Almighty.

A Mason's great business with life is to read the book of its teaching;
to find that life is not the doing of drudgeries, but the hearing of
oracles. The old mythology is but a leaf in that book; for it peopled
the world with spiritual natures; and science, many-leaved, still
spreads before us the same tale of wonder.

We shall be just as happy hereafter, as we are pure and upright, and no
more, just as happy as our character prepares us to be, and no more. Our
moral, like our mental character, is not formed in a moment; it is the
habit of our minds; the result of many thoughts and feelings and
efforts, bound together by many natural and strong ties. The great law
of Retribution is, that all coming experience is to be affected by every
present feeling; every future moment of being must answer for every
present moment; one moment, sacrificed to vice, or lost to improvement,
is _forever_ sacrificed and lost; an hour's delay to enter the right
path, is to put us back so far, in the everlasting pursuit of happiness;
and every sin, even of the best men, is to be thus answered for, if not
according to the full measure of its ill-desert, yet according to a rule
of unbending rectitude and impartiality.

The law of retribution presses upon every man, whether he thinks of it
or not. It pursues him through all the courses of life, with a step that
never falters nor tires, and with an eye that never sleeps. If it were
not so, God's government would not be impartial; there would be no
discrimination; no moral dominion; no light shed upon the mysteries of
Providence.

Whatsoever a man soweth, that, and not something else, shall he reap.
That which we are doing, good or evil, grave or gay, that which we do
to-day and shall do to-morrow; each thought, each feeling, each action,
each event; every passing hour, every breathing moment; all are
contributing to form the character, according to which we are to be
judged. Every particle of influence that goes to form that
aggregate,--our character,--will, in that future scrutiny, be sifted out
from the mass; and, particle by particle, with ages perhaps intervening,
fall a distinct contribution to the sum of our joys or woes. Thus every
idle word and idle hour will give answer in the judgment.

Let us take care, therefore, what we sow. An evil temptation comes upon
us; the opportunity of unrighteous gain, or of unhallowed indulgence,
either in the sphere of business or pleasure, of society or solitude. We
yield; and plant a seed of bitterness and sorrow. To-morrow it will
threaten discovery. Agitated and alarmed, we cover the sin, and bury it
deep in falsehood and hypocrisy. In the bosom where it lies concealed,
in the fertile soil of kindred vices, that sin dies not, but thrives and
grows; and other and still other germs of evil gather around the
accursed root; until, from that single seed of corruption, there springs
up in the soul all that is horrible in habitual lying, knavery, or vice.
Loathingly, often, we take each downward step; but a frightful power
urges us onward; and the hell of debt, disease, ignominy, or remorse
gathers its shadows around our steps even on earth; and are yet but the
beginnings of sorrows. The evil deed may be done in a single moment; but
conscience never dies, memory never sleeps; guilt never can become
innocence; and remorse can never whisper peace.

Beware, thou who art tempted to evil! Beware what thou layest up for the
future! Beware what thou layest up in the archives of eternity! Wrong
not thy neighbor! lest the thought of him thou injurest, and who suffers
by thy act, be to thee a pang which years will not deprive of its
bitterness! Break not into the house of innocence, to rifle it of its
treasure; lest when many years have passed over thee, the moan of its
distress may not have died away from thine ear! Build not the desolate
throne of ambition in thy heart; nor be busy with devices, and
circumventings, and selfish schemings; lest desolation and loneliness be
on thy path, as it stretches into the long futurity! Live not a useless,
an impious, or an injurious life! for bound up with that life is the
immutable principle of an endless retribution, and elements of God's
creating, which will never spend their force, but continue ever to
unfold with the ages of eternity. Be not deceived! God has formed thy
nature, thus to answer to the future. His law can never be abrogated,
nor His justice eluded; and forever and ever it win be true, that
"_Whatsoever a man soweth, that also he shall reap_."

[Illustration: Decorative]



XIV.

GRAND ELECT, PERFECT, AND SUBLIME MASON.

[Perfect Elu.]


It is for each individual Mason to discover the secret of Masonry, by
reflection upon its symbols and a wise consideration and analysis of
what is said and done in the work. Masonry does not _inculcate_ her
truths. She states them, once and briefly; or hints them, perhaps,
darkly; or interposes a cloud between them and eyes that would be
dazzled by them. "_Seek_, and ye shall _find_," knowledge and the truth.

The practical object of Masonry is the physical and moral amelioration
and the intellectual and spiritual improvement of individuals and
society. Neither can be effected, except by the dissemination of truth.
It is falsehood in doctrines and fallacy in principles, to which most of
the miseries of men and the misfortunes of nations are owing. Public
opinion is rarely right on any point; and there are and always will be
important truths to be substituted in that opinion in the place of many
errors and absurd and injurious prejudices. There are few truths that
public opinion has not at some time hated and persecuted as heresies,
and few errors that have not at some time seemed to it truths radiant
from the immediate presence of God. There are moral maladies, also, of
man and society, the treatment of which requires not only boldness, but
also, and more, prudence and discretion; since they are more the fruit
of false and pernicious doctrines, moral, political, and religious, than
of vicious inclinations.

Much of the Masonic secret manifests itself, without revealing it, to
him who even partially comprehends all the Decrees in proportion as he
receives them; and particularly to those who advance to the highest
Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. That Rite raises a
corner of the veil, even in the degree of Apprentice; for it there
declares that Masonry is a _worship_.

Masonry labors to improve the social order by enlightening men's minds,
warming their hearts with the love of the good, inspiring them with the
great principle of human fraternity, and requiring of its disciples that
their language and actions shall conform to that principle, that they
shall enlighten each other, control their passions, abhor vice, and pity
the vicious man as one afflicted with a deplorable malady.

It is the universal, eternal, immutable religion, such as God planted it
in the heart of universal humanity. No creed has ever been long-lived
that was not built on this foundation. It is the base, and they are the
superstructure. "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father
is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to
keep himself unspotted from the world." "Is not _this_ the fast that I
have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy
burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every
yoke?" The ministers of this religion are all Masons who comprehend it
and are devoted to it; its sacrifices to God are good works, the
sacrifices of the base and disorderly passions, the offering up of
self-interest on the altar of humanity, and perpetual efforts to attain
to all the moral perfection of which man is capable.

To make honor and duty the steady beacon-lights that shall guide your
life-vessel over the stormy seas of time; to do that which it is right
to do, not because it will insure you success, or bring with it a
reward, or gain the applause of men, or be "the best policy," more
prudent or more advisable; but because it is right, and therefore
_ought_ to be done; to war incessantly against error, intolerance,
ignorance, and vice, and yet to pity those who err, to be tolerant even
of intolerance, to teach the ignorant, and labor to reclaim the vicious,
are some of the duties of a Mason.

A good Mason is one that can look upon death, and see its face the same
countenance with which he hears its story; that "I endure all the labors"
of his life with his soul supporting his body, that can equally despise
riches when he hath them and when he hath them not; that is, not sadder
if they are in his neighbor's exchequer, nor more lifted up if they
shine around about his own walls; one that is not moved with good
fortune coming to him, nor going from him; that can look upon another
man's lands with equanimity and pleasure, as if they were his own; and
yet look upon his own, and use them too, just as if they were another
man's; that neither spends his goods prodigally and foolishly, nor yet
keeps them avariciously and like a miser; that weighs not benefits by
weight and number, but by the mind and circumstances of him who confers
them; that never thinks his charity expensive, if a worthy person be the
receiver; that does nothing for opinion's sake, but everything for
conscience, being as careful of his thoughts as of his acting in markets
and theatres, and in as much awe of himself as of a whole assembly; that
is, bountiful and cheerful to his friends, and charitable and apt to
forgive his enemies; that loves his country, consults its honor, and
obeys its laws, and desires and endeavors nothing more than that he may
do his duty and honor God. And such a Mason may reckon his life to be
the life of a man, and compute his months, not by the course of the sun,
but by the zodiac and circle of his virtues.

The whole world is, but one republic, of which each nation is a family,
and every individual a child. Masonry, not in anywise derogating from
the differing duties which the diversity of states requires, tends to
create a new people, which, composed of men of many nations and tongues,
shall all be bound together by the bonds of science, morality, and
virtue.

Essentially philanthropic, philosophical, and progressive, it has for
the basis of its dogma a firm belief in the existence of God and his
providence, and of the immortality of the soul; for its object, the
dissemination of moral, political, philosophical, and religious truth,
and the practice of all the virtues. In every age, its device has been,
"Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," with constitutional government, _law,
order, discipline_, and _subordination_ to legitimate
authority--_government_ and not _anarchy_.

But it is neither a political party nor a religious sect. It embraces
all parties and all sects, to form from among them all a vast fraternal
association. It recognizes the dignity of human nature, and man's right
to such freedom as he is fitted for; and it knows nothing that should
place one man below another, except ignorance, debasement, and crime,
and the necessity of subordination to lawful will and authority.

It is philanthropic; for it recognizes the great truth that all men are
of the same origin, have common interests, and should co-operate
together to the same end.

Therefore it teaches its members to love one another, to give to each
other mutual assistance and support in all the circumstances of life, to
share each other's pains and sorrows, as well as their joys and
pleasures; to guard the reputations, respect the opinions, and be
perfectly tolerant of the errors, of each other, in matters of faith and
beliefs.

It is philosophical, because it teaches the great Truths concerning the
nature and existence of one Supreme Deity, and the existence and
immortality of the soul. It revives the Academy of Plato, and the wise
teachings of Socrates. It reiterates the maxims of Pythagoras,
Confucius, and Zoroaster, and reverentially enforces the sublime lessons
of Him who died upon the Cross.

The ancients thought that universal humanity acted under the influence
of two opposing Principles, the Good and the Evil: of which the Good
urged men toward Truth, Independence, and Devotedness; and the Evil
toward Falsehood, Servility, and Selfishness. Masonry represents the
Good Principle and constantly wars against the evil one. It is the
Hercules, the Osiris, the Apollo, the Mithras, and the Ormuzd, at
everlasting and deadly feud with the demons of ignorance, brutality,
baseness, falsehood, slavishness of soul, intolerance, superstition,
tyranny, meanness, the insolence of wealth, and bigotry.

When despotism and superstition, twin-powers of evil and darkness,
reigned everywhere and seemed invincible and immortal, it invented, to
avoid persecution, the mysteries, that is to say, the allegory, the
symbol, and the emblem, and transmitted its doctrines by the secret mode
of initiation. Now, retaining its ancient symbols, and in part its
ancient ceremonies, it displays in every civilized country its banner,
on which in letters of living light its great principles are written;
and it smiles at the puny efforts of kings and popes to crush it out by
excommunication and interdiction.

Man's views in regard to God, will contain only so much positive truth
as the human mind is capable of receiving; whether that truth is
attained by the exercise of reason, or communicated by revelation. It
must necessarily be both limited and alloyed, to bring it within the
competence of finite human intelligence. Being finite, we can form no
correct or adequate idea of the Infinite; being material, we can form no
clear conception of the Spiritual. We do believe in and know the
infinity of Space and Time, and the spirituality of the Soul; but the
_idea_ of that infinity and spirituality eludes us. Even Omnipotence
cannot infuse infinite conceptions into finite minds; nor can God,
without first entirely changing the conditions of our being, pour a
complete and full knowledge of His own nature and attributes into the
narrow capacity of a human soul. Human intelligence could not grasp it,
nor human language express it. The visible is, necessarily, the measure
of the invisible.

The consciousness of the individual reveals _itself_ alone. His
knowledge cannot pass beyond the limits of his own being. His
conceptions of other things and other beings _are only his conceptions_.
They are not those things or beings themselves. The living principle of
a living Universe must be INFINITE; while all _our_ ideas and
conceptions are _finite_, and applicable only to finite beings.

The Deity is thus not an object of _knowledge_, but of _faith_; not to
be approached by the _understanding_, but by the _moral sense_; not to
be _conceived_, but to be _felt_. All attempts to embrace the Infinite
in the conception of the Finite are, and must be only accommodations to
the frailty of man. Shrouded from human comprehension in an obscurity
from which a chastened imagination is awed back, and Thought retreats in
conscious weakness, the Divine Nature is a theme on which man is little
entitled to dogmatize. Here the philosophic Intellect becomes most
painfully aware of its own insufficiency.

And yet it is here that man most dogmatizes, classifies and describes
God's attributes, makes out his map of God's nature, and his inventory
of God's qualities, feelings, impulses, and passions; and then hangs and
burns his brother, who, as dogmatically as he, makes out a different map
and inventory. The common understanding has no humility. _Its_ God is an
_incarnate_ Divinity. Imperfection imposes its own limitations on the
Illimitable, and clothes the Inconceivable Spirit of the Universe in
forms that come within the grasp of the senses and the intellect, and
are derived from that infinite and imperfect nature which is but God's
creation.

We are all of us, though not all equally, mistaken. The cherished dogmas
of each of us are not, as we fondly suppose, the pure truth of God; but
simply our own special form of error, our guesses at truth, the
refracted and fragmentary rays of light that have fallen upon our own
minds. Our little systems have their day, and cease to be; they are but
broken lights of God; and He is more than they. Perfect truth is not
attainable anywhere. We style this Degree that of Perfection; and yet
what it teaches is imperfect and defective. Yet we are not to relax in
the pursuit of truth, nor contentedly acquiesce in error. It is our duty
always to press forward in the search; for though absolute truth is
unattainable, yet the amount of error in our views is capable of
progressive and perpetual diminution; and thus Masonry is a continual
struggle toward the light.

All errors are not equally innocuous. That which is most injurious is to
entertain unworthy conceptions of the nature and attributes of God; and
it is this that Masonry symbolizes by ignorance of the True Word. The
true word of a Mason is, not the entire, perfect, absolute truth in
regard to God; but the highest and noblest conception of Him that our
minds are capable of forming; and this _word_ is Ineffable, because one
man cannot communicate to another his own conception of Deity; since
every man's conception of God must be proportioned to his mental
cultivation, and intellectual powers, and moral excellence. God is, as
man conceives Him, the reflected image of man himself.

For every man's conception of God must vary with his mental cultivation
and mental powers. If any one contents himself with any _lower_ image
than his intellect is capable of grasping, then he contents himself with
that which is false _to him_, as well as false _in fact_. If lower than
he can reach, he must needs _feel_ it to be false. And if we, of the
nineteenth century after Christ, adopt the conceptions of the nineteenth
century before Him; if _our_ conceptions of God are those of the
ignorant, narrow-minded, and vindictive Israelite; then we think worse
of God, and have a lower, meaner, and more limited view of His nature,
than the faculties which He has bestowed are capable of grasping. The
highest view we can form is nearest to the truth. If we acquiesce in any
lower one, we acquiesce in an untruth. We feel that it is an affront and
an indignity to Him, to conceive of Him as cruel, short-sighted,
capricious and unjust; as a jealous, an angry, a vindictive Being.

When we examine our conceptions of His character, if we can conceive of
a loftier, nobler, higher, more beneficent, glorious, and magnificent
character, then this latter is to us the true conception of Deity; _for
nothing can be imagined more excellent than He_.

Religion, to obtain currency and influence with the great mass of
mankind, must needs be alloyed with such an amount of error as to place
it far below the standard attainable by the higher human capacities. A
religion as pure as the loftiest and most cultivated human reason could
discern, would not be comprehended by, or effective over, the less
educated portion of mankind. What is Truth to the philosopher, would not
be Truth, nor have the effect of Truth, to the peasant. The religion of
the many must necessarily be more incorrect than that of the refined and
reflective few, not so much in its essence as in its forms, not so much
in the spiritual idea which lies latent at the bottom of it, as in the
symbols and dogmas in which that idea is embodied. The truest religion
would, in many points, not be comprehended by the ignorant, nor
consolatory to them, nor guiding and supporting for them. The doctrines
of the Bible are often not clothed in the language of strict truth, but
in that which was fittest to convey to a rude and ignorant people the
practical essentials of the doctrine. A perfectly pure faith, free from
all extraneous admixtures, a system of noble theism and lofty morality,
would find too little preparation for it in the common mind and heart,
to admit of prompt reception by the masses of mankind; and Truth might
not have reached us, if it had not borrowed the wings of Error.

The Mason regards God as a Moral Governor, as well as an Original
Creator; as a God at hand, and not merely one afar off in the distance
of infinite space, and in the remoteness of Past or Future Eternity. He
conceives of Him as taking a watchful and presiding interest in the
affairs of the world, and as influencing the hearts and actions of men.

To him, God is the great Source of the World of Life and Matter; and
man, with his wonderful corporeal and mental frame, His direct work. He
believes that God has made men with different intellectual capacities;
and enabled some, by superior intellectual power, to see and originate
truths which are hidden from the mass of men. He believes that when it
is His will that mankind should make some great step forward, or achieve
some pregnant discovery, He calls into being some intellect of more than
ordinary magnitude and power, to give birth to new ideas, and grander
conceptions of the Truths vital to Humanity.

We hold that God has so ordered matters in this beautiful and
harmonious, but mysteriously-governed Universe, that one great mind
after another will arise, from time to time, as such are needed, to
reveal to men the truths that are wanted, and the amount of truth than
can be borne. He so arranges, that nature and the course of events shall
send men into the world, endowed with that higher mental and moral
organization, in which grand truths, and sublime gleams of spiritual
light will spontaneously and inevitably arise. These speak to men by
inspiration.

Whatever Hiram really was, he is the type, perhaps an imaginary type, to
us, of humanity in its highest phase; an exemplar of what man may and
should become, in the course of ages, in his progress toward the
realization of his destiny; an individual gifted with a glorious
intellect, a noble soul, a fine organization, and a perfectly balanced
moral being; an earnest of what humanity may be, and what we believe it
will hereafter be in God's good time; _the possibility of the race made
real_.

The Mason believes that God has arranged this glorious but perplexing
world with a purpose, and on a plan. He holds that every man sent upon
this earth, and especially every man of superior capacity, has a duty to
perform, a mission to fulfill, a baptism to be baptized with; that every
great and good man possesses some portion of God's truth, which he must
proclaim to the world, and which must bear fruit in his own bosom. In a
true and simple sense, he believes all the pure, wise, and intellectual
to be inspired, and to be so for the instruction, advancement, and
elevation of mankind. That kind of inspiration, like God's omnipresence,
is not limited to the few writers claimed by Jews, Christians, or
Moslems, but is co-extensive with the race. It is the consequence of a
faithful use of our faculties. Each man is its subject, God is its
source, and Truth its only test. It differs in degrees, as the
intellectual endowments, the moral wealth of the soul, and the degree of
cultivation of those endowments and faculties differ. It is limited to
no sect, age, or nation. It is wide as the world and common as God. It
was not given to a few men, in the infancy of mankind, to monopolize
inspiration, and bar God out of the soul. We are not born in the dotage
and decay of the world. The stars are beautiful as in their prime; the
most ancient Heavens are fresh and strong. God is still everywhere in
nature. Wherever a heart beats with love, wherever Faith and Reason
utter their oracles, there is God, as formerly in the hearts of seers
and prophets. No soil on earth is so holy as the good man's heart;
nothing is so full of God. This inspiration is not given to the learned
alone, not alone to the great and wise, but to every faithful child of
God. Certain as the open eye drinks in the light, do the pure in heart
see God; and he who lives truly, feels Him as a presence within the
soul. The conscience is the very voice of Deity.

Masonry, around whose altars the Christian, the Hebrew, the Moslem, the
Brahmin, the followers of Confucius and Zoroaster, can assemble as
brethren and unite in prayer to the one God who is above _all_ the
Baalim, must needs leave it to each of its Initiates to look for the
foundation of his faith and hope to the written scriptures of his own
religion. For itself it finds those truths definite enough, which are
written by the finger of God upon the heart of man and on the pages of
the book of nature. Views of religion and duty, wrought out by the
meditations of the studious, confirmed by the allegiance of the good and
wise, stamped as sterling by the response they find in every uncorrupted
mind, commend themselves to Masons of every creed, and may well be
accepted by all.

The Mason does not pretend to dogmatic certainty, nor vainly imagine
such certainty attainable. He considers that if there were no written
revelation, he could safely rest the hopes that animate him and the
principles that guide him, on the deductions of reason and the
convictions of instinct and consciousness. He can find a sure foundation
for his religious belief, in these deductions of the intellect and
convictions of the heart. For reason proves to him the existence and
attributes of God; and those spiritual instincts which he feels are the
voice of God in his soul, infuse into his mind a sense of his relation
to God, a conviction of the beneficence of his Creator and Preserver,
and a hope of future existence; and his reason and conscience alike
unerringly point to virtue as the highest good, and the destined aim and
purpose of man's life.

He studies the wonders of the Heavens, the frame-work and revolutions of
the Earth, the mysterious beauties and adaptations of animal existence,
the moral and material constitution of the human creature, so fearfully
and wonderfully made; and is satisfied that God IS; and that a Wise and
Good Being is the author of the starry Heavens above him, and of the
moral world within him; and his mind finds an adequate foundation for
its hopes, its worship, its principles of action, in the far-stretching
Universe, in the glorious firmament, in the deep, full soul, bursting
with unutterable thoughts.

These are truths which every reflecting mind will unhesitatingly
receive, as not to be surpassed, nor capable of improvement; and fitted,
if obeyed, to make earth indeed a Paradise, and man only a little lower
than the angels. The worthlessness of ceremonial observances, and the
necessity of active virtue; the enforcement of purity of heart as the
security for purity of life, and of the government of the thoughts, as
the originators and forerunners of action; universal philanthropy,
requiring us to love all men, and to do unto others that and that only
which we should think it right, just, and generous for them to do unto
us; forgiveness of injuries; the necessity of self-sacrifice in the
discharge of duty; humility; genuine sincerity, and _being_ that which
we _seem_ to be; all these sublime precepts need no miracle, no voice
from the clouds, to recommend them to our allegiance, or to assure us of
their divine origin. They command obedience by virtue of their inherent
rectitude and beauty; and have been, and are, and will be the law in
every age and every country of the world. God revealed them to man in
the beginning.

To the Mason, God is our Father in Heaven, to be Whose especial children
is the sufficient reward of the peacemakers, to see Whose face the
highest hope of the pure in heart; Who is ever at hand to strengthen His
true worshippers; to Whom our most fervent love is due, our most humble
and patient submission; Whose most acceptable worship is a pure and
pitying heart and a beneficent life; in Whose constant presence we live
and act, to Whose merciful disposal we are resigned by that death which,
we hope and believe, is but the entrance to a better life; and Whose
wise decrees forbid a man to lap his soul in an elysium of mere indolent
content.

As to our feelings toward Him and our conduct toward man, Masonry
teaches little about which men can differ, and little from which they
can dissent. He is our _Father_; and we are all _brethren_. This much
lies open to the most ignorant and busy, as fully as to those who have
most leisure and are most learned. This needs no Priest to teach it, and
no authority to indorse it; and if every man did that only which is
consistent with it, it would exile barbarity, cruelty, intolerance,
uncharitableness, perfidy, treachery, revenge, selfishness, and all
their kindred vices and bad passions beyond the confines of the world.

The true Mason, sincerely holding that a Supreme God created and governs
this world, believes also that He governs it by laws, which, though
wise, just, and beneficent, are yet steady, unwavering, inexorable. He
believes that his agonies and sorrows are ordained for _his_ chastening,
_his_ strengthening, _his_ elaboration and development; because they are
the necessary results of the operation of laws, the best that could be
devised for the happiness and purification of the species, and to give
occasion and opportunity for the practice of all the virtues, from the
homeliest and most common, to the noblest and most sublime; or perhaps
not even that, but the best adapted to work out the vast, awful,
glorious, eternal designs of the Great Spirit of the Universe. He
believes that the ordained operations of nature, which have brought
misery to him, have, from the very unswerving tranquility of their
career, showered blessings and sunshine upon many another path; that the
unrelenting chariot of Time, which has crushed or maimed him in its
allotted course, is pressing onward to the accomplishment of those
serene and mighty purposes, to have contributed to which, even as a
victim, is an honor and a recompense. He takes this view of Time and
Nature and God, and yet bears his lot without murmur or distrust;
because it is a portion of a system, the best possible, because ordained
by God. He does not believe that God loses sight of _him_, while
superintending the march of the great harmonies of the Universe; nor
that it was not foreseen, when the Universe was created, its laws
enacted, and the long succession of its operations pre-ordained, that in
the great march of those events, he would suffer pain and undergo
calamity. He believes that his individual good entered into God's
consideration, as well as the great cardinal results to which the course
of all things is tending.

Thus believing, he has attained an eminence in virtue, the highest, amid
_passive_ excellence, which humanity can reach. He finds his reward and
his support in the reflection that he is an unreluctant and
self-sacrificing co-operator with the Creator of the Universe; and in
the noble consciousness of being worthy and capable of so sublime a
conception, yet so sad a destiny. He is then truly entitled to be
called a Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason. He is content to fall
early in the battle, if his body may but form a stepping-stone for the
future conquests of humanity.

It cannot be that God, Who, we are certain, is perfectly good, can
choose us to suffer pain, unless either we are ourselves to receive from
it an antidote to what is evil in ourselves, or else as such pain is a
necessary part in the scheme of the Universe, which as a whole is good.
In either case, the Mason receives it with submission. He would not
suffer unless it was ordered so. Whatever his creed, if he believes that
God is, and that He cares for His creatures, he cannot doubt that; nor
that it would not have been so ordered, unless it was either better for
himself, or for some other persons, or for some things. To complain and
lament is to murmur against God's will, and worse than unbelief.

The Mason, whose mind is cast in a nobler mould than those of the
ignorant and unreflecting, and is instinct with a diviner life,--who
loves truth more than rest, and the peace of Heaven rather than the
peace of Eden,--to whom a loftier being brings severer cares,--who knows
that man does not live by pleasure or content alone, but by the presence
of the power of God,--must cast behind him the hope of any other repose
or tranquillity, than that which is the last reward of long agonies of
thought; he must relinquish all prospect of any Heaven save that of
which trouble is the avenue and portal; he must gird up his loins, and
trim his lamp, for a work that must be done, and must not be negligently
done. If he does not like to live in the furnished lodgings of
tradition, he must build his own house, his own system of faith and
thought, for himself.

The hope of success, and not the hope of reward, should be our
stimulating and sustaining power. Our object, and not ourselves, should
be our inspiring thought. Selfishness is a sin, when temporary, and for
time. Spun out to eternity, it does not become celestial prudence. We
should toil and die, not for Heaven or Bliss, but for Duty.

In the more frequent cases, where we have to join our efforts to those
of thousands of others, to contribute to the carrying forward of a great
cause; merely to till the ground or sow the seed for a very distant
harvest, or to prepare the way for the future advent of some great
amendment; the amount which each one contributes to the achievement of
ultimate success, the portion of the price which justice should assign
to each as his especial production, can never be accurately ascertained.
Perhaps few of those who have ever labored, in the patience of secrecy
and silence, to bring about some political or social change, which they
felt convinced would ultimately prove of vast service to humanity, lived
to see the change effected, or the anticipated good flow from it. Fewer
still of them were able to pronounce what appreciable weight their
several efforts contributed to the achievement of the change desired.
Many will doubt, whether, in truth, these exertions have any influence
whatever; and, discouraged, cease all active effort.

Not to be thus discouraged, the Mason must labor to elevate and purify
his _motives_, as well as sedulously cherish the conviction, assuredly a
true one, that in this world there is no such thing as effort thrown
away; that in all labor there is profit; that all sincere exertion, in a
righteous and unselfish cause, is _necessarily_ followed, in spite of
all appearance to the contrary, by an appropriate and proportionate
success; that _no_ bread cast upon the waters can be wholly lost; that
_no_ seed planted in the ground can fail to quicken in due time and
measure; and that, however we may, in moments of despondency, be apt to
doubt, not only whether our cause will triumph, but whether, if it does,
we shall have contributed to its triumph,--there is One, Who has not
only seen every exertion we have made, but Who can assign the exact
degree in which each soldier has assisted to gain the great victory over
social evil. No good work is done wholly in vain.

The Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason will in nowise deserve that
honorable title, if he has not that strength, that will, that
self-sustaining energy; that Faith, that feeds upon no earthly hope, nor
ever thinks of victory, but, content in its own consummation, combats
because it ought to combat, rejoicing fights, and still rejoicing falls.

The Augean Stables of the World, the accumulated uncleanness and misery
of centuries, require a mighty river to cleanse them thoroughly away;
every drop we contribute aids to swell that river and augment its force,
in a degree appreciable by God, though not by man; and he whose zeal is
deep and earnest, will not be over-anxious that his individual drops
should be distinguishable amid the mighty mass of cleansing and
fertilizing waters; far less that, for the sake of distinction, it
should flow in ineffective singleness away.

The true Mason will not be careful that his name should be inscribed
upon the mite which he casts into the treasury of God. It suffices him
to know that if he has labored, with purity of purpose, in any good
cause, he _must_ have contributed to its success; that the _degree_ in
which he has contributed is a matter of infinitely small concern; and
still more, that the consciousness of having so contributed, however
obscurely and unnoticed, is his sufficient, even if it be his sole,
reward. Let every Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason cherish this
faith. It is a duty. It is the brilliant and never-dying light that
shines within and through the symbolic pedestal of alabaster, on which
reposes the perfect cube of agate, symbol of duty, inscribed with the
divine name of God. He who industriously sows and reaps is a good
laborer, and worthy of his hire. But he who sows that which shall be
reaped by others, by those who will know not of and care not for the
sower, is a laborer of a nobler order, and, worthy of a more excellent
reward.

The Mason does not exhort others to an ascetic undervaluing of this
life, as an insignificant and unworthy portion of existence; for that
demands feelings which are unnatural, and which, therefore, if attained,
must be morbid, and if merely professed, insincere; and teaches us to
look rather to a future life for the compensation of social evils, than
to this life for their cure; and so does injury to the cause of virtue
and to that of social progress. Life is real, and is earnest, and it is
full of duties to be performed. It is the beginning of our immortality.
Those only who feel a deep interest and affection for this world will
work resolutely for its amelioration; those whose affections are
transferred to Heaven, easily acquiesce in the miseries of earth,
deeming them hopeless, befitting, and ordained; and console themselves
with the idea of the amends which are one day to be theirs. It is a sad
truth, that those most decidedly given to spiritual contemplation, and
to making religion rule in their hearts, are often most apathetic toward
all improvement of this world's systems, and in many cases virtual
conservatives of evil, and hostile to political and social reform, as
diverting men's energies from eternity.

The Mason does not war with his own instincts, macerate the body into
weakness and disorder, and disparage what he sees to be beautiful,
knows to be wonderful, and feels to be unspeakably dear and fascinating.
He does not put aside the nature which God has given him, to struggle
after one which He has _not_ bestowed. He knows that man is sent into
the world, not a spiritual, but a composite being, made up of body and
mind, the body having, as is fit and needful in a material world, its
full, rightful, and allotted share. His life is guided by a full
recognition of this fact. He does not deny it in bold words, and admit
it in weaknesses and inevitable failings. He believes that his
spirituality will come in the next stage of his being, when he puts on
the spiritual body; that his body will be dropped at death; and that,
until then, God meant it to be commanded and controlled, but not
neglected, despised, or ignored by the soul, under pain of heavy
consequences.

Yet the Mason is not indifferent as to the fate of the soul, after its
present life, as to its continued and eternal being, and the character
of the scenes in which that being will be fully developed. These are to
him topics of the profoundest interest, and the most ennobling and
refining contemplation. They occupy much of his leisure; and as he
becomes familiar with the sorrows and calamities of this life, as his
hopes are disappointed and his visions of happiness here fade away; when
life has wearied him in its race of hours; when he is harassed and
toil-worn, and the burden of his years weighs heavy on him, the balance
of attraction gradually inclines in favor of another life; and he clings
to his lofty speculations with a tenacity of interest which needs no
injunction, and will listen to no prohibition. They are the consoling
privilege of the aspiring, the wayworn, the weary, and the bereaved.

To him the contemplation of the Future lets in light upon the Present,
and develops the higher portions of his nature. He endeavors rightly to
adjust the respective claims of Heaven and earth upon his time and
thought, so as to give the proper proportions thereof to performing the
duties and entering into the interests of this world, and to preparation
for a better; to the cultivation and purification of his own character,
and to the public service of his fellow-men.

The Mason does not dogmatize, but entertaining and uttering his own
convictions, he leaves everyone else free to do the same; and only hopes
that the time will come, even if after the lapse of ages, when all men
shall form one great family of brethren, and one law alone, the law of
love, shall govern God's whole Universe.

Believe as you may, my brother; if the Universe is not, to you, without
a God, and if man is not like the beast that perishes, but hath an
immortal soul, we welcome you among us, to wear, as we wear, with
humility, and conscious of your demerits and shortcomings, the title of
Grand Elect, Perfect, and Sublime Mason.

It was not without a secret meaning, that _twelve_ was the number of the
Apostles of Christ, and _seventy-two_ that of his Disciples: that John
addressed his rebukes and menaces to the _Seven_ churches, the number of
the Archangels and the Planets. At Babylon were the Seven Stages of
Bersippa, a pyramid of Seven stories, and at Ecbatana Seven concentric
inclosures, each of a different color. Thebes also had Seven gates, and
the same number is repeated again and again in the account of the flood.
The Sephiroth, or Emanations, _ten_ in number, three in one class, and
seven in the other, repeat the mystic numbers of Pythagoras. Seven
Amschaspands or planetary spirits were invoked with Ormuzd: Seven
inferior Rishis of Hindustan were saved with the head of their family in
an ark: and Seven ancient personages alone returned with the British
just man, Hu, from the dale of the grievous waters. There were Seven
Heliadæ, whose father Helias, or the Sun, once crossed the sea in a
golden cup; Seven Titans, children of the older Titan, Kronos or Saturn;
Seven Corybantes; and Seven Cabiri, sons of Sydyk; Seven primeval
Celestial spirits of the Japanese, and Seven Karfesters who escaped from
the deluge and began to be the parents of a new race, on the summit of
Mount Albordi. Seven Cyclopes, also, built the walls of Tiryus.

Celsus, as quoted by Origen, tells us that the Persians represented by
symbols the two-fold motion of the stars, fixed and planetary, and the
passage of the Soul through their successive spheres. They erected in
their holy caves, in which the mystic rites of the Mithriac Initiations
were practised, what he denominates a high _ladder_, on the Seven steps
of which were Seven gates or portals, according to the number of the
Seven principal heavenly bodies. Through these the aspirants passed,
until they reached the summit of the whole; and this passage was styled
a transmigration through the spheres.

Jacob saw in his dream a _ladder_ planted or set on the earth, and its
top reaching to Heaven, and the Malaki Alohim ascending and descending
on it, and above it stood IHUH, declaring Himself to be Ihuh-Alhi
Abraham. The word translated _ladder_, is [Hebrew: סלם] _Salam_, from
[Hebrew: סלל], _Salal_, raised, elevated, reared up, exalted, piled up
into a heap, _Aggeravit_. [Hebrew: סללה] Salalah, means a heap, rampart,
or other accumulation of earth or stone, artificially made; and [Hebrew:
סלע], _Salaa_ or _Salo_, is a rock or cliff or boulder, and the name of
the city of Petra. There is no ancient Hebrew word to designate a
pyramid.

The symbolic mountain Meru was ascended by Seven steps or stages; and
all the pyramids and artificial tumuli and hillocks thrown up in flat
countries were imitations of this fabulous and mystic mountain, for
purposes of worship. These were the "High Places" so often mentioned in
the Hebrew books, on which the idolaters sacrificed to foreign gods.

The pyramids were sometimes square, and sometimes round. The sacred
Babylonian tower [[Hebrew: מגדל], Magdol], dedicated to the great Father
Bal, was an artificial hill, of pyramidal shape, and Seven stages, built
of brick, and each stage of a different color, representing the Seven
planetary spheres by the appropriate color of each planet. Meru itself
was said to be a single mountain, terminating in three peaks, and thus a
symbol of the Trimurti. The great Pagoda at Tanjore was of six stories,
surmounted by a temple as the seventh, and on this three spires or
towers. An ancient pagoda at Deogur was surmounted by a tower,
sustaining the mystic egg and a trident. Herodotus tells us that the
Temple of Bal at Babylon was a tower composed of Seven towers, resting
on an eighth that served as basis, and successively diminishing in size
from the bottom to the top; and Strabo tells us it was a pyramid.

Faber thinks that the Mithriac _ladder_ was really a pyramid with Seven
stages, each provided with a narrow door or aperture, through each of
which doors the aspirant passed, to reach the summit, and then descended
through similar doors on the opposite side of the pyramid; the ascent
and descent of the Soul being thus represented.

Each Mithriac cave and all the most ancient temples were intended to
symbolize the Universe, which itself was habitually called the Temple
and habitation of Deity. Every temple was the world in miniature; and
so the whole world was one grand temple. The most ancient temples were
roofless; and therefore the Persians, Celts, and Scythians strongly
disliked artificial covered edifices. Cicero says that Xerxes burned the
Grecian temples, on the express ground that the whole world was the
Magnificent Temple and Habitation of the Supreme Deity. Macrobius says
that the entire Universe was judiciously deemed by many the Temple of
God. Plato pronounced the real Temple of the Deity to be the world; and
Heraclitus declared that the Universe, variegated with animals and
plants and stars was the only genuine Temple of the Divinity.

How completely the Temple of Solomon was symbolic, is manifest, not only
from the continual reproduction in it of the sacred numbers and of
astrological symbols in the historical descriptions of it; but also, and
yet more, from the details of the imaginary reconstructed edifice, seen
by Ezekiel in his vision. The Apocalypse completes the demonstration,
and shows the kabalistic meanings of the whole. The Symbola
Architectonica are found on the most ancient edifices; and these
mathematical figures and instruments, adopted by the Templars, and
identical with those on the gnostic seals and abraxæ, connect their
dogma with the Chaldaic, Syriac, and Egyptian Oriental philosophy. The
secret Pythagorean doctrines of numbers were preserved by the monks of
Thibet, by the Hierophants of Egypt and Eleusis, at Jerusalem, and in
the circular Chapters of the Druids; and they are especially consecrated
in that mysterious book, the Apocalypse of Saint John.

All temples were surrounded by pillars, recording the number of the
constellations, the signs of the zodiac, or the cycles of the planets;
and each one was a microcosm or symbol of the Universe, having for roof
or ceiling the starred vault of Heaven.

All temples were originally open at the top, having for roof the sky.
Twelve pillars described the belt of the zodiac. Whatever the number of
the pillars, they were mystical everywhere. At Abury, the Druidic temple
reproduced all the cycles by its columns. Around the temples of
Chilminar in Persia, of Baalbec, and of Tukhti Schlomoh in Tartary, on
the frontier of China, stood _forty_ pillars. On each side of the temple
at Pæstum were fourteen, recording the Egyptian cycle of the dark and
light sides of the moon, as described by Plutarch; the whole
thirty-eight that surrounded them recording the two meteoric cycles so
often found in the Druidic temples.

The theatre built by Scaurus, in Greece, was surrounded by 360 columns;
the Temple at Mecca, and that at Iona in Scotland by 360 stones.

[Illustration]



MORALS AND DOGMA


CHAPTER OF ROSE CROIX

[Illustration]



XV.

KNIGHT OF THE EAST OR OF THE SWORD.

[Knight of the East, of the Sword, or of the Eagle.]


This Degree, like all others in Masonry, is symbolical. Based upon
historical truth and authentic tradition, it is still an allegory. The
leading lesson of this Degree is Fidelity to obligation, and Constancy
and Perseverance under difficulties and discouragement.

Masonry is engaged in her crusade,--against ignorance, intolerance,
fanaticism, superstition, uncharitableness, and error. She does not sail
with the trade-winds, upon a smooth sea, with a steady free breeze, fair
for a welcoming harbor; but meets and must overcome many opposing
currents, baffling winds, and dead calms.

The chief obstacles to her success are the apathy and faithlessness of
her own selfish children, and the supine indifference of the world. In
the roar and crush and hurry of life and business, and the tumult and
uproar of politics, the quiet voice of Masonry is unheard and unheeded.
The first lesson which one learns, who engages in any great work of
reform or beneficence, is, that men are essentially careless, lukewarm,
and indifferent as to everything that does not concern their own
personal and immediate welfare. It is to single men, and not to the
united efforts of many, that all the great works of man, struggling
toward perfection, are owing. The enthusiast, who imagines that he can
inspire with his own enthusiasm the multitude that eddies around him, or
even the few who have associated themselves with him as co-workers, is
grievously mistaken; and most often the conviction of his own mistake is
followed by discouragement and disgust. To do all, to pay all, and to
suffer all, and then, when despite all obstacles and hindrances, success
is accomplished, and a great work done, to see those who opposed or
looked coldly on it, claim and reap all the praise and reward, is the
common and almost universal lot of the benefactor of his kind.

He who endeavors to serve, to benefit, and improve the world, is like a
swimmer, who struggles against a rapid current, in a river lashed into
angry waves by the winds. Often they roar over his head, often they beat
him back and baffle him. Most men yield to the stress of the current,
and float with it to the shore, or are swept over the rapids; and only
here and there the stout, strong heart and vigorous arms struggle on
toward ultimate success.

It is the motionless and stationary that most frets and impedes the
current of progress; the solid rock or stupid dead tree, rested firmly
on the bottom, and around which the river whirls and eddies: the Masons
that doubt and hesitate and are discouraged; that disbelieve in the
capability of man to improve; that are not disposed to toil and labor
for the interest and well-being of general humanity; that expect others
to do all, even of that which they do not oppose or ridicule; while they
sit, applauding and doing nothing, or perhaps prognosticating failure.

There were many such at the rebuilding of the Temple. There were
prophets of evil and misfortune--the lukewarm and the indifferent and
the apathetic; those who stood by and sneered; and those who thought
they did God service enough if they now and then faintly applauded.
There were ravens croaking ill omen, and murmurers who preached the
folly and futility of the attempt. The world is made up of such; and
they were as abundant then as they are now.

But gloomy and discouraging as was the prospect, with lukewarmness
within and bitter opposition without, our ancient brethren persevered.
Let us leave them engaged in the good work, and whenever to us, as to
them, success is uncertain, remote, and contingent, let us still
remember that the only question for us to ask, as true men and Masons,
is, what does duty require; and not what will be the result and our
reward if we do our duty. Work on with the Sword in one hand, and the
Trowel in the other!

Masonry teaches that God is a Paternal Being, and has an interest in his
creatures, such as is expressed in the title _Father_; an interest
unknown to all the systems of Paganism, untaught in all the theories of
philosophy; an interest not only in the glorious beings of other
spheres, the Sons of Light, the dwellers in Heavenly worlds, but in us,
poor, ignorant, and unworthy; that He has pity for the erring, pardon
for the guilty, love for the pure, knowledge for the humble, and
promises of immortal life for those who trust in and obey Him.

Without a belief in Him, life is miserable, the world is dark, the
Universe disrobed of its splendors, the intellectual tie to nature
broken, the charm of existence dissolved, the great hope of being lost;
and the mind, like a star struck from its sphere, wanders through the
infinite desert of its conceptions, without attraction, tendency,
destiny, or end.

Masonry teaches, that, of all the events and actions, that take place in
the universe of worlds and the eternal succession of ages, there is not
one, even the minutest, which God did not forever foresee, with all the
distinctness of immediate vision, combining all, so that man's free will
should be His instrument, like all the other forces of nature.

It teaches that the soul of man is formed by Him for a purpose; that,
built up in its proportions, and fashioned in every part, by infinite
skill, an emanation from His spirit, its nature, necessity, and design
are virtue. It is so formed, so moulded, so fashioned, so exactly
balanced, so exquisitely proportioned in every part, that sin introduced
into it is misery; that vicious thoughts fall upon it like drops of
poison; and guilty desires, breathing on its delicate fibres, make
plague-spots there, deadly as those of pestilence upon the body. It is
made for virtue, and not for vice; for purity, as its end, rest, and
happiness. Not more vainly would we attempt to make the mountain sink to
the level of the valley, the waves of the angry sea turn back from its
shores and cease to thunder upon the beach, the stars to halt in their
swift courses, than to change any one law of our own nature. And one of
those laws, uttered by God's voice, and speaking through every nerve
and fibre, every force and element, of the moral constitution He has
given us, is that we must be upright and virtuous; that if tempted we
must resist; that we must govern our unruly passions, and hold in hand
our sensual appetites. And this is not the dictate of an arbitrary will,
nor of some stern and impracticable law; but it is part of the great
firm law of harmony that binds the Universe together: not the mere
enactment of arbitrary will; but the dictate of Infinite Wisdom.

We know that God is good, and that what He does is right. This known,
the works of creation, the changes of life, the destinies of eternity,
are all spread before us, as the dispensations and counsels of infinite
love. This known, we then know that the love of God is working to
issues, like itself, beyond all thought and imagination good and
glorious; and that the only reason why we do not understand it, is that
it is _too_ glorious for us to understand. God's love takes care for
all, and nothing is neglected. It watches over all, provides for all,
makes wise adaptations for all; for age, for infancy, for maturity, for
childhood; in every scene of this or another world; for want, weakness,
joy, sorrow, and even for sin. All is good and well and right; and shall
be so forever. Through the eternal ages the light of God's beneficence
shall shine hereafter, disclosing all, consummating all, rewarding all
that deserve reward. Then we shall see, what now we can only believe.
The cloud will be lifted up, the gate of mystery be passed, and the full
light shine forever; the light of which that of the Lodge is a symbol.
Then that which caused us trial shall yield us triumph; and that which
made our heart ache shall fill us with gladness; and we shall then feel
that there, as here, the only true happiness is to learn, to advance,
and to improve; which could not happen unless we had commenced with
error, ignorance, and imperfection. We must pass through the darkness,
to reach the light.

[Illustration]



XVI.

PRINCE OF JERUSALEM.


We no longer expect to rebuild the Temple at Jerusalem. To us it has
become but a symbol. To us the whole world is God's Temple, as is every
upright heart. To establish all over the world the New Law and Reign of
Love, Peace, Charity, and Toleration, is to build that Temple, most
acceptable to God, in erecting which Masonry is now engaged. No longer
needing to repair to Jerusalem to worship, nor to offer up sacrifices
and shed blood to propitiate the Deity, man may make the woods and
mountains his Churches and Temples, and worship God with a devout
gratitude, and with works of charity and beneficence to his fellow-men.
Wherever the humble and contrite heart silently offers up its adoration,
under the overarching trees, in the open, level meadows, on the
hill-side, in the glen, or in the city's swarming streets; there is
God's House and the New Jerusalem.

The Princes of Jerusalem no longer sit as magistrates to judge between
the people; nor is their number limited to five. But their duties still
remain substantially the same, and their insignia and symbols retain
their old significance. Justice and Equity are still their
characteristics. To reconcile disputes and heal dissensions, to restore
amity and peace, to soothe dislikes and soften prejudices, are their
peculiar duties; and they know that the peacemakers are blessed.

Their emblems have been already explained. They are part of the language
of Masonry; the same now as it was when Moses learned it from the
Egyptian Hierophants.

Still we observe the spirit of the Divine law, as thus enunciated to our
ancient brethren, when the Temple was rebuilt, and the book of the law
again opened:

"Execute true judgment; and show mercy and compassion every man to his
brother. Oppress not the widow nor the fatherless, the stranger nor the
poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in his heart.
Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbor; execute the judgment of
Truth and Peace in your gates; and love no false oath; for all these I
hate, saith the Lord.

"Let those who have power rule in righteousness, and Princes in
judgment. And let him that is a judge be as an hiding-place from the
wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place;
as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. Then the vile person
shall no more be called liberal; nor the churl bountiful; and the work
of justice shall be peace; and the effect of justice, quiet and
security; and wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of the times.
Walk ye righteously and speak uprightly; despise the gains of
oppression, shake from your hands the contamination of bribes; stop not
your ears against the cries of the oppressed, nor shut your eyes that
you may not see the crimes of the great; and you shall dwell on high,
and your place of defence be like munitions of rocks."

Forget not these precepts of the old Law; and especially do not forget,
as you advance, that every Mason, however humble, is your brother, and
the laboring man your peer! Remember always that all Masonry is work,
and that the trowel is an emblem of the Degrees in this Council. Labor,
when rightly understood, is both noble and ennobling, and intended to
develop man's moral and spiritual nature, and not to be deemed a
disgrace or a misfortune.

Everything around us is, in its bearings and influences, moral. The
serene and bright morning, when we recover our conscious existence from
the embraces of sleep; when, from that image of Death God calls us to a
new life, and again gives us existence, and His mercies visit us in
every bright ray and glad thought, and call for gratitude and content;
the silence of that early dawn, the hushed silence, as it were, of
expectation; the holy eventide, its cooling breeze, its lengthening
shadows, its falling shades, its still and sober hour; the sultry
noontide and the stern and solemn midnight; and Spring-time, and
chastening Autumn; and Summer, that unbars our gates, and carries us
forth amidst the ever-renewed wonders of the world; and Winter, that
gathers us around the evening hearth:--all these, as they pass, touch by
turns the springs of the spiritual life in us, and are conducting that
life to good or evil. The idle watch-hand often points to something
within us; and the shadow of the gnomon on the dial often falls upon the
conscience.

A life of labor is not a state of inferiority or degradation. The
Almighty has not cast man's lot beneath the quiet shades, and amid glad
groves and lovely hills, with no task to perform; with nothing to do but
to rise up and eat, and to lie down and rest. He has ordained that
_Work_ shall be done, in all the dwellings of life, in every productive
field, in every busy city, and on every wave of every ocean. And this He
has done, because it has pleased Him to give man a nature destined to
higher ends than indolent repose and irresponsible profitless
indulgence; and because, for developing the energies of such a nature,
work was the necessary and proper element. We might as well ask why He
could not make two and two be six, as why He could not develop these
energies without the instrumentality of work. They are equally
impossibilities.

This, Masonry teaches, as a great Truth; a great moral landmark, that
ought to guide the course of all mankind. It teaches its toiling
children that the scene of their daily life is all spiritual, that the
very implements of their toil, the fabrics they weave, the merchandise
they barter, are designed for spiritual ends; that so believing, their
daily lot may be to them a sphere for the noblest improvement. That
which we do in our intervals of relaxation, our church-going, and our
book-reading, are especially designed to prepare our minds for the
_action_ of Life. We are to hear and read and meditate, that we may
_act_ well; and the _action_ of Life is itself the great field for
spiritual improvement. There is no task of industry or business, in
field or forest, on the wharf or the ship's deck, in the office or the
exchange, but has spiritual ends. There is no care or cross of our daily
labor, but was especially ordained to nurture in us patience, calmness,
resolution, perseverance, gentleness, disinterestedness, magnanimity.
Nor is there any tool or implement of toil, but is a part of the great
spiritual instrumentality.

All the relations of life, those of parent, child, brother, sister,
friend, associate, lover and beloved, husband, wife, are moral,
throughout every living tie and thrilling nerve that bind them together.
They cannot subsist a day nor an hour without putting the mind to a
trial of its truth, fidelity, forbearance, and disinterestedness.

A great city is one extended scene of moral action. There is no blow
struck in it but has a purpose, ultimately good or bad, and therefore
moral. There is no action performed, but has a motive; and motives are
the special jurisdiction of morality. Equipages, houses, and furniture
are symbols of what is moral, and they in a thousand ways minister to
right or wrong feeling. Everything that belongs to us, ministering to
our comfort or luxury, awakens in us emotions of pride or gratitude, of
selfishness or vanity; thoughts of self-indulgence, or merciful
remembrances of the needy and the destitute.

Everything acts upon and influences us. God's great law of sympathy and
harmony is potent and inflexible as His law of gravitation. A sentence
embodying a noble thought stirs our blood; a noise made by a child frets
and exasperates us, and influences our actions.

A world of spiritual objects, influences, and relations lies around us
all. We all vaguely deem it to be so; but he only lives a charmed life,
like that of genius and poetic inspiration, who communes with the
spiritual scene around him, hears the voice of the spirit in every
sound, sees its signs in every passing form of things, and feels its
impulse in all action, passion, and being. Very near to us lies the
mines of wisdom; unsuspected they lie all around us. There is a secret
in the simplest things, a wonder in the plainest, a charm in the
dullest.

We are all naturally seekers of wonders. We travel far to see the
majesty of old ruins, the venerable forms of the hoary mountains, great
water-falls, and galleries of art. And yet the world-wonder is all
around us; the wonder of setting suns, and evening stars, of the magic
spring-time, the blossoming of the trees, the strange transformations of
the moth; the wonder of the Infinite Divinity and of His boundless
revelation. There is no splendor beyond that which sets its morning
throne in the golden East; no dome sublime as that of Heaven; no beauty
so fair as that of the verdant, blossoming earth; no place, however
invested with the sanctities of old time, like that home which is hushed
and folded within the embrace of the humblest wall and roof.

And all these are but the symbols of things, far greater and higher. All
is but the clothing of the spirit. In this vesture of time is wrapped
the immortal nature: in this show of circumstance and form stands
revealed the stupendous reality. Let man but be, as he is, a living
soul, communing with himself and with God, and his vision becomes
eternity; his abode, infinity; his home, the bosom of all-embracing
love.

The great problem of Humanity is wrought out in the humblest abodes; no
more than this is done in the highest. A human heart throbs beneath the
beggar's gabardine; and that and no more stirs with its beating the
Prince's mantle. The beauty of Love, the charm of Friendship, the
sacredness of Sorrow, the heroism of Patience, the noble Self-sacrifice,
these and their like, alone, make life to be life indeed, and are its
grandeur and its power. They are the priceless treasures and glory of
humanity; and they are not things of condition. All places and all
scenes are alike clothed with the grandeur and charm of virtues such as
these.

The million occasions will come to us all, in the ordinary paths of our
life, in our homes, and by our firesides, wherein we may act as nobly,
as if, all our life long, we led armies, sat in senates, or visited beds
of sickness and pain. Varying every hour, the million occasions will
come in which we may restrain our passions, subdue our hearts to
gentleness and patience, resign our own interest for another's
advantage, speak words of kindness and wisdom, raise the fallen, cheer
the fainting and sick in spirit, and soften and assuage the weariness
and bitterness of their mortal lot. To every Mason there will be
opportunity enough for these. They cannot be written on his tomb; but
they will be written deep in the hearts of men, of friends, of children,
of kindred all around him, in the book of the great account, and, in
their eternal influences, on the great pages of the Universe.

To such a destiny, at least, my Brethren, let us all aspire! These laws
of Masonry let us all strive to obey! And so may our hearts become true
temples of the Living God! And may He encourage our zeal, sustain our
hopes, and assure us of success!

[Illustration]

[Illustration]



XVII.

KNIGHT OF THE EAST AND WEST.


This is the first of the Philosophical Degrees of the Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite; and the beginning of a course of instruction
which will fully unveil to you the heart and inner mysteries of Masonry.
Do not despair because you have often seemed on the point of attaining
the inmost light, and have as often been disappointed. In all time,
truth has been hidden under symbols, and often under a succession of
allegories: where veil after veil had to be penetrated before the true
Light was reached, and the essential truth stood revealed. The Human
Light is but an imperfect reflection of a ray of the Infinite and
Divine.

We are about to approach those ancient Religions which once ruled the
minds of men, and whose ruins encumber the plains of the great Past, as
the broken columns of Palmyra and Tadmor lie bleaching on the sands of
the desert. They rise before us, those old, strange, mysterious creeds
and faiths, shrouded in the mists of antiquity, and stalk dimly and
undefined along the line which divides Time from Eternity; and forms of
strange, wild, startling beauty mingled in the vast throngs of figures
with shapes monstrous, grotesque, and hideous.

The religion taught by Moses, which, like the laws of Egypt, enunciated
the principle of exclusion, borrowed, at every period of its existence,
from all the creeds with which it came in contact. While, by the studies
of the learned and wise, it enriched itself with the most admirable
principles of the religions of Egypt and Asia, it was changed, in the
wanderings of the People, by everything that was most impure or
seductive in the pagan manners and superstitions. It was one thing in
the times of Moses and Aaron, another in those of David and Solomon, and
still another in those of Daniel and Philo.

At the time when John the Baptist made his appearance in the desert,
near the shores of the Dead Sea, all the old philosophical and religious
systems were approximating toward each other. A general lassitude
inclined the minds of all toward the quietude of that amalgamation of
doctrines for which the expeditions of Alexander and the more peaceful
occurrences that followed, with the establishment in Asia and Africa of
many Grecian dynasties and a great number of Grecian colonies, had
prepared the way. After the intermingling of different nations, which
resulted from the wars of Alexander in three-quarters of the globe, the
doctrines of Greece, of Egypt, of Persia, and of India, met and
intermingled everywhere. All the barriers that had formerly kept the
nations apart, were thrown down; and while the People of the West
readily connected their faith with those of the East, those of the
Orient hastened to learn the traditions of Rome and the legends of
Athens. While the Philosophers of Greece, all (except the disciples of
Epicurus) more or less Platonists, seized eagerly upon the beliefs and
doctrines of the East,--the Jews and Egyptians, before then the most
exclusive of all peoples, yielded to that eclecticism which prevailed
among their masters, the Greeks and Romans.

Under the same influences of toleration, even those who embraced
Christianity, mingled together the old and the new, Christianity and
Philosophy, the Apostolic teachings and the traditions of Mythology. The
man of intellect, devotee of one system, rarely displaces it with
another in all its purity. The people take such a creed as is offered
them. Accordingly, the distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric
doctrine, immemorial in other creeds, easily gained a foothold among
many of the Christians; and it was held by a vast number, even during
the preaching of Paul, that the writings of the Apostles were
incomplete; that they contained only the germs of another doctrine,
which must receive from the hands of philosophy, not only the systematic
arrangement which was wanting, but all the development which lay
concealed therein. The writings of the Apostles, they said, in
addressing themselves to mankind in general, enunciated only the
articles of the vulgar faith; but transmitted the mysteries of knowledge
to superior minds, to the Elect,--mysteries handed down from generation
to generation in esoteric traditions; and to this science of the
mysteries they gave the name of [[Greek: Γνώσις] Gnōsis].

The Gnostics derived their leading doctrines and ideas from Plato and
Philo, the Zend-avesta and the Kabalah, and the Sacred books of India
and Egypt; and thus introduced into the bosom of Christianity the
cosmological and theosophical speculations, which had formed the larger
portion of the ancient religions of the Orient, joined to those of the
Egyptian, Greek, and Jewish doctrines, which the Neo-Platonists had
equally adopted in the Occident.

Emanation from the Deity of all spiritual beings, progressive
degeneration of these beings from emanation to emanation, redemption and
return of all to the purity of the Creator; and, after the
re-establishment of the primitive harmony of all, a fortunate and truly
divine condition of all, in the bosom of God; such were the fundamental
teachings of Gnosticism. The genius of the Orient, with its
contemplations, irradiations, and intuitions, dictated its doctrines.
Its language corresponded to its origin. Full of imagery, it had all the
magnificence, the inconsistencies, and the mobility of the figurative
style.

Behold, it said, the light, which emanates from an immense centre of
Light, that spreads everywhere its benevolent rays; so do the spirits of
Light emanate from the Divine Light. Behold, all the springs which
nourish, embellish, fertilize, and purify the Earth; they emanate from
one and the same ocean; so from the bosom of the Divinity emanate so
many streams, which form and fill the universe of intelligences. Behold
numbers, which all emanate from one primitive number, all resemble it,
all are composed of its essence, and still vary infinitely; and
utterances, decomposable into so many syllables and elements, all
contained in the primitive Word, and still infinitely various; so the
world of Intelligences emanated from a Primary Intelligence, and they
all resemble it, and yet display an infinite variety of existences.

It revived and combined the old doctrines of the Orient and the
Occident; and it found in many passages of the Gospels and the Pastoral
letters, a warrant for doing so. Christ himself spoke in parables and
allegories, John borrowed the enigmatical language of the Platonists,
and Paul often indulged in incomprehensible rhapsodies, the meaning of
which could have been clear to the Initiates alone.

It is admitted that the cradle of Gnosticism is probably to be looked
for in Syria, and even in Palestine. Most of its expounders wrote in
that corrupted form of the Greek used by the Hellenistic Jews, and in
the Septuagint and the New Testament; and there was a striking analogy
between their doctrines and those of the Judæo-Egyptian Philo, of
Alexandria; itself the seat of three schools, at once philosophic and
religious--the Greek, the Egyptian, and the Jewish.

Pythagoras and Plato, the most mystical of the Grecian Philosophers (the
latter heir to the doctrines of the former), and who had travelled, the
latter in Egypt, and the former in Phœnicia, India, and Persia, also
taught the esoteric doctrine and the distinction between the initiated
and the profane. The dominant doctrines of Platonism were found in
Gnosticism. Emanation of Intelligences from the bosom of the Deity; the
going astray in error and the sufferings of spirits, so long as they are
remote from God, and imprisoned in matter; vain and long-continued
efforts to arrive at the knowledge of the Truth, and re-enter into their
primitive union with the Supreme Being; alliance of a pure and divine
soul with an irrational soul, the seat of evil desires; angels or demons
who dwell in and govern the planets, having but an imperfect knowledge
of the ideas that presided at the creation; regeneration of all beings
by their return to the [[Greek: κόσμος νοητός], kosmos noētos], the
world of Intelligences, and its Chief, the Supreme Being; sole possible
mode of re-establishing that primitive harmony of the creation, of
which the music of the spheres of Pythagoras was the image; these were
the analogies of the two systems; and we discover in them some of the
ideas that form a part of Masonry; in which, in the present mutilated
condition of the symbolic Degrees, they are disguised and overlaid with
fiction and absurdity, or present themselves as casual hints that are
passed by wholly unnoticed.

The distinction between the esoteric and exoteric doctrines (a
distinction purely Masonic), was always and from the very earliest times
preserved among the Greeks. It remounted to the fabulous times of
Orpheus; and the mysteries of Theosophy were found in all their
traditions and myths. And after the time of Alexander, they resorted for
instruction, dogmas, and mysteries, to all the schools, to those of
Egypt and Asia, as well as those of Ancient Thrace, Sicily, Etruria, and
Attica.

The Jewish-Greek School of Alexandria is known only by two of its
Chiefs, Aristobulus and Philo, both Jews of Alexandria in Egypt.
Belonging to Asia by its origin, to Egypt by its residence, to Greece by
its language and studies, it strove to show that all truths embedded in
the philosophies of other countries were transplanted thither from
Palestine. Aristobulus declared that all the facts and details of the
Jewish Scriptures were so many allegories, concealing the most profound
meanings, and that Plato had borrowed from them all his finest ideas.
Philo, who lived a century after him, following the same theory,
endeavored to show that the Hebrew writings, by their system of
allegories, were the true source of all religious and philosophical
doctrines. According to him, the literal meaning is for the vulgar
alone. Whoever has meditated on philosophy, purified himself by virtue,
and raised himself by contemplation, to God and the intellectual world,
and received their inspiration, pierces the gross envelope of the
letter, discovers a wholly different order of things, and is initiated
into mysteries, of which the elementary or literal instruction offers
but an imperfect image. A historical fact, a figure, a word, a letter, a
number, a rite, a custom, the parable or vision of a prophet, veils the
most profound truths; and he who has the key of science will interpret
all according to the light he possesses.

Again we see the symbolism of Masonry, and the search of the Candidate
for light. "Let men of narrow minds withdraw," he says, "with closed
ears. We transmit the divine mysteries to those who have received the
sacred initiation, to those who practise true piety, and who are not
enslaved by the empty trappings of words or the preconceived opinions of
the pagans."

To Philo, the Supreme Being was the Primitive Light, or the Archetype of
Light, Source whence the rays emanate that illuminate Souls. He was also
the Soul of the Universe, and as such acted in all its parts. He Himself
fills and limits His whole Being. His Powers and Virtues fill and
penetrate all. These Powers [Greek: Δυνάμεις, dunameis] are Spirits
distinct from God, the "Ideas" of Plato personified. He is without
beginning, and lives in the prototype of Time [αιων, aion].

His image is THE WORD [Greek: Λογος], a form more brilliant than fire;
that not being the _pure_ light. This LOGOS dwells in God; for the
Supreme Being makes to Himself within His Intelligence the types or
ideas of everything that is to become reality in this World. The LOGOS
is the vehicle by which God acts on the Universe, and may be compared to
the speech of man.

The LOGOS being the World of Ideas [Greek: κόσμος νοητός], by means
whereof God has created visible things, He is the most ancient God, in
comparison with the World, which is the youngest production. The LOGOS,
_Chief of Intelligence_, of which He is the general representative, is
named _Archangel, type_ and _representative_ of all spirits, even those
of mortals. He is also styled the man-type and primitive man, Adam
Kadmon.

God only is Wise. The wisdom of man is but the reflection and image of
that of God. He is the Father, and His WISDOM the mother of creation:
for He united Himself with WISDOM [[Greek: Σοφια], Sophia], and
communicated to it the germ of creation, and it brought forth the
material world. He created the ideal world only, and caused the material
world to be made real after its type, by His LOGOS, which is His speech,
and at the same time the Idea of Ideas, the Intellectual World. The
Intellectual City was but the _Thought_ of the Architect, who meditated
the creation, according to that plan of the Material City.

The Word is not only the Creator, but occupies the place of the Supreme
Being. Through Him all the Powers and Attributes of God act. On the
other side, as first representative of the Human Family, He is the
Protector of men and their Shepherd.

God gives to man the Soul or Intelligence, which exists before the body,
and which he unites with the body. The reasoning Principle comes from
God through the Word, and communes with God and with the Word; but there
is also in man an irrational Principle, that of the inclinations and
passions which produce disorder, emanating from inferior spirits who
fill the air as ministers of God. The body, taken from the Earth, and
the irrational Principle that animates it concurrently with the rational
Principle, are hated by God, while the rational soul which He has given
it, is, as it were, captive in this prison, this coffin, that
encompasses it. The present condition of man is not his primitive
condition, when he was the image of the Logos. He has fallen from his
first estate. But he may raise himself again, by following the
directions of WISDOM [Greek: Σοφια] and of the Angels which God has
commissioned to aid him in freeing himself from the bonds of the body,
and combating Evil, the existence whereof God has permitted, _to furnish
him the means of exercising his liberty_. The souls that are purified,
not by the Law but by light, rise to the Heavenly regions, to enjoy
there a perfect felicity. Those that persevere in evil go from body to
body, the seats of passions and evil desires. The familiar lineaments of
these doctrines will be recognized by all who read the Epistles of St.
Paul, who wrote after Philo, the latter living till the reign of
Caligula, and being the contemporary of Christ.

And the Mason is familiar with these doctrines of Philo: that the
Supreme Being is a centre of Light whose rays or emanations pervade the
Universe; for that is the Light for which all Masonic journeys are a
search, and of which the sun and moon in our Lodges are only emblems:
that Light and Darkness, chief enemies from the beginning of Time,
dispute with each other the empire of the world; which we symbolize by
the candidate wandering in darkness and being brought to light: that the
world was created, not by the Supreme Being, but by a secondary agent,
who is but His WORD the [Greek: Λογος], and by types which are but his
ideas, aided by an INTELLIGENCE, or WISDOM [Greek: Σοφια], which gives
one of His Attributes; in which we see the occult meaning of the
necessity of recovering "the Word"; and of our two columns of STRENGTH
and WISDOM, which are also the two parallel lines that bound the circle
representing the Universe: that the visible world is the image of the
invisible world; that the essence of the Human Soul is the image of God,
and it existed before the body; that the object of its terrestrial life
is to disengage itself of its body or its sepulchre; and that it will
ascend to the Heavenly regions whenever it shall be purified; in which
we see the meaning, now almost forgotten in our Lodges, of the mode of
preparation of the candidate for apprenticeship, and his tests and
purifications in the first Degree, according to the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite.

Philo incorporated in his eclecticism neither Egyptian nor Oriental
elements. But there were other Jewish Teachers in Alexandria who did
both. The Jews of Egypt were slightly jealous of, and a little hostile
to, those of Palestine, particularly after the erection of the sanctuary
at Leontopolis by the High-Priest Onias; and therefore they admired and
magnified those sages, who, like Jeremiah, had resided in Egypt. "The
wisdom of Solomon" was written at Alexandria, and, in the time of St.
Jerome, was attributed to Philo; but it contains principles at variance
with his. It personifies Wisdom, and draws between its children and the
Profane, the same line of demarcation that Egypt had long before taught
to the Jews. That distinction existed at the beginning of the Mosaic
creed. Moshah himself was an Initiate in the mysteries of Egypt, as he
was compelled to be, as the adopted son of the daughter of Pharaoh,
_Thouoris_, daughter of _Sesostris-Ramses_; who, as her tomb and
monuments show, was, in the right of her infant husband, Regent of Lower
Egypt or the Delta at the time of the Hebrew Prophet's birth, reigning
at Heliopolis. She was also, as the reliefs on her tomb show, a
Priestess of HATHOR and NEITH, the two great primeval goddesses. As her
adopted son, living in her Palace and presence forty years, and during
that time scarcely acquainted with his brethren the Jews, the law of
Egypt compelled his initiation: and we find in many of his enactments
the intention of preserving, between the common people and the
Initiates, the line of separation which he found in Egypt. Moshah and
Aharun his brother, the whole series of High-Priests, the Council of the
70 Elders, Salomon and the entire succession of Prophets, were in
possession of a higher science; and of that science Masonry is, at
least, the lineal descendant. It was familiarly known as THE KNOWLEDGE
OF THE WORD.

AMŪN, at first the God of Lower Egypt only, where Moshah was reared [a
word that in Hebrew means Truth], was the Supreme God. He was styled
"_the Celestial Lord, who sheds Light on hidden things_." He was the
source of that divine life, of which the _crux ansata_ is the symbol;
and the source of all power. He united all the attributes that the
Ancient Oriental Theosophy assigned to the Supreme Being. He was the
[Greek: πλήρωμα] (Pleroma), or "_Fullness of things_," for He
comprehended in Himself everything; and the LIGHT; for he was the
Sun-God. He was unchangeable in the midst of everything phenomenal in
his worlds. He _created_ nothing; but everything _emanated_ from Him;
and of Him all the other Gods were but manifestations.

The Ram was His living symbol; which you see reproduced in this Degree,
lying on the book with seven seals on the tracing-board. He caused the
creation of the world by the Primitive Thought [[Greek: Εννοια],
Ennoia], or _Spirit_ [[Greek: Πνευμα], Pneuma], that issued from him by
means of his _Voice_ or the WORD; and which _Thought_ or _Spirit_ was
personified as the Goddess NEITH. She, too, was a divinity of _Light_,
and mother of the Sun; and the Feast of Lamps was celebrated in her
honor at Sais. The Creative _Power_, another manifestation of Deity,
proceeding to the creation conceived of in her, the Divine
_Intelligence_, produced with its Word the Universe, symbolized by an
egg issuing from the mouth of KNEPH; from which egg came PHTHA, image of
the Supreme Intelligence as realized in the world, and the type of that
manifested in man; the principal agent, also, of Nature, or the creative
and productive Fire. PHRE or RE, the Sun, or Celestial Light, whose
symbol was [Mystic Symbol: ○], the point within a circle, was the son of
PHTHA; and TIPHE, his wife, or the celestial firmament, with the seven
celestial bodies, animated by spirits of genii that govern them, was
represented on many of the monuments, clad in blue or yellow, her
garments sprinkled with stars, and accompanied by the sun, moon, and
five planets; and she was the type of Wisdom, and they of the Seven
Planetary Spirits of the Gnostics, that with her presided over and
governed the sublunary world.

In this Degree, unknown for a hundred years to those who have practised
it, these emblems reproduced refer to these old doctrines. The lamb, the
yellow hangings strewed with stars, the seven columns, candlesticks, and
seals all recall them to us.

The Lion was the symbol of ATHOM-RE, the Great God of Upper Egypt; the
Hawk, of RA or PHRE; the Eagle, of MENDES; the Bull, of APIS; and three
of these are seen under the platform on which our altar stands.

The first HERMES was the INTELLIGENCE or WORD of God. Moved with
compassion for a race living without law, and wishing to teach them
that they sprang from His bosom, and to point out to them the way that
they should go [the books which the first Hermes, the same with Enoch,
had written on the mysteries of divine science, in the sacred
characters, being unknown to those who lived after the flood], God sent
to man OSIRIS and ISIS, accompanied by THOTH, the incarnation or
terrestrial repetition of the first HERMES; who taught men the arts,
science, and the ceremonies of religion; and then ascended to Heaven or
the Moon. OSIRIS was the Principle of Good. TYPHON, like AHRIMAN, was
the principle and source of all that is evil in the moral and physical
order. Like the Satan of Gnosticism, he was confounded with Matter.

From Egypt or Persia the new Platonists borrowed the idea, and the
Gnostics received it from them, that man, in his terrestrial career, is
successively under the influence of the Moon, of Mercury, of Venus, of
the Sun, of Mars, of Jupiter, and of Saturn, until he finally reaches
the Elysian Fields; an idea again symbolized in the Seven Seals.

The Jews of Syria and Judea were the direct precursors of Gnosticism;
and in their doctrines were ample oriental elements. These Jews had had
with the Orient, at two different periods, intimate relations,
familiarizing them with the doctrines of Asia, and especially of Chaldea
and Persia;--their forced residence in Central Asia under the Assyrians
and Persians; and their voluntary dispersion over the whole East, when
subjects of the Seleucidæ and the Romans. Living near two-thirds of a
century, and many of them long afterward, in Mesopotamia, the cradle of
their race; speaking the same language, and their children reared with
those of the Chaldeans, Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, and receiving
from them their names (as the case of Danayal, who was called
Bæltasatsar, proves), they necessarily adopted many of the doctrines of
their conquerors. Their descendants, as Azra and Nahamaiah show us,
hardly desired to leave Persia, when they were allowed to do so. They
had a special jurisdiction, and governors and judges taken from their
own people; many of them held high office, and their children were
educated with those of the highest nobles. Danayal was the friend and
minister of the King, and the Chief of the College of the Magi at
Babylon; if we may believe the book which bears his name, and trust to
the incidents related in its highly figurative and imaginative style.
Mordecai, too, occupied a high station, no less than that of Prime
Minister, and Esther or Astar, his cousin, was the Monarch's wife.

The Magi of Babylon were expounders of figurative writings, interpreters
of nature, and of dreams,--astronomers and divines; and from their
influences arose among the Jews, after their rescue from captivity, a
number of sects, and a new exposition, the mystical interpretation, with
all its wild fancies and infinite caprices. The _Aions_ of the Gnostics,
the _Ideas_ of Plato, the _Angels_ of the Jews, and the _Demons_ of the
Greeks, all correspond to the _Ferouers_ of Zoroaster.

A great number of Jewish families remained permanently in their new
country; and one of the most celebrated of their schools was at Babylon.
They were soon familiarized with the doctrine of Zoroaster, which itself
was more ancient than Kuros. From the system of the Zend-Avesta they
borrowed, and subsequently gave large development to, everything that
could be reconciled with their own faith; and these additions to the old
doctrine were soon spread, by the constant intercourse of commerce, into
Syria and Palestine.

In the Zend-Avesta, God is Illimitable Time. No origin can be assigned
to Him: He is so entirely enveloped in His glory, His nature and
attributes are so inaccessible to human Intelligence, that He can be
only the object of a silent Veneration. Creation took place by emanation
from Him. The first emanation was the primitive _Light_, and from that
the King of Light, ORMUZD. By the "WORD," _Ormuzd_ created the world
pure. He is its preserver and judge; a Being Holy and Heavenly;
Intelligence and Knowledge; the First-born of Time without limits; and
invested with all the Powers of the Supreme Being.

Still he is, strictly speaking, the _Fourth_ Being. He had a _Ferouer_,
a pre-existing Soul [in the language of Plato, a _type_ or _ideal_]; and
it is said of Him, that He existed from the beginning, in the primitive
_Light_. But, that _Light_ being but an element, and His _Ferouer_ a
type, he is, in ordinary language, _the First-born_ of
ZEROUANE-AKHERENE. Behold, again, "THE WORD" of Masonry; the _Man_, on
the Tracing-Board of this Degree; the LIGHT toward which all Masons
travel.

He created after his own image, six Genii called _Amshaspands_, who
surround his Throne, are his organs of communication with inferior
spirits and men, transmit to Him their prayers, solicit for them His
favors, and serve them as models of purity and perfection. Thus we have
the _Demiourgos_ of Gnosticism, and the six _Genii_ that assist him.
These are the Hebrew Archangels of the planets.

The names of these _Amshaspands_ are Bahman, Ardibehest, Schariver,
Sapandomad, Khordad, and Amerdad.

The fourth, the Holy SAPANDOMAD, created the first man and woman.

Then ORMUZD created 28 _Izeds_, of whom MITHRAS is the chief. They
watch, with _Ormuzd_ and the _Amshaspands_, over the happiness, purity,
and preservation of the world, which is under their government; and they
are also models for mankind and interpreters of men's prayers. With
_Mithras_ and _Ormuzd_, they make a _pleroma_ [or complete number] of
30, corresponding to the thirty Aions of the Gnostics, and to the
_ogdoade, dodecade_, and _decade_ of the Egyptians. _Mithras_ was the
Sun-God, invoked with, and soon confounded with him, becoming the object
of a special worship, and eclipsing _Ormuzd_ himself.

The third order of pure spirits is more numerous. They are the
_Ferouers_, the THOUGHTS of Ormuzd, or the IDEAS which he conceived
before proceeding to the creation of things. They too are superior to
men. They protect them during their life on earth; they will purify them
from evil at their resurrection. They are their tutelary genii, from the
fall to the complete regeneration.

AHRIMAN, second-born of the Primitive Light, emanated from it, pure like
ORMUZD; but, proud and ambitious, yielded to jealousy of the First-born.
For his hatred and pride, the Eternal condemned him to dwell, for 12,000
years, in that part of space where no ray of light reaches; the black
empire of darkness. In that period the struggle between _Light_ and
_Darkness, Good_ and _Evil_, will be terminated.

AHRIMAN scorned to submit, and took the field against ORMUZD. To the
good spirits created by his Brother, he opposed an innumerable army of
Evil Ones. To the seven _Amshaspands_ he opposed seven _Archdevs_,
attached to the seven Planets; to the _Izeds_ and _Ferouers_ an equal
number of _Devs_, which brought upon the world all moral and physical
evils. Hence _Poverty, Maladies, Impurity, Envy, Chagrin, Drunkenness,
Falsehood, Calumny_, and their horrible array.

The image of Ahriman was the Dragon, confounded by the Jews with Satan
and the Serpent-Tempter. After a reign of 3000 years, Ormuzd had created
the Material World, in six periods, calling successively into existence
the Light, Water, Earth, plants, animals, and Man. But Ahriman concurred
in creating the earth and water; for darkness was already an element,
and Ormuzd could not exclude its Master. So also the two concurred in
producing Man. Ormuzd produced, by his Will and Word, a Being that was
the type and source of universal life for everything that exists under
Heaven. He placed in man a pure principle, or Life, proceeding from the
Supreme Being. But Ahriman destroyed that pure principle, in the form
wherewith it was clothed; and when Ormuzd had made, of its recovered and
purified essence, the first man and woman, Ahriman seduced and tempted
them with wine and fruits; the woman yielding first.

Often, during the three latter periods of 3000 years each, Ahriman and
Darkness are, and are to be, triumphant. But the pure souls are assisted
by the Good Spirits; the Triumph of Good is decreed by the Supreme
Being, and the period of that triumph will infallibly arrive. When the
world shall be most afflicted with the evils poured out upon it by the
spirits of perdition, three Prophets will come to bring relief to
mortals. SOSIOSCH, the principal of the Three, will regenerate the
earth, and restore to it its primitive beauty, strength, and purity. He
will judge the good and the wicked. After the universal resurrection of
the good, he will conduct them to a home of everlasting happiness.
Ahriman, his evil demons, and all wicked men, will also be purified in a
torrent of melted metal. The law of Ormuzd will reign everywhere; all
men will be happy; all, enjoying unalterable bliss, will sing with
Sosiosch the praises of the Supreme Being.

These doctrines, the details of which were sparingly borrowed by the
Pharisaic Jews, were much more fully adopted by the Gnostics; who taught
the restoration of all things, their return to their original pure
condition, the happiness of those to be saved, and their admission to
the feast of Heavenly Wisdom.

The doctrines of Zoroaster came originally from Bactria, an Indian
Province of Persia. Naturally, therefore, it would include Hindu or
Buddhist elements, as it did. The fundamental idea of Buddhism was,
matter subjugating the intelligence, and intelligence freeing itself
from that slavery. Perhaps something came to Gnosticism from China.
"Before the chaos which preceded the birth of Heaven and Earth," says
Lao-Tseu, "a single Being existed, immense and silent, immovable and
ever active--the mother of the Universe. I know not its name: but I
designate it by the word _Reason_. Man has his _type_ and _model_ in the
Earth; Earth in Heaven; Heaven in Reason; and Reason in Itself." Here
again are the _Ferouers_, the _Ideas_, the _Aions_--the REASON or
INTELLIGENCE Εννοια, SILENCE Σιγή, WORD Λογος, and WISDOM Σοφια of the
Gnostics.

The dominant system among the Jews after their captivity was that of the
Pharoschim or Pharisees. Whether their name was derived from that of the
Parsees, or followers of Zoroaster, or from some other source, it is
certain that they had borrowed much of their doctrine from the Persians.
Like them they claimed to have the exclusive and mysterious knowledge,
unknown to the mass. Like them they taught that a constant war was waged
between the Empire of Good and that of Evil. Like them they attributed
the sin and fall of man to the demons and their chief; and like them
they admitted a special protection of the righteous by inferior beings,
agents of Jehovah. All their doctrines on these subjects were at bottom
those of the Holy Books; but singularly developed; and the Orient was
evidently the source from which those developments came.

They styled themselves _Interpreters_; a name indicating their claim to
the exclusive possession of the true meaning of the Holy Writings, by
virtue of the oral tradition which Moses had received on Mount Sinai,
and which successive generations of Initiates had transmitted, as they
claimed, unaltered, unto them. Their very costume, their belief in the
influences of the stars, and in the immortality and transmigration of
souls, their system of angels and their astronomy, were all foreign.

Sadduceeism arose merely from an opposition essentially Jewish, to these
foreign teachings, and that mixture of doctrines, adopted by the
Pharisees, and which constituted the popular creed.

We come at last to the _Essenes_ and _Therapeuts_, with whom this Degree
is particularly concerned. That intermingling of oriental and occidental
rites, of Persian and Pythagorean opinions, which we have pointed out in
the doctrines of Philo, is unmistakable in the creeds of these two
sects.

They were less distinguished by metaphysical speculations than by simple
meditations and moral practices. But the latter always partook of the
Zoroastrian principle, that it was necessary to free the soul from the
trammels and influences of matter; which led to a system of abstinence
and maceration entirely opposed to the ancient Hebraic ideas, favorable
as they were to physical pleasures.

In general, the life and manners of these mystical associations, as
Philo and Josephus describe them, and particularly their prayers at
sunrise, seem the image of what the Zend-Avesta prescribes to the
faithful adorer of Ormuzd; and some of their observances cannot
otherwise be explained.

The Therapeuts resided in Egypt, in the neighborhood of Alexandria; and
the Essenes in Palestine, in the vicinity of the Dead Sea. But there was
nevertheless a striking coincidence in their ideas, readily explained by
attributing it to a foreign influence. The Jews of Egypt, under the
influence of the School of Alexandria, endeavored in general to make
their doctrines harmonize with the traditions of Greece; and thence
came, in the doctrines of the Therapeuts, as stated by Philo, the many
analogies between the Pythagorean and Orphic ideas, on one side, and
those of Judaism on the other: while the Jews of Palestine, having less
communication with Greece, or contemning its teachings, rather imbibed
the Oriental doctrines, which they drank in at the source and with which
their relations with Persia made them familiar. This attachment was
particularly shown in the Kabalah, which belonged rather to Palestine
than to Egypt, though extensively known in the latter; and furnished the
Gnostics with some of their most striking theories.

It is a significant fact, that while Christ spoke often of the Pharisees
and Sadducees, He never once mentioned the Essenes, between whose
doctrines and His there was so great a resemblance, and, in many points,
so perfect an identity. Indeed, they are not named, nor even distinctly
alluded to, anywhere in the New Testament.

John, the son of a Priest who ministered in the Temple at Jerusalem, and
whose mother was of the family of Aharun, was in the deserts until the
day of his showing unto Israel. He drank neither wine nor strong drink.
Clad in hair-cloth, and with a girdle of leather, and feeding upon such
food as the desert afforded, he preached, in the country about Jordan,
the baptism of repentance, for the remission of siri-s; that is, the
necessity of repentance proven by _reformation_. He taught the people
charity and liberality; the publicans, justice, equity, and fair
dealing; the soldiery, peace, truth, and contentment; to do violence to
none, accuse none falsely, and be content with their pay. He inculcated
the necessity of a virtuous life, and the folly of trusting to their
descent from Abraham.

He denounced both Pharisees and Sadducees as a generation of vipers,
threatened with the anger of God. He baptized those who confessed their
sins. He preached in the desert; and therefore in the country where the
Essenes lived, professing the same doctrines. He was imprisoned before
Christ began to preach. Matthew mentions him without preface or
explanation; as if, apparently, his history was too well known to need
any. "In those days," he says, "came John the Baptist, preaching in the
wilderness of Judea." His disciples frequently fasted; for we find them
with the Pharisees coming to Jesus to inquire why _His_ Disciples did
not fast as often as they; and He did not denounce _them_, as His habit
was to denounce the Pharisees; but answered them kindly and gently.

From his prison, John sent two of his disciples to inquire of Christ:
"Art thou he that is to come, or do we look for another?" Christ
referred them to his miracles as an answer; and declared to the people
that John was a prophet, and more than a prophet, and that no greater
man had ever been born; but that the humblest Christian was his
superior. He declared him to be Elias, who was to come.

John had denounced to Herod his marriage with his brother's wife as
unlawful; and for this he was imprisoned, and finally executed to
gratify her. His disciples buried him; and Herod and others thought he
had risen from the dead and appeared again in the person of Christ. The
people all regarded John as a prophet; and Christ silenced the Priests
and Elders by asking them whether he was inspired. They feared to excite
the anger of the people by saying that he was not. Christ declared that
he came "in the way of righteousness"; and that the lower classes
believed him, though the Priests and Pharisees did not.

Thus John, who was often consulted by Herod, and to whom that monarch
showed great deference, and was often governed by his advice; whose
doctrine prevailed very extensively among the people and the publicans,
taught _some_ creed older than Christianity. That is plain: and it is
equally plain, that the very large body of the Jews that adopted his
doctrines, were neither Pharisees nor Sadducees, but the humble, common
people. They must, therefore, have been Essenes. It is plain, too, that
Christ applied for baptism as a sacred rite, well known and long
practiced. It was becoming to him, he said, to fulfill all
righteousness.

In the 18th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles we read thus: "And a
certain Jew, named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, and
mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man _was instructed in
the way of the Lord_, and, being fervent in spirit, _he spake and taught
diligently the things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John_;
and he began to speak boldly in the synagogue; whom, when Aquilla and
Priscilla had heard, they took him unto them, and expounded unto him
_the way of God_ more perfectly."

Translating this from the symbolic and figurative language into the true
ordinary sense of the Greek text, it reads thus: "And a certain Jew,
named Apollos, an Alexandrian by birth, an eloquent man, and of
extensive learning, came to Ephesus. He had learned in the mysteries the
true doctrine in regard to God; and, being a zealous enthusiast, he
spoke and taught diligently the truths in regard to the Deity, having
received no other baptism than that of John." He knew nothing in regard
to Christianity; for he had resided in Alexandria, and had just then
come to Ephesus; being, probably, a disciple of Philo, and a Therapeut.

"That, in all times," says St. Augustine, "is the Christian religion,
which to know and follow is the most sure and certain health, called
according to that name, but not according to the thing itself, of which
it is the name; for the thing itself, which is now called the Christian
religion, _really was known to the Ancients_, nor was wanting at any
time from the beginning of the human race, until the time when Christ
came in the flesh; from whence the true religion, which had previously
existed, began to be called Christian; and this in our days is the
Christian religion, not as having been wanting in former times, but as
having, in later times, received this name." The disciples were first
called "Christians," at Antioch, when Barnabas and Paul began to preach
there.

The Wandering or Itinerant Jews or Exorcists, who assumed to employ the
Sacred Name in exorcising evil spirits, were no doubt Therapeutae or
Essenes.

"And it came to pass," we read in the 19th chapter of the Acts, verses 1
to 4, "that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul, having passed through
the upper parts of Asia Minor, came to Ephesus; and finding certain
_disciples_, he said to them, 'Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye
became Believers?' And they said unto him, 'We have not so much as heard
that there _is_ any Holy Ghost.' And he said to them, 'In what, then,
were you baptized?' And they said 'In John's baptism.' Then said Paul,
'John indeed baptized with the baptism of repentance, saying to the
people that they should believe in Him who was to come after him, that
is, in Jesus Christ. When they heard this, they were baptized in the
name of the Lord Jesus."

This faith, taught by John, and so nearly Christianity, could have been
nothing but the doctrine of the Essenes; and there can be no doubt that
John belonged to that sect. The place where he preached, his macerations
and frugal diet, the doctrines he taught, all prove it conclusively.
There was no other sect to which he _could_ have belonged; certainly
none so numerous as his, _except_ the Essenes.

We find, from the two letters written by Paul to the brethren at
Corinth, that City of Luxury and Corruption, that there were contentions
among them. Rival sects had already, about the 57th year of our era,
reared their banners there, as followers, some of Paul, some of Apollos,
and some of Cephas. Some of them denied the resurrection. Paul urged
them to adhere to the doctrines taught by himself, and had sent Timothy
to them to bring them afresh to their recollection.

According to Paul, Christ was to come again. He was to put an end to all
other Principalities and Powers, and finally to Death, and then be
Himself once more merged in God; _who should then be all in all_.

The forms and ceremonies of the Essenes were symbolical. They had,
according to Philo the Jew, four Degrees; the members being divided into
two Orders, the _Practici_ and _Therapeutici_; the latter being the
contemplative and medical Brethren; and the former the active,
practical, business men. They were Jews by birth; and had a greater
affection for each other than the members of any other sect. Their
brotherly love was intense. They fulfilled the Christian law, "Love one
another." They despised riches. No one was to be found among them,
having more than another. The possessions of one were intermingled with
those of the others; so that they all had but one patrimony, and were
brethren. Their piety toward God was extraordinary. Before sunrise they
never spake a word about profane matters; but put up certain prayers
which they had received from their forefathers. At dawn of day, and
before it was light, their prayers and hymns ascended to Heaven. They
were eminently faithful and true, and the Ministers of Peace. They had
mysterious ceremonies, and initiations into their mysteries; and the
Candidate promised that he would ever practise fidelity to all men, and
especially to those in authority, "because no one obtains the government
without God's assistance."

Whatever they said, was firmer than an oath; but they avoided swearing,
and esteemed it worse than perjury. They were simple in their diet and
mode of living, bore torture with fortitude, and despised death. They
cultivated the science of medicine and were very skillful. They deemed
it a good omen to dress in white robes. They had their own courts, and
passed righteous judgments. They kept the Sabbath more rigorously than
the Jews.

Their chief towns were Engaddi, near the Dead Sea, and Hebron. Engaddi
was about 30 miles southeast from Jerusalem, and Hebron about 20 miles
south of that city. Josephus and Eusebius speak of them as an ancient
sect; and they were no doubt the first among the Jews to embrace
Christianity: with whose faith and doctrine their own tenets had so many
points of resemblance, and were indeed in a great measure the same.
Pliny regarded them as a very ancient people.

In their devotions they turned toward the rising sun; as the Jews
generally did toward the Temple. But they were no idolaters; for they
observed the law of Moses with scrupulous fidelity. They held all things
in common, and despised riches, their wants being supplied by the
administration of Curators or Stewards. The Tetractys, composed of round
dots instead of jods, was revered among them. This being a Pythagorean
symbol, evidently shows their connection with the school of Pythagoras;
but their peculiar tenets more resemble those of Confucius and
Zoroaster; and probably were adopted while they were prisoners in
Persia; which explains their turning toward the Sun in prayer.

Their demeanor was sober and chaste. They submitted to the
superintendence of governors whom they appointed over themselves. The
whole of their time was spent in labor, meditation, and prayer; and they
were most sedulously attentive to every call of justice and humanity,
and every moral duty. They believed in the unity of God. They supposed
the souls of men to have fallen, by a disastrous fate, from the regions
of purity and light, into the bodies which they occupy; during their
continuance in which they considered them confined as in a prison.
Therefore they did not believe in the resurrection of the body; but in
that of the soul only. They believed in a future state of rewards and
punishments; and they disregarded the ceremonies or external forms
enjoined in the law of Moses to be observed in the worship of God;
holding that the words of that lawgiver were to be understood in a
mysterious and recondite sense, and not according to their literal
meaning. They offered no sacrifices, except at home; and by meditation
they endeavored, as far as possible, to isolate the soul from the body,
and carry it back to God.

Eusebius broadly admits "that the ancient Therapeutæ were Christians;
and that their ancient writings were our Gospels and Epistles."

The ESSENES were of the Eclectic Sect of Philosophers, and held PLATO in
the highest esteem; they believed that true philosophy, the greatest and
most salutary gift of God to mortals, was scattered, in various
portions, through all the different Sects; and that it was,
consequently, the duty of every wise man to gather it from the several
quarters where it lay dispersed, and to employ it, thus reunited, in
destroying the dominion of impiety and vice.

The great festivals of the Solstices were observed in a distinguished
manner by the Essenes; as would naturally be supposed, from the fact
that they reverenced the Sun, not as a god, but as a symbol of light and
fire; the fountain of which, the Orientals supposed God to be. They
lived in continence and abstinence, and had establishments similar to
the monasteries of the early Christians.

The writings of the Essenes were full of mysticism, parables, enigmas,
and allegories. They believed in the esoteric and exoteric meanings of
the Scriptures; and, as we have already said, they had a warrant for
that in the Scriptures themselves. They found it in the Old Testament,
as the Gnostics found it in the New. The Christian writers, and even
Christ himself, recognized it as a truth, that all Scripture had an
inner and an outer meaning. Thus we find it said as follows, in one of
the Gospels:

"Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the Kingdom of God; but
unto men _that are without_, all these things are done in parables; that
seeing, they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not
understand.... And the disciples came and said unto him, 'Why speakest
Thou the truth in parables?'--He answered and said unto them, 'Because
it is given unto _you_ to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven,
but to _them_ it is not given.'"

Paul, in the 4th chapter of his Epistle to the Galatians, speaking of
the simplest facts of the Old Testament, asserts that they are _an
allegory_. In the 3d chapter of the second letter to the Corinthians, he
declares himself a minister of the New Testament, appointed by God; "Not
of the letter, but of the spirit; for the letter killeth." Origen and
St. Gregory held that the Gospels were not to be taken in their literal
sense; and Athanasius admonishes us that "Should we understand sacred
writ according to the letter, we should fall into the most enormous
blasphemies."

Eusebius said, "Those who preside over the Holy Scriptures, philosophize
over them, and expound their literal sense by allegory."

The sources of our knowledge of the Kabalistic doctrines, are the books
of Jezirah and Sohar, the former drawn up in the second century, and the
latter a little later; but containing materials much older than
themselves. In their most characteristic elements, they go back to the
time of the exile. In them, as in the teachings of Zoroaster, everything
that exists emanated from a source of infinite LIGHT. Before everything,
existed THE ANCIENT OF DAYS, the KING OF LIGHT; a title often given to
the Creator in the _Zend-Avesta_ and the code of the _Sabaæns_. With the
idea so expressed is connected the pantheism of India. THE KING OF
LIGHT, THE ANCIENT, is ALL THAT IS. He is not only the real cause of all
Existences; he is Infinite [AINSOPH]. He is HIMSELF: there is nothing in
Him that We can call _Thou_.

In the Indian doctrine, not only is the Supreme Being the real cause of
all, but he is the only real Existence: all the rest is illusion. In the
Kabalah, as in the Persian and Gnostic doctrines, He is the Supreme
Being unknown to all, the "Unknown Father." The world is his revelation,
and subsists only in Him. His attributes are reproduced there, with
different modifications, and in different degrees, so that the Universe
is His Holy Splendor: it is but His Mantle; but it must be revered in
silence. All beings have emanated from the Supreme Being: The nearer a
being is to Him, the more perfect it is; the more remote in the scale,
the less its purity.

A ray of Light, shot from the Deity, is the cause and principle of all
that exists. It is at once Father and Mother of All, in the sublimest
sense. It penetrates everything; and without it nothing can exist an
instant. From this double FORCE, designated by the two parts of the word
I. H. U. H. emanated the FIRST-BORN of God, the Universal FORM, in which
are contained all beings; the Persian and Platonic Archetype of things,
united with the Infinite by the primitive ray of Light.

This First-Born is the Creative Agent, Conservator, and animating
Principle of the Universe. It is THE LIGHT OF LIGHT. It possesses the
three Primitive Forces of the Divinity, LIGHT, SPIRIT, and LIFE Φώς,
Πνευμά, and Ζωη. As it has received what it gives, Light and Life, it is
equally considered as the generative and conceptive Principle, the
Primitive Man, ADAM KADMON. As such, it has revealed itself in ten
emanations or _Sephiroth_, which are not ten different beings, nor even
beings at all; but sources of life, vessels of Omnipotence, and types of
Creation. They are _Sovereignty_ or _Will, Wisdom, Intelligence,
Benignity, Severity, Beauty, Victory, Glory, Permanency_, and _Empire_.
These are attributes of God; and this idea, that God reveals Himself by
His attributes, and that the human mind cannot perceive or discern God
Himself, in his works, but only his mode of manifesting Himself, is a
profound Truth. We know of the Invisible only what the Visible reveals.

_Wisdom_ was called NOUS and LOGOS [and Νου̃ς Λογος], INTELLECT or the
WORD. _Intelligence_, source of the oil of anointing, responds to the
Holy Ghost of the Christian Faith.

_Beauty_ is represented by green and yellow. _Victory_ is
YAHOVAH-TSABAOTH, the column on the right hand, the column _Jachin:
Glory_ is the column _Boaz_, on the left hand. And thus our symbols
appear again in the Kabalah. And again the LIGHT, the object of our
labors, appears as the creative power of Deity. The circle, also, was
the special symbol of the first Sephirah, Kether, or the Crown.

We do not further follow the Kabalah in its four Worlds of Spirits,
_Aziluth, Briah, Yezirah_, and _Asiah_, or of _emanation, creation,
formation_, and _fabrication_, one inferior to and one emerging from the
other, the superior always enveloping the inferior; its doctrine that,
in all that exists, there is nothing purely material; that all comes
from God, and in all He proceeds by irradiation; that everything
subsists by the Divine ray that penetrates creation; and all is united
by the Spirit of God, which is the life of life; so that all is God; the
Existences that inhabit the four worlds, inferior to each other in
proportion to their distance from the Great King of Light: the contest
between the good and evil Angels and Principles, to endure until the
Eternal Himself comes to end it and re-establish the primitive harmony;
the four distinct parts of the Soul of Man; and the migrations of impure
souls, until they are sufficiently purified to share with the Spirits of
Light the contemplation of the Supreme Being whose Splendor fills the
Universe.

The WORD was also found in the Phœnician Creed. As in all those of Asia,
a WORD of God, written in starry characters, by the planetary
Divinities, and communicated by the Demi-Gods, as a profound mystery, to
the higher classes of the human race, to be communicated by them to
mankind, created the world. The faith of the Phœnicians was an emanation
from that ancient worship of the Stars, which in the creed of Zoroaster
alone, is connected with a faith in one God. Light and Fire are the most
important agents in the Phoenician faith. There is a race of children of
the Light. They adored the Heaven with its Lights, deeming it the
Supreme God.

Everything emanates from a Single Principle, and a Primitive Love, which
is the Moving Power of All and governs all. Light, by its union with
Spirit, whereof it is but the vehicle or symbol, is the Life of
everything, and penetrates everything. It should therefore be respected
and honored everywhere; for everywhere it governs and controls.

The Chaldaic and Jerusalem Paraphrasts endeavored to render the phrase,
DEBAR-YAHOVAH דבר יהוה, the Word of God, a personalty, wherever they met
with it. The phrase, "And God created man," is, in the Jerusalem Targum,
"And the Word of IHUH created man."

So, in xxviii. Gen. 20,21, where Jacob says: "If God [יהיה אלהי IHIH
ALHIM] will be with me..." then shall IHUH be my ALHIM [Hebrew ]; UHIH
IHUH Li LALHIM; and this stone shall be God's House [[Hebrew].. IHIH
BITH ALHIM]: Onkelos paraphrases it, "If the word of IHUH will be my
help ... then the word of IHUH shall be my God".

So, in iii. Gen. 8, for "The Voice of the Lord God" [[Hebrew], IHUH
ALHIM], we have, "The Voice of the Word of IHUH."

In ix. Wisdom, 1, "O God of my Fathers and Lord of Mercy! who has made
all things with thy word.. [Greek: έν λόγου σου.]"

And in xviii. Wisdom, 15, "Thine Almighty Word [Greek: Λογος] leaped
down from Heaven."

Philo speaks of the Word as being the same with God. So in several
places he calls it "[Greek: δεύτερος Θείος Λóγος]," the Second Divinity;
"[Greek: είμώντουΘεού]," the Image of God: the Divine Word that made all
things: "the [Greek: υπαρχος]," substitute, of God; and the like.

Thus, when John commenced to preach, had been for ages agitated, by the
Priests and Philosophers of the East and West, the great questions
concerning the eternity or creation of matter: immediate or intermediate
creation of the Universe by the Supreme God; the origin, object, and
filial extinction of evil; the relations between the intellectual and
material worlds, and between God and man; and the creation, fall,
redemption, and restoration to his first estate, of man.

The Jewish doctrine, differing in this from all the other Oriental
creeds, and even from the Alohayistic legend with which the book of
Genesis commences, attributed the creation to the immediate action of
the Supreme Being. The Theosophists of the other Eastern Peoples
interposed more than one intermediary between God and the world. To
place between them but a single Being, to suppose for the production of
the world but a single intermediary, was, in their eyes, to lower the
Supreme Majesty. The interval between God, who is perfect Purity, and
matter, which is base and foul, was too great for them to clear it at a
single step. Even in the Occident, neither Plato nor Philo could thus
impoverish the Intellectual World.

Thus, Cerinthus of Ephesus, with most of the Gnostics, Philo, the
Kabalah, the Zend-Avesta, the Puranas, and all the Orient, deemed the
distance and antipathy between the Supreme Being and the material world
too great, to attribute to the former the Creation of the latter. Below,
and emanating from, or created by, the Ancient of Days, the Central
Light, the Beginning, or First Principle [[Greek: Αρχή]], one, two, or
more Principles, Existences or Intellectual Beings were imagined, to
some one or more of whom [without any immediate creative act on the part
of the Great Immovable, Silent Deity], the immediate creation of the
material and mental universe was due.

We have already spoken of many of the speculations on this point. To
some, the world was created by the LOGOS or WORD, first manifestation
of, or emanation from, the Deity. To others, the beginning of creation
was by the emanation of a ray of LIGHT, creating the principle of
_Light_ and _Life_. The Primitive THOUGHT, creating the inferior
Deities, a succession of INTELLIGENCES, the Iynges of Zoroaster, his
_Amshaspands_, _Izeds_, and _Ferouers_, the _Ideas_ of Plato, the
_Aions_ of the Gnostics, the _Angels_ of the Jews, the _Nous_, the
_Demiourgos_, the DIVINE REASON, the _Powers_ or _Forces_ of Philo, and
the Alohayim, Forces or Superior Gods of the ancient legend with which
Genesis begins,--to these and other intermediaries the creation was
owing. No restraints were laid on the Fancy and the Imagination. The
veriest Abstractions became Existences and Realities. The attributes of
God, personified, became Powers, Spirits, Intelligences.

God was the _Light of Light_, _Divine Fire_, the _Abstract
Intellectuality_, the _Root_ or _Germ_ of the Universe. _Simon Magus_,
founder of the Gnostic faith, and many of the early Judaizing
Christians, admitted that the manifestations of the Supreme Being, as
FATHER, or JEHOVAH, SON or CHRIST, and HOLY SPIRIT, were only so many
different _modes_ of Existence, or _Forces_ [[Greek: δυναμεις]] of the
same God. To others they were, as were the multitude of Subordinate
Intelligences, real and distinct beings.

The Oriental imagination revelled in the creation of these Inferior
Intelligences, Powers of Good and Evil, and Angels. We have spoken of
those imagined by the Persians and the Kabalists. In the Talmud, every
star, every country, every town, and almost every tongue has a Prince of
Heaven as its Protector. JEHUEL is the guardian of fire, and MICHAEL, of
water. Seven spirits assist each; those of fire being _Seraphiel_,
_Gabriel_, _Nitriel_, _Tammael_, _Tchimschiel_, _Hadarniel_, and
_Sarniel_. These seven are represented by the square columns of this
Degree, while the columns JACHIN and BOAZ represent the angels of fire
and water. But the columns are not representatives of these alone.

To Basilides, God was without name, uncreated, at first containing and
concealing in Himself the Plenitude of His Perfections; and when these
are by Him displayed and manifested, there result as many particular
Existences, all analogous to Him, and still and always Him. To the
Essenes and the Gnostics, the East and the West both devised this faith;
that the Ideas, Conceptions, or Manifestations of the Deity were so many
Creations, so many Beings, all God, nothing without Him, but more than
what we now understand by the word _ideas_. They emanated from and were
again merged in God. They had a kind of middle existence between our
modern ideas, and the intelligences or ideas, elevated to the rank of
genii, of the Oriental mythology.

These personified attributes of Deity, in the theory of Basilides, were
the [Greek: Πρωτόγονος] or _First-born_, [Greek: Νου̃ς][_Nous_ or
_Mind_]: from it emanates [Greek: Λογος] [_Logos_, or THE WORD] from it
[Greek: Φρόνησις]: [_Phronesis, Intellect_]: from it [Greek: Σοφια]
[_Sophia, Wisdom_]: from it [Greek: Δύναμις] [_Dunamis, Power_]: and
from it [Greek: Δικαιοσύνη] [_Dikaiosune, Righteousness_]: to which
latter the Jews gave the name of [Greek: Ειρηνη] [_Eirene, Peace_, or
_Calm_], the essential characteristics of Divinity, and harmonious
effect of all His perfections. The whole number of successive emanations
was 365, expressed by the Gnostics, in Greek letters, by the mystic word
[Greek: ΑΒΡΑΞΑΣ] [_Abraxas_]; designating God as manifested, or the
aggregate of his manifestations; but not the Supreme and Secret God
Himself. These three hundred and sixty-five Intelligences compose
altogether the Fullness or _Plenitude_ [[Greek: Πληρωμα]] of the Divine
Emanations.

With the Ophites, a sect of the Gnostics, there were seven inferior
spirits [inferior to Ialdabaoth, the Demiourgos or Actual Creator]:
_Michaël, Surièl, Raphaël, Gabriel, Thauthabaoth, Erataoth_, and
_Athaniel_, the genii of the stars called the Bull, the Dog, the Lion,
the Bear, the Serpent, the Eagle, and the Ass that formerly figured in
the constellation Cancer, and symbolized respectively by those animals;
as _Ialdabaoth, Iao, Adonaï, Eloï, Oraï_, and _Astaphaï_ were the genii
of Saturn, the Moon, the Sun, Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury.

The WORD appears in all these creeds. It is the _Ormuzd_ of Zoroaster,
the _Ainsoph_ of the Kabalah, the _Nous_ of Platonism and Philonism, and
the _Sophia_ or _Demiourgos_ of the Gnostics.

And all these creeds, while admitting these different manifestations of
the Supreme Being, held that His identity was immutable and permanent.
That was Plato's distinction between the Being always the same [Greek:
τό όυ] and the perpetual flow of things incessantly changing, the
Genesis.

The belief in dualism in some shape, was universal. Those who held that
everything emanated from God, aspired to God, and re-entered into God,
believed that, among those emanations were two adverse Principles, of
Light and Darkness, Good and Evil. This prevailed in Central Asia and in
Syria; while in Egypt it assumed the form of Greek speculation. In the
former, a second Intellectual Principle was admitted, active in its
Empire of Darkness, audacious against the Empire of Light. So the
Persians and Sabeans understood it. In Egypt, this second Principle was
Matter, as the word was used by the Platonic School, with its sad
attributes, Vacuity, Darkness, and Death. In their theory, matter could
be animated only by the low communication of a principle of divine life.
It resists the influences that would spiritualize it. That resisting
Power is Satan, the rebellious Matter, Matter that does not partake of
God.

To many there were two Principles; the Unknown Father, or Supreme and
Eternal God, living in the centre of the Light, happy in the perfect
purity of His being; the other, eternal Matter, that inert, shapeless,
darksome mass, which they considered as the source of all evils, the
mother and dwelling-place of Satan.

To Philo and the Platonists, there was a Soul of the world, creating
visible things, and active in them, as agent of the Supreme
Intelligence; realizing therein the ideas communicated to Him by that
Intelligence, and which sometimes excel His conceptions, but which He
executes without comprehending them.

The Apocalypse or Revelations, by whomever written, belongs to the
Orient and to extreme antiquity. It reproduces what is far older than
itself. It paints, with the strongest colors that the Oriental genius
ever employed, the closing scenes of the great struggle of Light, and
Truth, and Good, against Darkness, Error, and Evil; personified in that
between the New Religion on one side, and Paganism and Judaism on the
other. It is a particular application of the ancient myth of Ormuzd and
his Genii against Ahriman and his Devs; and it celebrates the final
triumph of Truth against the combined powers of men and demons. The
ideas and imagery are borrowed from every quarter; and allusions are
found in it to the doctrines of all ages. We are continually reminded
of the Zend-Avesta, the Jewish Codes, Philo, and the Gnosis. The Seven
Spirits surrounding the Throne of the Eternal, at the opening of the
Grand Drama, and acting so important a part throughout, everywhere the
first instruments of the Divine Will and Vengeance, are the Seven
Amshaspands of Parsism; as the Twenty-four Ancients, offering to the
Supreme Being the first supplications and the first homage, remind us of
the Mysterious Chiefs of Judaism, foreshadow the Eons of Gnosticism, and
reproduce the twenty-four Good Spirits created by Ormuzd and inclosed in
an egg.

The Christ of the Apocalypse, First-born of Creation and of the
Resurrection, is invested with the characteristics of the Ormuzd and
Sosiosch of the Zend-Avesta, the Ainsoph of the Kabalah and the
Carpistes [Greek: Καρπιστης] of the Gnostics. The idea that the true
Initiates and Faithful become Kings and Priests, is at once Persian,
Jewish, Christian, and Gnostic. And the definition of the Supreme Being,
that He is at once Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end--He that
was, and is, and is to come, _i.e._, Time illimitable, is Zoroaster's
definition of Zerouane-Akherene.

The depths of Satan which no man can measure; his triumph for a time by
fraud and violence; his being chained by an angel; his reprobation and
his precipitation into a sea of metal; his names of the Serpent and the
Dragon; the whole conflict of the Good Spirits or celestial armies
against the bad; are so many ideas and designations found alike in the
Zend-Avesta, the Kabalah, and the Gnosis.

We even find in the Apocalypse that singular Persian idea, which regards
some of the lower animals as so many Devs or vehicles of Devs.

The guardianship of the earth by a good angel, the renewing of the earth
and heavens, and the final triumph of pure and holy men, are the same
victory of Good over Evil, for which the whole Orient looked.

The gold, and white raiments of the twenty-four Elders are, as in the
Persian faith, the signs of a lofty perfection and divine purity.

Thus the Human mind labored and struggled and tortured itself for ages,
to explain to itself what it felt, without confessing it, to be
explicable. A vast crowd of indistinct abstractions, hovering in the
imagination, a train of words embodying no tangible meaning, an
inextricable labyrinth of subtleties, was the result.

But one grand idea ever emerged and stood prominent and unchangeable
over the weltering chaos of confusion. God is great and good, and wise.
Evil and pain and sorrow are temporary and for wise and beneficent
purposes. They _must_ be consistent with God's goodness, purity, and
infinite perfection; and there _must_ be a mode of explaining them, if
we could but find it out; as, in all ways we will endeavor to do.
Ultimately, Good will prevail, and Evil be overthrown. God alone _can_
do this, and He _will_ do it, by an Emanation from Himself, assuming the
Human form and redeeming the world.

Behold the object, the end, the result, of the great speculations and
logomachies of antiquity; the ultimate annihilation of evil, and
restoration of Man to his first estate, by a Redeemer, a Masayah, a
Christos, the incarnate Word, Reason, or Power of Deity.

This Redeemer is the Word or Logos, the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, the Ainsoph
of the Kabalah, the Nous of Platonism and Philonism; He that was in the
Beginning with God, and was God, and by Whom everything was made. That
He was looked for by all the People of the East is abundantly shown by
the Gospel of John and the Letters of Paul; wherein scarcely anything
seemed necessary to be said in proof that such a Redeemer was to come;
but all the energies of the writers are devoted to showing that Jesus
was that Christos whom all the nations were expecting; the "Word," the
Masayah, the Anointed or Consecrated One.

In this Degree the great contest between good and evil, in anticipation
of the appearance and advent of the Word or Redeemer is symbolized; and
the mysterious esoteric teachings of the Essenes and the Cabalists. Of
the practices of the former we gain but glimpses in the ancient writers;
but we know that, as their doctrines were taught by John the Baptist,
they greatly resembled those of greater purity and more nearly perfect,
taught by Jesus; and that not only Palestine was full of John's
disciples, so that the Priests and Pharisees did not dare to deny John's
inspiration; but his doctrine had extended to Asia Minor, and had made
converts in luxurious Ephesus, as it also had in Alexandria in Egypt;
and that they readily embraced the Christian faith, of which they had
before not even heard.

These old controversies have died away, and the old faiths have faded
into oblivion. But Masonry still survives, vigorous and strong, as when
philosophy was taught in the schools of Alexandria and under the
Portico; teaching the same old truths as the Essenes taught by the
shores of the Dead Sea, and as John the Baptist preached in the Desert;
truths imperishable as the Deity, and undeniable as Light. Those truths
were gathered by the Essenes from the doctrines of the Orient and the
Occident, from the Zend-Avesta and the Vedas, from Plato and Pythagoras,
from India, Persia, Phœnicia, and Syria, from Greece and Egypt, and from
the Holy Books of the Jews. Hence we are called Knights of the East and
West, because their doctrines came from both. And these doctrines, the
wheat sifted from the chaff, the Truth separated from Error, Masonry has
garnered up in her heart of hearts, and through the fires of
persecution, and the storms of calamity, has brought them and delivered
them unto us. That God is One, immutable, unchangeable, infinitely just
and good; that Light will finally overcome Darkness,--Good conquer Evil,
and Truth be victor over Error;--these, rejecting all the wild and
useless speculations of the Zend-Avesta, the Kabalah, the Gnostics, and
the Schools, are the religion and Philosophy of Masonry.

Those speculations and fancies it is useful to study; that knowing in
what worthless and unfruitful investigations the mind may engage, you
may the more value and appreciate the plain, simple, sublime,
universally-acknowledged truths, which have in all ages been the Light
by which Masons have been guided on their way; the Wisdom and Strength
that like imperishable columns have sustained and will continue to
sustain its glorious and magnificent Temple.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]



XVIII.


KNIGHT ROSE CROIX.

[Prince Rose Croix.]


Each of us makes such applications to his own faith and creed, of the
symbols and ceremonies of this Degree, as seems to him proper. With
these special interpretations we have here nothing to do. Like the
legend of the Master Khūrūm, in which some see figured the condemnation
and sufferings of Christ; others those of the unfortunate Grand Master
of the Templars; others those of the first Charles, King of England; and
others still the annual descent of the Sun at the winter Solstice to the
regions of darkness, the basis of many an ancient legend; so the
ceremonies of this Degree receive different explanations; each
interpreting them for himself, and being offended at the interpretation
of no other.

In no other way could Masonry possess its character of Universality;
that character which has ever been peculiar to it from its origin; and
which enables two Kings, worshippers of different Deities, to sit
together as Masters, while the walls of the first temple arose; and the
men of Gebal, bowing down to the Phœnician Gods, to work by the side of
the Hebrews to whom those Gods were abomination; and to sit with them in
the same Lodge as brethren.

You have already learned that these ceremonies have one general
significance, to every one, of every faith, who believes in God, and the
soul's immortality.

The primitive men met in no Temples made with human hands. "God," said
Stephen, the first Martyr, "dwelleth not in Temples made with hands." In
the open air, under the overarching mysterious sky, in the great
World-Temple, they uttered their vows and thanksgivings, and adored the
God of Light; of that Light that was to them the type of Good, as
darkness was the type of Evil.

All antiquity solved the enigma of the existence of Evil, by supposing
the existence of a Principle of Evil, of Demons, fallen Angels, an
Ahriman, a Typhon, a Siva, a Lok, or a Satan, that, first falling
themselves, and plunged in misery and darkness, tempted man to his fall,
and brought sin into the world. All believed in a future life, to be
attained by purification and trials; in a state or successive states of
reward and punishment; and in a Mediator or Redeemer, by whom the Evil
Principle was to be overcome, and the Supreme Deity reconciled to His
creatures. The belief was general, that He was to be born of a Virgin,
and suffer a painful death. The Indians called him Chrishna; the
Chinese, Kioun-tse; the Persians, Sosiosch; the Chaldeans, Dhou-vanai;
the Egyptians, Har-Oeri; Plato, Love; and the Scandinavians, Balder.

Chrishna, the Hindoo Redeemer, was cradled and educated among Shepherds.
A Tyrant, at the time of his birth, ordered all the male children to be
slain. He performed miracles, say his legends, even raising the dead. He
washed the feet of the Brahmins, and was meek and lowly of spirit. He
was born of a Virgin; descended to Hell, rose again, ascended to Heaven,
charged his disciples to teach his doctrines, and gave them the gift of
miracles.

The first Masonic Legislator whose memory is preserved to us by history,
was Buddha, who, about a thousand years before the Christian era,
reformed the religion of Manous. He called to the Priesthood all men,
without distinction of caste, who felt themselves inspired by God to
instruct men. Those who so associated themselves formed a Society of
Prophets under the name of Samaneans. They recognized the existence of a
single uncreated God, in whose bosom everything grows, is developed and
transformed. The worship of this God reposed upon the obedience of all
the beings He created. His feasts were those of the Solstices. The
doctrines of Buddha pervaded India, China, and Japan. The Priests of
Brahma, professing a dark and bloody creed, brutalized by Superstition,
united together against Buddhism, and with the aid of Despotism,
exterminated its followers. But their blood fertilized the new doctrine,
which produced a new Society under the name of Gymnosophists; and a
large number, fleeing to Ireland, planted their doctrines there, and
there erected the round towers, some of which still stand, solid and
unshaken as at first visible monuments of the remotest ages.

The Phœnician Cosmogony, like all others in Asia, was the Word of God,
written in astral characters, by the planetary Divinities, and
communicated by the Demi-gods, as a profound mystery, to the brighter
intelligences of Humanity, to be propagated by them among men. Their
doctrines resembled the Ancient Sabeism, and being the faith of Hiram
the King and his namesake the Artist, are of interest to all Masons.
With them, the First Principle was half material, half spiritual, a dark
air, animated and impregnated by the spirit; and a disordered chaos,
covered with thick darkness. From this came the WORD, and thence
creation and generation; and thence a race of men, children of light,
who adored Heaven and its Stars as the Supreme Being; and whose
different gods were but incarnations of the Sun, the Moon, the Stars,
and the Ether. _Chrysor_ was the great igneous power of Nature, and
_Baal_ and _Malakarth_ representations of the Sun and Moon, the latter
word, in Hebrew, meaning Queen.

Man had fallen, but not by the tempting of the serpent. For, with the
Phœnicians, the serpent was deemed to partake of the Divine Nature, and
was sacred, as he was in Egypt. He was deemed to be immortal, unless
slain by violence, becoming young again in his old age, by entering into
and consuming himself. Hence the Serpent in a circle, holding his tail
in his mouth, was an emblem of eternity. With the head of a hawk he was
of a Divine Nature, and a symbol of the sun. Hence one Sect of the
Gnostics took him for their good genius, and hence the brazen serpent
reared by Moses in the Desert, on which the Israelites looked and lived.

"Before the chaos, that preceded the birth of Heaven and Earth," said
the Chinese Lao-Tseu, "a single Being existed, immense and silent,
immutable and always acting; the mother of the Universe. I know not the
name of that Being, but I designate it by the word Reason. Man has his
model in the earth, the earth in Heaven, Heaven in Reason, and Reason in
itself."

"I am," says Isis, "Nature; parent of all things, the sovereign of the
Elements, the primitive progeny of Time, the most exalted of the
Deities, the first of the Heavenly Gods and Goddesses, the Queen of the
Shades, the uniform countenance; who dispose with my rod the numerous
lights of Heaven, the salubrious breezes of the sea, and the mournful
silence of the dead; whose single Divinity the whole world venerates in
many forms, with various rites and by many names. The Egyptians, skilled
in ancient lore, worship me with proper ceremonies, and call me by my
true name, Isis the Queen."

The Hindu Vedas thus define the Deity:

"He who surpasses speech, and through whose power speech is expressed,
know thou that He is Brahma; and not these perishable things that man
adores.

"He whom Intelligence cannot comprehend, and He alone, say the sages,
through whose Power the nature of Intelligence can be understood, know
thou that He is Brahma; and not these perishable things that man adores.

"He who cannot be seen by the organ of sight, and through whose power
the organ of seeing sees, know thou that He is Brahma; and not these
perishable things that man adores.

"He who cannot be heard by the organ of hearing, and through whose power
the organ of hearing hears, know thou that He is Brahma; and not these
perishable things that man adores.

"He who cannot be perceived by the organ of smelling, and through whose
power the organ of smelling smells, know thou that He is Brahma; and not
these perishable things that man adores."

"When God resolved to create the human race," said _Arius_, "He made a
Being that He called The WORD, The Son, _Wisdom_, to the end that this
Being might give existence to men." This WORD is the _Ormuzd_ of
Zoroaster, the _Ainsoph_ of the Kabalah, the [Greek: Νου̃ς] of Plato and
Philo, the _Wisdom_ or _Demiourgos_ of the Gnostics.

That is the True Word, the knowledge of which our ancient brethren
sought as the priceless reward of their labors on the Holy Temple: the
Word of Life, the Divine Reason, "in whom was Life, and that Life the
Light of men"; "which long shone in darkness, and the darkness
comprehended it not;" the Infinite Reason that is the Soul of Nature,
immortal, of which the Word of this Degree reminds us; and to believe
wherein and revere it, is the peculiar duty of every Mason.

"In the beginning," says the extract from some older work with which
John commences his Gospel, "was the Word, and the Word was near to God,
and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was
not anything made that was made. In Him was Life, and the life was the
Light of man; and the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness did
not contain it."

It is an old tradition that this passage was from an older work. And
Philostorgius and Nicephorus state, that when the Emperor Julian
undertook to rebuild the Temple, a stone was taken up, that covered the
mouth of a deep square cave, into which one of the laborers, being let
down by a rope, found in the centre of the floor a cubical pillar, on
which lay a roll or book, wrapped in a fine linen cloth, in which, in
capital letters, was the foregoing passage.

However this may have been, it is plain that John's Gospel is a polemic
against the Gnostics; and, stating at the outset the current doctrine in
regard to the creation by the Word, he then addresses himself to show
and urge that this Word was Jesus Christ.

And the first sentence, fully rendered into our language, would read
thus: "When the process of emanation, of creation or evolution of
existences inferior to the Supreme God began, the Word came into
existence and was: and this word was [Greek: προς τον Θεον] _near to_
God; _i.e._ the immediate or first emanation from God: and it was God
Himself, developed or manifested in that particular mode, and in action.
And by that Word everything that is was created."--And thus Tertullian
says that God made the World out of nothing, by means of His Word,
Wisdom, or Power.

To Philo the Jew, as to the Gnostics, the Supreme Being was the
_Primitive Light_, or _Archetype of Light_,--_Source_ whence the rays
emanate that illuminate Souls. He is the _Soul_ of the World, and as
such acts everywhere. He himself fills and bounds his whole existence,
and his forces fill and penetrate everything. His Image is the WORD
[LOGOS], a form more brilliant than fire, which is not pure light. This
WORD dwells in God; for it is within His Intelligence that the Supreme
Being frames for Himself the Types of Ideas of all that is to assume
reality in the Universe. The WORD is the Vehicle by which God acts on
the Universe; the World of Ideas by means whereof God has created
visible things; the more Ancient God, as compared with the Material
World; Chief and General Representative of all Intelligences; the
Archangel, type and representative of all spirits, even those of
Mortals; the type of Man; the primitive man himself. These ideas are
borrowed from Plato. And this WORD is not only the Creator ["_by Him was
everything made that was made_"], but acts _in the place_ of God; and
through him act all the Powers and Attributes of God. And also, as first
representative of the human race, he is the protector of Men and their
Shepherd, the "Ben H'Adam," or Son of Man.

The actual condition of Man is not his primitive condition, that in
which he was the image of the Word. His unruly passions have caused him
to fall from his original lofty estate. But he may rise again, by
following the teachings of Heavenly Wisdom, and the Angels whom God
commissions to aid him in escaping from the entanglements of the body;
and by fighting bravely against Evil, the existence of which God has
allowed solely to furnish him with the means of exercising his free
will.

The Supreme Being of the Egyptians was _Amūn_, a secret and concealed
God, the Unknown Father of the Gnostics, the Source of Divine Life, and
of all force, the Plenitude of all, comprehending all things in Himself,
the original Light. He _creates_ nothing; but everything _emanates_ from
Him: and all other Gods are but his manifestations. From Him, by the
utterance of a Word, emanated _Neith_, the Divine Mother of all things,
the Primitive THOUGHT, the FORCE that puts everything in movement, the
SPIRIT everywhere extended, the _Deity of Light and Mother of the Sun_.

Of this Supreme Being, _Osiris_ was the image, Source of all Good in the
moral and physical world, and constant foe of Typhon, the Genius of
Evil, the Satan of Gnosticism, brute matter, deemed to be always at feud
with the spirit that flowed from the Deity; and over whom Har-Oeri, the
Redeemer, Son of Isis and Osiris, is finally to prevail.

In the Zend-Avesta of the Persians the Supreme Being is _Time without
limit_, ZERUANE AKHERENE.--No origin could be assigned to Him; for He
was enveloped in His own Glory, and His Nature and Attributes were so
inaccessible to human Intelligence, that He was but the object of a
silent veneration. The commencement of Creation was by emanation from
Him. The first emanation was the Primitive Light, and from this Light
emerged _Ormuzd_, the _King of Light_, who, by the WORD, created the
World in its purity, is its Preserver and Judge, a Holy and Sacred
Being, Intelligence and Knowledge, Himself Time without limit, and
wielding all the powers of the Supreme Being.

In this Persian faith, as taught many centuries before our era, and
embodied in the Zend-Avesta, there was in man a pure Principle,
proceeding from the Supreme Being, produced by the Will and Word of
Ormuzd. To that was united an impure principle, proceeding from a
foreign influence, that of Ahriman, the Dragon, or principle of Evil.
Tempted by Ahriman, the first man and woman had fallen; and for twelve
thousand years there was to be war between _Ormuzd_ and the Good Spirits
created by him, and _Ahriman_ and the Evil ones whom he had called into
existence.

But pure souls are assisted by the Good Spirits, the Triumph of the Good
Principle is determined upon in the decrees of the Supreme Being, and
the period of that triumph will infallibly arrive. At the moment when
the earth shall be most afflicted with the evils brought upon it by the
Spirits of perdition, three Prophets will appear to bring assistance to
mortals. Sosiosch, Chief of the Three, will regenerate the world, and
restore to it its primitive Beauty, Strength, and Purity. He will judge
the good and the wicked. After the universal resurrection of the Good,
the pure Spirits will conduct them to an abode of eternal happiness.
Ahriman, his evil Demons, and all the world, will be purified in a
torrent of liquid burning metal. The Law of Ormuzd will rule everywhere;
all men will be happy; all, enjoying an unalterable bliss, will unite
with Sosiosch in singing the praises of the Supreme Being.

These doctrines, with some modifications, were adopted by the Kabalists
and afterward by the Gnostics.

Apollonius of Tyana says: "We shall render the most appropriate worship
to the Deity, when to that God whom we call the First, who is One, and
separate from all, and after whom we recognize the others, we present no
offerings whatever, kindle to Him no fire, dedicate to Him no sensible
thing; for he needs nothing, even of all that natures more exalted than
ours could give. The earth produces no plant, the air nourishes no
animal, there is in short nothing, which would not be impure in his
sight. In addressing ourselves to Him, we must use only the higher word,
that, I mean, which is not expressed by the mouth,--the silent inner
word of the spirit.... From the most Glorious of all Beings, we must
seek for blessings, by that which is most glorious in ourselves; and
that is the spirit, which needs no organ."

Strabo says: "This one Supreme Essence is that which embraces us all,
the water and the land, that which we call the Heavens, the World, the
Nature of things. This Highest Being should be worshipped, without any
visible image, in sacred groves. In such retreats the devout should lay
themselves down to sleep, and expect signs from God in dreams."

Aristotle says: "It has been handed down in a mythical form, from the
earliest times to posterity, that there are Gods, and that The Divine
compasses entire nature. All besides this has been added, after the
mythical style, for the purpose of persuading the multitude, and for the
interest of the laws and the advantage of the State. Thus men have given
to the Gods human forms, and have even represented them under the figure
of other beings, in the train of which fictions followed many more of
the same sort. But if, from all this, we separate the original
principle, and consider it alone, namely, that the first Essences are
Gods, we shall find that this has been divinely said; and since it is
probable that philosophy and the arts have been several times, so far as
that is possible, found and lost, such doctrines may have been preserved
to our times as the remains of ancient wisdom."

Porphyry says: "By images addressed to sense, the ancients represented
God and his powers--by the visible they typified the invisible for those
who had learned to read in these types, as in a book, a treatise on the
Gods. We need not wonder if the ignorant consider the images to be
nothing more than wood or stone; for just so, they who are ignorant of
writing see nothing in monuments but stone, nothing in tablets but wood,
and in books but a tissue of papyrus."

Apollonius of Tyana held, that birth and death are only in appearance;
that which separates itself from the _one_ substance (the _one_ Divine
essence), and is caught up by matter, seems to be born; that, again,
which releases itself from the bonds of matter, and is reunited with the
one Divine Essence, seems to die. There is, at most, an alteration
between becoming visible and becoming invisible. In all there is,
properly speaking, but the one essence, which alone acts and suffers, by
becoming all things to all; the Eternal God, whom men wrong, when they
deprive Him of what properly can be attributed to Him only, and transfer
it to other names and persons.

The New Platonists substituted the idea of the Absolute, for the Supreme
Essence itself;--as the first, simplest principle, anterior to all
existence; of which nothing determinate can be predicated; to which no
consciousness, no self-contemplation can be ascribed; inasmuch as to do
so, would immediately imply a quality, a distinction of subject and
object. This Supreme Entity can be known only by an intellectual
intuition of the Spirit, transcending itself, and emancipating itself
from its own limits.

This mere logical tendency, by means of which men thought to arrive at
the conception of such an absolute, the [Greek: όν], was united with a
certain mysticism, which, by a transcendent state of feeling,
communicated, as it were, to this abstraction what the mind would
receive as a reality. The absorption of the Spirit into that
superexistence ([Greek: τό έπέκεινα τής ούσίας]), so as to be entirely
identified with it, or such a revelation of the latter to the spirit
raised above itself, was regarded as the highest end which the spiritual
life could reach.

The New Platonists' idea of God, was that of One Simple Original
Essence, exalted above all plurality and all becoming; the only true
Being; unchangeable, eternal [[Greek: Εϊς ών ένί τώ νύν τό άει πεπλήρωκε
καί μόνον έστι τό κατά τούτον όντως ών]]: from whom all Existence in its
several gradations has emanated--the world of Gods, as nearest akin to
Himself, being first, and at the head of all. In these Gods, that
perfection, which in the Supreme Essence was inclosed and unevolved, is
expanded and becomes knowable. They serve to exhibit in different forms
the image of that Supreme Essence, to which no soul can rise, except by
the loftiest flight of contemplation; and after it has rid itself from
all that pertains to sense--from all manifoldness. They are the
mediators between man (amazed and stupefied by manifoldness) and the
Supreme Unity.

Philo says: "He who disbelieves the miraculous, simply as the
miraculous, neither knows God, nor has he ever sought after Him; for
otherwise he would have understood, by looking at that truly great and
awe-inspiring sight, the miracle of the Universe, that these miracles
(in God's providential guidance of His people) are but child's play for
the Divine Power. But the truly miraculous has become despised through
familiarity. The universal, on the contrary, although in itself
insignificant, yet, through our love of novelty, transports us with
amazement."

In opposition to the anthropopathism of the Jewish Scriptures, the
Alexandrian Jews endeavored to purify the idea of God from all admixture
of the Human. By the exclusion of every human passion, it was sublimated
to a something devoid of all attributes, and wholly transcendental; and
the mere Being [Greek: όν], the Good, in and by itself, the Absolute of
Platonism, was substituted for the personal Deity [[Hebrew: יהוה]] of
the Old Testament. By soaring upward, beyond all created existence, the
mind, disengaging itself from the Sensible, attains to the intellectual
intuition of this Absolute Being; of whom, however, it can predicate
nothing but existence, and sets aside all other determinations as not
answering to the exalted nature of the Supreme Essence.

Thus Philo makes a distinction between those who are in the proper sense
Sons of God, having by means of contemplation raised themselves to the
highest Being, or attained to a knowledge of Him, in His immediate
self-manifestation, and those who know God only in his mediate
revelation through his operation--such as He declares Himself in
creation--in the revelation still veiled in the letter of
Scripture--those, in short, who attach themselves simply to the Logos,
and consider this to be the Supreme God; who are the sons of the Logos,
rather than of the True Being, (όν)

"God," says Pythagoras, "is neither the object of sense, nor subject to
passion, but invisible, only intelligible, and supremely intelligent In
His body He is like the _light_, and in His soul He resembles truth. He
is the universal _spirit_ that pervades and diffuseth itself over all
nature. All beings receive their _life_ from Him. There is but one only
God, who is not, as some are apt to imagine, seated above the world,
beyond the orb of the Universe; but being Himself all in all, He sees
all the beings that fill His immensity; the only Principle, the _Light_
of Heaven, the Father of all. He _produces everything_; He orders and
disposes everything; He is the REASON, the LIFE, and the MOTION of all
being."

"I am the LIGHT of the world; he that followeth Me shall not walk in
DARKNESS, but shall have the LIGHT OF LIFE." So said the Founder of the
Christian Religion, as His words are reported by John the Apostle.

God, say the sacred writings of the Jews, appeared to Moses in a FLAME
OF FIRE, in the midst of a bush, which was not consumed. He descended
upon Mount Sinai, as the smoke of a _furnace_; He went before the
children of Israel, by day, in a pillar of cloud and, by night, in a
pillar of _fire_, to give them _light_. "Call _you_ on the name of
_your_ Gods," said Elijah the Prophet to the Priests of Baal, "and I
will call upon the name of ADONAI; and the God that answereth _by fire_,
let him be God."

According to the Kabalah, as according to the doctrines of Zoroaster,
everything that exists has emanated from a source of infinite light.
Before all things, existed _the Primitive Being_, THE ANCIENT OF DAYS,
_the Ancient King of Light_; a title the more remarkable, because it is
frequently given to the Creator in the Zend-Avesta, and in the Code of
the Sabeans, and occurs in the Jewish Scriptures.

The world was His Revelation, God revealed; and subsisted only in Him.
His attributes were there reproduced with various modifications and in
different degrees; so that the Universe was His Holy Splendor, His
Mantle. He was to be adored in silence; and perfection consisted in a
nearer approach to Him.

Before the creation of worlds, the PRIMITIVE LIGHT filled all space, so
that there was no void. When the Supreme Being, existing in this Light,
resolved to display His perfections, or manifest them in worlds, He
withdrew within Himself, formed around Him a void space, and shot forth
His first emanation, a ray of light; the cause and principle of
everything that exists, uniting both the generative and conceptive
power, which penetrates everything, and without which nothing could
subsist for an instant.

Man fell, seduced by the Evil Spirits most remote from the Great King of
Light; those of the fourth world of spirits, Asiah, whose chief was
Belial. They wage incessant war against the pure Intelligences of the
other worlds, who, like the Amshaspands, Izeds, and Ferouers of the
Persians are the tutelary guardians of man. In the beginning, all was
unison and harmony; full of the same divine light and perfect purity.
The Seven Kings of Evil fell, and the Universe was troubled. Then the
Creator took from the Seven Kings the principles of Good and of Light,
and divided them among the four worlds of Spirits, giving to the first
three the Pure Intelligences, united in love and harmony, while to the
fourth were vouchsafed only some feeble glimmerings of light.

When the strife between these and the good angels shall have continued
the appointed time, and these Spirits enveloped in darkness shall long
and in vain have endeavored to absorb the Divine light and life, then
will the Eternal Himself come to correct them. He will deliver them from
the gross envelopes of matter that hold them captive, will re-animate
and strengthen the ray of light or spiritual nature which they have
preserved, and re-establish throughout the Universe that primitive
Harmony which was its bliss.

Marcion, the Gnostic, said, "The Soul of the True Christian, adopted as
a child by the Supreme Being, to whom it has long been a stranger,
receives from Him the Spirit and Divine life. It is led and confirmed,
by this gift, in a pure and holy life, like that of God; and if it so
completes its earthly career, in charity, chastity, and sanctity, it
will one day be disengaged from its material envelope, as the ripe grain
is detached from the straw, and as the young bird escapes from its
shell. Like the angels, it will share in the bliss of the Good and
Perfect Father, re-clothed in an aerial body or organ, and made like
unto the Angels in Heaven."

You see, my brother, what is the meaning of Masonic "Light." You see why
the EAST of the Lodge, where the initial letter of the Name of the Deity
overhangs the Master, is the place of Light. Light, as
contradistinguished from darkness, is Good, as contradistinguished from
Evil: and it is that Light, the true knowledge of Deity, the Eternal
Good, for which Masons in all ages have sought. Still Masonry marches
steadily onward toward that Light that shines in the great distance, the
Light of that day when Evil, overcome and vanquished, shall fade away
and disappear forever, and Life and Light be the one law of the
Universe, and its eternal Harmony.

The Degree of Rose teaches three things;--the unity, immutability and
goodness of God; the immortality of the Soul; the ultimate defeat and
extinction of evil and wrong and sorrow, by a Redeemer or Messiah, yet
to come, if he has not already appeared.

It replaces the three pillars of the old Temple, with three that have
already been explained to you,--Faith [in God, mankind, and man's self],
Hope [in the victory over evil, the advancement of Humanity, and a
hereafter], and Charity [relieving the wants and tolerant of the errors
and faults of others]. To be trustful to be hopeful, to be indulgent;
these, in an age of selfishness, of ill opinion of human nature, of
harsh and bitter judgment, are the most important Masonic Virtues, and
the true supports of every Masonic Temple. And they are the old pillars
of the Temple under different names. For he only is wise who judges
others charitably; he only is strong who is hopeful; and there is no
beauty like a firm faith in God, our fellows and ourself.

The second apartment, clothed in mourning, the columns of the Temple
shattered and prostrate, and the brethren bowed down in the deepest
dejection, represents the world under the tyranny of the Principle of
Evil; where virtue is persecuted and vice rewarded; where the righteous
starve for bread, and the wicked live sumptuously and dress in purple
and fine linen; where insolent ignorance rules, and learning and genius
serve; where King and Priest trample on liberty and the rights of
conscience; where freedom hides in caves and mountains, and sycophancy
and servility fawn and thrive; where the cry of the widow and the orphan
starving for want of food, and shivering with cold, rises ever to
Heaven, from a million miserable hovels; where men, willing to labor,
and starving, they and their children and the wives of their bosoms, beg
plaintively for work, when the pampered capitalist stops his mills;
where the law punishes her who, starving, steals a loaf, and lets the
seducer go free; where the success of a party justifies murder, and
violence and rapine go unpunished; and where he who with many years'
cheating and grinding the faces of the poor grows rich, receives office
and honor in life, and after death brave funeral and a splendid
mausoleum:--this world, where, since its making, war has never ceased,
nor man paused in the sad task of torturing and murdering his brother;
and of which ambition, avarice, envy, hatred, lust, and the rest of
Ahriman's and Typhon's army make a Pandemonium: this world, sunk in sin,
reeking with baseness, clamorous with sorrow and misery. If any see in
it also a type of the sorrow of the Craft for the death of Hiram, the
grief of the Jews at the fall of Jerusalem, the misery of the Templars
at the ruin of their order and the death of De Molay, or the world's
agony and pangs of woe at the death of the Redeemer, it is the right of
each to do so.

The third apartment represents the consequences of sin and vice and the
hell made of the human heart, by its fiery passions. If any see in it
also a type of the Hades of the Greeks, the Gehenna of the Hebrews, the
Tartarus of the Romans, or the Hell of the Christians, or only of the
agonies of remorse and the tortures of an upbraiding conscience, it is
the right of each to do so.

The fourth apartment represents the Universe, freed from the insolent
dominion and tyranny of the Principle of Evil, and brilliant with the
true Light that flows from the Supreme Deity; when sin and wrong, and
pain and sorrow, remorse and misery shall be no more forever; when the
great plans of Infinite Eternal Wisdom shall be fully developed; and all
God's creatures, seeing that all apparent evil and individual suffering
and wrong were but the drops that went to swell the great river of
infinite goodness, shall know that vast as is the power of Deity, His
goodness and beneficence are infinite as His power. If any see in it a
type of the peculiar mysteries of any faith or creed, or an allusion to
any past occurrences, it is their right to do so. Let each apply its
symbols as he pleases. To all of us they typify the universal rule of
Masonry,--of its three chief virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity; of
brotherly love and universal benevolence. We labor here to no other end.
These symbols need no other interpretation.

The obligations of our Ancient Brethren of the Rose were to fulfill
all the duties of friendship, cheerfulness, charity, peace, liberality,
temperance and chastity: and scrupulously to avoid impurity,
haughtiness, hatred, anger, and every other kind of vice. They took
their philosophy from the old Theology of the Egyptians, as Moses and
Solomon had done, and borrowed its hieroglyphics and the ciphers of the
Hebrews. Their principal rules were, to exercise the profession of
medicine charitably and without fee, to advance the cause of virtue,
enlarge the sciences, and induce men to live as in the primitive times
of the world.

When this Degree had its origin, it is not important to inquire; nor
with what different rites it has been practised in different countries
and at various times. It is of very high antiquity. Its ceremonies
differ with the degrees of latitude and longitude, and it receives
variant interpretations. If we were to examine all the different
ceremonials, their emblems, and their formulas, we should see that all
that belongs to the primitive and essential elements of the order, is
respected in every sanctuary. All alike practise virtue, that it may
product fruit. All labor, like us, for the extirpation of vice, the
purification of man, the development of the arts and sciences, and the
relief of humanity.

None admit an adept to their lofty philosophical knowledge, and
mysterious sciences, until he has been purified at the altar of the
symbolic Degrees. Of what importance are differences of opinion as to
the age and genealogy of the Degree, or variance in the practice,
ceremonial and liturgy, or the shade of color of the banner under which
each tribe of Israel marched, if all revere the Holy Arch of the
symbolic Degrees, first and unalterable source of Free Masonry; if all
revere our conservative principles, and are with us in the great
purposes of our organization?

If, anywhere, brethren of a particular religious belief have been
excluded from this Degree, it merely shows how gravely the purposes and
plan of Masonry may be misunderstood. For whenever the door of any
Degree is closed against him who believes in one God and the soul's
immortality, on account of the other tenets of his faith, that Degree is
Masonry no longer. No Mason has the right to interpret the symbols of
this Degree for another, or to refuse him its mysteries, if he will not
take them with the explanation and commentary superadded.

Listen, my brother, to _our_ explanation of the symbols of the Degree,
and then give them such further interpretation as you think fit.

The _Cross_ has been a sacred symbol from the earliest Antiquity. It is
found upon all the enduring monuments of the world, in Egypt, in
Assyria, in Hindostan, in Persia, and on the Buddhist towers of Ireland.
Buddha was said to have died upon it. The Druids cut an oak into its
shape and held it sacred, and built their temples in that form. Pointing
to the four quarters of the world, it was the symbol of universal
nature. It was on a cruciform tree, that Chrishna was said to have
expired, pierced with arrows. It was revered in Mexico.

But its peculiar meaning in this Degree, is that given to it by the
Ancient Egyptians. _Thoth_ or _Phtha_ is represented on the oldest
monuments carrying in his hand the _Crux Ansata_, or _Ankh_, [a Tau
cross, with a ring or circle over it]. He is so seen on the double
tablet of Shufu and Noh Shufu, builders of the greatest of the Pyramids,
at Wady Meghara, in the peninsula of Sinai. It was the hieroglyphic for
_life_, and with a triangle prefixed meant _life-giving_. To us
therefore it is the symbol of _Life_--of that life that emanated from
the Deity, and of that Eternal Life for which all hope; through our
faith in God's infinite goodness.

The ROSE was anciently sacred to Aurora and the Sun. It is symbol of
_Dawn_, of the resurrection of Light and the renewal of life, and
therefore of the dawn of the first day, and more particularly of the
resurrection: and the Cross and Rose together are therefore
hieroglyphically to be read, _the Dawn of Eternal Life_ which all
Nations have hoped for by the advent of a Redeemer.

The _Pelican_ feeding her young is an emblem of the large and bountiful
beneficence of Nature, of the Redeemer of fallen man, and of that
humanity and charity that ought to distinguish a Knight of this Degree.

The Eagle was the living Symbol of the Egyptian God _Mendes_ or
_Menthra_, whom _Sesostris-Ramses_ made one with _Amun-Re_, the God of
Thebes and Upper Egypt, and the representative of the Sun, the word RE
meaning _Sun_ or _King_.

The _Compass_ surmounted with a crown signifies that notwithstanding the
high rank attained in Masonry by a Knight of the Rose Croix, equity and
impartiality are invariably to govern his conduct.

To the word INRI, inscribed on the Crux Ansata over the Master's Seat,
many meanings have been assigned. The Christian Initiate reverentially
sees in it the initials of the inscription upon the cross on which
Christ suffered--_Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudæorum_. The sages of Antiquity
connected it with one of the greatest secrets of Nature, that of
universal regeneration. They interpreted it thus, _Igne Natura renovatur
Integra_; [entire nature is renovated by fire]: The Alchemical or
Hermetic Masons framed for it this aphorism, _Igne nitrum roris
invenitur_. And the Jesuits are charged with having applied to it this
odious axiom, _Justum necare reges impios_. The four letters are the
initials of the Hebrew words that represent the four elements--_Iammim_,
the seas or water; _Hour_, fire; _Rouach_, the air, and _Iebeschah_, the
dry earth. How we read it, I need not repeat to you.

The CROSS, [Illustration: Glyph] was the Sign of the Creative Wisdom or
Logos, the Son of God. Plato says, "He expressed him upon the Universe
in the figure of the letter X. The next Power to the Supreme God Was
decussated or figured in the shape of a Cross on Universe." Mithras
signed his soldiers on the forehead with a Cross. [Glyph] is the mark
of 600, the mysterious cycle of the Incarnations.

We constantly see the Tau and the Resh united thus [Glyph]. These two
letters, in the old Samaritan, as found in Arius, stand, the first for
400, the second for 200-600. This is the Staff of Osiris, also, and his
monogram, and was adopted by the Christians as a Sign. On a medal of
Constantius is this inscription, "_In hoc signo victor cris_ [Glyph]."
An inscription in the Duomo at Milan reads, "[Glyph] et [Glyph].
_Christi-Nomina-Sancta-Teneï_."

The Egyptians used as a Sign of their God Canobus, a [Glyph] or a
[Glyph] indifferently. The Vaishnavas of India have also the same Sacred
Tau, which they also mark with Crosses, thus [Glyph], and with
triangles, thus, [Glyph]. The vestments of the priests of Horus were
covered with these Crosses [Glyph]. So was the dress of the Lama of
Thibet. The Sectarian marks of the Jains are [Glyph]. The distinctive
badge of the Sect of Xac Japonicus is [Glyph]. It is the Sign of Fo,
identical with the Cross of Christ.

On the ruins of Mandore, in India, among other mystic emblems, are the
mystic triangle, and the interlaced triangle, [Glyph]. This is also
found on ancient coins and medals, excavated from the ruins of Oojein
and other ancient cities of India.

You entered here amid gloom and into shadow, and are clad in the apparel
of sorrow. Lament, with us, the sad condition of the Human race, in this
vale of tears! the calamities of men and the agonies of nations! the
darkness of the bewildered soul, oppressed by doubt and apprehension!

There is no human soul that is not sad at times. There is no thoughtful
soul that does not at times despair. There is perhaps none, of all that
think at all of anything beyond the needs and interests of the body,
that is not at times startled and terrified by the awful questions
which, feeling as though it were a guilty thing for doing so, it
whispers to itself in its inmost depths. Some Demon seems to torture it
with doubts, and to crush it with despair, asking whether, after all, it
is certain that its convictions are true and its faith well founded:
whether it is indeed sure that a God of Infinite Love and Beneficence
rules the Universe, or only some great remorseless Fate and iron
Necessity, hid in impenetrable gloom, and to which men and their
sufferings and sorrows, their hopes and joys, their ambitions and deeds,
are of no more interest or importance than the motes that dance in the
sunshine; or a Being that amuses Himself with the incredible vanity and
folly, the writhings and contortions of the insignificant insects that
compose Humanity, and idly imagine that they resemble the Omnipotent.
"What are we," the Tempter asks, "but puppets in a show-box? O
Omnipotent destiny, pull our strings gently! Dance us mercifully off our
miserable little stage!"

"Is it not," the Demon whispers, "merely the inordinate vanity of man
that causes him now to pretend to himself that he is like unto God in
intellect, sympathies and passions, as it was that which, at the
beginning, made him believe that he was, in his bodily shape and organs,
the very image of the Deity? Is not his God merely his own shadow,
projected in gigantic outlines upon the clouds? Does he not create for
himself a God out of himself, by merely adding indefinite extension to
his own faculties, powers, and passions?"

"Who," the Voice that will not be always silent whispers, "has ever
thoroughly satisfied himself with his own arguments in respect to his
own nature? Who ever demonstrated to himself, with a conclusiveness that
elevated the belief to certainty, that he was an immortal spirit,
dwelling only temporarily in the house and envelope of the body, and to
live on forever after that shall have decayed? Who ever has demonstrated
or ever can demonstrate that the intellect of Man differs from that of
the wiser animals, otherwise than in degree? Who has ever done more than
to utter nonsense and incoherencies in regard to the difference between
the instincts of the dog and the reason of Man? The horse, the dog, the
elephant, are as conscious of their identity as we are. They think,
dream, remember, argue with themselves, devise, plan, and _reason_. What
is the intellect and intelligence of the man but the intellect of the
animal in a higher degree or larger quantity?" In the _real_ explanation
of a single thought of a dog, all metaphysics will be condensed.

And with still more terrible significance, the Voice asks, in what
Respect the masses of men, the vast swarms of the human race, have
proven themselves either wiser or better than the animals in whose eyes
a higher intelligence shines than in _their_ dull, unintellectual orbs;
in what respect they have proven themselves worthy of or suited for an
immortal life. Would that be a prize of any value to the vast majority?
Do they show, here upon earth, any capacity to improve, any fitness for
a state of existence in which they could not crouch to power, like
hounds dreading the lash or tyrannize over defenceless weakness; in
which they could not hate and persecute, and torture, and exterminate;
in which they could not trade, and speculate, and over-reach, and entrap
the unwary and cheat the confiding and gamble and thrive, and sniff with
self-righteousness at the short-comings of others, and thank God that
they were not like other men? What, to immense numbers of men, would be
the value of a Heaven where they could not lie and libel, and ply base
avocations for profitable returns?

Sadly we look around us, and read the gloomy and dreary records of the
old dead and rotten ages. More than eighteen centuries have staggered
away into the spectral realm of the Past, since Christ, teaching the
Religion of Love, was crucified, that it might become a Religion of
Hate; and His Doctrines are not yet even nominally accepted as true by a
fourth of mankind. Since His death, what incalculable swarms of human
beings have lived and died in total unbelief of all that we deem
essential to Salvation! What multitudinous myriads of souls, since the
darkness of idolatrous superstition settled down, thick and
impenetrable, upon the earth, have flocked up toward the eternal Throne
of God, to receive His judgment?

The Religion of Love proved to be, for seventeen long centuries, as much
the Religion of Hate, and infinitely more the Religion of Persecution,
than Mahometanism, its unconquerable rival. Heresies grew up before the
Apostles died; and God hated the Nicolaītans, while John, at Patmos,
proclaimed His coming wrath. Sects wrangled, and each, as it gained the
power, persecuted the other, until the soil of the whole Christian world
was watered with the blood, and fattened on the flesh, and whitened with
the bones, of martyrs, and human ingenuity was taxed to its utmost to
invent new modes by which tortures and agonies could be prolonged and
made more exquisite.

"By what right" whispers the Voice, "does this savage, merciless,
persecuting animal, to which the sufferings and writhings of others of
its wretched kind furnish the most pleasurable sensations, and the mass
of which care only to eat, sleep, be clothed, and wallow in sensual
pleasures, and the best of which wrangle, hate, envy, and, with few
exceptions, regard their own interests alone,--with what right does it
endeavor to delude itself into the conviction that it is _not_ an
animal, as the wolf, the hyena, and the tiger are, but a somewhat
nobler, a spirit destined to be immortal, a spark of the essential
Light, Fire and Reason, which are God? What other immortality than one
of selfishness could this creature enjoy? Of what other is it capable?
Must not immortality commence _here_ and is not _life_ a part of it? How
shall death change the base nature of the base soul? Why have not those
other animals that only faintly imitate the wanton, savage, human
cruelty and thirst for blood, the same right as man has, to expect a
resurrection and an Eternity of existence, or a Heaven of Love?"

_The world improves_. Man ceases to persecute,--when the persecuted
become too numerous and strong, longer to submit to it. That source of
pleasure closed, men exercise the ingenuities of their cruelty on the
animals and other living things below them. To deprive other creatures
of the life which God gave them, and this not only that we may eat their
flesh for food, but out of mere savage wantonness, is the agreeable
employment and amusement of man, who prides himself on being the Lord of
Creation, and a little lower than the Angels. If he can no longer use
the rack, the gibbet, the pincers, and the stake, he can hate, and
slander, and delight in the thought that he will, hereafter, luxuriously
enjoying the sensual beatitudes of Heaven, see with pleasure the
writhing agonies of those justly damned for daring to hold opinions
contrary to his own, upon subjects totally beyond the comprehension both
of them and him.

Where the armies of the despots cease to slay and ravage, the armies of
"Freedom" take their place, and, the black and white commingled,
slaughter and burn and ravish. Each age re-enacts the crimes as well as
the follies of its predecessors, and still war licenses outrage and
turns fruitful lands into deserts, and God is thanked in the Churches
for bloody butcheries, and the remorseless devastators, even when
swollen by plunder, are crowned with laurels and receive ovations.

Of the whole of mankind, not one in ten thousand has any aspirations
beyond the daily needs of the gross animal life. In this age and in all
others, all men except a few, in most countries, are born to be mere
beasts of burden, co-laborers with the horse and the ox. Profoundly
ignorant, even in "civilized" lands, they think and reason like the
animals by the side of which they toil. For them, God, Soul, Spirit,
Immortality, are mere words, without any real meaning. The God of
nineteen-twentieths of the Christian world is only Bel, Moloch, Zeus,
or at best Osiris, Mithras, or Adonaï, under another name, worshipped
with the old Pagan ceremonies and ritualistic formulas. It is the Statue
of Olympian Jove, worshipped as the Father, in the Christian Church that
was a Pagan Temple; it is the Statue of Venus, become the Virgin Mary.
For the most part, men do not in their hearts believe that God is either
just or merciful. They fear and shrink from His lightnings and dread His
wrath. For the most part, they only _think_ they believe that there is
another life, a judgment, and a punishment for sin. Yet they will none
the less persecute as Infidels and Atheists those who do not believe
what they themselves imagine they believe, and which yet they do _not_
believe, because it is incomprehensible to them in their ignorance and
want of intellect. To the vast majority of mankind, God is but the
reflected image, in infinite space, of the earthly Tyrant on his Throne,
only more powerful, more inscrutable, and more implacable. To curse
Humanity, the Despot need only _be_, what the popular mind has, in every
age, imagined God.

In the great cities, the lower strata of the populace are equally
without faith and without hope. The others have, for the most part, a
mere blind faith, imposed by education and circumstances, and not as
productive of moral excellence or even common honesty as Mohammedanism.
"_Your property will be safe here_," said the Moslem; "_There are no
Christians here_." The philosophical and scientific world becomes daily
more and more unbelieving. Faith and Reason are not opposites, in
equilibrium; but antagonistic and hostile to each other; the result
being the darkness and despair of scepticism, avowed, or half-veiled as
rationalism.

Over more than three-fourths of the habitable globe, humanity still
kneels, like the camels, to take upon itself the burthens to be tamely
borne for its tyrants. If a Republic occasionally rises like a Star, it
hastens with all speed to set in blood. The kings need not make war upon
it, to crush it out of their way. It is only necessary to let it alone,
and it soon lays violent hands upon itself. And when a people long
enslaved shake off its fetters, it may well be incredulously asked,

            Shall the braggart shout
    For some blind glimpse of Freedom, link itself,
    Through madness, hated by the wise, to law,
            System and Empire?

Everywhere in the world labor is, in some shape, the slave of capital;
generally, a slave to be fed only so long as he can work; or, rather,
only so long as his work is profitable to the owner of the human
chattel. There are famines in Ireland, strikes and starvation in
England, pauperism and tenement-dens in New York, misery, squalor,
ignorance, destitution, the brutality of vice and the insensibility to
shame, of despairing beggary, in all the human cesspools and sewers
everywhere. Here, a sewing-woman famishes and freezes; there, mothers
murder their children, that those spared may live upon the bread
purchased with the burial allowances of the dead starveling; and at the
next door young girls prostitute themselves for food.

Moreover, the Voice says, this besotted race is not satisfied with
seeing its multitudes swept away by the great epidemics whose causes are
unknown, and of the justice or wisdom of which the human mind cannot
conceive. It must also be ever at war. There has not been a moment since
men divided into Tribes, when all the world was at peace. Always men
have been engaged in murdering each other somewhere. Always the armies
have lived by the toil of the husbandman, and war has exhausted the
resources, wasted the energies, and ended the prosperity of Nations. Now
it loads unborn posterity with crushing debt, mortgages all estates, and
brings upon States the shame and infamy of dishonest repudiation.

At times, the baleful fires of war light up half a Continent at once; as
when all the Thrones unite to compel a people to receive again a hated
and detestable dynasty, or States deny States the right to dissolve an
irksome union and create for themselves a separate government. Then
again the flames flicker and die away, and the fire smoulders in its
ashes, to break out again, after a time, with renewed and a more
concentrated fury. At times, the storm, revolving, howls over small
areas only; at times its lights are seen, like the old beacon-fires on
the hills, belting the whole globe. No sea, but hears the roar of
cannon; no river, but runs red with blood; no plain, but shakes,
trampled by the hoofs of charging squadrons; no field, but is fertilized
by the blood of the dead; and everywhere man slays, the vulture gorges,
and the wolf howls in the ear of the dying soldier. No city is not
tortured by shot and shell; and no people fail to enact the horrid
blasphemy of thanking a God of Love for victories and carnage. Te Deums
are still sung for the Eve of St. Bartholomew and the Sicilian Vespers.
Man's ingenuity is racked, and all his inventive powers are tasked, to
fabricate the infernal enginery of destruction, by which human bodies
may be the more expeditiously and effectually crushed, shattered, torn,
and mangled; and yet hypocritical[1] Humanity, drunk with blood and
drenched with gore, shrieks to Heaven at a single murder, perpetrated to
gratify a revenge not more unchristian, or to satisfy a cupidity not
more ignoble, than those which are the promptings of the Devil in the
souls of Nations.

When we have fondly dreamed of Utopia and the Millennium, when we have
begun almost to believe that man is _not_, after all, a tiger half
tamed, and that the smell of blood will not wake the savage within him,
we are of a sudden startled from the delusive dream, to find the thin
mask of civilization rent in twain and thrown contemptuously away. We
lie down to sleep, like the peasant on the lava-slopes of Vesuvius. The
mountain has been so long inert, that we believe its fires extinguished.
Round us hang the clustering grapes, and the green leaves of the olive
tremble in the soft night-air over us. Above us shine the peaceful,
patient stars. The crash of a new eruption wakes us, the roar of the
subterranean thunders, the stabs of the volcanic lightning into the
shrouded bosom of the sky; and we see, aghast, the tortured Titan
hurling up its fires among the pale stars, its great tree of smoke and
cloud, the red torrents pouring down its sides. The roar and the
shriekings of Civil War are all around us: the land is a pandemonium:
man is again a Savage. The great armies roll along their hideous waves,
and leave behind them smoking and depopulated deserts. The pillager is
in every house, plucking even the morsel of bread from the lips of the
starving child. Gray hairs are dabbled in blood, and innocent girlhood
shrieks in vain to Lust for mercy. Laws, Courts, Constitutions,
Christianity, Mercy, Pity, disappear. God seems to have abdicated, and
Moloch to reign in His stead; while Press and Pulpit alike exult at
universal murder, and urge the extermination of the Conquered, by the
sword and the flaming torch; and to plunder and murder entitles the
human beasts of prey to the thanks of Christian Senates.

Commercial greed deadens the nerves of sympathy of Nations, and makes
them deaf to the demands of honor, the impulses of generosity, the
appeals of those who suffer under injustice. Elsewhere, the universal
pursuit of wealth dethrones God and pays divine honors to Mammon and
Baalzebub. Selfishness rules supreme: to win wealth becomes the whole
business of life. The villanies of legalized gaming and speculation
become epidemic; treachery is but evidence of shrewdness; office becomes
the prey of successful faction; the Country, like Actæon, is torn by its
own hounds, and the villains it has carefully educated to their trade,
most greedily plunder it, when it is _in extremis_.

By what right, the Voice demands, does a creature always engaged in the
work of mutual robbery and slaughter, and who makes his own interest his
God, claim to be of a nature superior to the savage beasts of which he
is the prototype?

Then the shadows of a horrible doubt fall upon the soul that would fain
love, trust and believe; a darkness, of which this that surrounded you
was a symbol. It doubts the truth of Revelation, its own spirituality,
the very existence of a beneficent God. It asks itself if it is not idle
to hope for any great progress of Humanity toward perfection, and
whether, when it advances in one respect, it does not retrogress in some
other, by way of compensation: whether advance in civilization is not
increase of selfishness: whether freedom does not necessarily lead to
license and anarchy: whether the destitution and debasement of the
masses does not inevitably follow increase of population and commercial
and manufacturing prosperity. It asks itself whether man is not the
sport of a blind, merciless Fate: whether all philosophies are not
delusions, and all religions the fantastic creations of human vanity and
self-conceit; and, above all, whether, when Reason is abandoned as a
guide, the faith of Buddhist and Brahmin has not the same claims to
sovereignty and implicit, unreasoning credence, as any other.

He asks himself whether it is not, after all, the evident and palpable
injustices of this life, the success and prosperity of the Bad, the
calamities, oppressions, and miseries of the Good, that are the bases of
all beliefs in a future state of existence? Doubting man's capacity for
indefinite progress here, he doubts the possibility of it anywhere; and
if he does not doubt whether God exists, and is just and beneficent, he
at least cannot silence the constantly recurring whisper, that the
miseries and calamities of men, their lives and deaths, their pains and
sorrows, their extermination by war and epidemics, are phenomena of no
higher dignity, significance, and importance, in the eye of God, than
what things of the same nature occur to other organisms of matter; and
that the fish of the ancient seas, destroyed by myriads to make room
for other species, the contorted shapes in which they are found as
fossils testifying to their agonies; the coral insects, the animals and
birds and vermin slain by man, have as much right as he to clamor at the
injustice of the dispensations of God, and to demand an immortality of
life in a new universe, as compensation for their pains and sufferings
and untimely death in this world.

This is not a picture painted by the imagination. Many a thoughtful mind
has so doubted and despaired. How many of us can say that our own faith
is so well grounded and complete that we never hear those painful
whisperings within the soul? Thrice blessed are they who never doubt,
who ruminate in patient contenment like the kine, or doze under the
opiate of a blind faith; on whose souls never rests that Awful Shadow
which is the absence of the Divine Light.

To explain to themselves the existence of Evil and Suffering, the
Ancient Persians imagined that there were two Principles or Deities in
the Universe, the one of Good and the other of Evil, constantly in
conflict with each other in struggle for the mastery, and alternately
overcoming and overcome. Over both, for the SAGES, was the One Supreme;
and for _them_ Light was in the end to prevail over Darkness, the Good
over the Evil, and even Ahriman and his Demons to part with their wicked
and vicious natures and share the universal Salvation. It did not occur
to them that the existence of the Evil Principle, by the consent of the
Omnipotent Supreme, presented the same difficulty, and left the
existence of Evil as unexplained as before. The human mind is always
content, if it can remove a difficulty a step further off. It cannot
believe that the world rests on nothing, but is devoutly content when
taught that it is borne on the back of an immense elephant, who himself
stands on the back of a tortoise. Given the tortoise, Faith is always
satisfied; and it has been a great source of happiness to multitudes
that they could believe in a Devil who could relieve God of the odium of
being the Author of Sin.

But not to all is Faith sufficient to overcome this great difficulty.
They say, with the Suppliant,_"Lord! I believe!"_--but like him they are
constrained to add,_"Help Thou my unbelief!"_--Reason must, for these,
co-operate and coincide with Faith, or they remain still in the darkness
of doubt,--most miserable of all conditions of the human mind.

Those, only, who care for nothing beyond the interests and pursuits of
this life, are uninterested in these great Problems. The animals, also,
do not consider them. It is the characteristic of an immortal Soul, that
it should seek to satisfy itself of its immortality, and to understand
this great enigma, the Universe, If the Hottentot and the Papuan are not
troubled and tortured by these doubts and speculations, they are not,
for that, to be regarded as either wise or fortunate. The swine, also,
are indifferent to the great riddles of the Universe, and are happy in
being wholly unaware that it is the vast Revelation and Manifestation,
in Time and Space, of a Single Thought of the Infinite God.

Exalt and magnify Faith as we will, and say that it begins where Reason
ends, it must, after all, have a foundation, either in Reason, Analogy,
the Consciousness, or human testimony. The worshipper of Brahma also has
implicit Faith in what seems to us palpably false and absurd. His faith
rests neither in Reason, Analogy, or the Consciousness, but on the
testimony of his Spiritual teachers, and of the Holy Books. The Moslem
also believes, on the positive testimony of the Prophet; and the Mormon
also can say, _"I believe this, because it is impossible."_ No faith,
however absurd or degrading, has ever wanted these foundations,
testimony, and the books. Miracles, proven by unimpeachable testimony
have been used as a foundation for Faith, in every age; and the modern
miracles are better authenticated, a hundred times, than the ancient
ones.

So that, after all, Faith must flow out from some source within us, when
the evidence of that which we are to believe is not presented to our
senses, or it will in no case be the assurance of the truth of what is
believed.

The Consciousness, or inhering and innate conviction, or the instinct
divinely implanted, of the verity of things, is the highest Possible
evidence, if not the _only real_ proof, of the verity of certain things,
but only of truths of a limited class.

What we call the Reason, that is, our imperfect human reason, not only
may, but assuredly will, lead us away from the Truth in regard to things
invisible and especially those of the Infinite, if we determine to
believe nothing but that which _it_ can demonstrate, or _not_ to
believe that which it can by its processes of logic prove to be
contradictory, unreasonable, or absurd. Its tape-line cannot measure the
arcs of Infinity. For example, to the Human reason, an Infinite Justice
and an Infinite Mercy or Love, in the same Being, are inconsistent and
impossible. One, it can demonstrate necessarily excludes the other. So
it can _demonstrate_ that as the Creation had a beginning, it
necessarily follows that an Eternity had elapsed before the Deity began
to create, during which He was inactive.

When we gaze, of a moonless clear night, on the Heavens glittering with
stars, and know that each fixed star of all the myriads is a Sun, and
each probably possessing its retinue of worlds, all peopled with living
beings, we sensibly feel our own unimportance in the scale of Creation,
and at once reflect that much of what has in different ages been
religious faith, could never have been believed, if the nature, size,
and distance of those Suns, and of our own Sun, Moon, and Planets, had
been known to the Ancients as they are to us.

To them, all the lights of the firmament were created only to give light
to the earth, as its lamps or candles hung above it. The earth was
supposed to be the only inhabited portion of the Universe. The world and
the Universe were synonymous terms. Of the immense size and distance of
the heavenly bodies, men had no conception. The Sages had, in Chaldæea,
Egypt, India, China, and in Persia, and therefore the sages always had,
an esoteric creed, taught only in the mysteries and unknown to the
vulgar. No Sage, in either country, or in Greece or Rome, believed the
popular creed. To them the Gods and the Idols of the Gods were symbols,
and symbols of great and mysterious truths.

The Vulgar imagined the attention of the Gods to be continually centred
upon the earth and man. The Grecian Divinities inhabited Olympus, an
insignificant mountain of the Earth. There was the Court of Zeus, to
which Neptune came from the Sea, and Pluto and Persephoné from the
glooms of Tartarus in the unfathomable depths of the Earth's bosom. God
came down from Heaven and on Sinai dictated laws for the Hebrews to His
servant Moses. The Stars were the guardians of mortals whose fates and
fortunes were to be read in their movements, conjunctions, and
oppositions. The Moon was the Bride and Sister of the Sun, at the same
distance above the Earth, and, like the Sun, made for the service of
mankind alone.

If, with the great telescope of Lord Rosse, we examine the vast nebulæ
of Hercules, Orion, and Andromeda, and find them resolvable into Stars
more numerous than the sands on the seashore; if we reflect that each of
these Stars is a Sun, like and even many times larger than ours,--each,
beyond a doubt, with its retinue of worlds swarming with life;--if we go
further in imagination, and endeavor to conceive of all the infinities
of space, filled with similar suns and worlds, we seem at once to shrink
into an incredible insignificance.

The Universe, which is the uttered Word of God, is _infinite_ in extent.
There is no empty space beyond creation on any side. The Universe, which
is the Thought of God pronounced, never was _not_, since God never was
inert; nor WAS, without thinking and creating. The forms of creation
change, the suns and worlds live and die like the leaves and the
insects, but the Universe itself is infinite and eternal, because God
Is, Was, and Will forever Be, and never did _not_ think and create.

Reason is fain to admit that a Supreme Intelligence, infinitely powerful
and wise, must have created this boundless Universe; but it also tells
us that we are as unimportant in it as the zoöphytes and entozoa, or as
the invisible particles of animated life that float upon the air or
swarm in the water-drop.

The foundations of our faith, resting upon the imagined interest of God
in our race, an interest easily supposable when man believed himself the
only intelligent created being, and therefore eminently worthy the
especial care and watchful anxiety of a God who had only this earth to
look after, and its house-keeping alone to superintend, and who was
content to create, in all the infinite Universe, only one single being,
possessing a soul, and not a mere animal, are rudely shaken as the
Universe broadens and expands for us; and the darkness of doubt and
distrust settles heavy upon the Soul.

The modes in which it is ordinarily endeavored to satisfy our doubts,
only increase them. To _demonstrate_ the necessity for a cause of the
creation, is equally to demonstrate the necessity of a cause for that
cause. The argument from plan and design only removes the difficulty a
step further off. We rest the world on the elephant, and the elephant on
the tortoise, and the tortoise on--nothing.

To tell us that the animals possess instinct only and that Reason
belongs to us alone, in no way tends to satisfy us of the radical
difference between us and them. For if the mental phenomena exhibited
by animals that think, dream, remember, argue from cause to effect,
plan, devise, combine, and communicate their thoughts to each other, so
as to act rationally in concert,--if their love, hate, and revenge, can
be conceived of as results of the organization of matter, like color and
perfume, the resort to the hypothesis of an immaterial Soul to explain
phenomena of the same kind, only more perfect, manifested by the _human_
being, is supremely absurd. That organized matter can think or even
_feel_ at all, is the great insoluble mystery. "Instinct" is but a word
without a meaning, or else it means inspiration. It is either the animal
itself, or God _in_ the animal, that thinks, remembers, and reasons; and
instinct, according to the common acceptation of the term, would be the
greatest and most wonderful of mysteries,--no less a thing than the
direct, immediate, and continual promptings of the Deity,--for the
animals are not machines, or automata moved by springs, and the ape is
but a dumb Australian.

Must we _always_ remain in this darkness of uncertainty, of doubt? Is
there _no_ mode of escaping from the labyrinth except by means of a
blind faith, which explains nothing, and in many creeds, ancient and
modern, sets Reason at defiance, and leads to the belief either in a God
without a Universe, a Universe without a God, or a Universe which is
itself a God?

We read in the Hebrew Chronicles that Schlomoh the wise King caused to
be placed in front of the entrance to the Temple two huge columns of
bronze, one of which was called YAKAYIN and the other BAHAZ; and these
words are rendered in our version _Strength_ and _Establishment_. The
Masonry of the Blue Lodges gives no explanation of these symbolic
columns; nor do the Hebrew Books advise us that they were symbolic. If
not so intended as symbols, they were subsequently understood to be
such.

But as we are certain that everything _within_ the Temple was symbolic,
and that the whole structure was intended to represent the Universe, we
may reasonably conclude that the columns of the portico also had a
symbolic signification. It would be tedious to repeat all the
interpretations which fancy or dullness has found for them.

The key to their true meaning is not undiscoverable. The perfect and
eternal distinction of the two primitive terms of the creative
syllogism, in order to attain to the demonstration of their harmony by
the analogy of contraries, is the second grand principle of that occult
philosophy veiled under the name "_Kabalah_," and indicated by all the
sacred hieroglyphs of the Ancient Sanctuaries, and of the rites, so
little understood by the mass of the Initiates, of the Ancient and
Modern Free-Masonry.

The Sohar declares that everything in the Universe proceeds by the
mystery of "the Balance," that is, of Equilibrium. Of the Sephiroth, or
Divine Emanations, Wisdom and Understanding, Severity and Benignity, or
Justice and Mercy, and Victory and Glory, constitute pairs.

Wisdom, or the Intellectual Generative _Energy_, and Understanding, or
the _Capacity_ to be impregnated by the Active Energy and produce
intellection or thought, are represented symbolically in the Kabalah as
male and female. So also are Justice and Mercy. Strength is the
intellectual Energy or Activity; Establishment or Stability is the
intellectual Capacity to produce, a passivity. They are the POWER of
_generation_ and the CAPACITY of _production_. By WISDOM, it is said,
God creates, and by UNDERSTANDING establishes. These are the two Columns
of the Temple, contraries like the Man and Woman, like Reason and Faith,
Omnipotence and Liberty, Infinite Justice and Infinite. Mercy, Absolute
Power or Strength to do even what is most unjust and unwise, and
Absolute Wisdom that makes it impossible to do it; Right and Duty. They
were the columns of the intellectual and moral world, the monumental
hieroglyph of the antinomy necessary to the grand law of creation.

There must be for every Force a Resistance to support it, to every light
a shadow, for every Royalty a Realm to govern, for every affirmative a
negative.

For the Kabalists, Light represents the Active Principle, and Darkness
or Shadow is analogous to the Passive Principle. Therefore it was that
they made of the Sun and Moon emblems of the two Divine Sexes and the
two creative forces; therefore, that they ascribed to woman the
Temptation and the first sin, and then the first labor, the maternal
labor of the redemption, because it is from the bosom of the darkness
itself that we see the Light born again. The Void attracts the Full; and
so it is that the abyss of poverty and misery, the Seeming Evil, the
seeming empty nothingness of life, the temporary rebellion of the
creatures, eternally attracts the overflowing ocean of being, of riches,
of pity, and of love. Christ completed the Atonement on the Cross by
descending into Hell.

Justice and Mercy are contraries. If each be infinite, their
co-existence seems impossible, and being equal, one cannot even
annihilate the other and reign alone. The mysteries of the Divine Nature
are beyond our finite comprehension; but so indeed are the mysteries of
our own finite nature; and it is certain that in all nature harmony and
movement are the result of the equilibrium of opposing or contrary
forces.

The analogy of contraries gives the solution of the most interesting and
most difficult problem of modern philosophy,--the definite and permanent
accord of Reason and Faith, of Authority and Liberty of examination, of
Science and Belief, of Perfection in God and Imperfection in Man. If
science or knowledge is the Sun, Belief is the Man; it is a reflection
of the day in the night. Faith is the veiled Isis, the Supplement of
Reason, in the shadows which precede or follow Reason. It emanates from
the Reason, but can never confound it nor be confounded with it. The
encroachments of Reason upon Faith, or of Faith on Reason, are eclipses
of the Sun or Moon; when they occur, they make useless both the Source
of Light and its reflection, at once.

Science perishes by systems that are nothing but beliefs; and Faith
succumbs to reasoning. For the two Columns of the Temple to uphold the
edifice, they must remain separated and be parallel to each other. As
soon as it is attempted by violence to bring them together, as Samson
did, they are overturned, and the whole edifice falls upon the head of
the rash blind man or the revolutionist whose personal or national
resentments have in advance devoted to death.

Harmony is the result of an alternating preponderance of forces.
Whenever this is wanting in government, government is a failure, because
it is either Despotism or Anarchy. All theoretical governments, however
plausible the theory, end in one or the other. Governments that are to
endure are not made in the closet of Locke or Shaftesbury, or in a
Congress or a Convention. In a Republic, forces that seem contraries,
that indeed are contraries, alone give movement and life. The Spheres
are held in their orbits and made to revolve harmoniously and
unerringly, by the concurrence, which seems to be the opposition, of two
contrary forces. If the centripetal force should overcome the
centrifugal and the equilibrium of forces cease, the rush of the
Spheres to the Central Sun would annihilate the system. Instead of
consolidation the whole would be shattered into fragments.

Man is a free agent, though Omnipotence is above and all around him. To
be free to do good, he must be free to do evil. The Light necessitates
the Shadow. A State is free like an individual in any government worthy
of the name. The State is less potent than the Deity, and therefore the
freedom of the individual citizen is consistent with its Sovereignty.
These are opposites, but not antagonistic. So, in a union of States, the
freedom of the States is consistent with the Supremacy of the Nation.
When either obtains the permanent mastery over the other, and they cease
to be _in equilibrio_, the encroachment continues with a velocity that
is accelerated like that of a falling body, until the feebler is
annihilated, and then, there being no resistance to support the
stronger, it rushes into ruin.

So, when the equipoise of Reason and Faith, in the individual or the
Nation, and the alternating preponderance cease, the result is,
according as one or the other is permanent victor, Atheism or
Superstition, disbelief or blind credulity; and the Priests either of
Unfaith or of Faith become despotic.

"_Whomsoever God loveth, him he chasteneth_," is an expression that
formulates a whole dogma. The trials of life are the blessings of life,
to the individual or the Nation, if either has a Soul that is truly
worthy of salvation. "_Light and darkness_," said ZOROASTER, "_are the
world's eternal ways_." The Light and the Shadow are everywhere and
always in proportion; the Light being the reason of being of the Shadow.
It is by trials only, by the agonies of sorrow and the sharp discipline
of adversities, that men and Nations attain initiation. The agonies of
the garden of Gethsemane and those of the Cross on Calvary preceded the
Resurrection and were the means of Redemption. It is with prosperity
that God afflicts Humanity.

The Degree of Rose is devoted to and symbolizes the final triumph of
truth over falsehood, of liberty over slavery, of light over darkness,
of life over death, and of good over evil. The great truth it inculcates
is, that notwithstanding the existence of Evil, God is infinitely wise,
just, and good: that though the affairs of the world proceed by no rule
of right and wrong known to us the narrowness of our views, yet all _is_
right, for it is the work of God; and all evils, all miseries, all
misfortunes, are but as drops in the vast current that is sweeping
onward, guided by Him, to a great and magnificent result: that, at the
appointed time, He will redeem and regenerate the world, and the
Principle, the Power and the existence of Evil will then cease; that
this will be brought about by such means and instruments as He chooses
to employ; whether by the merits of a Redeemer that has already appeared
or a Messiah that is yet waited for, by an incarnation of Himself or by
an inspired prophet, it does not belong to us as Masons to decide. Let
each judge and believe for himself.

In the mean time, we labor to hasten the coming of that day. The morals
of antiquity, of the law of Moses and of Christianity, are ours. We
recognize every teacher of Morality, every Reformer, as a brother in
this great work. The Eagle is to us the symbol of Liberty, the Compasses
of Equality, the Pelican of Humanity, and our order of Fraternity.
Laboring for these, with Faith, Hope, and Charity as our armor, we will
wait with patience for the final triumph of Good and the complete
manifestation of the Word of God.

No one Mason has the right to measure for another, within the walls of a
Masonic Temple, the degree of veneration which he shall feel for any
Reformer, or the Founder of any Religion. We teach a belief in no
particular creed, as we teach unbelief in none. Whatever higher
attributes the Founder of the Christian Faith may, in our belief, have
had or not have had, none can deny that He taught and practised a pure
and elevated morality, even at the risk and to the ultimate loss of His
life. He was not only the benefactor of a disinherited people, but a
model for mankind. Devotedly He loved the children of Israel. To them He
came, and to them alone He preached that Gospel which His disciples
afterward carried among foreigners. He would fain have freed the chosen
People from their spiritual bondage of ignorance and degradation. As a
lover of all mankind, laying down His life for the emancipation of His
Brethren, He should be to all, to Christian, to Jew, and to Mahometan,
an object of gratitude and veneration.

The Roman world felt the pangs of approaching dissolution. Paganism, its
Temples shattered by Socrates and Cicero, had spoken its last word. The
God of the Hebrews was unknown beyond the limits of Palestine. The old
religions had failed to give happiness and peace to the world. The
babbling and wrangling philosophers had confounded all men's ideas,
until they doubted of everything and had faith in nothing: neither in
God nor in his goodness and mercy, nor in the virtue of man, nor in
themselves. Mankind was divided into two great classes,--the master and
the slave; the powerful and the abject, the high and the low, the
tyrants and the mob; and even the former were satiated with the
servility of the latter, sunken by lassitude and despair to the lowest
depths of degradation.

When, lo, a voice, in the inconsiderable Roman Province of Judea
proclaims a new Gospel--a new "God's Word," to crushed, suffering,
bleeding humanity. Liberty of Thought, Equality of all men in the eye of
God, universal Fraternity! a new doctrine, a new religion; the old
Primitive Truth uttered once again!

Man is once more taught to look upward to his God. No longer to a God
hid in impenetrable mystery, and infinitely remote from human sympathy,
emerging only at intervals from the darkness to smite and crush
humanity: but a God, good, kind, beneficent, and merciful: a Father,
loving the creatures He has made, with a love immeasureable and
exhaustless; Who feels for us, and sympathizes with us, and sends us
pain and want and disaster only that they may serve to develop in us the
virtues and excellences that befit us to live with Him hereafter.

Jesus of Nazareth, the "Son of man," is the expounder of the new Law of
Love. He calls to Him the humble, the poor, the Pariahs of the world.
The first sentence that He pronounces blesses the world, and announces
the new gospel: "Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be
comforted." He pours the oil of consolation and peace upon every crushed
and bleeding heart. Every sufferer is His proselyte. He shares their
sorrows, and sympathizes with all their afflictions.

He raises up the sinner and the Samaritan woman, and teaches them to
hope for forgiveness. He pardons the woman taken in adultery. He selects
his disciples not among the Pharisees or the Philosophers, but among the
low and humble, even of the fishermen of Galilee. He heals the sick and
feeds the poor. He lives among the destitute and the friendless. "Suffer
little children," He said, "to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom
of Heaven! Blessed are the humble-minded, for theirs is the kingdom of
Heaven; the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth; the merciful, for
they shall obtain mercy; the pure in heart, for they shall see God; the
peace-makers, for they shall be called the children of God! First be
reconciled to they brother, and _then_ come and offer thy gift at the
altar. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of
thee turn not away! Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do
good to them that hate you; and pray for them which despitefully use you
and persecute you! All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to
you, do ye also unto them; for this is the law and the Prophets! He that
taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me. A new
commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another: as I have loved
you, that ye also love one another: by this shall all know that ye are
My disciples. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down
his life for his friend."

The Gospel of Love He sealed with His life. The cruelty of the Jewish
Priesthood, the ignorant ferocity of the mob, and the Roman indifference
to barbarian blood, nailed Him to the cross, and He expired uttering
blessings upon humanity.

Dying thus, He bequeathed His teachings to man as an inestimable
inheritance. Perverted and corrupted, they have served as a basis for
many creeds, and been even made the warrant for intolerance and
persecution. We here teach them in their purity. They are our Masonry;
for to them good men of all creeds can subscribe.

That God is good and merciful, and loves and sympathizes with the
creatures He has made; that His finger is visible in all the movements
of the moral, intellectual, and material universe; that we are His
children, the objects of His paternal care and regard; that all men are
our brothers, whose wants we are to supply, their errors to pardon,
their opinions to tolerate, their injuries to forgive; that man has an
immortal soul, a free will, a right to freedom of thought and action;
that all men are equal in God's sight; that we best serve God by
humility, meekness, gentleness, kindness, and the other virtues which
the lowly can practise as well as the lofty; this is "the new Law," the
"WORD," for which the world had waited and pined so long; and every true
Knight of the Rose will revere the memory of Him who taught it, and
look indulgently even on those who assign to Him a character far above
his own conceptions or belief, even to the extent of deeming Him Divine.

Hear Philo, the Greek Jew. "The contemplative soul, unequally guided,
sometimes toward abundance and sometimes toward barrenness, though ever
advancing, is illuminated by the primitive ideas, the rays that emanate
from the Divine Intelligence, whenever it ascends toward the Sublime
Treasures. When, on the contrary, it descends, and is barren, it falls
within the domain of those Intelligences that are termed Angels ... for,
when the soul is deprived of the light of God, which leads it to the
knowledge of things, it no longer enjoys more than a feeble and
secondary light, which gives it, not the understanding of things, but
that of words only, as in this baser world...."

"... Let the narrow-souled withdraw, having their ears sealed up! We
communicate the divine mysteries to those only who have received the
sacred initiation, to those who practise true piety, and who are not
enslaved by the empty pomp of words, or the doctrines of the pagans...."

"... O, ye Initiates, ye whose ears are purified, receive this in your
souls, as a mystery never to be lost! Reveal it to no Profane! Keep and
contain it within yourselves, as an incorruptible treasure, not like
gold or silver, but more precious than everything besides; for it is the
knowledge of the Great Cause, of Nature, and of that which is born of
both. And 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 in 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
follow his school."

We, like him, recognize all Initiates as our Brothers. We belong to no
one creed or school. In all religions there is a basis of Truth; in all
there is pure Morality. All that teach the cardinal tenets of Masonry we
respect; all teachers and reformers of mankind we admire and revere.

Masonry also has her mission to perform. With her traditions reaching
back to the earliest times, and her symbols dating further back than
even the monumental history of Egypt extends, she invites all men of all
religions to enlist under her banners and to war against evil,
ignorance, and wrong. You are now her knight, and to her service your
sword is consecrated. May you prove a worthy soldier in a worthy
cause!



MORALS AND DOGMA.


COUNCIL OF KADOSH.



XIX.

GRAND PONTIFF.


The true Mason labors for the benefit of those who are to come after
him, and for the advancement and improvement of his race. That is a poor
ambition which contents itself within the limits of a single life. All
men who deserve to live, desire to survive their funerals, and to live
afterward in the good that they have done mankind, rather than in the
fading characters written in men's memories. Most men desire to leave
some work behind them that may outlast their own day and brief
generation. That is an instinctive impulse, given by God, and often
found in the rudest human heart; the surest proof of the soul's
immortality, and of the fundamental difference between man and the
wisest brutes. To plant the trees that, after we are dead, shall shelter
our children, is as natural as to love the shade of those our fathers
planted. The rudest unlettered husbandman, painfully conscious of his
own inferiority, the poorest widowed mother, giving her life-blood to
those who pay only for the work of her needle, will toil and stint
themselves to educate their child, that he may take a higher station in
the world than they;--and of such are the world's greatest benefactors.

In his influences that survive him, man becomes immortal, before the
general resurrection. The Spartan mother, who, giving her son his
shield, said, "WITH IT, OR UPON IT!" afterward shared the government of
Lacedæmon with the legislation of Lycurgus; for she too made a law, that
lived after her; and she inspired the Spartan soldiery that afterward
demolished the walls of Athens, and aided Alexander to conquer the
Orient. The widow who gave Marion the fiery arrows to burn her own
house, that it might no longer shelter the enemies of her infant
country, the house where she had lain upon her husband's bosom, and
where her children had been born, legislated more effectually for her
State than Locke or Shaftesbury, or than many a Legislature has done,
since that State won its freedom.

It was of slight importance to the Kings of Egypt and the Monarchs of
Assyria and Phœnicia, that the son of a Jewish woman, a foundling,
adopted by the daughter of Sesostris Ramses, slew an Egyptian that
oppressed a Hebrew slave, and fled into the desert, to remain there
forty years. But Moses, who might otherwise have become Regent of Lower
Egypt, known to us only by a tablet on a tomb or monument, became the
deliverer of the Jews, and led them forth from Egypt to the frontiers of
Palestine, and made for them a law, out of which grew the Christian
faith; and so has shaped the destinies of the world. He and the old
Roman lawyers, with Alfred of England, the Saxon Thanes and Norman
Barons, the old judges and chancellors, and the makers of the canons,
lost in the mists and shadows of the Past,--these are our legislators;
and we obey the laws that they enacted.

Napoleon died upon the barren rock of his exile. His bones, borne to
France by the son of a King, rest in the Hôpital des Invalides, in the
great city on the Seine. His Thoughts still govern France. He, and not
the People, dethroned the Bourbon, and drove the last King of the House
of Orleans into exile. He, in his coffin, and not the People, voted the
crown to the Third Napoleon; and he, and not the Generals of France and
England, led their united forces against the grim Northern Despotism.

Mahomet announced to the Arabian idolaters the new creed, "_There is but
one God, and Mahomet, like Moses and Christ, is His Apostle_." For many
years unaided, then with the help of his family and a few friends, then
with many disciples, and last of all with an army, he taught and
preached the Koran. The religion of the wild Arabian enthusiast
converting the fiery Tribes of the Great Desert, spread over Asia, built
up the Saracenic dynasties, conquered Persia and India, the Greek
Empire, Northern Africa, and Spain, and dashed the surges of its fierce
soldiery against the battlements of Northern Christendom. The law of
Mahomet still governs a fourth of the human race; and Turk and Arab,
Moor and Persian and Hindu, still obey the Prophet, and pray with their
faces turned toward Mecca; and he, and not the living, rules and reigns
in the fairest portions of the Orient.

Confucius still enacts the law for China; and the thoughts and ideas of
Peter the Great govern Russia. Plato and the other great Sages of
Antiquity still reign as the Kings of Philosophy, and have dominion over
the human intellect. The great Statesmen of the Past still preside in
the Councils of Nations. Burke still lingers in the House of Commons;
and Berryer's sonorous tones will long ring in the Legislative Chambers
of France. The influences of Webster and Calhoun, conflicting, rent
asunder the American States, and the doctrine of each is the law and the
oracle speaking from the Holy of Holies for his own State and all
consociated with it: a faith preached and proclaimed by each at the
cannon's mouth and consecrated by rivers of blood.

It has been well said, that when Tamerlane had builded his pyramid of
fifty thousand human skulls, and wheeled away with his vast armies from
the gates of Damascus, to find new conquests, and build other pyramids,
a little boy was playing in the streets of Mentz, son of a poor artisan,
whose apparent importance in the scale of beings was, compared with that
of Tamerlane, as that of a grain of sand to the giant bulk of the earth;
but Tamerlane and all his shaggy legions, that swept over the East like
a hurricane, have passed away, and become shadows; while printing, the
wonderful invention of John Faust, the boy of Mentz, has exerted a
greater influence on man's destinies and overturned more thrones and
dynasties than all the victories of all the blood-stained conquerors
from Nimrod to Napoleon.

Long ages ago, the Temple built by Solomon and our Ancient Brethren sank
into ruin, when the Assyrian Armies sacked Jerusalem. The Holy City is a
mass of hovels cowering under the dominion of the Crescent; and the Holy
Land is a desert. The Kings of Egypt and Assyria, who were
contemporaries of Solomon, are forgotten, and their histories mere
fables. The Ancient Orient is a shattered wreck, bleaching on the shores
of Time. The Wolf and the Jackal howl among the ruins of Thebes and of
Tyre, and the sculptured images of the Temples and Palaces of Babylon
and Nineveh are dug from their ruins and carried into strange lands. But
the quiet and peaceful Order, of which the Son of a poor Phœnician Widow
was one of the Grand Masters, with the Kings of Israel and Tyre, has
continued to increase in stature and influence, defying the angry waves
of time and the storms of persecution. Age has not weakened its wide
foundations nor shattered its columns, nor marred the beauty of its
harmonious proportions. Where rude barbarians, in the time of Solomon,
peopled inhospitable howling wildernesses, in France and Britain, and in
that New World, not known to Jew or Gentile, until the glories of the
Orient had faded, that Order has builded new Temples, and teaches to
its millions of Initiates those lessons of peace, good-will, and
toleration, of reliance on God and confidence in man, which it learned
when Hebrew and Giblemite worked side by side on the slopes of Lebanon,
and the Servant of Jehovah and the Phœnician Worshipper of Bel sat with
the humble artisan in Council at Jerusalem.

It is the Dead that govern. The Living only obey. And if the Soul sees,
after death, what passes on this earth, and watches over the welfare of
those it loves, then must its greatest happiness consist in seeing the
current of its beneficent influences widening out from age to age, as
rivulets widen into rivers, and aiding to shape the destinies of
individuals, families, States, the World; and its bitterest punishment,
in seeing its evil influences causing mischief and misery, and cursing
and afflicting men, long after the frame it dwelt in has become dust,
and when both name and memory are forgotten.

We know not who among the Dead control our destinies. The universal
human race is linked and bound together by those influences and
sympathies, which in the truest sense do make men's fates. Humanity is
the unit, of which the man is but a fraction. What other men in the Past
have done, said, thought, makes the great iron network of circumstance
that environs and controls us all. We take our faith on trust. We think
and believe as the Old Lords of Thought command us; and Reason is
powerless before Authority.

We would make or annul a particular contract; but the Thoughts of the
dead Judges of England, living when their ashes have been cold for
centuries, stand between us and that which we would do, and utterly
forbid it. We would settle our estate in a particular way; but the
prohibition of the English Parliament, its uttered Thought when the
first or second Edward reigned, comes echoing down the long avenues of
time, and tells us we shall not exercise the power of disposition as we
wish. We would gain a particular advantage of another; and the thought
of the old Roman lawyer who died before Justinian, or that of Rome's
great orator Cicero, annihilates the act, or makes the intention
ineffectual. This act, Moses forbids; that, Alfred. We would sell our
land; but certain marks on a perishable paper tell us that our father or
remote ancestor ordered otherwise; and the arm of the dead, emerging
from the grave, with peremptory gesture prohibits the alienation. About
to sin or err, the thought or wish of our dead mother, told us when we
were children, by words that died upon the air in the utterance, and
many a long year were forgotten, flashes on our memory, and holds us
back with a power that is resistless.

Thus we obey the dead; and thus shall the living, when we are dead, for
weal or woe, obey _us_. The Thoughts of the Past are the Laws of the
Present and the Future. That which we say and do if its effects last not
beyond our lives, is unimportant. That which shall live when we are
dead, as part of the great body of law enacted by the dead, is the only
act worth doing, the only Thought worth speaking. The desire to do
something that shall benefit the world, when neither praise nor obloquy
will reach us where we sleep soundly in the grave, is the noblest
ambition entertained by man.

It is the ambition of a true and genuine Mason. Knowing the slow
processes by which the Deity brings about great results, he does not
expect to reap as well as sow, in a single lifetime. It is the
inflexible fate and noblest destiny, with rare exceptions, of the great
and good, to work, and let others reap the harvest of their labors. He
who does good, only to be repaid in kind, or in thanks and gratitude, or
in reputation and the world's praise, is like him who loans his money,
that he may, after certain months, receive it back with interest. To be
repaid for eminent services with slander, obloquy, or ridicule, or at
best with stupid indifference or cold ingratitude, as it is common, so
it is no misfortune, except to those who lack the wit to see or sense to
appreciate the service, or the nobility of soul to thank and reward with
eulogy, the benefactor of his kind. His influences live, and the great
Future will obey; whether it recognize or disown the lawgiver.

Miltiades was fortunate that he was exiled; and Aristides that he was
ostracized, because men wearied of hearing him called "The Just." Not
the Redeemer was unfortunate; but those only who repaid Him for the
inestimable gift He offered them, and for a life passed in toiling for
their good, by nailing Him upon the cross, as though He had been a slave
or malefactor. The persecutor dies and rots, and Posterity utters his
name with execration, but his victim's memory he has unintentionally
made glorious and immortal.

If not for slander and persecution, the Mason who would benefit his
race must look for apathy and cold indifference in those whose good he
seeks, in those who ought to seek the good of others. Except when the
sluggish depths of the Human Mind are broken up and tossed as with a
storm, when at the appointed time a great Reformer comes, and a new
Faith springs up and grows with supernatural energy, the progress of
Truth is slower than the growth of oaks; and he who plants need not
expect to gather. The Redeemer, at His death, had twelve disciples, and
one betrayed and one deserted and denied Him. It is enough for us to
know that the fruit will come in its due season. When, or who shall
gather it, it does not in the least concern us to know. It is our
business to plant the seed. It is God's right to give the fruit to whom
He pleases; and if not to us, then is our action by so much the more
noble.

To sow, that others may reap; to work and plant for those who are to
occupy the earth when we are dead; to project our influences far into
the future, and live beyond our time; to rule as the Kings of Thought,
over men who are yet unborn; to bless with the glorious gifts of Truth
and Light and Liberty those who will neither know the name of the giver,
nor care in what grave his unregarded ashes repose, is the true office
of a Mason and the proudest destiny of a man.

All the great and beneficent operations of Nature are produced by slow
and often imperceptible degrees. The work of destruction and devastation
only is violent and rapid. The Volcano and the Earthquake, the Tornado
and the Avalanche, leap suddenly into full life and fearful energy, and
smite with an unexpected blow. Vesuvius buried Pompeii and Herculaneum
in a night; and Lisbon fell prostrate before God in a breath, when the
earth rocked and shuddered; the Alpine village vanishes and is erased at
one bound of the avalanche; and the ancient forests fall like grass
before the mower, when the tornado leaps upon them. Pestilence slays its
thousands in a day; and the storm in a night strews the sand with
shattered navies.

The Gourd of the Prophet Jonah grew up, and was withered, in a night.
But many years ago, before the Norman Conqueror stamped his mailed foot
on the neck of prostrate Saxon England, some wandering barbarian, of the
continent then unknown to the world, in mere idleness, with hand or
foot, covered an acorn with a little earth, and passed on regardless, on
his journey to the dim Past. He died and was forgotten; but the acorn
lay there still, the mighty force within it acting in the darkness. A
tender shoot stole gently up; and fed by the light and air and frequent
dews put forth its little leaves, and lived, because the elk or buffalo
chanced not to place his foot upon and crush it. The years marched
onward, and the shoot became a sapling, and its green leaves went and
came with Spring and Autumn. And still the years came and passed away
again, and William, the Norman Bastard, parcelled England out among his
Barons, and still the sapling grew, and the dews fed its leaves, and the
birds builded their nests among its small limbs for many generations.
And still the years came and went, and the Indian hunter slept in the
shade of the sapling, and Richard Lion-Heart fought at Acre and Ascalon,
and John's bold Barons wrested from him the Great Charter; and lo! the
sapling had become a tree; and still it grew, and thrust its great arms
wider abroad, and lifted its head still higher toward the Heavens;
strong-rooted, and defiant of the storms that roared and eddied through
its branches; and when Columbus ploughed with his keels the unknown
Western Atlantic, and Cortez and Pizarro bathed the cross in blood; and
the Puritan, the Huguenot, the Cavalier, and the follower of Penn sought
a refuge and a resting-place beyond the ocean, the Great Oak still
stood, firm-rooted, vigorous, stately, haughtily domineering over all
the forest, heedless of all the centuries that had hurried past since
the wild Indian planted the little acorn in the forest;--a stout and
hale old tree, with wide circumference shading many a rood of ground;
and fit to furnish timbers for a ship, to carry the thunders of the
Great Republic's guns around the world. And yet, if one had sat and
watched it every instant, from the moment when the feeble shoot first
pushed its way to the light until the eagles built among its branches,
he would never have seen the tree or sapling _grow_.

Many long centuries ago, before the Chaldæan Shepherds watched the
Stars, or Shufu built the Pyramids, one could have sailed in a
seventy-four where now a thousand islands gem the surface of the Indian
Ocean; and the deep-sea lead would nowhere have found any bottom. But
below these waves were myriads upon myriads, beyond the power of
Arithmetic to number, of minute existences, each a perfect living
creature, made by the Almighty Creator, and fashioned by Him for the
work it had to do. There they toiled beneath the waters, each doing its
allotted work, and wholly ignorant of the result which God intended.
They lived and died, incalculable in numbers and almost infinite in the
succession of their generations, each adding his mite to the gigantic
work that went on there under God's direction. Thus hath He chosen to
create great Continents and Islands; and still the coral-insects live
and work, as when they made the rocks that underlie the valley of the
Ohio.

Thus God hath chosen to create. Where now is firm land, once chafed and
thundered the great primeval ocean. For ages upon ages the minute
shields of infinite myriads of infusoria, and the stony stems of
encrinites sunk into its depths, and there, under the vast pressure of
its waters, hardened into limestone. Raised slowly from the Profound by
His hand, its quarries underlie the soil of all the continents, hundreds
of feet in thickness; and we, of these remains of the countless dead,
build tombs and palaces, as the Egyptians, whom we call ancient, built
their pyramids.

On all the broad lakes and oceans the Great Sun looks earnestly and
lovingly, and the invisible vapors rise ever up to meet him. No eye but
God's beholds them as they rise. There, in the upper atmosphere, they
are condensed to mist, and gather into clouds, and float and swim around
in the ambient air. They sail with its currents, and hover over the
ocean, and roll in huge masses round the stony shoulders of great
mountains. Condensed still more by change of temperature, they drop upon
the thirsty earth in gentle showers, or pour upon it in heavy rains, or
storm against its bosom at the angry Equinoctial. The shower, the rain,
and the storm pass away, the clouds vanish, and the bright stars again
shine clearly upon the glad earth. The rain-drops sink into the ground,
and gather in subterranean reservoirs, and run in subterranean channels,
and bubble up in springs and fountains; and from the mountain-sides and
heads of valleys the silver threads of water begin their long journey to
the ocean. Uniting, they widen into brooks and rivulets, then into
streams and rivers; and, at last, a Nile, a Ganges, a Danube, an Amazon,
or a Mississippi rolls between its banks, mighty, majestic, and
resistless, creating vast alluvial valleys to be the granaries of the
world, ploughed by the thousand keels of commerce and serving as great
highways, and as the impassable boundaries of rival nations; ever
returning to the ocean the drops that rose from it in vapor, and
descended in rain and snow and hail upon the level plains and lofty
mountains; and causing him to recoil for many a mile before the
headlong rush of their great tide.

So it is with the aggregate of Human endeavor. As the invisible
particles of vapor combine and coalesce to form the mists and clouds
that fall in rain on thirsty continents, and bless the great green
forests and wide grassy prairies, the waving meadows and the fields by
which men live; as the infinite myriads of drops that the glad earth
drinks are gathered into springs and rivulets and rivers, to aid in
levelling the mountains and elevating the plains and to feed the large
lakes and restless oceans; so all Human Thought, and Speech and Action,
all that is done and said and thought and suffered upon the Earth
combine together, and flow onward in one broad resistless current toward
those great results to which they are determined by the will of God.

We build slowly and destroy swiftly. Our Ancient Brethren who built the
Temples at Jerusalem, with many myriad blows felled, hewed, and squared
the cedars, and quarried the stones, and carved the intricate ornaments,
which were to be the Temples. Stone after stone, by the combined effort
and long toil of Apprentice, Fellow-Craft, and Master, the walls arose;
slowly the roof was framed and fashioned; and many years elapsed before,
at length, the Houses stood finished, all fit and ready for the Worship
of God, gorgeous in the sunny splendors of the atmosphere of Palestine.
So they were built. A single motion of the arm of a rude, barbarous
Assyrian Spearman, or drunken Roman or Gothic Legionary of Titus, moved
by a senseless impulse of the brutal will, flung in the blazing brand;
and, with no further human agency, a few short hours sufficed to consume
and melt each Temple to a smoking mass of black unsightly ruin.

Be patient, therefore, my Brother, and wait!

    _The issues are with God: To do,
     Of right belongs to us._

Therefore faint not, nor be weary in well-doing! Be not discouraged at
men's apathy, nor disgusted with their follies, nor tired of their
indifference! Care not for returns and results; but see only what there
is to do, and do it, leaving the results to God! Soldier of the Cross!
Sworn Knight of Justice, Truth, and Toleration! Good Knight and True! be
patient and work!

The Apocalypse, that sublime Kabalistic and prophetic Summary of all
the occult figures, divides its images into three Septenaries, after
each of which there is silence in Heaven. There are Seven Seals to be
opened, that is to say, Seven mysteries to know, and Seven difficulties
to overcome, Seven trumpets to sound, and Seven cups to empty.

The Apocalypse is, to those who receive the nineteenth Degree, the
Apotheosis of that Sublime Faith which aspires to God alone, and
despises all the pomps and works of Lucifer. LUCIFER, the
_Light-bearer!_ Strange and mysterious name to give to the Spirit of
Darkness! Lucifer, the Son of the Morning! Is it _he_ who bears the
_Light_, and with its splendors intolerable blinds feeble, sensual, or
selfish Souls? Doubt it not! for traditions are full of Divine
Revelations and Inspirations: and Inspiration is not of one Age nor of
one Creed. Plato and Philo, also, were inspired.

The Apocalypse, indeed, is a book as obscure as the Sohar.

It is written hieroglyphically with numbers and images; and the Apostle
often appeals to the intelligence of the Initiated. "Let him who hath
knowledge, understand! let him who understands, calculate!" he often
says, after an allegory or the mention of a number. Saint John, the
favorite Apostle, and the Depositary of all the Secrets of the Saviour,
therefore did not write to be understood by the multitude.

The Sephar Yezirah, the Sohar, and the Apocalypse are the completest
embodiments of Occultism. They contain more meanings than words; their
expressions are figurative as poetry and exact as numbers. The
Apocalypse sums up, completes, and surpasses all the Science of Abraham
and of Solomon. The visions of Ezekiel, by the river Chebar, and of the
new Symbolic Temple, are equally mysterious expressions, veiled by
figures of the enigmatic dogmas of the Kabalah, and their symbols are as
little understood by the Commentators, as those of Free Masonry.

The Septenary is the Crown of the Numbers, because it unites the
Triangle of the Idea to the Square of the Form.

The more the great Hierophants were at pains to conceal their absolute
Science, the more they sought to add grandeur to and multiply its
symbols. The huge pyramids, with their triangular sides of elevation and
square bases, represented their Metaphysics, founded upon the knowledge
of Nature. That knowledge of Nature had for its symbolic key the
gigantic form of that huge Sphinx, which has hollowed its deep bed in
the sand, while keeping watch at the feet of the Pyramids. The Seven
grand monuments called the Wonders of the World, were the magnificent
Commentaries on the Seven lines that composed the Pyramids, and on the
Seven mystic gates of Thebes.

The Septenary philosophy of Initiation among the Ancients may be summed
up thus:

Three Absolute Principles which are but One Principle: four elementary
forms which are but one; all forming a Single Whole, compounded of the
Idea and the Form.

The three Principles were these:

1º. BEING IS BEING.

In Philosophy, identity of the Idea and of Being or Verity; in Religion,
the first Principle, THE FATHER.

2º. BEING IS REAL.

In Philosophy, identity of Knowing and of Being or Reality; in Religion,
the LOCOS of Plato, the _Demiourgos_, the WORD.

3º. BEING IS LOGIC.

In Philosophy, identity of the Reason and Reality; in Religion,
Providence, the Divine Action that makes real the Good, that which in
Christianity we call THE HOLY SPIRIT.

The _union_ of all the Seven colors is the _White_, the analogous symbol
of the GOOD: the _absence_ of all is the _Black_, the analogous symbol
of the EVIL. There are three primary colors, _Red_, _Yellow_, and
_Blue_; and four secondary, _Orange_, _Green_, _Indigo_, and _Violet_;
and all these God displays to man in the rainbow; and they have their
analogies also in the moral and intellectual world. The same number,
_Seven_, continually reappears in the Apocalypse, compounded of _three_
and _four_; and these numbers relate to the last Seven of the Sephiroth,
three answering to BENIGNITY or MERCY, SEVERITY or JUSTICE, and BEAUTY
or HARMONY; and four to _Netzach_, _Hōd_, _Yesōd_, and _Malakoth_,
VICTORY, GLORY, STABILITY, and DOMINATION. The same numbers also
represent the _first_ three Sephiroth, KETHER, KHOKMAH, and BAINAH, or
_Will_, _Wisdom_, and _Understanding_, which, with DAATH or
_Intellection_ or _Thought_, are also four, DAATH not being regarded as
a Sephirah, not as the Deity acting, or as a potency, energy, or
attribute, but as the Divine Action.

The Sephiroth are commonly figured in the Kabalah as constituting a
human form, the ADAM KADMON or MACROCOSM. Thus arranged, the universal
law of Equipoise is three times exemplified. From that of the Divine
Intellectual, Active, Masculine ENERGY, and the Passive CAPACITY to
produce Thought, the action of THINKING results. From that of BENIGNITY
and SEVERITY, HARMONY flows; and from that of VICTORY or an Infinite
overcoming, and GLORY, which, being Infinite, would seem to forbid the
existence of obstacles or opposition, results STABILITY or PERMANENCE,
which is the perfect DOMINION of the Infinite WILL.

The last nine Sephiroth are included in, at the same time that they have
flowed forth from, the first of all, KETHER, or the CROWN. Each also, in
succession flowed from, and yet still remains included in, the one
preceding it. The Will of God _includes_ His Wisdom, and His Wisdom _is_
His Will specially developed and acting. This Wisdom is the LOGOS that
creates, mistaken and personified by Simon Magus and the succeeding
Gnostics. By means of its utterance, the letter YŌD, it creates the
worlds, first in the Divine Intellect as an Idea, which invested with
form became the fabricated World, the Universe of material reality. YŌD
and HE, two letters of the Ineffable Name of the Manifested Deity,
represent the Male and the Female, the Active and the Passive in
Equilibrium, and the VAV completes the Trinity and the Triliteral Name
[Hebrew: יהו], the Divine Triangle, which with the repetition of the
_He_ becomes the Tetragrammaton.

Thus the ten Sephiroth contain all the Sacred Numbers, _three_, _five_,
_seven_, and _nine_, and the perfect Number _Ten_, and correspond with
the Tetractys of Pythagoras.

BEING IS BEING, [Hebrew: אהיה אשר אהיה], _Ahayah Asar Ahayah_. This is
the Principle, the "BEGINNING."

In the Beginning was, that is to say, IS, WAS, and WILL BE, the WORD,
that is to say, the REASON that _Speaks_.

Εν αρχη ην Ό Λογος!

The Word is the reason of belief, and in it also is the expression of
the Faith which makes Science a living thing. The Word, Λογος, is the
Source of Logic. Jesus is the Word Incarnate. The accord of the Reason
with Faith, of Knowledge with Belief, of Authority with Liberty, has
become in modern times the veritable enigma of the Sphinx.

It is WISDOM that, in the Kabalistic Books of the Proverbs and
Ecclesiasticus, is the Creative Agent of God. Elsewhere in the Hebrew
writings it is [Hebrew: דבר יהוה], _Debar Iahavah_, the Word of God. It
is by His uttered Word that God reveals Himself to us; not alone in the
visible and invisible but intellectual creation, but also in our
convictions, consciousness, and instincts. Hence it is that certain
beliefs are universal. The conviction of all men that God is good led to
a belief in a Devil, the fallen _Lucifer_ or _Light-bearer_, Shaitan the
Adversary, Ahriman and Tuphōn, as an attempt to explain the existence of
Evil, and make it consistent with the Infinite Power, Wisdom, and
Benevolence of God.

Nothing surpasses and nothing equals, as a Summary of all the doctrines
of the Old World, those brief words engraven by HERMES on a Stone, and
known under the name of "_The Tablet of Emerald_:" the Unity of Being
and the Unity of the Harmonies, ascending and descending, the
progressive and proportional scale of the Word; the immutable law of the
Equilibrium, and the proportioned progress of the universal analogies;
the relation of the Idea to the Word, giving the measure of the relation
between the Creator and the Created, the necessary mathematics of the
Infinite, proved by the measures of a single corner of the Finite;--all
this is expressed by this single proposition of the Great Egyptian
Hierophant:

_"What is Superior is as that which is Inferior, and what is Below is as
that which is Above, to form the Marvels of the Unity."_



XX.

GRAND MASTER OF ALL SYMBOLIC LODGES.


The true Mason is a practical Philosopher, who, under religious emblems,
in all ages adopted by wisdom, builds upon plans traced by nature and
reason the moral edifice of knowledge. He ought to find, in the
symmetrical relation of all the parts of this rational edifice, the
principle and rule of all his duties, the source of all his pleasures.
He improves his moral nature, becomes a better man, and finds in the
reunion of virtuous men, assembled with pure views, the means of
multiplying his acts of beneficence. Masonry and Philosophy, without
being one and the same thing, have the same object, and propose to
themselves the same end, the worship of the Grand Architect of the
Universe, acquaintance and familiarity with the wonders of nature, and
the happiness of humanity attained by the constant practice of all the
virtues.

As Grand Master of all Symbolic Lodges, it is your especial duty to aid
in restoring Masonry to its primitive purity. You have become an
instructor. Masonry long wandered in error. Instead of improving, it
degenerated from its primitive simplicity, and retrograded toward a
system, distorted by stupidity and ignorance, which, unable to construct
a beautiful machine, made a complicated one. Less than two hundred years
ago, its organization was simple, and altogether moral, its emblems,
allegories, and ceremonies easy to be understood, and their purpose and
object readily to be seen. It was then confined to a very small number
of Degrees. Its constitutions were like those of a Society of Essenes,
written in the first century of our era. There could be seen the
primitive Christianity, organized into Masonry, the school of Pythagoras
without incongruities or absurdities; a Masonry simple and significant,
in which it was not necessary to torture the mind to discover reasonable
interpretations; a Masonry at once religious and philosophical, worthy
of a good citizen and an enlightened philanthropist.

Innovators and inventors overturned that primitive simplicity.
Ignorance engaged in the work of making Degrees, and trifles and gewgaws
and pretended mysteries, absurd or hideous, usurped the place of Masonic
Truth. The picture of a horrid vengeance, the poniard and the bloody
head, appeared in the peaceful Temple of Masonry, without sufficient
explanation of their symbolic meaning. Oaths out of all proportion with
their object, shocked the candidate, and then became ridiculous, and
were wholly disregarded. Acolytes were exposed to tests, and compelled
to perform acts, which, if real, would have been abominable; but being
mere chimeras, were preposterous, and excited contempt and laughter
only. Eight hundred Degrees of one kind and another were invented:
Infidelity and even Jesuitry were taught under the mask of Masonry. The
rituals even of the respectable Degrees, copied and mutilated by
ignorant men, became nonsensical and trivial; and the words so corrupted
that it has hitherto been found impossible to recover many of them at
all. Candidates were made to degrade themselves, and to submit to
insults not tolerable to a man of spirit and honor.

Hence it was that, practically, the largest portion of the Degrees
claimed by the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and before it by the
Rite of Perfection, fell into disuse, were merely communicated, and
their rituals became jejune and insignificant. These Rites resembled
those old palaces and baronial castles, the different parts of which,
built at different periods remote from one another, upon plans and
according to tastes that greatly varied, formed a discordant and
incongruous whole. Judaism and chivalry, superstition and philosophy,
philanthropy and insane hatred and longing for vengeance, a pure
morality and unjust and illegal revenge, were found strangely mated and
standing hand in hand within the Temples of Peace and Concord; and the
whole system was one grotesque commingling of incongruous things, of
contrasts and contradictions, of shocking and fantastic extravagances,
of parts repugnant to good taste, and fine conceptions overlaid and
disfigured by absurdities engendered by ignorance, fanaticism, and a
senseless mysticism.

An empty and sterile pomp, impossible indeed to be carried out, and to
which no meaning whatever was attached, with far-fetched explanations
that were either so many stupid platitudes or themselves needed an
interpreter; lofty titles, arbitrarily assumed, and to which the
inventors had not condescended to attach any explanation that should
acquit them of the folly of assuming temporal rank, power, and titles of
nobility, made the world laugh, and the Initiate feel ashamed.

Some of these titles we retain; but they have with us meanings entirely
consistent with that Spirit of Equality which is the foundation and
peremptory law of its being of all Masonry. The _Knight_, with us, is he
who devotes his hand, his heart, his brain, to the Science of Masonry,
and professes himself the Sworn Soldier of Truth: the Prince is he who
aims to be _Chief [Princeps]_, _first_, _leader_, among his equals, in
virtue and good deeds: the _Sovereign_ is he who, one of an order whose
members are all Sovereigns, is Supreme only because the law and
constitutions are so, which he administers, and by which he, like every
other brother, is governed. The titles, _Puissant_, _Potent_, _Wise_,
and _Venerable_, indicate that power of Virtue, Intelligence, and
Wisdom, which those ought to strive to attain who are placed in high
office by the suffrages of their brethren: and all our other titles and
designations have an esoteric meaning, consistent with modesty and
equality, and which those who receive them should fully understand. As
Master of a Lodge it is your duty to instruct your Brethren that they
are all so many constant lessons, teaching the lofty qualifications
which are required of those who claim them, and not merely idle gewgaws
worn in ridiculous imitation of the times when the Nobles and Priests
were masters and the people slaves: and that, in all true Masonry, the
Knight, the Pontiff, the Prince, and the Sovereign are but the first
among their equals: and the cordon, the clothing, and the jewel but
symbols and emblems of the virtues required of all good Masons.

The Mason kneels, no longer to present his petition for admittance or to
receive the answer, no longer to a man as his superior, who is but his
brother, but to his God; to whom he appeals for the rectitude of his
intentions, and whose aid he asks to enable him to keep his vows. No one
is degraded by bending his knee to God at the altar, or to receive the
honor of Knighthood as Bayard and Du Guesclin knelt. To kneel for other
purposes, Masonry does not require. God gave to man a head to be borne
erect, a port upright and majestic. We assemble in our Temples to
cherish and inculcate sentiments that conform to that loftiness of
bearing which the just and upright man is entitled to maintain, and we
do not require those who desire to be admitted among us, ignominiously
to bow the head. We respect man, because we respect ourselves that he
may conceive a lofty idea of his dignity as a human being free and
independent. If modesty is a virtue, humility and obsequiousness to man
are base: for there is a noble pride which is the most real and solid
basis of virtue. Man should humble himself before the Infinite God; but
not before his erring and imperfect brother.

As Master of a Lodge, you will therefore be exceedingly careful that no
Candidate, in any Degree, be required to submit to any degradation
whatever; as has been too much the custom in some of the Degrees: and
take it as a certain and inflexible rule, to which there is _no_
exception, that real Masonry requires of no man anything to which a
Knight and Gentleman cannot honorably, and without feeling outraged or
humiliated submit.

The Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States
at length undertook the indispensable and long-delayed task of revising
and reforming the work and rituals of the thirty Degrees under its
jurisdiction. Retaining the essentials of the Degrees and all the means
by which the members recognize one another, it has sought out and
developed the leading idea of each Degree, rejected the puerilities and
absurdities with which many of them were disfigured, and made of them a
connected system of moral, religious, and philosophical instruction.
Sectarian of no creed, it has yet thought it not improper to use the old
allegories, based on occurrences detailed in the Hebrew and Christian
books, and drawn from the Ancient Mysteries of Egypt, Persia, Greece,
India, the Druids and the Essenes, as vehicles to communicate the Great
Masonic Truths; as it has used the legends of the Crusades, and the
ceremonies of the orders of Knighthood.

It no longer inculcates a criminal and wicked vengeance. It has not
allowed Masonry to play the assassin: to avenge the death either of
Hiram, of Charles the 1st, or of Jacques De Molay and the Templars. The
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Masonry has now become, what
Masonry at first was meant to be, a Teacher of Great Truths, inspired by
an upright and enlightened reason, a firm and constant wisdom, and an
affectionate and liberal philanthropy.

It is no longer a system, over the composition and arrangement of the
different parts of which, want of reflection, chance, ignorance, and
perhaps motives still more ignoble presided; a system unsuited to our
habits, our manners, our ideas, or the world-wide philanthropy and
universal toleration of Masonry; or to bodies small in number, whose
revenues should be devoted to the relief of the unfortunate, and not to
empty show; no longer a heterogeneous aggregate of Degrees, shocking by
its anachronisms and contradictions, powerless to disseminate light,
information, and moral and philosophical ideas.

As Master, you will teach those who are under you, and to whom you will
owe your office, that the decorations of many of the Degrees are to be
dispensed with, whenever the expense would interfere with the duties of
charity, relief, and benevolence; and to be indulged in only by wealthy
bodies that will thereby do no wrong to those entitled to their
assistance. The essentials of all the Degrees may be procured at slight
expense; and it is at the option of every Brother to procure or not to
procure, as he pleases, the dress, decorations, and jewels of any Degree
other than the 14th, 18th, 30th, and 32d.

We teach the truth of none of the legends we recite. They are to us but
parables and allegories, involving and enveloping Masonic instruction;
and vehicles of useful and interesting information. They represent the
different phases of the human mind, its efforts and struggles to
comprehend nature, God, the government of the Universe, the permitted
existence of sorrow and evil. To teach us wisdom, and the folly of
endeavoring to explain to ourselves that which we are not capable of
understanding, we reproduce the speculations of the Philosophers, the
Kabalists, the Mystagogues and the Gnostics. Every one being at liberty
to apply our symbols and emblems as he thinks most consistent with truth
and reason and with his own faith, we give them such an interpretation
only as may be accepted by all. Our Degrees may be conferred in France
or Turkey, at Pekin, Ispahàn, Rome, or Geneva, in the city of Penn or in
Catholic Louisiana, upon the subject of an absolute government or the
citizen of a Free State, upon Sectarian or Theist. To honor the Deity,
to regard all men as our Brethren, as children, equally dear to Him, of
the Supreme Creator of the Universe, and to make himself useful to
society and himself by his labor, are its teachings to its Initiates in
all the Degrees.

Preacher of Liberty, Fraternity, and Equality, it desires them to be
attained by making men fit to receive them, and by the moral power of an
intelligent and enlightened People. It lays no plots and conspiracies.
It hatches no premature revolutions; it encourages no people to revolt
against the constituted authorities; but recognizing the great truth
that freedom follows fitness for freedom as the corollary follows the
axiom, it strives to _prepare_ men to govern themselves.

Where domestic slavery exists, it teaches the master humanity and the
alleviation of the condition of his slave, and moderate correction and
gentle discipline; as it teaches them to the master of the apprentice:
and as it teaches to the employers of other men, in mines,
manufactories, and workshops, consideration and humanity for those who
depend upon their labor for their bread, and to whom want of employment
is starvation, and overwork is fever, consumption, and death.

As Master of a Lodge, you are to inculcate these duties on your
brethren. Teach the employed to be honest, punctual, and faithful as
well as respectful and obedient to all proper orders: but also teach the
employer that every man or woman who desires to work, has a right to
have work to do; and that they, and those who from sickness or
feebleness, loss of limb or of bodily vigor, old age or infancy, are not
able to work, have a right to be fed, clothed, and sheltered from the
inclement elements: that he commits an awful sin against Masonry and in
the sight of God, if he closes his workshops or factories, or ceases to
work his mines, when they do not yield him what he regards as sufficient
profit, and so dismisses his workmen and workwomen to starve; or when he
reduces the wages of man or woman to so low a standard that they and
their families cannot be clothed and fed and comfortably housed; or by
overwork must give him their blood and life in exchange for the pittance
of their wages: and that his duty as a Mason and Brother peremptorily
requires him to continue to employ those who else will be pinched with
hunger and cold, or resort to theft and vice: and to pay them fair
wages, though it may reduce or annul his profits or even eat into his
capital; for God hath but loaned him his wealth, and made him His
almoner and agent to invest it.

Except, as mere symbols of the moral virtues and intellectual qualities,
the tools and implements of Masonry belong exclusively to the first
three Degrees. They also, however, serve to remind the Mason who has
advanced further, that his new rank is based upon the humble labors of
the symbolic Degrees, as they are improperly termed, inasmuch as all the
Degrees are symbolic.

Thus the Initiates are inspired with a just idea of Masonry, to wit,
that it is essentially WORK; both teaching and practising LABOR; and
that it is altogether emblematic. Three kinds of work are necessary to
the preservation and protection of man and society: manual labor,
specially belonging to the three blue Degrees; labor in arms, symbolized
by the Knightly or chivalric Degrees; and intellectual labor, belonging
particularly to the Philosophical Degrees.

We have preserved and multiplied such emblems as have a true and
profound meaning. We reject many of the old and senseless explanations.
We have not reduced Masonry to a cold metaphysics that exiles everything
belonging to the domain of the imagination. The ignorant, and those
_half_-wise, in reality, but _over_-wise in their own conceit, may
assail our symbols with sarcasms; but they are nevertheless ingenious
veils that cover the Truth, respected by all who know the means by which
the heart of man is reached and his feelings enlisted. The Great
Moralists often had recourse to allegories, in order to instruct men
without repelling them. But we have been careful not to allow our
emblems to be too obscure, so as to require far-fetched and forced
interpretations. In our days, and in the enlightened land in which we
live, we do not need to wrap ourselves in veils so strange and
impenetrable, as to prevent or hinder instruction instead of furthering
it; or to induce the suspicion that we have concealed meanings which we
communicate only to the most reliable adepts, because they are contrary
to good order or the well-being of society.

The Duties of the Class of _Instructors_, that is, the Masons of the
Degrees from the 4th to the 8th, inclusive, are, particularly, to
perfect the younger Masons in the words, signs and tokens and other work
of the Degrees they have received; to explain to them the meaning of the
different emblems, and to expound the moral instruction which they
convey. And upon their report of proficiency alone can their pupils be
allowed to advance and receive an increase of wages.

_The Directors of the Work_, or those of the 9th, 10th, and 11th Degrees
are to report to the Chapters upon the regularity, activity and proper
direction of the work of bodies in the lower Degrees, and what is needed
to be enacted for their prosperity and usefulness. In the Symbolic
Lodges, they are particularly charged to stimulate the zeal of the
workmen, to induce them to engage in new labors and enterprises for the
good of Masonry, their country and mankind, and to give them fraternal
advice when they fall short of their duty; or, in cases that require it,
to invoke against them the rigor of Masonic law.

_The Architects_, or those of the 12th, 13th, and 14th, should be
selected from none but Brothers well instructed in the preceding
Degrees; zealous, and capable of discoursing upon that Masonry;
illustrating it, and discussing the simple questions of moral
philosophy. And one of them, at every communication, should be prepared
with a lecture, communicating useful knowledge or giving good advice to
the Brethren.

_The Knights_, of the 15th and 16th Degrees, wear the sword. They are
bound to prevent and repair, as far as may be in their power, all
injustice, both in the world and in Masonry; to protect the weak and to
bring oppressors to justice. Their works and lectures must be in this
spirit. They should inquire whether Masonry fulfills, as far as it ought
and can, its principal purpose, which is to succor the unfortunate. That
it may do so, they should prepare propositions to be offered in the Blue
Lodges calculated to attain that end, to put an end to abuses, and to
prevent or correct negligence. Those in the Lodges who have attained the
rank of Knights, are most fit to be appointed Almoners, and charged to
ascertain and make known who need and are entitled to the charity of the
Order.

In the higher Degrees those only should be received who have sufficient
reading and information to discuss the great questions of philosophy.
From them the Orators of the Lodges should be selected, as well as those
of the Councils and Chapters. They are charged to suggest such measures
as are necessary to make Masonry entirely faithful to the spirit of its
institution, both as to its charitable purposes, and the diffusion of
light and knowledge; such as are needed to correct abuses that have
crept in, and offences against the rules and general spirit of the
Order; and such as will tend to make it, as it was meant to be, the
great Teacher of Mankind.

As Master of a Lodge, Council, or Chapter, it will be your duty to
impress upon the minds of your Brethren these views of the general plan
and separate parts of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite; of its
spirit and design; its harmony and regularity; of the duties of the
officers and members; and of the particular lessons intended to be
taught by each Degree.

Especially you are not to allow any assembly of the body over which you
may preside, to close, without recalling to the minds of the Brethren
the Masonic virtues and duties which are represented upon the Tracing
Board of this Degree. That is an imperative duty. Forget not that, more
than three thousand years ago, ZOROASTER said: "_Be good, be kind, be
humane, and charitable; love your fellows; console the afflicted; pardon
those who have done you wrong._" Nor that more than two thousand three
hundred years ago CONFUCIUS repeated, also quoting the language of those
who had lived before himself: "_Love thy neighbor as thyself: Do not to
others what thou wouldst not wish should be done to thyself: Forgive
injuries. Forgive your enemy, be reconciled to him, give him assistance,
invoke God in his behalf!_"

Let not the morality of your Lodge be inferior to that of the Persian or
the Chinese Philosopher.

Urge upon your Brethren the teaching and the unostentatious practice of
the morality of the Lodge, without regard to times, places, religions,
or peoples.

Urge them to love one another, to be devoted to one another, to be
faithful to the country, the government, and the laws: for to serve the
country is to pay a dear and sacred debt:

To respect all forms of worship, to tolerate all political and religious
opinions; not to blame, and still less to condemn the religion of
others: not to seek to make converts; but to be content if they have the
religion of Socrates; a veneration for the Creator, the religion of good
works, and grateful acknowledgment of God's blessings:

To fraternize with all men; to assist all who are unfortunate; and to
cheerfully postpone their own interests to that of the Order:

To make it the constant rule of their lives, to think well, to speak
well, and to act well:

To place the sage above the soldier, the noble, or the prince: and take
the wise and good as their models:

To see that their professions and practice, their teachings and conduct,
do always agree:

To make this also their motto: Do that which thou oughtest to do; let
the result be what it will.

Such, my Brother, are some of the duties of that office which you have
sought to be qualified to exercise. May you perform them well; and in so
doing gain honor for yourself, and advance the great cause of Masonry,
Humanity, and Progress.



XXI.

NOACHITE, OR PRUSSIAN KNIGHT.


You are especially charged in this Degree to be modest and humble, and
not vain-glorious nor filled with self-conceit. Be not wiser in your own
opinion than the Deity, nor find fault with His works, nor endeavor to
improve upon what He has done. Be modest also in your intercourse with
your fellows, and slow to entertain evil thoughts of them, and reluctant
to ascribe to them evil intentions. A thousand presses, flooding the
country with their evanescent leaves, are busily and incessantly engaged
in maligning the motives and conduct of men and parties, and in making
one man think worse of another; while, alas, scarcely one is found that
ever, even accidentally, labors to make man think better of his fellow.

Slander and calumny were never so insolently licentious in any country
as they are this day in ours. The most retiring disposition, the most
unobtrusive demeanor, is no shield against their poisoned arrows. The
most eminent public service only makes their vituperation and invective
more eager and more unscrupulous, when he who has done such service
presents himself as a candidate for the people's suffrages.

The evil is wide-spread and universal. No man, no woman, no household,
is sacred or safe from this new Inquisition. No act is so pure or so
praiseworthy, that the unscrupulous vender of lies who lives by
pandering to a corrupt and morbid public appetite will not proclaim it
as a crime. No motive is so innocent or so laudable, that he will not
hold it up as villainy. Journalism pries into the interior of private
houses, gloats over the details of domestic tragedies of sin and shame,
and deliberately invents and industriously circulates the most
unmitigated and baseless falsehoods, to coin money for those who pursue
it as a trade, or to effect a temporary result in the wars of faction.

We need not enlarge upon these evils. They are apparent to all and
lamented over by all, and it is the duty of a Mason to do all in his
power to lessen, if not to remove them. With the errors and even sins of
other men, that do not personally affect us or ours, and need not our
condemnation to be odious, we have nothing to do; and the journalist has
no patent that makes him the Censor of Morals. There is no obligation
resting on us to trumpet forth our disapproval of every wrongful or
injudicious or improper act that every other man commits. One would be
ashamed to stand on the street corners and retail them orally for
pennies.

One ought, in truth, to write or speak against no other one in this
world. Each man in it has enough to do, to watch and keep guard over
himself. Each of us is sick enough in this great Lazaretto: and
journalism and polemical writing constantly remind us of a scene once
witnessed in a little hospital; where it was horrible to hear how the
patients mockingly reproached each other with their disorders and
infirmities: how one, who was wasted by consumption, jeered at another
who was bloated by dropsy: how one laughed at another's cancer of the
face; and this one again at his neighbor's lock-jaw or squint; until at
last the delirious fever-patient sprang out of his bed, and tore away
the coverings from the wounded bodies of his companions, and nothing was
to be seen but hideous misery and mutilation. Such is the revolting work
in which journalism and political partisanship, and half the world
outside of Masonry, are engaged.

Very generally, the censure bestowed upon men's acts, by those who have
appointed and commissioned themselves Keepers of the Public Morals, is
undeserved. Often it is not only undeserved, but praise is deserved
instead of censure, and, when the latter is not undeserved, it is always
extravagant, and therefore unjust.

A Mason will wonder what spirit they are endowed withal, that can basely
libel at a man, even, that is fallen. If they had any nobility of soul,
they would with him condole his disasters, and drop some tears in pity
of his folly and wretchedness: and if they were merely human and not
brutal, Nature did grievous wrong to human bodies, to curse them with
souls so cruel as to strive to add to a wretchedness already
intolerable. When a Mason hears of any man that hath fallen into public
disgrace, he should have a mind to commiserate his mishap, and not to
make him more disconsolate. To envenom a name by libels, that already is
openly tainted, is to add stripes with an iron rod to one that is flayed
with whipping; and to every well-tempered mind will seem most inhuman
and unmanly.

Even the man who does wrong and commits errors often has a quiet home, a
fireside of his own, a gentle, loving wife and innocent children, who
perhaps do not know of his past errors and lapses--past and long
repented of; or if they do, they love him the better, because, being
mortal, he hath erred, and being in the image of God, he hath repented.
That every blow at this husband and father lacerates the pure and tender
bosoms of that wife and those daughters, is a consideration that doth
not stay the hand of the brutal journalist and partisan: but he strikes
home at these shrinking, quivering, innocent, tender bosoms; and then
goes out upon the great arteries of cities, where the current of life
pulsates, and holds his head erect, and calls on his fellows to laud him
and admire him, for the chivalric act he hath done, in striking his
dagger through one heart into another tender and trusting one.

If you seek for high and strained carriages, you shall, for the most
part, meet with them in low men. Arrogance is a weed that ever grows on
a dunghill. It is from the rankness of that soil that she hath her
height and spreadings. To be modest and unaffected with our superiors is
duty; with our equals, courtesy; with our inferiors, nobleness. There is
no arrogance so great as the proclaiming of other men's errors and
faults, by those who understand nothing but the dregs of actions, and
who make it their business to besmear deserving fames. Public reproof is
like striking a deer in the herd: it not only wounds him, to the loss of
blood, but betrays him to the hound, his enemy.

The occupation of the spy hath ever been held dishonorable, and it is
none the less so, now that with rare exceptions editors and partisans
have become perpetual spies upon the actions of other men. Their malice
makes them nimble-eyed, apt to note a fault and publish it, and, with a
strained construction, to deprave even those things in which the doer's
intents were honest. Like the crocodile, they slime the way of others,
to make them fall; and when that has happened, they feed their insulting
envy on the life-blood of the prostrate. They set the vices of other men
on high, for the gaze of the world, and place their virtues underground,
that none may note them. If they cannot wound upon proofs, they will do
it upon likelihoods: and if not upon them, they manufacture lies, as
God created the world, out of nothing; and so corrupt the fair tempter
of men's reputations; knowing that the multitude will believe them,
because affirmations are apter to win belief, than negatives to uncredit
them; and that a lie travels faster than an eagle flies, while the
contradiction limps after it at a snail's pace, and, halting, never
overtakes it. Nay, it is contrary to the morality of journalism, to
allow a lie to be contradicted in the place that spawned it. And even if
that great favor is conceded, a slander once raised will scarce ever
die, or fail of finding many that will allow it both a harbor and trust.

This is, beyond any other, the age of falsehood. Once, to be suspected
of equivocation was enough to soil a gentleman's escutcheon; but now it
has become a strange merit in a partisan or statesman, always and
scrupulously to tell the truth. Lies are part of the regular ammunition
of all campaigns and controversies, valued according as they are
profitable and effective; and are stored up and have a market price,
like saltpetre and sulphur; being even more deadly than they.

If men weighed the imperfections of humanity, they would breathe less
condemnation. Ignorance gives disparagement a louder tongue than
knowledge does. Wise men had rather know, than tell. Frequent dispraises
are but the faults of uncharitable wit: and it is from where there is no
judgment, that the heaviest judgment comes; for self-examination would
make all judgments charitable. If we even do know vices in men, we can
scarce show ourselves in a nobler virtue than in the charity of
concealing them: if that be not a flattery persuading to continuance.
And it is the basest office man can fall into, to make his tongue the
defamer of the worthy man.

There is but one rule for the Mason in this matter. If there be virtues,
and he is called upon to speak of him who owns them, let him tell them
forth impartially. And if there be vices mixed with them, let him be
content the world shall know them by some other tongue than his. For if
the evil-doer deserve no pity, his wife, his parents, or his children,
or other innocent persons who love him Way; and the bravo's trade,
practised by him who stabs the defenceless for a price paid by
individual or party, is really no more respectable now than it was a
hundred years ago, in Venice. Where we want experience, Charity bids us
think the best, and leave what we know not to the Searcher of Hearts;
for mistakes, suspicions, and envy often injure a clear fame; and there
is least danger in a charitable construction.

And, finally, the Mason should be humble and modest toward the Grand
Architect of the Universe, and not impugn His Wisdom, nor set up his own
imperfect sense of Right against His Providence and dispensations, nor
attempt too rashly to explore the Mysteries of God's Infinite Essence
and inscrutable plans, and of that Great Nature which we are not made
capable to understand.

Let him steer far away from all those vain philosophies, which endeavor
to account for all that is, without admitting that there is a God,
separate and apart from the Universe which is his work: which erect
Universal Nature into a God, and worship it alone: which annihilate
Spirit, and believe no testimony except that of the bodily senses:
which, by logical formulas and dextrous collocation of words, make the
actual, living, guiding, and protecting God fade into the dim mistiness
of a mere abstraction and unreality, itself a mere logical formula.

Nor let him have any alliance with those theorists who chide the delays
of Providence and busy themselves to hasten the slow march which it has
imposed upon events: who neglect the practical, to struggle after
impossibilities: who are wiser than Heaven; know the aims and purposes
of the Deity, and can see a short and more direct means of attaining
them, than it pleases Him to employ: who would have no discords in the
great harmony of the Universe of things; but equal distribution of
property, no subjection of one man to the will of another, no compulsory
labor, and still no starvation, nor destitution, nor pauperism.

Let him not spend his life, as they do, in building a new Tower of
Babel; in attempting to change that which is fixed by an inflexible law
of God's enactment: but let him, yielding to the Superior Wisdom of
Providence, content to believe that the march of events is rightly
ordered by an Infinite Wisdom, and leads, though we cannot see it, to a
great and perfect result,--let him be satisfied to follow the path
pointed out by that Providence, and to labor for the good of the human
race in that mode in which God has chosen to enact that good shall be
effected: and above all, let him build no Tower of Babel, under the
belief that by ascending he will mount so high that God will disappear
or be superseded by a great monstrous aggregate of material forces, or
mere glittering, logical formula; but, evermore, standing humbly and
reverently upon the earth and looking with awe and confidence toward
Heaven, let him be satisfied that there is a _real_ God; a _person_, and
not a formula; a Father and a protector, who loves, and sympathizes, and
compassionates; and that the eternal ways by which He rules the world
are infinitely wise, no matter how far they may be above the feeble
comprehension and limited vision of man.

[Illustration: Lyre]



XXII.

KNIGHT OF THE ROYAL AXE
OR
PRINCE OF LIBANUS.


Sympathy with the great laboring classes, respect for labor itself, and
resolution to do some good _work_ in our day and generation, these are
the lessons of this Degree, and they are purely Masonic. Masonry has
made a working-man and his associates the Heroes of her principal
legend, and himself the companion of Kings. The idea is as simple and
true as it is sublime. From first to last, Masonry is _work_. It
venerates the Grand _Architect_ of the Universe. It commemorates the
_building_ of a Temple. Its principal emblems are _the working tools_ of
Masons and Artisans. It preserves the name of the first _worker_ in
_brass_ and _iron_ as one of its pass-words. When the Brethren meet
together, they are at _labor_. The Master is the _overseer_ who sets the
craft to _work_ and gives them proper instruction. Masonry is the
apotheosis of WORK.

It is the hands of brave, forgotten men that have made this great,
populous, cultivated world a world for _us_. It is _all_ work, and
_forgotten_ work. The _real_ conquerors, creators, and eternal
proprietors of every great and civilized land are all the heroic souls
that ever were in it, each in his degree: all the men that ever felled a
forest-tree or drained a marsh, or contrived a wise scheme, or did or
said a true or valiant thing therein. Genuine work alone, done
faithfully, is eternal, even as the Almighty Founder and World-builder
Himself. All work is noble: a life of ease is not for any man, nor for
any God. The Almighty Maker is not like one who, in old immemorial ages,
having made his machine of a Universe, sits ever since, and sees it
_go_. Out of that belief comes Atheism. The faith in an Invisible,
Unnameable, Directing Deity, present everywhere in all that we see, and
work, and suffer, is the essence of all faith whatsoever.

The life of all Gods figures itself to us as a Sublime Earnestness,--of
Infinite battle against Infinite labor Our highest religion is named the
Worship of Sorrow. For the Son of Man there is no noble crown,
well-worn, or even ill-worn, but is a crown of thorns. Man's highest
destiny is not to be happy, to love pleasant things and find them. His
only true _un_happiness should be that he cannot work, and get his
destiny as a man fulfilled. The day passes swiftly over, our life passes
swiftly over, and the night cometh, wherein no man can work. That night
once come, our happiness and unhappiness are vanished, and become as
things that never were. But our work is not abolished, and has not
vanished. It remains, or the want of it remains, for endless Times and
Eternities.

Whatsoever of morality and intelligence; what of patience, perseverance,
faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word,
whatsoever of STRENGTH a man has in him, will lie written in the WORK he
does. To work is to try himself against Nature and her unerring,
everlasting laws: and they will return true verdict as to him. The
noblest Epic is a mighty Empire slowly built together, a mighty series
of heroic deeds, a mighty conquest over chaos. Deeds are greater than
words. They have a life, mute, but undeniable; and grow. They people the
vacuity of Time, and make it green and worthy.

Labor is the truest emblem of God, the Architect and Eternal Maker;
noble Labor, which is yet to be the King of this Earth, and sit on the
highest Throne. Men without duties to do, are like trees planted on
precipices; from the roots of which all the earth has crumbled. Nature
owns no man who is not also a Martyr. She scorns the man who sits
screened from all work, from want, danger, hardship, the victory over
which is work; and has all his work and battling done by other men; and
yet there are men who pride themselves that they and theirs have done no
work time out of mind. So neither have the swine.

The chief of men is he who stands in the van of men, fronting the peril
which frightens back all others, and if not vanquished would devour
them. Hercules was worshipped for twelve labors. The Czar of Russia
became a toiling shipwright, and worked with his axe in the docks of
Saardam; and something came of that. Cromwell worked, and Napoleon; and
effected somewhat.

There is a perennial nobleness and even sacredness in work. Be he never
so benighted and forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in
a man who actually and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is there
perpetual Despair. Man perfects himself by working. Jungles are cleared
away. Fair seed-fields rise instead, and stately cities; and withal, the
man himself first ceases to be a foul unwholesome jungle and desert
thereby. Even in the meanest sort of labor, the whole soul of man is
composed into a kind of real harmony, the moment he begins to work.
Doubt, Desire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, and even Despair shrink
murmuring far off into their caves, whenever the man bends himself
resolutely against his task. Labor is life. From the inmost heart of the
worker rises his God-given Force, the Sacred Celestial Life-essence,
breathed into him by Almighty God; and awakens him to all nobleness, as
soon as work fitly begins. By it man learns Patience, Courage,
Perseverance, Openness to light, readiness to own himself mistaken,
resolution to do better and improve. Only by labor will man continually
learn the virtues. There is no Religion in stagnation and inaction; but
only in activity and exertion. There was the deepest truth in that
saying of the old monks, "_laborare est orare_." "He prayeth best who
loveth best all things both great and small;" and can man love except by
working earnestly to benefit that being whom he loves?

"Work; and therein have well-being," is the oldest of Gospels;
unpreached, inarticulate, but ineradicable, and enduring forever. To
make Disorder, wherever found, an eternal enemy; to attack and subdue
him, and make order of him, the subject not of Chaos, but of
Intelligence and Divinity, and of ourselves; to attack ignorance,
stupidity and brute-mindedness, wherever found, to smite it wisely and
unweariedly, to rest not while we live and it lives, in the name of God,
this is our duty as Masons; commanded us by the Highest God. Even He,
with his unspoken voice, more awful than the thunders of Sinai, or the
syllabled speech of the Hurricane, speaks to us. The Unborn Ages; the
old Graves, with their long-moldering dust speak to us. The deep
Death-Kingdoms, the Stars in their never-resting course, all Space and
all Time, silently and continually admonish us that we too must work
while it is called to-day. Labor, wide as the Earth, has its summit in
Heaven. To toil, whether with the sweat of the brow, or of the brain or
heart, is worship,--the noblest thing yet discovered beneath the Stars.
Let the weary cease to think that labor is a curse an doom pronounced by
Deity. Without it there could be no true excellence in human nature.
Without it, and pain, and sorrow, where would be the human virtues?
Where Patience, Perseverance, Submission, Energy, Endurance, Fortitude,
Bravery, Disinterestedness, Self-Sacrifice, the noblest excellencies of
the Soul?

Let him who toils complain not, nor feel humiliated! Let him look up,
and see his fellow-workmen there, in God's Eternity; they alone
surviving there. Even in the weak human memory, they long survive, as
Saints, as Heroes, and as Gods: they _alone_ survive, and people the
unmeasured solitudes of Time.

To the primeval man, whatsoever good came, descended on him (as in mere
fact, it ever does) direct from God; whatsoever duty lay visible for
him, this a Supreme God had prescribed. For the primeval man, in whom
dwelt Thought, this Universe was all a Temple, life everywhere a
Worship.

Duty is with us ever; and evermore forbids us to be idle. To work with
the hands or brain, according to our requirements and our capacities, to
do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable than rank and
title. Ploughers, spinners and builders, inventors, and men of science,
poets, advocates, and writers, all stand upon one common level, and form
one grand, innumerable host, marching ever onward since the beginning of
the world: each entitled to our sympathy and respect, each a man and our
brother.

It was well to give the earth to man as a dark mass, whereon to labor.
It was well to provide rude and unsightly materials in the ore-bed and
the forest, for him to fashion into splendor and beauty. It was well,
not because of that splendor and beauty; but because the act creating
them is better than the things themselves; because exertion is nobler
than enjoyment; because the laborer is greater and more worthy of honor
than the idler. Masonry stands up for the nobility of labor. It is
Heaven's great ordinance for human improvement. It has been broken down
for ages; and Masonry desires to build it up again. It has been broken
down, because men toil only because they must, submitting to it as, in
some sort, a degrading necessity; and desiring nothing so much on earth
as to escape from it. They fulfill the great law of labor in the letter,
but break it in the spirit: they fulfill it with the muscles, but break
it with the mind.

Masonry teaches that every idler ought to hasten to some field of labor,
manual or mental, as a chosen and coveted theatre of improvement; but he
is not impelled to do so, under the teachings of an imperfect
civilization. On the contrary, he sits down, folds his hands, and
blesses and glorifies himself in his idleness. It is time that this
opprobrium of toil were done away. To be ashamed of toil; of the dingy
workshop and dusty labor-field; of the hard hand, stained with service
more honorable than that of war; of the soiled and weather-stained
garments, on which Mother Nature has stamped, midst sun and rain, midst
fire and steam, her own heraldic honors; to be ashamed of these tokens
and titles, and envious of the flaunting robes of imbecile idleness and
vanity, is treason to Nature, impiety to Heaven, a breach of Heaven's
great Ordinance. TOIL, of brain, heart, or hand, is the only true
manhood and genuine nobility.

Labor is a more beneficent ministration than man's ignorance
comprehends, or his complainings will admit. Even when its end is hidden
from him, it is not mere blind drudgery. It is all a training, a
discipline, a development of energies, a nurse of virtues, a school of
improvement. From the poor boy who gathers a few sticks for his mother's
hearth, to the strong man who fells the oak or guides the ship or the
steam-car, every human toiler, with every weary step and every urgent
task, is obeying a wisdom far above his own wisdom, and fulfilling a
design far beyond his own design.

The great law of human industry is this: that industry, working either
with the hand or the mind, the application of our powers to some task,
to the achievement of some result, lies at the foundation of all human
improvement. We are not sent into the world like animals, to crop the
spontaneous herbage of the field, and then to lie down in indolent
repose: but we are sent to dig the soil and plough the sea; to do the
business of cities and the work of manufactories. The world is the great
and appointed school of industry. In an artificial state of society,
mankind is divided into the idle and the laboring classes; but such was
not the design of Providence.

Labor is man's great function, his peculiar distinction and his
privilege. From being an animal, that eats and drinks and sleeps only,
to become a worker, and with the hand of ingenuity to pour his own
thoughts into the moulds of Nature, fashioning them into forms of grace
and fabrics of convenience, and converting them to purposes of
improvement and happiness, is the greatest possible step in privilege.

The Earth and the Atmosphere are man's laboratory. With spade and
plough, with mining-shafts and furnaces and forges, with fire and steam;
midst the noise and whirl of swift and bright machinery, and abroad in
the silent fields, man was made to be ever working, ever experimenting.
And while he and all his dwellings of care and toil are borne onward
with the circling skies, and the splendors of Heaven are around him, and
their infinite depths image and invite his thought, still in all the
worlds of philosophy, in the universe of intellect, man must be a
worker. He is nothing, he can be nothing, can achieve nothing, fulfill
nothing, without working. Without it, he can gain neither lofty
improvement nor tolerable happiness. The idle must hunt down the hours
as their prey. To them Time is an enemy, clothed with armor; and they
must kill him, or themselves die. It never yet did answer, and it never
will answer, for any man to do nothing, to be exempt from all care and
effort, to lounge, to walk, to ride, and to feast alone. No man can live
in that way. God made a law against it: which no human power can annul,
no human ingenuity evade.

The idea that a property is to be acquired in the course of ten or
twenty years, which shall suffice for the rest of life; that by some
prosperous traffic or grand speculation, all the labor of a whole life
is to be accomplished in a brief portion of it; that by dexterous
management, a large part of the term of human existence is to be
exonerated from the cares of industry and self-denial, is founded upon a
grave mistake, upon a misconception of the true nature and design of
business, and of the conditions of human well-being. The desire of
accumulation for the sake of securing a life of ease and gratification,
of escaping from exertion and self-denial, is wholly wrong, though very
common.

It is better for the Mason to live while he lives, and enjoy life as it
passes: to live richer and die poorer. It is best of all for him to
banish from the mind that empty dream of future indolence and
indulgence; to address himself to the business of life, as the school of
his earthly education; to settle it with himself now that independence,
if he gains it, is not to give him exemption from employment. It is best
for him to know, that, in order to be a happy man, he must always be a
laborer, with the mind or the body, or with both: and that the
reasonable exertion of his powers, bodily and mental, is not to be
regarded as mere drudgery, but as a good discipline, a wise ordination,
a training in this primary school of our being, for nobler endeavors,
and spheres of higher activity hereafter.

There are reasons why a Mason may lawfully and even earnestly desire a
fortune. If he can fill some fine palace, itself a work of art, with the
productions of lofty genius; if he can be the friend and helper of
humble worth; if he can seek it out, where failing health or adverse
fortune presses it hard, and soften or stay the bitter hours that are
hastening it to madness or to the grave; if he can stand between the
oppressor and his prey, and bid the fetter and the dungeon give up their
victim; if he can build up great institutions of learning, and academies
of art; if he can open fountains of knowledge for the people, and
conduct its streams in the right channels; if he can do better for the
poor than to bestow alms upon them--even to think of them, and devise
plans for their elevation in knowledge and virtue, instead of forever
opening the old reservoirs and resources for their improvidence; if he
has sufficient heart and soul to do all this, or part of it; if wealth
would be to him the handmaid of exertion, facilitating effort, and
giving success to endeavor; then may he lawfully, and yet warily and
modestly, desire it. But if it is to do nothing for him, but to minister
ease and indulgence, and to place his children in the same bad school,
then there is no reason why he should desire it.

What is there glorious in the world, that is not the product of labor,
either of the body or of the mind? What is history, but its record? What
are the treasures of genius and art, but its work? What are cultivated
fields, but its toil? The busy marts, the rising cities, the enriched
empires of the world are but the great treasure-houses of labor. The
pyramids of Egypt, the castles and towers and temples of Europe, the
buried cities of Italy and Mexico, the canals and railroads of
Christendom, are but tracks, all round the world, of the mighty
footsteps of labor. Without it antiquity would not have been. Without
it, there would be no memory of the past, and no hope for the future.

Even utter indolence reposes on treasures that labor at some time gained
and gathered. He that does nothing, and yet does not starve, has still
his significance; for he is a standing proof that somebody has at some
time worked. But not to such does Masonry do honor. It honors the
Worker, the Toiler; him who produces and not alone consumes; him who
puts forth his hand to add to the treasury of human comforts, and not
alone to take away. It honors him who goes forth amid the struggling
elements to fight his battle, and who shrinks not, with cowardly
effeminacy, behind pillows of ease. It honors the strong muscle, and
the manly nerve, and the resolute and brave heart, the sweating brow,
and the toiling brain. It honors the great and beautiful offices of
humanity, manhood's toil and woman's task; paternal industry and
maternal watching and weariness; wisdom teaching and patience learning;
the brow of care that presides over the State, and many-handed labor
that toils in workshop, field, and study, beneath its mild and
beneficent sway.

God has not made a world of rich men; but rather a world of poor men; or
of men, at least, who must toil for a subsistence. That is, then, the
best condition for man, and the grand sphere of human improvement. If
the whole world could acquire wealth, (and one man is as much entitled
to it as another, when he is born); if the present generation could lay
up a complete provision for the next, as some men desire to do for their
children; the world would be destroyed at a single blow. All industry
would cease with the necessity for it; all improvement would stop with
the demand for exertion; the dissipation of fortunes, the mischiefs of
which are now countervailed by the healthful tone of society, would
breed universal disease, and break out into universal license; and the
world would sink, rotten as Herod, into the grave of its own loathsome
vices.

Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have
been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor
artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius. A
certain staidness and sobriety, a certain moderation and restraint, a
certain pressure of circumstances, are good for man. His body was not
made for luxuries. It sickens, sinks, and dies under them. His mind was
not made for indulgence. It grows weak, effeminate, and dwarfish, under
that condition. And he who pampers his body with luxuries and his mind
with indulgence, bequeaths the consequences to the minds and bodies of
his descendants, without the wealth which was their cause. For wealth,
without a law of entail to help it, has always lacked the energy even to
_keep_ its own treasures. They drop from its imbecile hand. The third
generation almost inevitably goes down the rolling wheel of fortune, and
there learns the energy necessary to rise again, if it rises at all;
heir, as it is, to the bodily diseases, and mental weaknesses, and the
soul's vices of its ancestors, and _not_ heir to their wealth. And yet
we are, almost all of us, anxious to put our children, or to insure
that our grandchildren shall be put, on this road to indulgence, luxury,
vice, degradation, and ruin; this heirship of hereditary disease, soul
malady, and mental leprosy.

If wealth were employed in promoting mental culture at home and works of
philanthropy abroad; if it were multiplying studies of art, and building
up institutions of learning around us; if it were in every way raising
the intellectual character of the world, there could scarcely be too
much of it. But if the utmost aim, effort, and ambition of wealth be, to
procure rich furniture, and provide costly entertainments, and build
luxurious houses, and minister to vanity, extravagance, and ostentation,
there could scarcely be too little of it. To a certain extent it may
laudably be the minister of elegancies and luxuries, and the servitor of
hospitality and physical enjoyment: but just in proportion as its
tendencies, divested of all higher aims and tastes, are running that
way, they are running to peril and evil.

Nor does that peril attach to individuals and families alone. It stands,
a fearful beacon, in the experience of Cities, Republics, and Empires.
The lessons of past times, on this subject, are emphatic and solemn. The
history of wealth has always been a history of corruption and downfall.
The people never existed that could stand the trial. Boundless profusion
is too little likely to spread for any people the theatre of manly
energy, rigid self-denial, and lofty virtue. You do not look for the
bone and sinew and strength of a country, its loftiest talents and
virtues, its martyrs to patriotism or religion, its men to meet the days
of peril and disaster, among the children of ease, indulgence, and
luxury.

In the great march of the races of men over the earth, we have always
seen opulence and luxury sinking before poverty and toil and hardy
nurture. That is the law which has presided over the great processions
of empire. Sidon and Tyre, whose merchants possessed the wealth of
princes; Babylon and Palmyra, the seats of Asiatic luxury; Rome, laden
with the spoils of a world, overwhelmed by her own vices more than by
the hosts of her enemies; all these, and many more, are examples of the
destructive tendencies of immense and unnatural accumulation: and men
must become more generous and benevolent, not more selfish and
effeminate, as they become more rich, or the history of modern wealth
will follow in the sad train of all past examples.

All men desire distinction, and feel the need of some ennobling object
in life. Those persons are usually most happy and satisfied in their
pursuits, who have the loftiest ends in view. Artists, mechanicians, and
inventors, all who seek to find principles or develop beauty in their
work, seem most to enjoy it. The farmer who labors for the beautifying
and scientific cultivation of his estate, is more happy in his labors
than one who tills his own land for a mere subsistence. This is one of
the signal testimonies which all human employments give to the high
demands of our nature. To gather wealth never gives such satisfaction as
to bring the humblest piece of machinery to perfection: at least, when
wealth is sought for display and ostentation, or mere luxury, and ease,
and pleasure; and not for ends of philanthropy, the relief of kindred,
or the payment of just debts, or as a means to attain some other great
and noble object.

With the pursuits of multitudes is connected a painful conviction that
they neither supply a sufficient object, nor confer any satisfactory
honor. Why work, if the world is soon not to know that such a being ever
existed; and when one can perpetuate his name neither on canvas nor on
marble, nor in books, nor by lofty eloquence, nor statesmanship?

The answer is, that every man has a work to do in himself, greater and
sublimer than any work of genius; and works upon a nobler material than
wood or marble--upon his own soul and intellect, and may so attain the
highest nobleness and grandeur known on earth or in Heaven; may so be
the greatest of artists, and of authors, and his life, which is far more
than speech, may be eloquent.

The great author or artist only portrays what every man should _be_. He
_conceives_, what we should _do_. He conceives, and represents moral
beauty, magnanimity, fortitude, love, devotion, forgiveness, the soul's
greatness. He portrays virtues, commended to our admiration and
imitation. To embody these portraitures in our lives is the practical
realization of those great ideals of art. The magnanimity of Heroes,
celebrated on the historic or poetic page; the constancy and faith of
Truth's martyrs; the beauty of love and piety glowing on the canvas; the
delineations of Truth and Right, that flash from the lips of the
Eloquent, are, in their essence only that which every man may feel and
practise in the daily walks of life. The work of virtue is nobler than
any work of genius; for it is a nobler thing to _be_ a hero than to
_describe_ one, to _endure_ martyrdom than to _paint_ it, to _do_ right
than to _plead_ for it. Action is greater than writing. A good man is a
nobler object of contemplation than a great author. There are but two
things worth living for: to do what is worthy of being written; and to
write what is worthy of being read; and the greater of these is _the
doing_.

Every man has to do the noblest thing that any man can do or describe.
There is a wide field for the courage, cheerfulness, energy, and dignity
of human existence. Let therefore no Mason deem his life doomed to
mediocrity or meanness, to vanity or unprofitable toil, or to any ends
less than immortal. No one can truly say that the grand prizes of life
are for others, and he can do nothing. No matter how magnificent and
noble an act the author can describe or the artist paint, it will be
still nobler for you to go and _do_ that which one describes, or _be_
the model which the other draws.

The loftiest action that ever was described is not more magnanimous than
that which we may find occasion to do, in the daily walks of life; in
temptation, in distress, in bereavement, in the solemn approach to
death. In the great Providence of God, in the great ordinances of our
being, there is opened to every man a sphere for the noblest action. It
is not even in extraordinary situations, where all eyes are upon us,
where all our energy is aroused, and all our vigilance is awake, that
the highest efforts of virtue are usually demanded of us; but rather in
silence and seclusion, amidst our occupations and our homes; in wearing
sickness, that makes no complaint; in sorely-tried honesty, that asks no
praise; in simple disinterestedness, hiding the hand that resigns its
advantage to another.

Masonry seeks to ennoble common life. Its work is to go down into the
obscure and unsearched records of daily conduct and feeling; and to
portray, not the ordinary virtue of an extraordinary life; but the more
extraordinary virtue of ordinary life. What is done and borne in the
shades of privacy, in the hard and beaten path of daily care and toil,
full of uncelebrated sacrifices; in the suffering, and sometimes
insulted suffering, that wears to the world a cheerful brow; in the long
strife of the spirit, resisting pain, penury, and neglect, carried on in
the inmost depths of the heart;--what is done, and borne, and wrought,
and won there, is a higher glory, and shall inherit a brighter crown.

On the volume of Masonic life one bright word is written, from which on
every side blazes an ineffable splendor. That word is DUTY.

To aid in securing to all labor permanent employment and its just
reward: to help to hasten the coming of that time when no one shall
suffer from hunger or destitution, because, though willing and able to
work, he can find no employment, or because he has been overtaken by
sickness in the midst of his labor, are part of your duties as a Knight
of the Royal Axe. And if we can succeed in making some small nook of
God's creation a little more fruitful and cheerful, a little better and
more worthy of Him,--or in making some one or two human hearts a little
wiser, and more manful and hopeful and happy, we shall have done work,
worthy of Masons, and acceptable to our Father in Heaven.



XXIII.

CHIEF OF THE TABERNACLE.


Among most of the Ancient Nations there was, in addition to their public
worship, a private one styled the Mysteries; to which those only were
admitted who had been prepared by certain ceremonies called initiations.

The most widely disseminated of the ancient worships were those of Isis,
Orpheus, Dionusos, Ceres and Mithras. Many barbarous nations received
the knowledge of the Mysteries in honor of these divinities from the
Egyptians, before they arrived in Greece; and even in the British Isles
the Druids celebrated those of Dionusos, learned by them from the
Egyptians.

The Mysteries of Eleusis, celebrated at Athens in honor of Ceres,
swallowed up, as it were, all the others. All the neighboring nations
neglected their own, to celebrate those of Eleusis; and in a little
while all Greece and Asia Minor were filled with the Initiates. They
spread into the Roman Empire, and even beyond its limits, "those holy
and august Eleusinian Mysteries," said Cicero, "in which the people of
the remotest lands are initiated." Zosimus says that they embraced the
whole human race; and Aristides termed them the common temple of the
whole world.

There were, in the Eleusinian feasts, two sorts of Mysteries, the great,
and the little. The latter were a kind of preparation for the former;
and everybody was admitted to them. Ordinarily there was a novitiate of
three, and sometimes of four years.

Clemens of Alexandria says that what was taught in the great Mysteries
concerned the Universe, and was the completion and perfection of all
instruction; wherein things were seen as they were, and nature and her
works were made known.

The ancients said that the Initiates would be more happy after death
than other mortals; and that, while the souls of the Profane on leaving
their bodies, would be plunged in the mire, and remain buried in
darkness, those of the Initiates would fly to the Fortunate Isles, the
abode of the Gods.

Plato said that the object of the Mysteries was to re-establish the soul
in its primitive purity, and in that state of perfection which it had
lost. Epictetus said, "whatever is met with therein has been instituted
by our Masters, for the instruction of man and the correction of
morals."

Proclus held that initiation elevated the soul, from a material,
sensual, and purely human life, to a communion and celestial intercourse
with the Gods; and that a variety of things, forms, and species were
shown Initiates, representing the first generation of the Gods.

Purity of morals and elevation of soul were required of the Initiates.
Candidates were required to be of spotless reputation and irreproachable
virtue. Nero, after murdering his mother, did not dare to be present at
the celebration of the Mysteries: and Antony presented himself to be
initiated, as the most infallible mode of proving his innocence of the
death of Avidius Cassius.

The Initiates were regarded as the only fortunate men. "It is upon us
alone," says Aristophanes, "shineth the beneficent day-star. We alone
receive pleasure from the influence of his rays; we, who are initiated,
and who practise toward citizen and stranger every possible act of
justice and piety." And it is therefore not surprising that, in time,
initiation came to be considered as necessary as baptism afterward was
to the Christians; and that not to have been admitted to the Mysteries
was held a dishonor.

"It seems to me," says the great orator, philosopher, and moralist,
Cicero, "that Athens, among many excellent inventions, divine and very
useful to the human family, has produced none comparable to the
Mysteries, which for a wild and ferocious life have substituted humanity
and urbanity of manners. It is with good reason they use the term
_initiation_; for it is through them that we in reality have learned the
first principles of life; and they not only teach us to live in a manner
more consoling and agreeable, but they soften the pains of death by the
hope of a better life hereafter."

Where the Mysteries originated is not known. It is supposed they came
from India, by the way of Chaldæa, into Egypt, and thence were carried
into Greece. Wherever they arose, they were practised among all the
ancient nations; and, as was usual, the Thracians, Cretans, and
Athenians each claimed the honor of invention, and each insisted that
they had borrowed nothing from any other people.

In Egypt and the East, all religion, even in its most poetical forms,
was more or less a mystery; and the chief reason why, in Greece, a
distinct name and office were assigned to the Mysteries, was because the
superficial popular theology left a want unsatisfied, which religion in
a wider sense alone could supply. They were practical acknowledgments of
the insufficiency of the popular religion to satisfy the deeper thoughts
and aspirations of the mind. The vagueness of symbolism might perhaps
reach what a more palpable and conventional creed could not. The former,
by its indefiniteness, acknowledged the abstruseness of its subject; it
treated a mysterious subject mystically; it endeavored to illustrate
what it could not explain; to excite an appropriate feeling, if it could
not develop an adequate idea; and made the image a mere subordinate
conveyance for the conception, which itself never became too obvious or
familiar.

The instruction now conveyed by books and letters was of old conveyed by
symbols; and the priest had to invent or to perpetuate a display of
rites and exhibitions, which were not only more attractive to the eye
than words, but often to the mind more suggestive and pregnant with
meaning.

Afterward, the institution became rather moral and political, than
religious. The civil magistrates shaped the ceremonies to political ends
in Egypt; the sages who carried them from that country to Asia, Greece,
and the North of Europe, were all kings or legislators. The chief
magistrate presided at those of Eleusis, represented by an officer
styled _King_: and the Priest played but a subordinate part.

The Powers revered in the Mysteries were all in reality Nature-Gods;
none of whom could be consistently addressed as mere heroes, because
their nature was confessedly super-heroic. The Mysteries, only in fact a
more solemn expression of the religion of the ancient poetry, taught
that doctrine of the Theocracia or Divine Oneness, which even poetry
does not entirely conceal. They were not in any open hostility with the
popular religion, but only a more solemn exhibition of its symbols; or
rather a part of itself in a more impressive form. The essence of all
Mysteries, as of all polytheism, consists in this, that the conception
of an unapproachable Being, single, eternal, and unchanging, and that
of a God of Nature, whose manifold power is immediately revealed to the
senses in the incessant round of movement, life, and death, fell asunder
in the treatment, and were separately symbolized. They offered a
perpetual problem to excite curiosity, and contributed to satisfy the
all-pervading religious sentiment, which if it obtain no nourishment
among the simple and intelligible, finds compensating excitement in a
reverential contemplation of the obscure.

Nature is as free from dogmatism as from tyranny; and the earliest
instructors of mankind not only adopted her lessons, but as far as
possible adhered to her method of imparting them. They attempted to
reach the understanding through the eye; and the greater part of all
religious teaching was conveyed through this ancient and most impressive
mode of "exhibition" or demonstration. The Mysteries were a sacred
drama, exhibiting some legend significant of Nature's change, of the
visible Universe in which the divinity is revealed, and whose import was
in many respects as open to the Pagan, as to the Christian. Beyond the
current traditions or sacred recitals of the temple, few explanations
were given to the spectators, who were left, as in the school of nature,
to make inferences for themselves.

The method of indirect suggestion, by allegory or symbol, is a more
efficacious instrument of instruction than plain didactic language;
since we are habitually indifferent to that which is acquired without
effort: "The initiated are few, though many bear the thyrsus." And it
would have been impossible to provide a lesson suited to every degree of
cultivation and capacity, unless it were one framed after Nature's
example, or rather a representation of Nature herself, employing her
universal symbolism instead of technicalities of language, inviting
endless research, yet rewarding the humblest inquirer, and disclosing
its secrets to every one in Proportion to his preparatory training and
power to comprehend them.

Even if destitute of any formal or official enunciation of those
important truths, which even in a cultivated age it was often found
inexpedient to assert except under a veil of allegory, and which
moreover lose their dignity and value in proportion as they are learned
mechanically as dogmas, the shows of the Mysteries certainly contained
suggestions if not lessons, which in the opinion not of one competent
witness only, but of many, were adapted to elevate the character of the
spectators, enabling them to augur something of the purposes of
existence, as well as of the means of improving it, to live better and
to die happier.

Unlike the religion of books or creeds, these mystic shows and
performances were not the reading of a lecture, but the opening of a
problem, implying neither exemption from research, nor hostility to
philosophy: for, on the contrary, philosophy is the great Mystagogue or
Arch-Expounder of symbolism: though the interpretations by the Grecian
Philosophy of the old myths and symbols were in many instances as
ill-founded, as in others they are correct.

No better means could be devised to rouse a dormant intellect, than
those impressive exhibitions, which addressed it through the
imagination: which, instead of condemning it to a prescribed routine of
creed, invited it to seek, compare, and judge. The alteration from
symbol to dogma is as fatal to beauty of expression, as that from faith
to dogma is to truth and wholesomeness of thought.

The first philosophy often reverted to the natural mode of teaching; and
Socrates, in particular, is said to have eschewed dogmas, endeavoring,
like the Mysteries, rather to awaken and develop in the minds of his
hearers the ideas with which they were already endowed or pregnant, than
to fill them with ready-made adventitious opinions.

So Masonry still follows the ancient manner of teaching. Her symbols are
the instruction she gives; and the lectures are but often partial and
insufficient one-sided endeavors to interpret those symbols. He who
would become an accomplished Mason, must not be content merely to hear
or even to understand the lectures, but must, aided by them, and they
having as it were marked out the way for him, study, interpret, and
develop the symbols for himself.

The earliest speculation endeavored to express far more than it could
distinctly comprehend; and the vague impressions of the mind found in
the mysterious analogies of phenomena their most apt and energetic
representations. The Mysteries, like the symbols of Masonry, were but an
image of the eloquent analogies of Nature; both those and these
revealing no new secret to such as were or are unprepared, or incapable
of interpreting their significance.

Everywhere in the old Mysteries, and in all the symbolisms and
ceremonial of the Hierophant was found the same mythical personage, who,
like Hermes, or Zoroaster, unites Human Attributes with Divine, and is
himself the God whose worship he introduced, teaching rude men the
commencements of civilization through the influence of song, and
connecting with the symbol of his death, emblematic of that of Nature,
the most essential consolations of religion.

The Mysteries embraced the three great doctrines of Ancient Theosophy.
They treated of God, Man, and Nature. Dionusos, whose Mysteries Orpheus
is said to have founded, was the God of Nature, or of the moisture which
is the life of Nature, who prepares in darkness the return of life and
vegetation, or who is himself the Light and Change evolving their
varieties. He was theologically one with Hermes, Prometheus, and
Poseidon. In the Egean Islands he is Butes, Dardanus, Himeros, or
Imbros. In Crete he appears as Iasius or Zeus, whose worship remaining
unveiled by the usual forms of mystery, betrayed to profane curiosity
the symbols, which, if irreverently contemplated, were sure to be
misunderstood. In Asia he is the long-stoled Bassareus coalescing with
the Sabazius of the Phrygian Corybantes: the same with the mystic
Iacchus, nursling or son of Ceres, and with the dismembered Zagreus, son
of Persephoné.

In symbolical forms the Mysteries exhibited THE ONE, of which THE
MANIFOLD is an infinite illustration, containing a moral lesson,
calculated to guide the soul through life, and to cheer it in death. The
story of Dionusos was profoundly significant. He was not only creator of
the world, but guardian, liberator, and Savior of the soul. God of the
many-colored mantle, he was the resulting manifestation personified, the
all in the many, the varied year, life passing into innumerable forms.

The spiritual regeneration of man was typified in the Mysteries by the
second birth of Dionusos as offspring of the Highest; and the agents and
symbols of that regeneration were the elements that affected Nature's
periodical purification--the air, indicated by the mystic fan or winnow;
the fire, signified by the torch; and the baptismal water, for water is
not only cleanser of all things, but the genesis or source of all.

These notions, clothed in ritual, suggested the soul's reformation and
training, the moral purity formally proclaimed at Eleusis. He only was
invited to approach, who was "of clean hands and ingenuous speech, free
from all pollution, and with a clear conscience." "Happy the man," say
the initiated in Euripides and Aristophanes, "who purifies his life,
and who reverently consecrates his soul in the thiăsos of the God. Let
him take heed to his lips that he utter no profane word; let him be just
and kind to the stranger, and to his neighbor; let him give way to no
vicious excess, lest he make dull and heavy the organs of the spirit.
Far from the mystic dance of the thiăsos be the impure the evil speaker,
the seditious citizen, the selfish hunter after gain, the traitor; all
those, in short, whose practices are more akin to the riot of Titans
than to the regulated life of the Orphici, or the Curetan order of the
Priests of Idæan Zeus."

The votary, elevated beyond the sphere of his ordinary faculties, and
unable to account for the agitation which overpowered him, seemed to
become divine in proportion as he ceased to be human; to be a dæmon or
god. Already, in imagination, the initiated were numbered among the
beatified. They alone enjoyed the true life, the Sun's true lustre,
while they hymned their God beneath the mystic groves of a mimic
Elysium, and were really renovated or regenerated under the genial
influence of their dances.

"They whom Proserpina guides in her mysteries," it was said, "who
imbibed her instruction and spiritual nourishment, rest from their
labors and know strife no more. Happy they who witness and comprehend
these sacred ceremonies! They are made to know the meaning of the riddle
of existence by observing its aim and termination as appointed by Zeus;
they partake a benefit more valuable and enduring than the grain
bestowed by Ceres; for they are exalted in the scale of intellectual
existence, and obtain sweet hopes to console them at their death."

No doubt the ceremonies of initiation were originally few and simple. As
the great truths of the primitive revelation faded out of the memories
of the masses of the People, and wickedness became rife upon the earth,
it became necessary to discriminate, to require longer probation and
satisfactory tests of the candidates, and by spreading around what at
first were rather schools of instruction than mysteries, the veil of
secrecy, and the pomp of ceremony, to heighten the opinion of their
value and importance.

Whatever pictures later and especially Christian writers may draw of the
Mysteries, they must, not only originally, but for many ages, have
continued pure; and the doctrines of natural religion and morals there
taught, have been of the highest importance; because both the most
virtuous as well as the most learned and philosophic of the ancients
speak of them in the loftiest terms. That they ultimately became
degraded from their high estate, and corrupted, we know.

The rites of initiation became progressively more complicated. Signs and
tokens were invented by which the Children of Light could with facility
make themselves known to each other. Different Degrees were invented, as
the number of Initiates enlarged, in order that there might be in the
inner apartment of the Temple a favored few, to whom alone the more
valuable secrets were entrusted, and who could wield effectually the
influence and power of the Order.

Originally the Mysteries were meant to be the beginning of a new life of
reason and virtue. The initiated or esoteric companions were taught the
doctrine of the One Supreme God, the theory of death and eternity, the
hidden mysteries of Nature, the prospect of the ultimate restoration of
the soul to that state of perfection from which it had fallen, its
immortality, and the states of reward and punishment after death. The
uninitiated were deemed Profane, unworthy of public employment or
private confidence, sometimes proscribed as Atheists, and certain of
ever-lasting punishment beyond the grave.

All persons were initiated into the lesser Mysteries; but few attained
the greater, in which the true spirit of them, and most of their secret
doctrines were hidden. The veil of secrecy was impenetrable, sealed by
oaths and penalties the most tremendous and appalling. It was by
initiation only, that a knowledge of the Hieroglyphics could be
obtained, with which the walls, columns, and ceilings of the Temples
were decorated, and which, believed to have been communicated to the
Priests by revelation from the celestial deities, the youth of all ranks
were laudably ambitious of deciphering.

The ceremonies were performed at dead of night, generally in apartments
under-ground, but sometimes in the centre of a vast Pyramid, with every
appliance that could alarm and excite the candidate. Innumerable
ceremonies, wild and romantic, dreadful and appalling, had by degrees
been added to the few expressive symbols of primitive observances, under
which there were instances in which the terrified aspirant actually
expired with fear.

The pyramids were probably used for the purposes of initiation, as were
caverns, pagodas, and labyrinths; for the ceremonies required many
apartments and cells, long passages and wells. In Egypt a principal
place for the Mysteries was the island of Philæ on the Nile, where a
magnificent Temple of Osiris stood, and his relics were said to be
preserved.

With their natural proclivities, the Priesthood, that select and
exclusive class, in Egypt, India, Phœnicia, Judea and Greece as well as
in Britain and Rome, and wherever else the Mysteries were known, made
use of them to build wider and higher the fabric of their own power. The
purity of no religion continues long. Rank and dignities succeed to the
primitive simplicity. Unprincipled, vain, insolent, corrupt, and venal
men put on God's livery to serve the Devil withal; and luxury, vice,
intolerance, and pride depose frugality, virtue, gentleness, and
humility, and change the altar where they should be servants, to a
throne on which they reign.

But the Kings, Philosophers, and Statesmen, the wise and great and good
who were admitted to the Mysteries, long postponed their ultimate
self-destruction, and restrained the natural tendencies of the
Priesthood. And accordingly Zosimus thought that the neglect of the
Mysteries after Diocletian abdicated, was the chief cause of the decline
of the Roman Empire; and in the year 364, the Proconsul of Greece would
not close the Mysteries, notwithstanding a law of the Emperor
Valentinian, lest the people should be driven to desperation, if
prevented from performing them; upon which, as they believed, the
welfare of mankind wholly depended. They were practised in Athens until
the 8th century, in Greece and Rome for several centuries after Christ;
and in Wales and Scotland down to the 12th century.

The inhabitants of India originally practised the Patriarchal religion.
Even the later worship of Vishnu was cheerful and social; accompanied
with the festive song, the sprightly dance, and the resounding cymbal,
with libations of milk and honey, garlands, and perfumes from aromatic
woods and gums.

There perhaps the Mysteries commenced; and in them, under allegories,
were taught the primitive truths. We cannot, within the limits of this
lecture, detail the ceremonies of initiation; and shall use general
language, except where something from those old Mysteries still remains
in Masonry.

The Initiate was invested with a cord of three threads, so twined as to
make three times three, and called _zennar_. Hence comes our cable-tow.
It was an emblem of their triune Deity, the remembrance of whom we also
preserve in the three chief officers of our Lodges, presiding in the
three quarters of that Universe which our Lodges represent; in our three
greater and three lesser lights, our three movable and three immovable
jewels, and the three pillars that support our Lodges.

The Indian Mysteries were celebrated in subterranean caverns and grottos
hewn in the solid rock; and the Initiates adored the Deity, symbolized
by the solar fire. The candidate, long wandering in darkness, truly
wanted Light, and the worship taught him was the worship of God, the
Source of Light. The vast Temple of Elephanta, perhaps the oldest in the
world, hewn out of the rock, and 135 feet square, was used for
initiations; as were the still vaster caverns of Salsette, with their
300 apartments.

The periods of initiation were regulated by the increase and decrease of
the moon. The Mysteries were divided into four steps or Degrees. The
candidate might receive the first at eight years of age, when he was
invested with the zennar. Each Degree dispensed something of perfection.
"Let the wretched man," says the Hitopadesa, "practise virtue, whenever
he enjoys one of the three or four religious Degrees; let him be
even-minded with all created things, and that disposition will be the
source of virtue."

After various ceremonies, chiefly relating to the unity and trinity of
the Godhead, the candidate was clothed in a linen garment without a
seam, and remained under the care of a Brahmin until he was twenty years
of age, constantly studying and practising the most rigid virtue. Then
he underwent the severest probation for the second Degree, in which he
was sanctified by the sign of the cross, which, pointing to the four
quarters of the compass, was honored as a striking symbol of the
Universe by many nations of antiquity, and was imitated by the Indians
in the shape of their temples.

Then he was admitted to the Holy Cavern, blazing with light, where, in
costly robes, sat, in the East, West, and South, the three chief
Hierophants, representing the Indian tri-une Deity. The ceremonies there
commenced with an anthem to the Great God of Nature; and then followed
this apostrophe: "O mighty Being! greater than Brahma! we bow down
before Thee as the primal Creator! Eternal God of Gods! The World's
Mansion! Thou art the Incorruptible Being, distinct from all things
transient! Thou art before all Gods, the Ancient Absolute Existence, and
the Supreme Supporter of the Universe! Thou art the Supreme Mansion; and
by Thee, O Infinite Form, the Universe was spread abroad."

The candidate, thus taught the first great primitive truth was called
upon to make a formal declaration, that he would be tractable and
obedient to his superiors; that he would keep his body pure; govern his
tongue, and observe a passive obedience in receiving the doctrines and
traditions of the Order; and the firmest secrecy in maintaining
inviolable its hidden and abstruse mysteries. Then he was sprinkled with
water (whence our _baptism_); certain words, now unknown, were whispered
in his ear; and he was divested of his shoes, and made to go three times
around the cavern. Hence our three circuits; hence we were neither
barefoot nor shod: and the words were the Pass-words of that Indian
Degree.

The Gymnosophist Priests came from the banks of the Euphrates into
Ethiopia, and brought with them their sciences and their doctrines.
Their principal College was at Meroe, and their Mysteries were
celebrated in the Temple of Amun, renowned for his oracle. Ethiopia was
then a powerful State, which preceded Egypt in civilization, and had a
theocratic government. Above the King was the Priest, who could put him
to death in the name of the Deity. Egypt was then composed of the
Thebaid only. Middle Egypt and the Delta were a gulf of the
Mediterranean. The Nile by degrees formed an immense marsh, which,
afterward drained by the labor of man, formed Lower Egypt; and was for
many centuries governed by the Ethiopian Sacerdotal Caste, of Arabic
origin; afterward displaced by a dynasty of warriors. The magnificent
ruins of Axoum, with its obelisks and hieroglyphics, temples, vast tombs
and pyramids, around ancient Meroe, are far older than the pyramids near
Memphis.

The Priests, taught by Hermes, embodied in books the occult and hermetic
sciences, with their own discoveries and the revelations of the Sibyls.
They studied particularly the most abstract sciences, discovered the
famous geometrical theorems which Pythagoras afterward learned from
them, calculated eclipses, and regulated, nineteen centuries before
Cæsar, the Julian year. They descended to practical investigations as
to the necessities of life, and made known their discoveries to the
people; they cultivated the fine arts, and inspired the people with that
enthusiasm which produced the avenues of Thebes, the Labyrinth, the
Temples of Karnac, Denderah, Edfou, and Philæ, the monolithic obelisks,
and the great Lake Moeris, the fertilizer of the country.

The wisdom of the Egyptian Initiates, the high sciences and lofty
morality which they taught, and their immense knowledge, excited the
emulation of the most eminent men, whatever their rank and fortune; and
led them, despite the complicated and terrible trials to be undergone,
to seek admission into the Mysteries of Osiris and Isis.

From Egypt, the Mysteries went to Phoenicia, and were celebrated at
Tyre. Osiris changed his name, and become Adoni or Dionusos, still the
representative of the Sun; and afterward these Mysteries were introduced
successively into Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Sicily, and Italy.
In Greece and Sicily, Osiris took the name of Bacchus, and Isis that of
Ceres, Cybele, Rhea and Venus.

Bar Hebraeus says: "Enoch was the first who invented books and different
sorts of writing. The ancient Greeks declare that Enoch is the same as
Mercury Trismegistus [Hermes], and that he taught the sons of men the
art of building cities, and enacted some admirable laws.... He
discovered the knowledge of the Zodiac, and the course of the Planets;
and he pointed out to the sons of men, that they should worship God,
that they should fast, that they should pray, that they should give
alms, votive offerings, and tenths. He reprobated abominable foods and
drunkenness, and appointed festivals for sacrifices to the Sun, at each
of the Zodiacal Signs."

Manetho extracted his history from certain pillars which he discovered
in Egypt, whereon inscriptions had been made by Thoth, or the first
Mercury [or Hermes], in the sacred letters and dialect: but which were
after the flood translated from that dialect into the Greek tongue, and
laid up in the private recesses of the Egyptian Temples. These pillars
were found in subterranean caverns, near Thebes and beyond the Nile, not
far from the sounding statue of Memnon, in a place called Syringes;
which are described to be certain winding apartments underground; made,
it is said, by those who were skilled in ancient rites; who, foreseeing
the coming of the Deluge, and fearing lest the memory of their
ceremonies should be obliterated, built and contrived vaults, dug with
vast labor, in several places.

From the bosom of Egypt sprang a man of consummate wisdom, initiated in
the secret knowledge of India, of Persia, and of Ethiopia, named Thoth
or Phtha by his compatriots, Taaut by the Phoenicians, Hermes
Trismegistus by the Greeks, and Adris by the Rabbins. Nature seemed to
have chosen him for her favorite and to have lavished on him all the
qualities necessary to enable him to study her and to know her
thoroughly. The Deity had, so to say, infused into him the sciences and
the arts, in order that he might instruct the whole world.

He invented many things necessary for the uses of life, and gave them
suitable names; he taught men how to write down their thoughts and
arrange their speech; he instituted the ceremonies to be observed in the
worship of each of the Gods; he observed the course of the stars; he
invented music, the different bodily exercises, arithmetic, medicine,
the art of working in metals, the lyre with three strings; he regulated
the three tones of the voice, the _sharp_, taken from autumn, the
_grave_ from winter, and the _middle_ from spring, there being then but
three seasons. It was he who taught the Greeks the mode of interpreting
terms and things, whence they gave him the name of [Greek: Hermes]
[_Hermes_], which signifies _Interpreter_.

In Egypt he instituted hieroglyphics: he selected a certain number of
persons whom he judged fitted to be the depositaries of his secrets, of
such only as were capable of attaining the throne and the first offices
in the Mysteries; he united them in a body, created them _Priests of the
Living God_, instructed them in the sciences and arts, and explained to
them the symbols by which they were veiled. Egypt, 1500 years before the
time of Moses, revered in the Mysteries ONE SUPREME GOD, called the ONLY
UNCREATED. Under Him it paid homage to seven principal deities. It is to
Hermes, who lived at that period, that we must attribute the concealment
or _veiling_ [_velation_] of the Indian worship, which Moses _unveiled_
or _revealed_, changing nothing of the laws of Hermes, except the
plurality of his mystic Gods.

The Egyptian Priests related that Hermes, dying, said: "Hitherto I have
lived an exile from my true country: now I return thither. Do not weep
for me: I return to that celestial country whither each goes in his
turn. There is God. This life is but a death." This is precisely the
creed of the old Buddhists of Samaneans, who believed that from time to
time God sent Buddhas on earth, to reform men, to wean them from their
vices, and lead them back into the paths of virtue.

Among the sciences taught by Hermes, there were secrets which he
communicated to the Initiates only upon condition that they should bind
themselves, by a terrible oath, never to divulge them, except to those
who, after long trial, should be found worthy to succeed them. The Kings
even prohibited the revelation of them on pain of death. This secret was
styled the Sacerdotal Art, and included alchemy, astrology, magism
[magic], the science of spirits, etc. He gave them the key to the
Hieroglyphics of all these secret sciences, which were regarded as
sacred, and kept concealed in the most secret places of the Temple.

The great secrecy observed by the initiated Priests, for many years, and
the lofty sciences which they professed, caused them to be honored and
respected throughout all Egypt, which was regarded by other nations as
the college, the sanctuary, of the sciences and arts. The mystery which
surrounded them strongly excited curiosity. Orpheus metamorphosed
himself, so to say, into an Egyptian. He was initiated into Theology and
Physics. And he so completely made the ideas and reasonings of his
teachers his own, that his Hymns rather bespeak an Egyptian Priest than
a Grecian Poet: and he was the first who carried into Greece the
Egyptian fables.

Pythagoras, ever thirsty for learning, consented even to be circumcised,
in order to become one of the Initiates: and the occult sciences were
revealed to him in the innermost part of the sanctuary.

The Initiates in a particular science, having been instructed by fables,
enigmas, allegories, and hieroglyphics, wrote mysteriously whenever in
their works they touched the subject of the Mysteries, and continued to
conceal science under a veil of fictions.

When the destruction by Cambyses of many cities, and the ruin of nearly
all Egypt, in the year 528 before our era, dispersed most of the Priests
into Greece and elsewhere, they bore with them their sciences, which
they continued to teach enigmatically, that is to say, ever enveloped in
the obscurities of fables and hieroglyphics; to the end that the vulgar
herd, seeing, might see nothing, and hearing, might comprehend nothing.
All the writers drew from this source: but these Mysteries, concealed
under so many unexplained envelopes, ended in giving birth to a swarm of
absurdities, which, from Greece, spread over the whole earth.

In the Grecian Mysteries, as established by Pythagoras, there were three
Degrees. A preparation of five years' abstinence and silence was
required. If the candidate was found to be passionate or intemperate,
contentious, or ambitious of worldly honors and distinctions, he was
rejected.

In his lectures, Pythagoras taught the mathematics, as a medium whereby
to prove the existence of God from observation and by means of reason;
grammar, rhetoric, and logic, to cultivate and improve that reason,
arithmetic, because he conceived that the ultimate benefit of man
consisted in the science of numbers, and geometry, music, and astronomy,
because he conceived that man is indebted to them for a knowledge of
what is really good and useful.

He taught the true method of obtaining a knowledge of the Divine laws of
purifying the soul from its imperfections, of searching for truth, and
of practising virtue; thus imitating the perfections of God. He thought
his system vain, if it did not contribute to expel vice and introduce
virtue into the mind. He taught that the two most excellent things were,
to speak the truth, and to render benefits to one another. Particularly
he inculcated Silence, Temperance, Fortitude, Prudence, and Justice. He
taught the immortality of the soul, the Omnipotence of God, and the
necessity of personal holiness to qualify a man for admission into the
Society of the Gods.

Thus we owe the particular mode of instruction in the Degree of
Fellow-Craft to Pythagoras; and that Degree is but an imperfect
reproduction of his lectures. From him, too, we have many of our
explanations of the symbols. He arranged his assemblies due East and
West, because he held that Motion began in the East and proceeded to the
West. Our Lodges are said to be due East and West, because the Master
represents the rising Sun, and of course must be in the East. The
pyramids, too, were built precisely by the four cardinal points. And our
expression, that our Lodges extend upward to the Heavens, comes from the
Persian and Druidic custom of having to their Temples no roofs but the
sky.

Plato developed and spiritualized the philosophy of Pythagoras. Even
Eusebius the Christian admits, that he reached to the vestibule of
Truth, and stood upon its threshold.

The Druidical ceremonies undoubtedly came from India; and the Druids
were originally Buddhists. The word _Druidh_, like the word _Magi_,
signifies wise or learned men; and they were at once philosophers,
magistrates, and divines.

There was a surprising uniformity in the Temples, Priests, doctrines,
and worship of the Persian Magi and British Druids. The Gods of Britain
were the same as the Cabiri of Samothrace. Osiris and Isis appeared in
their Mysteries, under the names of Hu and Ceridwen; and like those of
the primitive Persians, their Temples were enclosures of huge unhewn
stones, some of which still remain, and are regarded by the common
people with fear and veneration. They were generally either circular or
oval. Some were in the shape of a circle to which a vast serpent was
attached. The circle was an Eastern symbol of the Universe, governed by
an Omnipotent Deity whose centre is everywhere, and his circumference
nowhere: and the egg was an universal symbol of the world. Some of the
Temples were winged, and some in the shape of a cross; the winged ones
referring to Kneph, the winged Serpent-Deity of Egypt; whence the name
of _Navestock_, where one of them stood. Temples in the shape of a cross
were also found in Ireland and Scotland. The length of one of these vast
structures, in the shape of a serpent, was nearly three miles.

The grand periods for initiation into the Druidical Mysteries, were
quarterly; at the equinoxes and solstices. In the remote times when they
originated, these were the times corresponding with the 13th of
February, 1st of May, 19th of August, and 1st of November. The time of
annual celebration was May-Eve, and the ceremonial preparations
commenced at midnight, on the 29th of April. When the initiations were
over, on May-Eve, fires were kindled on all the cairns and cromlechs in
the island, which burned all night to introduce the sports of May-day.
The festival was in honor of the Sun. The initiations were performed at
midnight; and there were three Degrees.

The Gothic Mysteries were carried Northward from the East, by Odin; who,
being a great warrior, modelled and varied them to suit his purposes and
the genius of his people. He placed over their celebration twelve
Hierophants, who were alike Priests, Counsellors of State, and Judges
from whose decision there was no appeal.

He held the numbers three and nine in peculiar veneration and was
probably himself the Indian Buddha. Every thrice-three months,
thrice-three victims were sacrificed to the tri-une God.

The Goths had three great festivals; the most magnificent of which
commenced at the winter solstice, and was celebrated in honor of Thor,
the Prince of the Power of the Air. That being the longest night in the
year, and the one after which the Sun comes Northward, it was
commemorative of the Creation; and they termed it mother-night, as the
one in which the creation of the world and light from the primitive
darkness took place. This was the _Yule, Juul,_ or _Yeol_ feast, which
afterward became Christmas. At this feast the initiations were
celebrated. Thor was the Sun, the Egyptian Osiris and Kneph, the
Phœnician Bel or Baal. The initiations were had in huge intricate
caverns, terminating, as all the Mithriac caverns did, in a spacious
vault, where the candidate _was brought to light_.

Joseph was undoubtedly initiated. After he had interpreted Pharaoh's
dream, that Monarch made him his Prime Minister, let him ride in his
second chariot, while they proclaimed before him, ABRECH![1] and set him
over the land of Egypt. In addition to this, the King gave him a new
name, Tsapanat-Paänakh, and married him to Asanat, daughter of Potai
Parang, a Priest of An or Hieropolis, where was the Temple of Athom-Re,
the Great God of Egypt; thus completely naturalizing him. He could not
have contracted this marriage, nor have exercised that high dignity,
without being first initiated in the Mysteries. When his Brethren came
to Egypt the second time, the Egyptians of his court could not eat with
them, as that would have been abomination, though they ate with Joseph;
who was therefore regarded not as a foreigner, but as one of themselves:
and when he sent and brought his brethren back, and charged them with
taking his cup, he said, "Know ye not that a man like me practises
divination?" thus assuming the Egyptian of high rank initiated into the
Mysteries, and as such conversant with the occult sciences.

[Footnote 1: An Egyptian word, meaning, _"Bow down."_]

So also must Moses have been initiated: for he was not only brought up
in the court of the King, as the adopted son of the King's daughter,
until he was forty years of age; but he was instructed in all the
learning of the Egyptians, and married afterward the daughter of
Yethrū, a Priest of An likewise. Strabo and Diodorus both assert that he
was himself a Priest of Heliopolis. Before he went into the Desert,
there were intimate relations between him and the Priesthood; and he had
successfully commanded, Josephus informs us, an army sent by the King
against the Ethiopians. Simglicius asserts that Moses received from the
Egyptians, in the Mysteries, the doctrines which he taught to the
Hebrews: and Clemens of Alexandria and Philo say that he was a
Theologian and Prophet, and interpreter of the Sacred Laws. Manetho,
cited by Josephus, says he was a Priest of Heliopolis, and that his true
and original (Egyptian) name was Asersaph or Osarsiph.

And in the institution of the Hebrew Priesthood, in the powers and
privileges, as well as the immunities and sanctity which he conferred
upon them, he closely imitated the Egyptian institutions; making
_public_ the worship of that Deity whom the Egyptian Initiates
worshipped in private; and strenuously endeavoring to keep the people
from relapsing into their old mixture of Chaldaic and Egyptian
superstition and idol-worship, as they were ever ready and inclined to
do; even Aharūn, upon their first clamorous discontent, restoring the
worship of Apis; as an image of which Egyptian God he made the golden
calf.

The Egyptian Priests taught in their great Mysteries, that there was one
God, Supreme and Unapproachable, who had _conceived_ the Universe by His
Intelligence, before He _created_ it by His Power and Will. They were no
Materialists nor Pantheists; but taught that Matter was not eternal or
co-existent with the great First Cause, but created by Him.

The early Christians, taught by the founder of their Religion, but in
greater perfection, those primitive truths that from the Egyptians had
passed to the Jews, and been preserved among the latter by the Essenes,
received also the institution of the Mysteries; adopting as their object
the building of the symbolic Temple, preserving the old Scriptures of
the Jews as their sacred book, and as the fundamental law, which
furnished the new veil of initiation with the Hebraic words and
formulas, that, corrupted and disfigured by time and ignorance, appear
in many of our Degrees.

Such, my Brother, is the doctrine of the first Degree of the Mysteries,
or that of Chief of the Tabernacle, to which you have now been
admitted, and the moral lesson of which is, devotion to the service of
God, and disinterested zeal and constant endeavor for the welfare of
men. You have here received only hints of the true objects and purposes
of the Mysteries. Hereafter, if you are permitted to advance, you will
arrive at a more complete understanding of them and of the sublime
doctrines which they teach. Be content, therefore, with that which you
have seen and heard and await patiently the advent of the greater light.

[Illustration]



XXIV.

PRINCE OF THE TABERNACLE.


Symbols were the almost universal language of ancient theology. They
were the most obvious method of instruction; for, like nature herself,
they addressed the understanding through the eye; and the most ancient
expressions denoting communication of religious knowledge, signify
ocular exhibition. The first teachers of mankind borrowed this method of
instruction; and it comprised an endless store of pregnant
hieroglyphics. These lessons of the olden time were the riddles of the
Sphynx, tempting the curious by their quaintness, but involving the
personal risk of the adventurous interpreter. "The Gods themselves," it
was said, "disclose their intentions to the wise, but to fools their
teaching is unintelligible;" and the King of the Delphic Oracle was said
not to _declare_, nor on the other hand to _conceal_; but emphatically
to "_intimate_ or _signify_."

The Ancient Sages, both barbarian and Greek, involved their meaning in
similar indirections and enigmas; their lessons were conveyed either in
visible symbols, or in those "parables and dark sayings of old," which
the Israelites considered it a sacred duty to hand down unchanged to
successive generations. The explanatory tokens employed by man, whether
emblematical objects or actions, symbols or mystic ceremonies, were like
the mystic signs and portents either in dreams or by the wayside,
supposed to be significant of the intentions of the Gods; both required
the aid of anxious thought and skillful interpretation. It was only by a
correct appreciation of analogous problems of nature, that the will of
Heaven could be understood by the Diviner, or the lessons of Wisdom
become manifest to the Sage.

The Mysteries were a series of symbols; and what was _spoken_ there
consisted wholly of accessory explanations of the act or image; sacred
commentaries, explanatory of established symbols; with little of those
independent traditions embodying physical or moral speculation, in which
the elements or planets were the actors, and the creation and
revolutions of the world were intermingled with recollections of ancient
events: and yet with so much of that also, that nature became her own
expositor through the medium of an arbitrary symbolical instruction; and
the ancient views of the relation between the human and divine received
dramatic forms.

There has ever been an intimate alliance between the two systems, the
symbolic and the philosophical, in the allegories of the monuments of
all ages, in the symbolic writings of the priests of all nations, in the
rituals of all secret and mysterious societies; there has been a
constant series, an invariable uniformity of principles, which come from
an aggregate, vast, imposing, and true, composed of parts that fit
harmoniously only there.

Symbolical instruction is recommended by the constant and uniform usage
of antiquity; and it has retained its influence throughout all ages, as
a system of mysterious communication. The Deity, in his revelations to
man, adopted the use of material images for the purpose of enforcing
sublime truths; and Christ taught by symbols and parables. The
mysterious knowledge of the Druids was embodied in signs and symbols.
Taliesin, describing his initiation, says: "The secrets were imparted to
me by the old Giantess (_Ceridwen_, or _Isis_), without the use of
audible language." And again he says, "I am a _silent_ proficient."

Initiation was a school, in which were taught the truths of primitive
revelation, the existence and attributes of one God, the immortality of
the Soul, rewards and punishments in a future life, the phenomena of
Nature, the arts, the sciences, morality, legislation, philosophy, and
philanthropy, and what we now style psychology and metaphysics, with
animal magnetism, and the other occult sciences.

All the ideas of the Priests of Hindostan, Persia, Syria, Arabia,
Chaldæa, Phœnicia, were known to the Egyptian Priests. The rational
Indian philosophy, after penetrating Persia and Chaldæa, gave birth to
the Egyptian Mysteries. We find that the use of Hieroglyphics was
preceded in Egypt by that of the easily understood symbols and figures,
from the mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms, used by the Indians,
Persians, and Chaldæans to express their thoughts; and this primitive
philosophy was the basis of the modern philosophy of Pythagoras and
Plato.

All the philosophers and legislators that made Antiquity illustrious,
were pupils of the initiation; and all the beneficent modifications in
the religions of the different people instructed by them were owing to
their institution and extension of the Mysteries. In the chaos of
popular superstitions, those Mysteries alone kept man from lapsing into
absolute brutishness. Zoroaster and Confucius drew their doctrines from
the Mysteries. Clemens of Alexandria, speaking of the Great Mysteries,
says: "Here ends all instruction. Nature and all things are seen and
known." Had moral truths alone been taught the Initiate, the Mysteries
could never have deserved nor received the magnificent eulogiums of the
most enlightened men of Antiquity,--of Pindar, Plutarch, Isocrates,
Diodorus, Plato, Euripides, Socrates, Aristophanes, Cicero, Epictetus,
Marcus Aurelius, and others;--philosophers hostile to the Sacerdotal
Spirit, or historians devoted to the investigation of Truth. No: all the
sciences were taught there; and those oral or written traditions briefly
communicated, which reached back to the first age of the world.

Socrates said, in the Phædo of Plato: "It well appears that those who
established the Mysteries, or secret assemblies of the initiated, were
no contemptible personages, but men of great genius, who in the early
ages strove to teach us, under enigmas, that he who shall go to the
invisible regions without being purified, will be precipitated into the
abyss; while he who arrives there, purged of the stains of this world,
and accomplished in virtue, will be admitted to the dwelling-place of
the Deity.... The initiated are certain to attain the company of the
Gods."

Pretextatus, Proconsul of Achaia, a man endowed with all the virtues,
said, in the 4th century, that to deprive the Greeks of those Sacred
Mysteries which bound together the whole human face, would make life
insupportable.

Initiation was considered to be a mystical death; a descent into the
infernal regions, where every pollution, and the stains and
imperfections of a corrupt and evil life were purged away by fire and
water; and the perfect _Epopt_ was then said to be _regenerated_,
_new-born_, restored to a _renovated_ existence of _life_, _light_, and
_purity_; and placed under the Divine Protection.

A new language was adapted to these celebrations, and also a language of
hieroglyphics, unknown to any but those who had received the highest
Degree. And to them ultimately were confined the learning, the morality,
and the political power of every people among which the Mysteries were
practised. So effectually was the knowledge of the hieroglyphics of the
highest Degree hidden from all but a favored few, that in process of
time their meaning Was entirely lost, and none could interpret them. If
the same hieroglyphics were employed in the higher as in the lower
Degrees, they had a different and more abstruse and figurative meaning.
It was pretended, in later times, that the sacred hieroglyphics and
language were the same that were used by the Celestial Deities.
Everything that could heighten the mystery of initiation was added,
until the very name of the ceremony possessed a strange charm, and yet
conjured up the wildest fears. The greatest rapture came to be expressed
by the word that signified to pass through the Mysteries.

The Priesthood possessed one third of Egypt. They gained much of their
influence by means of the Mysteries, and spared no means to impress the
people with a full sense of their importance. They represented them as
the beginning of a new life of reason and virtue: the initiated, or
esoteric companions were said to entertain the most agreeable
anticipations respecting death and eternity, to comprehend all the
hidden mysteries of Nature, to have their souls restored to the original
perfection from which man had fallen; and at their death to be borne to
the celestial mansions of the Gods. The doctrines of a future state of
rewards and punishments formed a prominent feature in the Mysteries; and
they were also believed to assure much temporal happiness and
good-fortune, and afford absolute security against the most imminent
dangers by land and sea. Public odium was cast on those who refused to
be initiated. They were considered profane, unworthy of public
employment or private confidence; and held to be doomed to eternal
punishment as impious. To betray the secrets of the Mysteries, to wear
on the stage the dress of an Initiate, or to hold the Mysteries up to
derision, was to incur death at the hands of public vengeance.

It is certain that up to the time of Cicero, the Mysteries still
retained much of their original character of sanctity and purity. And at
a later day, as we know, Nero, after committing a horrible crime, did
not dare, even in Greece, to aid in the celebration of the Mysteries;
nor at a still later day was Constantine, the Christian Emperor, allowed
to do so, after his murder of his relatives.

Everywhere, and in all their forms, the Mysteries were funereal; and
celebrated the mystical death and restoration to life of some divine or
heroic personage: and the details of the legend and the mode of the
death varied in the different Countries where the Mysteries were
practised.

Their explanation belongs both to astronomy and mythology; and the
Legend of the Master's Degree is but another form of that of the
Mysteries, reaching back, in one shape or other, to the remotest
antiquity.

Whether Egypt originated the legend, or borrowed it from India or
Chaldæa, it is now impossible to know. But the Hebrews received the
Mysteries from the Egyptians; and of course were familiar with _their
legend_,--known as it was to those Egyptian Initiates, Joseph and Moses.
It was the fable (or rather the _truth_ clothed in allegory and figures)
of OSIRIS, the Sun, Source of Light and Principle of Good, and TYPHON,
the Principle of Darkness and Evil. In all the histories of the Gods and
Heroes lay couched and hidden astronomical details and the history of
the operations of visible Nature; and those in their turn were also
symbols of higher and profounder truths. None but rude uncultivated
intellects could long consider the Sun and Stars and the Powers of
Nature as Divine, or as fit objects of Human Worship; and _they_ will
consider them so while the world lasts; and ever remain ignorant of the
great Spiritual Truths of which these are the hieroglyphics and
expressions.

A brief summary of the Egyptian legend will serve to show the leading
idea on which the Mysteries among the Hebrews were based.

Osiris, said to have been an ancient King of Egypt, was the Sun; and
Isis, his wife, the Moon: and his history recounts, in poetical and
figurative style, the annual journey of the Great Luminary of Heaven
through the different Signs of the Zodiac.

In the absence of Osiris, Typhon, his brother, filled with envy and
malice, sought to usurp his throne; but his plans were frustrated by
Isis. Then he resolved to kill Osiris. This he did, by persuading him to
enter a coffin or sarcophagus, which he then flung into the Nile. After
a long search, Isis found the body, and concealed it in the depths of a
forest; but Typhon, finding it there, cut it into fourteen pieces, and
scattered them hither and thither. After tedious search, Isis found
thirteen pieces, the fishes having eaten the other (the privates), which
she replaced of wood, and buried the body at Philæ; where a temple of
surpassing magnificence was erected in honor of Osiris.

Isis, aided by her son Orus, Horus or Har-oeri, warred against Typhon,
slew him, reigned gloriously, and at her death was reunited to her
husband, in the same tomb.

Typhon was represented as born of the earth; the upper part of his body
covered with feathers, in stature reaching the clouds, his arms and legs
covered with scales, serpents darting from him on every side, and fire
flashing from his mouth. Horus, who aided in slaying him, became the God
of the Sun, answering to the Grecian Apollo; and Typhon is but the
anagram of Python, the great serpent slain by Apollo.

The word Typhon, like Eve, signifies _a serpent_, and _life_.[2] By its
form the serpent symbolizes life, which circulates through all nature.
When, toward the end of autumn, the Woman (Virgo), in the constellations
seems (upon the Chaldæan sphere) to crush with her heel the head of the
serpent, this figure foretells the coming of winter, during which life
seems to retire from all beings, and no longer to circulate through
nature. This is why Typhon signifies also a serpent, the symbol of
winter, which, in the Catholic Temples, is represented surrounding the
Terrestrial Globe, which surmounts the heavenly cross, emblem of
redemption. If the word Typhon is derived from _Tupoul_, it signifies a
tree which produces apples (_mala_, evils), the Jewish origin of the
fall of man. Typhon means also one who supplants, and signifies the
human passions, which expel from our hearts the lessons of wisdom. In
the Egyptian Fable, Isis wrote the sacred word for the instruction of
men, and Typhon effaced it as fast as she wrote it. In morals, his name
signifies _Pride_, _Ignorance_, and _Falsehood_.

[Footnote 2: [Hebrew:] Tsapanai, in Hebrew, means a serpent.]

When Isis first found the body, where it had floated ashore near Byblos,
a shrub of _erica_ or tamarisk near it had, by the virtue of the body,
shot up into a tree around it, and protected it; and hence our sprig of
acacia. Isis was also aided in her search by Anubis, in the shape of a
dog. He was Sirius or the Dog-Star, the friend and counsellor of Osiris,
and the inventor of language, grammar, astronomy, surveying, arithmetic,
music, and medical science; the first maker of laws; and who taught the
worship of the Gods, and the building of Temples.

In the Mysteries, the nailing up of the body of Osiris in the chest or
ark was termed the _aphanism_, or disappearance [of the Sun at the
Winter Solstice, below the Tropic of Capricorn], and the recovery of the
different parts of his body by Isis, the _Euresis_, finding. The
candidate went through a ceremony representing this, in all the
Mysteries everywhere. The main facts in the fable were the same in all
countries; and the prominent Deities were everywhere a male and a
female.

In Egypt they were Osiris and Isis: in India, Mahadeva and Bhavani: in
Phœnicia, Thammuz (or Adonis) and Astarte: in Phrygia, Atys and Cybele:
in Persia, Mithras and Asis: in Samothrace and Greece, Dionusos or
Sabazeus and Rhea: in Britain, Hu and Ceridwen: and in Scandinavia,
Woden and Frea: and in every instance these Divinities represented the
Sun and the Moon.

The mysteries of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, seem to have been the model of
all other ceremonies of initiation subsequently established among the
different peoples of the world. Those of Atys and Cybele, celebrated in
Phrygia; those of Ceres and Proserpine, at Eleusis and many other places
in Greece, were but copies of them. This we learn from Plutarch,
Diodorus Siculus, Lactantius, and other writers; and in the absence of
direct testimony should necessarily infer it from the similarity of the
adventures of these Deities; for the ancients held that the Ceres of the
Greeks was the same as the Isis of the Egyptians; and Dionusos or
Bacchus as Osiris.

In the legend of Osiris and Isis, as given by Plutarch, are many details
and circumstances other than those that we have briefly mentioned; and
all of which we need not repeat here. Osiris married his sister Isis;
and labored publicly with her to ameliorate the lot of men. He taught
them agriculture, while Isis invented laws. He built temples to the
Gods, and established their worship. Both were the patrons of artists
and their useful inventions; and introduced the use of iron for
defensive weapons and implements of agriculture, and of gold to adorn
the temples of the Gods. He went forth with an army to conquer men to
civilization, teaching the people whom he overcame to plant the vine and
sow grain for food.

Typhon, his brother, slew him when the sun was in the sign of the
Scorpion, that is to say, at the Autumnal Equinox. They had been rival
claimants, says Synesius, for the throne of Egypt, as Light and Darkness
contend ever for the empire of the world. Plutarch adds, that at the
time when Osiris was slain, the moon was at its full; and therefore it
was in the sign opposite the Scorpion, that is, the Bull, the sign of
the Vernal Equinox.

Plutarch assures us that it was to represent these events and details
that Isis established the Mysteries, in which they were reproduced by
images, symbols, and a religious ceremonial, whereby they were imitated:
and in which lessons of piety were given, and consolations under the
misfortunes that afflict us here below. Those who instituted these
Mysteries meant to strengthen religion and console men in their sorrows
by the lofty hopes found in a religious faith, whose principles were
represented to them covered by a pompous ceremonial, and under the
sacred veil of allegory.

Diodorus speaks of the famous columns erected near Nysa, in Arabia,
where, it was said, were two of the tombs of Osiris and Isis. On one was
this inscription: "I am Isis, Queen of this country. I was instructed by
Mercury. No one can destroy the laws which I have established. I am the
eldest daughter of Saturn, most ancient of the Gods. I am the wife and
sister of Osiris the King. I first made known to mortals the use of
wheat. I am the mother of Orus the King. In my honor was the city of
Bubaste built. Rejoice, O Egypt, rejoice, land that gave me birth!" ...
And on the other was this: "I am Osiris the King, who led my armies into
all parts of the world, to the most thickly inhabited countries of
India, the North, the Danube, and the Ocean. I am the eldest son of
Saturn: I was born of the brilliant and magnificent egg, and my
substance is of the same nature as that which composes light. There is
no place in the Universe where I have not appeared, to bestow my
benefits and make known my discoveries." The rest was illegible.

To aid her in the search for the body of Osiris, and to nurse her infant
child Horus, Isis sought out and took with her Anubis, son of Osiris,
and his sister Nephte. He, as we have said, was Sirius, the brightest
star in the Heavens. After finding him, she went to Byblos, and seated
herself near a fountain, where she had learned that the sacred chest had
stopped which contained the body of Osiris. There she sat, sad and
silent, shedding a torrent of tears. Thither came the women of the Court
of Queen Astarte, and she spoke to them, and dressed their hair, pouring
upon it deliciously perfumed ambrosia. This known to the Queen, Isis
was engaged as nurse for her child, in the palace, one of the columns of
which was made of the erica or tamarisk, that had grown up over the
chest containing Osiris, cut down by the King, and unknown to him, still
enclosing the chest: which column Isis afterward demanded, and from it
extracted the chest and the body, which, the latter wrapped in thin
drapery and perfumed, she carried away with her.

Blue Masonry, ignorant of its import, still retains among its emblems
one of a woman weeping over a broken column, holding in her hand a
branch of acacia, myrtle, or tamarisk, while Time, we are told, stands
behind her combing out the ringlets of her hair. We need not repeat the
vapid and trivial explanation there given, of this representation of
_Isis_, weeping at Byblos, over the column torn from the palace of the
King, that contained the body of Osiris, while Horus, the God of Time,
pours ambrosia on her hair.

Nothing of this recital was historical; but the whole was an allegory or
sacred fable, containing a meaning known only to those who were
initiated into the Mysteries. All the incidents were astronomical, with
a meaning still deeper lying behind _that_ explanation, and so hidden by
a double veil. The Mysteries, in which these incidents were represented
and explained, were like those of Eleusis in their object, of which
Pausanias, who was initiated, says that the Greeks, from the remotest
antiquity, regarded them as the best calculated of all things to lead
men to piety: and Aristotle says they were the most valuable of all
religious institutions, and thus were called mysteries par excellence;
and the Temple of Eleusis was regarded as, in some sort, the common
sanctuary of the whole earth, where religion had brought together all
that was most imposing and most august.

The object of all the Mysteries was to inspire men with piety, and to
console them in the miseries of life. That consolation, so afforded, was
the hope of a happier future, and of passing, after death, to a state of
eternal felicity.

Cicero says that the Initiates not only received lessons which made life
more agreeable, but drew from the ceremonies happy hopes for the moment
of death. Socrates says that those who were so fortunate as to be
admitted to the Mysteries, possessed, when dying, the most glorious
hopes for eternity. Aristides says that they not only procure the
Initiates consolations in the present life, and means of deliverance
from the great weight of their evils, but also the precious advantage of
passing after death to a happier state.

Isis was the Goddess of Sais; and the famous Feast of Lights was
celebrated there in her honor. There were celebrated the Mysteries, in
which were represented the death and subsequent restoration to life of
the God Osiris, in a secret ceremony and scenic representation of his
sufferings, called the Mysteries of Night.

The Kings of Egypt often exercised the functions of the Priesthood; and
they were initiated into the sacred science as soon as they attained the
throne. So at Athens, the First Magistrate, or Archon-King,
superintended the Mysteries. This was an image of the union that existed
between the Priesthood and Royalty, in those early times when
legislators and kings sought in religion a potent political instrument.

Herodotus says, speaking of the reasons why animals were deified in
Egypt: "If I were to explain these reasons, I should be led to the
disclosure of those holy matters which I particularly wish to avoid, and
which, but from necessity, I should not have discussed at all." So he
says, "The Egyptians have at Sais the tomb of a certain personage, whom
I do not think myself permitted to specify. It is behind the Temple of
Minerva." [The latter, so called by the Greeks, was really Isis, whose
was the often-cited enigmatical inscription, "I am what was and is and
is to come. No mortal hath yet unveiled me."] So again he says: "Upon
this lake are represented by night the accidents which happened to him
whom I dare not name. The Egyptians call them their Mysteries.
Concerning these, at the same time that I confess myself sufficiently
informed, I feel myself compelled to be silent. Of the ceremonies also
in honor of Ceres, I may not venture to speak, further than the
obligations of religion will allow me."

It is easy to see what was the great object of initiation and the
Mysteries; whose first and greatest fruit was, as all the ancients
testify, to civilize savage hordes, to soften their ferocious manners,
to introduce among them social intercourse, and lead them into a way of
life more worthy of men. Cicero considers the establishment of the
Eleusinian Mysteries to be the greatest of all the benefits conferred by
Athens on other commonwealths; their effects having been, he says, to
civilize men, soften their savage and ferocious manners, and teach them
the true principles of morals, which _initiate_ man into the only kind
of life worthy of him. The same philosophic orator, in a passage where
he apostrophizes Ceres and Proserpine, says that mankind owes these
Goddesses the first elements of moral life, as well as the first means
of sustenance of physical life; knowledge of the laws, regulation of
morals, and those examples of civilization which have improved the
manners of men and cities.

Bacchus in Euripides says to Pentheus, that his new institution (the
Dionysiac Mysteries) deserved to be known, and that one of its great
advantages was, that it proscribed all impurity: that these were the
Mysteries of Wisdom, of which it would be imprudent to speak to persons
not initiated: that they were established among the Barbarians, who in
that showed greater wisdom than the Greeks, who had not yet received
them.

This double object, political and religious,--one teaching our duty to
men, and the other what we owe to the Gods; or rather, respect for the
Gods calculated to maintain that which we owe the laws, is found in that
well-known verse of Virgil, borrowed by him from the ceremonies of
initiation: "Teach me to respect Justice and the Gods." This great
lesson, which the Hierophant impressed on the Initiates, after they had
witnessed a representation of the Infernal regions, the Poet places
after his description of the different punishments suffered by the
wicked in Tartarus, and immediately after the description of that of
Sisyphus.

Pausanias, likewise, at the close of the representation of the
punishments of Sisyphus and the daughters of Danaus, in the Temple at
Delphi, makes this reflection; that the crime or impiety which in them
had chiefly merited this punishment, was the contempt which they had
shown for the Mysteries of Eleusis. From this reflection of Pausanias,
who was an Initiate, it is easy to see that the Priests of Eleusis, who
taught the dogma of punishment in Tartarus, included among the great
crimes deserving these punishments, contempt for and disregard of the
Holy Mysteries; whose object was to lead men to piety, and thereby to
respect for justice and the laws, chief object of their institution, if
not the only one, and to which the needs and interest of religion itself
were subordinate; since the latter was but a means to lead more surely
to the former; for the whole force of religious opinions being in the
hands of the legislators to be wielded, they were sure of being better
obeyed.

The Mysteries were not merely simple lustrations and the observation of
some arbitrary formulas and ceremonies; nor a means of reminding men of
the ancient condition of the race prior to civilization: but they led
men to piety by instruction in morals and as to a future life; which at
a very early day, if not originally, formed the chief portion of the
ceremonial.

Symbols were used in the ceremonies, which referred to agriculture, as
Masonry has preserved the ear of wheat in a symbol and in one of her
words; but their principal reference was to astronomical phenomena. Much
was no doubt said as to the condition of brutality and degradation in
which man was sunk before the institution of the Mysteries; but the
allusion was rather metaphysical, to the ignorance of the uninitiated,
than to the wild life of the earliest men.

The great object of the Mysteries of Isis, and in general of all the
Mysteries, was a great and truly politic one. It was to ameliorate our
race, to perfect its manners and morals, and to restrain society by
stronger bonds than those that human laws impose. They were the
invention of that ancient science and wisdom which exhausted all its
resources to make legislation perfect; and of that philosophy which has
ever sought to secure the happiness of man, by purifying his soul from
the passions which can trouble it, and as a necessary consequence
introduce social disorder. And that they were the work of genius is
evident from their employment of all the sciences, a profound knowledge
of the human heart, and the means of subduing it.

It is a still greater mistake to imagine that they were the inventions
of charlatanism, and means of deception. They may in the lapse of time
have degenerated into imposture and schools of false ideas; but they
were not so at the beginning; or else the wisest and best men of
antiquity have uttered the most willful falsehoods. In process of time
the very allegories of the Mysteries themselves, Tartarus and its
punishments, Minos and the other judges of the dead, came to be
misunderstood, and to be false because they were so; while at first they
were true, because they were recognized as merely the arbitrary forms in
which truths were enveloped.

The object of the Mysteries was to procure for man a real felicity on
earth by the means of virtue; and to that end he was taught that his
soul was immortal; and that error, sin, and vice must needs, by an
inflexible law, produce their consequences. The rude representation of
physical torture in Tartarus was but an image of the certain,
unavoidable, eternal consequences that flow by the law of God's
enactment from the sin committed and the vice indulged in. The poets and
mystagogues labored to propagate these doctrines of the soul's
immortality and the certain punishment of sin and vice, and to accredit
them with the people, by teaching them the former in their poems, and
the latter in the sanctuaries; and they clothed them with the charms,
the one of poetry, and the other of spectacles and magic illusions.

They painted, aided by all the resources of art, the virtuous man's
happy life after death, and the horrors of the frightful prisons
destined to punish the vicious. In the shades of the sanctuaries, these
delights and horrors were exhibited as spectacles, and the Initiates
witnessed religious dramas, under the name of _initiation_ and
_mysteries_. Curiosity was excited by secrecy, by the difficulty
experienced in obtaining admission, and by the tests to be undergone.
The candidate was amused by the variety of the scenery, the pomp of the
decorations, the appliances of machinery. Respect was inspired by the
gravity and dignity of the actors and the majesty of the ceremonial; and
fear and hope, sadness and delight, were in turns excited.

The Hierophants, men of intellect, and well understanding the
disposition of the people and the art of controlling them, used every
appliance to attain that object, and give importance and impressiveness
to their ceremonies. As they covered those ceremonies with the veil of
Secrecy, so they preferred that Night should cover them with its wings.
Obscurity adds to impressiveness, and assists illusion; and they used it
to produce an effect upon the astonished Initiate. The ceremonies were
conducted in caverns dimly lighted: thick groves were planted around the
Temples, to produce that gloom that impresses the mind with a religious
awe.

The very word _mystery_, according to Demetrius Phalereus, was a
metaphorical expression that denoted the secret awe which darkness and
gloom inspired. The night was almost always the time fixed for their
celebration; and they were ordinarily termed _nocturnal_ ceremonies.
Initiations into the Mysteries of Samothrace took place at night; as did
those of Isis, of which Apuleius speaks. Euripides makes Bacchus say,
that _his_ Mysteries were celebrated at night, because there is in night
something august and imposing.

Nothing excites men's curiosity so much as Mystery, concealing things
which they desire to know: and nothing so much increases curiosity as
obstacles that interpose to prevent them from indulging in the
gratification of their desires. Of this the Legislators and Hierophants
took advantage, to attract the people to their sanctuaries, and to
induce them to seek to obtain lessons from which they would perhaps have
turned away with indifference, if they had been pressed upon them. In
this spirit of mystery they professed to imitate the Deity, who hides
Himself from our senses, and conceals from us the springs by which He
moves the Universe. They admitted that they concealed the highest truths
under the veil of allegory, the more to excite the curiosity of men, and
to urge them to investigation. The secrecy in which they buried their
Mysteries, had that end. Those to whom they were confided, bound
themselves, by the most fearful oaths, never to reveal them. They were
not allowed even to speak of these important secrets with any others
than the initiated; and the penalty of death was pronounced against any
one indiscreet enough to reveal them, or found in the Temple without
being an Initiate; and any one who had betrayed those secrets, was
avoided by all, as excommunicated.

Aristotle was accused of impiety, by the Hierophant Eurymedon, for
having sacrificed to the manés of his wife, according to the rite used
in the worship of Ceres. He was compelled to flee to Chalcis; and to
purge his memory from this stain, he directed, by his will, the erection
of a Statue to that Goddess. Socrates, dying, sacrificed to Esculapius,
to exculpate himself from the suspicion of Atheism. A price was set on
the head of Diagoras, because he had divulged the Secret of the
Mysteries. Andocides was accused of the same crime, as was Alcibiades,
and both were cited to answer the charge before the inquisition at
Athens, where the People were the Judges. Æschylus the Tragedian was
accused of having represented the Mysteries on the stage; and was
acquitted only on proving that he had never been initiated.

Seneca, comparing Philosophy to initiation, says that the most sacred
ceremonies could be known to the adepts alone: but that many of their
precepts were known even to the Profane. Such was the case with the
doctrine of a future life, and a state of rewards and punishments beyond
the grave. The ancient legislators clothed this doctrine in the pomp of
a mysterious ceremony, in mystic words and magical representations, to
impress upon the mind the truths they taught, by the strong influence of
such scenic displays upon the senses and imagination.

In the same way they taught the origin of the soul, its fall to the
earth past the spheres and through the elements, and its final return to
the place of its origin, when, during the continuance of its union with
earthly matter, the sacred fire, which formed its essence, had
contracted no stains, and its brightness had not been marred by foreign
particles, which, denaturalizing it, weighed it down and delayed its
return. These metaphysical ideas, with difficulty comprehended by the
mass of the Initiates, were represented by figures, by symbols, and by
allegorical analogies; no idea being so abstract that men do not seek to
give it expression by, and translate it into, sensible images.

The attraction of Secrecy was enhanced by the difficulty of obtaining
admission. Obstacles and suspense redoubled curiosity. Those who aspired
to the initiation of the Sun and in the Mysteries of Mithras in Persia,
underwent many trials. They commenced by easy tests and arrived by
degrees at those that were most cruel, in which the life of the
candidate was often endangered. Gregory Nazianzen terms them _tortures_
and mystic _punishments_. No one can be initiated, says Suidas, until
after he has proven, by the most terrible trials, that he possesses a
virtuous soul, exempt from the sway of every passion, and at it were
impassible. There were twelve principal tests; and some make the number
larger.

The trials of the Eleusinian initiations were not so terrible; but they
were severe; and the suspense, above all, in which the aspirant was kept
for several years [the memory of which is retained in Masonry by the
_ages_ of those of the different Degrees], or the interval between
admission to the _inferior_ and initiation in the _great_ Mysteries, was
a species of torture to the curiosity which it was desired to excite.
Thus the Egyptian Priests tried Pythagoras before admitting him to know
the secrets of the sacred science. He succeeded, by his incredible
patience and the courage with which he surmounted all obstacles, in
obtaining admission to their society and receiving their lessons. Among
the Jews, the Essenes admitted none among them, until they had passed
the tests or several Degrees.

By initiation, those who before were _fellow-citizens_ only, became
_brothers_, connected by a closer bond than before, by mean of a
religious fraternity, which, bringing men nearer together united them
more strongly: and the weak and the poor could more readily appeal for
assistance to the powerful and the wealthy, with whom religious
association gave them a closer fellowship.

The Initiate was regarded as the favorite of the Gods. For him alone
Heaven opened its treasures. Fortunate during life, he could, by virtue
and the favor of Heaven, promise himself after death an eternal
felicity.

The Priests of the Island of Samothrace promised favorable winds and
prosperous voyages to those who were initiated. It was promised them
that the CABIRI, and Castor and Pollux, the DIOSCURI, should appear to
them when the storm raged, and give them calms and smooth seas: and the
Scholiast of Aristophanes says that those initiated in the Mysteries
there were just men, who were privileged to escape from great evils and
tempests.

The Initiate in the Mysteries of Orpheus, after he was purified, was
considered as released from the empire of evil, and transferred to a
condition of life which gave him the happiest hopes. "I have emerged
from evil," he was made to say, "and have attained good." Those
initiated in the Mysteries of Eleusis believed that the Sun blazed with
a pure splendor for them alone. And, as we see in the case of Pericles,
they flattered themselves that Ceres and Proserpine inspired them and
gave them wisdom and counsel.

Initiation dissipated errors and banished misfortune: and after having
filled the heart of man with joy during life, it gave him the most
blissful hopes at the moment of death. We owe it to the Goddesses of
Eleusis, says Socrates, that we do not lead the wild life of the
earliest men: and to them are due the flattering hopes which initiation
gives us for the moment of death and for all eternity. The benefit which
we reap from these august ceremonies, says Aristides, is not only
present joy, a deliverance and enfranchisement from the old ills; but
also the sweet hope which we have in death of passing to a more
fortunate state. And Theon says that participation of the Mysteries is
the finest of all things, and the source of the greatest blessings. The
happiness promised there was not limited to this mortal life; but it
extended beyond the grave. There a new life was to commence, during
which the Initiate was to enjoy a bliss without alloy and without limit.
The Corybantes promised eternal life to the Initiates of the Mysteries
of Cybele and Atys.

Apuleius represents Lucius, while still in the form of an ass, as
addressing his prayers to Isis, whom he speaks of as the same as Ceres,
Venus, Diana, and Proserpine, and as illuminating the walls of many
cities simultaneously with her feminine lustre, and substituting her
quivering light for the bright rays of the Sun. She appears to him in
his vision as a beautiful female, "over whose divine neck her long thick
hair hung in graceful ringlets." Addressing him, she says, "The parent
of Universal nature attends thy call. The mistress of the Elements,
initiative germ of generations, Supreme of Deities, Queen of departed
spirits, first inhabitant of Heaven, and uniform type of all the Gods
and Goddesses, propitiated by thy prayers, is with thee. She governs
with her nod the luminous heights of the firmament, the salubrious
breezes of the ocean; the silent deplorable depths of the shades below;
one Sole Divinity under many forms, worshipped by the different nations
of the Earth under many titles, and with various religious rites."

Directing him how to proceed, at her festival, to re-obtain his human
shape, she says: "Throughout the entire course of the remainder of thy
life, until the very last breath has vanished from thy lips, thou art
devoted to my service.... Under my protection will thy life be happy and
glorious: and when, thy days being spent, thou shalt descend to the
shades below, and inhabit the Elysian fields, there also, even in the
subterranean hemisphere, shalt thou pay frequent worship to me, thy
propitious patron: and yet further: if through sedulous obedience,
religious devotion to my ministry, and inviolable chastity, thou shalt
prove thyself a worthy object of divine favor, then shalt thou feel the
influence of the power that I alone possess. The number of thy days
shall be prolonged beyond the Ordinary decrees of fate."

In the procession of the festival, Lucius saw the image of the Goddess,
on either side of which were female attendants, that, "with ivory combs
in their hands, made believe, by the motion of their arms and the
twisting of their fingers, to comb and ornament the Goddess' royal
hair." Afterward, clad in linen robes, came the initiated. "The hair of
the women was moistened by perfume, and enveloped in a transparent
covering; but the men, terrestrial stars, as it were, of the great
religion, were thoroughly shaven, and their bald heads shone
exceedingly."

Afterward came the Priests, in robes of white linen. The first bore a
lamp in the form of a boat, emitting flame from an orifice in the
middle: the second, a small altar: the third, a golden palm-tree: and
the fourth displayed the figure of a left hand, the palm open and
expanded, "representing thereby a symbol of equity and fair-dealing, of
which the left hand, as slower than the right hand, and more void of
skill and craft, is therefore an appropriate emblem."

After Lucius had, by the grace of Isis, recovered his human form, the
Priest said to him, "Calamity hath no hold on those whom our Goddess
hath chosen for her service, and whom her majesty hath vindicated." And
the people declared that he was fortunate to be "thus after a manner
born again, and at once betrothed to the service of the Holy Ministry."

When he urged the Chief Priest to initiate him, he was answered that
there was not a single one among the initiated, of a mind so depraved,
or so bent on his own destruction, as, without receiving a special
command from Isis, to dare to undertake her ministry rashly and
sacrilegiously, and thereby commit an act certain to bring upon himself
a dreadful injury. "For", continued the Chief Priest, "the gates of the
shades below, and the care of our life being in the hands of the
Goddess,--_the ceremony of initiation into the Mysteries is_, as it
were, _to suffer death_, with the precarious chance of resuscitation.
Wherefore the Goddess, in the wisdom of her Divinity, hath been
accustomed to select as persons to whom the secrets of her religion can
with propriety be entrusted, those who, standing as it were on the
utmost limit of the course of life they have completed, _may through her
Providence be in a manner born again_, and commence the career of a new
existence".

When he was finally to be initiated, he was conducted to the nearest
baths, and after having bathed, the Priest first solicited forgiveness
of the Gods, and then sprinkled him all over with the clearest and
purest water, and conducted him back to the Temple, "where," says
Apuleius, "after giving me some instruction, that mortal tongue is not
permitted to reveal, he bade me for the succeeding ten days restrain my
appetite, eat no animal food, and drink no wine."

These ten days elapsed, the Priest led him into the inmost recesses of
the Sanctuary. "And here, studious reader," he continues, "peradventure
thou wilt be sufficiently anxious to know all that was said and done,
which, were it lawful to divulge, I would tell thee; and, wert thou
permitted to hear, thou shouldst know. Nevertheless, although the
disclosure would affix the penalty of rash curiosity to my tongue as
well as thy ears, yet will I, for fear thou shouldst be too long
tormented with religious longing, and suffer the pain of protracted
suspense, tell the truth notwithstanding. Listen then to what I shall
relate. _I approached the abode of death; with my foot I pressed the
threshold of Proserpine's Palace. I was transported through the
elements, and conducted back again. At midnight I saw the bright light
of the sun shining. I stood in the presence of the Gods, the Gods of
Heaven and of the Shades below; ay, stood near and worshipped._ And now
have I told thee such things that, hearing, thou necessarily canst not
understand; and being beyond the comprehension of the Profane, I can
enunciate without committing a crime."

After night had passed, and the morning had dawned, the usual ceremonies
were at an end. Then he was consecrated by twelve stoles being put upon
him, clothed, crowned with palm-leaves, and exhibited to the people. The
remainder of that day was celebrated as his birthday and passed in
festivities; and on the third day afterward, the same religious
ceremonies were repeated, including a religious breakfast, _"followed by
a final consummation of ceremonies_."

A year afterward, he was warned to prepare for initiation into the
Mysteries of "the Great God, Supreme Parent of all the other Gods, the
invincible OSIRIS." "For," says Apuleius, "although there is a strict
connexion between the religions of both Deities, AND EVEN THE ESSENCE OF
BOTH DIVINITIES IS IDENTICAL, the ceremonies of the respective
initiations are considerably different."

Compare with this hint the following language of the prayer of Lucius,
addressed to Isis; and we may judge what doctrines were taught in the
Mysteries, in regard to the Deity: "O Holy and Perpetual Preserver of
the Human Race! ever ready to cherish Mortals by Thy munificence, and to
afford Thy sweet maternal affection to the wretched under misfortune;
Whose bounty is never at rest, neither by day nor by night, nor
throughout the very minutest particle of duration; Thou who stretchest
forth Thy health-bearing right hand over the land and over the sea for
the protection of mankind, to disperse the storms of life, to unravel
the inextricable entanglement of the web of fate, to mitigate the
tempests of fortune, and restrain the malignant influences of the
stars,--_the Gods in Heaven adore Thee, the Gods in the shades below do
Thee homage, the stars obey Thee, the Divinities rejoice in Thee, the
elements and the revolving seasons serve Thee!_ At Thy nod the winds
breathe, clouds gather, seeds grow, buds germinate; _in obedience to
Thee the Earth revolves_ AND THE SUN GIVES US LIGHT. IT IS THOU WHO
GOVERNEST THE UNIVERSE AND TREADEST TARTARUS UNDER THY FEET."

Then he was initiated into the nocturnal Mysteries of Osiris and
Serapis: and afterward into those of Ceres at Rome: but of the
ceremonies in these initiations, Apuleius says nothing.

Under the Archonship of Euclid, bastards and slaves were excluded from
initiation; and the same exclusion obtained against the Materialists or
Epicureans who denied Providence and consequently the utility of
initiation. By a natural progress, it came at length to be considered
that the gates of Elysium would open only for the Initiates, whose souls
had been purified and regenerated in the sanctuaries. But it was never
held, on the other hand, that initiation alone sufficed. We learn from
Plato, that it was also necessary for the soul to be purified from every
stain: and that the purification necessary was such as gave virtue,
truth, wisdom, strength, justice, and temperance.

Entrance to the Temples was forbidden to all who had committed homicide,
even if it were involuntary. So it is stated by both Isocrates and
Theon. Magicians and Charlatans who made trickery a trade, and impostors
pretending to be possessed by evil spirits, were excluded from the
sanctuaries. Every impious person and criminal was rejected; and
Lampridius states that before the celebration of the Mysteries, public
notice was given, that none need apply to enter but those against whom
their consciences uttered no reproach, and who were certain of their own
innocence.

It was required of the Initiate that his heart and hands should be free
from any stain. Porphyry says that man's soul, at death, should be
enfranchised from all the passions, from hate, envy, and the others;
and, in a word, _be as pure as it is required to be in the Mysteries_.
Of course it is not surprising that parricides and perjurers, and
others who had committed crimes against God or man, could not be
admitted.

In the Mysteries of Mithras, a lecture was repeated to the Initiate on
the subject of Justice. And the great moral lesson of the Mysteries, to
which all their mystic ceremonial tended, expressed in a single line by
Virgil, was _to practise Justice and revere the Deity_;--thus recalling
men to justice, by connecting it with the justice of the Gods, who
require it and punish its infraction. The Initiate could aspire to the
favors of the Gods, only because and while he respected the rights of
society and those of humanity. "The sun," says the chorus of Initiates
in Aristophanes, "burns with a pure light for us alone, who, admitted to
the Mysteries, observe the laws of piety in our intercourse with
strangers and our fellow-citizens." The rewards of initiation were
attached to the practice of the social virtues. It was not enough to be
initiated merely. It was necessary to be faithful to the _laws_ of
initiation, which imposed on men duties in regard to their kind. Bacchus
allowed none to participate in his Mysteries, but men who conformed to
the rules of piety and justice. Sensibility, above all, and compassion
for the misfortunes of others, were precious virtues, which initiation
strove to encourage. "Nature," says Juvenal, "has created us
compassionate, since it has endowed us with tears. Sensibility is the
most admirable of our senses. What man is truly worthy of the torch of
the Mysteries; who such as the Priest of Ceres requires him to be, if he
regards the misfortunes of others as wholly foreign to himself?"

All who had not used their endeavors to defeat a conspiracy; and those
who had on the contrary fomented one; those citizens who had betrayed
their country, who had surrendered an advantageous post or place, or the
vessels of the State, to the enemy; all who had supplied the enemy with
money; and in general, all who had come short of their duties as honest
men and good citizens, were excluded from the Mysteries of Eleusis. To
be admitted there, one must have lived equitably, and with sufficient
good fortune not to be regarded as hated by the Gods.

Thus the Society of the Initiates was, in its principle, and according
to the true purpose of its institution, a society of virtuous men, who
labored to free their souls from the tyranny of the passions, and to
develop the germ of all the social virtues. And this was the meaning of
the idea, afterward misunderstood, that entry into Elysium was only
allowed to the Initiates: because entrance to the sanctuaries was
allowed to the virtuous only, and Elysium was created for virtuous souls
alone.

The precise nature and details of the doctrines as to a future life, and
rewards and punishments there, developed in the Mysteries, is in a
measure uncertain. Little direct information in regard to it has come
down to us. No doubt, in the ceremonies there was a scenic
representation of Tartarus and the judgment of the dead, resembling that
which we find in Virgil: but there is as little doubt that these
representations were explained to be allegorical. It is not our purpose
here to repeat the descriptions given of Elysium and Tartarus. That
would be aside from our object. We are only concerned with the great
fact that the Mysteries taught the doctrine of the soul's immortality,
and that, in some shape, suffering, pain, remorse, and agony, ever
follow sin as its consequences.

Human ceremonies are indeed but imperfect symbols; and the alternate
baptisms in fire and water intended to purify us into immortality, are
ever in this world interrupted at the moment of their anticipated
completion. Life is a mirror which reflects only to deceive, a tissue
perpetually interrupted and broken, an urn forever fed, yet never full.

All initiation is but introductory to the great change of death Baptism,
anointing, embalming, obsequies by burial or fire, are preparatory
symbols, like the initiation of Hercules before descending to the
Shades, pointing out the mental change which ought to precede the
renewal of existence. Death is the true initiation, to which sleep is
the introductory or minor mystery. It is the final rite which united the
Egyptian with his God, and which opens the same promise to all who are
duly prepared for it.

The body was deemed a prison for the soul; but the latter was not
condemned to eternal banishment and imprisonment. The Father of the
Worlds permits its chains to be broken, and has provided in the course
of Nature the means of its escape. It was a doctrine of immemorial
antiquity, shared alike by Egyptians, Pythagoreans, the Orphici, and by
that characteristic Bacchic Sage, "the Preceptor of the Soul," Silenus,
that death is far better than life; that the real death belongs to those
who on earth are immersed in the Lethe of its passions and fascinations,
and that the true life commences only when the soul is emancipated for
its return.

And in this sense, as presiding over life and death, Dionusos is in the
highest sense _the_ LIBERATOR: since, like Osiris, he frees the soul,
and guides it in its migrations beyond the grave, preserving it from the
risk of again falling under the slavery of matter or of some inferior
animal form, the purgatory of Metempsychosis; and exalting and
perfecting its nature through the purifying discipline of his Mysteries.
"The great consummation of all philosophy," said Socrates, professedly
quoting from traditional and mystic sources, "is _Death_: He who pursues
philosophy aright, _is studying how to die_."

All soul is part of the Universal Soul, whose totality is Dionusos; and
it is therefore he who, as Spirit of Spirits, leads back the vagrant
spirit to its home, and accompanies it through the purifying processes,
both real and symbolical, of its earthly transit. He is therefore
emphatically the _Mystes_ or Hierophant, the great Spiritual Mediator of
Greek religion.

The human soul is itself [Greek: δαιμονιος] a God _within_ the mind,
capable through its own power of rivalling the canonization of the Hero,
of making itself immortal by the practice of the good, and the
contemplation of the beautiful and true. The removal to the Happy
Islands could only be understood mythically; everything earthly must
die; Man, like Œdipus, is wounded from his birth, his real elysium can
exist only beyond the grave. Dionusos died and descended to the shades.
His passion was the great Secret of the Mysteries; as Death is the Grand
Mystery of existence. His death, typical of Nature's Death, or of her
periodical decay and restoration, was one of the many symbols of the
_palingenesia_ or second birth of man.

Man descended from the elemental Forces or Titans [Elohim], who fed on
the body of the Pantheistic Deity creating the Universe by
self-sacrifice, commemorates in sacramental observance this mysterious
passion; and while partaking of the raw flesh of the victim, seems to be
invigorated by a fresh draught from the fountain of universal life, to
receive a new pledge of regenerated existence. Death is the inseparable
antecedent of life; the seed dies in order to produce the plant, and
earth itself is rent asunder and dies at the birth of Dionusos. Hence
the significancy of the _phallus_, or of its inoffensive substitute, the
obelisk, rising as an emblem of resurrection by the tomb of buried Deity
at Lerna or at Sais.

Dionusos-Orpheus descended to the Shades to recover the lost Virgin of
the Zodiac, to bring back his mother to the sky as Thyone; or what has
the same meaning, to consummate his eventful marriage with Persephone,
thereby securing, like the nuptials of his father with Semele or Danaë,
the perpetuity of Nature. His under-earth office is the depression of
the year, the wintry aspect in the alternations of bull and serpent,
whose united series makes up the continuity of Time, and in which,
physically speaking, the stern and dark are ever the parents of the
beautiful and bright.

It was this aspect, sombre for the moment, but bright by anticipation,
which was contemplated in the Mysteries: the human sufferer was consoled
by witnessing the severer trials of the Gods; and the vicissitudes of
life and death, expressed by apposite symbols, such as the sacrifice or
submersion of the Bull, the extinction and re-illumination of the torch,
excited corresponding emotions of alternate grief and joy, that play of
passion which was present at the origin of Nature, and which accompanies
all her changes.

The greater Eleusiniæ; were celebrated in the month Boëdromion, when the
seed was buried in the ground, and when the year, verging to its
decline, disposes the mind to serious reflection. The first days of the
ceremonial were passed in sorrow and anxious silence, in fasting and
expiatory or lustral offices. On a sudden, the scene was changed: sorrow
and lamentation were discarded, the glad name of Iacchus passed from
mouth to mouth, the image of the God, crowned with myrtle and bearing a
lighted torch, was borne in joyful procession from the Ceramicus to
Eleusis, where, during the ensuing night, the initiation was completed
by an imposing revelation. The first scene was in the [Greek: προναος],
or outer court of the sacred enclosure, where amidst utter darkness, or
while the meditating God, the star illuminating the Nocturnal Mystery,
alone carried an unextinguished torch, the candidates were overawed with
terrific sounds and noises, while they painfully groped their way, as in
the gloomy cavern of the soul's sublunar migration; a scene justly
compared to the passage of the Valley of the Shadow of Death. For by the
immutable law exemplified in the trials of Psyche, man must pass through
the terrors of the under-world, before he can reach the height of
Heaven. At length the gates of the _adytum_ were thrown open, a
supernatural light streamed from the illuminated statue of the Goddess,
and enchanting sights and sounds, mingled with songs and dances, exalted
the communicant to a rapture of supreme felicity, realizing, as far as
sensuous imagery could depict, the anticipated reunion with the Gods.

In the dearth of direct evidence as to the detail of the ceremonies
enacted, or of the meanings connected with them, their tendency must be
inferred from the characteristics of the contemplated deities with their
accessory symbols and mythi, or from direct testimony as to the value of
the Mysteries generally.

The ordinary phenomena of vegetation, the death of the seed in giving
birth to the plant, connecting the sublimest hopes with the plainest
occurrences, was the simple yet beautiful formula assumed by the great
mystery in almost all religions, from the Zend-Avesta to the Gospel. As
Proserpina, the divine power is as the seed decaying and destroyed; as
Artemis, she is the principle of its destruction; but Artemis Proserpina
is also Cotē Soteria, the Saviour, who leads the Spirits of Hercules and
Hyacinthus to Heaven.

Many other emblems were employed in the Mysteries,--as the dove, the
myrtle-wreath, and others, all significant of life rising out of death,
and of the equivocal condition of dying yet immortal man.

The horrors and punishments of Tartarus, as described in the Phædo and
the Æneid, with all the ceremonies of the judgments of Minos, Eacus, and
Rhadamanthus, were represented, sometimes more and sometimes less fully,
in the Mysteries; in order to impress upon the minds of the Initiates
this great lesson,--that we should be ever prepared to appear before the
Supreme Judge, with a heart pure and spotless; as Socrates teaches in
the Gorgias. For the soul stained with crimes, he says, to descend to
the Shades, is the bitterest ill. To adhere to Justice and Wisdom, Plato
holds, is our duty, that we may some day take that lofty road that leads
toward the heavens, and avoid most of the evils to which the soul is
exposed in its subterranean journey of a thousand years. And so in the
Phædo, Socrates teaches that we should seek here below to free our soul
of its passions, in order to be ready to enter our appearance, whenever
Destiny summons us to the Shades.

Thus the Mysteries inculcated a great moral truth, veiled with a fable
of huge proportions and the appliances of an impressive spectacle, to
which, exhibited in the sanctuaries, art and natural magic lent all
they had that was imposing. They sought to strengthen men against the
horrors of death and the fearful idea of utter annihilation. Death, says
the author of the dialogue, entitled _Axiochus_, included in the works
of Plato, is but a passage to a happier state; but one must have lived
well, to attain that most fortunate result. So that the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul was consoling to the virtuous and religious man
alone; while to all others it came with menaces and despair, surrounding
them with terrors and alarms that disturbed their repose during all
their life.

For the material horrors of Tartarus, allegorical to the Initiate, were
real to the mass of the Profane; nor in latter times, did, perhaps many
Initiates read rightly the allegory. The triple-walled prison, which the
condemned soul first met, round which swelled and surged the fiery waves
of Phlegethon, wherein rolled roaring, huge, blazing rocks; the great
gate with columns of adamant, which none save the Gods could crush;
Tisiphone, their warder, with her bloody robes; the lash resounding on
the mangled bodies of the miserable unfortunates, their plaintive
groans, mingled in horrid harmony with the clashings of their chains;
the Furies, lashing the guilty with their snakes; the awful abyss where
Hydra howls with its hundred heads, greedy to devour; Tityus, prostrate,
and his entrails fed upon by the cruel vulture: Sisyphus, ever rolling
his rock; Ixion on his wheel; Tantalus tortured by eternal thirst and
hunger, in the midst of water and with declicious fruits touching his
head; the daughters of Danaus at their eternal, fruitless task; beasts
biting and venomous reptiles stinging; and devouring flame eternally
consuming bodies ever renewed in endless agony; all these sternly
impressed upon the people the terrible consequences of sin and vice, and
urged them to pursue the paths of honesty and virtue.

And if, in the ceremonies of the Mysteries, these material horrors were
explained to the Initiates as mere symbols of the unimaginable torture,
remorse, and agony that would rend the immaterial soul and rack the
immortal spirit, they were feeble and insufficient in the same mode and
measure only, as all material images and symbols fall short of that
which is beyond the cognizance of our senses: and the grave Hierophant,
the imagery, the paintings, the dramatic horrors, the funeral
sacrifices, the august mysteries, the solemn silence of the sanctuaries,
were none the less impressive, because they were known to be but
symbols, that with material shows and images made the imagination to be
the teacher of the intellect.

So, too, it was represented, that except for the gravest sins there was
an opportunity for expiation; and the tests of _water_, _air_, and
_fire_ were represented; by means of which, during the march of many
years, the soul could be purified, and rise toward the ethereal regions;
that ascent being more or less tedious and laborious, according as each
soul was more or less clogged by the gross impediments of its sins and
vices. Herein was shadowed forth, (how distinctly taught the Initiates
we know not), the doctrine that pain and sorrow, misfortune and remorse,
are the inevitable _consequences_ that flow from sin and vice, as effect
flows from cause; that by each sin and every act of vice the soul drops
back and loses ground in its advance toward perfection: and that the
ground so lost is and will be in reality never so recovered as that the
sin shall be as if it never had been committed; but that throughout all
the eternity of its existence, each soul shall be conscious that every
act of vice or baseness it did on earth has made the distance greater
between itself and ultimate perfection.

We see this truth glimmering in the doctrine, taught in the Mysteries,
that though slight and ordinary offences could be expiated by penances,
repentance, acts of beneficence, and prayers, grave crimes were mortal
sins, beyond the reach of all such remedies. Eleusis closed her gates
against Nero: and the Pagan Priests told Constantine that among all
their modes of expiation there was none so potent as could wash from
_his_ soul the dark spots left by the murder of his wife, and his
multiplied perjuries and assassinations.

The object of the ancient initiations being to ameliorate mankind and to
perfect the intellectual part of man, the nature of the human soul, its
origin, its destination, its relations to the body and to universal
nature, all formed part of the mystic science; and to them in part the
lessons given to the Initiate were directed. For it was believed that
initiation tended to his perfection, and to preventing the divine part
within him, overloaded with matter gross and earthy, from being plunged
into gloom, and impeded in its return to the Deity. The soul, with them,
was not a mere conception or abstraction; but a reality including in
itself life and thought; or, rather, of whose essence it was to live and
think.

It was material; but not brute, inert, inactive, lifeless, motionless,
formless, lightless matter. It was held to be active, reasoning,
thinking; its natural home in the highest regions of the Universe,
whence it descended to illuminate, give form and movement to, vivify,
animate, and carry with itself the baser matter; and whither it
unceasingly tends to reascend, when and as soon as it can free itself
from its connection with that matter. From that substance, divine,
infinitely delicate and active, essentially luminous, the souls of men
were formed, and by it alone, uniting with and organizing their bodies,
men _lived_.

This was the doctrine of Pythagoras, who learned it when he received the
Egyptian Mysteries: and it was the doctrine of all who, by means of the
ceremonial of initiation, thought to purify the soul. Virgil makes the
spirit of Anchises teach it to Æneas: and all the expiations and
lustrations used in the Mysteries were but symbols of those intellectual
ones by which the soul was to be purged of its vice-spots and stains,
and freed of the incumbrance of its earthly prison, so that it might
rise unimpeded to the source from which it came.

Hence sprung the doctrine of the transmigration of souls; which
Pythagoras taught as an allegory, and those who came after him received
literally. Plato, like him, drew his doctrines from the East and the
Mysteries, and undertook to translate the language of the symbols used
there, into that of Philosophy; and to prove by argument and
philosophical deduction, what, _felt_ by the consciousness, the
Mysteries taught by symbols as an indisputable fact,--the immortality of
the soul. Cicero did the same; and followed the Mysteries in teaching
that the Gods were but mortal men, who for their great virtues and
signal services had deserved that their souls should, after death, be
raised to that lofty rank.

It being taught in the Mysteries, either by way of allegory, the meaning
of which was not made known except to a select few, or, perhaps only at
a later day, as an actual reality, that the souls of the vicious dead
passed into the bodies of those animals to whose nature their vices had
most affinity, it was also taught that the soul could avoid these
transmigrations, often successive and numerous, by the practice of
virtue, which would acquit it of them, free it from the circle of
successive generations, and restore it at once to its source. Hence
nothing was so ardently prayed for by the Initiates, says Proclus, as
this happy fortune, which, delivering them from the empire of Evil,
would restore them to their true life, and conduct them to the place of
final rest. To this doctrine probably referred those figures of animals
and monsters which were exhibited to the Initiate, before allowing him
to see the sacred light for which he sighed.

Plato says, that souls will not reach the term of their ills, until the
revolutions of the world have restored them to their primitive
condition, and purified them from the stains which they have contracted
by the contagion of fire, earth, and air. And he held that they could
not be allowed to enter Heaven, until they had distinguished themselves
by the practice of virtue in some one of three several bodies. The
Manicheans allowed five: Pindar, the same number as Plato; as did the
Jews.

And Cicero says, that the ancient soothsayers, and the interpreters of
the will of the Gods, in their religious ceremonies and initiations,
taught that we expiate here below the crimes committed in a prior life;
and for that are born. It was taught in these Mysteries, that the soul
passes through several states, and that the pains and sorrows of this
life are an expiation of prior faults.

This doctrine of transmigration of souls obtained, as Porphyry informs
us, among the Persians and Magi. It was held in the East and the West,
and that from the remotest antiquity. Herodotus found it among the
Egyptians, who made the term of the circle of migrations from one human
body, through animals, fishes, and birds, to another human body, three
thousand years. Empedocles even held that souls went into plants. Of
these, the laurel was the noblest, as of animals the lion; both being
consecrated to the Sun, to which, it was held in the Orient, virtuous
souls were to return. The Curds, the Chinese, the Kabbalists, all held
the same doctrine. So Origen held, and the Bishop Synesius, the latter
of whom had been initiated, and who thus prayed to God: "O Father, grant
that my soul, reunited to the light, may not be plunged again into the
defilements of earth!" So the Gnostics held; and even the Disciples of
Christ inquired if the man who was born blind, was not so punished for
some sin that he had committed before his birth.

Virgil, in the celebrated allegory in which he develops the doctrines
taught in the Mysteries, enunciated the doctrine, held by most of the
ancient philosophers, of the pre-existence of souls, in the eternal fire
from which they emanate; that fire which animates the Stars, and
circulates in every part of Nature: and the purifications of the soul,
by fire, water, and air, of which he speaks, and which three modes were
employed in the Mysteries of Bacchus, were symbols of the passage of the
soul into different bodies.

The relations of the human soul with the rest of nature were a chief
object of the science of the Mysteries. The man was there brought face
to face with entire nature. The world, and the spherical envelope that
surrounds it, were represented by a mystic egg, by the side of the image
of the Sun-God whose Mysteries were celebrated. The famous Orphic egg
was consecrated to Bacchus in his Mysteries. It was, says Plutarch, an
image of the Universe, which engenders everything, and contains
everything in its bosom. "Consult," says Macrobius, "the Initiates of
the Mysteries of Bacchus, who honor with special veneration the sacred
egg." The rounded and almost spherical form of its shell, he says, which
encloses it on every side, and confines within itself the principles of
life, is a symbolic image of the world; and the world is the universal
principle of all things.

This symbol was borrowed from the Egyptians, who also consecrated the
egg to Osiris, germ of Light, himself born, says Diodorus, from that
famous egg. In Thebes, in Upper Egypt, he was represented as emitting it
from his mouth, and causing to issue from it the first principle of heat
and light, or the Fire-God, Vulcan, or Phtha. We find this egg even in
Japan, between the horns of the famous Mithriac Bull, whose attributes
Osiris, Apis, and Bacchus all borrowed.

Orpheus, author of the Grecian Mysteries, which he carried from Egypt to
Greece, consecrated this symbol: and taught that matter, uncreated and
informous, existed from all eternity, unorganized, as chaos; containing
in itself the Principles of all Existences confused and intermingled,
light with darkness, the dry with the humid, heat with cold; from which,
it after long ages taking the shape of an immense egg, issued the purest
matter, or first substance, and the residue was divided into the four
elements, from which proceeded heaven and earth and all things else.
This grand Cosmogonic idea he taught in the Mysteries; and thus the
Hierophant explained the meaning of the mystic egg, seen by the
Initiates in the Sanctuary.

Thus entire Nature, in her primitive organization, was presented to him
whom it was wished to instruct in her secrets and initiate in her
mysteries; and Clemens of Alexandria might well say that initiation was
a real physiology.

So Phanes, the Light-God, in the Mysteries of the New Orphics, emerged
from the egg of chaos: and the Persians had the great egg of Ormuzd. And
Sanchoniathon tells us that in the Phœnician theology, the matter of
chaos took the form of an egg; and he adds: "Such are the lessons which
the Son of Thabion, first Hierophant of the Phœnicians, turned into
allegories, in which physics and astronomy intermingled, and which he
taught to the other Hierophants, whose duty it was to preside at orgies
and initiations; and who, seeking to excite the astonishment and
admiration of mortals, faithfully transmitted these things to their
successors and the Initiates."

In the Mysteries was also taught the division of the Universal Cause
into an Active and a Passive cause; of which two, Osiris and Isis,--the
heavens and the earth were symbols. These two First Causes, into which
it was held that the great Universal First Cause at the beginning of
things divided itself, were the two great Divinities, whose worship was,
according to Varro, inculcated upon the Initiates at Samothrace. "As is
taught," he says, "in the initiation into the Mysteries at Samothrace,
Heaven and Earth are regarded as the two first Divinities. They are the
potent Gods worshipped in that Island, and whose names are consecrated
in the books of our Augurs. One of them is male and the other female;
and they bear the same relation to each other as the soul does to the
body, humidity to dryness." The Curetes, in Crete, had builded an altar
to Heaven and to Earth; whose Mysteries they celebrated at Gnossus, in a
cypress grove.

These two Divinities, the Active and Passive Principles of the Universe,
were commonly symbolized by the generative parts of man and woman; to
which, in remote ages, no idea of indecency was attached; the _Phallus_
and _Cteis_, emblems of generation and production, and which, as such,
appeared in the Mysteries. The Indian Lingam was the union of both, as
were the boat and mast and the point within a circle: all of which
expressed the same philosophical idea as to the Union of the two great
Causes of Nature, which concur, one actively and the other passively, in
the generation of all beings: which were symbolized by what we now term
_Gemini_, the Twins, at that remote period when the Sun was in that
Sign at the Vernal Equinox, and when they were Male and Female; and of
which the Phallus was perhaps taken from the generative organ of the
Bull, when about twenty-five hundred years before our era he opened that
equinox, and became to the Ancient World the symbol of the creative and
generative Power.

The Initiates at Eleusis commenced, Proclus says, by invoking the two
great causes of nature, the Heavens and the Earth, on which in
succession they fixed their eyes, addressing to each a prayer. And they
deemed it their duty to do so, he adds, because they saw in them the
Father and Mother of all generations. The concourse of these two agents
of the Universe was termed in theological language a _marriage_.
Tertullian, accusing the Valentinians of having borrowed these symbols
from the Mysteries of Eleusis, yet admits that in those Mysteries they
were explained in a manner consistent with decency, as representing the
powers of nature. He was too little of a philosopher to comprehend the
sublime esoteric meaning of these emblems, which will, if you advance,
in other Degrees be unfolded to you.

The Christian Fathers contented themselves with reviling and ridiculing
the use of these emblems. But as they in the earlier times created no
indecent ideas, and were worn alike by the most innocent youths and
virtuous women, it will be far wiser for us to seek to penetrate their
meaning. Not only the Egyptians, says Diodorus Siculus, but every other
people that consecrate this symbol (the Phallus), deem that they thereby
do honor to the Active Force of the universal generation of all living
things. For the same reason, as we learn from the geographer Ptolemy, it
was revered among the Assyrians and Persians. Proclus remarks that in
the distribution of the Zodiac among the twelve great Divinities, by
ancient astrology, six signs were assigned to the male and six to the
female principle.

There is another division of nature, which has in all ages struck all
men, and which was not forgotten in the Mysteries; that of Light and
Darkness, Day and Night, Good and Evil; which mingle with, and clash
against, and pursue or are pursued by each other throughout the
Universe. The Great Symbolic Egg distinctly reminded the Initiates of
this great division of the world. Plutarch, treating of the dogma of a
Providence, and of that of the two principles of Light and Darkness,
which he regarded as the basis of the Ancient Theology, of the Orgies
and the Mysteries, as well among the Greeks as the Barbarians,--a
doctrine whose origin, according to him, is lost in the night of
time,--cites, in support of his opinion, the famous Mystic Egg of the
disciples of Zoroaster and the Initiates in the Mysteries of Mithras.

To the Initiates in the Mysteries of Eleusis was exhibited the spectacle
of these two principles, in the successive scenes of Darkness and Light
which passed before their eyes. To the profoundest darkness, accompanied
with illusions and horrid phantoms, succeeded the most brilliant light,
whose splendor blazed round the statue of the Goddess. The candidate,
says Dion Chrysostomus, passed into a mysterious temple, of astonishing
magnitude and beauty, where were exhibited to him many mystic scenes;
where his ears were stunned with many voices; and where Darkness and
Light successively passed before him. And Themistius in like manner
describes the Initiate, when about to enter into that part of the
sanctuary tenanted by the Goddess, as filled with fear and religious
awe, wavering, uncertain in what direction to advance through the
profound darkness that envelopes him. But when the Hierophant has opened
the entrance to the inmost sanctuary, and removed the robe that hides
the Goddess, he exhibits her to the Initiate, resplendent with divine
light. The thick shadow and gloomy atmosphere which had environed the
candidate vanish; he is filled with a vivid and glowing enthusiasm, that
lifts his soul out of the profound dejection in which it was plunged;
and the purest light succeeds to the thickest darkness.

In a fragment of the same writer, preserved by Stobæus, we learn that
the Initiate, up to the moment when his initiation is to be consummated,
is alarmed by every kind of sight: that astonishment and terror take his
soul captive; he trembles; cold sweat flows from his body; until the
moment when the Light is shown him,--a most astounding Light,--the
brilliant scene of Elysium, where he sees charming meadows overarched by
a clear sky, and festivals celebrated by dances; where he hears
harmonious voices, and the majestic chants of the Hierophants; and views
the sacred spectacles. Then, absolutely free, and enfranchised from the
dominion of all ills, he mingles with the crowd of Initiates, and,
crowned with flowers, celebrates with them the holy orgies, in the
brilliant realms of ether, and the dwelling-place of Ormuzd.

In the Mysteries of Isis, the candidate first passed through the dark
valley of the shadow of death; then into a place representing the
elements or sublunary world, where the two principles clash and contend;
and was finally admitted to a luminous region where the sun, with his
most brilliant light, put to rout the shades of night. Then he himself
put on the costume of the Sun-God or the Visible Source of Ethereal
Light, in whose Mysteries he was initiated; and passed from the empire
of darkness to that of light. After having set his feet on the threshold
of the palace of Pluto he ascended to the Empyrean, to the bosom of the
Eternal Principle of Light of the Universe, from which all souls and
intelligences emanate.

Plutarch admits that this theory of two Principles was the basis of all
the Mysteries, and consecrated in the religious ceremonies and Mysteries
of Greece. Osiris and Typhon, Ormuzd and Ahriman, Bacchus and the Titans
and Giants, all represented these principles. Phanes, the luminous God
that issued from the Sacred Egg, and Night, bore the sceptres in the
Mysteries of the New Bacchus. Night and Day were two of the eight Gods
adored in the Mysteries of Osiris. The sojourn of Proserpine and also of
Adonis, during six months of each year in the upper world, abode of
light, and six months in the lower or abode of darkness, allegorically
represented the same division of the Universe.

The connection of the different initiations with the Equinoxes which
separate the Empire of the Nights from that of the Days, and fix the
moment when one of these principles begins to prevail over the other,
shows that the Mysteries referred to the continual contest between the
two principles of light and darkness, each alternately victor and
vanquished. The very object proposed by them shows that their basis was
the theory of the two principles and their relations with the soul. "We
celebrate the august Mysteries of Ceres and Proserpine," says the
Emperor Julian, "at the Autumnal Equinox, to obtain of the Gods that the
soul may not experience the malignant action of the Power of Darkness
that is then about to have sway and rule in Nature." Sallust the
Philosopher makes almost the same remark as to the relations of the soul
with the periodical march of light and darkness, during an annual
revolution; and assures us that the mysterious festivals of Greece
related to the same. And in all the explanations given by Macrobius of
the Sacred Fables in regard to the Sun, adored under the names of
Osiris, Horus, Adonis, Atys, Bacchus, etc., we invariably see that they
refer to the theory of the two Principles, Light and Darkness, and the
triumphs gained by one over the other. In April was celebrated the first
triumph obtained by the light of day over the length of the nights; and
the ceremonies of mourning and rejoicing had, Macrobius says, as their
object, the vicissitudes of the annual administration of the world.

This brings us naturally to the tragic portion of these religious
scenes, and to the allegorical history of the different adventures of
the Principle, Light, victor and vanquished by turns, in the combats
waged with Darkness during each annual period. Here we reach the most
mysterious part of the ancient initiations, and that most interesting to
the Mason who laments the death of his Grand Master Khir-Om. Over it
Herodotus throws the august veil of mystery and silence. Speaking of the
Temple of Minerva, or of that Isis who was styled the Mother of the
Sun-God, and whose Mysteries were termed _Isiac_, at Sais, he speaks of
a Tomb in the Temple, in the rear of the Chapel and against the wall;
and says, "It is the tomb of a man, whose name respect requires me to
conceal. Within the Temple were great obelisks of stone [_phalli_], and
a circular lake paved with stones and revetted with a parapet. It seemed
to me as large as that at Delos" [where the Mysteries of Apollo were
celebrated]. "In this lake the Egyptians celebrate, during the night,
what they style the Mysteries, in which are represented the sufferings
of the God of whom I have spoken above." This God was Osiris, put to
death by Typhon, and who descended to the Shades and was restored to
life; of which he had spoken before.

We are reminded, by this passage, of the Tomb of Khir-Om, his death, and
his rising from the grave, symbolical of restoration of life; and also
of the brazen Sea in the Temple at Jerusalem. Herodotus adds: "I impose
upon myself a profound silence in regard to these Mysteries, with most
of which I am acquainted. As little will I speak of the initiations of
Ceres, known among the Greeks as Thesmophoria. What I shall say will not
violate the respect which I owe to religion."

Athenagoras quotes this passage to show that not only the Statue but the
Tomb of Osiris was exhibited in Egypt, and a tragic representation of
his sufferings; and remarks that the Egyptians had mourning ceremonies
in honor of their Gods, whose deaths they lamented; and to whom they
afterward sacrificed as having passed to a state of immortality.

It is, however, not difficult, combining the different rays of light
that emanate from the different Sanctuaries, to learn the genius and the
object of these secret ceremonies. We have hints, and not details.

We know that the Egyptians worshipped the Sun, under the name of Osiris.
The misfortunes and tragical death of this God were an allegory relating
to the Sun. Typhon, like Ahriman, represented Darkness. The sufferings
and death of Osiris in the Mysteries of the Night were a mystic image of
the phenomena of Nature, and the conflict of the two great Principles
which share the empire of Nature, and most influenced our souls. The Sun
is neither born, dies, nor is raised to life: and the recital of these
events was but an allegory, veiling a higher truth.

Horus, son of Isis, and the same as Apollo or the Sun, also died and was
restored again to life and to his mother; and the priests of Isis
celebrated these great events by mourning and joyous festival succeeding
each other.

In the Mysteries of Phoenicia, established in honor of Thammuz or Adoni,
also the Sun, the spectacle of his death and resurrection was exhibited
to the Initiates. As we learn from Meursius and Plutarch, a figure was
exhibited representing the corpse of a young man. Flowers were strewed
upon his body, the women mourned for him; a tomb was erected to him. And
these feasts, as we learn from Plutarch and Ovid, passed into Greece.

In the Mysteries of Mithras, the Sun-God, in Asia Minor, Armenia and
Persia, the death of that God was lamented, and his resurrection was
celebrated with the most enthusiastic expressions of joy. A corpse, we
learn from Julian Firmicus, was shown the Initiates, representing
Mithras dead; and afterward his resurrection was announced; and they
were then invited to rejoice that the dead God was restored to life, and
had by means of his sufferings secured their salvation. Three months
before, his birth had been celebrated, under the emblem of an infant,
born on the 25th of December, or the eighth day before the Kalends of
January.

In Greece, in the Mysteries of the same God, honored under the name of
Bakchos, a representation was given of his death, slain by the Titans;
of his descent into hell, his subsequent resurrection, and his return
toward his Principle or the pure abode whence he had descended to unite
himself with matter. In the islands of Chios and Tenedos, his death was
represented by the sacrifice of a man, actually immolated.

The mutilation and sufferings of the same Sun-God, honored in Phrygia
under the name of Atys, caused the tragic scenes that were, as we learn
from Diodorus Siculus, represented annually in the Mysteries of Cybele,
mother of the Gods. An image was borne there, representing the corpse of
a young man, over whose tomb tears were shed, and to whom funeral honors
were paid.

At Samothrace, in the Mysteries of the Cabiri or great Gods, a
representation was given of the death of one of them. This name was
given to the Sun, because the Ancient Astronomers gave the name of Gods
Cabiri and of Samothrace to the two Gods in the Constellation Gemini;
whom others term Apollo and Hercules, two names of the Sun. Athenion
says that the young Cabirus so slain was the same as the Dionusos or
Bakchos of the Greeks. The Pelasgi, ancient inhabitants of Greece, and
who settled Samothrace, celebrated these Mysteries, whose origin is
unknown: and they worshipped Castor and Pollux as patrons of navigation.

The tomb of Apollo was at Delphi, where his body was laid, after Python,
the Polar Serpent that annually heralds the coming of autumn, cold,
darkness, and winter, had slain him, and over whom the God triumphs, on
the 25th of March, on his return to the lamb of the Vernal Equinox.

In Crete, Jupiter Ammon, or the Sun in Aries, painted with the
attributes of that equinoctial sign, the Ram or Lamb;--that Ammon who,
Martianus Copella says, is the same as Osiris, Adoni, Adonis, Atys, and
the other Sun-Gods,--had also a tomb, and a religious initiation; one of
the principal ceremonies of which consisted in clothing the Initiate
with the skin of a white lamb. And in this we see the origin of the
apron of white sheep-skin, used in Masonry.

All these deaths and resurrections, these funeral emblems, these
anniversaries of mourning and joy, these cenotaphs raised in different
places to the Sun-God, honored under different names, had but a single
object, the allegorical narration of the events which happened here
below to the Light of Nature, that sacred fire from which our souls were
deemed to emanate, warring with Matter and the dark Principle resident
therein, ever at variance with the Principle of Good and Light poured
upon itself by the Supreme Divinity. All these Mysteries, says Clemens
of Alexandria, displaying to us murders and tombs alone, all these
religious tragedies, had a common basis, variously ornamented: and that
basis was the fictitious death and resurrection of the Sun, Soul of the
World, principle of life and movement in the Sublunary World, and source
of our intelligences, which are but a portion of the Eternal Light
blazing in that Star, their chief centre.

It was in the Sun that Souls, it was said, were purified: and to it they
repaired. It was one of the gates of the soul, through which the
theologians, says Porphyry, say that it re-ascends toward the home of
Light and the Good. Wherefore, in the Mysteries of Eleusis, the Dadoukos
(the first officer after the Hierophant, who represented the Grand
Demiourgos or Maker of the Universe), who was posted in the interior of
the Temple, and there received the candidates, represented the Sun.

It was also held that the vicissitudes experienced by the Father of
Light had an influence on the destiny of souls; which, of the same
substance as he, shared his fortunes. This we learn from the Emperor
Julian and Sallust the Philosopher. They are afflicted when he suffers:
they rejoice when he triumphs over the Power of Darkness which opposes
his sway and hinders the happiness of Souls, to whom nothing is so
terrible as darkness. The fruit of the sufferings of the God, father of
light and Souls, slain by the Chief of the Powers of Darkness, and again
restored to life, was received in the Mysteries. "His death works your
Salvation;" said the High Priest of Mithras. That was the great secret
of this religious tragedy, and its expected fruit;--the resurrection of
a God, who, repossessing Himself of His dominion over Darkness, should
associate with Him in His triumph those virtuous Souls that by their
purity were worthy to share His glory; and that strove not against the
divine force that drew them to Him, when He had thus conquered.

To the Initiate were also displayed the spectacles of the chief agents
of the Universal Cause, and of the distribution of the world, in the
detail of its parts arranged in most regular order. The Universe itself
supplied man with the model of the first Temple reared to the Divinity.
The arrangement of the Temple of Solomon, the symbolic ornaments which
formed its chief decorations, and the dress of the High Priest,--all, as
Clemens of Alexandria, Josephus and Philo state, had reference to the
order of the world. Clemens informs us that the Temple contained many
emblems of the Seasons, the Sun, the Moon, the planets, the
constellations Ursa Major and Minor, the zodiac, the elements, and the
other parts of the world.

Josephus, in his description of the High Priest's Vestments, protesting
against the charge of impiety brought against the Hebrews by other
nations, for contemning the Heathen Divinities, declares it false,
because, in the construction of the Tabernacle, in the vestments of the
Sacrificers, and in the Sacred vessels, the whole World was in some sort
represented. Of the three parts, he says, into which the Temple was
divided, two represent Earth and Sea, open to all men, and the third,
Heaven, God's dwelling-place, reserved for Him alone. The twelve loaves
of Shew-bread signify the twelve months of the year. The Candlestick
represented the twelve signs through which the Seven Planets run their
courses; and the seven lights, those planets; the veils, of four colors,
the four elements; the tunic of the High Priest, the earth; the
Hyacinth, nearly blue, the Heavens; the ephod, of four colors, the whole
of nature; the gold, Light; the breast-plate, in the middle, this earth
in the centre of the world; the two Sardonyxes, used as clasps, the Sun
and Moon; and the twelve precious stones of the breast-plate arranged by
threes, like the Seasons, the twelve months, and the twelve signs of the
zodiac. Even the loaves were arranged in two groups of six, like the
zodiacal signs above and below the Equator. Clemens, the learned Bishop
of Alexandria, and Philo, adopt all these explanations.

Hermes calls the Zodiac, the Grent Tent,--Tabernaculum. In the Royal
Arch Degree of the American Rite, the Tabernacle has four veils, of
different colors, to each of which belongs a banner. The colors of the
four are White, Blue, Crimson, and Purple, and the banners bear the
images of the Bull, the Lion, the Man, and the Eagle, the Constellations
answering 2500 years before our era to the Equinoctial and Solstitial
points: to which belong four stars, Aldebaran, Regulus, Fomalhaut, and
Antares. At each of these veils there are three words: and to each
division of the Zodiac, belonging to each of these Stars, are three
Signs. The four signs, Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, were termed
the _fixed_ signs, and are appropriately assigned to the four veils.

So the Cherubim, according to Clemens and Philo, represented the two
hemispheres: their wings, the rapid course of the firmament, and of time
which revolves in the Zodiac. "For the Heavens fly;" says Philo,
speaking of the wings of the Cherubim: which were winged representations
of the Lion, the Bull, the Eagle, and the Man; of two of which, the
human-headed, winged bulls and lions, so many have been found at
Nimroud; adopted as beneficent symbols, when the Sun entered Taurus at
the Vernal Equinox and Leo at the Summer Solstice: and when, also, he
entered Scorpio for which, on account of its malignant influences,
Aquila, the eagle was substituted, at the autumnal equinox; and Aquarius
(the water-bearer) at the Winter Solstice.

So, Clemens says, the candlestick with seven branches represented the
seven planets, like which the seven branches were arranged and
regulated, preserving that musical proportion and system of harmony of
which the sun was the centre and connection. They were arranged, says
Philo, by threes, like the planets above and those below the sun;
between which two groups was the branch that represented him, the
mediator or moderator of the celestial harmony. He is, in fact, the
fourth in the musical scale, as Philo remarks, and Martianus Capella in
his hymn to the Sun.

Near the candlestick were other emblems representing the heavens, earth,
and the vegetative matter out of whose bosom the vapors arise. The whole
temple was an abridged image of the world. There were candlesticks with
four branches, symbols of the elements and the seasons; with twelve,
symbols of the signs; and even with three hundred and sixty, the number
of days in the year, without the supplementary days. Imitating the
famous Temple of Tyre, where were the great columns consecrated to the
winds and fire, the Tyrian artist placed two columns of bronze at the
entrance of the porch of the temple. The hemispherical brazen sea,
supported by four groups of bulls, of three each, looking to the four
cardinal points of the compass, represented the bull of the Vernal
Equinox, and at Tyre were consecrated to Astarte; to whom Hiram,
Josephus says, had builded a temple, and who wore on her head a helmet
bearing the image of a bull. And the throne of Solomon, with bulls
adorning its arms, and supported on lions, like those of Horus in Egypt
and of the Sun at Tyre; likewise referred to the Vernal Equinox and
Summer Solstice.

Those who in Thrace adored the sun, under the name of Saba-Zeus, the
Grecian Bakchos, builded to him, says Macrobius, a temple on Mount
Zelmisso, its round form representing the world and the sun. A circular
aperture in the roof admitted the light, and introduced the image of
the sun into the body of the sanctuary, where he seemed to blaze as in
the heights of Heaven, and to dissipate the darkness within that temple
which was a representative symbol of the world. There the passion,
death, and resurrection of Bakchos were represented.

So the Temple of Eleusis was lighted by a window in the roof. The
sanctuary so lighted, Dion compares to the Universe, from which he says
it differed in size alone; and in it the great lights of nature played a
great part and were mystically represented. The images of the Sun, Moon,
and Mercury were represented there, (the latter the same as Anubis who
accompanied Isis); and they are still the three lights of a Masonic
Lodge; except that for Mercury, the Master of the Lodge has been
absurdly substituted.

Eusebius names as the principal Ministers in the Mysteries of Eleusis,
first, the _Hierophant_, clothed with the attributes of the Grand
Architect (Demiourgos) of the Universe. After him came the _Dadoukos_,
or torch-bearer, representative of the Sun: then the altar-bearer,
representing the Moon: and last, the _Hieroceryx_, bearing the caduceus,
and representing Mercury. It was not permissible to reveal the different
emblems and the mysterious pageantry of initiation to the Profane; and
therefore we do not know the attributes, emblems, and ornaments of these
and other officers; of which Apuleius and Pausanias dared not speak.

We know only that everything recounted there was marvellous; everything
done there tended to astonish the Initiate: and that eyes and ears were
equally astounded. The Hierophant, of lofty height, and noble features,
with long hair, of a great age, grave and dignified, with a voice sweet
and sonorous, sat upon a throne, clad in a long trailing robe; as the
Motive-God of Nature was held to be enveloped in His work and hidden
under a veil which no mortal can raise. Even His name was concealed,
like that of the Demiourgos, whose name was ineffable.

The Dadoukos also wore a long robe, his hair long, and a bandeau on his
forehead. Callias, when holding that office, fighting on the great day
of Marathon, clothed with the insignia of his office, was taken by the
Barbarians to be a King. The Dadoukos led the procession of the
Initiates, and was charged with the Purifications.

We do not know the functions of the _Epibomos_ or assistant at the
altar, who represented the moon. That planet was one of the two homes
of souls, and one of the two great gates by which they descended and
reascended. Mercury was charged with the conducting of souls through the
two great gates; and in going from the sun to the moon they passed
immediately by him. He admitted or rejected them as they were more or
less pure, and therefore the Hieroceryx or Sacred Herald, who
represented Mercury was charged with the duty of excluding the Profane
from the Mysteries.

The same officers are found in the procession of Initiates of Isis,
described by Apuleius. All clad in robes of white linen, drawn tight
across the breast, and close-fitting down to the very feet, came, first,
one bearing a lamp in the shape of a boat; second, one carrying an
altar; and third, one carrying a golden palm-tree and the caduceus.
These are the same as the three officers at Eleusis, after the
Hierophant. Then one carrying an open hand, and pouring milk on the
ground from a golden vessel in the shape of a woman's breast. The hand
was that of justice: and the milk alluded to the Galaxy or Milky Way,
along which souls descended and remounted. Two others followed, one
bearing a winnowing fan, and the other a water-vase; symbols of the
purification of souls by air and water; and the third purification, by
earth, was represented by an image of the animal that cultivates it, the
cow or ox, borne by another officer.

Then followed a chest or ark, magnificently ornamented, containing an
image of the organs of generation of Osiris, or perhaps of both sexes;
emblems of the original generating and producing Powers. When Typhon,
said the Egyptian fable, cut up the body of Osiris into pieces, he flung
his genitals into the Nile, where a fish devoured them. Atys mutilated
himself, as his Priests afterward did in imitation of him; and Adonis
was in that part of his body wounded by the boar: all of which
represented the loss by the Sun of his vivifying and generative power,
when he reached the Autumnal Equinox (the Scorpion that on old monuments
bites those parts of the Vernal Bull), and descended toward the region
of darkness and Winter.

Then, says Apuleius, came "one who carried in his bosom an object that
rejoiced the heart of the bearer, a venerable effigy of the Supreme
Deity, neither bearing resemblance to man, cattle, bird, beast, or any
living creature: an exquisite invention, venerable from the novel
originality of the fashioning; a wonderful, ineffable symbol of
religious mysteries, to be looked upon in profound silence. Such as it
was, its figure was that of a small urn of burnished gold, hollowed very
artistically, rounded at the bottom, and covered all over the outside
with the wonderful hieroglyphics of the Egyptians. The spout was not
elevated, but extended laterally, projecting like a long rivulet; while
on the opposite side was the handle, which, with similar lateral
extension, bore on its summit an asp, curling its body into folds, and
stretching upward, its wrinkled, scaly, swollen throat."

The salient basilisk, or royal ensign of the Pharaohs, often occurs on
the monuments--a serpent in folds, with his head raised erect above the
folds. The basilisk was the Phoenix of the serpent-tribe; and the vase
or urn was probably the vessel, shaped like a cucumber, with a
projecting spout, out of which, on the monuments of Egypt, the priests
are represented pouring streams of the _cruz ansata_ or Tau Cross, and
of _sceptres_, over the kings.

In the Mysteries of Mithras, a sacred cave, representing the whole
arrangement of the world, was used for the reception of the Initiates.
Zoroaster, says Eubulus, first introduced this custom of consecrating
caves. They were also consecrated, in Crete, to Jupiter; in Arcadia, to
the Moon and Pan; and in the Island of Naxos, to Bacchus. The Persians,
in the cave where the Mysteries of Mithras were celebrated, fixed the
seat of that God, Father of Generation, or Demiourgos, near the
equinoctial point of Spring, with the Northern portion of the world on
his right, and the Southern on his left.

Mithras, says Porphyry, presided over the Equinoxes, seated on a Bull,
the symbolical animal of the Demiourgos, and bearing a sword. The
equinoxes were the gates through which souls passed to and fro, between
the hemisphere of light and that or darkness. The milky way was also
represented, passing near each of these gates: and it was, in the old
theology, termed the pathway of souls. It is, according to Pythagoras,
vast troops of souls that form that luminous belt.

The route followed by souls, according to Porphyry, or rather their
progressive march in the world, lying through the fixed stars and
planets, the Mithriac cave not only displayed the zodiacal and other
constellations, and marked gates at the four equinoctial and solstitial
points of the zodiac, whereat souls enter into and escape from the world
of generations; and through which they pass to and fro between the
realms of light and darkness; but it represented the seven planetary
spheres which they needs must traverse, in descending from the heaven of
the fixed stars to the elements that envelop the earth; and seven gates
were marked, one for each planet, through which they pass, in descending
or returning.

We learn this from Celsus, in Origen; who says that the symbolical image
of this passage among the Stars, used in the Mithriac Mysteries, was a
ladder, reaching from earth to Heaven, divided into seven steps or
stages, to each of which was a gate, and at the summit an eighth, that
of the fixed stars. The first gate says Celsus, was that of Saturn, and
of lead, by the heavy nature whereof his dull slow progress was
symbolized. The second, of tin, was that of Venus, symbolizing her soft
splendor and easy flexibility. The third, of brass, was that of Jupiter,
emblem of his solidity and dry nature. The fourth, of iron, was that of
Mercury, expressing his indefatigable activity and sagacity. The fifth,
of copper, was that of Mars, expressive of his inequalities and variable
nature. The sixth, of silver, was that of the Moon: and the seventh, of
gold, that of the Sun. This order is not the real order of these
Planets; but a mysterious one, like that of the days of the Week
consecrated to them, commencing with Saturday, and _retrograding_ to
Sunday. It was dictated, Celsus says, by certain harmonic relations,
those of the fourth.

Thus there was an intimate connection between the Sacred Science of the
Mysteries, and ancient astronomy and physics; and the grand spectacle of
the Sanctuaries was that of the order of the Known Universe, or the
spectacle of Nature itself, surrounding the soul of the Initiate, as it
surrounded it when it first descended through the planetary gates, and
by the equinoctal and solstitial doors, along the Milky Way, to be for
the first time immured in its prison-house of matter. But the Mysteries
also represented to the candidate, by sensible symbols, the invisible
forces which move this visible Universe, and the virtues, qualities, and
powers attached to matter, and which maintain the marvellous order
observed therein. Of this Porphyry informs us.

The world, according to the philosophers of antiquity, was not a purely
material and mechanical machine. A great Soul, diffused everywhere,
vivified all the members of the immense body of the Universe; and an
Intelligence, equally great, directed all its movements, and maintained
the eternal harmony that resulted therefrom. Thus the Unity of the
Universe, represented by the symbolic egg, contained in itself two
units, the Soul and the Intelligence, which pervaded all its parts: and
they were to the Universe, considered as an animated and intelligent
being, what intelligence and the soul of life are to the individuality
of man.

The doctrine of the Unity of God, in this sense, was taught by Orpheus.
Of this his hymn or palinode is a proof; fragments of which are quoted
by many of the Fathers, as Justin, Tatian, Clemens of Alexandria, Cyril,
and Theodoret, and the whole by Eusebius, quoting from Aristobulus. The
doctrine of the LOGOS (word) or the Noos (intellect), his incarnation,
death, resurrection or transfiguration; of his union with matter, his
division in the visible world, which he pervades, his return to the
original Unity, and the whole theory relative to the origin of the soul
and its destiny, were taught in the Mysteries, of which they were the
great object.

The Emperor Julian, explains the Mysteries of Atys and Cybele by the
same metaphysical principles, respecting the demiurgical Intelligence,
its descent into matter, and its return to its origin: and extends this
explanation to those of Ceres. And so likewise does Sallust the
Philosopher, who admits in God a secondary intelligent Force, which
descends into the generative matter to organize it. These mystical ideas
naturally formed a part of the sacred doctrine and of the ceremonies of
initiation, the object of which, Sallust remarks, was to unite man with
the World and the Deity; and the final term of perfection whereof was,
according to Clemens, the contemplation of nature, of real beings, and
of causes. The definition of Sallust is correct. The Mysteries were
practised as a means of perfecting the soul, of making it to know its
own dignity, of reminding it of its noble origin and immortality, and
consequently of its relations with the Universe and the Deity, what was
meant by _real_ beings, was _invisible_ beings, _genii_, the _faculties_
or _powers_ of nature; everything not a part of the _visible_ world,
which was called, by way of opposition, _apparent_ existence. The theory
of Genii, or Powers of Nature, and its Forces, personified, made part of
the Sacred Science of initiation, and of that religious spectacle of
different beings exhibited in the Sanctuary. It resulted from that
belief in the providence and superintendence of the Gods, which was one
of the primary bases of initiation. The administration of the Universe
by Subaltern Genii, to whom it is confided, and by whom good and evil
are dispensed in the world, was a consequence of this dogma, taught in
the Mysteries of Mithras, where was shown that famous egg, shared
between Ormuzd and Ahriman, each of whom commissioned twenty-four Genii
to dispense the good and evil found therein; they being under twelve
Superior Gods, six on the side of Light and Good and six on that of
Darkness and Evil.

This doctrine of the Genii, depositaries of the Universal Providence,
was intimately connected with the Ancient Mysteries, and adopted in the
sacrifices and initiations both of Greeks and Barbarians. Plutarch says
that the Gods, by means of Genii, who are intermediates between them and
men, draw near to mortals in the ceremonies of initiation, at which the
Gods charge them to assist, and to distribute punishment and blessing.
Thus not the Deity, but His ministers, or a Principle and Power of Evil,
were deemed the authors of vice and sin and suffering: and thus the
Genii or angels differed in character like men, some being good and some
evil; some Celestial Gods, Archangels, Angels, and some Infernal Gods,
Demons and fallen Angels.

At the head of the latter was their Chief, Typhon, Ahriman, or Shaitan,
the Evil Principle; who, having wrought disorder in nature, brought
troubles on men by land and sea, and caused the greatest ills, is at
last punished for his crimes. It was these events and incidents, says
Plutarch, which Isis desired to represent in the ceremonial of the
Mysteries, established by her in memory of her sorrows and wanderings,
whereof she exhibited an image and representation in her Sanctuaries,
where also were afforded encouragements to piety and consolation in
misfortune. The dogma of a Providence, he says, administering the
Universe by means of intermediary Powers, who maintain the connection of
man with the Divinity, was consecrated in the Mysteries of the
Egyptians, Phrygians, and Thracians, of the Magi and the Disciples of
Zoroaster; as is plain by their initiations, in which mournful and
funereal ceremonies mingled. It was an essential part of the lessons
given the Initiates, to teach them the relations of their own souls with
Universal Nature, the greatest lessons of all, meant to dignify man in
his own eyes, and teach him his place in the Universe of things.

Thus the whole system of the Universe was displayed in all its parts to
the eyes of the Initiate; and the symbolic cave which represented it was
adorned and clothed with all the attributes of that Universe. To this
world so organized, endowed with a double force, active and passive,
divided between light and darkness, moved by a living and intelligent
Force, governed by Genii or Angels who preside over its different parts,
and whose nature and character are more lofty or low in proportion as
they possess a greater or less portion of dark matter,--to this world
descends the soul, emanation of the ethereal fire, and exiled from the
luminous region above the world. It enters into this dark matter,
wherein the hostile Principles, each seconded by his troops of Genii,
are ever in conflict, there to submit to one or more organizations in
the body which is its prison, until it shall at last return to its place
of origin, its true native country, from which during this life it is an
exile.

But one thing remained,--to represent its return, through the
constellations and planetary spheres, to its original home. The
celestial fire, the philosophers said, soul of the world and of fire, an
universal principle, circulating above the Heavens, in a region
infinitely pure and wholly luminous, itself pure, simple, and unmixed,
is above the world by its specific lightness. If any part of it (say a
human soul) descends, it acts against its nature in doing so, urged by
an inconsiderate desire of the intelligence, a perfidious love for
matter which causes it to descend, to know what passes here below, where
good and evil are in conflict. The Soul, a simple substance, when
unconnected with matter, a ray or particle of the Divine Fire, whose
home is in Heaven, ever turns toward that home, while united with the
body, and struggles to return thither.

Teaching this, the Mysteries strove to recall man to his divine origin,
and point out to him the means of returning thither. The great science
acquired in the Mysteries was knowledge of man's self, of the nobleness
of his origin, the grandeur of his destiny, and his superiority over the
animals, which can never acquire this knowledge, and whom he resembles
so long as he does not reflect upon his existence and sound the depths
of his own nature.

By doing and suffering, by virtue and piety and good deeds, the soul was
enabled at length to free itself from the body, and ascend along the
path of the Milky Way, by the gate of Capricorn and by the seven
spheres, to the place whence by many gradations and successive lapses
and enthralments it had descended. And thus the theory of the spheres,
and of the signs and intelligences which preside there, and the whole
system of astronomy, were connected with that of the soul and its
destiny; and so were taught in the Mysteries, in which were developed
the great principles of physics and metaphysics as to the origin of the
soul, its condition here below, its destination, and its future fate.

The Greeks fix the date of the establishment of the Mysteries of Eleusis
at the year 1423 B.C., during the reign of Erechtheus at Athens.
According to some authors, they were instituted by Ceres herself; and
according to others, by that Monarch, who brought them from Egypt,
where, according to Diodorus of Sicily, he was born. Another tradition
was, that Orpheus introduced them into Greece, together with the
Dionisiac ceremonies, copying the latter from the Mysteries of Osiris,
and the former from those of Isis.

Nor was it at Athens only, that the worship and Mysteries of Isis,
metamorphosed into Ceres, were established. The Bœotians worshipped the
Great or Cabiric Ceres, in the recesses of a sacred grove, into which
none but Initiates could enter; and the ceremonies there observed, and
the sacred traditions of their Mysteries, were connected with those of
the Cabiri in Samothrace.

So in Argos, Phocis, Arcadia, Achaia, Messenia, Corinth, and many other
parts of Greece, the Mysteries were practised, revealing everywhere
their Egyptian origin and everywhere having the same general features;
but those of Eleusis, in Attica, Pausanius informs us, had been regarded
by the Greeks, from the earliest times, as being as far superior to all
the others, as the Gods are to mere Heroes.

Similar to these were the Mysteries of Bona Dea, the Good Goddess, whose
name, say Cicero and Plutarch, it was not permitted to any man to know,
celebrated at Rome from the earliest times of that city. It was these
Mysteries, practised by women alone, the secrecy of which was impiously
violated by Clodius. They were held at the Kalends of May; and,
according to Plutarch, much of the ceremonial greatly resembled that of
the Mysteries of Bakchos.

The Mysteries of Venus and Adonis belonged principally to Syria and
Phœnicia, whence they passed into Greece and Sicily. Venus or Astarte
was the Great Female Deity of the Phœnicians, as Hercules, Melkarth or
Adoni was their Chief God. Adoni, called by the Greeks Adonis, was the
lover of Venus. Slain by a wound in the thigh inflicted by a wild boar
in the chase, the flower called anemone sprang from his blood. Venus
received the corpse and obtained from Jupiter the boon that her lover
should thereafter pass six months of each year with her, and the other
six in the Shades with Proserpine; an allegorical description of the
alternate residence of the Sun in the two hemispheres. In these
Mysteries his death was represented and mourned, and after this
maceration and mourning were concluded, his resurrection and ascent to
Heaven were announced.

Ezekiel speaks of the festivals of Adonis under the name of those of
Thammuz, an Assyrian Deity, whom every year the women mourned, seated at
the doors of their dwellings. These Mysteries, like the others, were
celebrated in the Spring, at the Vernal Equinox, when he was restored to
life; at which time, when they were instituted, the Sun (ADON, Lord, or
Master) was in the Sign Taurus, the domicile of Venus. He was
represented with horns, and the hymn of Orpheus in his honor styles him
"the two-horned God;" as in Argos Bakchos was represented with the feet
of a bull.

Plutarch says that Adonis and Bakchos were regarded as one and the same
Deity; and that this opinion was founded on the great similarity in very
many respects between the Mysteries of these two Gods.

The Mysteries of Bakchos were known as the Sabazian, Orphic, and
Dionysiac Festivals. They went back to the remotest antiquity among the
Greeks, and were attributed by some to Bakchos himself, and by others to
Orpheus. The resemblance in ceremonial between the observances
established in honor of Osiris in Egypt, and those in honor of Bakchos
in Greece, the mythological traditions of the two Gods, and the symbols
used in the festivals of each, amply prove their identity. Neither the
name of Bakchos, nor the word _orgies_ applied to his feasts, nor the
sacred words Used in his Mysteries, are Greek, but of foreign origin.
Bakchos was an Oriental Deity, worshipped in the East, and his orgies
celebrated there, long before the Greeks adopted them. In the earliest
times he was worshipped in India, Arabia, and Bactria.

He was honored in Greece with public festivals, and in simple or
complicated Mysteries, varying in ceremonial in various places, as was
natural, because his worship had come thither from different countries
and at different periods. The people who celebrated the complicated
Mysteries were ignorant of the meaning of many words which they used,
and of many emblems which they revered. In the Sabazian Feasts, for
example [from Saba-Zeus an oriental name of this Deity], the words EVOI,
SABOI, were used, which are in nowise Greek; and a serpent of gold was
thrown into the bosom of the Initiate, in allusion to the fable that
Jupiter had, in the form of a serpent, had connection with Proserpina,
and begotten Bakchos, the bull; whence the enigmatical saying, repeated
to the Initiates, that a bull engendered a dragon or serpent, and the
serpent in turn engendered the bull, who became Bakchos: the meaning of
which was, that the bull [Taurus, which then opened the Vernal Equinox,
and the Sun in which Sign, figuratively represented by the Sign itself,
was Bakchos, Dionusos, Saba-Zeus, Osiris, etc.], and the Serpent,
another constellation, occupied such relative positions in the Heavens,
that when one rose the other set, and _vice versa_.

The serpent was a familiar symbol in the Mysteries of Bakchos. The
Initiates grasped them with their hands, as Orphiucus does on the
celestial globe, and the Orpheo-telestes, or purifier of candidates did
the same, crying, as Demosthenes taunted Æschines with doing in public
at the head of the women whom his mother was to imitate, EVOI, SABOI,
HYES ATTÊ, ATTÊ, HYES!

The Initiates in these Mysteries had preserved the ritual and ceremonies
that accorded with the simplicity of the earliest ages, and the manners
of the first men. The rules of Pythagoras were followed there. Like the
Egyptians, who held wool unclean, they buried no Initiate in woolen
garments. They abstained from bloody sacrifices; and lived on fruits or
vegetables or inanimate things. They imitated the life of the
contemplative Sects of the Orient; thus approximating to the tranquility
of the first men, who lived exempt from trouble and crimes in the bosom
of a profound peace. One of the most precious advantages promised by
their initiation was, to put a man in communion with the Gods, by
purifying his soul of all the passions that interfere with that
enjoyment, and dim the rays of divine light that are communicated to
every soul capable of receiving them, and that imitate their purity. One
of the degrees of initiation was the state of inspiration to which the
adepts were claimed to attain. The Initiates in the Mysteries of the
Lamb, at Pepuza, in Phrygia, professed to be inspired, and prophesied;
and it was claimed that the soul, by means of these religious
ceremonies, purified of all stain, could see the Gods in this life, and
certainly, in all cases, after death.

The sacred gates of the Temple, where the ceremonies of initiation were
performed, were opened but once in each year, and no stranger was ever
allowed to enter it. Night threw her veil over these august Mysteries,
which could be revealed to no one. There the sufferings of Bakchos were
represented, who, like Osiris, died, descended to hell and rose to life
again; and raw flesh was distributed to the Initiates, which each ate,
in memory of the death of the Deity, torn in pieces by the Titans.

These Mysteries also were celebrated at the Vernal Equinox; and the
emblem of generation, to express the active energy and generative power
of the Divinity, was a principal symbol. The Initiates wore garlands and
crowns of myrtle and laurel.

In these Mysteries, the aspirant was kept in terror and darkness to
perform the three days and nights; and was then made [Greek: Aϕα
υισμος], or ceremony representing the death of Bakchos, the same
mythological personage with Osiris. This was effected by confining him
in a close cell, that he might seriously reflect, in solitude and
darkness, on the business he was engaged in: and his mind be prepared
for the reception of the sublime and mysterious truths of primitive
revelation and philosophy. This was a symbolic death; the deliverance
from it, regeneration; after which he was called [Greek: διϕυης] or
twin-born. While confined in the cell, the pursuit of Typhon after the
mangled body of Osiris, and the search of Rhea or Isis for the same,
were enacted in his hearing; the initiated crying aloud the names of
that Deity derived from the Sanscrit. Then it was announced that the
body was found; and the aspirant was liberated amid shouts of joy and
exultation.

Then he passed through a representation of Hell and Elysium. "Then,"
said an ancient writer, "they are entertained with hymns and dances,
with the sublime doctrines of sacred knowledge, and with wonderful and
holy visions. And now become perfect and initiated, they are FREE, and
no longer under restraint; but, crowned and triumphant, they walk up and
down the regions of the blessed, converse with pure and holy men, and
celebrate the sacred Mysteries at pleasure." They were taught the nature
and objects of the Mysteries, and the means of making themselves known,
and received the name of Epopts; were fully instructed in the nature and
attributes of the Divinity, and the doctrine of a future state; and
made acquainted with the unity and attributes of the Grand Architect of
the Universe, and the true meaning of the fables in regard to the Gods
of Paganism: the great Truth being often proclaimed, that "Zeus is the
primitive Source of all things; there is ONE God; ONE power, and ONE
rule over all." And after full explanation of the many symbols and
emblems that surrounded them, they were dismissed with the barbarous
words [Greek: Κογξ] and [Greek: Ομπαξ], corruptions of the Sanscrit
words, Kanska Aom Pakscha; meaning, _object of our wishes, God,
Silence_, or _Worship the Deity in Silence_.

Among the emblems used was the rod of Bakchos; which once, it was said,
he cast on the ground, and it became a serpent; and at another time he
struck the rivers Orontes and Hydaspes with it, and the waters receded
and he passed over dry-shod. Water was obtained, during the ceremonies,
by striking a rock with it. The Bakchæ crowned their heads with
serpents, carried them in vases and baskets, and at the [Greek:
Ευρησιϛ], or finding, of the body of Osiris, cast one, alive, into the
aspirant's bosom.

The Mysteries of Atys in Phrygia, and those of Cybele his mistress, like
their worship, much resembled those of Adonis and Bakchos, Osiris and
Isis. Their Asiatic origin is universally admitted, and was with great
plausibility claimed by Phrygia, which contested the palm of antiquity
with Egypt. They, more than any other people, mingled allegory with
their religious worship, and were great inventors of fables; and their
sacred traditions as to Cybele and Atys, whom all admit to be Phrygian
Gods, were very various. In all, as we learn from Julius Firmicus, they
represented by allegory the phenomena of nature, and the succession of
physical facts, under the veil of a marvellous history.

Their feasts occurred at the equinoxes, commencing with lamentation,
mourning, groans, and pitiful cries for the death of Atys; and ending
with rejoicings at his restoration to life.

We shall not recite the different versions of the legend of Atys and
Cybele, given by Julius Firmicus, Diodorus, Arnobius, Lactantius,
Servius, Saint Augustine, and Pausanias. It is enough to say that it is
in substance this: that Cybele, a Phrygian Princess, who invented
musical instruments and dances, was enamored of Atys, a youth; that
either he in a fit of frenzy mutilated himself or was mutilated by her
in a paroxysm of jealousy; that he died, and afterward, like Adonis,
was restored to life. It is the Phœnician fiction as to the Sun-God,
expressed in other terms, under other forms, and with other names.

Cybele was worshipped in Syria, under the name of Rhea. Lucian says that
the Lydian Atys there established her worship and built her temple. The
name of Rhea is also found in the ancient cosmogony of the Phœnicians by
Sanchoniathon. It was Atys the Lydian, says Lucian, who, having been
mutilated, first established the Mysteries of Rhea, and taught the
Phrygians, the Lydians, and the people of Samothrace to celebrate them.
Rhea, like Cybele, was represented drawn by lions, bearing a drum, and
crowned with flowers. According to Varro, Cybele represented the earth.
She partook of the characteristics of Minerva, Venus, the Moon, Diana,
Nemesis, and the Furies; was clad in precious stones; and her High
Priest wore a robe of purple and a tiara of gold.

The Grand Feast of the Syrian Goddess, like that of the Mother of the
Gods at Rome, was celebrated at the Vernal Equinox. Precisely at that
equinox the Mysteries of Atys were celebrated, in which the Initiates
were taught to expect the rewards of a future life, and the flight of
Atys from the jealous fury of Cybele was described, his concealment in
the mountains and in a cave, and his self-mutilation in a fit of
delirium; in which act his priests imitated him. The feast of the
passion of Atys continued three days; the first of which was passed in
mourning and tears; to which afterward clamorous rejoicings succeeded;
by which, Macrobius says, the Sun was adored under the name of Atys. The
ceremonies were all allegorical, some of which, according to the Emperor
Julian, could be explained, but more remained covered with the veil of
mystery. Thus it is that symbols, outlast their explanations, as many
have done in Masonry, and ignorance and rashness substitute new ones.

In another legend, given by Pausanias, Atys dies, wounded like Adonis by
a wild boar in the organs of generation; a mutilation with which all the
legends ended. The pine-tree under which he was said to have died, was
sacred to him; and was found upon many monuments, with a bull and a ram
near it; one the sign of exaltation of the Sun, and the other of that of
the Moon.

The worship of the Sun under the name of Mithras belonged to Persia,
whence that name came, as did the erudite symbols of that worship. The
Persians, adorers of Fire, regarded the Sun as the most brilliant abode
of the fecundating energy of that element, which gives life to the
earth, and circulates in every part of the Universe, of which it is, as
it were, the soul. This worship passed from Persia into Armenia,
Cappadocia, and Cilicia, long before it was known at Rome. The Mysteries
of Mithras flourished more than any others in the imperial city. The
worship of Mithras commenced to prevail there under Trajan. Hadrian
prohibited these Mysteries, on account of the cruel scenes represented
in their ceremonial: for human victims were immolated therein, and the
events of futurity looked for in their palpitating entrails. They
reappeared in greater splendor than ever under Commodus, who with his
own hand sacrificed a victim to Mithras: and they were still more
practised under Constantine and his successors, when the Priests of
Mithras were found everywhere in the Roman Empire, and the monuments of
his worship appeared even in Britain.

Caves were consecrated to Mithras, in which were collected a multitude
of astronomical emblems; and cruel tests were required of the Initiates.

The Persians built no temples; but worshipped upon the summits of hills,
in enclosures of unhewn stones. They abominated images, and made the Sun
and Fire emblems of the Deity. The Jews borrowed this from them, and
represented God as appearing to Abraham in a flame of fire, and to Moses
as a fire at Horeb and on Sinai.

With the Persians, Mithras, typified in the Sun, was the invisible
Deity, the Parent of the Universe, the Mediator. In Zoroaster's cave of
initiation, the Sun and Planets were represented over-head, in gems and
gold, as also was the Zodiac. The Sun appeared emerging from the back of
Taurus. Three great pillars, Eternity, Fecundity, and Authority,
supported the roof; and the whole was an emblem of the Universe.

Zoroaster, like Moses, claimed to have conversed face to face, as man
with man, with the Deity; and to have received from Him a system of pure
worship, to be communicated only to the virtuous, and those who would
devote themselves to the study of Philosophy. His fame spread over the
world, and pupils came to him from every country. Even Pythagoras was
his scholar.

After his novitiate, the candidate entered the cavern of initiation, and
was received on the point of a sword presented to his naked left
breast, by which he was slightly wounded. Being crowned with olive,
anointed with balsam of benzoin, and otherwise prepared, he was purified
with fire and water, and went through seven stages of initiation. The
symbol of these stages was a high ladder with seven rounds or steps. In
them, he went through many fearful trials, in which darkness displayed a
principal part. He saw a representation of the wicked in Hades; and
finally emerged from darkness into light. Received in a place
representing Elysium, in the brilliant assembly of the initiated, where
the Archimagus presided, robed in blue, he assumed the obligations of
secrecy, and was entrusted with the Sacred Words, of which the Ineffable
Name of God was the chief.

Then all the incidents of his initiation were explained to him: he was
taught that these ceremonies brought him nearer the Deity; and that he
should adore the consecrated Fire, the gift of that Deity and His
visible residence. He was taught the sacred characters known only to the
initiated; and instructed in regard to the creation of the world, and
the true philosophical meaning of the vulgar mythology; and especially
of the legend of Ormuzd and Ahriman, and the symbolic meaning of the six
Amshaspands created by the former: _Bahman_, the Lord of Light;
_Ardibehest_, the Genius of Fire; _Shariver_, the Lord of Splendor and
Metals; _Stapandomad_, the Source of Fruitfulness; _Khordad_, the Genius
of Water and Time; and _Amerdad_, the protector of the Vegetable World,
and the prime cause of growth. And finally he was taught the true nature
of the Supreme Being, Creator of Ormuzd and Ahriman, the Absolute First
Cause, styled ZERUANE AKHERENE.

In the Mithriac initiation were several Degrees. The first, Tertullian
says, was that of Soldier of Mithras. The ceremony of reception
consisted in presenting the candidate a crown, supported by a sword. It
was placed near his head, and he repelled it, saying, "Mithras is my
crown." Then he was declared the soldier of Mithras, and had the right
to call the other Initiates fellow-soldiers or companions in arms. Hence
the title _Companions_ in the Royal Arch Degree of the American Rite.

Then he passed, Porphyry says, through the Degree of the Lion,--the
constellation Leo, domicile of the Sun and symbol of Mithras, found on
his monuments. These ceremonies were termed at Rome Leontic and Heliac;
and _Coratia_ or _Hiero-Coracia_, of the Raven, a bird consecrated to
the Sun, and a sign placed in the Heavens below the Lion, with the
Hydra, and also appearing on the Mithriac monuments.

Thence he passed to a higher Degree, where the Initiates were called
_Perses_ and children of the Sun. Above them were the _Fathers_, whose
chief or Patriarch was styled Father of Fathers or _Pater Patratus_. The
Initiates also bore the title of _Eagles_ and _Hawks_, birds consecrated
to the Sun in Egypt, the former sacred to the God Mendes, and the latter
the emblem of the Sun and Royalty.

The little island of Samothrace was long the depositary of certain
august Mysteries, and many went thither from all parts of Greece to be
initiated. It was said to have been settled by the ancient Pelasgi,
early Asiatic colonists in Greece. The Gods adored in the Mysteries of
this island were termed CABIRI, an oriental word, from _Cabar_, great.
Varro calls the Gods of Samothrace, _Potent Gods_. In Arabic, Venus is
called _Cabar_. Varro says that the Great Deities whose Mysteries were
practised there, were Heaven and Earth. These were but symbols of the
Active and Passive Powers or Principles of universal generation. The two
Twins, Castor and Pollux, or the Dioscuri, were also called the Gods of
Samothrace; and the Scholiast of Apollonius, citing Mnaseas, gives the
names of Ceres, Proserpine, Pluto, and Mercury, as the four Cabiric
Divinities worshipped at Samothrace, as Axieros, Axiocersa, Axiocersus,
and Casmillus. Mercury was, there as everywhere, the minister and
messenger of the Gods; and the young servitors of the altars and the
children employed in the Temples were called Mercuries or Casmilli, as
they were in Tuscany, by the Etrusci and Pelasgi, who worshipped the
Great Gods.

Tarquin the Etruscan was an Initiate of the Mysteries of Samothrace; and
Etruria had its Cabiri as Samothrace had. For the worship of the Cabiri
spread from that island into Etruria, Phrygia, and Asia Minor: and it
probably came from Phœnicia into Samothrace: for the Cabiri are
mentioned by Sanchoniathon; and the word _Cabar_ belongs to the Hebrew,
Phœnician, and Arabic languages.

The Dioscuri, tutelary Deities of Navigation, with Venus, were invoked
in the Mysteries of Samothrace. The constellation Auriga, or Phaëton,
was also honored there with imposing ceremonies. Upon the Argonautic
expedition, Orpheus, an Initiate of these Mysteries, a storm arising,
counselled his companions to put into Samothrace. They did so, the storm
ceased, and they were initiated into the Mysteries there, and sailed
again with the assurance of a fortunate voyage, under the auspices of
the Dioscuri, patrons of sailors and navigation.

But much more than that was promised the Initiates. The Hierophants of
Samothrace made something infinitely greater to be the object of their
initiations; to wit, the consecration of men to the Deity, by pledging
them to virtue; and the assurance of those rewards which the justice of
the Gods reserves for Initiates after death. This, above all else, made
these ceremonies august, and inspired everywhere so great a respect for
them, and so great a desire to be admitted to them. That originally
caused the island to be styled _Sacred_. It was respected by all
nations. The Romans, when masters of the world, left it its liberty and
laws. It was an asylum for the unfortunate, and a sanctuary inviolable.
There men were absolved of the crime of homicide, if not committed in a
temple.

Children of tender age were initiated there, and invested with the
sacred robe, the purple cincture, and the crown of olive, and seated
upon a throne, like other Initiates. In the ceremonies was represented
the death of the youngest of the Cabiri, slain by his brothers, who fled
into Etruria, carrying with them the chest or ark that contained his
genitals: and there the Phallus and the sacred ark were adored.
Herodotus says that the Samothracian Initiates understood the object and
origin of this reverence paid the Phallus, and why it was exhibited in
the Mysteries. Clemens of Alexandria says that the Cabiri taught the
Tuscans to revere it. It was consecrated at Heliopolis in Syria, where
the Mysteries of a Divinity having many points of resemblance with Atys
and Cybele were represented. The Pelasgi connected it with Mercury; and
it appears on the monuments of Mithras; always and everywhere a symbol
of the life-giving power of the Sun at the Vernal Equinox.

In the Indian Mysteries, as the candidate made his three circuits, he
paused each time he reached the South, and said, "I copy the example of
the Sun, and follow his beneficent course." Blue Masonry has retained
the Circuits, but has utterly lost the explanation; which is, that in
the Mysteries the candidate invariably represented the Sun, descending
Southward toward the reign of the Evil Principle, Ahriman, Siba, or
Typhon (darkness and winter); there figuratively to be slain, and after
a few days to rise again from the dead, and commence to ascend to the
Northward.

Then the death of Sita was bewailed; or that of Cama, slain by Iswara,
and committed to the waves on a chest, like Osiris and Bacchus; during
which the candidate was terrified by phantoms and horrid noises.

Then he was made to personify Vishnu, and perform his avatars, or
labors. In the first two he was taught in allegories the legend of the
Deluge: in the first he took three steps at right angles, representing
the three huge steps taken by Vishnu in that avatar; and hence the three
steps in the Master's Degree ending at right angles.

The nine avatars finished, he was taught the necessity of faith, as
superior to sacrifices, acts of charity, or mortifications of the flesh.
Then he was admonished against five crimes, and took a solemn obligation
never to commit them. He was then introduced into a representation of
Paradise; the Company of the Members of the Order, magnificently
arrayed, and the Altar with a fire blazing upon it, as an emblem of the
Deity.

Then a new name was given him, and he was invested in a white robe and
tiara, and received the signs, tokens, and lectures. A cross was marked
on his forehead, and an inverted level, or the Tau Cross, on his breast.
He received the sacred cord, and divers amulets or talismans; and was
then invested with the sacred Word or Sublime Name, known only to the
initiated, the Triliteral A.U.M.

Then the multitude of emblems was explained to the candidate; the arcana
of science hidden under them, and the different virtues of which the
mythological figures were mere personifications. And he thus learned the
meaning of those symbols, which, to the uninitiated, were but a maze of
unintelligible figures.

The third Degree was a life of seclusion, after the Initiate's children
were capable of providing for themselves; passed in the forest, in the
practice of prayers and ablutions, and living only on vegetables. He was
then said to be born again.

The fourth was absolute renunciation of the world, self-contemplation
and self-torture; by which Perfection was thought to be attained, and
the soul merged in the Deity.

In the second Degree, the Initiate was taught the Unity of the Godhead,
the happiness of the patriarchs, the destruction by the Deluge, the
depravity of the heart, and the necessity of a mediator, the instability
of life, the final destruction of all created things, and the
restoration of the world in a more perfect form. They inculcated the
Eternity of the Soul, explained the meaning of the doctrine of the
Metempsychosis, and held the doctrine of a state of future rewards and
punishments: and they also earnestly urged that sins could only be
atoned for by repentance, reformation, and voluntary penance; and not by
mere ceremonies and sacrifices.

The Mysteries among the Chinese and Japanese came from India, and were
founded on the same principles and with similar rites. The word given to
the new Initiate was O-MI-TO Fo, in which we recognize the original name
A.U.M., coupled at a much later time with that of Fo, the Indian Buddha,
to show that he was the Great Deity Himself.

The equilateral triangle was one of their symbols; and so was the
mystical Y; both alluding to the Triune God, and the latter being the
ineffable name of the Deity. A ring supported by two serpents was
emblematical of the world, protected by the power and wisdom of the
Creator; and that is the origin of the two parallel lines (into which
time has changed the two serpents), that support the circle in our
Lodges.

Among the Japanese, the term of probation for the highest Degree was
twenty years.

The main features of the Druidical Mysteries resembled those of the
Orient.

The ceremonies commenced with a hymn to the sun. The candidates were
arranged in ranks of _threes_, _fives_, and _sevens_, according to their
qualifications; and conducted nine times around the Sanctuary, from East
to West. The candidate underwent many trials, one of which had direct
reference to the legend of Osiris. He was placed in a boat, and sent out
to sea alone, having to rely on his own skill and presence of mind to
reach the opposite shore safety. The death of Hu was represented in his
hearing, with external mark of sorrow, while he was in utter darkness.
He met with many obstacles, had to prove his courage, and expose his
life against armed enemies; represented various animals, and at last,
attaining the permanent light, he was instructed by the Arch-Druid in
regard to the Mysteries, and in the morality of the Order, incited to
act bravely in war, taught the great truths of the immortality of the
soul and a future state, solemnly enjoined not to neglect the worship of
the Deity, nor the practice of rigid morality; and to avoid sloth,
contention, and folly.

The aspirant attained only the exoteric knowledge in the first two
Degrees. The third was attained only by a few, and they persons of rank
and consequence, and after long purification, and study of all the arts
and sciences known to the Druids, in solitude, for nine months. This was
the symbolical death and burial of these Mysteries.

The dangerous voyage upon the actual open sea, in a small boat covered
with a skin, on the evening of the 29th of April, was the last trial,
and closing scene, of initiation. If he declined this trial, he was
dismissed with contempt. If he made it and succeeded, he was termed
thrice-born, was eligible to all the dignities of the State, and
received complete instruction in the philosophical and religious
doctrines of the Druids.

The Greeks also styled the [Greek: Εποπτηϛ, Τριγονος], thrice-born; and
in India perfection was assigned to the Yogee who had accomplished many
births.

The general features of the initiations among the Goths were the same as
in all the Mysteries. A long probation, of fasting and mortification,
circular processions, representing the march of the celestial bodies,
many fearful tests and trials, a descent into the infernal regions, the
killing of the God _Balder_ by the Evil Principle, _Lok_, the placing of
his body in a boat and sending it abroad upon the waters; and, in short,
the Eastern Legend, under different names, and with some variations.

The Egyptian Anubis appeared there, as the dog guarding the gates of
death. The candidate was immured in the representation of a tomb; and
when released, goes in search of the body of Balder, and finds him, at
length, restored to life, and seated upon a throne. He was obligated
upon a naked sword (as is still the custom in the _Rit Moderne_), and
_sealed_ his obligation by drinking mead _out of a human skull_.

Then all the ancient primitive truths were made known to him, so far as
they had survived the assaults of time: and he was informed as to the
generation of the Gods, the creation of the world, the deluge, and the
resurrection, of which that of Balder was a type.

He was marked with the sign of the cross, and a ring was given to him
as a symbol of the Divine Protection; and also as an emblem of
Perfection; from which comes the custom of giving a ring to the Aspirant
in the 14th Degree.

The point within a Circle, and the Cube, emblem of Odin, were explained
to him; and lastly, the nature of the Supreme God, "the author of
everything that existeth, the Eternal, the Ancient, the Living and Awful
Being, the Searcher into concealed things, the Being that never
changeth;" with whom Odin the Conqueror was by the vulgar confounded:
and the Triune God of the Indians was reproduced, as ODIN, the Almighty
FATHER, FREA, (_Rhea_ or _Phre_), his wife (emblem of universal
_matter_), and _Thor_ his son (the Mediator). Here we recognize _Osiris,
Isis_, and _Hor_ or _Horus_. Around the head of Thor, as if to show his
eastern origin, twelve stars were arranged in a circle.

He was also taught the ultimate destruction of the world, and the rising
of a new one, in which the brave and virtuous shall enjoy everlasting
happiness and delight: as the means of securing which happy fortune, he
was taught to practise the strictest morality and virtue.

The Initiate was prepared to receive the great lessons of all the
Mysteries, by long trials, or by abstinence and chastity. For many days
he was required to fast and be continent, and to drink liquids
calculated to diminish his passions and keep him chaste.

Ablutions were also required, symbolical of the purity necessary to
enable the soul to escape from its bondage in matter. Sacred baths and
preparatory baptisms were used, lustrations, immersions, lustral
sprinklings, and purifications of every kind. At Athens they bathed in
the Ilissus, which thence became a sacred river; and before entering the
Temple of Eleusis, all were required to wash their hands in a vase of
lustral water placed near the entrance. Clean hands and a pure heart
were required of the candidates. Apuleius bathed seven times in the sea,
symbolical of the Seven Spheres through which the Soul must reascend:
and the Hindus must bathe in the sacred river Ganges.

Clemens of Alexandria cites a passage of Menander, who speaks of a
purification by sprinkling three times with salt and water. Sulphur,
resin, and the laurel also served for purification, as did air, earth,
water, and fire. The Initiates at Heliopolis, in Syria, says Lucian,
sacrificed the sacred lamb, symbol of Aries, then the sign of the Vernal
Equinox; ate his flesh, as the Israelites did at the Passover; and then
touched his head and feet to theirs, and knelt upon the fleece. Then
they bathed in warm water, drank of the same, and slept upon the ground.

There was a distinction between the lesser and greater Mysteries. One
must have been for some years admitted to the former before he could
receive the latter, which were but a preparation for them, the Vestibule
of the Temple, of which those of Eleusis were the Sanctuary. There, in
the lesser Mysteries, they were prepared to receive the holy truths
taught in the greater. The Initiates in the lesser were called simply
_Mystes_, or Initiates; but those in the greater, _Epoptes_, or Seers.
An ancient poet says that the former were an imperfect shadow of the
latter, as sleep is of Death. After admission to the former, the
Initiate was taught lessons of morality, and the rudiments of the sacred
science, the most sublime and secret part of which was reserved for the
Epopt, who saw the Truth in its nakedness, while the Mystes only viewed
it through a veil and under emblems fitter to excite than to satisfy his
curiosity.

Before communicating the first secrets and primary dogmas of initiation,
the priests required the candidate to take a fearful oath never to
divulge the secrets. Then he made his vows, prayers, and sacrifices to
the Gods. The skins of the victims consecrated to Jupiter were spread on
the ground, and he was made to set his feet upon them. He was then
taught some enigmatic formulas, as answers to questions, by which to
make himself known. He was then enthroned, invested with a purple
cincture, and crowned with flowers, or branches of palm or olive.

We do not certainly know the time that was required to elapse between
the admission to the Lesser and Greater Mysteries of Eleusis. Most
writers fix it at five years. It was a singular mark of favor when
Demetrius was made Mystes and Epopt in one and the same ceremony. When
at length admitted to the Degree of Perfection, the Initiate was brought
face to face with entire nature, and learned that the soul was the whole
of man: that earth was but his place of exile; that Heaven was his
native country; that for the soul to be born is really to die; and that
death was for it the return to a new life. Then he entered the
sanctuary; but he did not receive the whole instruction at once. It
continued through several years. There were, as it were, many
apartments, through which he advanced by degrees, and between which
thick veils intervened. There were Statues and Paintings, says Proclus,
in the inmost sanctuary, showing the forms assumed by the Gods, finally
the last veil fell, the sacred covering dropped from the image of the
Goddess, and she stood revealed in all her splendor, surrounded by a
divine light, which, filling the whole sanctuary, dazzled the eyes and
penetrated the soul of the Initiate. Thus is symbolized the final
revelation of the true doctrine as to the nature of Deity and of the
soul, and of the relations of each to matter.

This was preceded by frightful scenes, alternations of fear and joy, of
light and darkness; by glittering lightning and the crash of thunder,
and apparitions of spectres, or magical illusions, impressing at once
the eyes and ears. This Claudian describes, in his poem on the rape of
Proserpine, where he alludes to what passed in her Mysteries. "The
temple is shaken," he cries; "fiercely gleams the lightning, by which
the Deity announces his presence. Earth trembles; and a terrible noise
is heard in the midst of these terrors. The Temple of the Son of Cecrops
resounds with long-continued roars; Eleusis uplifts her sacred torches;
the serpents of Triptolemus are heard to hiss; and fearful Hecate
appears afar."

The celebration of the Greek Mysteries continued, according to the
better opinion, for nine days.

On the first the Initiates met. It was the day of the full moon, of the
month Boëdromion; when the moon was full at the end of the sign Aries,
near the Pleiades and the place of her exaltation in Taurus.

The second day there was a procession to the sea, for purification by
bathing.

The third was occupied with offerings, expiatory sacrifices, and other
religious rites, such as fasting, mourning, continence, etc. A mullet
was immolated, and offerings of grain and living animals made.

On the fourth they carried in procession the mystic wreath of flowers,
representing that which Proserpine dropped when seized by Pluto, and the
Crown of Ariadne in the Heavens. It was borne on a triumphal car drawn
by oxen; and women followed bearing mystic chests or boxes, wrapped with
purple cloths, containing grains of sesame, pyramidal biscuits, salt,
pomegranates and the mysterious serpent, and perhaps the mystic phallus.

On the fifth was the superb procession of torches, commemorative of the
search for Proserpine by Ceres; the Initiates marching by trios, and
each bearing a torch; while at the head of the procession marched the
Dadoukos.

The sixth was consecrated to Iakchos, the young Light-God, son of Ceres,
reared in the sanctuaries and bearing the torch of the Sun-God. The
chorus in Aristophanes terms him the luminous star that lights the
nocturnal initiation. He was brought from the sanctuary, his head
crowned with myrtle, and borne from the gate of the Ceramicus to
Eleusis, along the sacred way, amid dances, sacred songs, every mark of
joy, and mystic cries of _Iakchos_.

On the seventh there were gymnastic exercises and combats, the victors
in which were crowned and rewarded.

On the eighth was the feast of Æsculapius.

On the ninth the famous libation was made for the souls of the departed.
The Priests, according to Athenæus, filled two vases, placed one in the
East and one in the West, toward the gates of day and night, and
overturned them, pronouncing a formula of mysterious prayers. Thus they
invoked Light and Darkness, the two great principles of nature.

During all these days no one could be arrested, nor any suit brought, on
pain of death, or at least a heavy fine: and no one was allowed, by the
display of unusual wealth or magnificence, to endeavor to rival this
sacred pomp. Everything was for religion.

Such were the Mysteries; and such the Old Thought, as in scattered and
widely separated fragments it has come down to us. The human mind still
speculates upon the great mysteries of nature, and still finds its ideas
anticipated by the ancients, whose profoundest thoughts are to be looked
for, not in their philosophies, but in their symbols, by which they
endeavored to express the great ideas that vainly struggled for
utterance in words, as they viewed the great circle of
phenomena,--Birth, Life, Death, or Decomposition, and New Life out of
Death and Rottenness,--to them the greatest of mysteries. Remember,
while you study their symbols, that they had a profounder sense of these
wonders than we have. To them the transformations of the worm were a
greater wonder than the stars; and hence the poor dumb scarabæus or
beetle was sacred to them. Thus their faiths are condensed into symbols
or expanded into allegories, which they understood, but were not always
able to explain in language; for there are thoughts and ideas which no
language ever spoken by man has words to express.

[Illustration]



XXV.

KNIGHT OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT.


This Degree is both philosophical and moral. While it teaches the
necessity of reformation as well as repentance, as a means of obtaining
mercy and forgiveness, it is also devoted to an explanation of the
symbols of Masonry; and especially to those which are connected with
that ancient and universal legend, of which that of Khir-Om Abi is but a
variation; that legend which, representing a murder or a death, and a
restoration to life, by a drama in which figure Osiris, Isis and Horus,
Atys and Cybele, Adonis and Venus, the Cabiri, Dionusos, and many
another representative of the active and passive Powers of Nature,
taught the Initiates in the Mysteries that the rule of Evil and Darkness
is but temporary, and that of Light and Good will be eternal.

Maimonides says: "In the days of Enos, the son of Seth, men fell into
grievous errors, and even Enos himself partook of their infatuation.
Their language was, that since God has placed on high the heavenly
bodies, and used them as His ministers, it was evidently His will that
they should receive from man the same veneration as the servants of a
great prince justly claim from the subject multitude. Impressed with
this notion, they began to build temples to the Stars, to sacrifice to
them, and to worship them, in the vain expectation that they should thus
please the Creator of all things. At first, indeed, they did not suppose
the Stars to be the only Deities, but adored in conjunction with them
the Lord God Omnipotent. In process of time, however, that great and
venerable Name was totally forgotten, and the whole human race retained
no other religion than the idolatrous worship of the Host of Heaven."

The first learning in the world consisted chiefly in symbols. The wisdom
of the Chaldæans, Phœnicians, Egyptians, Jews; of Zoroaster,
Sanchoniathon, Pherecydes, Syrus, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, of all
the ancients, that is come to our hand, is symbolic. It was the mode,
says Serranus on Plato's Symposium, of the Ancient Philosophers, to
represent truth by certain symbols and hidden images.

"All that can be said concerning the Gods," says Strabo, "must be by the
exposition of old opinions and fables; it being the custom of the
ancients to wrap up in enigma and allegory their thoughts and discourses
concerning Nature; which are therefore not easily explained."

As you learned in the 24th Degree, my Brother, the ancient Philosophers
regarded the soul of man as having had its origin in Heaven. That was,
Macrobius says, a settled opinion among them all; and they held it to be
the only true wisdom, for the soul, while united with the body, to look
ever toward its source, and strive to return to the place whence it
came. Among the fixed stars it dwelt, until, seduced by the desire of
animating a body, it descended to be imprisoned in matter. Thenceforward
it has no other resource than recollection, and is ever attracted toward
its birth-place and home. The means of return are to be sought for in
itself. To re-ascend to its source, it must do and suffer in the body.

Thus the Mysteries taught the great doctrine of the divine nature and
longings after immortality of the soul, of the nobility of its origin,
the grandeur of its destiny, its superiority over the animals who have
no aspirations heavenward. If they struggled in vain to express its
_nature_, by comparing it to Fire and Light,--if they erred as to its
original place of abode, and the mode of its descent, and the path
which, descending and ascending, it pursued among the stars and spheres,
these were the accessories of the Great Truth, and mere allegories
designed to make the idea more impressive, and, as it were, tangible, to
the human mind.

Let us, in order to understand this old Thought, first follow the soul
in its descent. The sphere or Heaven of the fixed stars was that Holy
Region, and those Elysian Fields, that were the native domicile of
souls, and the place to which they re-ascended, when they had recovered
their primitive purity and simplicity. From that luminous region the
soul set forth, when it journeyed toward the body; a destination which
it did not reach until it had undergone three degradations, designated
by the name of Deaths; and until it had passed through the several
spheres and the elements. All souls remained in possession of Heaven and
of happiness, so long as they were wise enough to avoid the contagion of
the body, and to keep themselves from any contact with matter. But those
who, from that lofty abode, where they were lapped in eternal light,
have looked longingly toward the body, and toward that which we here
below call _life_, but which is to the soul a real _death_; and who have
conceived for it a secret desire,--those souls, victims of their
concupiscence, are attracted by degrees toward the inferior regions of
the world, by the mere weight of thought and of that terrestrial desire.
The soul, perfectly incorporeal, does not at once invest itself with the
gross envelope of the body, but little by little, by successive and
insensible alterations, and in proportion as it removes further and
further from the simple and perfect substance in which it dwelt at
first. It first surrounds itself with a body composed of the substance
of the stars; and afterward, as it descends through the several spheres,
with ethereal matter more and more gross, thus by degrees descending to
an earthly body; and its number of degradations or deaths being the same
as that of the spheres which it traverses.

The Galaxy, Macrobius says, crosses the Zodiac in two opposite points,
Cancer and Capricorn, the tropical points in the sun's course,
ordinarily called the Gates of the Sun. These two tropics, before his
time, corresponded with those constellations, but in his day with Gemini
and Sagittarius, in consequence of the precession of the equinoxes; but
the _signs_ of the Zodiac remained unchanged; and the Milky Way crossed
at the _signs_ Cancer and Capricorn, though not at those
_constellations_.

Through these _gates_ souls were supposed to descend to earth and
re-ascend to Heaven. One, Macrobius says, in his dream of Scipio, was
styled the Gate of Men; and the other, the Gate of the Gods. Cancer was
the former, because souls descended by it to the earth; and Capricorn
the latter, because by it they re-ascended to their seats of
immortality, and became Gods. From the Milky Way, according to
Pythagoras, diverged the route to the dominions of Pluto. Until they
left the Galaxy, they were not deemed to have commenced to descend
toward the terrestrial bodies. From that they departed, and to that they
returned. Until they reached the sign Cancer, they had not left it, and
were still Gods. When they reached Leo, they commenced their
apprenticeship for their future condition; and when they were at
Aquarius, the sign opposite Leo, they were furthest removed from human
life.

The soul, descending from the celestial limits, where the Zodiac and
Galaxy unite, loses its spherical shape, the shape of all Divine Nature,
and is lengthened into a cone, as a point is lengthened into a line; and
then, an indivisible monad before, it divides itself and becomes a
duad--that is, unity becomes division, disturbance, and conflict. Then
it begins to experience the disorder which reigns in matter, to which it
unites itself, becoming, as it were, intoxicated by draughts of grosser
matter: of which inebriation the cup of Bakchos, between Cancer and Leo,
is a symbol. It is for them the cup of forgetfulness. They assemble,
says Plato, in the fields of oblivion, to drink there the water of the
river Ameles, which causes men to forget everything. This fiction is
also found in Virgil. "If souls," says Macrobius, "carried with them
into the bodies they occupy all the knowledge which they had acquired of
divine things, during their sojourn in the Heavens, men would not differ
in opinion as to the Deity; but some of them forget more, and some less,
of that which they had learned."

We smile at these notions of the ancients; but we must learn to look
through these material images and allegories, to the ideas, struggling
for utterance, the great speechless thoughts which they envelop: and it
is well for us to consider whether we ourselves have yet found out any
_better_ way of representing to ourselves the soul's origin and its
advent into this body, so entirely foreign to it; if, indeed, we have
ever thought about it at all; or have not ceased to think, in despair.

The highest and purest portion of matter, which nourishes and
constitutes divine existences, is what the poets term _nectar_, the
beverage of the Gods. The lower, more disturbed and grosser portion, is
what intoxicates souls. The ancients symbolized it as the River Lethe,
dark stream of oblivion. How do _we_ explain the soul's forgetfulness of
its antecedents, or reconcile that utter absence of remembrance of its
former condition, with its essential immortality? In truth, we for the
most part dread and shrink from any attempt at explanation of it to
ourselves.

Dragged down by the heaviness produced by this inebriating draught, the
soul falls along the zodiac and the milky way to the lower spheres, and
in its descent not only takes, in each sphere, a new envelope of the
material composing the luminous bodies of the planets, but receives
there the different faculties which it is to exercise while it inhabits
the body.

In Saturn, it acquires the power of reasoning and intelligence, or what
is termed the logical and contemplative faculty. From Jupiter it
receives the power of action. Mars gives it valor, enterprise, and
impetuosity. From the Sun it receives the senses and imagination, which
produce sensation, perception, and thought. Venus inspires it with
desires. Mercury gives it the faculty of expressing and enunciating what
it thinks and feels. And, on entering the sphere of the Moon, it
acquires the force of generation and growth. This lunary sphere, lowest
and basest to divine bodies, is first and highest to terrestrial bodies.
And the lunary body there assumed by the soul, while, as it were, the
sediment of celestial matter, is also the first substance of animal
matter.

The celestial bodies, Heaven, the Stars, and the other Divine elements,
ever aspire to rise. The soul reaching the region which mortality
inhabits, tends toward terrestrial bodies, and is deemed to die. Let no
one, says Macrobius, be surprised that we so frequently speak of the
_death_ of this soul, which yet we call immortal. It is neither annulled
nor destroyed by such death: but merely enfeebled for a time; and does
not thereby forfeit its prerogative of immortality; for afterward, freed
from the body, when it has been purified from the vice-stains contracted
during that connection, it is re-established in all its privileges, and
returns to the luminous abode of its immortality.

On its return, it restores to each sphere through which it ascends, the
passions and earthly faculties received from them: to the Moon, the
faculty of increase and diminution of the body; to Mercury, fraud, the
architect of evils; to Venus, the seductive love of pleasure; to the
Sun, the passion for greatness and empire; to Mars, audacity and
temerity; to Jupiter, avarice; and to Saturn, falsehood and deceit: and
at last, relieved of all, it enters naked and pure into the eighth
sphere or highest Heaven.

All this agrees with the doctrine of Plato, that the soul cannot
re-enter into Heaven, until the revolutions of the Universe shall have
restored it to its primitive condition, and purified it from the effects
of its contact with the four elements.

This opinion of the pre-existence of souls, as pure and celestial
substances, before their union with our bodies, to put on and animate
which they descend from Heaven, is one of great antiquity. A modern
Rabbi, Manasseh Ben Israel, says it was always the belief of the
Hebrews. It was that of most philosophers who admitted the immortality
of the soul: and therefore it was taught in the Mysteries; for, as
Lactantius says, they could not see how it was possible that the soul
should exist _after_ the body, if it had not existed _before_ it, and if
its nature was not independent of that of the body. The same doctrine
was adopted by the most learned of the Greek Fathers, and by many of the
Latins: and it would probably prevail largely at the present day, if men
troubled themselves to think upon this subject at all, and to inquire
whether the soul's immortality involved its prior existence.

Some philosophers held that the soul was incarcerated in the body, by
way of punishment for sins committed by it in a prior state. How they
reconciled this with the same soul's unconsciousness of any such prior
state, or of sin committed there, does not appear. Others held that God,
of his mere will, sent the soul to inhabit the body. The Kabalists
united the two opinions. They held that there are four worlds, _Asiluth,
Briarth, Jezirath_, and _Aziath_; the world of _emanation_, that of
_creation_, that of _forms_, and the _material_ world; one above and
more perfect than the other, in that order, both as regards their own
nature and that of the beings who inhabit them. All souls are originally
in the world Aziluth, the Supreme Heaven, abode of God, and of pure and
immortal spirits. Those who descend from it without fault of their own,
by God's order, are gifted with a divine fire, which preserves them from
the contagion of matter, and restores them to Heaven so soon as their
mission is ended. Those who descend through their own fault, go from
world to world, insensibly losing their love of Divine things, and their
self-contemplation; until they reach the world Aziath, falling by their
own weight. This is a pure Platonism, clothed with the images and words
peculiar to the Kabalists. It was the doctrine of the Essenes, who, says
Porphyry, "believe that souls descend from the most subtile ether,
attracted to bodies by the seductions of matter." It was in substance
the doctrine of Origen; and it came from the Chaldæans, who largely
studied the theory of the Heavens, the spheres, and the influences of
the signs and constellations.

The Gnostics made souls ascend and descend through eight Heavens, in
each of which were certain Powers that opposed their return, and often
drove them back to earth, when not sufficiently purified. The last of
these Powers, nearest the luminous abode of souls, was a serpent or
dragon.

In the ancient doctrine, certain Genii were charged with the duty of
conducting souls to the bodies destined to receive them, and of
withdrawing them from those bodies. According to Plutarch, these were
the functions of Proserpine and Mercury. In Plato, a familiar Genius
accompanies man at his birth, follows and watches him all his life, and
at death conducts him to the tribunal of the Great Judge. These Genii
are the media of communication between man and the Gods; and the soul is
ever in their presence. This doctrine is taught in the oracles of
Zoroaster: and these Genii were the Intelligences that resided in the
planets.

Thus the secret science and mysterious emblems of initiation were
connected with the Heavens, the Spheres, and the Constellations: and
this connection must be studied by whomsoever would understand the
ancient mind, and be enabled to interpret the allegories, and explore
the meaning of the symbols, in which the old sages endeavored to
delineate the ideas that struggled within them for utterance, and could
be but insufficiently and inadequately expressed by language, whose
words are images of those things alone that can be grasped by and are
within the empire of the senses.

It is not possible for us thoroughly to appreciate the feelings with
which the ancients regarded the Heavenly bodies, and the ideas to which
their observation of the Heavens gave rise, because We cannot put
ourselves in their places, look at the stars with their eyes in the
world's youth, and divest ourselves of the knowledge which even the
commonest of us have, that makes us regard the Stars and Planets and all
the Universe of Suns and Worlds, as a mere inanimate machine and
aggregate of senseless orbs, no more astonishing, except in degree, than
a clock or an orrery. _We_ wonder and are amazed at the Power and Wisdom
(to most men it seems only a kind of Infinite _Ingenuity_) of the MAKER:
they wondered at the _Work_, and endowed _it_ with Life and Force and
mysterious Powers and mighty Influences.

Memphis, in Egypt, was in Latitude 29˚ 5' North, and in Longitude 30˚
18' East. Thebæ, in Upper Egypt, in Latitude 25˚ 45' North, and
Longitude 32˚ 43' East. Babylon was in Latitude 32˚ 30' North, and
Longitude 44˚ 23' East: while Saba, the ancient Sabæan capital of
Ethiopia, was about in Latitude 15˚ North.

Through Egypt ran the great River Nile, coming from beyond Ethiopia, its
source in regions wholly unknown, in the abodes of heat and fire, and
its course from South to North. Its inundations had formed the alluvial
lands of Upper and Lower Egypt, which they continued to raise higher and
higher, and to fertilize by their deposits. At first, as in all
newly-settled countries, those inundations, occurring annually and
always at the same period of the year, were calamities: until, by means
of levees and drains and artificial lakes for irrigation, they became
blessings, and were looked for with joyful anticipation, as they had
before been awaited with terror. Upon the deposit left by the Sacred
River, as it withdrew into its banks, the husbandman sowed his seed; and
the rich soil and the genial sun insured him an abundant harvest.

Babylon lay on the Euphrates, which ran from Southeast to Northwest,
blessing, as all rivers in the Orient do, the arid country through which
it flowed; but its rapid and uncertain overflows bringing terror and
disaster.

To the ancients, as yet inventors of no astronomical instruments, and
looking at the Heavens with the eyes of children, this earth was a level
plain of unknown extent. About its boundaries there was speculation, but
no knowledge. The inequalities of its surface were the irregularities of
a plane. That it was a globe, or that anything lived on its under
surface, or on what it rested, they had no idea. Every twenty-four hours
the sun came up from beyond the Eastern rim of the world, and travelled
across the sky, over the earth, always South of, but sometimes nearer
and sometimes further from the point overhead; and sunk below the
world's Western rim. With him went light, and after him followed
darkness.

And every twenty-four hours appeared in the Heavens another body,
visible chiefly at night, but sometimes even when the sun shone, which
likewise, as if following the sun at a greater or less distance,
travelled across the sky; sometimes as a thin crescent, and thence
increasing to a full orb resplendent with silver light; and sometimes
more and sometimes less to the Southward of the point overhead, within
the same limits as the Sun.

Man, enveloped by the thick darkness of profoundest night, when
everything around him has disappeared, and he seems alone with himself
and the black shades that surround him, feels his existence a blank and
nothingness, except so far as memory recalls to him the glories and
splendors of light. Everything is dead to him, and he, as it were, to
Nature. How crushing and overwhelming the thought, the fear, the dread,
that _perhaps_ that darkness may be eternal, and that day may possibly
never return; if it ever occurs to his mind, while the solid gloom
closes up against him like a wall! What then can restore him to like, to
energy, to activity, to fellowship and communion with the great world
which God has spread around him, and which perhaps in the darkness may
be passing away? LIGHT restores him to himself and to nature which
seemed lost to him. Naturally, therefore, the primitive men regarded
light as the principle of their real existence, without which life would
be but one continued weariness and despair. This necessity for light,
and its actual creative energy, were felt by all men: and nothing was
more alarming to them than its absence. It became their first Divinity,
a single ray of which, flashing into the dark tumultuous bosom of chaos,
caused man and all the Universe to emerge from it. So all the poets sung
who imagined Cosmogonies; such was the first dogma of Orpheus, Moses,
and the Theologians. Light was Ormuzd, adored by the Persians, and
Darkness Ahriman, origin of all evils. Light was the life of the
Universe, the friend of man, the substance of the Gods and of the Soul.

The sky was to them a great, solid, concave arch; a hemisphere of
unknown material, at an unknown distance above the flat level earth; and
along it journeyed in their courses the Sun, the Moon, the Planets, and
the Stars.

The Sun was to them a great globe of fire, of unknown dimensions, at an
unknown distance. The Moon was a mass of softer light; the stars and
planets lucent bodies, armed with unknown and supernatural influences.

It could not fail to be soon observed, that at regular intervals the
days and nights were equal; and that two of these intervals measured the
same space of time as elapsed between the successive inundations, and
between the returns of spring-time and harvest. Nor could it fail to be
perceived that the changes of the moon occurred regularly; the same
number of days always elapsing between the first appearance of her
silver crescent in the West at evening and that of her full orb rising
in the East at the same hour; and the same again, between that and the
new appearance of the crescent in the West.

It was also soon observed that the Sun crossed the Heavens in a
different line each day, the days being longest and the nights shortest
when the line of his passage was furthest North, and the days shortest
and nights longest when that line was furthest South: that his progress
North and South was perfectly regular, marking four periods that were
always the same,--those when the days and nights were equal, or the
Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes; that when the days were longest, or the
Summer Solstice; and that when they were shortest, or the Winter
Solstice.

With the Vernal Equinox, or about the 25th of March of our Calendar,
they found that there unerringly came soft winds, the return of warmth,
caused by the Sun turning back to the Northward from the middle ground
of his course, the vegetation of the new year, and the impulse to
amatory action on the part of the animal creation. Then the Bull and the
Ram, animals most valuable to the agriculturist, and symbols themselves
of vigorous generative power, recovered their vigor, the birds mated and
builded their nests, the seeds germinated, the grass grew, and the trees
put forth leaves. With the Summer Solstice, when the Sun reached the
extreme northern limit of his course, came great heat, and burning
winds, and lassitude and exhaustion; then vegetation withered, man
longed for the cool breezes of Spring and Autumn, and the cool water of
the wintry Nile or Euphrates, and the Lion sought for that element far
from his home in the desert.

With the Autumnal Equinox came ripe harvests, and fruits of the tree and
vine, and falling leaves, and cold evenings presaging wintry frosts; and
the Principle and Powers of Darkness, prevailing over those of Light,
drove the Sun further to the South, so that the nights grew longer than
the days. And at the Winter Solstice the earth was wrinkled with frost,
the trees were leafless, and the Sun, reaching the most Southern point
in his career, seemed to hesitate whether to continue descending, to
leave the world to darkness and despair, or to turn upon his steps and
retrace his course to the Northward, bringing back seed-time and Spring,
and green leaves and flowers, and all the delights of love.

Thus, naturally and necessarily, time was divided, first into days, and
then into moons or months, and years; and with these divisions and the
movements of the Heavenly bodies that marked them, were associated and
connected all men's physical enjoyments and privations. Wholly
agricultural, and in their frail habitations greatly at the mercy of the
elements and the changing seasons, the primitive people of the Orient
were most deeply interested in the recurrence of the periodical
phenomena presented by the two great luminaries of Heaven, on whose
regularity all their prosperity depended.

And the attentive observer soon noticed that the smaller lights of
Heaven were, apparently, even more regular than the Sun and Moon, and
foretold with unerring certainty, by their risings and settings, the
periods of recurrence of the different phenomena and seasons on which
the physical well-being of all men depended. They soon felt the
necessity of distinguishing the individual stars, or groups of stars,
and giving them names, that they might understand each other, when
referring to and designating them. Necessity produced designations at
once natural and artificial. Observing that, in the circle of the year,
the renewal and periodical appearance of the productions of the earth
were constantly associated, not only with the courses of the Sun, but
also with the rising and setting of certain Stars, and with their
position relatively to the Sun, the centre to which they referred the
whole starry host, the mind naturally connected the celestial and
terrestrial objects that were _in fact_ connected: and they commenced by
giving to particular Stars or groups of Stars the names of those
terrestrial objects which seemed connected with them; and for those
which still remained unnamed by this nomenclature, they, to complete a
system, assumed arbitrary and fanciful names.

Thus the Ethiopian of Thebes or Saba styled those Stars under which the
Nile commenced to overflow, Stars of Inundation, or that _poured out
water_ (AQUARIUS).

Those Stars among which the Sun was, when he had reached the Northern
Tropic and began to _retreat_ Southward, were termed, from his
retrograde motion, the Crab (CANCER).

As he approached, in Autumn, the middle point between the Northern and
Southern extremes of his journeying, the days and nights became equal;
and the Stars among which he was then found were called Stars of the
Balance (LIBRA).

Those stars among which the Sun was, when the Lion, driven from the
Desert by thirst, came to slake it at the Nile, were called Stars of the
Lion (LEO).

Those among which the Sun was at harvest, were called those of the
Gleaning Virgin, holding a Sheaf of Wheat (VIRGO).

Those among which he was found in February, when the Ewes brought forth
their young, were called Stars of the Lamb (ARIES).

Those in March, when it was time to plough, were called Stars of the Ox
(TAURUS).

Those under which hot and burning winds came from the desert, venomous
like poisonous reptiles, were called Stars of the Scorpion (SCORPIO).

Observing that the annual return of the rising of the Nile was always
accompanied by the appearance of a beautiful Star, which at that period
showed itself in the direction of the sources of that river, and seemed
to warn the husbandman to be careful not to be surprised by the
inundation, the Ethiopian compared this act of that Star to that of the
Animal which by barking gives warning of danger, and styled it the Dog
(SIRIUS).

Thus commencing, and as astronomy came to be more studied, imaginary
figures were traced all over the Heavens, to which the different Stars
were assigned. Chief among them were those that lay along the path which
the Sun travelled as he climbed toward the North and descended to the
South: lying within certain limits and extending to an equal distance on
each side of the line of equal nights and days. This belt, curving like
a Serpent, was termed the Zodiac, and divided into twelve Signs.

At the Vernal Equinox, 2455 years before our Era, the Sun was entering
the sign and constellation Taurus, or the Bull; having passed through,
since he commenced, at the Winter Solstice, to ascend Northward, the
Signs Aquarius, Pisces and Aries; on entering the first of which he
reached the lowest limit of his journey Southward.

From TAURUS, he passed through Gemini and Cancer, and reached LEO when
he arrived at the terminus of his journey Northward. Thence, through
Leo, Virgo, and Libra, he entered SCORPIO at the Autumnal Equinox, and
journeyed Southward through Scorpia, Sagittarius, and Capricornus to
AQUARIUS, the terminus of his journey South.

The path by which he journeyed through these signs became the
_Ecliptic_; and that which passes through the two equinoxes, the
_Equator_.

They knew nothing of the immutable laws of nature; and whenever the Sun
commenced to tend Southward, they feared lest he might continue to do
so, and by degrees disappear forever, leaving the earth to be ruled
forever by darkness, storm, and cold.

Hence they rejoiced when he commenced to re-ascend after the Winter
Solstice, struggling against the malign influences of Aquarius and
Pisces, and amicably received by the Lamb. And when at the Vernal
Equinox he entered Taurus, they still more rejoiced at the assurance
that the days would again be longer than the nights, that the season of
seed-time had come, and the Summer and harvest would follow.

And they lamented when, after the Autumnal Equinox, the malign influence
of the venomous Scorpion, and vindictive Archer, and the filthy and
ill-omened He-Goat dragged him down toward the Winter Solstice.

Arriving there, they said he had been slain, and had gone to the realm
of darkness. Remaining there three days, he rose again, and again
ascended Northward in the heavens, to redeem the earth from the gloom
and darkness of Winter, which soon became emblematical of sin, and evil,
and suffering; as the Spring, Summer, and Autumn became emblems of
happiness and immortality.

Soon they personified the Sun, and worshipped him under the name of
OSIRIS, and transmuted the legend of his descent among the Winter Signs,
into a fable of his death, his descent into the infernal regions, and
his resurrection.

The Moon became Isis, the wife of Osiris; and Winter, as well as the
desert or the ocean into which the Sun descended, became TYPHON, the
Spirit or Principle of Evil, warring against and destroying Osiris.

From the journey of the Sun through the twelve signs came the legend of
the twelve labors of Hercules, and the incarnations of Vishnu and
Buddha. Hence came the legend of the murder of Khūrũm, representative of
the Sun, by the three Fellow-crafts, symbols of the three Winter signs,
Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces, who assailed him at the three gates
of Heaven and slew him at the Winter Solstice. Hence the search for him
by the nine Fellow-crafts, the other nine signs, his finding, burial,
and resurrection.

The celestial Taurus, opening the new year, was the Creative Bull of the
Hindus and Japanese, breaking with his horn the egg out of which the
world is born, Hence the bull APIS was worshipped by the Egyptians, and
reproduced as a golden calf by Aaron in the desert. Hence the cow was
sacred to the Hindús. Hence, from the sacred and beneficent signs of
Taurus and Leo, the human-headed winged lions and bulls in the palaces
at Kouyounjik and Nimroud, like which were the Cherubim set by Solomon
in his Temple: and hence the twelve brazen or bronze oxen, on which the
laver of brass was supported.

The Celestial Vulture or Eagle, rising and setting with the Scorpion,
was substituted in its place, in many cases, on account of the malign
influences of the latter: and thus the four great periods of the year
were marked by the Bull, the Lion, the Man (Aquarius) and the Eagle;
which were upon the respective standards of Ephraim, Judah, Reuben, and
Dan; and still appear on the shield of American Royal Arch Masonry.

Afterward the Ram or Lamb became an object of adoration, when, in his
turn, he opened the equinox, to deliver the world from the wintry reign
of darkness and evil.

Around the central and simple idea of the annual death and resurrection
of the Sun a multitude of circumstantial details soon clustered. Some
were derived from other astronomical phenomena; while many were merely
poetical ornaments and inventions.

Besides the Sun and Moon, those ancients also saw a beautiful Star,
shining, with a soft, silvery light, always following the Sun at no
great distance when he set, or preceding him when he rose. Another of a
red and angry color, and still another more kingly and brilliant than
all, early attracted their attention, by their free movements among the
fixed hosts of Heaven: and the latter by his unusual brilliancy, and the
regularity with which he rose and set. These were Venus, Mars, and
Jupiter. Mercury and Saturn could scarcely have been noticed in the
world's infancy, or until astronomy began to assume the proportions of a
science.

In the projection of the celestial sphere by the astronomical priests,
the zodiac and constellations, arranged in a circle, presented their
halves in diametrical opposition; and the hemisphere of Winter was said
to be adverse, opposed, contrary, to that of Summer. Over the angels of
the latter ruled a king (OSIRIS or ORMUZD), enlightened, intelligent,
creative, and beneficent. Over the fallen angels or evil genii of the
former, the demons or Devs of the subterranean empire of darkness and
sorrow, and its stars, ruled also a chief. In Egypt the Scorpion first
ruled, the sign next the Balance, and long the chief of the Winter
signs; and then the Polar Bear or Ass, called Typhon, that is, _deluge_,
on account of the rains which inundated the earth while that
constellation domineered. In Persia, at a later day, it was the serpent,
which, personified as Ahriman, was the Evil Principle of the religion of
Zoroaster.

The Sun does not arrive at the same moment in each year at the
equinoctial point on the equator. The explanation of his anticipating
that point belongs to the science of astronomy; and to that we refer you
for it. The consequence is, what is termed the precession of the
equinoxes, by means of which the Sun is constantly changing his place in
the zodiac, at each vernal equinox; so that now, the signs retaining the
names which they had 300 years before Christ, they and the
constellations do not correspond; the Sun being now in the constellation
Pisces, when he is in the sign Aries.

The annual amount of precession is 50 seconds and a little over [50"
1.]. The period of a complete Revolution of the Equinoxes, 25,856 years.
The precession amounts to 30° or a sign, in 2155.6 years. So that, as
the sun now enters Pisces at the Vernal Equinox, he entered Aries at
that period, 300 years B.C., and Taurus 2455 B.C. And the division of
the Ecliptic, now _called_ Taurus, lies in the Constellation Aries;
while the _sign_ Gemini is in the _Constellation_ Taurus. Four thousand
six hundred and ten years before Christ, the sun entered Gemini at the
Vernal Equinox.

At the two periods, 2455 and 300 years before Christ, and now, the
entrances of the sun at the Equinoxes and Solstices into the signs, were
and are as follows:--

                        _B.C._ 2455.


Vern. Equinox, he entered Taurus         from Aries.
Summer Solstice           Leo            from Cancer.
Autumnal Equinox          Scorpio        from Libra.
Winter Solstice           Aquarius       from Capricornus.

                         _B.C._ 300.

Vern. Eq.                 Aries          from Pisces.
Summer Sols.              Cancer         from Gemini.
Autumn Eq.                Libra          from Virgo.
Winter Sols.              Capricornus    from Sagittarius.

                          1872.

Vern. Eq.                 Pisces         from Aquarius.
Sum. Sols.                Gemini         from Taurus.
Aut. Eq.                  Virgo          from Leo.
Winter Sols.              Sagittarius    from Scorpio.

From confounding _signs_ with _causes_ came the worship of the sun and
stars. "If," says Job, "I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon
progressive in brightness; and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or
my mouth hath kissed my hand, this were an iniquity to be punished by
the Judge; for I should have denied the God that is above."

Perhaps we are not, on the whole, much wiser than those simple men of
the old time. For what do we know of _effect_ and _cause_, except that
one thing regularly or habitually _follows_ another?

So, because the heliacal rising of Sirius _preceded_ the rising of the
Nile, it was deemed to _cause_ it; and other stars were in like manner
held to _cause_ extreme heat, bitter cold, and watery storm.

A religious reverence for the zodiacal Bull [TAURUS] appears, from a
very early period, to have been pretty general,--perhaps it was
universal, throughout Asia; from that chain or region of Caucasus to
which it gave name; and which is still known under the appellation of
Mount Taurus, to the Southern extremities of the Indian Peninsula;
extending itself also into Europe, and through the Eastern parts of
Africa.

This evidently originated during those remote ages of the world, when
the colure of the vernal equinox passed across the stars in the head of
the sign Taurus [among which was Aldebarán]; a period when, as the most
ancient monuments of all the oriental nations attest, the light of arts
and letters first shone forth.

The Arabian word AL-DE-BARÁN, means the _foremost_, or _leading_, star:
and it could only have been so named, when it did precede, or _lead_,
all others. The year then opened with the sun in Taurus; and the
multitude of ancient sculptures, both in Assyria and Egypt, wherein the
bull appears with lunette or crescent horns, and the disk of the sun
between them, are direct allusions to the important festival of the
first new moon of the year: and there was everywhere an annual
celebration of the festival of the first new moon, when the year opened
with Sol and Luna in Taurus.

David sings: "Blow the trumpet in _the New Moon_; in the time appointed;
on our solemn feast-day: for this is a statute unto Israel, and a law of
the God of Jacob. This he ordained to Joseph, for a testimony, when he
came out of the land of Egypt."

The reverence paid to Taurus continued long after, by the precession of
the Equinoxes, the colure of the vernal equinox had come to pass through
Aries. The Chinese still have a temple, called "The Palace of the horned
Bull"; and the same symbol is worshipped in Japan and all over
Hindostan. The Cimbrians carried a brazen bull with them, as the image
of their God, when they overran Spain and Gaul; and the representation
of the Creation, by the Deity in the shape of a bull, breaking the shell
of an egg with his horns, meant Taurus, opening the year, and bursting
the symbolical shell of the annually-recurring orb of the new year.

Theophilus says that the Osiris of Egypt was supposed to be dead or
absent fifty days in each year. Landseer thinks that this was because
the Sabæan priests were accustomed to see, in the lower latitudes of
Egypt and Ethiopia, the first or chief stars of the Husbandman [BOÖTES]
sink achronically beneath the Western horizon; and then to begin their
lamentations, or hold forth the signal for others to weep: and when his
prolific virtues were supposed to be transferred to the vernal sun,
bacchanalian revelry became devotion.

Before the colure of the Vernal Equinox had passed into Aries, and after
it had left Aldebarán and the Hyades, the Pleiades were, for seven or
eight centuries, the leading stars of the Sabæan year. And thus we see,
on the monuments, the disk and crescent, symbols of the sun and moon in
conjunction, appear successively,--first on the head, and then on the
neck and back of the Zodiacal Bull, and more recently on the forehead of
the Ram.

The diagrammatical character or symbol, still in use to denote Taurus,
[Glyph], is this very crescent and disk: a symbol that has come down to
us from those remote ages when this memorable conjunction in Taurus, by
marking the commencement, at once of the Sabæan year and of the cycle of
the Chaldean Saros, so pre-eminently distinguished that sign as to
become its characteristic symbol. On a bronze bull from China, the
crescent is attached to the _back_ of the Bull, by means of a cloud, and
a curved groove is provided for the occasional introduction of the disk
of the sun, when solar and lunar time were coincident and conjunctive,
at the commencement of the year, and of the lunar cycle. When that was
made, the year did not open with the stars in the _head_ of the Bull,
but when the colure of the vernal equinox passed across the middle or
later degrees of the asterism Taurus, and the Pleiades were, in China,
as in Canaan, the leading stars of the year.

The crescent and disk combined always represent the conjunctive Sun and
Moon; and when placed on the head of the Zodiacal Bull, the commencement
of the cycle termed SAROS by the Chaldeans, and Metonic by the Greeks;
and supposed to be alluded to in Job, by the phrase, "Mazzaroth in his
season"; that is to say, when the first new Moon and new Sun of the year
were coincident, which happened once in eighteen years and a fraction.

On the sarcophagus of Alexander, the same symbol appears on the head of
a Ram, which, in the time of that monarch, was the leading sign. So too
in the sculptured temples of the Upper Nile, the crescent and disk
appear, not on the head of Taurus, but on the forehead of the Ram or the
Ram-headed God, whom the Grecian Mythologists called Jupiter Ammon,
really the Sun in Aries.

If we now look for a moment at the individual stars which composed and
were near to the respective constellations, we may find something that
will connect itself with the symbols of the Ancient Mysteries and of
Masonry.

It is to be noticed that when the Sun is _in_ a particular
constellation, no part of that constellation will be seen, except just
before sunrise and just after sunset; and then only the edge of it: but
the constellations _opposite_ to it will be visible. When the Sun is in
Taurus, for example, that is, when Taurus _sets with_ the Sun, Scorpio
rises as he sets, and continues visible throughout the night. And if
Taurus rises and sets with the Sun to-day, he will, six months hence,
rise at sunset and set at sunrise; for the stars thus gain on the Sun
two hours a month.

Going back to the time when, watched by the Chaldean shepherds, and the
husbandmen of Ethiopia and Egypt,

"The milk-white Bull with golden horns
 Led on the new-born year,"

we see in the neck of TAURUS, the Pleiades, and in his face the Hyades,
"which Grecia from their showering names," and of whom the brilliant
Aldebarán is the chief; while to the southwestward is that most splendid
of all the constellations, Orion, with Betelgueux in his right shoulder,
Bellatrix in his left shoulder, Rigel on the left foot, and in his belt
the three stars known as the Three Kings, and now as the Yard and Ell.
Orion, ran the legend, persecuted the Pleiades; and to save them from
his fury, Jupiter placed them in the Heavens, where he still pursues
them, but in vain. They, with Arcturus and the Bands of Orion, are
mentioned in the Book of Job. They are usually called the Seven Stars,
and it is said there _were_ seven, before the fall of Troy; though now
only six are visible.

The Pleiades were so named from a Greek word signifying _to sail._ In
all ages they have been observed for signs and seasons. Virgil says that
the sailors gave names to "the Pleiades, Hyades, and the Northern Car:
_Pleiadas, Hyadas, Claramque Lycaonis Arcton."_ And Palinurus, he
says,--

_Arcturum, pluviasque Hyadas, Geminosque Triones,
Armatumque auro circumspicit Oriona,--_

studied Arcturus and the rainy Hyades and the Twin Triones, and Orion
cinctured with gold.

Taurus was the prince and leader of the celestial host for more than two
thousand years; and when his head set with the Sun about the last of
May, the Scorpion was seen to rise in the Southeast.

The Pleiades were sometimes called _Vergiliœ,_ or the Virgins of Spring;
because the Sun entered this cluster of stars in the season of blossoms.
Their Syrian name was _Succoth,_ or _Succothbeneth,_ derived from a
Chaldean word signifying to _speculate_ or _observe._

The _Hyades_ are five stars in the form of a V, 11° southeast of the
Pleiades. The Greeks counted them as seven. When the Vernal Equinox was
in Taurus, Aldebarán led up the starry host; and as he rose in the East,
Aries was about 27° high.

When he was close upon the meridian, the Heavens presented their most
magnificent appearance. Capella was a little further from the meridian,
to the north; and Orion still further from it to the southward. Procyon,
Sirius, Castor and Pollux had climbed about half-way from the horizon to
the meridian. Regulus had just risen upon the ecliptic. The Virgin still
lingered below the horizon. Fomalhaut was half-way to the meridian in
the Southwest; and to the Northwest were the brilliant constellations,
Perseus, Cepheus, Cassiopeia, and Andromeda; while the Pleiades had just
passed the meridian.

ORION is visible to all the habitable world. The equinoctial line passes
through the centre of it. When Aldebarán rose in the East, the Three
Kings in Orion followed him; and as Taurus set, the Scorpion, by whose
sting it was said Orion died, rose in the East.

Orion rises at noon about the 9th of March. His rising was accompanied
with great rains and storms, and it became very terrible to mariners.

In Boötes, called by the ancient Greeks _Lycaon_, from _lukos,_ a wolf,
and by the Hebrews, Caleb Anubach, the Barking Dog, is the Great Star
ARCTURUS, which, when Taurus opened the year, corresponded with a season
remarkable for its great heat.

Next comes GEMINI, the Twins, two human figures, in the heads of which
are the bright Stars CASTOR and POLLUX, the Dioscuri, and the Cabiri of
Samothrace, patrons of navigation; while South of Pollux are the
brilliant Stars SIRIUS and PROCYON, the greater and lesser Dog: and
still further South, Canopus, in the Ship Argo.

Sirius is apparently the largest and brightest Star in the Heavens. When
the Vernal Equinox was in Taurus, he rose heliacally, that is, just
before the Sun, when, at the Summer Solstice, the Sun entered Leo, about
the 21st of June, fifteen days previous to the swelling of the Nile. The
heliacal rising of Canopus was also a precursor of the rising of the
Nile. Procyon was the forerunner of Sirius, and rose before him.

There are no important Stars in CANCER. In the Zodiacs of Esne and
Dendera, and in most of the astrological remains of Egypt, the sign of
this constellation was a beetle (_Scarabœus_), which thence became
sacred, as an emblem of the gate through which souls descended from
Heaven. In the crest of Cancer is a cluster of Stars formerly called
_Prœsepe,_ the Manger, on each side of which is a small Star, the two of
which were called _Aselli_ little asses.

In _Leo_ are the splendid Stars, REGULUS, directly on the ecliptic, and
DENEBOLA in the Lion's tail. Southeast of Regulus is the fine Star COR
HYDRÆ.

The combat of Hercules with the Nemæan lion was his first labor. It was
the first sign into which the Sun passed, after falling below the Summer
Solstice; from which time he struggled to re-ascend.

The Nile overflowed in this sign. It stands first in the Zodiac of
Dendera, and is in all the Indian and Egyptian Zodiacs.

In the left hand of VIRGO (Isis or Ceres) is the beautiful Star SPICA
Virginis, a little South of the ecliptic. VINDEMIATRIX, of less
magnitude, is in the right arm; and Northwest of Spica, in Boötes (the
husbandman, Osiris), is the splendid star ARCTURUS.

The division of the first Decan of the Virgin, Aben Ezra says,
represents a beautiful Virgin with flowing hair, sitting in a chair,
with two ears of corn in her hand, and suckling an infant. In an Arabian
MS. in the Royal Library at Paris, is a picture of the Twelve Signs.
That of Virgo is a young girl with an infant by her side. Virgo was
Isis; and her representation, carrying a child (Horus) in her arms,
exhibited in her temple, was accompanied by this inscription: "I AM ALL
THAT IS, THAT WAS, AND THAT SHALL BE; and the fruit which I brought
forth is the Sun."

Nine months after the Sun enters Virgo, he reaches the Twins. When
Scorpio begins to rise, Orion sets: when Scorpio comes to the meridian,
Leo begins to set, Typhon reigns, Osiris is slain, and Isis (the Virgin)
his sister and wife, follows him to the tomb, weeping.

The Virgin and Boötes, setting heliacally at the Autumnal Equinox,
delivered the world to the wintry constellations, and introduced into it
the genius of Evil, represented by Ophiucus, the Serpent.

At the moment of the Winter Solstice, the Virgin rose heliacally (_with_
the Sun), having the Sun (Horus) in her bosom.

In LIBRA are four Stars of the second and third magnitude, which we
shall mention hereafter. They are Zuben-es-Chamali, Zuben-el-Gemabi,
Zuben-hak-rabi, and Zuben-el-Gubi. Near the last of these is the
brilliant and malign Star, ANTARES in Scorpio.

In SCORPIO, ANTARES, of the 1st magnitude, and remarkably red, was one
of the four great Stars, FOMALHAUT, in Cetus, ALDEBARAN in Taurus,
REGULUS in Leo, and ANTARES, that formerly answered to the Solstitial
and Equinoctial points, and were much noticed by astronomers. This sign
was sometimes represented by a Snake, and sometimes by a Crocodile, but
generally by a Scorpion, which last is found on the Mithriac Monuments,
and on the Zodiac of Dendera. It was considered a sign accursed, and the
entrance of the Sun into it commenced the reign of Typhon.

In Sagittarius, Capricornus, and Aquarius there are no Stars of
importance.

Near Pisces is the brilliant Star FOMALHAUT. No sign in the Zodiac is
considered of more malignant influence than this. It was deemed
indicative of _Violence_ and _Death._ Both the Syrians and Egyptians
abstained from eating fish, out of dread and abhorhence; and when the
latter would represent anything as odious, or express hatred by
Hieroglyphics, they painted a fish.

In Auriga is the bright Star CAPELLA, which to the Egyptians never set.

And, circling ever round the North Pole are Seven Stars, known as Ursa
Major, or the Great Bear, which have been an object of universal
observation in all ages of the world. They were venerated alike by the
Priests of Bel, the Magi of Persia, the Shepherds of Chaldea, and the
Phœnician navigators, as well as by the astronomers of Egypt. Two of
them, MERAK and DUBHE, always point to the North Pole.

The Phoenicians and Egyptians, says Eusebius, were the first who
ascribed divinity to the Sun, Moon, and Stars, and regarded them as the
sole causes of the production and destruction of all beings. From them
went abroad over all the world all known opinions as to the generation
and descent of the Gods. Only the Hebrews looked beyond the visible
world to an invisible Creator. All the rest of the world regarded as
Gods those luminous bodies that blaze in the firmament, offered them
sacrifices, bowed down before them, and raised neither their souls nor
their worship above the visible heavens.

The Chaldeans, Canaanites, and Syrians, among whom Abraham lived, did
the same. The Canaanites consecrated horses and chariots to the Sun. The
inhabitants of Emesa in Phœnicia adored him under the name of
Elagabalus; and the Sun, as Hercules, was the great Deity of the
Tyrians. The Syrians worshipped, with fear and dread, the Stars of the
Constellation Pisces, and consecrated images of them in their temples.
The Sun as Adonis was worshipped in Byblos and about Mount Libanus.
There was a magnificent Temple of the Sun at Palmyra, which was pillaged
by the soldiers of Aurelian, who rebuilt it and dedicated it anew. The
Pleiades, under the name of Succoth-Beneth, were worshipped by the
Babylonian colonists who settled in the country of the Samaritans.
Saturn, under the name of Remphan, was worshipped among the Copts. The
planet Jupiter was worshipped as Bel or Baal; Mars as Malec, Melech, or
Moloch; Venus as Ashtaroth or Astarte, and Mercury as Nebo, among the
Syrians, Assyrians, Phœnicians, and Canaanites.

Sanchoniathon says that the earliest Phœnicians adored the Sun, whom
they deemed sole Lord of the Heavens; and honored him, under the name of
BEEL-SAMIN, signifying _King of Heaven._ They raised columns to the
elements, fire, and air or wind, and worshipped them; and Sabæism, or
the worship of the Stars, flourished everywhere in Babylonia. The Arabs,
under a sky always clear and serene, adored the Sun, Moon, and Stars.
Abulfaragius so informs us, and that each of the twelve Arab Tribes
invoked a particular Star as its Patron. The Tribe Hamyar was
consecrated to the Sun, the Tribe Cennah to the Moon; the Tribe Misa was
under the protection of the beautiful Star in Taurus, Aldebarán; the
Tribe Tai under that of Canopus; the Tribe Kais, of Sirius; the Tribes
Lachamus and Idamus, of Jupiter; the Tribe Asad, of Mercury; and so on.

The Saracens, in the time of Heraclius, worshipped Venus, whom they
called CABAR, or The Great; and they swore by the Sun, Moon, and Stars.
Shahristan, an Arabic author, says that the Arabs and Indians before his
time had temples dedicated to the seven Planets. Abulfaragius says that
the seven great primitive nations, from whom all others descended, the
Persians, Chaldæans, Greeks, Egyptians, Turks, Indians, and Chinese, all
originally were Sabæists, and worshipped the Stars. They all, he says,
like the Chaldæans, prayed, turning toward the North Pole three times a
day, at Sunrise, Noon, and Sunset, bowing themselves three times before
the Sun. They invoked the Stars and the Intelligences which inhabited
them, offered them sacrifices, and called the fixed stars and planets
gods. Philo says that the Chaldæans regarded the stars as sovereign
arbiters of the order of the world, and did not look beyond the visible
causes to any invisible and intellectual being. They regarded NATURE as
the great divinity, that exercised its powers through the action of its
parts the Sun, Moon, Planets, and Fixed Stars, the successive
revolutions of the seasons, and the combined action of Heaven and Earth.
The great feast of the Sabæans was when the Sun reached the Vernal
Equinox: and they had five other feasts, at the times when the five
minor planets entered the signs in which they had their exaltation.

Diodorus Siculus informs us that the Egyptians recognized two great
Divinities, primary and eternal, the Sun and Moon, which they thought
governed the world, and from which everything receives its nourishment
and growth: that on them depended all the great work of generation, and
the perfection of all effects produced in nature. We know that the two
great Divinities of Egypt were Osiris and Isis, the greatest agents of
nature; according to some, the Sun and Moon, and according to others,
Heaven and Earth, or the active and passive principles of generation.

And we learn from Porphyry that Chæremon, a learned priest of Egypt, and
many other learned men of that nation, said that the Egyptians
recognized as gods the stars composing the zodiac, and all those that by
their rising or setting marked its divisions; the subdivisions of the
signs into decans, the horoscope and the stars that presided therein,
and which were called Potent Chiefs of Heaven: that considering the Sun
as the Great God, Architect, and Ruler of the World, they explained not
only the fable of Osiris and Isis, but generally all their sacred
legends, by the stars, by their appearance and disappearance, by their
ascension, by the phases of the moon, and the increase and diminution of
her light; by the march of the sun, the division of time and the heavens
into two parts, one assigned to darkness and the other to light; by the
Nile and, in fine, by the whole round of physical causes.

Lucian tells us that the bull Apis, sacred to the Egyptians, was the
image of the celestial Bull, or Taurus; and that Jupiter Ammon, horned
like a ram, was an image of the constellation Aries. And Clemens of
Alexandria assures us that the four principal sacred animals, carried
in their processions, were emblems of the four signs or cardinal points
which fixed the seasons at the equinoxes and solstices, and divided into
four parts the yearly march of the sun. They worshipped fire also, and
water, and the Nile, which river they styled Father, Preserver of Egypt,
sacred emanation from the Great God Osiris; and in their hymns in which
they called it the god crowned with millet (which grain, represented by
the _pschent_, was part of the head-dress of their kings), bringing with
him abundance. The other elements were also revered by them: and the
Great Gods, whose names are found inscribed on an ancient column, are
the Air, Heaven, the Earth, the Sun, the Moon, Night, and Day. And, in
fine, as Eusebius says, they regarded the Universe as a great Deity,
composed of a great number of gods, the different parts of itself.

The same worship of the Heavenly Host extended into every part of
Europe, into Asia Minor, and among the Turks, Scythians, and Tartars.
The ancient Persians adored the Sun as Mithras, and also the Moon,
Venus, Fire, Earth, Air, and Water; and, having no statues or altars,
they sacrificed on high places to the Heavens and to the Sun. On seven
ancient _pyrea_ they burned incense to the Seven Planets, and considered
the elements to be divinities. In the Zend-Avesta we find invocations
addressed to Mithras, the stars, the elements, trees, mountains, and
every part of nature. The Celestial Bull is invoked there, to which the
Moon unites herself; and the four great stars, Taschter, Satevis,
Haftorang, and Venant, the great Star Rapitan, and the other
constellations which watch over the different portions of the earth.

The Magi, like a multitude of ancient nations, worshipped fire, above
all the other elements and powers of nature. In India, the Ganges and
the Indus were worshipped, and the Sun was the Great Divinity. They
worshipped the Moon also, and kept up the sacred fire. In Ceylon, the
Sun, Moon, and other planets were worshipped: in Sumatra, the Sun,
called Iri, and the Moon, called Handa. And the Chinese built Temples to
Heaven, the Earth, and genii of the air, of the water, of the mountains,
and of the stars, to the sea-dragon, and to the planet Mars.

The celebrated Labyrinth was built in honor of the Sun; and its twelve
palaces, like the twelve superb columns of the Temple at Hieropolis,
covered with symbols relating to the twelve signs and the occult
qualities of the elements, were consecrated to the twelve gods or
tutelary genii of the signs of the Zodiac. The figure of the pyramid
and that of the obelisk, resembling the shape of a flame, caused these
monuments to be consecrated to the Sun and to Fire. And Timæus of Locria
says: "The equilateral triangle enters into the composition of the
pyramid, which has four equal faces and equal angles, and which in this
is like fire the most subtle and mobile of the elements." They and the
obelisks were erected in honor of the Sun, termed in an inscription upon
one of the latter, translated by the Egyptian Hermapion and to be found
in Ammianus Marcellinus, "Apollo the strong, Son of God, He who made the
world, true Lord of the diadems, who possesses Egypt and fills it with
His glory."

The two most famous divisions of the Heavens, by seven, which is that of
the planets, and by twelve, which is that of the signs, are found on the
religious monuments of all the people of the ancient world. The twelve
Great Gods of Egypt are met with everywhere. They were adopted by the
Greeks and Romans; and the latter assigned one of them to each sign of
the Zodiac. Their images were seen at Athens, where an altar was erected
to each; and they were painted on the porticos. The People of the North
had their twelve _Azes_, or Senate of twelve great gods, of whom Odin
was chief. The Japanese had the same number, and like the Egyptians
divided them into classes, seven, who were the most ancient, and five,
afterward added: both of which numbers are well known and consecrated in
Masonry.

There is no more striking proof of the universal adoration paid the
stars and constellations, than the arrangement of the Hebrew camp in the
Desert, and the allegory in regard to the twelve Tribes of Israel,
ascribed in the Hebrew legends to Jacob. The Hebrew camp was a
quadrilateral, in sixteen divisions, of which the central four were
occupied by images of the four elements. The four divisions at the four
angles of the quadrilateral exhibited the four signs that the
astrologers called _fixed_, and which they regard as subject to the
influence of the four great Royal Stars, Regulus in Leo, Aldebaran in
Taurus, Antares in Scorpio, and Fomalhaut in the mouth of Pisces, on
which falls the water poured out by Aquarius; of which constellations
the Scorpion was represented in the Hebrew blazonry by the Celestial
Vulture or Eagle, that rises at the same time with it and is its
paranatellon. The other signs were arranged on the four faces of the
quadilateral, and in the parallel and interior divisions.

There is an astonishing coincidence between the characteristics assigned
by Jacob to his sons, and those of the signs of the Zodiac, or the
planets that have their domicile in those signs.

_Reuben_ is compared to running water, unstable, and that cannot excel;
and he answers to Aquarius, his ensign being a man. The water poured out
by Aquarius flows toward the South Pole, and it is the first of the four
Royal Signs, ascending from the Winter Solstice.

The Lion (Leo) is the device of _Judah_; and Jacob compares him to that
animal, whose constellation in the Heavens is the domicile of the Sun;
the Lion of the Tribe of Judah; by whose grip, when that of apprentice
and that of fellow-craft,--of Aquarius at the Winter Solstice and of
Cancer at the Vernal Equinox,--had not succeeded in raising him, Khūrūm
was lifted out of the grave.

_Ephraim_, on whose ensign appears the Celestial Bull, Jacob compares to
the ox. _Dan_, bearing as his device a Scorpion, he compares to the
Cerastes or horned Serpent, synonymous in astrological language with the
vulture or pouncing eagle; and which bird was often substituted on the
flag of Dan, in place of the venomous scorpion, on account of the terror
which that reptile inspired, as the symbol of Typhon and his malign
influences; wherefore the Eagle, as its paranatellon, that is, rising
and setting at the same time with it, was naturally used in its stead.
Hence the four famous figures in the sacred pictures of the Jews and
Christians, and in Royal Arch Masonry, of the Lion, the Ox, the Man, and
the Eagle, the four creatures of the Apocalypse, copied there from
Ezekiel, in whose reveries and rhapsodies they are seen revolving around
blazing circles.

The Ram, domicile of Mars, chief of the Celestial Soldiery and of the
twelve Signs, is the device of _Gad_, whom Jacob characterizes as a
warrior, chief of his army.

Cancer, in which are the stars termed _Aselli_, or little assess, is the
device of the flag of _Issachar_, whom Jacob compares to an ass.

Capricorn, of old represented with the tail of a fish, and called by
astronomers the Son of Neptune, is the device of _Zebulon_, of whom
Jacob says that he dwells on the shore of the sea.

Sagittarius, chasing the Celestial Wolf, is the emblem of _Benjamin_,
whom Jacob compares to a hunter: and in that constellation the Romans
placed the domicile of Diana the huntress. Virgo, the domicile of
Mercury, is borne on the flag of _Naphtali_, whose eloquence and agility
Jacob magnifies, both of which are attributes of the Courier of the
Gods. And of _Simeon_ and _Levi_ he speaks as united, as are the two
fishes that make the Constellation Pisces, which is their armorial
emblem.

Plato, in his Republic, followed the divisions of the Zodiac and the
planets. So also did Lycurgus at Sparta, and Cecrops in the Athenian
Commonwealth. Chun, the Chinese legislator, divided China into twelve
Tcheou, and specially designated twelve mountains. The Etruscans divided
themselves into twelve Cantons. Romulus appointed twelve Lictors. There
were twelve tribes of Ishmael and twelve disciples of the Hebrew
Reformer. The New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse has twelve gates.

The Souciet, a Chinese book, speaks of a palace composed of four
buildings, whose gates looked toward the four corners of the world. That
on the East was dedicated to the new moons of the months of Spring; that
on the West to those of Autumn; that on the South to those of Summer;
and that on the North to those of Winter: and in this, palace the
Emperor and his grandees sacrificed a lamb, the animal that represented
the Sun at the Vernal Equinox.

Among the Greeks, the march of the Choruses in their theatres
represented the movements of the Heavens and the planets, and the
Strophe and Anti-Strophe imitated, Aristoxenes says, the movements of
the Stars. The number five was sacred among the Chinese, as that of the
planets other than the Sun and Moon. Astrology consecrated the numbers
twelve, seven, thirty, and three hundred and sixty; and everywhere
_seven_, the number of the planets, was as sacred as twelve, that of the
signs, the months, the oriental cycles, and the sections of the horizon.
We shall speak more at large hereafter, in another Degree, as to these
and other numbers, to which the ancients ascribed mysterious powers.

The Signs of the Zodiac and the Stars appeared on many of the ancient
coins and medals. On the public seal of the Locrians, Ozoles was
Hesperus, or the planet Venus. On the medals of Antioch on the Orontes
was the ram and crescent; and the Ram was the special Deity of Syria,
assigned to it in the division of the earth among the twelve signs. On
the Cretan coins was the Equinoctial Bull; and he also appeared on those
of the Mamertins and of Athens. Sagittarius appeared on those of the
Persians. In India the twelve signs appeared upon the ancient coins.
The Scorpion was engraved on the medals of the Kings of Comagena, and
Capricorn on those of Zeugma, Anazorba, and other cities. On the medals
of Antoninus are found nearly all the signs of the Zodiac.

Astrology was practised among all the ancient nations. In Egypt, the
book of Astrology was borne reverentially in the religious processions;
in which the few sacred animals were also carried, as emblems of the
equinoxes and solstices. The same science nourished among the Chaldeans,
and over the whole of Asia and Africa. When Alexander invaded India, the
astrologers of the Oxydraces came to him to disclose the secrets of
their science of Heaven and the Stars. The Brahmins whom Apollonius
consulted, taught him the secrets of Astronomy, with the ceremonies and
prayers whereby to appease the gods and learn the future from the stars.
In China, astrology taught the mode of governing the State and families.
In Arabia it was deemed the mother of the sciences; and old libraries
are full of Arabic books on this pretended science. It flourished at
Rome. Constantine had his horoscope drawn by the astrologer Valens. It
was a science in the middle ages, and even to this day is neither
forgotten nor unpractised. Catherine de Medici was fond of it. Louis
XIV. consulted his horoscope, and the learned Casini commenced his
career as an astrologer.

The ancient Sabæans established feasts in honor of each planet, on the
day, for each, when it entered its place of _exaltation_, or reached the
particular degree in the particular sign of the zodiac in which
astrology had fixed the place of its exaltation; that is, the place in
the Heavens where its influence was supposed to be greatest, and where
it acted on Nature with the greatest energy. The place of exaltation of
the Sun was in Aries, because, reaching that point, he awakens all
Nature, and warms into life all the germs of vegetation; and therefore
his most solemn feast among all nations, for many years before our Era,
was fixed at the time of his entrance into that sign. In Egypt, it was
called the Feast of Fire and Light. It was the Passover, when the
Paschal Lamb was slain and eaten, among the Jews, and Neurouz among the
Persians. The Romans preferred the place of _domicile_ to that of
exaltation; and celebrated the feasts of the planets under the signs
that were their _houses_. The Chaldeans, whom, and not the Egyptians,
the Sabæans followed in this, preferred the places of exaltation.

Saturn, from the length of time required for his apparent revolution,
was considered the most remote, and the Moon the nearest planet. After
the Moon came Mercury and Venus, then the Sun and then Mars, Jupiter,
and Saturn.

So the risings and settings of the Fixed Stars, and their conjunctions
with the Sun, and their first appearance as they emerged from his rays,
fixed the epochs for the feasts instituted in their honor; and the
Sacred Calendars of the ancients were regulated accordingly.

In the Roman games of the circus, celebrated in honor of the Sun and of
entire Nature, the Sun, Moon, Planets, Zodiac, Elements, and the most
apparent parts and potent agents of Nature were personified and
represented, and the courses of the Sun in the Heavens were imitated in
the Hippodrome; his chariot being drawn by four horses of different
colors, representing the four elements and seasons. The courses were
from East to West, like the circuits round the Lodge, and seven in
number, to correspond with the number of planets. The movements of the
Seven Stars that revolve around the pole were also represented, as were
those of Capella, which by its heliacal rising at the moment when the
Sun reached the Pleiades, in Taurus, announced the commencement of the
annual revolution of the Sun.

The intersection of the Zodiac by the colures at the Equinoctial and
Solstitial points, fixed four periods, each of which has, by one or more
nations, and in some cases by the same nation at different periods, been
taken for the commencement of the year. Some adopted the Vernal Equinox,
because then day began to prevail over night, and light gained a victory
over darkness. Sometimes the Summer Solstice was preferred; because then
day attained its maximum of duration, and the acme of its glory and
perfection. In Egypt, another reason was, that then the Nile began to
overflow, at the heliacal rising of Sirius. Some preferred the Autumnal
Equinox, because then the harvests were gathered, and the hopes of a new
crop were deposited in the bosom of the earth. And some preferred the
Winter Solstice, because then, the shortest day having arrived, their
length commenced to increase, and Light began the career destined to end
in victory at the Vernal Equinox.

The Sun was figuratively said to _die_ and be _born again_ at the Winter
Solstice; the games of the Circus, in honor of the invincible God-Sun,
were then celebrated, and the Roman year, established or reformed by
Numa, commenced. Many peoples of Italy commenced their year, Macrobius
says, at that time; and represented by the four ages of man the gradual
succession of periodical increase and diminution of day, and the light
of the Sun; likening him to an infant born at the Winter Solstice, a
young man at the Vernal Equinox, a robust man at the Summer Solstice,
and an old man at the Autumnal Equinox.

This idea was borrowed from the Egyptians, who adored the Sun at the
Winter Solstice, under the figure of an infant.

The image of the Sign in which each of the four seasons commenced,
became the form under which was figured the Sun of that particular
season. The Lion's skin was worn by Hercules; the horns of the Bull
adorned the forehead of Bacchus; and the autumnal serpent wound its long
folds round the Statue of Serapis, 2500 years before our era; when those
Signs corresponded with the commencement of the Seasons. When other
constellations replaced them at those points, by means of the precession
of the Equinoxes, those attributes were changed. Then the Ram furnished
the horns for the head of the Sun, under the name of Jupiter Ammon. He
was no longer born exposed to the waters of Aquarius, like Bacchus, nor
enclosed in an urn like the God Canopus; but in the Stables of Augeas or
the Celestial Goat. He then completed his triumph, mounted on an ass, in
the constellation Cancer, which then occupied the Solstitial point of
Summer.

Other attributes the images of the Sun borrowed from the constellations
which, by their rising and setting, fixed the points of departure of the
year, and the commencements of its four principal divisions.

First the Bull and afterward the Ram (called by the Persians the Lamb),
was regarded as the regenerator of Nature, through his union with the
Sun. Each, in his turn, was an emblem of the Sun overcoming the winter
darkness, and repairing the disorders of Nature, which every year was
regenerated under these Signs, after the Scorpion and Serpent of Autumn
had brought upon it barrenness, disaster, and darkness. Mithras was
represented sitting on a Bull; and that animal was an image of Osiris:
while the Greek Bacchus armed his front with its horns, and was pictured
with its tail and feet.

The Constellations also became noteworthy to the husbandman, which by
their rising or setting, at morning or evening, indicated the coming of
this period of renewed fruitfulness and new life. Capella, or the kid
Amalthea, whose horn is called that of abundance, and whose place is
over the equinoctial point, or Taurus; and the Pleiades, that long
indicated the Seasons, and gave rise to a multitude of poetic fables,
were the most observed and most celebrated in antiquity.

The original Roman year commenced at the Vernal Equinox. July was
formerly called _Quintilis_, the 5th month, and August _Sextilis_, the
6th, as _September_ is still the 7th month, _October_ the 8th, and so
on. The Persians commenced their year at the same time, and celebrated
their great feast of Neurouz when the Sun entered Aries and the
Constellation Perseus rose,--Perseus, who first brought down to earth
the heavenly fire consecrated in their temples: and all the ceremonies
then practised reminded men of the renovation of Nature and the triumph
of Ormuzd, the Light-God, over the powers of Darkness and Ahriman their
Chief.

The Legislator of the Jews fixed the commencement of their year in the
month Nisan, at the Vernal Equinox, at which season the Israelites
marched out of Egypt and were relieved of their long bondage; in
commemoration of which Exodus, they ate the Paschal Lamb at that
Equinox. And when Bacchus and his army had long marched in burning
deserts, they were led by a Lamb or Ram into beautiful meadows, and to
the Springs that watered the Temple of Jupiter Ammon. For, to the Arabs
and Ethiopians, whose great Divinity Bacchus was, nothing was so perfect
a type of Elysium as a Country abounding in springs and rivulets.

Orion, on the same meridian with the Stars of Taurus, died of the sting
of the celestial Scorpion, that rises when he sets; as dies the Bull of
Mithras in Autumn: and in the Stars that correspond with the Autumnal
Equinox we find those malevolent genii that ever war against the
Principle of good, and that take from the Sun and the Heavens the
fruit-producing power that they communicate to the earth.

With the Vernal Equinox, dear to the sailor as to the husbandman, came
the Stars that, with the Sun, open navigation, and rule the stormy Seas.
Then the Twins plunge into the solar fires, or disappear at setting,
going down with the Sun into the bosom of the waters. And these tutelary
Divinities of mariners, the Dioscuri or Chief Cabiri of Samothrace,
sailed with Jason to possess themselves of the golden-fleeced ram, or
Aries, whose rising in the morning announced the Sun's entry into
Taurus, when the Serpent-bearer Jason rose in the evening, and, in
aspect with the Dioscuri, was deemed their brother. And Orion, son of
Neptune, and most potent controller of the tempest-tortured ocean,
announcing sometimes calm and sometimes tempest, rose after Taurus,
rejoicing in the forehead of the new year.

The Summer Solstice was not less an important point in the Sun's march
than the Vernal Equinox, especially to the Egyptians, to whom it not
only marked the end and term of the increasing length of the days and of
the domination of light, and the _maximum_ of the Sun's elevation; but
also the annual recurrence of that phenomenon peculiar to Egypt, the
rising of the Nile, which, ever accompanying the Sun in his course,
seemed to rise and fall as the days grew longer and shorter, being
lowest at the Winter Solstice, and highest at that of Summer. Thus the
Sun seemed to regulate its swelling; and the time of his arrival at the
solstitial point being that of the first rising of the Nile, was
selected by the Egyptians as the beginning of a year which they called
the Year of God, and of the Sothiac Period, or the period of Sothis, the
Dog-Star, who, rising in the morning, fixed that epoch, so important to
the people of Egypt. This year was also called the Heliac, that is the
Solar year, and the Canicular year; and it consisted of three hundred
and sixty-five days, without intercalation; so that at the end of four
years, or of four times three hundred and sixty-five days, making 1460
days, it needed to add a day, to make four complete revolutions of the
Sun. To correct this, some Nations made every fourth year consist, as we
do now, of 366 days: but the Egyptians preferred to add nothing to the
year of 365 days, which, at the end of 120 years, or of 30 times 4
years, was short 30 days or a month; that is to say, it required a month
more to complete the 120 revolutions of the Sun, though so many were
counted, that is, so many years. Of course the commencement of the 121st
year would not correspond with the Summer Solstice, but would precede it
by a month: so that, when the Sun arrived at the Solstitial point whence
he at first set out, and whereto he must needs return, to make in
reality 120 years, or 120 complete revolutions, the first month of the
121st year would have ended.

Thus, if the commencement of the year went back 30 days every 120 years,
this commencement of the year, continuing to recede, would, at the end
of 12 times 120 years, or of 1460 years get back to the Solstitial
point, or primitive point of departure of the period. The Sun would then
have made but 1459 revolutions though 1460 were counted; to make up
which, a year more would need to be added. So that the Sun would not
have made his 1460 revolutions until the end of 1461 years of 365 days
each,--each revolution being in reality not 365 days exactly, but
365-l/4.

This period of 1461 years, each of 365 days, bringing back the
commencement of the Solar year to the Solstitial point, at the rising of
Sirius, after 1460 complete Solar revolutions, was called in Egypt the
_Sothiac_ period, the point of departure whereof was the Summer
Solstice, first occupied by the Lion and afterward by Cancer, under
which sign is Sirius, which opened the period. It was, says Porphyry, at
this Solstitial New Moon, accompanied by the rising of Seth or the
Dog-Star, that the beginning of the year was fixed, and that of the
generation of all things, or, as it were, the natal hour of the world.

Not Sirius alone determined the period of the rising of the Nile.
Aquarius, his urn, and the stream flowing from it, in opposition to the
sign of the Summer Solstice then occupied by the Sun, opened in the
evening the march of Night, and received the full Moon in his cup. Above
him and with him rose the feet of Pegasus, struck wherewith the waters
flow forth that the Muses drink. The Lion and the Dog, indicating, were
supposed to _cause_ the inundation, and so were worshipped. While the
Sun passed through Leo, the waters doubled their depth; and the sacred
fountains poured their streams through the heads of lions. Hydra, rising
between Sirius and Leo, extended under three signs. Its head rose with
Cancer, and its tail with the feet of the Virgin and the beginning of
Libra; and the inundation continued while the Sun passed along its whole
extent.

The successive contest of light and darkness for the possession of the
lunar disk, each being by turns victor and vanquished, exactly resembled
what passed upon the earth by the action of the Sun and his journeys
from one Solstice to the other. The lunary revolution presented the same
periods of light and darkness as the year, and was the object of the
same religious fictions. Above the Moon, Pliny said, everything is pure,
and filled with eternal light. There ends the cone of shadow which the
earth projects, and which produces night; there ends the sojourn of
night and darkness; to it the air extends; but there we enter the pure
substance.

The Egyptians assigned to the Moon the demiurgic or creative force of
Osiris, who united himself to her in the spring, when the Sun
communicated to her the principles of generation which she afterward
disseminated in the air and all the elements. The Persians considered
the Moon to have been impregnated by the Celestial Bull, first of the
signs of spring. In all ages, the Moon has been supposed to have great
influence upon vegetation, and the birth and growth of animals; and the
belief is as widely entertained now as ever, and that influence regarded
as a mysterious and inexplicable one. Not the astrologers alone, but
Naturalists like Pliny, Philosophers like Plutarch and Cicero,
Theologians like the Egyptian Priests, and Metaphysicians like Proclus,
believed firmly in these lunar influences.

"The Egyptians," says Diodorus Siculus, "acknowledged two great gods,
the Sun and Moon, or Osiris and Isis, who govern the world and regulate
its administration by the dispensation of the seasons.... Such is the
nature of these two great Divinities, that they impress an active and
fecundating force, by which the generation of beings in effected; the
Sun, by heat and that spiritual principle that forms the breath of the
winds; the Moon by humidity and dryness; and both by the forces of the
air which they share in common. By this beneficial influence everything
is born, grows, and vegetates. Wherefore this whole huge body, in which
nature resides, is maintained by the combined action of the Sun and
Moon, and their five qualities,--the principles spiritual, fiery, dry,
humid, and airy."

So five primitive powers, elements, or elementary qualities, are united
with the Sun and Moon in the Indian theology,--air, spirit, fire, water,
and earth: and the same five elements are recognized by the Chinese. The
Phoenicians, like the Egyptians, regarded the Sun and Moon and Stars as
sole causes of generation and destruction here below.

The Moon, like the Sun, changed continually the track in which she
crossed the Heavens, moving ever to and fro between the upper and lower
limits of the Zodiac; and her different places, phases, and aspects
there, and her relations with the Sun and the constellations, have been
a fruitful source of mythological fables.

All the planets had what astrology termed their _houses_, in the
Zodiac. The House of the Sun was in Leo, and that of the Moon in Cancer.
Each other planet had two signs; Mercury had Gemini and Virgo; Venus,
Taurus and Libra; Mars, Aries and Scorpio; Jupiter, Pisces and
Sagittarius; and Saturn, Aquarius and Capricornus. From this
distribution of the signs also came many mythological emblems and
fables; as also many came from the places of exaltation of the planets.
Diana of Ephesus, the Moon wore the image of a crab on her bosom,
because in that sign was the Moon's domicile; and lions bore up the
throne of Horus, the Egyptian Apollo, the Sun personified, for a like
reason: while the Egyptians consecrated the tauriform scarabæsus to the
Moon, because she had her place of exaltation in Taurus; and for the
same reason Mercury is said to have presented Isis with a helmet like a
bull's head.

A further division of the Zodiac was of each sign into three parts of
10° each, called Decans, or, in the whole Zodiac, 36 parts, among which
the seven planets were apportioned anew, each planet having an equal
number of Decans, except the first, which, opening and closing the
series of planets five times repeated, necessarily had one Decan more
than the others. This subdivision was not invented until after Aries
opened the Vernal Equinox; and accordingly Mars, having his house in
Aries, opens the series of decans and closes it; the planets following
each other, five times in succession, in the following order, Mars, the
Sun, Venus, Mercury, the Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, etc.; so that to
each sign are assigned three planets, each occupying 10 degrees. To each
Decan a God or Genius was assigned, making thirty-six in all, one of
whom, the Chaldeans said, came down upon earth every ten days, remained
so many days, and re-ascended to Heaven. This division is found on the
Indian sphere, the Persian, and that Barbaric one which Aben Ezra
describes. Each genius of the Decans had a name and special
characteristics. They concur and aid in the effects produced by the Sun,
Moon, and other planets charged with the administration of the world:
and the doctrine in regard to them, secret and august as it was held,
was considered of the gravest importance; and its principles, Firmicus
says, were not entrusted by the ancients, inspired as they were by the
Deity, to any but the Initiates, and to them only with great reserve,
and a kind of fear, and when cautiously enveloped with an obscure veil,
that they might not come to be known by the profane.

With these Decans were connected the _paranatellons_ or those stars
_outside_ of the Zodiac, that rise and set at the same moment with the
several divisions of 10° of each sign. As there were anciently only
forty-eight celestial figures or constellations, of which twelve were in
the Zodiac, it follows that there were, outside of the Zodiac,
thirty-six other asterisms, paranatellons of the several thirty-six
Decans. For example, as when Capricorn set, Sirius and Procyon, or Canis
Major and Canis Minor, rose, they were the Paranatellons of Capricorn,
though at a great distance from it in the heavens. The rising of Cancer
was known from the setting of Corona Borealis and the rising of the
Great and Little Dog, its three paranatellons.

The risings and settings of the Stars are always spoken of as connected
with the Sun. In that connection there are three kinds of them,
cosmical, achronical, and heliacal, important to be distinguished by all
who would understand this ancient learning.

When any Star rises or sets with the same degree of the same sign of the
Zodiac that the Sun occupies at the time, it rises and sets
simultaneously with the Sun, and this is termed rising or setting
_cosmically_; but a star that so rises and sets can never be seen, on
account of the light that precedes, and is left behind by the Sun. It is
therefore necessary, in order to know his place in the Zodiac, to
observe stars that rise just before or set just after him.

A Star that is in the East when night commences, and in the West when it
ends, is said to rise and set _achronically_. A Star so rising or
setting was in _opposition_ to the Sun, rising at the end of evening
twilight, and setting at the beginning of morning twilight, and this
happened to each Star but once a year, because the Sun moves from West
to East, with reference to the Stars, one degree a day.

When a Star rises as night ends in the morning, or sets as night
commences in the evening, it is said to rise or set _heliacally_,
because the Sun (_Helios_) seems to touch it with his luminous
atmosphere. A Star thus re-appears after a disappearance, often, of
several months, and thenceforward it rises an hour earlier each day,
gradually emerging from the Sun's rays, until at the end of three months
it precedes the Sun six hours, and rises at midnight. A Star sets
heliacally, when no longer remaining visible above the Western horizon
after sunset, the day arrives when they cease to be seen setting in the
West. They so remain invisible, until the Sun passes so far to the
Eastward as not to eclipse them with his light; and then they re-appear,
but in the East, about an hour and a half before sunrise: and this is
their _heliacal_ rising. In this interval, the cosmical rising and
setting take place.

Besides the relations of the constellations and their paranatellons with
the houses and places of exaltation of the Planets, and with their
places in the respective Signs and Decans, the Stars were supposed to
produce different effects according as they rose or set, and according
as they did so either cosmically, achronically, or heliacally; and also
according to the different seasons of the year in which these phenomena
occurred; and these differences were carefully marked on the old
Calendars; and many things in the ancient allegories are referable to
them.

Another and most important division of the Stars was into good and bad,
beneficent and malevolent. With the Persians, the former, of the
Zodiacal Constellations, were from Aries to Virgo, inclusive; and the
latter from Libra to Pisces, inclusive. Hence the good Angels and Genii,
and the bad Angels, Devs, Evil Genii, Devils, Fallen Angels, Titans, and
Giants of the Mythology. The Other thirty-six Constellations were
equally divided, eighteen on each side, or, with those of the Zodiac,
twenty-four.

Thus the symbolic Egg, that issued from the mouth of the invisible
Egyptian God KNEPH; known in the Grecian Mysteries as the Orphic Egg;
from which issued the God CHUMONG of the Coresians, and the Egyptian
OSIRIS, and PHANES, God and Principle of Light; from which, broken by
the Sacred Bull of the Japanese, the world emerged; and which the Greeks
placed at the feet of BACCHUS TAURI-CORNUS; the Magian Egg of ORMUZD,
from which came the Amshaspands and Devs; was divided into two halves,
and equally apportioned between the Good and Evil Constellations and
Angels. Those of Spring, as for example Aries and Taurus, Auriga and
Capella, were the beneficent stars; and those of Autumn, as the Balance,
Scorpio, the Serpent of Ophiucus, and the Dragon of the Hesperides, were
types and subjects of the Evil Principle, and regarded as malevolent
causes of the ill effects experienced in Autumn and Winter. Thus are
explained the mysteries of the journeyings of the human soul through the
spheres, when it descends to the earth by the Sign of the Serpent, and
returns to the Empire of light by that or the Lamb or Bull.

The creative action of Heaven was manifested, and all its demiurgic
energy developed, most of all at the Vernal Equinox, to which refer all
the fables that typify the victory of Light over Darkness, by the
triumphs of Jupiter, Osiris, Ormuzd, and Apollo. Always the triumphant
god takes the form of the Bull, the Ram, or the Lamb. Then Jupiter
wrests from Typhon his thunderbolts, of which that malignant Deity had
possessed himself during the Winter. Then the God of Light overwhelms
his foe, pictured as a huge Serpent. Then Winter ends; the Sun, seated
on the Bull and accompanied by Orion, blazes in the Heavens. All nature
rejoices at the victory; and Order and Harmony are everywhere
re-established, in place of the dire confusion that reigned while gloomy
Typhon domineered, and Ahriman prevailed against Ormuzd.

The universal Soul of the World, motive power of Heaven and of the
Spheres, it was held, exercises its creative energy chiefly through the
medium of the Sun, during his revolution along the signs of the Zodiac,
with which signs unite the paranatellons that modify their influence,
and concur in furnishing the symbolic attributes of the Great Luminary
that regulates Nature and is the depository of her greatest powers. The
action of this Universal Soul of the World is displayed in the movements
of the Spheres, and above all in that of the Sun, in the successions of
the risings and settings of the Stars, and in their periodical returns.
By these are explainable all the metamorphoses of that Soul, personified
as Jupiter, as Bacchus, as Vishnu, or as Buddha, and all the various
attributes ascribed to it; and also the worship of those animals that
were consecrated in the ancient Temples, representatives on earth of the
Celestial Signs, and supposed to receive by transmission from them the
rays and emanations which in them flow from the Universal Soul.

All the old Adorers of Nature, the Theologians, Astrologers, and Poets,
as well as the most distinguished Philosophers, supposed that the Stars
were so many animated and intelligent beings, or eternal bodies, active
causes of effect here below, animated by a living principle, and
directed by an intelligence that was itself but an emanation from and a
part of the life and universal intelligence of the world: and we find in
the hierarchical order and distribution of their eternal and divine
Intelligences, known by the names of Gods, Angels, and Genii, the same
distributions and the same divisions as those by which the ancients
divided the visible Universe and distributed its parts. And the famous
divisions by seven and by twelve, appertaining to the planets and the
signs of the zodiac, is everywhere found in the hierarchical order of
the Gods, and Angels, and the other Ministers that are the depositaries
of that Divine Force which moves and rules the world.

These, and the other Intelligences assigned to the other Stars have
absolute dominion over all parts of Nature; over the elements, the
animal and vegetable kingdoms, over man and all his actions, over his
virtues and vices, and over good and evil, which divide between them his
life. The passions of his soul and the maladies of his body,--these and
the entire man are dependent on the heavens and the genii that there
inhabit, who preside at his birth, control his fortunes during life, and
receive his soul or active and intelligent part when it is to be
re-united to the pure life of the lofty Stars. And all through the great
body of the world are disseminated portions of the universal Soul,
impressing movement on everything that seems to move of itself, giving
life to the plants and trees, directing by a regular and settled plan
the organization and development of their germs, imparting constant
mobility to the running waters and maintaining their eternal motion,
impelling the winds and changing their direction or stilling them,
calming and arousing the ocean, unchaining the storms, pouring out the
fires of volcanoes, or with earthquakes shaking the roots of huge
mountains and the foundations of vast continents; by means of a force
that, belonging to Nature, is a mystery to man.

And these invisible Intelligences, like the stars, are marshalled in two
great divisions, under the banners of the two Principles of Good and
Evil, Light and Darkness; under Ormuzd and Ahriman, Osiris and Typhon.
The Evil Principle was the motive power of brute matter; and it,
personified as Ahriman and Typhon, had its hosts and armies of Devs and
Genii, Fallen Angels and Malevolent Spirits, who waged continual wage
with the Good Principle, the Principle of Empyreal Light and Splendor,
Osiris, Ormuzd, Jupiter or Dionusos, with his bright hosts of
Amshaspands, Izeds, Angels, and Archangels; a warfare that goes on from
birth until death, in the soul of every man that lives.

We have heretofore, in the 24th Degree, recited the principal incidents
in the legend of Osiris and Isis, and it remains but to point out the
astronomical phenomena which it has converted into mythological facts.

The Sun, at the Vernal Equinox, was the fruit-compelling star that by
his warmth provoked generation and poured upon the sublunary world all
the blessings of Heaven; the beneficent god, tutelary genius of
universal vegetation, that communicates to the dull earth new activity,
and stirs her great heart, long chilled by Winter and his frosts, until
from her bosom burst all the greenness and perfume of spring, making her
rejoice in leafy forests and grassy lawns and flower-enamelled meadows,
and the promise of abundant crops of grain and fruits and purple grapes
in their due season.

He was then called Osiris, Husband of Isis, God of Cultivation and
Benefactor of Men, pouring on them and on the earth the choicest
blessings within the gift of the Divinity. Opposed to him was Typhon,
his antagonist in the Egyptian mythology, as Ahriman was the foe of
Ormuzd, the Good Principle, in the theology of the Persians.

The first inhabitants of Egypt and Ethiopia, as Diodorus Siculus informs
us, saw in the Heavens two first eternal causes of things, or great
Divinities, one the Sun, whom they called Osiris, and the other the
Moon, whom they called Isis; and these they considered the causes of all
the generations of earth. This idea, we learn from Eusebius, was the
same as that of the Phœnicians. On these two great Divinities the
administration of the world depended. All sublunary bodies received from
them their nourishment and increase, during the annual revolution which
they controlled, and the different seasons into which it was divided.

To Osiris and Isis, it was held, were owing civilization, the discovery
of agriculture, laws, arts of all kinds, religious worship, temples, the
invention of letters, astronomy, the gymnastic arts, and music; and thus
they were the universal benefactors. Osiris travelled to civilize the
countries which he passed through, and communicate to them his valuable
discoveries. He built cities, and taught men to cultivate the earth.
Wheat and wine were his first presents to men. Europe, Asia, and Africa
partook of the blessings which he communicated, and the most remote
regions of India remembered him, and claimed him as one of their great
gods.

You have learned how Typhon, his brother, slew him. His body was cut
into pieces, all of which were collected by Isis, except his organs of
generation, which had been thrown into and devoured in the waters of the
river that every year fertilized Egypt. The other portions were buried
by Isis, and over them she erected a tomb. Thereafter she remained
single, loading her subjects with blessings. She cured the sick,
restored sight to the blind, made the paralytic whole, and even raised
the dead. From her Horus or Apollo learned divination and the science of
medicine.

Thus the Egyptians pictured the beneficent action of the two luminaries
that, from the bosom of the elements, produced all animals and men, and
all bodies that are born, grow, and die in the eternal circle of
generation and destruction here below.

When the Celestial Bull opened the new year at the Vernal Equinox,
Osiris, united with the Moon, communicated to her the seeds of
fruitfulness which she poured upon the air, and therewith impregnated
the generative principles which gave activity to universal vegetation.
Apis, represented by a bull, was the living and sensible image of the
Sun or Osiris, when in union with Isis or the Moon at the Vernal
Equinox, concurring with her in provoking everything that lives to
generation. This conjunction of the Sun with the Moon at the Vernal
Equinox, in the constellation Taurus, required the Bull Apis to have on
his shoulder a mark resembling the Crescent Moon. And the fecundating
influence of these two luminaries was expressed by images that would now
be deemed gross and indecent, but which then were not misunderstood.

Everything good in Nature comes from Osiris,--order, harmony, and the
favorable temperature of the seasons and celestial periods. From Typhon
come the stormy passions and irregular impulses that agitate the brute
and material part of man; maladies of the body, and violent shocks that
injure the health and derange the system; inclement weather, derangement
of the seasons, and eclipses. Osiris and Typhon were the Ormuzd and
Ahriman of the Persians; principles of good and evil, of light and
darkness, ever at war in the administration of the Universe.

Osiris was the image of generative power. This was expressed by his
symbolic statues, and by the sign into which he entered at the Vernal
Equinox. He especially dispensed the humid principle of Nature,
generative element of all things; and the Nile and all moisture were
regarded as emanations from him, without which there could be no
vegetation.

That Osiris and Isis were the Sun and Moon, is attested by many ancient
writers; by Diogenes Laertius, Plutarch, Lucian, Suidas, Macrobius,
Martianus Capella, and others. His power was symbolized by an Eye over a
Sceptre. The Sun was termed by the Greeks the Eye of Jupiter, and the
Eye of the World; and his is the All-Seeing Eye in our Lodges. The
oracle of Claros styled him King of the Stars and of the Eternal Fire,
that engenders the year and the seasons, dispenses rain and winds, and
brings about daybreak and night. And Osiris was invoked as the God that
resides in the Sun and is enveloped by his rays, the invisible and
eternal force that modifies the sublunary world by means of the Sun.

Osiris was the same God known as Bacchus, Dionusos, and Serapis. Serapis
is the author of the regularity and harmony of the world. Bacchus,
jointly with Ceres (identified by Herodotus with Isis) presides over the
distribution of all our blessings; and from the two emanates everything
beautiful and good in Nature. One furnishes the germ and principle of
every good; the other receives and preserves it as a deposit; and the
latter is the function of the Moon in the theology of the Persians. In
each theology, Persian and Egyptian, the Moon acts directly on the
earth; but she is fecundated, in one by the Celestial Bull and in the
other by Osiris, with whom she is united at the Vernal Equinox, in the
sign Taurus, the place of her exaltation or greatest influence on the
earth. The force of Osiris, says Plutarch, is exercised through the
Moon. She is the passive cause relatively to him, and the active cause
relatively to the earth, to which she transmits the germs of
fruitfulness received from him.

In Egypt the earliest movement in the waters of the Nile began to appear
at the Vernal Equinox, when the new Moon occurred at the entrance of the
Sun into the constellation Taurus; and thus the Nile was held to receive
its fertilizing power from the combined action of the equinoctial Sun
and the new Moon, meeting in Taurus. Osiris was often confounded with
the Nile, and Isis with the earth; and Osiris was deemed to act on the
earth, and to transmit to it his emanations, through both the Moon and
the Nile; whence the fable that his generative organs were thrown into
that river. Typhon, on the other hand, was the principle of aridity and
barrenness; and by his mutilation of Osiris was meant that drought which
caused the Nile to retire within his bed and shrink up in Autumn.

Elsewhere than in Egypt, Osiris was the symbol of the refreshing rains
that descend to fertilize the earth; and Typhon the burning winds of
Autumn; the stormy rains that rot the flowers, the plants, and leaves;
the short, cold days; and everything injurious in Nature, and that
produces corruption and destruction.

In short, Typhon is the principle of corruption, of darkness, of the
lower world from which come earthquakes, tumultuous commotions of the
air, burning heat, lightning, and fiery meteors, and plague and
pestilence. Such too was the Ahriman of the Persians; and this revolt of
the Evil Principle against the Principle of Good and Light, has been
represented in every cosmogony, under many varying forms. Osiris, on the
contrary, by the intermediation of Isis, fills the material world with
happiness, purity, and order, by which the harmony of Nature is
maintained. It was said that he died at the Autumnal Equinox, when
Taurus or the Pleiades rose in the evening, and that he rose to life
again in the Spring, when vegetation was inspired with new activity.

Of course the two signs of Taurus and Scorpio will figure most largely
in the mythological history of Osiris, for they marked the two
equinoxes, 2500 years before our Era; and next to them the other
constellations, near the equinoxes, that fixed the limits of the
duration of the fertilizing action of the Sun; and it is also to be
remarked that Venus, the Goddess of Generation, has her domicile in
Taurus, as the Moon has there her place of exaltation.

When the Sun was in Scorpio, Osiris lost his life, and that fruitfulness
which, under the form of the Bull, he had communicated, through the
Moon, to the Earth. Typhon, his hands and feet horrid with serpents, and
whose habitat in the Egyptian planisphere was under Scorpio, confined
him in a chest and flung him into the Nile, under the 17th degree of
Scorpio. Under that sign he lost his life and virility; and he recovered
them in the Spring, when he had connection with the Moon. When he
entered Scorpio, his light diminished, Night reassumed her dominion, the
Nile shrunk within its banks, and the earth lost her verdure and the
trees their leaves. Therefore it is that on the Mithriac Monuments, the
Scorpion bites the testicles of the Equinoctial Bull, on which sits
Mithras, the Sun of Spring and God of Generation; and that, on the same
monuments, we see two trees, one covered with young leaves, and at its
foot a little bull and a torch burning; and the other loaded with
fruit, and at its foot a Scorpion, and a torch reversed and
extinguished.

Ormuzd or Osiris, the beneficent Principle that gives the world light,
was personified by the Sun, apparent source of light. Darkness,
personified by Typhon or Ahriman, was his natural enemy. The Sages of
Egypt described the necessary and eternal rivalry or opposition of these
principles, ever pursuing one the other, and one dethroning the other in
every annual revolution, and at a particular period, one in the Spring
under the Bull, and the other in Autumn under the Scorpion, by the
legendary history of Osiris and Typhon, detailed to us by Diodorus and
Synesius; in which history were also personified the Stars and
constellations Orion, Capella, the Twins, the Wolf, Sirius, and
Hercules, whose risings and settings noted the advent of one or the
other equinox.

Plutarch gives us the positions in the Heavens of the Sun and Moon, at
the moment when Osiris was murdered by Typhon. The Sun, he says, was in
the Sign of the Scorpion, which he then entered at the Autumnal Equinox.
The Moon was full, he adds; and consequently, as it rose at sunset, it
occupied Taurus, which, opposite to Scorpio, rose as it and the Sun sank
together, so that she was then found alone in the sign Taurus, where,
six months before, she had been in union or conjunction with Osiris, the
Sun, receiving from him those germs of universal fertilization which he
communicated to her. It was the sign through which Osiris first ascended
into his empire of light and good. It rose with the Sun on the day of
the Vernal Equinox; it remained six months in the luminous hemisphere,
ever preceding the Sun and above the horizon during the day; until in
Autumn, the Sun arriving at Scorpio, Taurus was in complete opposition
with him, rose when he set, and completed its entire course above the
horizon during the night; presiding, by rising in the evening, over the
commencement of the long nights. Hence in the sad ceremonies
commemorating the death of Osiris, there was borne in procession a
golden bull covered with black crape, image of the darkness into which
the familiar sign of Osiris was entering, and which was to spread over
the Northern regions, while the Sun, prolonging the nights, was to be
absent, and each to remain under the dominion of Typhon, Principle of
Evil and Darkness.

Setting out from the sign Taurus, Isis, as the Moon, went seeking for
Osiris through all the superior signs, in each of which she became full
in the successive months from the Autumnal to the Vernal Equinox,
without finding him in either. Let us follow her in her allegorical
wanderings.

Osiris was slain by Typhon his rival, with whom conspired a Queen of
Ethiopia, by whom, says Plutarch, were designated the winds. The
paranatellons of Scorpio, the sign occupied by the Sun when Osiris was
slain, were the Serpents, reptiles which supplied the attributes of the
Evil Genii and of Typhon, who himself bore the form of a serpent in the
Egyptian planisphere. And in the division of Scorpio is also found
Cassiopeia, Queen of Ethiopia, whose setting brings stormy winds.

Osiris descended to the shades or infernal regions. There he took the
name of Serapis, identical with Pluto, and assumed his nature. He was
then in conjunction with Serpentarius, identical with Æsculapius, whose
form he took in his passage to the lower signs, where he takes the names
of Pluto and Ades.

Then Isis wept for the death of Osiris, and the golden bull covered with
crape was carried in procession. Nature mourned the impending loss of
her Summer glories, and the advent of the empire of night, the
withdrawing of the waters, made fruitful by the Bull in Spring, the
cessation of the winds that brought rains to swell the Nile, the
shortening of the days, and the despoiling of the earth. Then Taurus,
directly opposite the Sun, entered into the cone of shadow which the
earth projects, by which the Moon is eclipsed at full, and with which,
making night, the Bull rises and descends as if covered with a veil,
while he remains above our horizon.

The body of Osiris, enclosed in a chest or coffin, was cast into the
Nile. Pan and the Satyrs, near Chemmis, first discovered his death,
announced it by their cries, and everywhere created sorrow and alarm.
Taurus, with the full Moon, then entered into the cone of shadow, and
under him was the Celestial River, most properly called the Nile, and
below, Perseus, the God of Chemmis, and Auriga, leading a she-goat,
himself identical with Pan, whose wife Aiga the she-goat was styled.

Then Isis went in search of the body. She first met certain children who
had seen it, received from them their information, and gave them in
return the gift of divination. The second full Moon occurred in Gemini,
the Twins, who presided over the oracles of Didymus, and one of whom was
Apollo, the God of Divination.

She learned that Osiris had, through mistake, had connection with her
sister Nephte, which she discovered by a crown of leaves of the melilot,
which he had left behind him. Of this connection a child was born, whom
Isis, aided by her dogs, sought for, found, reared, and attached to
herself, by the name of Anubis, her faithful guardian. The third full
Moon occurs in Cancer, domicile of the Moon. The paranatellons of that
sign are, the crown of Ariadne or Proserpine, made of leaves of the
melilot, Procyon and Canis Major, one star of which was called the Star
of Isis, while Sirius himself was honored in Egypt under the name of
Anubis.

Isis repaired to Byblos, and seated herself near a fountain, where she
was found by the women of the Court of a King. She was induced to visit
his Court, and became the nurse of his son. The fourth full Moon was in
Leo, domicile of the Sun, or of Adonis, King of Byblos. The
paranatellons of this sign are the flowing water of Aquarius, and
Cepheus, King of Ethiopia, called Regulus, or simply The King. Behind
him rise Cassiopeia his wife, Queen of Ethiopia, Andromeda his daughter,
and Perseus his son-in-law, all paranatellons in part of this sign, and
in part of Virgo.

Isis suckled the child, not at her breast, but with the end of her
finger, at night. She burned all the mortal parts of its body, and then,
taking the shape of a swallow, she flew to the great column of the
palace, made of the tamarisk-tree that grew up round the coffin
containing the body of Osiris, and within which it was still enclosed.
The fifth full Moon occurred in Virgo, the true image of Isis, and which
Eratosthenes calls by that name. It pictured a woman suckling an infant,
the son of Isis, born near the Winter Solstice. This sign has for
paranatellons the mast of the Celestial Ship, and the swallow-tailed
fish or swallow above it, and a portion of Perseus, son-in-law of the
King of Ethiopia.

Isis, having recovered the sacred coffer, sailed from Byblos in a vessel
with the eldest son of the King, toward Boutos, where Anubis was, having
charge of her son Horus; and in the morning dried up a river, whence
arose a strong wind. Landing, she hid the coffer in a forest. Typhon,
hunting a wild boar by moonlight discovered it, recognized the body of
his rival, and cut it into fourteen pieces, the number of days between
the full and new Moon, and in every one of which days the Moon loses a
portion of the light that at the commencement filled her whole disk. The
sixth full Moon occurred in Libra, over the divisions separating which
from Virgo are the Celestial Ship, Perseus, son of the King of Ethiopia
and Boötes, said to have nursed Horus. The river of Orion that sets in
the morning is also a paranatellon of Libra, as are Ursa Major, the
Great Bear or Wild Boar of Erymanthus, and the Dragon of the North Pole,
or the celebrated Python from which the attributes of Typhon were
borrowed. All these surround the full Moon of Libra, last of the
Superior Signs, and the one that precedes the new Moon of Spring, about
to be reproduced in Taurus, and there be once more in conjunction with
the Sun.

Isis collects the scattered fragments of the body of Osiris, buries
them, and consecrates the phallus, carried in pomp at the _Pamylia_, or
feasts of the Vernal Equinox, at which time the congress of Osiris and
the Moon was celebrated. Then Osiris had returned from the shades, to
aid Horus his son and Isis his wife against the forces of Typhon. He
thus reappeared, say some, under the form of a wolf, or, others say,
under that of a horse. The Moon, fourteen days after she is full in
Libra, arrives at Taurus and unites herself to the Sun, whose fires she
thereafter for fourteen days continues to accumulate on her disk from
new Moon to full. Then she unites with herself all the months in that
superior portion of the world where light always reigns, with harmony
and order, and she borrows from him the force which is to destroy the
germs of evil that Typhon had, during the winter, planted everywhere in
nature. This passage of the Sun into Taurus, whose attributes he assumes
on his return from the lower hemisphere or the shades, is marked by the
rising in the evening of the Wolf and the Centaur, and by the heliacal
setting of Orion, called the Star of Horus, and which thenceforward is
in conjunction with the Sun of Spring, in his triumph over the darkness
or Typhon.

Isis, during the absence of Osiris, and after she had hidden the coffer
in the place where Typhon found it, had rejoined that malignant enemy;
indignant at which, Horus her son deprived her of her ancient diadem,
when she rejoined Osiris as he was about to attack Typhon: but Mercury
gave her in its place a helmet shaped like the head of a bull. Then
Horus, as a mighty warrior, such as Orion was described, fought with and
defeated Typhon; who, in the shape of the Serpent or Dragon of the Pole,
had assailed his father. So, in Ovid, Apollo destroys the same Python,
when Io, fascinated by Jupiter, is metamorphosed into a cow, and placed
in the sign of the Celestial Bull, where she becomes Isis. The
equinoctial year ends at the moment when the Sun and Moon, at the
Vernal Equinox, are united with Orion, the Star of Horus, placed in the
Heavens under Taurus. The new Moon becomes young again in Taurus, and
shows herself as a crescent, for the first time, in the next sign,
Gemini, the domicile of Mercury. Then Orion, in conjunction with the
Sun, with whom he rises, precipitates the Scorpion, his rival, into the
shades of night, causing him to set whenever he himself re-appears on
the eastern horizon, with the Sun. Day lengthens and the germs of evil
are by degrees eradicated: and Horus (from _Aur_, Light) reigns
triumphant, symbolizing, by his succession to the characteristics of
Osiris, the eternal renewal of the Sun's youth and creative vigor at the
Vernal Equinox.

Such are the coincidences of astronomical phenomena with the legend of
Osiris and Isis; sufficing to show the origin of the legend, overloaded
as it became at length with all the ornamentation natural to the
poetical and figurative genius of the Orient.

Not only into this legend, but into those of all the ancient nations,
enter the Bull, the Lamb, the Lion, and the Scorpion or the Serpent; and
traces of the worship of the Sun yet linger in all religions.
Everywhere, even in our Order, survive the equinoctial and solstitial
feasts. Our ceilings still glitter with the greater and lesser
luminaries of the Heavens, and our lights, in their number and
arrangement, have astronomical references. In all churches and chapels,
as in all Pagan temples and pagodas, the altar is in the East; and the
ivy over the east windows of old churches is the Hedera Helix of
Bacchus. Even the cross had an astronomical origin; and our Lodges are
full of the ancient symbols.

The learned author of the Sabæan Researches, Landseer, advances another
theory in regard to the legend of Osiris; in which he makes the
constellation Boötes play a leading part. He observes that, as none of
the stars were visible at the same time with the Sun, his actual place
in the Zodiac, at any given time, could only be, ascertained by the
Sabæsan astronomers by their observations of the stars, and of their
heliacal and achronical risings and settings. There were many solar
festivals among the Sabæans, and part of them agricultural ones; and the
concomitant signs of those festivals were the risings and settings of
the stars of the Husbandman, Bear-driver, or Hunter, BOÖTES. His stars
were, among the Hierophants, the established nocturnal indices or signs
of the Sun's place in the ecliptic at different seasons of the year, and
the festivals were named, one, that of the _Aphanism_ or disappearance;
another, that of the _Zetesis,_ or search, etc., of Osiris or Adonis,
that is, of _Boötes._

The returns of certain stars, as connected with their concomitant
seasons of spring (or seed-time) and harvest, seemed to the ancients,
who had not yet discovered that gradual change, resulting from the
apparent movement of the stars in longitude, which has been termed the
precession of the equinoxes, to be eternal and immutable; and those
periodical returns were to the initiated, even more than to the vulgar,
celestial oracles, announcing the approach of those important changes,
upon which the prosperity, and even the very existence of man must ever
depend; and the oldest of the Sabæan constellations seem to have been,
an astronomical _Priest,_ a _King,_ a _Queen,_ a _Husbandman,_ and a
_Warrior_; and these more frequently recur on the Sabæan cylinders than
any other constellations whatever. The _King_ was _Cepheus_ or
_Chepheus_ of Ethiopia: the _Husbandman, Osiris, Bacchus, Sabazeus,
Noah_ or _Boötes_. To the latter sign, the Egyptians were nationally,
traditionally and habitually grateful; for they conceived that from
Osiris all the greatest of terrestrial enjoyments were derived. The
stars of the Husbandman were the signal for those successive
agricultural labors on which the annual produce of the soil depended;
and they came in consequence to be considered and hailed, in Egypt and
Ethiopia, as the genial stars of terrestrial productiveness; to which
the oblations, prayers, and vows of the pious Sabæan were regularly
offered up.

Landseer says that the stars in Boötes, reckoning down to those of the
5th magnitude inclusive, are _twenty-six,_ which, seeming achronically
to disappear in succession, produced the fable of the cutting of Osiris
into twenty-six pieces by Typhon. There are more stars than this in the
constellation; but no more that the ancient votaries of Osiris, even in
the clear atmosphere of the Sabæan climates, could observe without
telescopes.

Plutarch says Osiris was cut into _fourteen_ pieces: Diodorus, into
_twenty-six_; in regard to which, and to the whole legend, Landseer's
ideas, varying from those commonly entertained, are as follows:

Typhon, Landseer thinks, was the _ocean_, which the ancients fabled or
believed surrounded the Earth, and into which all the stars in their
turn appear successively to sink; [perhaps it was DARKNESS personified,
which the ancients called TYPHON. He Was hunting by moonlight, says the
old legend, when he met with Osiris].

The ancient Saba must have been near latitude 15° north. Axoum is nearly
in 14°, and the Western Saba or Meroë is to the north of that.
Forty-eight centuries ago, Aldebaran, the leading star of the year, had,
at the Vernal Equinox, attained at daylight in the morning, an elevation
of about 14 degrees, sufficient for him to have ceased to be _combust_,
that is, to have emerged from the Sun's rays, so as to be visible. The
ancients allowed _twelve_ days for a star of the first magnitude to
emerge from the solar rays; and there is less twilight, the further
South we go.

At the same period, too, Cynosura was not the pole-star, but Alpha
Draconis was; and the stars rose and set with very different degrees of
obliquity from those of their present risings and settings. By having a
globe constructed with circumvolving poles, capable of any adjustment
with regard to the colures, Mr. Landseer ascertained that, at that
remote period, in lat. 15° north, the 26 stars in Bootes, or 27,
including Arcturus, did not set anchronically in succession; but several
set simultaneously in couples, and six by threes simultaneously; so
that, in all, there were but _fourteen_ separate settings or
disappearances, corresponding with the fourteen pieces into which Osiris
was cut, according to Plutarch. Kappa, Iota, and Theta, in the uplifted
western hand, disappeared together, and last of all. They really skirted
the horizon; but were invisible in that low latitude, for the three or
four days mentioned in some of the versions; while the _Zetesis_ or
search was proceeding, and the women of Phœnicia and Jerusalem sat
weeping for the Wonder, Thammuz; after which they immediately
reappeared, below and to the eastward of _a_ Draconis.

And, on the very morning after the achronical departure of the last star
of the Husbandman, Aldebaran rose heliacally, and became visible in the
East in the morning before day.

And precisely at the moment of the heliacal rising of Arcturus, also
rose Spica Virginis. One is near the middle of the Husbandman, and the
other near that of the Virgin; and Arcturus may have been the part of
Osiris which Isis did not recover with the other pieces of the body.

At Dedan and Saba it was thirty-six days, from the beginning of the
_aphanism_, i.e., the _disappearances_ of these stars, to the heliacal
rising of Aldebaran. During these days, or forty at Medina, or a few
more at Babylon and Byblos, the stars of the Husbandman successively
sank out of sight, during the _crepusculum_ or short-lived morning
twilight of those Southern climes. They disappear during the glancings
of the dawn, the special season of ancient sidereal observation.

Thus the forty days of mourning for Osiris were measured out by the
period of the departure of his Stars. When the last had sunken out of
sight, the vernal season was ushered in; and the Sun arose with the
splendid Aldebaran, the Tauric leader of the Hosts of Heaven; and the
whole East rejoiced and kept holiday.

With the exception of the Stars χ, ε˛ and δ, Boötes did not begin to
reappear in the Eastern quarter of the Heavens till after the lapse of
about four months. Then the Stars of Taurus had declined Westward, and
Virgo was rising heliacally. In that latitude, also, the Stars of Ursa
Major [termed anciently the Ark of Osiris] set; and Benetnasch, the last
of them, returned to the Eastern horizon, with those in the head of Leo,
a little before the Summer Solstice. In about a month, followed the
Stars of the Husbandman; the chief of them, Ras, Mirach, and Arcturus,
being very nearly simultaneous in their heliacal rising.

Thus the Stars of Boötes rose in the East immediately after
Vindemiatrix, and as if under the genial influence of its rays; he had
his annual career of prosperity; he revelled orientally for a quarter of
a year, and attained his meridian altitude with Virgo; and then, as the
Stars of the Water-Urn rose, and Aquarius began to pour forth his annual
deluge, he declined Westward, preceded by the Ark of Osiris. In the
East, he was the sign of that happiness in which Nature, the great
Goddess of passive production, rejoiced. Now, in the West, as he
declines toward the Northwestern horizon, his generative vigor gradually
abates; the Solar year grows old; and as his Stars descend beneath the
Western Wave, Osiris dies, and the world mourns.

The Ancient Astronomers saw all the great Symbols of Masonry in the
Stars. Sirius still glitters in our Lodges as the Blazing Star,
(_l'Étoile Flamboyante_). The Sun is still symbolized by the point
within a Circle; and, with the Moon and Mercury or Anubis, in the three
Great Lights of the Lodge. Not only to these, but to the figures and
numbers exhibited by the Stars, were ascribed peculiar and divine
powers. The veneration paid to numbers had its source there. The three
Kings in Orion are in a straight line, and equidistant from each other,
the two extreme Stars being 3° apart, and each of the three distant from
the one nearest it 1° 30'. And as the number _three_ is peculiar to
apprentices, so the straight line is the first principle of Geometry,
having length but no breadth, and being but the extension of a point,
and an emblem of Unity, and thus of Good, as the divided or broken line
is of Duality or Evil. Near these Stars are the Hyades, _five_ in
number, appropriate to the Fellow-Craft; and close to them the Pleiades,
of the master's number, _seven_; and thus these three sacred numbers,
consecrated in Masonry as they were in the Pythagorean philosophy,
always appear together in the Heavens, when the Bull, emblem of
fertility and production, glitters among the Stars, and Aldebaran leads
the Hosts of Heaven (_Tsbauth_).

Algenib in Perseus and Almaach and Algol in Andromeda form a
right-angled triangle, illustrate the 47th problem, and display the
Grand Master's square upon the skies. Denebola in Leo, Arcturus in
Boötes, and Spica in Virgo form an equilateral triangle, universal
emblem of Perfection, and the Deity with His Trinity of Infinite
Attributes, Wisdom, Power, and Harmony; and that other, the generative,
preserving, and destroying Powers. The Three Kings form, with Rigel in
Orion, two triangles included in one: and Capella and Menkalina in
Auriga, with Bellatrix and Betelgueux in Orion, form two isosceles
triangles with β Tauri, that is equidistant from each pair; while the
first four make a right-angled parallelogram,--the oblong square so
often mentioned in our Degrees.

Julius Firmicus, in his description of the Mysteries, says, "But in
those funerals and lamentations which are annually celebrated in honor
of Osiris, their defenders pretend a physical reason. They call the
seeds of fruit, Osiris; the Earth, Isis; the natural heat, Typhon: and
because the fruits are ripened by the natural heat, and collected for
the life of man, and are separated from their marriage to the earth, and
are sown again when Winter approaches, this they would have to be the
death of Osiris: but when the fruits, by the genial fostering of the
earth, begin again to be generated by a new procreation, this is the
finding of Osiris."

No doubt the decay of vegetation and the falling of the leaves, emblems
of dissolution and evidences of the action of that Power that changes
Life into Death, in order to bring Life again out of Death, were
regarded as signs of that Death that seemed coming upon all Nature; as
the springing of leaves and buds and flowers in the spring was a sign of
restoration to life: but these were all secondary, and referred to the
Sun as first cause. It was _his_ figurative death that was mourned, and
not theirs; and that with that death, as with his return to life, many
of the stars were connected.

We have already alluded to the relations which the twelve signs of the
Zodiac bear to the legend of the Master's Degree. Some other
coincidences may have sufficient interest to warrant mention.

Khir-Om was assailed at the East, West, and South Gates of the Temple.
The two equinoxes were called, we have seen, by all the Ancients, the
Gates of Heaven, and the Syrians and Egyptians considered the Fish (the
Constellation near Aquarius, and one of the Stars whereof is Fomalhaut)
to be indicative of violence and death.

Khir-Om lay several days in the grave; and, at the Winter Solstice, for
five or six days, the length of the days did not perceptibly increase.
Then, the Sun commencing again to climb Northward, as Osiris was said to
arise from the dead, so Khir-Om was raised, by the powerful attraction
of the Lion (Leo), who waited for him at the Summer Solstice, and drew
him to himself.

The names of the three assassins may have been adopted from three Stars
that we have already named. We search in vain in the Hebrew or Arabic
for the names _Jubelo, Jubela_, and _Jubelum_. They embody an utter
absurdity, and are capable of no explanation in those languages. Nor are
the names _Gibs, Gravelot, Hobhen_, and the like, in the Ancient and
Accepted Rite, any more plausible, or better referable to any ancient
language. But when, by the precession of the Equinoxes, the Sun was in
Libra at the Autumnal Equinox, he met in that sign, where the reign of
Typhon commenced, three Stars forming a triangle,--_Zuben-es Chamali_ in
the West, _Zuben-Hak-Rabi_ in the East, and _Zuben-El-Gubi_ in the
South, the latter immediately below the Tropic of Capricorn, and so
within the realm of Darkness. From these names, those of the murderers
have perhaps been corrupted. In Zuben-Hak-Rabi we may see the original
of Jubelum Akirop; and in Zuben-El-Gubi, that of Jubelo Gibs: and time
and ignorance may even have transmuted the words Es Chamali into one as
little like them as Gravelot.

Isis, the Moon personified, sorrowing sought for her husband. Nine or
twelve Fellow-Crafts (the Rites vary as to the number), in white aprons,
were sent to search for Khir-Om, in the Legend of the Master's Degree;
or, in this Rite, the Nine Knights Elu. Along the path that the Moon
travels are nine conspicuous Stars, by which nautical men determine
their longitude at Sea;--Arietis, Aldebaran, Pollux, Regulus, Spica
Virginis, Antares, Altair, Fomalhaut, and Markab. These might well be
said to accompany Isis in her search.

In the York Rite, _twelve_ Fellow-Crafts were sent to search for the
body of Khir-Om and the murderers. Their number corresponds with that of
the Pleiades and Hyades in Taurus, among which Stars the Sun was found
when Light began to prevail over Darkness, and the Mysteries were held.
These Stars, we have shown, received early and particular attention from
the astronomers and poets. The Pleiades were the Stars of the ocean to
the benighted mariner; the Virgins of Spring, heralding the season of
blossoms.

As six Pleiades only are now visible, the number twelve may have been
obtained by them, with Aldebaran, and five far more brilliant Stars than
any other of the Hyades, in the same region of the Heavens, and which
were always spoken of in connection with the Pleiades; the Three Kings
in the belt of Orion, and Bellatrix and Betelgueux on his shoulders;
brightest of the flashing starry hosts.

"Canst thou," asks Job, "bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades or
loose the bands of Orion?" And in the book of Amos we find these Stars
connected with the victory of Light over Darkness: "Seek Him," says that
Seer, "that maketh the Seven Stars (the familiar name of the Pleiades),
and Orion, AND TURNETH THE SHADOW OF DEATH INTO MORNING."

An old legend in Masonry says that a dog led the Nine Elus to the cavern
where Abiram was hid. Boötes was anciently called Caleb Anubach, a
Barking Dog; and was personified in Anubis, who bore the head of a dog,
and aided Isis in her search. Arcturus, one of his Stars, fiery red, as
if fervent and zealous, is also connected by Job with the Pleiades and
Orion. When Taurus opened the year, Arcturus rose after the Sun, at the
time of the Winter Solstice, and seemed searching him through the
darkness, until, sixty days afterward, he rose at the same hour. Orion
then also, at the Winter Solstice, rose at noon, and at night seemed to
be in search of the Sun.

So, referring again to the time when the Sun entered the Autumnal
Equinox, there are nine remarkable Stars that come to the meridian
nearly at the same time, rising as Libra sets, and so seeming to chase
that Constellation. They are Capella and Menkalina in the Charioteer,
Aldebaran in Taurus, Bellatrix, Betelgueux, the Three Kings, and Rigel
in Orion. Aldebaran passes the meridian first, indicating his right to
his peculiar title of _Leader_. Nowhere in the heavens are there, near
the same meridian, so many splendid Stars. And close behind them, but
further South, follows Sirius, the Dog-Star, who showed the nine Elus
the way to the murderer's cave.

Besides the division of the signs into the ascending and descending
series (referring to the upward and downward progress of the soul), the
latter from Cancer to Capricorn, and the former from Capricorn to
Cancer, there was another division of them not less important; that of
the six superior and six inferior signs; the former, 2455 years before
our era, from Taurus to Scorpio, and 300 years before our era, from
Aries to Libra; and the latter, 2455 years B.C. from Scorpio to Taurus,
and 300 years B.C. from Libra to Aries; of which we have already spoken,
as the two Hemispheres, or Kingdoms of Good and Evil, Light and
Darkness; of Ormuzd and Ahriman among the Persians, and Osiris and
Typhon among the Egyptians.

With the Persians, the first six Genii, created by Ormuzd, presided over
the first six signs, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, and Virgo: and
the six evil Genii, or Devs, created by Ahriman, over the six others,
Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pisces. The soul
was fortunate and happy under the Empire of the first six; and began to
be sensible of evil, when it passed under the Balance or Libra, the
seventh sign. Thus the soul entered the realm of Evil and Darkness when
it passed into the Constellations that belong to and succeed the
Autumnal Equinox; and it re-entered the realm of Good and Light, when it
arrived, returning, at those of the Vernal Equinox. It lost its felicity
by means of the Balance, and regained it by means of the Lamb. This is a
necessary consequence of the premises; and it is confirmed by the
authorities and by emblems still extant.

Sallust the Philosopher, speaking of the Feasts of Rejoicing celebrated
at the Vernal Equinox, and those of Mourning, in memory of the rape of
Proserpine, at the Autumnal Equinox, says that the former were
celebrated, because then is effected, as it were, the return of the soul
toward the Gods; that the time when the principle of Light recovered its
superiority over that of Darkness, or day over night, was the most
favorable one for souls that tend to re-ascend to their Principle; and
that when Darkness and the Night again become victors, was most
favorable to the descent of souls toward the infernal regions.

For that reason, the old astrologers, as Firmicus states, fixed the
locality of the river Styx in the 8th degree of the Balance. And he
thinks that by Styx was allegorically meant the earth.

The Emperor Julian gives the same explanation, but more fully developed.
He states, as a reason why the august Mysteries of Ceres and Proserpine
were celebrated at the Autumnal Equinox, that at that period of the year
men feared lest the impious and dark power of the Evil Principle, then
commencing to conquer, should do harm to their souls. They were a
precaution and means of safety, thought to be necessary at the moment
when the God of Light was passing into the opposite or adverse region of
the world; while at the Vernal Equinox there was less to be feared,
because then that God, present in one portion of the world, _recalled
souls to Him_, he says, _and showed Himself to be their Saviour_. He had
a little before developed that theological idea, of the attractive force
which the Sun exercises over souls, drawing them to him and raising them
to his luminous sphere. He attributes this effect to him at the feasts
of Atys, dead and restored to life, or the feasts of Rejoicing, which at
the end of three days succeeded the mourning for that death; and he
inquires why those Mysteries were celebrated at the Vernal Equinox. The
reason, he says, is evident. As the sun, arriving at the equinoctial
point of Spring, drawing nearer to us, increases the length of the days,
that period seems most appropriate for those ceremonies. For, besides
that there is a great affinity between the substance of Light and the
nature of the Gods, the Sun has that occult force of attraction, by
which he draws matter toward himself, by means of his warmth, making
plants to shoot and grow, etc.; and why can he not, by the same divine
and pure action of his rays, attract and draw to him fortunate souls?
Then, as light is analogous to the Divine Nature, and favorable to souls
struggling to return to their First Principle, and as that light so
increases at the Vernal Equinox, that the days prevail in duration over
the nights, and as the Sun has an attractive force, besides the visible
energy of his rays, it follows that souls are attracted toward the solar
light. He does not further pursue the explanation; because, he says, it
belongs to a mysterious doctrine, beyond the reach of the vulgar and
known only to those who understand the mode of action of Deity, like the
Chaldean author whom he cites, who had treated of the Mysteries of
Light, or the God with seven rays.

Souls, the Ancients held, having emanated from the Principle of Light,
partaking of its destiny here below, cannot be indifferent to nor
unaffected by these revolutions of the Great Luminary, alternately
victor and overcome during every Solar revolution.

This will be found to be confirmed by an examination of some of the
Symbols used in the Mysteries. One of the most famous of these was THE
SERPENT, the peculiar Symbol also of this Degree. The Cosmogony of the
Hebrews and that of the Gnostics designated this reptile as the author
of the fate of Souls. It was consecrated in the Mysteries of Bacchus and
in those of Eleusis. Pluto overcame the virtue of Proserpine under the
form of a serpent; and, like the Egyptian God Serapis, was always
pictured seated on a serpent, or with that reptile entwined about him.
It is found on the Mithriac Monuments, and supplied with attributes of
Typhon to the Egyptians, The sacred basilisc, in coil, with head and
neck erect, was the royal ensign of the Pharaohs. Two of them were
entwined around and hung suspended from the winged Globe on the Egyptian
Monuments. On a tablet in one of the Tombs at Thebes, a God with a spear
pierces a serpent's head. On a tablet from the Temple of Osiris at Philæ
is a tree, with a man on one side, and a woman on the other, and in
front of the woman an erect basilisc, with horns on its head and a disk
between the horns. The head of Medusa was encircled by winged snakes,
which, the head removed, left the Hierogram or Sacred Cypher of the
Ophites or Serpent-worshippers. And the Serpent, in connection with the
Globe or circle, is found upon the monuments of all the Ancient Nations.

Over Libra, the sign through which souls were said to descend or fall,
is found, on the Celestial Globe, the Serpent, grasped by Serpentarius,
the Serpent-bearer. The head of the reptile is under Corona Borealis,
the Northern Crown, called by Ovid, _Libera_, or _Proserpine_; and the
two Constellations rise, with the Balance, after the Virgin (or Isis),
whose feet rest on the eastern horizon at Sunrise on the day of the
equinox. As the Serpent extends over both signs, Libra and Scorpio, it
has been the gate through which souls descend, during the whole time
that those two signs in succession marked the Autumnal Equinox. To this
alluded the Serpent, which, in the Mysteries of Bacchus Saba-Zeus, was
flung into the bosom of the Initiate.

And hence came the enigmatical expression, _the Serpent engenders the
Bull, and the Bull the Serpent_; alluding to the two adverse
constellations, answering to the two equinoxes, one of which rose as the
other set, and which were at the two points of the heavens through which
souls passed, ascending and descending. By the Serpent of Autumn, souls
fell; and they were regenerated again by the Bull on which Mithras sate,
and whose attributes Bacchus-Zagreus and the Egyptian Osiris assumed, in
their Mysteries, wherein were represented the fall and regeneration of
souls, by the Bull slain and restored to life.

Afterward the regenerating Sun assumed the attributes of _Aries_ or the
Lamb; and in the Mysteries of Ammon, souls were regenerated by passing
through that sign, after having fallen through the Serpent.

The Serpent-bearer, or Ophicus, was Æsculapius, God of Healing. In the
Mysteries of Eleusis, that Constellation was placed in the eighth
Heaven: and on the eighth day of those Mysteries, the feast of
Æsculapius was celebrated. It was also termed Epidaurus, or the feast of
the Serpent of Epidaurus. The Serpent was sacred to Æsculapius; and was
connected in various ways with the mythological adventures of Ceres.

So the libations to Souls, by pouring wine on the ground, and looking
toward the two gates of Heaven, those of day and night, referred to the
ascent and descent of Souls.

Ceres and the Serpent, Jupiter Ammon and the Bull, all figured in the
Mysteries of Bacchus. Suppose Aries, or Jupiter Ammon occupied by the
Sun setting in the West;--Virgo (Ceres) will be on the Eastern horizon,
and in her train the Crown, or Proserpine. Suppose Taurus setting;--then
the Serpent is in the East; and reciprocally; so that Jupiter Ammon, or
the Sun of Aries, causes the Crown to rise after the Virgin, in the
train of which comes the Serpent. Place reciprocally the Sun at the
other equinox, with the balance in the West, in conjunction with the
Serpent under the Crown; and we shall see the Bull and the Pleiades rise
in the East. Thus are explained all the fables as to the generation of
the Bull by the Serpent and of the Serpent by the Bull, the biting of
the testicles of the Bull by the Scorpion, on the Mithriac Monuments;
and that Jupiter made Ceres with child by tossing into her bosom the
testicles of a Ram.

In the Mysteries of the bull-horned Bacchus, the officers held serpents
in their hands, raised them above their heads, and cried aloud "Eva!"
the generic oriental name of the serpent, and the particular name of the
constellation in which the Persians placed Eve and the serpent. The
Arabians call it _Hevan_, Ophiucus himself, _Hawa_, and the brilliant
star in his head, _Ras-al-Hawa_. The use of this word _Eva_ or _Evoë_
caused Clemens of Alexandria to say that the priests in the Mysteries
invoked _Eve_, by whom evil was brought into the world.

The mystic winnowing-fan, encircled by Serpents, was used in the feasts
of Bacchus. In the Isiac Mysteries a basilisc twined round the handle of
the mystic vase. The Ophites fed a serpent in a mysterious ark, from
which they took him when they celebrated the Mysteries, and allowed him
to glide among the sacred bread. The Romans kept serpents in the Temples
of Bona Dea and Æsculapius. In the Mysteries of Apollo, the pursuit of
Latona by the serpent Python was represented. In the Egyptian Mysteries,
the dragon Typhon pursued Isis.

According to Sanchoniathon, TAAUT, the interpreter of Heaven to men,
attributed something divine to the nature of the dragon and serpents, in
which the Phœnicians and Egyptians followed him. They have more
vitality, more spiritual force, than any other creature; of a fiery
nature, shown by the rapidity of their motions, without the limbs of
other animals. They assume many shapes and attitudes, and dart with
extraordinary quickness and force. When they have reached old age, they
throw off that age and are young again, and increase in size and
strength, for a certain period of years.

The Egyptian Priests fed the sacred serpents in the temple at Thebes.
Taaut himself had in his writings discussed these mysteries in regard to
the serpent. Sanchoniathon said in another work, that the serpent was
immortal, and re-entered into himself; which, according to some ancient
theosophists, particularly those of India, was an attribute of the
Deity. And he also said that the serpent never died, unless by a violent
death.

The Phœnicians called the serpent _Agathodemon_ [the good spirit]; and
Kneph was the Serpent-God of the Egyptians.

The Egyptians, Sanchoniathon said, represented the serpent with the head
of a hawk, on account of the swift flight of that bird: and the chief
Hierophant, the sacred interpreter, gave very mysterious explanations of
that symbol; saying that such a serpent was a very divine creature, and
that, opening his eyes, he lighted with their rays the whole of
first-born space: when he closes them, it is darkness again. In reality,
the hawk-headed serpent, genius of light, or good genius, was the symbol
of the Sun.

In the hieroglyphic characters, a snake was the letter T or DJ. It
occurs many times on the Rosetta stone. The horned serpent was the
hieroglyphic for a God.

According to Eusebius, the Egyptians represented the world by a blue
circle, sprinkled with flames, within which was extended a serpent with
the head of a hawk. Proclus says they represented the four quarters of
the world by a cross, and the soul of the world, or Kneph, by a serpent
surrounding it in the form of a circle.

We read in Anaxagoras, that Orpheus said, that the water, and the vessel
that produced it, were the primitive principles of things, and together
gave existence to an animated being, which was a serpent, with two
heads, one of a lion and the other of a bull, between which was the
figure of a God whose name was Hercules or Kronos: that from Hercules
came the egg of the world, which produced Heaven and earth, by dividing
itself into two hemispheres: and that the God Phanes, which issued from
that egg, was in the shape of a serpent.

The Egyptian Goddess _Ken_, represented standing naked on a lion, held
two serpents in her hand. She is the same as the _Astarte_ or
_Ashtaroth_ of the Assyrians. _Hera_, worshipped in the Great Temple at
Babylon, held in her right hand a serpent by the head; and near _Khea_,
also worshipped there, were two large silver serpents.

In a sculpture from Kouyunjik, two serpents attached to poles are near a
fire-altar, at which two eunuchs are standing. Upon it is the sacred
fire, and a bearded figure leads a wild goat to the sacrifice.

The serpent of the Temple of Epidaurus was sacred to _Æsculapius_, the
God of Medicine, and 462 years after the building of the city, was taken
to Rome after a pestilence.

The Phœnicians represented the God _Nomu_ (_Kneph_ or _Amun-Kneph_) by a
serpent. In Egypt, a Sun supported by two asps was the emblem of
_Horhat_ the good genius; and the serpent with the winged globe was
placed over the doors and windows of the Temples as a tutelary God.
Antipater of Sidon calls _Amun_ "the renowned Serpent," and the Cerastes
is often found embalmed in the Thebaid.

On ancient Tyrian coins and Indian medals, a serpent was represented,
coiled round the trunk of a tree. _Python_, the Serpent Deity, was
esteemed oracular; and the tripod at Delphi was a triple-headed serpent
of gold.

The portals of all the Egyptian Temples are decorated with the hierogram
of the Circle and the Serpent. It is also found upon the Temple of
Naki-Rustan in Persia; on the triumphal arch at Pechin, in China; over
the gates of the great Temple of Chaundi Teeva, in Java; upon the walls
of Athens; and in the Temple of Minerva at Tegea. The Mexican hierogram
was formed by the intersecting of two great Serpents, which described
the circle with their bodies, and had each a human head in its mouth.

All the Buddhists crosses in Ireland had serpents carved upon them.
Wreaths of snakes are on the columns of the ancient Hindu Temple at
Burwah-Sangor.

Among the Egyptians, it was a symbol of Divine Wisdom, when extended at
length; and, with its tail in its mouth, of Eternity.

In the ritual of Zoroaster, the Serpent was a symbol of the Universe. In
China, the ring between two Serpents was the symbol of the world
governed by the power and wisdom of the Creator. The Bacchanals carried
serpents in their hands or round their heads.

The Serpent entwined round an Egg, was a symbol common to the Indians,
the Egyptians, and the Druids. It referred to the creation of the
Universe. A Serpent with an egg in his mouth was a symbol of the
Universe containing within itself the germ of all things that the Sun
develops.

The property possessed by the Serpent, of casting its skin, and
apparently renewing its youth, made it an emblem of eternity and
immortality. The Syrian women still employ it as a charm against
barrenness, as did the devotees of Mithras and Saba-Zeus. The
Earth-born civilizers of the early world, Fohi, Cecrops, and Erechtheus,
were half-man, half-serpent. The snake was the guardian of the Athenian
Acropolis. NAKHUSTAN, the brazen serpent of the wilderness, became
naturalized among the Hebrews as a token of healing power. "Be ye," said
Christ, "wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."

The Serpent was as often a symbol of malevolence and enmity. It appears
among the emblems of Siva-Roudra, the power of desolation and death: it
is the bane of Aëpytus, Idom, Archemorus, and Philoctetes: it gnaws the
roots of the tree of life in the Eddas, and bites the heel of
unfortunate Eurydice. In Hebrew writers it is generally a type of evil;
and is particularly so in the Indian and Persian Mythologies. When the
Sea is churned by Mount Mandar rotating within the coils of the Cosmical
Serpent Vasouki, to produce the Amrita or water of immortality, the
serpent vomits a hideous poison, which spreads through and infects the
Universe, but which Vishnu renders harmless by swallowing it. Ahriman in
serpent-form invades the realm of Ormuzd; and the Bull, emblem of life,
is wounded by him and dies. It was therefore a religious obligation with
every devout follower of Zoroaster to exterminate reptiles, and other
impure animals, especially serpents. The moral and astronomical
significance of the Serpent were connected. It became a maxim of the
Zend-Avesta, that Ahriman, the Principle of Evil, made the Great Serpent
of Winter, who assaulted the creation of Ormuzd.

A serpent-ring was a well-known symbol of time: and to express
dramatically how time preys upon itself, the Egyptian priests fed vipers
in a subterranean chamber, as it were in the sun's Winter abode on the
fat of bulls, or the year's plenteousness. The dragon of Winter pursues
Ammon, the golden ram, to Mount Casius. The Virgin of the zodiac is
bitten in the heel by Serpens, who, with Scorpio, rises immediately
behind her; and as honey, the emblem of purity and salvation, was
thought to be an antidote to the serpent's bite, so the bees of
Aristæus, the emblems of nature's abundance, are destroyed through the
agency of the serpent, and regenerated within the entrails of the Vernal
Bull.

The Sun-God is finally victorious. Christina crushes the head of the
serpent Calyia; Apollo destroys Python, and Hercules that Lernæan
monster whose poison festered in the foot of Philoctetes, of Mopsus, of
Chiron, or of Sagittarius. The infant Hercules destroys the pernicious
snakes detested of the gods, and ever, like St. George of England and
Michael the Archangel, wars against hydras and dragons.

The eclipses of the sun and moon were believed by the orientals to be
caused by the assaults of a dæmon in dragon-form; and they endeavored to
scare away the intruder by shouts and menaces. This was the original
Leviathan or Crooked Serpent of old, transfixed in the olden time by the
power of Jehovah, and suspended as a glittering trophy in the sky; yet
also the Power of Darkness supposed to be ever in pursuit of the Sun and
Moon. When it finally overtakes them, it will entwine them in its folds,
and prevent their shining. In the last Indian Avatara, as in the Eddas,
a serpent vomiting flames is expected to destroy the world. The serpent
presides over the close of the year, where it guards the approach to the
golden fleece of Aries, and the three apples or seasons of the
Hesperides; presenting a formidable obstacle to the career of the
Sun-God. The Great Destroyer of snakes is occasionally married to them;
Hercules with the northern dragon begets the three ancestors of Scythia;
for the Sun seems at one time to rise victorious from the contest with
darkness, and at another to sink into its embraces. The northern
constellation Draco, whose sinuosities wind like a river through the
wintry bear, was made the astronomical cincture of the Universe, as the
serpent encircles the mundane egg in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

The Persian Ahriman was called "The old serpent, the liar from the
beginning, the Prince of Darkness, and the rover up and down." The
Dragon was a well-known symbol of the waters and of great rivers; and it
was natural that by the pastoral Asiatic Tribes, the powerful nations of
the alluvial plains in their neighborhood who adored the dragon or Fish,
should themselves be symbolized under the form of dragons; and overcome
by the superior might of the Hebrew God, as monstrous Leviathans maimed
and destroyed by him. Ophioneus, in the old Greek Theology, warred
against Kronos, and was overcome and cast into his proper element, the
sea. There he is installed as the Sea-God Oannes or Dragon, the
Leviathan of the watery, half of creation, the dragon who vomited a
flood of water after the persecuted woman of the Apocalypse, the monster
who threatened to devour Hesione and Andromeda, and who for a time
became the grave of Hercules and Jonah; and he corresponds with the
obscure name of _Rahab_, whom Jehovah is said in Job to have transfixed
and overcome.

In the Spring, the year or Sun-God appears as Mithras or Europa mounted
on the Bull; but in the opposite half of the Zodiac he rides the emblem
of the waters, the winged horse of Nestor or Poseidon: and the Serpent,
rising heliacally at the Autumnal Equinox, besetting with poisonous
influence the cold constellation Sagittarius, is explained as the
reptile in the path who "bites the horse's heels, so that his rider
falls backward." The same serpent, the Oannes Aphrenos or Musaros of
Syncellus, was the Midgard Serpent which Odin sunk beneath the sea, but
which grew to such a size as to encircle the whole earth.

For these Asiatic symbols of the contest of the Sun-God with the Dragon
of darkness and Winter were imported not only into the Zodiac, but into
the more homely circle of European legend; and both Thor and Odin fight
with dragons, as Apollo did with Python, the great scaly snake, Achilles
with the Scamander, and Bellerophon with the Chimæra. In the apocryphal
book of Esther, dragons herald "a day of darkness and obscurity"; and
St. George of England, a problematic Cappadocian Prince, was originally
only a varying form of Mithras. Jehovah is said to have "cut Rahab and
wounded the dragon." The latter is not only the type of earthly
desolation, the dragon of the deep waters, but also the leader of the
banded conspirators of the sky, of the rebellious stars, which,
according to Enoch, "came not at the right time"; and his tail drew a
third part of the Host of Heaven, and cast them to the earth. Jehovah
"divided the sea by his strength, and broke the heads of the Dragons in
the waters." And according to the Jewish and Persian belief, the Dragon
would, in the latter days, the Winter of time, enjoy a short period of
licensed impunity, which would be a season of the greatest suffering to
the People of the earth; but he would finally be bound or destroyed in
the great battle of Messiah; or, as it seems intimated by the Rabbinical
figure of being eaten by the faithful, be, like Ahriman or Vasouki,
ultimately absorbed by and united with the Principle of good.

Near the image of Rhea, in the Temple of Bel at Babylon, were two large
serpents of silver, says Diodorus, each weighing thirty talents; and in
the same temple was an image of Juno, holding in her right hand the head
of a serpent. The Greeks called Bel _Beliar_; and Hesychius interprets
that word to mean a dragon or great serpent. We learn from the book of
Bel and the Dragon that in Babylon was kept a great, live serpent, which
the people worshipped.

The Assyrians, the Emperors of Constantinople, the Parthians Scythians,
Saxons, Chinese, and Danes all bore the serpent as a standard, and among
the spoils taken by Aurelian from Zenobia were such standards, _Persici
Dracones_. The Persians represented Ormuzd and Ahriman by two serpents,
contending for the mundane egg. Mithras is represented with a lion's
head and human body, encircled by a serpent. In the Sadder is this
precept: "When you kill serpents, you will repeat the Zend-Avesta, and
thence you will obtain great merit; for it is the same as if you had
killed so many devils."

Serpents encircling rings and globes, and issuing from globes, are
common in the Persian, Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian monuments. Vishnu
is represented reposing on a coiled serpent, whose folds form a canopy
over him. Mahadeva is represented with a snake around his neck, one
around his hair, and armlets of serpents on both arms. Bhairava sits on
the coils of a serpent, whose head rises above his own. Parvati has
snakes about her neck and waist. Vishnu is the Preserving Spirit,
Mahadeva is Siva, the Evil Principle, Bhairava is his son, and Parvati
his consort. The King of Evil Demons was called in Hindū Mythology,
_Naga_, the King of Serpents, in which name we trace the Hebrew
_Nachash_, serpent.

In Cashmere were seven hundred places where carved images of serpents
were worshipped; and in Thibet the great Chinese Dragon ornamented the
Temples of the Grand Lama. In China, the dragon was the stamp and symbol
of royalty, sculptured in all the Temples, blazoned on the furniture of
the houses, and interwoven with the vestments of the chief nobility. The
Emperor bears it as his armorial device; it is engraved on his sceptre
and diadem, and on all the vases of the imperial palace. The Chinese
believe that there is a dragon of extraordinary strength and sovereign
power, in Heaven, in the air, on the waters, and on the mountains. The
God Fohi is said to have had the form of a man, terminating in the tail
of a snake, a combination to be more fully explained to you in a
subsequent Degree.

The dragon and serpent are the 5th and 6th signs of the Chinese Zodiac;
and the Hindus and Chinese believe that, at every eclipse, the sun or
moon is seized by a huge serpent or dragon, the serpent _Asootee_ of the
Hindus, which enfolds the globe and the constellation Draco; to which
also refers "the War in Heaven, when Michael and his Angels fought
against the dragon."

Sanchoniathon says that Taaut was the author of the worship of serpents
among the Phœnicians. He "consecrated," he says, "the species of dragons
and serpents; and the Phœnicians and Egyptians followed him in this
superstition." He was "the first who made an image of Cœlus"; that is,
who represented the Heavenly Hosts of Stars by visible symbols; and was
probably the same as the Egyptian Thoth. On the Tyrian coins of the age
of Alexander, serpents are represented in many positions and attitudes,
coiled around trees, erect in front of altars, and crushed by the Syrian
Hercules.

The seventh letter of the Egyptian alphabet, called _Zeuta_ or _Life_,
was sacred to Thoth, and was expressed by a serpent standing on his
tail; and that Deity, the God of healing, like Æsculapius, to whom the
serpent was consecrated, leans on a knotted stick around which coils a
snake. The Isiac tablet, describing the Mysteries of Isis, is charged
with serpents in every part, as her emblems. The _Asp_ was specially
dedicated to her, and is seen on the heads of her statues, on the
bonnets of her priests, and on the tiaras of the Kings of Egypt. Serapis
was sometimes represented with a human head and serpentine tail: and in
one engraving two minor Gods are represented with him, one by a serpent
with a bull's head, and the other by a serpent with the radiated head of
a lion.

On an ancient sacrificial vessel found in Denmark, having several
compartments, a serpent is represented attacking a kneeling boy,
pursuing him, retreating before him, appealed to beseechingly by him,
and conversing with him. We are at once reminded of the Sun at the new
year represented by a child sitting on a lotus, and of the relations of
the Sun of Spring with the Autumnal Serpent, pursued by and pursuing
him, and in conjunction with him. Other figures on this vessel belong to
the Zodiac.

The base of the _tripod_ of the Pythian Priestess was a triple-headed
serpent of brass, whose body, folded in circles growing wider and wider
toward the ground, formed a conical column, while the three heads,
disposed triangularly, upheld the _tripod_ of gold. A similar column
was placed on a pillar in the Hippodrome at Constantinople, by the
founder of that city; one of the heads of which is said to have been
broken off by Mahomet the Second, by a blow with his iron mace.

The British God Hu was called "The Dragon--Ruler of the World," and his
car was drawn by serpents. His ministers were styled _adders_. A Druid
in a poem of Taliessin says, "I am a Druid, I am an _Architect_, I am a
Prophet, I am a _Serpent_ (Gnadi)." The Car of the Goddess Ceridwen also
was drawn by serpents.

In the elegy of Uther Pendragon, this passage occurs in a description of
the religious rites of the Druids: "While the Sanctuary is earnestly
invoking _The Gliding King_, before whom _the Fair One_ retreats, upon
the evil that covers the huge stones; whilst the Dragon moves round over
the places which contain vessels of drink-offering, whilst the
drink-offering is in _the Golden Horns_;" in which we readily discover
the mystic and obscure allusion to the Autumnal Serpent pursuing the Sun
along the circle of the Zodiac, to the celestial cup or crater, and the
Golden horns of Virgil's milk-white Bull; and, a line or two further on,
we find the Priest imploring the victorious _Beli_, the Sun-God of the
Babylonians.

With the serpent, in the Ancient Monuments, is very often found
associated the Cross. The Serpent upon a Cross was an Egyptian Standard.
It occurs repeatedly upon the Grand Staircase of the Temple of Osiris at
Philæ; and on the pyramid of Ghizeh are represented two kneeling figures
erecting a Cross, on the top of which is a serpent erect. The _Crux
Ansata_ was a Cross with a coiled Serpent above it; and it is perhaps
the most common of all emblems on the Egyptian Monuments, carried in the
hand of almost every figure of a Deity or a Priest. It was, as we learn
by the monuments, the form of the iron tether-pins, used for making fast
to the ground the cords by which young animals were confined: and as
used by shepherds, became a symbol of Royalty to the Shepherd Kings.

A Cross like a Teutonic or Maltese one, formed by four curved lines
within a circle, is also common on the Monuments, and represented the
Tropics and the Colures.

The Caduceus, borne by Hermes or Mercury, and also by Cybele, Minerva,
Anubis, Hercules Ogmius the God of the Celts, and the personified
Constellation Virgo, was a winged wand, entwined by two serpents. It
was originally a simple Cross, symbolizing the equator and equinoctial
Colure, and the four elements proceeding from a common centre. This
Cross, surmounted by a circle, and that by a crescent, became an emblem
of the Supreme Deity--or of the active power of generation and the
passive power of production conjoined,--and was appropriated to Thoth or
Mercury. It then assumed an improved form, the arms of the Cross being
changed into wings, and the circle and crescent being formed by two
snakes, springing from the wand, forming a circle by crossing each
other, and their heads making the horns of the crescent; in which form
it is seen in the hands of Anubis.

The triple Tau, in the centre of a circle and a triangle, typifies the
Sacred Name; and represents the Sacred Triad, the Creating, Preserving,
and Destroying Powers; as well as the three great lights of Masonry. If
to the Masonic point within a Circle, and the two parallel lines, we add
the single Tau Cross, we have the Ancient Egyptian Triple Tau.

A column in the form of a cross, with a circle over it, was used by the
Egyptians to measure the increase of the inundations of the Nile. The
Tau and Triple Tau are found in many Ancient Alphabets.

With the Tau or the Triple Tau may be connected, within two circles, the
double cube, or perfection; or the perfect ashlar.

The _Crux Ansata_ is found on the sculptures of Khorsabad; on the
ivories from Nimroud, of the same age, carried by an Assyrian Monarch;
and on cylinders of the later Assyrian period.

As the single Tau represents the one God, so, no doubt, the Triple Tau,
the origin of which cannot be traced, was meant to represent the Trinity
of his attributes, the three Masonic pillars, WISDOM, STRENGTH, and
HARMONY.

The Prophet Ezekiel, in the 4th verse of the 9th chapter, says: "And the
Lord said unto him, 'Go through the midst of the city, through the midst
of Jerusalem, and mark the letter TAU upon the foreheads of those that
sigh and mourn for all the abominations that be done in the midst
thereof." So the Latin Vulgate, and the probably most ancient copies of
the Septuagint translate the passage. This _Tau_ was in the form of the
cross of this Degree, and it was the emblem of _life_ and _salvation_.
The Samaritan _Tau_ and the Ethiopic _Tavvi_ are the evident prototype
of the Greek [Greek: τ]; and we learn from Tertullian, Origen, and St.
Jerome, that the Hebrew _Tau_ was anciently written in the form of a
Cross.

In ancient times the mark _Tau_ was set on those who had been acquitted
by their judges, as a symbol of innocence. The military commanders
placed it on soldiers who escaped unhurt from the field of battle, as a
sign of their safety under the Divine Protection.

It was a sacred symbol among the Druids. Divesting a tree of part of its
branches, they left it in the shape of a Tau Cross, preserved it
carefully, and consecrated it with solemn ceremonies. On the tree they
cut deeply the word THAU, by which they meant God. On the right arm of
the Cross, they inscribed the word HESULS, on the left BELEN or BELENUS,
and on the middle of the trunk THARAMIS. This represented the sacred
_Triad_.

It is certain that the Indians, Egyptians, and Arabians paid veneration
to the sign of the Cross, thousands of years before the coming of
Christ. Everywhere it was a sacred symbol. The Hindus and the Celtic
Druids built many of their Temples in the form of a Cross, as the ruins
still remaining clearly show, and particularly the ancient Druidical
Temple at Classerniss in the Island of Lewis in Scotland. The Circle is
of 12 Stones. On each of the sides, east, west, and south, are three. In
the centre was the image of the Deity; and on the north an avenue of
twice nineteen stones, and one at the entrance. The Supernal Pagoda at
Benares is in the form of a Cross; and the Druidical subterranean grotto
at New Grange in Ireland.

The Statue of Osiris at Rome had the same emblem. Isis and Ceres also
bore it; and the caverns of initiation were constructed in that shape
with a pyramid over the _Sacellum_.

Crosses were cut in the stones of the Temple of Serapis in Alexandria;
and many Tau Crosses are to be seen in the sculptures of Alabastion and
Esné, in Egypt. On coins, the symbol of the Egyptian God Kneph was a
Cross within a Circle.

The Crux Ansata was the particular emblem of Osiris, and his sceptre
ended with that figure. It was also the emblem of Hermes, and was
considered a Sublime Hieroglyphic, possessing mysterious powers and
virtues, as a wonder-working amulet.

The Sacred Tau occurs in the hands of the mummy-shaped figures between
the forelegs of the row of Sphynxes, in the great avenue leading from
Luxor to Karnac. By the Tau Cross the Cabalists expressed the number
10, a perfect number, denoting Heaven, and the Pythagorean Tetractys, or
incommunicable name of God. The Tau Cross is also found on the stones in
front of the door of the Temple of Amunoth III, at Thebes, who reigned
about the time when the Israelites took possession of Canaan: and the
Egyptian Priests carried it in all the sacred processions.

Tertullian, who had been initiated, informs us that the Tau was
inscribed on the forehead of every person who had been admitted into the
Mysteries of Mithras.

As the simple Tau represented Life, so, when the Circle, symbol of
Eternity, was added, it represented Eternal Life.

At the Initiation of a King, the Tau, as the emblem of life and key of
the Mysteries, was impressed upon his lips.

In the Indian Mysteries, the Tau Cross, under the name of _Tiluk_, was
marked upon the body of the candidate, as a sign that he was set apart
for the Sacred Mysteries.

On the upright tablet of the King, discovered at Nimroud, are the names
of thirteen Great Gods (among which are YAV and BEL); and the left-hand
character of every one is a cross composed of two cuneiform characters.

The Cross appears upon an Ancient Phœnician medal found in the ruins of
Citium; on the very ancient Buddhist Obelisk near Ferns in Ross-shire;
on the Buddhist Round Towers in Ireland, and upon the splendid obelisk
of the same era at Forres in Scotland.

Upon the facade of a temple at Kalabche in Nubia are three regal
figures, each holding a Crux Ansata.

Like the Subterranean Mithriatic Temple at New Grange in Scotland, the
Pagodas of Benares and Mathura were in the form of a Cross. Magnificent
Buddhist Crosses were erected, and are still standing, at Clonmacnoise,
Finglas, and Kilcullen in Ireland. Wherever the monuments of Buddhism
are found, in India, Ceylon, or Ireland, we find the Cross: for Buddha
or Boudh was represented to have been crucified.

All the planets known to the Ancients were distinguished by the Mystic
Cross, in conjunction with the solar or lunar symbols; Saturn by a cross
over a crescent, Jupiter by a cross under a crescent, Mars by a cross
resting obliquely on a circle, Venus by a cross under a circle, and
Mercury by a cross surmounted by a circle and that by a crescent.

The Solstices, Cancer and Capricorn, the two Gates of Heaven are the two
pillars of Hercules, beyond which he, the Sun, never journeyed: and they
still appear in our Lodges, as the two great columns, Jachin and Boaz,
and also as the two parallel lines that bound the circle, with a point
in the centre, emblem of the Sun between the two tropics of Cancer and
Capricorn.

The Blazing Star in our Lodges, we have already said, represents Sirius,
Anubis, or Mercury, Guardian and Guide of Souls. Our Ancient English
brethren also considered it an emblem of the Sun. In the old Lectures
they said: "The Blazing Star or Glory in the centre refers us to that
Grand Luminary the Sun, which enlightens the Earth, and by its genial
influence dispenses blessings to mankind." It is also said in those
lectures to be an emblem of Prudence. The word _Prudentia_ means, in its
original and fullest signification, _Foresight_: and accordingly the
Blazing Star has been regarded as an emblem of Omniscience, or the
All-Seeing Eye, which to the Ancients was the Sun.

Even the Dagger of the Elu of Nine is that used in the Mysteries of
Mithras; which, with its blade black and hilt white, was an emblem of
the two principles of Light and Darkness.

Isis, the same as Ceres, was, as we learn from Eratosthenes, the
Constellation Virgo, represented by a woman holding an ear of wheat. The
different emblems which accompany her in the description given by
Apuleius, a serpent on either side, a golden vase, with a serpent twined
round the handle, and the animals that marched in procession, the bear,
the ape, and Pegasus, represented the Constellations that, rising with
the Virgin, when on the day of the Vernal Equinox she stood in the
Oriental gate of Heaven, brilliant with the rays of the full moon,
seemed to march in her train.

The cup, consecrated in the Mysteries both of Isis and Eleusis, was the
Constellation Crater or the Cup. The sacred vessel of the Isiac ceremony
finds its counterpart in the Heavens. The Olympic robe presented to the
Initiate, a magnificent mantle, covered with figures of serpents and
animals, and under which were twelve other sacred robes, wherewith he
was clothed in the sanctuary, alluded to the starry Heaven and the
twelve signs: while the seven preparatory immersions in the sea alluded
to the seven spheres, through which the soul plunged, to arrive here
below and take up its abode in a body.

The Celestial Virgin, during the last three centuries that preceded the
Christian era, occupied the horoscope or Oriental point, and that gate
of Heaven through which the Sun and Moon ascended above the horizon at
the two equinoxes. Again it occupied it at midnight, at the Winter
Solstice, the precise moment when the year commenced. Thus it was
essentially connected with the march of times and seasons, of the Sun,
the Moon, and day and night, at the principal epochs of the year. At the
equinoxes were celebrated the greater and lesser Mysteries of Ceres.
When souls descended past the Balance, at the moment when the Sun
occupied that point, the Virgin rose before him; she stood at the gates
of day and opened them to him. Her brilliant Star, Spica Virginis, and
Arcturus, in Boötes, northwest of it, heralded his coming. When he had
returned to the Vernal Equinox, at the moment when souls were generated,
again it was the Celestial Virgin that led the march of the signs of
night; and in her stars came the beautiful full moon of that month.
Night and day were in succession introduced by her, when they began to
diminish in length; and souls, before arriving at the gates of Hell,
were also led by her. In going through these signs, they passed the Styx
in the 8th Degree of Libra. She was the famous Sibyl who initiated
Eneas, and opened to him the way to the infernal regions.

This peculiar situation of the Constellation Virgo, has caused it to
enter into all the sacred fables in regard to nature, under different
names and the most varied forms. It often takes the name of Isis or the
Moon, which, when at its full at the Vernal Equinox, was in union with
it or beneath its feet. Mercury (or Anubis) having his domicile and
exaltation in the sign Virgo, was, in all the sacred fables and
Sanctuaries, the inseparable companion of Isis, without whose counsels
she did nothing.

This relation between the emblems and mysterious recitals of the
initiations, and the Heavenly bodies and order of the world, was still
more clear in the Mysteries of Mithras, adored as the Sun in Asia Minor,
Cappadocia, Armenia, and Persia, and whose Mysteries went to Rome in the
time of Sylla. This is amply proved by the descriptions we have of the
Mithriac cave, in which were figured the two movements of the Heavens,
that of the fixed Stars and that of the Planets, the Constellations, the
eight mystic gates of the spheres, and the symbols of the elements. So
on a celebrated monument of that religion, found at Rome, were figured,
the Serpent or Hydra under Leo, as in the Heavens, the Celestial Dog,
the Bull, the Scorpion, the Seven Planets, represented by seven altars,
the Sun, Moon, and emblems relating to Light, to Darkness, and to their
succession during the year, where each in turn triumphs for six months.

The Mysteries of Atys were celebrated when the Sun entered Aries; and
among the emblems was a ram at the foot of a tree which was being cut
down.

Thus, if not the whole truth, it is yet a large part of it, that the
Heathen Pantheon, in its infinite diversity of names and
personifications, was but a multitudinous, though in its origin
unconscious allegory, of which physical phenomena, and principally the
Heavenly Bodies, were the fundamental types. The glorious images of
Divinity which formed Jehovah's Host, were the Divine Dynasty or real
theocracy which governed the early world; and the men of the golden age,
whose looks held commerce with the skies, and who watched the radiant
rulers bringing Winter and Summer to mortals, might be said with poetic
truth to live in immediate communication with Heaven, and, like the
Hebrew Patriarchs, to see God face to face. Then the Gods introduced
their own worship among mankind: then Oannes, Oe or Aquarius rose from
the Red Sea to impart science to the Babylonians; then the bright Bull
legislated for India and Crete; and the Lights of Heaven, personified as
Liber and Ceres, hung the Bœotian hills with vineyards, and gave the
golden sheaf to Eleusis. The children of men were, in a sense, allied or
married, to those sons of God who sang the jubilee of creation; and the
encircling vault with its countless Stars, which to the excited
imagination of the solitary Chaldean wanderer appeared as animated
intelligences, might naturally be compared to a gigantic ladder, on
which, in their rising and setting, the Angel luminaries appeared to be
ascending and descending between earth and Heaven. The original
revelation died out of men's memories; they worshipped the Creature
instead of the Creator; and holding all earthly things as connected by
eternal links of harmony and sympathy with the heavenly bodies, they
united in one view astronomy, astrology, and religion. Long wandering
thus in error, they at length ceased to look upon the Stars and external
nature as Gods; and by directing their attention to the microcosm or
narrower world of self, they again became acquainted with the True Ruler
and Guide of the Universe, and used the old fables and superstitions as
symbols and allegories, by which to convey and under which to hide the
great truths which had faded out of most men's remembrance.

In the Hebrew writings, the term "Heavenly Hosts" includes not only the
counsellors and emissaries of Jehovah, but also the celestial
luminaries; and the stars, imagined in the East to be animated
intelligences, presiding over human weal and woe, are identified with
the more distinctly impersonated messengers or angels, who execute the
Divine decrees, and whose predominance in Heaven is in mysterious
correspondence and relation with the powers and dominions of the earth.
In Job, the Morning Stars and the Sons of God are identified; they join
in the same chorus of praise to the Almighty; they are both susceptible
of joy; they walk in brightness, and are liable to impurity and
imperfection in the sight of God. The Elohim originally included not
only foreign superstitious forms, but also all that host of Heaven which
was revealed in poetry to the shepherds of the desert, now as an
encampment of warriors, now as careering in chariots of fire, and now as
winged messengers, ascending and descending the vault of Heaven, to
communicate the will of God to mankind.

"The Eternal," says the Bereshith Rabba to Genesis, "called forth
Abraham and his posterity out of the dominion of the stars; by nature,
the Israelite was a servant to the stars, and born under their
influence, as are the heathen; but by virtue of the law given on Mount
Sinai, he became liberated from this degrading servitude." The Arabs had
a similar legend. The Prophet Amos explicitly asserts that the
Israelites, in the desert, worshipped, not Jehovah, but Moloch, or a
Star-God, equivalent to Saturn. The Gods El or Jehovah were not merely
planetary or solar. Their symbolism, like that of every other Deity, was
coextensive with nature, and with the mind of man. Yet the astrological
character is assigned even to Jehovah. He is described as seated on the
pinnacle of the Universe, leading forth the Hosts of Heaven, and telling
them unerringly by name and number. His stars are His sons and His eyes,
which run through the whole world, keeping watch over men's deeds. The
stars and planets were properly the angels. In Pharisaic tradition, as
in the phraseology of the New Testament, the Heavenly Host appears as an
Angelic Army, divided into regiments and brigades, under the command of
imaginary chiefs, such as Massaloth, Legion, Kartor Gistra etc.--each
Gistra being captain of 365,000 myriads of stars. The Seven Spirits
which stand before the throne, spoken of by several Jewish writers, and
generally presumed to have been immediately derived from the Persian
Amshaspands, were ultimately the seven planetary intelligences, the
original model of the seven-branched golden candlestick exhibited to
Moses on God's mountain. The stars were imagined to have fought in their
courses against Sisera. The heavens were spoken of as holding a
predominance over earth, as governing it by signs and ordinances, and as
containing the elements of that astrological wisdom, more especially
cultivated by the Babylonians and Egyptians.

Each nation was supposed by the Hebrews to have its own guardian angel,
and its own provincial star. One of the chiefs of the Celestial Powers,
at first Jehovah Himself in the character of the Sun, standing in the
height of Heaven, overlooking and governing all things, afterward one of
the angels or subordinate planetary genii of Babylonian or Persian
mythology, was the patron and protector of their own nation, "the Prince
that standeth for the children of thy people." The discords of earth
were accompanied by a warfare in the sky; and no people underwent the
visitation of the Almighty, without a corresponding chastisement being
inflicted on its tutelary angel.

The fallen Angels were also fallen Stars; and the first allusion to a
feud among the spiritual powers in early Hebrew Mythology, where Rabab
and his confederates are defeated, like the Titans in a battle against
the Gods, seems to identify the rebellious Spirits as part of the
visible Heavens, where the "high ones on high" are punished or chained,
as a signal proof of God's power and justice. God, it is said--

"Stirs the sea with His might--by His understanding He smote Rahab--His
breath clears the face of Heaven--His hand pierced the crooked
Serpent.... God withdraws not His anger; beneath Him bow the
confederates of Rahab."

Rahab always means a sea-monster: probably some such legendary monstrous
dragon, as in almost all mythologies is the adversary of Heaven and
demon of eclipse, in whose belly, significantly called the belly of
Hell, Hercules, like Jonah, passed three days, ultimately escaping with
the loss of his hair or rays. Chesil, the rebellious giant Orion,
represented in Job as riveted to the sky, was compared to Ninus or
Nimrod, the mythical founder of Nineveh (City of Fish) the mighty
hunter, who slew lions and panthers before the Lord. Rahab's
confederates are probably the "High ones on High," the Chesilim or
constellations in Isaiah, the Heavenly Host or Heavenly Powers, among
whose number were found folly and disobedience.

"I beheld," says Pseudo-Enoch, "seven stars like great blazing
mountains, and like Spirits, entreating me. And the angel said, This
place, until the consummation of Heaven and Earth, will be the prison of
the Stars and of the Host of Heaven. These are the Stars which
overstepped God's command before their time arrived; and came not at
their proper season; therefore was he offended with them, and bound
them, until the time of the consummation of their crimes in the secret
year." And again: "These Seven Stars are those which have transgressed
the commandment of the Most High God, and which are here bound until the
number of the days of their crimes be completed."

The Jewish and early Christian writers looked on the worship of the sun
and the elements with comparative indulgence. Justin Martyr and Clemens
of Alexandria admit that God had appointed the stars as legitimate
objects of heathen worship, in order to preserve throughout the world
some tolerable notions of natural religion. It seemed a middle point
between Heathenism and Christianity; and to it certain emblems and
ordinances of that faith seemed to relate. The advent of Christ was
announced by a Star from the East; and His nativity was celebrated on
the shortest day of the Julian Calendar, the day when, in the physical
commemorations of Persia and Egypt, Mithras or Osiris was newly found.
It was then that the acclamations of the Host of Heaven, the unfailing
attendants of the Sun, surrounded, as at the spring-dawn of creation,
the cradle of His birth-place, and that, in the words of Ignatius, "a
star, with light inexpressible, shone forth in the Heavens, to destroy
the power of magic and the bonds of wickedness; for God Himself had
appeared, in the form of man, for the renewal of eternal life."

But however infinite the variety of objects which helped to develop the
notion of Deity, and eventually assumed its place, substituting the
worship of the creature for that of the creator; of Parts of the body,
for that of the soul, of the Universe, still the notion itself was
essentially one of unity. The idea of one God, of a creative,
productive, governing unity, resided in the earliest exertion of
thought: and this monotheism of the primitive ages, makes every
succeeding epoch, unless it be the present appear only as a stage in the
progress of degeneracy and aberration Everywhere in the old faiths we
find the idea of a supreme or presiding Deity. Amun or Osiris presides
among the many gods of Egypt; Pan, with the music of his pipe, directs
the chorus of the constellations, as Zeus leads the solemn procession of
the celestial troops in the astronomical theology of the Pythagoreans.
"Amidst an infinite diversity of opinions on all other subjects," says
Maximus Tyrius, "the whole world is unanimous in the belief of one only
almighty King and Father of all."

There is always a Sovereign Power, a Zeus or Deus, Mahadeva or Adideva,
to whom belongs the maintenance of the order of the Universe. Among the
thousand gods of India, the doctrine of Divine Unity is never lost sight
of; and the ethereal Jove, worshipped by the Persian in an age long
before Xenophanes or Anaxagoras, appears as supremely comprehensive and
independent of planetary or elemental subdivisions, as the "Vast One" or
"Great Soul" of the Vedas.

But the simplicity of belief of the patriarchs did not exclude the
employment of symbolical representations. The mind never rests satisfied
with a mere feeling. That feeling ever strives to assume precision and
durability as an idea, by some _outward_ delineation of its thought.
Even the ideas that are above and beyond the senses, as all ideas of God
are, require the aid of the senses for their expression and
communication. Hence come the representative forms and symbols which
constitute the external investiture of every religion; attempts to
express a religious sentiment that is essentially _one_, and that vainly
struggles for adequate external utterance, striving to tell to one man,
to _paint_ to him, an idea existing in the mind of another, and
essentially incapable of utterance or description, in a language all the
words of which have a sensuous meaning. Thus, the idea being perhaps the
same in all, its expressions and utterances are infinitely various, and
branch into an infinite diversity of creeds and sects.

All religious expression is symbolism; since we can describe only what
we see; and the true objects of religion are unseen. The earliest
instruments of education were symbols; and they and all other religious
forms differed and still differ according to external circumstances and
imagery, and according to differences of knowledge and mental
cultivation. To present a visible symbol to the eye of another is not to
inform him of the meaning which that symbol has to _you_. Hence the
philosopher soon superadded to these symbols, explanations addressed to
the ear, susceptible of more precision, but less effective, obvious, and
impressive than the painted or sculptured forms which he despised. Out
of these explanations grew by degrees a variety of narratives, whose
true object and meaning were gradually forgotten. And when these were
abandoned, and philosophy resorted to definitions and formulas, its
language was but a more refined symbolism, grappling with and attempting
to picture ideas impossible to be expressed. For the most abstract
expression for Deity which language can supply, is but a _sign_ or
_symbol_ for an object unknown, and no more truthful and adequate than
the terms Osiris and Vishnu, except as being less sensuous and explicit.
To say that He is a _Spirit_, is but to say that He is not matter.
_What_ spirit is, we can only define as the Ancients did, by resorting,
as if in despair, to some sublimized species of matter, as Light, Fire,
or Ether.

No symbol of Deity can be appropriate or durable except in a relative or
moral sense. We cannot exalt words that have only a sensuous meaning,
_above_ sense. To call Him a _Power_ or a _Force_, or an _Intelligence_,
is merely to deceive ourselves into the belief that we use words that
have a meaning to us, when they have none, or at least no more than the
ancient visible symbols had. To call Him _Sovereign, Father, Grand
Architect of the Universe, Extension, Time, Beginning, Middle, and End,
whose face is turned on all sides, the Source of life and death_, is but
to present other men with symbols by which we vainly endeavor to
communicate to them the same vague ideas which men in all ages have
impotently struggled to express. And it may be doubted whether we have
succeeded either in communicating, or in forming in our own minds, any
more distinct and definite and true and adequate idea of the Deity, with
all our metaphysical conceits and logical subtleties, than the rude
ancients did, who endeavored to symbolize and so to express His
attributes, by the Fire, the Light, the Sun and Stars, the Lotus and the
Scarabæus; all of them types of what, except by types, more or less
sufficient, could not be expressed at all.

The primitive man recognized the Divine Presence under a variety of
appearances, without losing his faith in this unity and Supremacy. The
invisible God, manifested and on one of His many sides visible, did not
cease to be God to him. He recognized Him in the evening breeze of Eden,
in the whirlwind of Sinai in the Stone of Beth-El: and identified Him
with the fire or thunder or the immovable rock adored in Ancient Arabia.
To him the image of the Deity was reflected in all that was pre-eminent
in excellence. He saw Jehovah, like Osiris and Bel, in the Sun as well
as in the Stars, which were His children, His eyes, "which run through
the whole world, and watch over the Sacred Soil of Palestine, from the
year's commencement to its close." He was the sacred fire of Mount
Sinai, of the burning bush, of the Persians, those Puritans of Paganism.

Naturally it followed that Symbolism soon became more complicated, and
all the powers of Heaven were reproduced on earth, until a web of
fiction and allegory was woven, which the wit of man, with his limited
means of explanation, will never unravel. Hebrew Theism itself became
involved in symbolism and image-worship, to which all religions ever
tend. We have already seen what was the symbolism of the Tabernacle, the
Temple, and the Ark. The Hebrew establishment tolerated not only the use
of emblematic vessels, vestments, and cherubs, of Sacred Pillars and
Seraphim, but symbolical representations of Jehovah Himself, not even
confined to poetical or illustrative language.

"Among the Adityas," says Chrishna, in the Bagvat Ghita, "I am Vishnu,
the radiant Sun among the Stars; among the waters, I am ocean; among the
mountains, the Himalaya; and among the mountain-tops, Meru." The Psalms
and Isaiah are full of similar attempts to convey to the mind ideas of
God, by ascribing to Him sensual proportions. He rides on the clouds,
and sits on the wings of the wind. Heaven is His pavilion, and out of
His mouth issue lightnings. Men cannot worship a mere abstraction. They
require some outward form in which to clothe their conceptions, and
invest their sympathies. If they do not shape and carve or paint visible
images, they have invisible ones, perhaps quite as inadequate and
unfaithful, within their own minds.

The incongruous and monstrous in the Oriental images came from the
desire to embody the Infinite, and to convey by multiplied, because
individually inadequate symbols, a notion of Divine Attributes to the
understanding. Perhaps we should find that we mentally do the same
thing, and make within ourselves images quite as incongruous, if judged
of by our own limited conceptions, if we were to undertake to analyze
and gain a clear idea of the mass of infinite attributes which we assign
to the Deity: and even of His infinite Justice and infinite Mercy and
Love.

We may well say, in the language of Maximus Tyrius: "If, in the desire
to obtain some faint conception of the Universal Father, the Nameless
Lawgiver, men had recourse to words or names, to silver or gold, to
animals or plants, to mountain-tops or flowing rivers, every one
inscribing the most valued and most beautiful things with the name of
Deity, and with the fondness of a lover clinging with rapture to each
trivial reminiscence of the Beloved, why should we seek to reduce this
universal practice of symbolism, necessary, indeed, since the mind often
needs the excitement of the imagination to rouse it into activity, to
one monotonous standard of formal propriety? Only let the image duly
perform its task, and bring the divine idea with vividness and truth
before the mental eye; if this be effected, whether by the art of
Phidias, the poetry of Homer, the Egyptian Hieroglyph, or the Persian
element, we need not cavil at external differences, or lament the
seeming fertility of unfamiliar creeds, _so long as the great essential
is attained_, THAT MEN ARE MADE TO REMEMBER, TO UNDERSTAND, AND TO
LOVE."

Certainly, when men regarded Light and Fire as something spiritual, and
above all the corruptions and exempt from all the decay of matter; when
they looked upon the Sun and Stars and Planets as composed of this finer
element, and as themselves great and mysterious Intelligences,
infinitely superior to man, living Existences, gifted with mighty powers
and wielding vast influences, those elements and bodies conveyed to
them, when used as symbols of Deity, a far more adequate idea than they
can now do to us, or than we can comprehend, now that Fire and Light are
familiar to us as air and water, and the Heavenly Luminaries are
lifeless worlds like our own. Perhaps they gave them ideas as adequate
as we obtain from the mere _words_ by which we endeavor to symbolize and
shadow forth the ineffable mysteries and infinite attributes of God.

There are, it is true, dangers inseparable from symbolism, which
countervail its advantages, and afford an impressive lesson in regard to
the similar risks attendant on the use of language. The imagination,
invited to assist the reason, usurps its place, or leaves its ally
helplessly entangled in its web. Names which stand for things are
confounded with them; the means are mistaken for the end: the instrument
of interpretation for the object; and thus symbols come to usurp an
independent character as truths and persons. Though perhaps a necessary
path, they were a dangerous one by which to approach the Deity; in which
"many," says Plutarch, "mistaking the sign for the thing signified, fell
into a ridiculous superstition; while others, in avoiding one extreme,
plunged into the no less hideous gulf of irreligion and impiety."

All great Reformers have warred against this evil, deeply feeling the
intellectual mischief arising out of a degraded idea of the Supreme
Being; and have claimed for their own God an existence or personality
distinct from the objects of ancient superstition; disowning in His name
the symbols and images that had profaned His Temple. But they have not
seen that the utmost which can be effected by human effort, is to
substitute impressions relatively correct, for others whose falsehood
has been detected, and to replace a gross symbolism by a purer one.
Every man, without being aware of it, worships a conception of his own
mind; for all symbolism, as well as all language, shares the subjective
character of the ideas it represents. The epithets we apply to God only
recall either visible or intellectual symbols to the eye or mind. The
modes or forms of manifestation of the reverential feeling that
constitutes the religious sentiment, are incomplete and progressive;
each term and symbol predicates a partial truth, remaining always
amenable to improvement or modification, and, in its turn, to be
superseded by others more accurate and comprehensive.

Idolatry consists in confounding the symbol with the thing signified,
the substitution of a material for a mental object of worship, after a
higher spiritualism has become possible; an ill-judged preference of the
inferior to the superior symbol, an inadequate and sensual conception of
the Deity: and every religion and every conception of God is idolatrous,
in so far as it is imperfect, and as it substitutes a feeble and
temporary idea in the shrine of that Undiscoverable Being who can be
known only in part, and who can therefore be honored, even by the most
enlightened among His worshippers, only in proportion to their limited
powers of understanding and imagining to themselves His perfections.

Like the belief in a Deity, the belief in the soul's immortality is
rather a natural feeling, an adjunct of self-consciousness, than a dogma
belonging to any particular age or country. It gives eternity to man's
nature, and reconciles its seeming anomalies and contradictions; it
makes him strong in weakness and perfectable in imperfection; and it
alone gives an adequate object for his hopes and energies, and value and
dignity to his pursuits. It is concurrent with the belief in an
infinite, eternal Spirit, since it is chiefly through consciousness of
the dignity of the mind within us, that we learn to appreciate its
evidences in the Universe.

To fortify, and as far as possible to impart this hope, was the great
aim of ancient wisdom, whether expressed in forms of poetry or
philosophy; as it was of the Mysteries, and as it is of Masonry. Life
rising out of death was the great mystery, which symbolism delighted to
represent under a thousand ingenious forms. Nature was ransacked for
attestations to the grand truth which seems to transcend all other gifts
of imagination, or rather to be their essence and consummation. Such
evidences were easily discovered. They were found in the olive and the
lotus, in the evergreen myrtle of the _Mystæ_ and of the grave of
Polydorus, in the deadly but self-renewing serpent, the wonderful moth
emerging from the coffin of the worm, the phenomena of germination, the
settings and risings of the sun and stars, the darkening and growth of
the moon, and in sleep, "the minor mystery of death."

The stories of the birth of Apollo from Latona, and of dead heroes, like
Glaucus, resuscitated in caves, were allegories of the natural
alternations of life and death in nature, changes that are but
expedients to preserve her virginity and purity inviolable in the
general sum of her operations, whose aggregate presents only a majestic
calm, rebuking alike man's presumption and his despair. The typical
death of the Nature-God, Osiris, Atys, Adonis, Hiram, was a profound but
consolatory mystery: the healing charms of Orpheus were connected with
his destruction; and his bones, those valued pledges of fertility and
victory, were, by a beautiful contrivance, often buried within the
sacred precincts of his immortal equivalent.

In their doctrines as to the immortality of the soul, the Greek
Philosophers merely stated with more precision ideas long before extant
independently among themselves, in the form of symbolical suggestion.
Egypt and Ethiopia in these matters learned from India, where, as
everywhere else, the origin of the doctrine was as remote and
untraceable as the origin of man himself. Its natural expression is
found in the language of Chrishna, in the Bagvat Ghita: "I myself never
was non-existent, nor thou, nor these princes of the Earth; nor shall we
ever hereafter cease to be ... The soul is not a thing of which a man
may say, it hath been, or is about to be, or is to be hereafter; for it
is a thing without birth; it is pre-existent, changeless, eternal, and
is not to be destroyed with this mortal frame."

According to the dogma of antiquity, the thronging forms of life are a
series of purifying migrations, through which the divine principle
re-ascends to the unity of its source. Inebriated in the bowl of
Dionusos, and dazzled in the mirror of existence, the souls, those
fragments or sparks of the Universal Intelligence, forgot their native
dignity, and passed into the terrestrial frames they coveted. The most
usual type of the spirit's descent was suggested by the sinking of the
Sun and Stars from the upper to the lower hemisphere. When it arrived
within the portals of the proper empire of Dionusos, the God of this
World, the scene of delusion and change, its individuality became
clothed in a material form; and as individual bodies were compared to a
garment, the world was the investiture of the Universal Spirit. Again,
the body was compared to a vase or urn, the soul's recipient; the world
being the mighty bowl which received the descending Deity. In another
image, ancient as the Grottoes of the Magi and the denunciations of
Ezekiel, the world was as a dimly illuminated cavern, where shadows seem
realities, and where the soul becomes forgetful of its celestial origin
in proportion to its proneness to material fascinations. By another, the
period of the Soul's embodiment is as when exhalations are condensed,
and the aerial element assumes the grosser form of water.

But if vapor falls in water, it was held, water is again the birth of
vapors, which ascend and adorn the Heavens. If our mortal existence be
the death of the spirit, our death may be the renewal of its life; as
physical bodies are exalted from earth to water, from water to air, from
air to fire, so the man may rise into the Hero, the Hero into the God.
In the course of Nature, the soul, to recover its lost estate, must pass
through a series of trials and migrations. The scene of those trials is
the Grand Sanctuary of Initiations, the world: their primary agents are
the elements; and Dionusos, as Sovereign of Nature, or the sensuous
world personified, is official Arbiter of the Mysteries, and guide of
the soul, which he introduces into the body and dismisses from it. He is
the Sun, that liberator of the elements, and his spiritual mediation was
suggested by the same imagery which made the Zodiac the supposed path of
the spirits in their descent and their return, and Cancer and Capricorn
the gates through which they passed.

He was not only Creator of the World, but guardian, liberator, and
Saviour of the Soul. Ushered into the world amidst lightning and
thunder, he became the Liberator celebrated in the Mysteries of Thebes,
delivering earth from Winter's chain, conducting the nightly chorus of
the Stars and the celestial revolution of the year. His symbolism was
the inexhaustible imagery employed to fill up the stellar devices of the
Zodiac: he was the Vernal Bull, the Lion, the Ram, the Autumnal Goat,
the Serpent: in short, the varied Deity, the resulting manifestation
personified, the all in the many, the varied year, life passing into
innumerable forms; essentially inferior to none, yet changing with the
seasons, and undergoing their periodical decay.

He mediates and intercedes for man, and reconciles the Universal Unseen
Mind with the individualized spirit of which he is emphatically the
Perfecter; a consummation which he effects, first through the
vicissitudes of the elemental ordeal, the alternate fire of Summer and
the showers of Winter, "the trials or test of an immortal Nature"; and
secondarily and symbolically through the Mysteries. He holds not only
the cup of generation, but also that of wisdom or initiation, whose
influence is contrary to that of the former, causing the soul to abhor
its material bonds, and to long for its return. The first was the Cup of
Forgetfulness; while the second is the Urn of Aquarius, quaffed by the
returning spirit, as by the returning Sun at the Winter Solstice, and
emblematic of the exchange of wordly impressions for the recovered
recollections of the glorious sights and enjoyments of its
pre-existence. Water nourishes and purifies; and the urn from which it
flows was thought worthy to be a symbol of Deity, as of the
Osiris-Canobus who with living water irrigated the soil of Egypt; and
also an emblem of Hope that should cheer the dwellings of the dead.

The second birth of Dionusos, like the rising of Osiris and Atys from
the dead, and the raising of Khurum, is a type of the spiritual
regeneration of man. Psyche (the Soul), like Ariadne, had two lovers,
an earthly and an immortal one. The immortal suitor is Dionusos, the
Eros-Phanes of the Orphici, gradually exalted by the progress of
thought, out of the symbol of Sensuality into the torch-bearer of the
Nuptials of the Gods; the Divine Influence which physically called the
world into being, and which, awakening the soul from its Stygian trance,
restores it from earth to Heaven.

Thus the scientific theories of the ancients, expounded in the
Mysteries, as to the origin of the soul, its descent, its sojourn here
below, and its return, were not a mere barren contemplation of the
nature of the world, and of the intelligent beings existing there. They
were not an idle speculation as to the order of the world, and about the
soul, but a study of the means for arriving at the great object
proposed,--the perfecting of the soul; and, as a necessary consequence,
that of morals and society. This Earth, to them, was not the Soul's
home, but its place of exile. Heaven was its home, and there was its
birth-place. To it, it ought incessantly to turn its eyes. Man was not a
terrestrial plant. His roots were in Heaven. The soul had lost its
wings, clogged by the viscosity of matter. It would recover them when it
extricated itself from matter and commenced its upward flight.

Matter being, in their view, as it was in that of St. Paul, the
principle of all the passions that trouble reason, mislead the
intelligence, and stain the purity of the soul, the Mysteries taught man
how to enfeeble the action of matter on the soul, and to restore to the
latter its natural dominion. And lest the stains so contracted should
continue after death, lustrations were used, fastings, expiations,
macerations, continence, and above all, initiations. Many of these
practices were at first merely symbolical,--material signs indicating
the moral purity required of the Initiates; but they afterward came to
be regarded as actual productive causes of that purity.

The effect of initiation was meant to be the same as that of philosophy,
to purify the soul of its passions, to weaken the empire of the body
over the divine portion of man, and to give him here below a happiness
anticipatory of the felicity to be one day enjoyed by him, and of the
future vision by him of the Divine Beings. And therefore Proclus and the
other Platonists taught "that the Mysteries and initiations withdrew
souls from this mortal and material life, to re-unite them to the gods;
and dissipated for the adepts the shades of ignorance by the splendors
of the Deity." Such were the precious fruits of the last Degree of the
Mystic Science,--to see Nature in her springs and sources, and to become
familiar with the causes of things and with real existences.

Cicero says that the soul must exercise itself in the practice of the
virtues, if it would speedily return to its place of origin. It should,
while imprisoned in the body, free itself therefrom by the contemplation
of superior beings, and in some sort be divorced from the body and the
senses. Those who remain enslaved, subjugated by their passions and
violating the sacred laws of religion and society, will re-ascend to
Heaven, only after they shall have been purified through a long
succession of ages.

The Initiate was required to emancipate himself from his passions, and
to free himself from the hindrances of the senses and of matter, in
order that he might rise to the contemplation of the Deity, or of that
incorporeal and unchanging light in which live and subsist the causes of
created natures. "We must," says Porphyry, "flee from everything
sensual, that the soul may with ease re-unite itself with God, and live
happily with Him." "This is the great work of initiation," says
Hierocles,--"to recall the soul to what is truly good and beautiful, and
make it familiar therewith, and they its own; to deliver it from the
pains and ills it endures here below, enchained in matter as in a dark
prison; to facilitate its return to the celestial splendors, and to
establish it in the Fortunate Isles, by restoring it to its first
estate. Thereby, when the hour of death arrives, the soul, freed of its
mortal garmenting, which it leaves behind it as a legacy to earth, will
rise buoyantly to its home among the Stars, there to re-take its ancient
condition, and approach toward the Divine nature as far as man may do."

Plutarch compares Isis to knowledge, and Typhon to ignorance, obscuring
the light of the sacred doctrine whose blaze lights the soul of the
Initiate. No gift of the gods, he holds, is so precious as the knowledge
of the Truth, and that of the Nature of the gods, so far as our limited
capacities allow us to rise toward them. The Valentinians termed
initiation LIGHT. The Initiate, says Psellus, becomes an Epopt, when
admitted to see THE DIVINE LIGHTS. Clemens of Alexandria, imitating the
language of an Initiate in the Mysteries of Bacchus, and inviting this
Initiate, whom he terms blind like Tiresias, to come to see Christ, Who
will blaze upon his eyes with greater glory than the Sun, exclaims: "Oh
Mysteries most truly holy! Oh pure Light! When the torch of the Dadoukos
gleams, Heaven and the Deity are displayed to my eyes! I am initiated,
and become holy!" This was the true object of initiation; to be
sanctified, and TO SEE, that is, to have just and faithful conceptions
of the Deity, the knowledge of Whom was THE LIGHT of the Mysteries. It
was promised the Initiate at Samothrace, that he should become pure and
just Clemens says that by baptism, souls are _illuminated_, and led to
_the pure light_ with which mingles no darkness, nor anything material.
The Initiate, become an Epopt, was called A SEER. "HAIL, NEW-BORN
LIGHT!" the Initiates cried in the Mysteries of Bacchus.

Such was held to be the effect of complete initiation. It lighted up the
soul with rays from the Divinity, and became for it, as it were, the eye
with which, according to the Pythagoreans, it contemplates the field of
Truth; in its mystical abstractions, wherein it rises superior to the
body, whose action on it, it annuls for the time, to re-enter into
itself, so as entirely to occupy itself with the view of the Divinity,
and the means of coming to resemble Him.

Thus enfeebling the dominion of the senses and the passions over the
soul, and as it were freeing the latter from a sordid slavery, and by
the steady practice of all the virtues, active and contemplative, our
ancient brethren strove to fit themselves to return to the bosom of the
Deity. Let not our objects as Masons fall below theirs. We use the
symbols which they used; and teach the same great cardinal doctrines
that they taught, of the existence of an intellectual God, and the
immortality of the soul of man. If the details of their doctrines as to
the soul seem to us to verge on absurdity, let us compare them with the
common notions of our own day, and be silent. If it seems to us that
they regarded the symbol in some cases as the thing symbolized, and
worshipped the sign as if it were itself Deity, let us reflect how
insufficient are our own ideas of Deity, and how we worship those ideas
and images formed and fashioned in our own minds, and not the Deity
Himself: and if we are inclined to smile at the importance they attached
to lustrations and fasts, let us pause and inquire whether the same
weakness of human nature does not exist to-day, causing rites and
ceremonies to be regarded as _actively_ efficient for the salvation of
souls.

And let us ever remember the words of an old writer, with which we
conclude this lecture: "It is a pleasure to stand on the shore, and to
see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a
castle, and see a battle and the adventures thereof: but no pleasure is
comparable to the standing on the vantage-ground of TRUTH (a hill not to
be commanded, and where the air is always clear and serene), and to see
the errors and wanderings, and mists and tempests, in the vale below;
_so always that this prospect be with pity, and not with swelling or
pride_. Certainly it is Heaven upon Earth to have a man's mind move in
charity, rest in Providence, AND TURN UPON THE POLES OF TRUTH."



XXVI.

PRINCE OF MERCY, OR SCOTTISH TRINITARIAN.


While you were veiled in darkness, you heard repeated by the Voice of
the Great Past its most ancient doctrines. None has the right to object,
if the Christian Mason sees foreshadowed in Chrishna and Sosiosch, in
Mithras and Osiris, the Divine WORD that, as he believes, became Man,
and died upon the cross to redeem a fallen race. Nor can _he_ object if
others see reproduced, in the WORD of the beloved Disciple, that was in
the beginning with God, and that was God, and by Whom everything was
made, only the LOGOS of Plato, and the WORD or Uttered THOUGHT or first
Emanation of LIGHT, or the Perfect REASON of the Great, Silent, Supreme,
Uncreated Deity, believed in and adored by all.

We do not undervalue the importance of any Truth. We utter no word that
can be deemed irreverent by any one of any faith. We do not tell the
Moslem that it is only important for him to believe that there is but
one God, and wholly unessential whether Mahomet was His prophet. We do
not tell the Hebrew that the Messiah whom he expects was born in
Bethlehem nearly two thousand years ago; and that he is a heretic
because he will not so believe. And as little do we tell the sincere
Christian that Jesus of Nazareth was but a man like us, or His history
but the unreal revival of an older legend. To do either is beyond our
jurisdiction. Masonry, of no one age, belongs to all time; of no one
religion, it finds its great truths in all.

To every Mason, there is a GOD; ONE, Supreme, Infinite in Goodness,
Wisdom, Foresight, Justice, and Benevolence; Creator, Disposer, and
Preserver of all things. How, or by what intermediates He creates and
acts, and in what way He unfolds and manifests Himself, Masonry leaves
to creeds and Religions to inquire.

To every Mason, the soul of man is immortal. Whether it emanates from
and will return to God, and what its continued mode of existence
hereafter, each judges for himself. Masonry was not made to settle that.

To every Mason, WISDOM or INTELLIGENCE, FORCE or STRENGTH, and HARMONY,
or FITNESS and BEAUTY, are the Trinity of the attributes of God. With
the subtleties of Philosophy concerning them Masonry does not meddle,
nor decide as to the reality of the supposed Existences which are their
Personifications: nor whether the Christian Trinity be such a
personification, or a Reality of the gravest import and significance.

To every Mason, the Infinite Justice and Benevolence of God give ample
assurance that Evil will ultimately be dethroned, and the Good, the
True, and the Beautiful reign triumphant and eternal. It teaches, as it
feels and knows, that Evil, and Pain, and Sorrow exist as part of a wise
and beneficent plan, all the parts of which work together under God's
eye to a result which shall be perfection. Whether the existence of evil
is rightly explained in this creed or in that, by Typhon the Great
Serpent, by Ahriman and his Armies of Wicked Spirits, by the Giants and
Titans that war against Heaven, by the two co-existent Principles of
Good and Evil, by Satan's temptation and the fall of Man, by Lok and the
Serpent Fenris, it is beyond the domain of Masonry to decide, nor does
it need to inquire. Nor is it within its Province to determine how the
ultimate triumph of Light and Truth and Good, over Darkness and Error
and Evil, is to be achieved; nor whether the Redeemer, looked and longed
for by all nations, hath appeared in Judea, or is yet to come.

It reverences all the great reformers. It sees in Moses, the Lawgiver of
the Jews, in Confucius and Zoroaster, in Jesus of Nazareth, and in the
Arabian Iconoclast, Great Teachers of Morality, and Eminent Reformers,
if no more: and allows every brother of the Order to assign to each such
higher and even Divine Character as his Creed and Truth require.

Thus Masonry disbelieves no truth, and teaches unbelief in no creed,
except so far as such creed may lower its lofty estimate of the Deity,
degrade Him to the level of the passions of humanity, deny the high
destiny of man, impugn the goodness and benevolence of the Supreme God,
strike at those great columns of Masonry, Faith, Hope, and Charity, or
inculcate immorality, and disregard of the active duties of the Order.

Masonry is a worship; but one in which all civilized men can unite; for
it does not undertake to explain or dogmatically to settle those great
mysteries, that are above the feeble comprehension of our human
intellect. It trusts in God, and HOPES; it BELIEVES, like a child, and
is humble. It draws no sword to compel others to adopt its belief, or to
be happy with its hopes And it WAITS with patience to understand the
mysteries of Nature and Nature's God hereafter.

The greatest mysteries in the Universe are those which are ever going on
around us; so trite and common to us that we never note them nor reflect
upon them. Wise men tell us of the _laws_ that regulate the motions of
the spheres, which, flashing in huge circles and spinning on their axes,
are also ever darting with inconceivable rapidity through the infinities
of Space; while we atoms sit here, and dream that all was made for _us_.
They tell us learnedly of centripetal and centrifugal _forces_, gravity
and attraction, and all the other sounding terms invented to hide a
_want_ of meaning. There are other forces in the Universe than those
that are mechanical.

Here are two minute seeds, not much unlike in appearance, and two of
larger size. Hand them to the learned Pundit, Chemistry, who tells us
how combustion goes on in the lungs, and plants are fed with phosphorus
and carbon, and the alkalies and silex. Let her decompose them, analyze
them, torture them in all the ways she knows. The net result of each is
a little sugar, a little fibrin, a little water--carbon, potassium,
sodium, and the like--one cares not to know what.

We hide them in the ground: and the slight rains moisten them, and the
Sun shines upon them, and little slender shoots spring up and grow;--and
what a miracle is the mere growth!--the force, the power, the _capacity_
by which the little feeble shoot, that a small worm can nip off with a
single snap of its mandibles, extracts from the earth and air and water
the different elements, so learnedly catalogued, with which it increases
in stature, and rises imperceptibly toward the sky.

_One_ grows to be a slender, fragile, feeble stalk, soft of texture,
like an ordinary weed; another a strong bush, of woody fibre, armed with
thorns, and sturdy enough to bid defiance to the winds: the third a
tender tree, subject to be blighted by the frost, and looked down upon
by all the forest; while another spreads its rugged arms abroad, and
cares for neither frost nor ice, nor the snows that for months lie
around its roots.

But lo! out of the brown foul earth, and colorless invisible air, and
limpid rain-water, the chemistry of the seeds has extracted
_colors_--four different shades of green, that paint the leaves which
put forth in the spring upon our plants, our shrubs, and our trees.
Later still come the flowers--the vivid colors of the rose, the
beautiful brilliance of the carnation, the modest blush of the apple,
and the splendid white of the orange. Whence come the _colors_ of the
leaves and flowers? By what process of chemistry are _they_ extracted
from the carbon, the phosphorus, and the lime? Is it any greater miracle
to make something out of nothing?

Pluck the flowers. Inhale the delicious _perfumes_; each perfect, and
all delicious. Whence have _they_ come? By what combination of acids and
alkalies could the chemist's laboratory produce _them_?

And now on two comes the fruit--the ruddy apple and the golden orange.
Pluck them--open them! The texture and fabric how totally different! The
_taste_ how entirely dissimilar--the _perfume_ of each distinct from its
flower and from the other. Whence the taste and this new perfume? The
same earth and air and water have been made to furnish a different taste
to each fruit, a different perfume not only to each fruit, but to each
fruit and its own flower.

Is it any more a problem whence come thought and will and perception and
all the phenomena of the mind, than this, whence come the colors, the
perfumes, the taste, of the fruit and flower?

And lo! in each fruit new seeds, each gifted with the same wondrous
power of reproduction--each with the same wondrous _forces_ wrapped up
in it to be again in turn evolved. Forces that had lived three thousand
years in the grain of wheat found in the wrappings of an Egyptian mummy;
forces of which learning and science and wisdom know no more than they
do of the nature and laws of action of God. What can _we_ know of the
nature, and how can _we_ understand the powers and mode of operation of
the human soul, when the glossy leaves, the pearl-white flower, and the
golden fruit of the orange are miracles wholly beyond our comprehension?

We but hide our ignorance in a cloud of words;--and the words too often
are mere combinations of sounds without any meaning. What is the
centrifugal force? A _tendency_ to go in a particular direction! What
external "_force_," then, produces that tendency?

What force draws the needle round to the north? What force moves the
muscle that raises the arm, when the will determines it shall rise?
Whence comes the _will itself_? Is it spontaneous--a first cause, or an
effect? These too are miracles; inexplicable as the creation, or the
existence and self-existence of God.

Who will explain to us the passion, the peevishness, the anger, the
memory, and affections of the small canary-wren? the consciousness of
identity and the dreams of the dog? the reasoning powers of the
elephant? the wondrous instincts, passions, government, and civil
policy, and modes of communication of ideas of the ant and bee?

Who has yet made us to understand, with all his learned words, how heat
comes to us from the Sun, and light from the remote Stars, setting out
upon its journey earth-ward from some, at the time the Chaldeans
commenced to build the Tower of Babel? Or how the image of an external
object comes to and fixes itself upon the retina of the eye; and when
there, how that mere empty, unsubstantial image becomes transmuted into
the wondrous thing that we call SIGHT? Or how the waves of the
atmosphere striking upon the tympanum of the ear--those thin, invisible
waves--produce the equally wondrous phenomenon of HEARING, and become
the roar of the tornado, the crash of the thunder, the mighty voice of
the ocean, the chirping of the cricket, the delicate sweet notes and
exquisite trills and variations of the wren and mocking-bird, or the
magic melody of the instrument of Paganini?

Our senses are mysteries to us, and we are mysteries to ourselves.
Philosophy has taught us nothing as to the _nature_ of our sensations,
our perceptions, our cognizances, the origin of our thoughts and ideas,
but _words_. By no effort or degree of reflection, never so long
continued, can man become conscious of a personal identity in himself,
separate and distinct from his body and his brain. We torture ourselves
in the effort to gain an idea of ourselves, and weary with the exertion.
Who has yet made us understand how, from the contact with a foreign
body, the image in the eye, the wave of air impinging on the ear,
particular particles entering the nostrils, and coining in contact with
the palate, come sensations in the nerves, and from that, perception in
the mind, of the animal or the man?

What do we know of Substance? Men even doubt yet whether it exists.
Philosophers tell us that our senses make known to us only the
_attributes_ of substance, extension, hardness, color, and the like; but
not _the thing itself_ that _is_ extended, solid, black or white; as we
know the _attributes_ of the Soul, its thoughts and its perceptions, and
not the Soul itself which perceives and thinks.

What a wondrous mystery is there in heat and light, existing, we know
not how, within certain limits, narrow in comparison with infinity,
beyond which on every side stretch out infinite space and the blackness
of unimaginable darkness, and the intensity of inconceivable cold! Think
only of the mighty Power required to maintain warmth and light in the
central point of such an infinity, to whose darkness that of Midnight,
to whose cold that of the last Arctic Island is nothing. And yet GOD is
everywhere.

And what a mystery are the effects of heat and cold upon the wondrous
fluid that we call water! What a mystery lies hidden in every flake of
snow and in every crystal of ice, and in their final transformation into
the invisible vapor that rises from the ocean or the land, and floats
above the summits of the mountains!

What a multitude of wonders, indeed, has chemistry unveiled to our eyes!
Think only that if some single law enacted by God were at once repealed,
that of attraction or affinity or cohesion, for example, the whole
material world, with its solid granite and adamant, its veins of gold
and silver, its trap and porphyry, its huge beds of coal, our own frames
and the very ribs and bones of this apparently indestructible earth,
would instantaneously dissolve, with all Suns and Stars and Worlds
throughout all the Universe of God, into a thin invisible vapor of
infinitely minute particles or atoms, diffused throughout infinite
space; and with them light and heat would disappear; unless the Deity
Himself be, as the Ancient Persians thought, the Eternal Light and the
Immortal Fire.

The mysteries of the Great Universe of God! How _can_ we with our
limited mental vision expect to grasp and comprehend them! Infinite
SPACE, stretching out from us every way, without limit: infinite TIME,
without beginning or end; and WE, HERE, and NOW, in the centre of each!
An infinity of suns, the nearest of which only _diminish_ in size,
viewed with the most powerful telescope: each with its retinue of
worlds; infinite numbers of such suns, so remote from us that their
light would not reach us, journeying during an infinity of time, while
the light that _has_ reached us, from some that we _seem_ to see, has
been upon its journey for fifty centuries: our world spinning upon its
axis, and rushing ever in its circuit round the sun; and it, the sun,
and all our system revolving round some great central point; and that,
and suns, stars, and worlds evermore flashing onward with incredible
rapidity through illimitable space: and then, in every drop of water
that we drink, in every morsel of much of our food, in the air, in the
earth, in the sea, incredible multitudes of living creatures, invisible
to the naked eye, of a minuteness beyond belief, yet organized, living,
feeding, _perhaps_ with consciousness of identity, and memory and
instinct.

Such are some of the mysteries of the great Universe of God. And yet we,
whose life and that of the world on which we live form but a point in
the centre of infinite Time: we, who nourish animalculæ within, and on
whom vegetables grow without, would fain learn how God created this
Universe, would understand His Powers, His Attributes, His Emanations,
His Mode of Existence and of Action; would fain know the plan according
to which all events proceed, that plan profound as God Himself; would
know the laws by which He controls His Universe; would fain _see_ and
_talk_ to Him face to face, as man talks to man: and we try not to
believe, because we do not _understand_.

He commands us to love one another, to love our neighbor as ourself; and
we dispute and wrangle, and hate and slay each other, because we cannot
be of one opinion as to the Essence of His Nature, as to His Attributes;
whether He became man born of a woman, and was crucified; whether the
Holy Ghost is of the _same_ substance with the Father, or only of a
_similar_ substance; whether a feeble old man is God's Vicegerent;
whether some are elected from all eternity to be saved, and others to be
condemned and punished; whether punishment of the wicked after death is
to be eternal; whether this doctrine or the other be heresy or
truth;--drenching the world with blood, depopulating realms, and turning
fertile lands into deserts; until, for religious war, persecution, and
bloodshed, the Earth for many a century has rolled round the Sun, a
charnel-house, steaming and reeking with human gore, the blood of
brother slain by brother for opinion's sake, that has soaked into and
polluted all her veins, and made her a horror to her sisters of the
Universe.

And if men were all Masons, and obeyed with all their heart her mild
and gentle teachings, that world would be a paradise; while intolerance
and persecution make of it a hell. For this is the Masonic Creed:
BELIEVE, in God's Infinite Benevolence, Wisdom, and Justice: HOPE, for
the final triumph of Good over Evil, and for Perfect Harmony as the
final result of all the concords and discords of the Universe: and be
CHARITABLE as God is, toward the unfaith, the errors, the follies, and
the faults of men: for all make one great brotherhood.


INSTRUCTION.

_Sen. W. Brother Junior Warden, are you a Prince of Mercy?

_Jun. W. I have seen the Delta and the HOLY NAMES upon it, and am an
AMETH like yourself, in the TRIPLE COVENANT, of which we bear the mark.

_Qu_ What is the first Word upon the Delta?

_Ans_ The Ineffable Name of Deity, the true mystery of which is known
to the Ameth alone.

_Qu_ What do the three sides of the Delta denote to us?

_Ans_ To us, and to all Masons, the three Great Attributes or
Developments of the Essence of the Deity; WISDOM, or the Reflective and
Designing Power, in which, when there was naught but God, the Plan and
Idea of the Universe was shaped and formed: FORCE, or the Executing and
Creating Power, which instantaneously acting, realized the Type and Idea
framed by Wisdom; and the Universe, and all Stars and Worlds, and Light
and Life, and Men and Angels and all living creatures WERE; and HARMONY,
or the Preserving Power, Order, and Beauty, maintaining the Universe in
its State, and constituting the law of Harmony, Motion, Proportion, and
Progression:--WISDOM, which _thought_ the plan; STRENGTH, which
_created_: HARMONY, which _upholds_ and _preserves_:--the Masonic
Trinity, three Powers and one Essence: the three columns which support
the Universe, Physical, Intellectual, and Spiritual, of which every
Masonic Lodge is a type and symbol:--while to the Christian Mason, they
represent the Three that bear record in Heaven, the FATHER, the WORD,
and the HOLY SPIRIT, which three are ONE.

_Qu_ What do the three Greek letters upon the Delta, _Ι Η Σ_
[_Iota, Eta_, and _Sigma_] represent?

_Ans_ Three of the Names of the Supreme Deity among the Syrians,
Phoenicians, and Hebrews ... IHUH [Hebrew: יהה]; _Self-Existence_ ...
AL [Hebrew: א]: _the Nature-God, or Soul of the Universe_ ... SHADAI
[Hebrew: שד] _Supreme Power_. Also three of the Six Chief Attributes of
God, among the Kabbalists:--WISDOM [IEH], the _Intellect_, ([Greek:
Νούς]) of the Egyptians, the _Word_ ([Greek: Λόγος]) of the Platonists,
and the _Wisdom_ ([Greek: Σοφία]) of the Gnostics: ... MAGNIFICENCE
[AL], the Symbol of which was the Lion's Head: ... and VICTORY and GLORY
[_Tsabaoth_], which are the two columns JACHIN and BOAZ, that stand in
the Portico of the Temple of Masonry. To the Christian Mason they are
the first three letters of the name of the Son of God, Who died upon the
cross to redeem mankind.

_Qu_ What is the first of the THREE COVENANTS, of which we bear the
mark?

_Ans_ That which God made with Noah; when He said, "I will not again
curse the earth any more for man's sake, neither will I smite any more
everything living as I have done. While the Earth remaineth, seed-time
and harvest, and cold and heat, and Winter and Summer, and day and night
shall not cease. I will establish My covenant with you, and with your
seed after you, and with every living creature. All mankind shall no
more be cut off by the waters of a flood, nor shall there any more be a
flood to destroy the earth. This is the token of My covenant: I do set
My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between
Me and the earth: an everlasting covenant between Me and every living
creature on the earth."

_Qu_ What is the second of the Three Covenants?

_Ans_ That which God made with Abraham; when He said, "I am the
Absolute Uncreated God. I will make My covenant between Me and thee, and
thou shalt be the Father of Many Nations, and Kings shall come from thy
loins. I will establish My covenant between Me and thee, and thy
descendants after thee, to the remotest generations, for an everlasting
covenant; and I will be thy God and their God, and will give thee the
land of Canaan for an everlasting possession."

_Qu_ What is the third Covenant?

_Ans_ That which God made with all men by His prophets; when He said:
"I will gather all nations and tongues, and they shall come and see My
Glory. I will create new Heavens and a new earth; and the former shall
not be remembered, nor come into mind. The Sun shall no more shine by
day, nor the Moon by night; but the Lord shall be an everlasting light
and splendor. His Spirit and His Word shall remain with men forever.
The heavens shall vanish away like vapor, and the earth shall wax old
like a garment, and they that dwell therein shall die; but my salvation
shall be forever, and my righteousness shall not end; and there shall be
Light among the Gentiles, and salvation unto the ends of the earth. The
redeemed of the Lord shall return, and everlasting joy be on their
heads, and sorrow and mourning shall flee away."

_Qu_ What is the symbol of the Triple Covenant?

_Ans_ The Triple Triangle.

_Qu_ Of what else is it the symbol to us?

_Ans_ Of the Trinity of Attributes of the Deity; and of the triple
essence of Man, the Principle of Life, the Intellectual Power, and the
Soul or Immortal Emanation from the Deity.

_Qu_ What is the first great Truth of the Sacred Mysteries?

_Ans_ No man hath seen God at any time. He is One, Eternal,
All-Powerful, All-Wise, Infinitely Just, Merciful, Benevolent, and
Compassionate, Creator and Preserver of all things, the Source of Light
and Life, coextensive with Time and Space; Who thought, and with the
Thought created the Universe and all living things, and the souls of
men: THAT IS:--the PERMANENT; while everything beside is a perpetual
genesis.

_Qu_ What is the second great Truth of the Sacred Mysteries?

_Ans_ The Soul of Man is Immortal; not the result of organization, nor
an aggregate of modes of action of matter, nor a succession of phenomena
and perceptions; but an EXISTENCE, one and identical, a living spirit, a
spark of the Great Central Light, that hath entered into and dwells in
the body; to be separated therefrom at death, and return to God who gave
it: that doth not disperse nor vanish at death, like breath or a smoke,
nor can be annihilated; but still exists and possesses activity and
intelligence, even as it existed in God, before it was enveloped in the
body.

_Qu_ What is the third great Truth in Masonry?

_Ans_ The impulse which directs to right conduct, and deters from
crime, is not only older than the ages of nations and cities, but coeval
with that Divine Being Who sees and rules both Heaven and earth. Nor did
Tarquin less violate that Eternal Law, though in his reign there might
have been no written law at Rome against such violence; for the
principle that impels us to right conduct, and warns us against guilt,
springs out of the nature of things. It did not begin to be law when it
was first _written_, nor was it _originated_; but it is coeval with the
Divine Intelligence itself. The consequence of virtue is not to be made
the end thereof: and laudable performances must have deeper roots,
motives and instigations, to give them the stamp of virtues.

_Qu_ What is the fourth great Truth in Masonry?

_Ans_ The moral truths are as absolute as the metaphysical truths. Even
the Deity cannot make it that there should be effects without a cause,
or phenomena without substance. As little could He make it to be sinful
and evil to respect our pledged word, to love truth, to moderate our
passions. The principles of Morality are axioms, like the principles of
Geometry. The moral laws are the necessary relations that flow from the
nature of things, and they are not created by, but have existed
eternally in God. Their continued existence does not depend upon the
exercise of His WILL. Truth and Justice are of His ESSENCE. Not because
we are feeble and God omnipotent, is it our duty to obey His law. We may
be forced, but are not under obligation, to obey the stronger. God is
the principle of Morality, but not by His mere will, which, abstracted
from all other of His attributes, would be neither just nor unjust. Good
is the expression of His will, in so far as that will is itself the
expression of eternal, absolute, uncreated justice, which is _in_ God,
which His will did not create; but which it executes and promulgates, as
_our_ will proclaims and promulgates and executes the idea of the good
which is in us. He has given us the law of Truth and Justice; but He has
not arbitrarily instituted that law. Justice is inherent in His will,
because it is contained in His intelligence and wisdom, in His very
nature and most intimate essence.

_Qu_ What is the fifth great Truth in Masonry?

_Ans_ There is an essential distinction between Good and Evil, what is
just and what is unjust; and to this distinction is attached, for every
intelligent and free creature, the absolute obligation of conforming to
what is good and just. Man is an intelligent and free being,--free,
because he is conscious that it is his duty, and because it is _made_
his duty, to obey the dictates of truth and justice, and therefore he
must necessarily have the power of doing so, which involves the power of
_not_ doing so;--capable of comprehending the distinction between good
and evil, justice and injustice, and the obligation which accompanies
it, and of naturally adhering to that obligation, independently of any
contract or positive law; capable also of resisting the temptations
which urge him toward evil and injustice, and of complying with the
sacred law of eternal justice.

That man is not governed by a resistless Fate or inexorable Destiny; but
is free to choose between the evil and the good: that Justice and Right,
the Good and Beautiful, are of the essence of the Divinity, like His
Infinitude; and therefore they are laws to man: that we are conscious of
our freedom to act, as we are conscious of our identity, and the
continuance and connectedness of our existence; and have the same
evidence of one as of the other; and if we can put _one_ in doubt, we
have no certainty of _either_, and everything is unreal: that we can
deny our free will and free agency, only upon the ground that they are
in the nature of things impossible; which would be to deny the
Omnipotence of God.

_Qu_ What is the sixth great Truth of Masonry?

_Ans_ The necessity of practising the moral truths, is _obligation_.
The moral truths, necessary in the eye of reason, are obligatory on the
will. The moral obligation, like the moral truth that is its foundation,
is _absolute_. As the necessary truths are not more or less necessary,
so the obligation is not more or less obligatory. There are degrees of
importance among different obligations; but none in the obligation
itself. We are not _nearly_ obliged, _almost_ obliged. We are _wholly_
so, or not at all. If there be any place of refuge to which we can
escape from the obligation, it ceases to exist. If the obligation is
absolute, it is immutable and universal. For if that of to-day may not
be that of to-morrow, if what is obligatory on _me_ may not be
obligatory on _you_, the obligation would differ from itself, and be
variable and contingent. This fact is the principle of all morality.
That every act contrary to right and justice, deserves to be repressed
by force, and punished when committed, equally in the absence of any law
or contract: that man naturally recognizes the distinction between the
merit and demerit of actions, as he does that between justice and
injustice, honesty and dishonesty; and feels, without being taught, and
in the absence of law or contract, that it is wrong for vice to be
rewarded or go unpunished, and for virtue to be punished or left
unrewarded: and that, the Deity being infinitely just and good, it must
follow as a necessary and inflexible law that punishment shall be the
result of Sin, its inevitable and natural effect and corollary, and not
a mere arbitrary vengeance.

_Qu_ What is the seventh great Truth in Masonry?

_Ans_ The immutable law of God requires, that besides respecting the
absolute rights of others, and being merely just, we should do good, be
charitable, and obey the dictates of the generous and noble sentiments
of the soul. Charity is a law, because our conscience is not satisfied
nor at ease if we have not relieved the suffering, the distressed, and
the destitute. It is to _give_ that which he to whom you give has no
right to _take_ or _demand_. To be charitable is obligatory on us. We
are the Almoners of God's bounties. But the obligation is not so precise
and inflexible as the obligation to be _just_. Charity knows neither
rule nor limit. It goes beyond all obligation. Its beauty consists in
its liberty. "He that loveth not, knoweth not God; FOR GOD IS LOVE. If
we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in
us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God
in him." To be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; to
relieve the necessities of the needy, and be generous, liberal, and
hospitable; to return to no man evil for evil; to rejoice at the good
fortune of others, and sympathize with them in their sorrows and
reverses; to live peaceably with all men, and repay injuries with
benefits and kindness; these are the sublime dictates of the Moral Law,
taught from the infancy of the world, by Masonry.

_Qu_ What is the eighth great Truth in Masonry?

_Ans_ That the laws which control and regulate the Universe of God, are
those of motion and harmony. We see only the isolated incidents of
things, and with our feeble and limited capacity and vision cannot
discern their connection, nor the mighty chords that make the apparent
discord perfect harmony. Evil is merely apparent, and all is in reality
good and perfect. For pain and sorrow, persecution and hardships,
affliction and destitution, sickness and death are but the means, by
which alone the noblest virtues could be developed. Without them, and
without sin and error, and wrong and outrage, as there can be no effect
without an adequate cause, there could be neither patience under
suffering and distress; nor prudence in difficulty; nor temperance to
avoid excess; nor courage to meet danger; nor truth, when to speak the
truth is hazardous; nor love, when it is met with ingratitude; nor
charity for the needy and destitute; nor forbearance and forgiveness of
injuries; nor toleration of erroneous opinions; nor charitable judgment
and construction of men's motives and actions; nor patriotism, nor
heroism, nor honor, nor self-denial, nor generosity. These and most
other virtues and excellencies would have no existence, and even their
names be unknown; and the poor virtues that still existed, would scarce
deserve the name; for life would be one flat, dead, low level, above
which none of the lofty elements of human nature would emerge; and man
would lie lapped in contented indolence and idleness, a mere worthless
negative, instead of the brave, strong soldier against the grim legions
of Evil and rude Difficulty.

_Qu_ What is the ninth great Truth in Masonry?

_Ans_ The great leading doctrine of this Degree;--that the JUSTICE, the
WISDOM, and the MERCY of God are alike infinite, alike perfect, and yet
do not in the least jar nor conflict one with the other; but form a
Great Perfect Trinity of Attributes, three and yet one: that, the
principle of merit and demerit being absolute, and every good action
deserving to be rewarded, and every bad one to be punished, and God
being as just as He is good; and yet the cases constantly recurring in
this world, in which crime and cruelty, oppression, tyranny, and
injustice are prosperous, happy, fortunate, and self-contented, and rule
and reign, and enjoy all the blessings of God's beneficence, while the
virtuous and good are unfortunate, miserable, destitute, pining away in
dungeons, perishing with cold, and famishing with hunger, slaves of
oppression, and instruments and victims of the miscreants that govern;
so that this world, if there were no existence beyond it, would be one
great theatre of wrong and injustice, proving God wholly disregardful of
His own necessary law of merit and demerit;--it follows that there must
be another life in which these apparent wrongs shall be repaired; That
all the powers of man's soul tend to infinity; and his indomitable
instinct of immortality, and the universal hope of another life,
testified by all creeds, all poetry, all traditions, establish its
certainty; for man is not an orphan; but hath a Father near at hand: and
the day must come when Light and Truth, and the Just and Good shall be
victorious, and Darkness, Error, Wrong, and Evil be annihilated, and
known no more forever: That the Universe is one great Harmony, in which,
according to the faith of all nations, deep-rooted in all hearts in the
primitive ages, Light will ultimately prevail over Darkness, and the
Good Principle over the Evil: and the myriad souls that have emanated
from the Divinity, purified and ennobled by the struggle here below,
will again return to perfect bliss in the bosom of God to offend against
Whose laws will then be no longer possible.

_Qu_ What, then, is the one great lesson taught to us, as Masons, in
this Degree?

_Ans_ That to that state and realm of Light and Truth and Perfection,
which is absolutely certain, all the good men on earth are tending; and
if there is a law from whose operation none are exempt, which inevitably
conveys their bodies to darkness and to dust, there is another not less
certain nor less powerful, which conducts their spirits to that state of
Happiness and Splendor and Perfection, the bosom of their Father and
their God. The wheels of Nature are not made to roll backward.
Everything presses on to Eternity. From the birth of Time an impetuous
current has set in, which bears all the sons of men toward that
interminable ocean. Meanwhile, Heaven is attracting to itself whatever
is congenial to its nature, is enriching itself by the spoils of the
Earth, and collecting within its capacious bosom whatever is pure,
permanent, and divine, leaving nothing for the last fire to consume but
the gross matter that creates concupiscence; while everything fit for
that good fortune shall be gathered and selected from the ruins of the
world, to adorn that Eternal City.

Let every Mason then obey the voice that calls him thither. Let us seek
the things that are above, and be not content with a world that must
shortly perish, and which we must speedily quit, while we neglect to
prepare for that in which we are invited to dwell forever. While
everything within us and around us reminds us of the approach of death,
and concurs to teach us that this is not our rest, let us hasten our
preparations for another world, and earnestly implore that help and
strength from our Father, which alone can put an end to that fatal war
which our desires have too long waged with our destiny. When these move
in the same direction, and that which God's will renders unavoidable
shall become our choice, all things will be ours; life will be divested
of its vanity, and death disarmed of its terrors.

_Qu_ What are the symbols of the purification necessary to make us
perfect Masons?

_Ans_ Lavation with pure water, or baptism; because to cleanse the body
is emblematical of purifying the soul; and because it conduces to the
bodily health, and virtue is the health of the soul, as sin and vice are
its malady and sickness:--unction, or anointing with oil; because
thereby we are set apart and dedicated to the service and priesthood of
the Beautiful, the True, and the Good:--and robes of white, emblems of
candor, purity, and truth.

_Qu_ What is to us the chief symbol of man's ultimate redemption and
regeneration?

_Ans_ The fraternal supper, of bread which nourishes, and of wine which
refreshes and exhilarates, symbolical of the time which is to come, when
all mankind shall be one great harmonious brotherhood; and teaching us
these great lessons: that as matter changes ever, but no single atom is
annihilated, it is not rational to suppose that the far nobler soul does
not continue to exist beyond the grave: that many thousands who have
died before us might claim to be joint owners with ourselves of the
particles that compose our mortal bodies; for matter ever forms, new
combinations; and the bodies of the ancient dead, the patriarchs before
and since the flood, the kings and common people of all ages, resolved
into their constituent elements, are carried upon the wind over all
continents, and continually enter into and form part of the habitations
of new souls, creating new bonds of sympathy and brotherhood between
each man that lives and all his race. And thus, in the bread we eat, and
in the wine we drink to-night _may_ enter into and form part of us the
identical particles of matter that once formed parts of the material
bodies called Moses, Confucius, Plato, Socrates, or Jesus of Nazareth.
In the truest sense, we eat and drink the bodies of the dead; and cannot
say that there is a single atom of our blood or body, the ownership of
which some other soul might not dispute with us. It teaches us also the
infinite beneficence of God who sends us seed-time and harvest, each in
its season, and makes His showers to fall and His sun to shine alike
upon the evil and the good: bestowing upon us unsolicited His
innumerable blessings, and asking no return. For there are no angels
stationed upon the watch-towers of creation to call the world to prayer
and sacrifice; but He bestows His benefits in silence, like a kind
friend who comes at night, and, leaving his gifts at the door, to be
found by us in the morning, goes quietly away and asks no thanks, nor
ceases his kind offices for our ingratitude. And thus the bread and wine
teach us that our Mortal Body is no more WE than the house in which we
live, or the garments that we wear; but the Soul is I, the ONE,
identical, unchangeable, immortal emanation from the Deity, to return
to God and be forever happy, in His good time; as our mortal bodies,
dissolving, return to the elements from which they came, their particles
coming and going ever in perpetual genesis. To our Jewish Brethren, this
supper is symbolical of the Passover: to the Christian Mason, of that
eaten by Christ and His Disciples when, celebrating the Passover, He
broke bread and gave it to them, saying, "Take! eat! this is My body;"
and giving them the cup, He said, "Drink ye all of it! for this is My
blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of
sins;" thus symbolizing the perfect harmony and union between Himself
and the faithful; and His death upon the cross for the salvation of man.

The history of Masonry is the history of Philosophy. Masons do not
pretend to set themselves up for instructors of the human race: but,
though Asia produced and preserved the Mysteries, Masonry has, in Europe
and America, given regularity to their doctrines, spirit, and action,
and developed the moral advantages which mankind may reap from them.
More consistent, and more simple in its mode of procedure, it has put an
end to the vast allegorical pantheon of ancient mythologies, and itself
become a science.

None can deny that Christ taught a lofty morality. "Love one another:
forgive those that despitefully use you and persecute you: be pure of
heart, meek, humble, contented: lay not up riches on earth, but in
Heaven: submit to the powers lawfully over you: become like these little
children, or ye cannot be saved, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven:
forgive the repentant; and cast no stone at the sinner, if you too have
sinned: do unto others as ye would have others do unto you:" such, and
not abstruse questions of theology, were His simple and sublime
teachings.

The early Christians followed in His footsteps. The first preachers of
the faith had no thought of domination. Entirely animated by His saying,
that he among them should be first, who should serve with the greatest
devotion, they were humble, modest, and charitable, and they knew how to
communicate this spirit of the inner man to the churches under their
direction. These churches were at first but spontaneous meetings of all
Christians inhabiting the same locality. A pure and severe morality,
mingled with religious enthusiasm, was the characteristic of each, and
excited the admiration even of their persecutors. Everything was in
common among them; their property, their joys, and their sorrows. In the
silence of night they met for instruction and to pray together. Their
love-feasts, or fraternal repasts, ended these reunions, in which all
differences in social position and rank were effaced in the presence of
a paternal Divinity. Their sole object was to make men better, by
bringing them back to a simple worship, of which universal morality was
the basis; and to end those numerous and cruel sacrifices which
everywhere inundated with blood the altars of the gods. Thus did
Christianity reform the world, and obey the teachings of its founder. It
gave to woman her proper rank and influence; it regulated domestic life;
and by admitting the slaves to the love-feasts, it by degrees raised
them above that oppression under which half of mankind had groaned for
ages.

This, in its purity, as taught by Christ Himself, was the true primitive
religion, as communicated by God to the Patriarchs. It was no new
religion, but the reproduction of the oldest of all; and its true and
perfect morality is the morality of Masonry, as is the morality of every
creed of antiquity.

In the early days of Christianity, there was an initiation like those of
the pagans. Persons were admitted on special conditions only. To arrive
at a complete knowledge of the doctrine, they had to pass three degrees
of instruction. The initiates were consequently divided into three
classes; the first, _Auditors_, the second, _Catechumens_, and the
third, _the Faithful_. The Auditors were a sort of novices, who were
prepared by certain ceremonies and certain instruction to receive the
dogmas of Christianity. A portion of these dogmas was made known to the
Catechumens; who, after particular purifications, received baptism, or
the initiation of the _theogenesis (divine generation)_; but in the
grand mysteries of that religion, the incarnation, nativity, passion,
and resurrection of Christ, none were initiated but _the Faithful_.
These doctrines, and the celebration of the Holy Sacraments,
particularly the Eucharist, were kept with profound secrecy. These
Mysteries were divided into two parts; the first styled the Mass of the
Catechumens; the second, the Mass of the Faithful. The celebration of
the Mysteries of Mithras was also styled _a mass_; and the ceremonies
used were the same. There were found all the sacraments of the Catholic
Church, even the breath of confirmation. The Priest of Mithras promised
the Initiates deliverance from sin, by means of confession and baptism,
and a future life of happiness or misery. He celebrated the oblation of
bread, image of the resurrection. The baptism of newly-born children,
extreme unction, confession of sins,--all belonged to the Mithriac
rites. The candidate was purified by a species of baptism, a mark was
impressed upon his forehead, he offered bread and water, pronouncing
certain mysterious words.

During the persecutions in the early ages of Christianity, the
Christians took refuge in the vast catacombs which stretched for miles
in every direction under the city of Rome, and are supposed to have been
of Etruscan origin. There, amid labyrinthine windings, deep caverns,
hidden chambers, chapels, and tombs, the persecuted fugitives found
refuge, and there they performed the ceremonies of the Mysteries.

The Basilideans, a sect of Christians that arose soon after the time of
the Apostles, practised the Mysteries, with the old Egyptian legend.
They symbolized Osiris by the Sun, Isis by the Moon, and Typhon by
Scorpio; and wore crystals bearing these emblems, as amulets or
talismans to protect them from danger; upon which were also a brilliant
star and the serpent. They were copied from the talismans of Persia and
Arabia, and given to every candidate at his initiation.

Irenæus tells us that the Simonians, one of the earliest sects of the
Gnostics, had a Priesthood of the Mysteries.

Tertullian tells us that the Valentinians, the most celebrated of all
the Gnostic schools, imitated, or rather perverted, the Mysteries of
Eleusis. Irenæus informs us, in several curious chapters, of the
Mysteries practised by the Marcosians; and Origen gives much information
as to the Mysteries of the Ophites; and there is no doubt that all the
Gnostic sects had Mysteries and an initiation. They all claimed to
possess a secret doctrine, coming to them directly from Jesus Christ,
different from that of the Gospels and Epistles, and superior to those
communications, which in their eyes, were merely exoteric. This secret
doctrine they did not communicate to every one; and among the extensive
sect of the Basilideans hardly one in a thousand knew it, as we learn
from Irenæus. We know the name of only the highest class of their
Initiates. They were styled _Elect_ or _Elus_ [[Greek: Έκλεκτοί]], and
Strangers to the World [[Greek: ξένοι έν κόσμώ]]. They had at least
three Degrees--the _Material_, the _Intellectual_, and the _Spiritual_,
and the lesser and greater Mysteries; and the number of those who
attained the highest Degree was quite small.

Baptism was one of their most important ceremonies; and the Basilideans
celebrated the 10th of January, as the anniversary of the day on which
Christ was baptized in Jordan.

They had the ceremony of laying on of hands, by way of purification; and
that of the mystic banquet, emblem of that to which they believed the
Heavenly Wisdom would one day admit them, in the fullness of things
[[Greek: Πλήρωμα]].

Their ceremonies were much more like those of the Christians than those
of Greece; but they mingled with them much that was borrowed from the
Orient and Egypt: and taught the primitive truths, mixed with a
multitude of fantastic errors and fictions.

The discipline of the secret was the concealment (_occultatio_) of
certain tenets and ceremonies. So says Clemens of Alexandria.

To avoid persecution, the early Christians were compelled to use great
precaution, and to hold meetings of the Faithful [_of the Household of
Faith_] in private places, under concealment by darkness. They assembled
in the night, and they guarded against the intrusion of false brethren
and profane persons, spies who might cause their arrest. They conversed
together figuratively, and by the use of symbols, lest cowans and
eavesdroppers might overhear: and there existed among them a favored
class, or Order, who were initiated into certain Mysteries which they
were bound by solemn promise not to disclose, or even converse about,
except with such as had received them under the same sanction. They were
called _Brethren, the Faithful, Stewards of the Mysteries,
Superintendents, Devotees of the Secret_, and ARCHITECTS.

In the _Hierarchiœ_, attributed to St. Dionysius the Areopagite, the
first Bishop of Athens, the tradition of the sacrament is said to have
been divided into three Degrees, or grades, _purification, initiation_,
and _accomplishment_ or _perfection_; and it mentions also, as part of
the ceremony, _the bringing to sight_.

The Apostolic Constitutions, attributed to Clemens, Bishop of Rome,
describe the early church, and say: "These regulations must on no
account be communicated to all sorts of persons, because of the
Mysteries contained in them." They speak of the Deacon's duty to keep
the doors, that none uninitiated should enter at the oblation.
_Ostiarii_, or doorkeepers, kept guard, and gave notice of the time of
prayer and church-assemblies; and also by private signal, in times of
persecution, gave notice to those within, to enable them to avoid
danger. The Mysteries were open to the _Fideles_ or _Faithful_ only; and
no spectators were allowed at the communion.

Tertullian, who died about A.D. 216, says in his _Apology_: "None are
admitted to the religious Mysteries without an oath of secrecy. We
appeal to your Thracian and Eleusinian Mysteries; and we are especially
bound to this caution, because if we prove faithless, we should not only
provoke Heaven, but draw upon our heads the utmost rigor of human
displeasure. And should strangers betray us? They know nothing but by
report and hearsay. Far hence, ye Profane! is the prohibition from all
holy Mysteries."

Clemens, Bishop of Alexandria, born about A.D. 191, says, in his
_Stromata_, that he cannot explain the Mysteries, because he should
thereby, according to the old proverb, put a sword into the hands of a
child. He frequently compares the Discipline of the Secret with the
heathen Mysteries, as to their internal and recondite wisdom.

Whenever the early Christians happened to be in company with strangers,
more properly termed _the Profane_, they never spoke of their
sacraments, but indicated to one another what they meant by means of
symbols and secret watchwords, disguisedly, and as by direct
communication of mind with mind, and by enigmas.

Origen, born A.D. 134 or 135, answering Celsus, who had objected that
the Christians had a concealed doctrine said: "Inasmuch as the essential
and important doctrines and principles of Christianity are openly
taught, it is foolish to object that there are other things that are
recondite; for this is common to Christian discipline with that of those
philosophers in whose teaching some things were exoteric and some
esoteric: and it is enough to say that it was so with some of the
disciples of Pythagoras."

The formula which the primitive church pronounced at the moment of
celebrating its Mysteries, was this: "Depart, ye Profane! Let the
Catechumens, and those who have not been admitted or initiated, go
forth."

Archelaus, Bishop of Cascara in Mesopotamia, who, in the year 278,
conducted a controversy with the Manichæans, said: "These Mysteries the
church now communicates to him who has passed through the introductory
Degree. They are not explained to the Gentiles at all; nor are they
taught openly in the hearing of Catechumens: but much that is spoken is
in disguised terms, that the Faithful ([Greek: Πιστοί]), who possess
the knowledge, may be still more informed, and those who are not
acquainted with it, may suffer no disadvantage."

Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, was born in the year 315, and died in 386,
In his _Catechesis_ he says; "The Lord spake in parables to His hearers
in general; but to His disciples He explained in private the parables
and allegories which He spoke in public. The splendor of glory is for
those who are early enlightened: obscurity and darkness are the portion
of the unbelievers and ignorant. Just so the church discovers its
Mysteries to those who have advanced beyond the class of Catechumens: we
employ obscure terms with others."

St. Basil, the Great Bishop of Cæsarea, born in the year 326, and dying
in the year 376, says: "We receive the dogmas transmitted to us by
writing, and those which have descended to us from the Apostles, beneath
the mystery of oral tradition: for several things have been handed to us
without writing, lest the vulgar, too familiar with our dogmas, should
lose a due respect for them. ... This is what the uninitiated are not
permitted to contemplate; and how should it ever be proper to write and
circulate among the people an account of them?"

St. Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop of Constantinople, A.D. 379, says; "You
have heard as much of the Mystery as we are allowed to speak openly in
the ears of all; the rest will be communicated to you in private; and
that you must retain within yourself.... Our Mysteries are not to be
made known to strangers."

St Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, who was born in 340, and died in 393,
says in his work _De Mysteries_: "All the Mystery should be kept
concealed, guarded by faithful silence, lest it should be inconsiderately
divulged to the ears of the Profane..... It is not given to all to
contemplate the depths of our Mysteries..... that they may not be seen
by those who ought not to behold them; nor received by those who cannot
preserve them." And in another work: "He sins against God, who divulges
to the unworthy the Mysteries confided to him. The danger is not merely
in violating truth, but in telling truth, if he allow himself to give
hints of them to those from whom they ought to be concealed.....Beware
of casting pearls before swine!... Every Mystery ought to be kept
secret; as it were, to be covered over by silence, lest it should rashly
be divulged to the ears of the Profane. Take heed that you do not
incautiously reveal the Mysteries!"

St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, who was born in 347, and died in 430,
says in one of his discourses: "Having dismissed the Catechumens, we
have retained you only to be our hearers; because besides those things
which belong to all Christians in common, we are now to discourse to you
of sublime Mysteries, which none are qualified to hear, but those who,
by the Master's favor, are made partakers of them.....To have taught
them openly, would have been to betray them." And he refers to the Ark
of the Covenant and says that it signified a Mystery, or secret of God,
shadowed over by the cherubim of glory, and honored by being veiled.

St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine speak of initiation more than fifty
times. St. Ambrose writes to those who are initiated; and initiation was
not merely baptism, or admission into the church, but it referred to
initiation into the Mysteries. To the baptized and initiated the
Mysteries of religion were unveiled; they were kept secret from the
Catechumens; who were permitted to hear the Scriptures read and the
ordinary discourses delivered, in which the Mysteries, reserved for the
Faithful, were never treated of. When the services and prayers were
ended, the Catechumens and spectators all withdrew.

Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, was born in 354, and died in 417.
He says: "I wish to speak openly: but I dare not, on account of those
who are not initiated. I shall therefore avail myself of disguised
terms, discoursing in a shadowy manner..... Where the holy Mysteries are
celebrated, we drive away all uninitiated persons, and then close the
doors" He mentions the acclamations of the initiated; "which", he says,
"I here pass over in silence; for it is forbidden to disclose such
things to the Profane". Palladius, in his life of Chrysostom, records, as
a great outrage, that, a tumult having been excited against him by his
enemies, they forced their way into the _penetralia_, where the
uninitiated beheld what was not proper for them to see; and Chrysostom
mentions the same circumstance in his epistle to Pope Innocent.

St. Cyril of Alexandria, who was made Bishop in 412, and died in 444,
says in his 7th Book against Julian: "These Mysteries are so profound
and so exalted, that they can be comprehended by those only who are
enlightened. I shall not, therefore, attempt to speak of what is so
admirable in them, lest by discovering them to the uninitiated, I
should offend against the injunction not to give what is holy to the
impure, nor cast pearls before such as cannot estimate their worth.....I
should say much more, if I were not afraid of being heard by those who
are uninitiated: because men are apt to deride what they do not
understand. And the ignorant, not being aware of the weakness of their
minds, condemn what they ought most to venerate."

Theodoret, Bishop of Cyropolis in Syria, was born in 393, and made
Bishop in 420. In one of his three Dialogues, called the Immutable, he
introduces _Orthodoxus_, speaking thus: "Answer me, if you please, in
mystical or obscure terms: for perhaps there are some persons present
who are not initiated into the Mysteries." And in his preface to
Ezekiel, tracing up the secret discipline to the commencement of the
Christian era, he says: "These Mysteries are so august, that we ought to
keep them with the greatest caution."

Minucius Felix, an eminent lawyer of Rome, who lived in 212, and wrote a
defence of Christianity, says: "Many of them [the Christians] know each
other by tokens and signs (_notis et insignibus_), and they form a
friendship for each other, almost before they become acquainted."

The Latin Word, _tessera_, originally meant a square piece of wood or
stone, used in making tesselated pavements; afterward a tablet on which
anything was written, and then a cube or die. Its most general use was
to designate a piece of metal or wood, square in shape, on which the
watchword of an Army was inscribed; whence _tessera_ came to mean the
watchword itself. There was also a _tessera hospitalis_, which was a
piece of wood cut into two parts, as a pledge of friendship. Each party
kept one of the parts; and they swore mutual fidelity by Jupiter. To
break the _tessera_ was considered a dissolution of the friendship. The
early Christians used it as a Mark, the watchword of friendship. With
them it was generally in the shape of a fish, and made of bone. On its
face was inscribed the word [Greek: Ίχθύς], a fish, the initials of
which represented the Greek words, [Greek: Ιησούς Χριστός ϴεού Υίός
Σωτήρ]; _Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour_.

St. Augustine (_de Fide et Symbolis_) says: "This is the faith which in
a few words is given to the Novices to be kept by a symbol; these few
words are known to all the Faithful; that by believing they may be
submissive to God; by being thus submissive, they may live rightly; by
living rightly, they may purify their hearts and with a pure heart may
understand what they believe."

Maximus Taurinus says: "The tessera is a symbol and sign by which to
distinguish between the Faithful and the Profane."

There are _three_ Degrees in Blue Masonry; and in addition to the two
words of two syllables each, embodying the binary, three of three
syllables each. There were three Grand Masters, the two Kings, and
Khir-Om the Artificer. The candidate gains admission by three raps, and
three raps call up the Brethren. There are three principal officers of
the Lodge, three lights at the Altar, three gates of the Temple, all in
the East, West, and South. The three lights represent the Sun, the Moon,
and Mercury; Osiris, Isis, and Horus; the Father, the Mother, and the
Child; Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty; Hakamah, Binah, and Daath; Gedulah,
Geburah, and Tepareth. The candidate makes three circuits of the Lodge:
there were three assassins of Khir-Om, and he was slain by three blows
while seeking to escape by the three gates of the Temple. The
ejaculation at his grave was repeated three times. There are three
divisions of the Temple, and three, five, and seven Steps. A Master
works with Chalk, Charcoal, and a vessel of Clay; there are three
movable and three immovable jewels. The Triangle appears among the
Symbols: the two parallel lines enclosing the circle are connected at
top, as are the Columns Jachin and Boaz, symbolizing the equilibrium
which explains the great Mysteries of Nature.

This continual reproduction of the number three is not accidental, nor
without a profound meaning: and we shall find the same repeated in all
the Ancient philosophies.

The Egyptian Gods formed Triads, the third member in each proceeding
from the other two. Thus we have the Triad of Thebes, Amun, Maut, and
Kharso; that of Philae, Osiris, Isis, and Horus; that of Elephantinē and
the Cataracts, Neph, Sate, and Anoukē.

Osiris, Isis, and Horus were the Father, Mother, and Son; the latter
being Light, the Soul of the World, the Son, the Protogonos or
First-Begotten.

Sometimes this Triad was regarded as SPIRIT, or the _active_ Principle
or Generative Power; MATTER, or the PASSIVE Principle or Productive
Capacity; and the Universe, which proceeds from the two Principles.

We also find in Egypt this Triad or Trinity; Ammon-Ra, the Creator:
Osiris-Ra, the Giver of Fruitfulness: Horus-Ra, the Queller of Light;
symbolized by the Summer, Autumn, and Spring Sun. For the Egyptians had
but three Seasons, the three gates of the Temple; and on account of the
different effects of the Sun on those three Seasons, the Deity appears
in these three forms.

The Phœnician Trinity was Ulomos, Chusoros, and the Egg out of which the
Universe proceeded.

The Chaldean Triad consisted of Bel, [the Persian Zervana Akherana],
Oromasdes, and Ahriman; the Good and Evil Principle alike outflowing
from the Father, by their equilibrium and alternating preponderance to
produce harmony. Each was to rule, in turn, for equal periods, until
finally the Evil Principle should itself become good.

The Chaldean and Persian oracles of Zoroaster give us the Triad, Fire,
Light, and Ether.

Orpheus celebrates the Triad of Phanes, Ouranos, and Kronos. Corry says
the Orphic Trinity consisted of Metis, Phanes, and Ericapaeus; Will,
Light or Love, and Life. Acusilaus makes it consist of Metis, Eros, and
Æther: Will, Love, and Ether. Phereycides of Syros, of Fire, Water, and
Air or Spirit. In the two former we readily recognize Osiris and Isis,
the Sun and the Nile.

The first three of the Persian Amshaspands were BAHMAN, the Lord of
LIGHT; Ardibehest, the Lord of FIRE; and Shariver, the Lord of SPLENDOR.
These at once lead us back to the Kabala.

Plutarch says: "The better and diviner nature consists of three; the
Intelligible (_i.e._ that which exists within the Intellect only as
yet), and Matter; [Greek: το Νοητος] and [Greek: Ύλη], and that which
proceeds from these, which the Greeks call Kosmos: of which Plato calls
the Intelligible, the Idea, the Exemplar, the Father: Matter, the
Mother, the Nurse, and the receptacle and place of generation: and the
issue of these two, the Offspring and Genesis."

The Pythagorean fragments say: "Therefore, before the Heaven was made,
there existed Idea and Matter, and God the Demiourgos [workman or active
instrument], of the former. He made the world out of matter, perfect,
only-begotten, with a soul and intellect, and constituted it a
divinity."

Plato gives us Thought, the Father; Primitive Matter, the Mother; and
KOSMOS, the Son, the issue of the two Principles. Kosmos is the ensouled
Universe.

With the later Platonists, the Triad was Potence, Intellect, and Spirit,
Philo represents Sanchoniathon's as Fire, Light, and Flame, the three
Sons of Genos; but this is the Alexandrian, not the Phœnician idea.

Aurelius says the Demiourgos or Creator is triple, and the three
Intellects are the three Kings: He who exists; He who possesses; He who
beholds. The first is that which exists by its essence; the second
exists in the first, and contains or possesses in itself the Universal
of things; all that afterward becomes: the third beholds this Universal,
formed and fashioned intellectually, and so having a separate existence.
The Third exists in the Second, and the Second in the First.

The most ancient Trinitarian doctrine on record is that of the Brahmins.
The Eternal Supreme Essence, called PARABRAHMA, BRAHM, PARATMA, produced
the Universe by self-reflection, and first revealed himself as BRAHMA,
the _Creating_ Power, then as VISHNU, the Preserving Power, and lastly
as SIVA, the _Destroying_ and _Renovating_ Power; the three Modes in
which the Supreme Essence reveals himself in the material Universe; but
which soon came to be regarded as three distinct Deities. These three
Deities they styled the TRIMURTI, or TRIAD.

The Persians received from the Indians the doctrine of the three
principles, and changed it to that of a principle of Life, which was
individualized by the Sun, and a principle of Death, which was
symbolized by cold and darkness; parallel of the moral world; and in
which the continual and alternating struggle between light and darkness,
life and death, seemed but a phase of the great struggle between the
good and evil principles, embodied in the legend of ORMUZD and AHRIMAN.
MITHRAS, a Median reformer, was deified after his death, and invested
with the attributes of the Sun; the different astronomical phenomena
being figuratively detailed as actual incidents of his life; in the same
manner as the history of BUDDHA was invented among the Hindūs.

The Trinity of the Hindūs became among the Ethiopians and Abyssinians
NEPH-AMON, PHTHA, and NEITH--the God CREATOR, whose emblem was a
ram--MATTER, or the primitive mud, symbolized by a globe or an egg, and
THOUGHT, or the LIGHT which contains the germ of everything; triple
manifestation of one and the same God (ATHOM), considered in three
aspects, as the _creative power, goodness_, and _wisdom_. Other Deities
were speedily invented; and among them OSIRIS, represented by the Sun,
ISIS, his wife, by the Moon or Earth, TYPHON, his Brother, the
Principle of Evil and Darkness, who was the son of Osiris and Isis. And
the Trinity of OSIRIS, ISIS, and HORUS became subsequently the Chief
Gods and objects of worship of the Egyptians.

The ancient Etruscans (a race that emigrated from the Rhætian Alps into
Italy, along whose route evidences of their migration have been
discovered, and whose language none have yet succeeded in reading)
acknowledged only one Supreme God; but they had images for His different
attributes, and temples to these images. Each town had one National
Temple, dedicated to the three great attributes of God, STRENGTH,
RICHES, and WISDOM, or _Tina, Talna_, and _Minerva_. The National Deity
was always a Triad under one roof; and it was the same in Egypt, where
one Supreme God alone was acknowledged, but was worshipped as a Triad,
with different names in each different home. Each city in Etruria might
have as many gods and gates and temples as it pleased; but three sacred
gates, and one Temple to three Divine Attributes were obligatory,
wherever the laws of Tages (or Taunt or Thoth) were received. The only
gate that remains in Italy, of the olden time, undestroyed, is the Porta
del Circo at Volterra; and it has upon it the three heads of the three
National Divinities, one upon the keystone of its magnificent arch, and
one above each side-pillar.

The Buddhists hold that the God SAKYA of the Hindūs, called in Ceylon,
GAUTAMA, in India beyond the Ganges, SOMONAKODOM, and in China, CHY-KIA,
or Fo, constituted a Trinity [TRIRATNA], of BUDDHA, DHARMA, and
SANGA,--_Intelligence, Law_, and _Union_ or _Harmony_.

The Chinese Sabæans represented the Supreme Deity as composed of
CHANG-TI, the _Supreme Sovereign_; TIEN, the _Heavens_; and TAO, the
_Universal Supreme Reason_ and _Principle of Faith_; and that from
Chaos, an immense silence, an immeasurable void without perceptible
forms, alone, infinite, immutable, moving in a circle in illimitable
space, without change or alteration, when vivified by the Principle of
Truth, issued all Beings, under the influence of TAO, Principle of
Faith, who produced one, one produced two, two produced three, and three
produced all that is.

The Sclavono-Vendes typified the Trinity by the three heads of the God
TRICLAV; and the Pruczi or Prussians by the Tri-une God PERKOUN,
PIKOLLOS, and POTRIMPOS, the Deities of _Light_ and _Thunder_, of
_Hell_ and the _Earth_, its fruits and animals: and the Scandinavians by
ODIN, FREA, and THOR.

In the KABALAH, or the Hebrew traditional philosophy, the Infinite
Deity, beyond the reach of the Human Intellect, and without Name, Form,
or Limitation, was represented as developing Himself, in order to
create, and by self-limitation, in ten emanations or out-flowings,
called SEPHIROTH, or _rays_. The first of these, in the world AZILUTH,
that is, within the Deity, was KETHER, or the _Crown_, by which we
understand the Divine Will or Potency. Next came, as a pair, HAKEMAH and
BAINAH, ordinarily translated "Wisdom" and "Intelligence," the former
termed the FATHER, and the latter the MOTHER. HAKEMAH is the active
_Power_ or _Energy_ of Deity, by which He produces within Himself
Intellection or Thinking: and BAINAH, the passive _Capacity_, from
which, acted on by the Power, the Intellection flows. This Intellection
is called DAATH: and it is the "WORD," of Plato and the Gnostics; the
_unuttered_ word, _within_ the Deity. Here is the origin of the Trinity
of the Father, the Mother or Holy Spirit, and the Son or Word.

Another Trinity was composed of the fourth Sephirah, GEDULAH or KHASED,
_Benignity_ or _Mercy_, also termed FATHER (_Aba_); the fifth, GEBURAH,
_Severity_ or Strict _Justice_, also termed the MOTHER (_Imma_); and the
sixth, the SON or _Issue_ of these, TIPHARETH, _Beauty_ or _Harmony_.
"Everything," says the SOHAR, "proceeds according to the Mystery of the
Balance"--that is, by the equilibrium of Opposites: and thus from the
Infinite Mercy and the Infinite Justice, in equilibrium, flows the
perfect Harmony of the Universe. Infinite POWER, which is Lawless, and
Infinite WISDOM, in Equilibrium, also produce BEAUTY or HARMONY, as Son,
Issue, or Result--the Word, or utterance of the Thought of God. Power
and Justice or Severity are the _same_: Wisdom and Mercy or Benignity
are the same;--in the Infinite Divine Nature.

According to Philo of Alexandria, the Supreme Being, Primitive Light or
Archetype of Light, uniting with WISDOM [Σοψια], the mother of Creation,
forms in Himself the types of all things, and acts upon the Universe
through the WORD [Λογος ... Logos], who dwells in God, and in whom all
His powers and attributes develop themselves; a doctrine borrowed by him
from Plato.

Simon Magus and his disciples taught that the Supreme Being or Centre of
Light produced first of all, three couples of united Existences, of
both sexes, [[Greek: Συζυγίας] ...Suzugias], which were the origins of
all things: REASON and INVENTIVENESS; SPEECH and THOUGHT; CALCULATION
and REFLECTION: [[Greek: Νούς] and [Greek: Επίνοιa, Φωνή] and [Greek:
Εννοια, Λογισμός] and [Greek: Ενθύμησις] ... Nöus and Epinoia, Phōne and
Ennoia, Logismos and Enthumēsis]; of which Ennoia or WISDOM was the
first produced, and Mother of all that exists.

Other Disciples of Simon, and with them most of the Gnostics, adopting
and modifying the doctrine, taught that the [Greek: Πλήρωμα] .. Plerōma,
or PLENITUDE of Superior Intelligences, having the Supreme Being at
their head, was composed of eight Eons [[Greek: Αίόνης] .. Aiōnes] of
different sexes;.. PROFUNDITY and SILENCE; SPIRIT and TRUTH; the WORD
and LIFE; MAN and the CHURCH: [[Greek: Βυθός] and [Greek: Σιγή; Πνεϋμα]
and [Greek: Αλήθεια; Λόγος] and [Greek: Ζωή; Ανθρωπος] and [Greek:
Έκκλησία] ... Buthos and Sigē; Pneuma and Aletheia; Logos and Zōe;
Anthrōpos and Ekklēsia].

Bardesanes, whose doctrines the Syrian Christians long embraced, taught
that the unknown Father, happy in the Plenitude of His Life and
Perfections, first produced a Companion for Himself [[Greek: Σύζυγος]
... Suzugos], whom He placed in the Celestial Paradise and who became,
by Him, the Mother of CHRISTOS, Son of the Living God: _i.e._ (laying
aside the allegory), that the Eternal conceived, in the silence of His
decrees, the Thought of revealing Himself by a Being who should be His
image or His Son: that to the Son succeeded his Sister and Spouse, the
Holy Spirit, and they produced four Spirits of the elements, male and
female, Maio and Jabseho, Nouro and Rucho; then Seven Mystic Couples of
Spirits, and Heaven and Earth, and all that is; then seven spirits
governing the planets, twelve governing the Constellations of the
Zodiac, and thirty-six Starry Intelligences whom he called Deacons:
while the Holy Spirit [_Sophia Achamoth_], being both the Holy
Intelligence and the Soul of the physical world, went from the Plerōma
into that material world and there mourned her degradation, until
CHRISTOS, her former spouse, coming to her with his Divine Light and
Love, guided her in the way to purification, and she again united
herself with him as his primitive Companion.

Basilides, the Christian Gnostic, taught that there were seven
emanations from the Supreme Being: The First-born, Thought, the Word,
Reflection, Wisdom, Power, and Righteousness.

[Greek: Πρωτογονος, Νους, Λογος, Φροντσις, Σοψα, Δυναμις], and [Greek:
Δικαιοσύνη] Protogonos, Nous, Logos, Phronesis, Sophia, Dunamis, and
Dikarosunē; from whom emanated other Intelligences in succession, to the
number, in all, of three hundred and sixty-five; which were God
manifested, and composed the Plenitude of the Divine Emanations, or the
God Abraxas; of which the Thought [or Intellect, [Greek: Nouς] ... Nous]
united itself, by baptism in the river Jordan, with the man Jesus,
servant [[Greek: διάκονος]. Diakonos] of the human race; but did not
suffer with Him; and the disciples of Basilides taught that the [Greek:
Νοϋς], put on the appearance only of humanity, and that Simon of Cyrene
was crucified in His stead and ascended into Heaven.

Basilides held that out of the unrevealed God, who is at the head of the
world of emanations, and exalted above all conception or designation
[[Greek: Ό άατονόμαστος, άρρητος]], were evolved seven living,
self-subsistent, ever-active hyposatized powers:


FIRST: THE INTELLECTUAL POWERS.

1st. NOUS          [Greek: Νοϋς]          The Mind.
2d.  LOGOS         [Greek: Λόγος]         The Reason.
3d.  Phronesis     [Greek: Φρόνησις]      The Thinking Power.
4th. Sophia        [Greek: Σοφία]         Wisdom.


SECOND: THE ACTIVE OR OPERATIVE POWER.

5th. Dunamis       [Greek: Δυναμις]       Might, accomplishing the
                                          purposes of Wisdom.

THIRD: THE MORAL ATTRIBUTES.

6th. Dikaiosunē    [Greek: Δικαιοσύνη]    Holiness or Moral Perfection.
7th. Eirēnē        [Greek: Είρήνη]        Inward Tranquility.

These Seven Powers ([Greek: Δυνάμεις].. Dunameis), with the Primal
Ground out of which they were evolved, constituted in his scheme the
[Greek: Πρωτη Όγδοάς][Prote Ogdoas], or First Octave, the root of all
Existence. From this point, the spiritual life proceeded to evolve out
of itself continually many gradations of existence, each lower one being
still the impression, the _antetype_, of the immediate higher one. He
supposed there were 365 of these regions or gradations, expressed by the
mystical word [Greek: Αβραξας] [Abraxas].

The [Greek: αβραξας] is thus interpreted, by the usual method of
reckoning Greek letters numerically.... [Greek:
α,1..β,2..ρ,100..a,l..ξ] 60..[Greek: α,l..ς], 200==365: which is the
whole Emanation-World, as the development of the Supreme Being.

In the system of Basilides, Light, Life, Soul, and Good were opposed to
Darkness, Death, Matter, and Evil, throughout the whole course of the
Universe.

According to the Gnostic view, God was represented as the immanent,
incomprehensible and original source of all perfection; the unfathomable
ABYSS ([Greek: βυθος].. buthos), according to Valentinus, exalted above
all possibility of designation; of whom, properly speaking, nothing can
be predicated; the [Greek: άκατονόμαστς] of Basilides, the [Greek: ών]
of Philo. From this incomprehensible Essence of God, an _immediate_
transition to finite things is inconceivable. _Self-limitation_ is the
first beginning of a communication of life on the part of God--the first
passing of the hidden Deity into manifestation; and from this proceeds
all further self-developing manifestation of the Divine Essence. From
this primal link in the chain of life there are evolved, in the first
place, the manifold powers or attributes inherent in the divine Essence,
which, until that first self-comprehension, were all hidden in the Abyss
of His Essence. Each of these attributes presents the whole divine
Essence under one particular aspect; and to each, therefore, in this
respect, the title of God may appropriately be applied. These Divine
Powers evolving themselves to self-subsistence, become thereupon the
germs and principles of all further developments of life. The life
contained in them unfolds and individualizes itself more and more, but
in such a way that the successive grades of this evolution of life
continually sink lower and lower; the spirits become feebler, the
further they are removed from the first link in the series.

The first manifestation they termed [Greek: πρώτη κατάληψις έαυτού protē
katalēpsis heautou] or [Greek: πρώτον καταληπτόν τού θεου] [_proton
Katalēpton tou Theou_]; which was hypostatically represented in a
[Greek: νόύς] or [Greek: λόγος], [_Nous_ or _Logos_].

In the Alexandrian Gnosis, the Platonic notion of the [Greek: ύλη]
[Hulē] predominates. This is the dead, the unsubstantial--the boundary
that limits from without the evolution of life in its gradually
advancing progression, whereby the Perfect is ever evolving itself into
the less Perfect. This [Greek: ύλη] again, is represented under various
images;--at one time as the darkness that exists alongside of the light;
at another, as the void [Greek: κένωμα, κενόν] ....Kenoma, Kenon, in
opposition to the Fullness, [Greek: Πλήρωμα ...Pleroma] of the Divine
Life; or as the shadow that accompanies the light; or as the chaos, or
the sluggish, stagnant, dark water. This matter, dead in itself,
possesses by its own nature no inherent tendency; as life of every sort
is foreign to it, itself makes no encroachment on the Divine. As,
however, the evolutions of the Divine Life (the essences developing
themselves out of the progressive emanation) become feebler, the further
they are removed from the first link in the series; and as their
connection with the first becomes looser at each successive step, there
arises at the last step of the evolution, an imperfect, defective
product, which, unable to retain its connection with the chain of Divine
Life, sinks from the World of Eons into the material chaos: or,
according to the same notion, somewhat differently expressed [according
to the Ophites and to Bardesanes], a drop from the fullness of the
Divine life bubbles over into the bordering void. Hereupon the dead
matter, by commixture with the living principle, which it wanted, first
of all receives animation. But, at the same time, also, the divine, the
living, becomes corrupted by mingling with the chaotic mass. Existence
now multiplies itself. There arises a subordinate, defective life; there
is ground for a new world; a creation starts into being, beyond the
confines of the world of emanation. But on the other hand, since the
chaotic principle of matter has acquired vitality, there now arises a
more distinct and more active opposition to the God-like--a barely
negative, blind, ungodly nature-power, which obstinately resists all
influence of the Divine; hence, as products, of the spirit of the
[Greek: ύλη], (of the [Greek: πνεύμα ύλικον].. Pneuma Hulikon), are
Satan, malignant spirits, wicked men, in none of whom is there any
reasonable or moral principle, or any principle of a rational will; but
blind passions alone have the ascendency. In them there is the same
conflict, as the scheme of Platonism supposes, between the soul under
the guidance of Divine reason the [Greek: νούς... Nous], and the soul
blindly resisting reason--between the [Greek: πρόνοια] [pronoia] and the
[Greek: αναγη] [anagē], the Divine Principle and the natural.

The Syrian Gnosis assured the existence of an active, turbulent kingdom
of evil, or of darkness, which, by its encroachments on the kingdom of
light, brought about a commixture of the light with the darkness, of the
God-like with the ungodlike.

Even among the Platonists, some thought that along with an organized,
inert matter, the substratum of the corporeal world, there existed from
the beginning a blind, lawless motive power, an ungodlike soul, as its
original motive and active principle. As the inorganic matter was
organized into a corporeal world, by the plastic power of the Deity, so,
by the same power, law and reason were communicated to that turbulent,
irrational soul. Thus the chaos of the [Greek: ύλη] was transformed into
an organized world, and that blind soul into a rational principle, a
mundane soul, animating the Universe. As from the latter proceeds all
rational, spiritual life in humanity, so from the former proceeds all
that is irrational, all that is under the blind sway of passion and
appetite; and all malignant spirits are its progeny.

In one respect _all_ the Gnostics agreed: they _all_ held, that there
was a world purely emanating out of the vital development of God, a
creation evolved directly out of the Divine Essence, far exalted above
any outward creation produced by God's plastic power, and conditioned by
pre-existing matter. They agreed in holding that the framer of _this
lower world_ was not the Father of _that higher world_ of emanation; but
the Demiurge [[Greek: Δεμιουργος]], a being of a kindred nature with the
Universe framed and governed by him, and far inferior to that higher
system and the Father of it.

But some, setting out from ideas which had long prevailed among certain
Jews of Alexandria, supposed that the Supreme God created and governed
the world by His ministering spirits, by the angels. At the head of
these angels stood one who had the direction and control of all;
therefore called the Artificer and Governor of the World. This Demiurge
they compared with the plastic, animating mundane spirit of Plato and
Platonists, the [Greek: δεύτερος θεός].. Deuteros Theos; the [Greek:
θεός γενητός]..., Theos Genetos, who, moreover, according to the Timæus
of Plato, strives to represent the IDEA of the Divine Reason, in that
which is _becoming_ (as contradistinguished from that which _is_) and
temporal. This angel is a representative of the Supreme God, on the
lower stage of existence: he does not act independently, but merely
according to the ideas inspired in him by the Supreme God; just as the
plastic, mundane soul of the Platonists creates all things after the
pattern of the ideas communicated by the Supreme Reason [[Greek: Νούς]
... Nous--the [Greek: ό έστι ζώον].... ho esti zōon--the [Greek:
παράδειγμα]. paradeigma, of the Divine Reason hypostatized]. But these
ideas transcend his limited essence; he cannot understand them; he is
merely their unconscious organ; and therefore is unable himself to
comprehend the whole scope and meaning of the work which he performs. As
an organ under the guidance of a higher inspiration, he reveals higher
truths than he himself can comprehend. The mass of the Jews, they held,
recognized not the angel, by whom, in all the Theophanies of the Old
Testament, God _revealed_ Himself; they knew not the Demiurge in his
true relation to the hidden Supreme God, _who never reveals Himself_ in
the sensible world. They confounded the type and the archetype, the
symbol and the idea. They rose no higher than the Demiurge; they took
him to be the Supreme God Himself. But the spiritual men among them, on
the contrary, clearly perceived, or at least _divined_, the ideas veiled
under Judaism; they rose beyond the Demiurge, to a knowledge of the
Supreme God; and are therefore properly His worshippers [[Greek
θεραπευταί].. Therapeutai].

Other Gnostics, who had not been followers of the Mosaic religion, but
who had, at an earlier period, framed to themselves an oriental Gnosis,
regarded the Demiurge as a being absolutely _hostile_ to the Supreme
God. He and his angels, notwithstanding their finite nature, wish to
establish their independence: they will tolerate no foreign rule within
their realm. Whatever of a higher nature descends into their kingdom,
they seek to hold imprisoned there, lest it should raise itself above
their narrow precincts. Probably, in this system, the kingdom of the
Demiurgic Angels corresponded, for the most part, with that of the
deceitful Star-Spirits, who seek to rob man of his freedom, to beguile
him by various arts of deception, and who exercise a tyrannical sway
over the things of this world. Accordingly, in the system of these
Sabæans, the seven Planet-Spirits, and the twelve Star-Spirits of the
zodiac, who sprang from an irregular connection between the cheated
Fetahil and the Spirit of Darkness, play an important part in everything
that is bad. The Demiurge is a limited and limiting being, proud,
jealous, and revengeful; and this his character betrays itself in the
Old Testament, which, the Gnostics held, came from him. They transferred
to the Demiurge himself, whatever in the idea of God, as presented by
the Old Testament, appeared to then defective. Against his will and rule
the [Greek: υνη] was continually rebelling, revolting without control
against the dominion which he, the fashioner, would exercise over it,
casting off the yoke imposed on it, and destroying the work he had
begun. The same jealous being, limited in his power, ruling with
despotic sway, they imagined they saw in nature. He strives to check the
germination of the divine seeds of life which the Supreme God of
Holiness and Love, who has no connection whatever with the sensible
world, has scattered among men. That perfect God was at most known and
worshipped in Mysteries by a few spiritual men.

The Gospel of St. John is in great measure a polemic against the
Gnostics, whose different sects, to solve the great problems, the
creation of a material world by an immaterial Being, the fall of man,
the incarnation, the redemption and restoration of the spirits called
men, admitted a long series of intelligences, intervening in a series of
spiritual operations; and which they designated by the names, _The
Beginning, the Word, the Only-Begotten, Life, Light_, and _Spirit_
[Ghost]: in Greek, [Greek: Άρχή, Δόγος, Μονογενής, Ζωή, Φώς] and [Greek:
Πνεϋμα], [Archē, Logos, Monogenēs, Zōe, Phōs, and Pneuma]. St. John, at
the beginning of his Gospel, avers that it was Jesus Christ who existed
in the Beginning; that He was the WORD of God by which everything was
made; that He was the Only-Begotten, the Life and the Light, and that He
diffuses among men the Holy Spirit [or Ghost], the Divine Life and
Light.

So the Plēroma [[Greek: Πλήρωμα]], Plenitude or Fullness, was a favorite
term with the Gnostics, and Truth and Grace were the Gnostic Eons; and
the Simonians, Dokētēs, and other Gnostics held that the Eon Christ
Jesus was never really, but only apparently clothed with a human body:
but St. John replies that the Word did really become Flesh, and dwelt
among us; and that in Him were the Plēroma and Truth and Grace.

In the doctrine of Valentinus, reared a Christian at Alexandria, God was
a perfect Being, an Abyss [[Greek: Βυθός].. Buthos], which no
intelligence could sound, because no eye could reach the invisible and
ineffable heights on which He dwelt, and no mind could comprehend the
duration of His existence; He has always been; He is the Primitive
Father and Beginning [the [Greek: Προπατωρ] and [Greek: ροαρχή]..
Propatōr and Proarchē]: He will BE always, and does not grow old. The
development of His Perfections produced the intellectual world. After
having passed infinite ages in repose and silence, He manifested Himself
by His Thought, source of all His manifestations, and which received
from Him the germ of His creations. Being of His Being, His Thought
[[Greek: Έννοια].. Ennoia] is also termed [Greek: Χάρις] [Charis],
Grace or Joy, and [Greek: Σιγή], or [Greek: Άρρητον] [Sigē or Arrēton],
Silence or the Ineffable. Its first manifestation was [Greek: Νους]
[Nous], the Intelligence, first of the Eons, commencement of all things,
first revelation of the Divinity, the [Greek: Μονογενής] [Monogenēs], or
Only-Begotten: next, Truth [[Greek: Άλήθεια] .. Alētheia], his
companion. Their manifestations were the Word [[Greek: Λογος].. Logos]
and Life [[Greek: Ζοή].. Zoe]; and theirs, Man and the Church [[Greek:
Ανθροπος] and [Greek: Έκκλησία].. Anthrōpos and Ekklēsia]: and from
these, other twelve, six of whom were Hope, Faith, Charity,
Intelligence, Happiness, and Wisdom; or, in the Hebrew, _Kesten, Kina,
Amphe, Ouananim, Thaedes_, and _Oubina_. The harmony of the Eons,
struggling to know and be united to the Primitive God, was disturbed,
and to redeem and restore them, the Intelligence [Greek: Νούς] produced
Christ and the Holy Spirit His companion; who restored them to their
first estate of happiness and harmony; and thereupon they formed the Eon
Jesus, born of a Virgin, to whom the Christos united himself in baptism,
and who, with his Companion Sophia-Achamoth, saved and redeemed the
world.

The Marcosians taught that the Supreme Deity produced by His words the
[Greek: Λογος] [Logos] or Plenitude of Eons: His first utterance was a
syllable of four letters, each of which became a being; His second of
four, His third of ten, and His fourth of twelve: thirty in all, which
constituted the [Greek: Πλήρωμα] [Plēroma].

The Valentinians, and others of the Gnostics, distinguished three orders
of existences:--1st. The divine germs of life, exalted by their nature
above matter, and akin to the [Greek: Σοφία] [Sophia], to the mundane
soul and to the Plēroma:--the spiritual natures, [Greek: φύσεις
πνεματικαί] [Phuseis Pneumatikai]: 2d. The natures originating in the
life, divided from the former by the mixture of the [Greek: ύλη]--the
psychical natures, [Greek: φύσεις ψυχικαί] [Phuseis Psuchikai]; with
which begins a perfectly new order of existence, an image of that higher
mind and system, in a subordinate grade; and finally, 3d. The Ungodlike
or Hylic Nature, which resists all amelioration, and whose tendency is
only to destroy--the nature of blind lust and passion.

The nature of the [Greek: πνευματικόν] [pneumatikon], the spiritual, is
essential relationship with God (the [Greek: όμοούσιον τώ θεώ]..
Homoousion tō Theō): hence the life of Unity, the undivided, the
absolutely simple (ούσία ένική, μονοειδής.. Ousia henike, monoeides).

The essence of the ψυχικοί [psuchikoi] is disruption into multiplicity,
manifoldness; which, however, is subordinate to a higher unity, by which
it allows itself to be guided; first unconsciously, then consciously.

The essence of the ύλικοì [Hulikoi] (of whom Satan is the head), is the
direct opposite to all unity; disruption and disunion in itself, without
the least sympathy, without any point of coalescence whatever for unity;
together with an effort to destroy all unity, to extend its own inherent
disunion to everything, and to rend everything asunder. This principle
has no power to posit anything; but only to negative: it is unable to
create, to produce, to form, but only to destroy, to decompose.

By Marcus, the disciple of Valentinus, the idea of a Λογος του οντος
[Logos Tou Ontos], of a WORD, manifesting the hidden Divine Essence, in
the Creation, was spun out into the most subtle details--the entire
creation being, in his view, a continuous _utterance_ of the Ineffable.
The way in which the germs of divine life [the σπέρματα πνευματικά..
spermata pneumatika], which lie shut up in the Eons, continually unfold
and individualize themselves more and more, is represented as a
spontaneous analysis of the several _names_ of the Ineffable, into their
several _sounds_..An _echo_ of the Plēroma falls down into the ύλη
[Hule], and becomes the forming of a new but lower creation.

One formula of the pneumatical baptism among the Gnostics ran thus: "In
the NAME which is hidden from all the Divinities and Powers" [of the
Demiurge], "The Name of Truth" [the Αλήθεια [Aletheia],
self-manifestation of the Buthos], which Jesus of Nazareth has put on in
the light-zones of Christ, the living Christ, through the Holy Ghost,
for the redemption of the angels,--the Name by which all things attain
to Perfection. The candidate then said: "I am established and redeemed;
I am redeemed in my soul from this world, and from all that belongs to
it, by the name of יהוה, who has redeemed the Soul of Jesus by the
living Christ". The assembly then said: "Peace (or Salvation) to all on
whom this name rests!"

The boy Dionusos, torn in pieces, according to the Bacchic Mysteries, by
the Titans, was considered by the Manicheans as simply representing the
Soul, swallowed up by the powers of darkness,--the divine life rent
into fragments by matter:--that part of the luminous essence of the
primitive man [the [Greek: πρώτος άνθρωπος] [Protos Anthropos] of Mani,
the [Greek: πράων άνθρωπος] [Praōn Anthrōpos] of the Valentinians, the
Adam Kadmon of the Kabalah; and the Kaiomorts of the Zendavesta],
swallowed up by the powers of darkness; the Mundane Soul, mixed with
matter--the seed of divine life, which had fallen into matter, and had
thence to undergo a process of purification and development.

The [Greek: Γνώσις] [Gnosis] of Carpocrates and his son Epiphanes
consisted in the knowledge of one Supreme Original being, the highest
unity, from whom all existence has emanated, and to whom it strives to
return. The finite spirits that rule over the several portions of the
Earth, seek to counteract this universal tendency to unity; and from
their influence, their laws, and arrangements, proceeds all that checks,
disturbs, or limits the original communion, which is the basis of
nature, as the outward manifestation of that highest Unity. These
spirits, moreover, seek to retain under their dominion the souls which,
emanating from the highest Unity, and still partaking of its nature,
have lapsed into the corporeal world, and have there been imprisoned in
bodies, in order, under their dominion, to be kept within the cycle of
migration. From these finite spirits, the popular religions of different
nations derive their origin. But the souls which, from a reminiscence of
their former condition, soar upward to the contemplation of that higher
Unity, reach to such perfect freedom and repose, as nothing afterward
can disturb or limit, and rise superior to the popular deities and
religions. As examples of this sort, they named Pythagoras, Plato,
Aristotle, and Christ. They made no distinction between the latter and
the wise and good men of every nation. They taught that any other soul
which could soar to the same height of contemplation, might be regarded
as equal with Him.

The Ophites commenced their system with a Supreme Being, long unknown to
the Human race, and still so the greater number of men; the [Greek:
Βυθος] [Buthos], or Profundity, Source of Light, and of Adam-Kadmon, the
Primitive Man, made by the Demiourgos, but perfected by the Supreme God
by the communication to him of the Spirit [[Greek: Πνεύμα].. Pneuma].
The first emanation was the Thought of the Supreme Deity [the [Greek:
Έννοια].. Ennoia], the conception of the Universe in the Thought of
God. This Thought, called also Silence ([Greek: Σιγη].. Sigē), produced
the Spirit [[Greek: Πνευμα].. Pneuma], Mother of the Living, and Wisdom
of God. Together with this Primitive Existence, Matter existed also (the
Waters, Darkness, Abyss, and Chaos), eternal like the Spiritual
Principle. Buthos and His Thought, uniting with Wisdom, made her
fruitful by the Divine Light, and she produced a perfect and an
imperfect being, _Christos_, and a Second and inferior wisdom,
_Sophia-Achamoth_, who falling into chaos remained entangled there,
became enfeebled, and lost all knowledge of the Superior Wisdom that
gave her birth. Communicating movement to Chaos, she produced
Ialdabaoth, the Demiourgos, Agent of Material Creation, and then
ascended toward her first place in the scale of creation. Ialdabaoth
produced an angel that was his image, and this a second, and so on in
succession to the sixth after the Demiourgos: the seven being
_reflections_ one of the other, yet different and inhabiting seven
distinct regions. The names of the six thus produced were IAO, SABAOTH,
ADONAI, ELOI, ORAI, and ASTAPHAI. Ialdabaoth, to become independent of
his mother, and to pass for the Supreme Being, made the world, and man,
in his own image; and his mother caused the Spiritual principle to pass
from him into man so made; and henceforward the contest between the
Demiourgos and his mother, between light and darkness, good and evil,
was concentrated in man; and the image of Ialdabaoth, reflected upon
matter, became the Serpent-Spirit, Satan, the Evil Intelligence. Eve,
created by Ialdabaoth, had by his Sons children that were angels like
themselves. The Spiritual light was withdrawn from man by Sophia, and
the world surrendered to the influence of evil; until the Spirit, urged
by the entreaties of Wisdom, induced the Supreme Being to send Christos
to redeem it. Compelled, despite himself, by his Mother, Ialdabaoth
caused the man Jesus to be born of a Virgin, and the Celestial Saviour,
uniting with his Sister, Wisdom, descended through the regions of the
seven angels, appeared in each under the form of its chief, concealed
his own, and entered with his sister into the man Jesus at the baptism
in Jordan. Ialdabaoth, finding that Jesus was destroying his empire and
abolishing his worship, caused the Jews to hate and crucify Him; before
which happened, Christos and Wisdom had ascended to the celestial
regions. They restored Jesus to life and gave Him an ethereal body, in
which He remained eighteen mouths on earth, and receiving from Wisdom
the perfect knowledge [Γνωσις.. Gnosis], communicated it to a small
number of His apostles, and then arose to the intermediate region
inhabited by Ialdabaoth, where, unknown to him, He sits at his right
hand, taking from him the Souls of Light purified by Christos. When
nothing of the Spiritual world shall remain subject to Ialdabaoth, the
redemption will be accomplished, and the end of the world, the
completion of the return of Light into the Plenitude, will occur.

Tatian adopted the theory of Emanation, of Eons, of the existence of a
God too sublime to allow Himself to be known, but displaying Himself by
Intelligences emanating from His bosom. The first of these was His
spirit [Πνευμα.. Pneuma], God Himself, God thinking, God conceiving the
Universe. The second was the Word [Λογος.. Logos], no longer merely the
Thought or Conception, but the Creative Utterance, manifestation of the
Divinity, but emanating from the Thought or Spirit; the First-Begotten,
author of the visible creation. This was the Trinity, composed of the
Father, Spirit, and Word.

The Elxaïtes adopted the Seven Spirits of the Gnostics; but named them
Heaven, Water, Spirit, The Holy Angels of Prayer, Oil, Salt, and the
Earth.

The opinion of the Doketes as to the human nature of Jesus Christ, was
that most generally received among the Gnostics. They deemed the
intelligences of the Superior World too pure and too much the
antagonists of matter, to be willing to unite with it: and held that
Christ, an Intelligence of the first rank, in appearing upon the earth,
did not become confounded with matter, but took upon Himself only the
_appearance_ of a body, or at the most used it only as an envelope.

Noëtus termed the Son the first Utterance of the Father; the Word, not
by Himself, as an Intelligence, and unconnected with the flesh, a real
Son; but a Word, and a perfect Only-Begotten; light emanated from the
Light; water flowing from its spring; a ray emanated from the Sun.

Paul of Samosata taught that Jesus Christ was the Son of Joseph and
Mary; but that the Word, Wisdom, or Intelligence of God, the Νους [Nous]
of the Gnostics, had united itself with Him, so that He might be said to
be at once the Son of God, and God Himself.

Arius called the Saviour the first of creatures, non-emanated from God,
but really created, by the direct will of God, before time and the
ages. According to the Church, Christ was of the same nature as God;
according to some dissenters, of the same nature as man. Arius adopted
the theory of a nature analogous to both. When God resolved to create
the Human race, He made a Being which He called THE WORD, THE SON,
WISDOM [Λόγος, Υίòς, Σοφíα.. Logos, Uios, Sophia], to the end that He
might give existence to men. This WORD is the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, the
Ensoph of the Kabalah, the Νούς [Nous] of Platonism and Philonism, and
the Σοφια or Δεμιουργος [Sophia or Demiourgos] of the Gnostics. He
distinguished the Inferior Wisdom, or the daughter, from the Superior
Wisdom; the latter being _in_ God, inherent in His nature, and incapable
of communication to any creature: the second, by which the Son was made,
communicated itself to Him, and therefore He Himself was entitled to be
called the Word and the Son.

Manes, founder of the Sect of the Manicheans, who had lived and been
distinguished among the Persian Magi, profited by the doctrines of
Scythianus, a Kabalist or Judaizing Gnostic of the times of the
Apostles; and knowing those of Bardesanes and Harmonius, derived his
doctrines from Zoroasterism, Christianity, and Gnosticism. He claimed to
be the Παράκλητος [Paraklētos] or Comforter, in the Sense of a Teacher,
organ of the Deity, but not in that of the Holy Spirit or Holy Ghost:
and commenced his _Epistola Fundamenti_ in these words: "Manes, Apostle
of Jesus Christ, elect of God the Father; Behold the Words of Salvation,
emanating from the living and eternal fountain." The dominant idea of
his doctrine was Pantheism, derived by him from its source in the
regions of India and on the confines of China: that the cause of all
that exists is in God; and at last, God is all in all. All souls are
equal--God is in all, in men, animals, and plants. There are two Gods,
one of Good and the other of Evil, each independent, eternal, chief of a
distinct Empire; necessarily, and of their very natures, hostile to one
another. The Evil God, Satan, is the Genius of matter alone. The God of
Good is infinitely his Superior, the True God; while the other is but
the chief of all that is the Enemy of God, and must in the end succumb
to His Power. The Empire of Light alone is eternal and true; and this
Empire is a great chain of Emanations, all connected with the Supreme
Being which they make manifest; all HIM, under different forms, chosen
for one end, the triumph of the Good. In each of His members lie hidden
thousands of ineffable treasures. Excellent in His Glory,
incomprehensible in His Greatness, the Father has joined to Himself
those fortunate and glorious Eons [Αιωνες.. Aionēs], whose Power and
Number it is impossible to determine. This is Spinoza's Infinity of
Infinite Attributes of God. Twelve Chief Eons, at the head of all, were
the Genii of the twelve Constellations of the Zodiac, and called by
Manes Olamin. Satan, also, Lord of the Empire of Darkness, had an Army
of Eons or Demons, emanating from his Essence, and reflecting more or
less his image, but divided and inharmonious among themselves. A war
among them brought them to the confines of the Realm of Light.
Delighted, they sought to conquer it. But the Chief of the Celestial
Empire created a Power which he placed on the frontiers of Heaven to
protect his Eons, and destroy the Empire of Evil. This was the Mother of
Life, the Soul of the World, an Emanation from the Supreme Being, too
pure to come in immediate contact with matter. It remained in the
highest region; but produced a Son, the first Man the _Kaiomorts_,
Adam-Kadmon, Πρώτος Ανθρωπος [Protos Anthropos,] and Hivil-Zivah; of the
Zend-Avesta, the Kabalah, the Gnosis, and Sabeism; who commenced the
contest with the Powers of Evil, but, losing part of his panoply, of his
Light, his Son and many souls born of the Light, who were devoured by
the darkness, God sent to his assistance the living Spirit, or the Son
of the First Man Υίός Άνθρώπου ... Uios Anthropou, or Jesus Christ. The
Mother of Life, general Principle of Divine Life, and the first Man,
Primitive Being that reveals the Divine Life, are too sublime to be
connected with the Empire of Darkness. The Son of Man or Soul of the
World, enters into the Darkness, becomes its captive, to end by
tempering and softening its savage nature. The Divine Spirit, after
having brought back the Primitive Man to the Empire of Light, raises
above the world that part of the Celestial Soul that remained unaffected
by being mingled with the Empire of Darkness. Placed in the region of
the Sun and Moon, this pure soul, the Son of Man, the Redeemer or
Christ, labors to deliver and attract to Himself that part of the Light
or of the Soul of the First Man diffused through matter; which done, the
world will cease to exist. To retain the rays of Light still remaining
among his Eons, and ever tending to escape and return, by concentrating
them, the Prince of Darkness, with their consent, made Adam, whose soul
was of the Divine Light, contributed by the Eons, and his body of
matter, so that he belonged to both Empires, that of Light and that of
Darkness. To prevent the light from escaping at once, the Demons forbade
Adam to eat the fruit of "knowledge of good and evil," by which he would
have known the Empire of Light and that of Darkness. He obeyed; an Angel
of Light induced him to transgress, and gave him the means of victory;
but the Demons created Eve, who seduced him into an act of Sensualism,
that enfeebled him, and bound him anew in the bonds of matter. This is
repeated in the case of every man that lives.

To deliver the soul, captive in darkness, the Principle of Light, or
Genius of the Sun, charged to redeem the Intellectual World, of which he
is the type, came to manifest Himself among men. Light appeared in the
darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not; according to the words
of St. John. The Light could not unite with the darkness. It but put on
the _appearance_ of a human body, and took the name of Christ in the
Messiah, only to accommodate itself to the language of the Jews. The
Light did its work, turning the Jews from the adoration of the Evil
Principle, and the Pagans from the worship of Demons. But the Chief of
the Empire of Darkness caused Him to be crucified by the Jews. Still He
suffered in appearance only, and His death gave to all souls the symbol
of their enfranchisement. The person of Jesus having disappeared, there
was seen in His place a cross of Light, over which a celestial voice
pronounced these words: "The cross of Light is called The Word, Christ,
The Gate, Joy, The Bread, The Sun, The Resurrection, Jesus, The Father,
The Spirit, Life, Truth, and Grace."

With the Priscillianists there were two principles, one the Divinity,
the other, Primitive Matter and Darkness; each eternal. Satan is the son
and lord of matter; and the secondary angels and demons, children of
matter. Satan created and governs the visible world. But the soul of man
emanated from God, and is of the same substance with God. Seduced by the
evil spirits, it passes through various bodies, until, purified and
reformed, it rises to God and is strengthened by His light. These powers
of evil hold mankind in pledge; and to redeem this pledge, the Saviour,
Christ the Redeemer, came and died upon the cross of expiation, thus
discharging the written obligation. He, like all souls, was of the same
substance with God, a manifestation of the Divinity, not forming a
second person; unborn, like the Divinity, and nothing else than the
Divinity under another form.

It is useless to trace these vagaries further; and we stop at the
frontiers of the realm of the three hundred and sixty-five thousand
emanations of the Mandaıtes from the Primitive Light, Fira or Ferho
and Yavar; and return contentedly to the simple and sublime creed of
Masonry.

Such were some of the ancient notions concerning the Deity; and taken in
connection with what has been detailed in the preceding Degrees, this
Lecture affords you a true picture of the ancient speculations. From the
beginning until now, those who have undertaken to solve the great
mystery of the creation of a material universe by an Immaterial Deity,
have interposed between the two, and between God and man, divers
manifestations of, or emanations from, or personified attributes or
agents of, the Great Supreme God, who is coexistent with Time and
coextensive with Space.

The universal belief of the Orient was, that the Supreme Being did not
Himself create either the earth or man. The fragment which commences the
Book of Genesis, consisting of the first chapter and the three first
verses of the second, assigns the creation or rather the _formation_ or
_modelling_ of the world from matter already existing in confusion, not
to IHUH, but to the ALHIM, well known as Subordinate Deities, Forces, or
Manifestations, among the Phœnicians. The second fragment imputes it to
IHUH-ALHIM,[3] and St. John assigns the creation to the Λογος or WORD;
and asserts that CHRIST was that WORD, as well as LIGHT and LIFE, other
emanations from the Great Primeval Deity, to which other faiths had
assigned the work of creation.

[Footnote 3: _The Substance_, or _Very Self_, of which the Alohayim are
the manifestations.]

An absolute existence, wholly immaterial, in no way within the reach of
our senses; a cause, but not an effect, that never was not, but existed
during an infinity of eternities, before there was anything else except
Time and Space, is wholly beyond the reach of our conceptions. The mind
of man has wearied itself in speculations as to His nature, His essence,
His attributes; and ended in being no wiser than it began. In the
impossibility of conceiving of immateriality, we feel at sea and lost
whenever we go beyond the domain of matter. And yet we know that there
_are_ Powers, Forces, Causes, that are themselves _not_ matter. We give
them names, but _what_ they really are, and what their essence, we are
wholly ignorant.

But, fortunately, it does not follow that we may not _believe_, or even
_know_, that which we cannot _explain_ to ourselves, or that which is
beyond the reach of our comprehension. If we believed only that which
our intellect can grasp, measure, comprehend, and have distinct and
clear ideas of, we sh+ ould believe scarce anything. The senses are not
the witnesses that bear testimony to us of the loftiest truths.

Our greatest difficulty is, that language is not adequate to express our
ideas; because our words refer to _things_, and are images of what is
substantial and material. If we use the word "_emanation_," our mind
involuntarily recurs to something material, _flowing out_ of some other
thing that is material; and if we _reject_ this idea of materiality,
nothing is left of the emanation but an unreality. The word "thing"
itself suggests to us that which is material and within the cognizance
and jurisdiction of the senses. If we cut away from it the idea of
materiality, it presents itself to us as _no_ thing, but an intangible
unreality, which the mind vainly endeavors to grasp. _Existence_ and
_Being_ are terms that have the same color of materiality; and when we
speak of a _Power_ or _Force_, the mind immediately images to itself one
physical and material thing acting upon another. Eliminate that idea;
and the Power or Force, devoid of physical characteristics, seems as
unreal as the shadow that dances on a wall, itself a mere _absence_ of
light; as spirit is to us merely that which is _not_ matter.

Infinite space and infinite time are the two primary ideas. We formulize
them thus: add body to body and sphere to sphere, until the imagination
wearies; and still there will remain beyond, a void, empty, unoccupied
SPACE, limitless, because it _is_ void. Add event to event in continuous
succession, forever and forever, and there will still remain, before and
after, a TIME in which there was and will be no event, and also endless
because it too _is_ void.

Thus these two ideas of the boundlessness of space and the endlessness
of time seem to _involve_ the ideas that matter and events are limited
and finite. We cannot conceive of an _infinity_ of worlds or of events;
but only of an _indefinite_ number of each; for, as we struggle to
conceive of their _infinity_, the thought ever occurs in despite of all
our efforts--there must be _space_ in which there are _no_ worlds;
there must have been _time_ when there were no events.

We cannot conceive how, if this earth moves millions of millions of
miles a million times repeated, it is still _in the centre of space_;
nor how, if we lived millions of millions of ages and centuries, we
should still be in the centre of eternity--with still as much _space_ on
one side as on the other; with still as much _time_ before us as behind;
for that seems to say that the world has not moved nor we lived at all.

Nor can we comprehend how an infinite series of worlds, added together,
is no larger than an infinite series of atoms; or an infinite series of
centuries no longer than an infinite series of seconds; both being alike
infinite, and therefore one series containing no more nor fewer units
than the other.

Nor have we the capacity to form in ourselves any idea of that which is
_immaterial_. We use the word, but it conveys to us only the idea of the
absence and negation of materiality; which vanishing, Space and Time
alone, infinite and boundless, seem to us to be left.

We cannot form any conception of an effect without a cause. We cannot
but believe, indeed we know, that, how far soever we may have to run
back along the chain of effects and causes, it cannot be _infinite_; but
we must come at last to _something_ which is not an effect, but the
first cause: and yet the fact is literally beyond our comprehension. The
mind refuses to grasp the idea of _self_-existence, of existence without
a beginning. As well expect the hair that grows upon our head to
understand the nature and immortality of the soul.

It does not need to go so far in search of mysteries; nor have we any
right to disbelieve or doubt the existence of a Great First Cause,
itself no effect, because we cannot comprehend it; because the words we
use do not even express it to us adequately.

We rub a needle for a little while, on a dark, inert mass of iron ore,
that had lain idle in the earth for many centuries. Something is thereby
communicated to the steel--we term it a _virtue_, a _power_, or a
_quality_--and then we balance it upon a pivot; and, lo! drawn by some
invisible, mysterious Power, one pole of the needle turns to the North,
and there the same Power keeps the same pole for days and years; will
keep it there, perhaps, as long as the world lasts, carry the needle
where you will, and no matter what seas or mountains intervene between
it and the North Pole of the world. And this Power, thus acting, and
indicating to the mariner his course over the trackless ocean, when the
stars shine not for many days, saves vessels from shipwreck, families
from distress, and those from sudden death on whose lives the fate of
nations and the peace of the world depend. But for it, Napoleon might
never have reached the ports of France on his return from Egypt, nor
Nelson lived to fight and win at Trafalgar. Men call this Power
_Magnetism_, and then complacently think that they have explained it
all; and yet they have but given a new _name_ to an unknown thing, to
_hide_ their ignorance. What is this wonderful Power? It is a real,
actual, _active_ Power: that we know and see. But what its _essence_ is,
or how it acts, we do not know, any more than we know the essence or the
mode of action of the Creative Thought and Word of God.

And again, what is that which we term _galvanism_ and
_electricity_,--which, evolved by the action of a little acid on two
metals, aided by a magnet, circles the earth in a second, sending from
land to land the _Thoughts_ that govern the transactions of individuals
and nations? The mind has formed no notion of matter, that will include
_it_; and no name that we can give it, helps us to understand its
essence and its being. It _is_ a Power, like Thought and the Will. We
know no more.

What is this power of _gravitation_ that makes everything upon the earth
tend to the centre? How does it reach out its invisible hands toward the
erratic meteor-stones, arrest them in their swift course, and draw them
down to the earth's bosom? It _is_ a _power_. We know no more.

What is that _heat_ which plays so wonderful a part in the world's
economy?--that _caloric_, latent everywhere, within us and without us,
produced by combustion, by intense pressure, and by swift motion? Is it
substance, matter, spirit, or immaterial, a mere Force or State of
Matter?

And what is _light?_ A _substance_, say the books,--_matter_, that
travels to us from the sun and stars, each ray separable into seven, by
the prism, of distinct colors, and with distinct peculiar qualities and
actions. And _if_ a substance, what is its essence, and what power is
inherent in it, by which it journeys incalculable myriads of miles, and
reaches us ten thousand years or more after it leaves the stars?

All power is equally a mystery. Apply intense cold to a drop of water
in the centre of a globe of iron, and the globe is shattered as the
water freezes. Confine a little of the same limpid element in a cylinder
which Enceladus or Typhon could not have riven asunder, and apply to it
intense heat, and the vast power that couched latent in the water
shivers the cylinder to atoms. A little shoot from a minute seed, a
shoot so soft and tender that the least bruise would kill it, forces its
way downward into the hard earth, to the depth of many feet, with an
energy wholly incomprehensible. What are these mighty forces, locked up
in the small seed and the drop of water?

Nay, what is LIFE itself, with all its wondrous, mighty energies,--that
power which maintains the heat within us, and prevents our bodies, that
decay so soon without it, from resolution into their original,
elements--Life, that constant miracle, the nature and essence whereof
have eluded all the philosophers; and all their learned dissertations on
it are a mere jargon of words?

No wonder the ancient Persians thought that Light and Life were
one,--both emanations from the Supreme Deity, the archetype of light. No
wonder that in their ignorance they worshipped the Sun. God breathed
into man the spirit of life,--not matter, but an emanation from Himself;
not a creature _made_ by Him, nor a distinct existence; but a _Power_,
like His own Thought: and light, to those great-souled ancients, also
seemed no creature, and no gross material substance, but a pure
emanation from the Deity, immortal and indestructible like Himself.

What, indeed, is REALITY? Our dreams are as real, while they last, as
the occurrences of the daytime. We see, hear, feel, act, experience
pleasure and suffer pain, as vividly and actually in a dream as when
awake. The occurrences and transactions of a year are crowded into the
limits of a second: and the dream remembered is as real as the past
occurrences of life.

The philosophers tell us that we have no cognizance of _substance_
itself, but only of its _attributes_: that when we see that which we
call a block of marble, our perceptions give us information only of
something extended, solid, colored, heavy, and the like; but not of the
very _thing_ itself, to which these attributes belong. And yet the
attributes do not exist without the substance. They are not substances,
but adjectives. There is no such _thing_ or _existence_ as hardness,
weight or color, by itself, detached from any subject, moving first
here, then there, and attaching itself to this and to the other subject.
And yet, they say, the attributes are not the subject.

So Thought, Volition, and Perception are not the soul, but its
_attributes_; and we have no cognizance of the soul _itself_, but only
of _them_, its manifestations. Nor of God; but only of His Wisdom,
Power, Magnificence, Truth, and other attributes.

And yet we know that there is matter, a soul within our body, a God that
lives in the Universe.

Take, then, the attributes of the soul. I am conscious that I exist and
am the same identical person that I was twenty years ago. I am conscious
that my body is not I,--that if my arms were lopped away, this _person_
that I call ME, would still remain, complete, entire, identical as
before. But I cannot ascertain, by the most intense and long-continued
reflection, what I am, nor where within my body I reside, nor whether I
am a point, or an expanded substance. I have no power to examine and
inspect. I exist, will, think, perceive. _That_ I know, and nothing
more. I think a noble and sublime Thought. What is that Thought? It is
not Matter, nor Spirit. It is not a Thing; but a _Power_ and _Force_. I
make upon a paper certain conventional marks, that _represent_ that
Thought. There is no Power or Virtue in the _marks_ I write, but only in
the Thought which they tell to others. I die, but the Thought still
lives. It is a Power. It acts on men, excites them to enthusiasm,
inspires patriotism, governs their conduct, controls their destinies,
disposes of life and death. The words I speak are but a certain
succession of particular sounds, that by conventional arrangement
communicate to others the Immaterial, Intangible, Eternal Thought. The
fact that Thought continues to exist an instant, after it makes its
appearance in the soul, proves it immortal: for there is nothing
conceivable that can destroy it. The spoken words, being mere sounds,
may vanish into thin air, and the written ones, mere marks, be burned,
erased, destroyed: but the THOUGHT itself lives still, and must live on
forever.

A Human Thought, then, is an actual EXISTENCE, and a FORCE and POWER,
capable of acting upon and controlling matter as well as mind. Is not
the existence of a God, who is the immaterial soul of the Universe, and
whose THOUGHT, embodied or not embodied in His WORD, is an Infinite
Power, of Creation and production, destruction and preservation, quite
as comprehensible as the existence of a Soul, of a Thought separated
from the Soul, of the Power of that Thought to mould the fate and
influence the Destinies of Humanity?

And yet we know not when that Thought comes, nor what it is. It is not
WE. We do not mould it, shape it, fashion it. It is neither our
mechanism nor our invention. It appears spontaneously, flashing, as it
were, into the soul, making that soul the involuntary instrument of its
utterance to the world. It comes to us, and seems a stranger to us,
seeking a home.

As little can we explain the mighty power of the human WILL. Volition,
like Thought, seems spontaneous, an effect without a cause.
Circumstances _provoke_ it, and serve as its _occasion_, but do not
_produce_ it. It springs up in the soul, like Thought, as the waters
gush, upward in a spring. Is it the manifestation of the soul, merely
making apparent what passes _within_ the soul, or an emanation from it,
going abroad and acting outwardly, itself a real Existence, as it is an
admitted Power? We can but own our ignorance. It is certain that it acts
on other souls, controls, directs them, shapes their action, legislates
for men and nations: and yet it is not material nor visible; and the
laws it writes merely inform one soul of what has passed within another.

God, therefore, is a mystery, only as everything that surrounds us, and
as we ourselves, are mysteries. We know that there is and must be a
FIRST CAUSE. His attributes, severed from Himself, are unrealities. As
color and extension, weight and hardness, do not exist apart from matter
as separate existences and substantives, spiritual or immaterial; so the
Goodness, Wisdom, Justice, Mercy, and Benevolence of God are not
independent existences, personify them as men may, but _attributes_ of
the Deity, the _adjectives_ of One Great Substantive. But we know that
He must be Good, True, Wise, Just, Benevolent, Merciful: and in all
these, and all His other attributes, Perfect and Infinite; because we
are conscious that these are laws imposed on us by the very nature of
things, necessary, and without which the Universe would be confusion and
the existence of a God incredible. They are of His _essence_, and
necessary, as His existence is.

He is the Living, Thinking, Intelligent SOUL of the Universe, the
PERMANENT, the STATIONARY [Εστως.. Estos], of Simon Magus, the ONE that
always is [To Ον, To ON] of Plato, as contradistinguished from the
perpetual flux and reflux, or _Genesis_, of _things_.

And, as the Thought of the Soul, emanating _from_ the Soul, becomes
audible and visible in Words, so did THE THOUGHT OF GOD, springing up
within Himself, immortal _as_ Himself, when once conceived,--immortal
_before_, because _in_ Himself, utter Itself in THE WORD, its
manifestation and mode of communication, and thus create the Material,
Mental, Spiritual Universe, which, like Him, never _began_ to exist.

This is the _real_ idea of the Ancient Nations: GOD, the Almighty
Father, and Source of All; His THOUGHT, _conceiving_ the whole Universe,
and _willing_ its creation: His WORD, _uttering_ that THOUGHT, and thus
becoming the Creator or Demiourgos, in whom was Life and Light, and that
Light the Life of the Universe.

Nor did that Word _cease_ at the single act of Creation; and having set
going the great machine, and enacted the laws of its motion and
progression, of birth and life, and change and death, cease to exist, or
remain thereafter in inert idleness.

FOR THE THOUGHT OF GOD LIVES AND IS IMMORTAL. Embodied in the WORD, is
not only _created_, but it _preserves_. It conducts and controls the
Universe, all spheres, all worlds, all actions of mankind, and of every
animate and inanimate creature. It speaks in the soul of every man who
lives. The Stars, the Earth, the Trees, the Winds, the universal voice
of Nature, tempest, and avalanche, the Sea's roar and the grave voice of
the waterfall, the hoarse thunder and the low whisper of the brook, the
song of birds, the voice of love, the speech of men, all are the
alphabet in which it communicates itself to men, and informs them of the
will and law of God, the Soul of the Universe. And thus most truly _did_
"THE WORD BECOME FLESH AND DWELL AMONG MEN."

God, the unknown FATHER [Πατήρ Άγνωστος.. Pater Agnōstos], known to us
only by His Attributes; the ABSOLUTE I AM:... The THOUGHT of God
[Ένννοια. Ennoia], and the WORD [Λόγος.... Logos], Manifestation and
expression of the Thought; .... Behold THE TRUE MASONIC TRINITY; the
UNIVERSAL SOUL, the THOUGHT _in_ the Soul, the WORD, or Thought
expressed; the THREE IN ONE, of a Trinitarian Ecossais.

Here Masonry pauses, and leaves its Initiates to carry out and develop
these great Truths in such manner as to each may seem most accordant
with reason, philosophy, truth, and his religious faith. It declines to
act as Arbiter between them. It looks calmly on, while each multiplies
the intermediates between the Deity and Matter, and the personifications
of God's manifestations and attributes, to whatever extent his reason,
his conviction, or his fancy dictates.

While the Indian tells us that PARABRAHMA, BRAHM, and PARATMA were the
first Triune God, revealing Himself as BRAHMA, VISHNU, and SIVA,
_Creator, Preserver, and Destroyer_;....

The Egyptian, of AMUN-RE, NEITH, and PHTHA, _Creator, Matter, Thought_
or _Light_; the Persian of _his_ Trinity of Three Powers in ORMUZD,
Sources of _Light, Fire_, and _Water_; the Buddhists of the God SAKYA, a
Trinity composed of BUDDHA, DHARMA, and SANGA,--_Intelligence, Law_, and
_Union_ or _Harmony_; the Chinese Sabeans of _their_ Trinity of
_Chang-ti_, the Supreme Sovereign; _Tien_, the Heavens; and _Tao_, the
Universal Supreme Reason and Principle of all things; who produced the
Unit; that, two; two, three; and three, all that is;....

While the Sclavono-Vend typifies _his_ Trinity by the three heads of the
God _Triglav_; the Ancient Prussian points to _his_ Triune God,
_Perkoun, Pikollos_, and _Potrimpos_, Deities of Light and Thunder, of
Hell and of the Earth; the Ancient Scandinavian to _Odin, Frea_, and
_Thor_; and the old Etruscans to TINA, TALNA, and MINERVA, _Strength,
Abundance_, and _Wisdom_;....

While Plato tells us of the _Supreme Good_, the _Reason_ or _Intellect_,
and the _Soul_ or _Spirit_; and Philo of the _Archetype of Light_,
_Wisdom_ [Σοψια], and the _Word_ [Λογος]; the Kabalists, of the Triads
of the Sephiroth;....

While the disciples of Simon Magus, and the many sects of the Gnostics,
confuse us with their _Eons, Emanations, Powers, Wisdom Superior_ and
_Inferior, Ialdabaoth, Adam-Kadmon_, even to the three hundred and
sixty-five thousand emanations of the Maldaïtes; ....

And while the pious Christian believes that the WORD dwelt in the Mortal
Body of Jesus of Nazareth, and suffered upon the Cross; and that the
HOLY GHOST was poured out upon the Apostles, and now inspires every
truly Christian Soul:....

While all these faiths assert their claims to the exclusive possession
of the Truth. Masonry inculcates its old doctrine, and no more:.... That
God is ONE; that His THOUGHT uttered in His WORD, created the Universe,
and preserves it by those Eternal Laws which are the expression of that
Thought: that the Soul of Man, breathed into him by God, is immortal as
His Thoughts are; that he is free to do evil or to choose good,
responsible for his acts and punishable for his sins: that all evil and
wrong and suffering are but temporary, the discords of one great
Harmony, and that in His good time they will lead by infinite
modulations to the great, harmonic final chord and cadence of Truth,
Love, Peace, and Happiness, that will ring forever and ever under the
Arches of Heaven, among all the Stars and Worlds, and in all souls of
men and Angels.

[Illustration]



XXVII.

KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE TEMPLE


This is the first of the really Chivalric Degrees of the Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite. It occupies this place in the Calendar of the
Degrees between the 26th and the last of the Philosophical Degrees, in
order, by breaking the continuity of these, to relieve what might
otherwise become wearisome; and also to remind you that, while engaged
with the speculations and abstractions of philosophy and creeds, the
Mason is also to continue engaged in the active duties of this great
warfare of life. He is not only a Moralist and Philosopher, but a
Soldier, the Successor of those Knights of the Middle Age, who, while
they wore the Cross, also wielded the Sword, and were the Soldiers of
Honor, Loyalty, and Duty.

Times change, and circumstances; but Virtue and Duty remain the same.
The Evils to be warred against but take another shape, and are developed
in a different form.

There is the same need now of truth and loyalty as in the days of
Frederic Barbarossa.

The characters, religious and military, attention to the sick and
wounded in the Hospital, and war against the Infidel in the field, are
no longer blended; but the same duties, to be performed in another
shape, continue to exist and to environ us all.

The innocent virgin is no longer at the mercy of the brutal Baron or
licentious man-at-arms; but purity and innocence still need protectors.

War is no longer the apparently natural State of Society; and for most
men it is an empty obligation to assume, that they will not recede
before the enemy; but the same high duty and obligation still rest upon
all men.

Truth, in act, profession, and opinion, is rarer now than in the days of
chivalry. Falsehood has become a current coin, and circulates with a
certain degree of respectability; because it has an actual value. It is
indeed the great Vice of the Age--it, and its twin-sister, Dishonesty.
Men, for political preferment, profess whatever principles are
expedient and profitable. At the bar, in the pulpit, and in the halls of
legislation, men argue against their own convictions, and, with what
they term _logic_, prove to the satisfaction of others that which they
do not themselves believe. Insincerity and duplicity are valuable to
their possessors, like estates in stocks, that yield a certain revenue:
and it is no longer the _truth_ of an opinion or a principle, but the
net _profit_ that may be realized from it, which is the measure of its
value.

The Press is the great sower of falsehood. To slander a political
antagonist, to misrepresent all that he says, and, if that be
impossible, to invent for him what he does _not_ say; to put in
circulation whatever baseless calumnies against him are necessary to
defeat him,--these are habits so common as to have ceased to excite
notice or comment, much less surprise or disgust.

There was a time when a Knight would die rather than utter a lie, or
break his Knightly word. The Knight Commander of the Temple revives the
old Knightly spirit; and devotes himself to the old Knightly worship of
Truth. No profession of an opinion not his own, for expediency's sake or
profit, or through fear of the world's disfavor; no slander of even an
enemy; no coloring or perversion of the sayings or acts of other men; no
insincere speech and argument for any purpose, or under any pretext,
must soil his fair escutcheon. Out of the Chapter, as well as in it, he
must speak the Truth, and _all_ the Truth, no more and no less; or else
speak not at all.

To purity and innocence everywhere, the Knight Commander owes
protection, as of old; against bold violence, or those, more guilty than
murderers, who by art and treachery seek to slay the soul; and against
that want and destitution that drive too many to sell their honor and
innocence for food.

In no age of the world has man had better opportunity than now to
display those lofty virtues and that noble heroism that so distinguished
the three great military and religious Orders, in their youth, before
they became corrupt and vitiated by prosperity and power.

When a fearful epidemic ravages a city, and death is inhaled with the
air men breathe; when the living scarcely suffice to bury the
dead,--most men flee in abject terror, to return and live, respectable
and influential, when the danger has passed away. But the old Knightly
spirit of devotion and disinterestedness and contempt of death still
lives, and is not extinct in the human heart. Everywhere a few are found
to stand firmly and unflinchingly at their posts, to front and defy the
danger, not for money, or to be honored for it, or to protect their own
household; but from mere humanity, and to obey the unerring dictates of
duty. They nurse the sick, breathing the pestilential atmosphere of the
hospital. They explore the abodes of want and misery. With the
gentleness of woman, they soften the pains of the dying, and feed the
lamp of life in the convalescent. They perform the last sad offices to
the dead; and they seek no other reward than the approval of their own
consciences.

These are the true Knights of the present age: these, and the captain
who remains at his post on board his shattered ship until the last boat,
loaded to the water's edge with passengers and crew, has parted from her
side; and then goes calmly down with her into the mysterious depths of
the ocean:--the pilot who stands at the wheel while the swift flames
eddy round him and scorch away his life:--the fireman who ascends the
blazing walls, and plunges amid the flames to save the property or lives
of those who have upon him no claim by tie of blood, or friendship, or
even of ordinary acquaintance:--these, and others like these:--all men,
who, set at the post of duty, stand there manfully; to die, if need be,
but not to desert their post: for these, too, are sworn not to recede
before the enemy.

To the performance of duties and of acts of heroism like these, you have
devoted yourself, my Brother, by becoming a Knight Commander of the
Temple. Soldier of the Truth and of Loyalty! Protector of Purity and
Innocence! Defier of Plague and Pestilence! Nurser of the Sick and
Burier of the Dead! Knight, preferring Death to abandonment of the Post
of Duty! Welcome to the bosom of this Order!

[Illustration]



XXVIII.

KNIGHT OF THE SUN, OR PRINCE ADEPT.


God, is the author of everything that existeth; the Eternal, the
Supreme, the Living, and Awful Being; from Whom nothing in the Universe
is hidden. Make of Him no idols and visible images; but rather worship
Him in the deep solitudes of sequestered forests; for He is invisible,
and fills the Universe as its soul, and liveth not in any Temple!

Light and Darkness are the World's Eternal ways. God is the principle of
everything that exists, and the Father of all Beings. He is eternal,
immovable and Self-Existent. There are no bounds to His power. At one
glance He sees the Past, the Present, and the Future; and the procession
of the builders of the Pyramids, with us and our remotest Descendants,
is now passing before Him. He reads our thoughts before they are known
to ourselves. He rules the movements of the Universe and all events and
revolutions are the creatures of His will. For He is the infinite Mind
and Supreme Intelligence.

In the beginning Man had the WORD, and that WORD was from God: and out
of the living power which, in and by that WORD, was communicated to man,
came the LIGHT of his existence. Let no man speak the WORD, for by it
THE FATHER made light and darkness, the world and living creatures.

The Chaldean upon his plains worshipped me, and the sea-loving
Phœnician. They builded me temples and towers, and burned sacrifices to
me upon a thousand altars. Light was divine to them, and they thought me
a God. But I am nothing--_nothing_; and LIGHT is the creature of the
unseen GOD that taught the true religion to the Ancient Patriarchs:
AWFUL, MYSTERIOUS, THE ABSOLUTE.

Man was created pure; and God gave him TRUTH, as He gave him LIGHT. He
has lost the _truth_ and found _error_. He has wandered far into
darkness; and round him Sin and Shame hover evermore. The Soul that is
impure, and sinful, and defiled with earthly stains, cannot again unite
with God, until, by long trials and many purifications, it is finally
delivered from the old calamity; and Light overcomes Darkness and
dethrones it, in the Soul.

God is the First; indestructible, eternal, UNCREATED, INDIVISIBLE.
_Wisdom, Justice, Truth_, and _Mercy_, with _Harmony_ and _Love_, are of
His essence, and _Eternity_ and _Infinitude of Extension_. He is silent,
and consents with MIND, and is known to Souls through MIND alone. In Him
were all things originally contained, and from Him all things were
evolved. For out of His Divine SILENCE and REST, after an infinitude of
time, was unfolded the WORD, or the Divine POWER; and then in turn the
Mighty, ever-acting, measureless INTELLECT; and from the WORD were
evolved the myriads of suns and systems that make the Universe; and
_fire_, and _light_, and the electric HARMONY, which is the harmony of
spheres and numbers: and from the INTELLECT all Souls and intellects of
men.

In the Beginning, the Universe was but ONE SOUL. HE was THE ALL, alone
with TIME and SPACE, and Infinite as they.

--HE HAD THIS THOUGHT: "I Create Worlds:" and lo! _the Universe_, and
the laws of _harmony_ and _motion_ that rule it, the expression of a
thought of God; and bird and beast, and every living thing but Man: and
light and air, and the mysterious currents, and the dominion of
mysterious numbers!

--HE HAD THIS THOUGHT: "_I Create Man, whose Soul shall be my image,
and he shall rule_." And lo! _Man_, with senses, instinct, and a
reasoning mind!

--And yet not MAN! but an _animal_ that breathed, and saw, and
thought: until an immaterial spark from God's own Infinite Being
penetrated the brain, and became the Soul: and lo, MAN THE IMMORTAL!
Thus, threefold, fruit of God's thought, is Man; that sees and hears and
feels; that thinks and reasons; that loves and is in harmony with the
Universe.

Before the world grew old, the primitive Truth faded out from men's
Souls. Then man asked himself, "_What am I? and how and whence am I? and
whither do I go?_" And the Soul, looking inward upon itself, strove to
learn whether that "I" were mere matter; its thought and reason and its
passions and affections mere results of material combination; or a
material Being enveloping an immaterial Spirit: ... and further it
strove, by self-examination, to learn whether that Spirit were an
individual essence, with a separate immortal existence, or an
infinitesimal portion of a Great First Principle, inter-penetrating the
Universe and the infinitude of space, and undulating like light and
heat: ... and so they wandered further amid the mazes of error; and
imagined vain philosophies; wallowing in the sloughs of materialism and
sensualism, of beating their wings vainly in the vacuum of abstractions
and idealities.

While yet the first oaks still put forth their leaves, man lost the
perfect knowledge of the One True God, the Ancient Absolute Existence,
the Infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence; and floated helplessly out
upon the shoreless ocean of conjecture. Then the soul vexed itself with
seeking to learn whether the material Universe was a mere chance
combination of atoms, or the work of Infinite, Uncreated Wisdom:...
whether the Deity was a concentrated, and the Universe an extended
immateriality; or whether He was a personal existence, an Omnipotent,
Eternal, Supreme Essence, regulating matter at will; or subjecting it to
unchangeable laws throughout eternity; and to Whom, Himself Infinite and
Eternal, Space and Time are unknown. With their finite limited vision
they sought to learn the source and explain the existence of Evil, and
Pain, and Sorrow; and so they wandered ever deeper into the darkness,
and were lost; and there was for them no longer any God; but only a
great, dumb, soulless Universe, full of mere emblems and symbols.

You have heretofore, in some of the Degrees through which you have
passed, heard much of the ancient worship of the Sun, the Moon, and the
other bright luminaries of Heaven, and of the Elements and Powers of
Universal Nature. You have been made, to some extent, familiar with
their personifications as Heroes suffering or triumphant, or as personal
Gods or Goddesses, with human characteristics and passions, and with the
multitude of legends and fables that do but allegorically represent
their risings and settings, their courses, their conjunctions and
oppositions, their domiciles and places of exaltation.

Perhaps you have supposed that we, like many who have written on these
subjects, have intended to represent this worship to you as the most
ancient and original worship of the first men that lived. To undeceive
you, if such was your conclusion, we have caused the Personifications of
the Great Luminary of Heaven, under the names by which he was known to
the most ancient nations, to proclaim the old primitive truths that were
known to the Fathers of our race, before men came to worship the visible
manifestations of the Supreme Power and Magnificence and the Supposed
Attributes of the Universal Deity in the Elements and in the glittering
armies that Night regularly marshals and arrays upon the blue field of
the firmament.

We ask now your attention to a still further development of these
truths, after we shall have added something to what we have already said
in regard to the Chief Luminary of Heaven, in explanation of the names
and characteristics of the several imaginary Deities that represented
him among the ancient races of men.

ATHOM or ATHOM-RE, was the Chief and Oldest Supreme God of Upper Egypt,
worshipped at Thebes; the same as the OM or AUM of the Hindūs, whose
name was unpronounceable, and who, like the BREHM of the latter People,
was "The Being that was, and is, and is to come; the Great God, the
Great Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent One, the Greatest in the
Universe, the Lord;" whose emblem was a perfect sphere, showing that He
was first, last, midst, and without end; superior to all Nature-Gods,
and all personifications of Powers, Elements, and Luminaries; symbolized
by Light, the Principle of Life.

AMUN was the Nature-God, or Spirit of Nature, called by that name or
AMUN-RE, and worshipped at Memphis in Lower Egypt, and in Libya, as well
as in Upper Egypt. He was the Libyan Jupiter, and represented the
intelligent and organizing force that develops itself in Nature, when
the intellectual types or forms of bodies are revealed to the senses in
the world's order, by their union with matter, whereby the generation
of bodies is effected. He was the same with Kneph, from whose mouth
issued the Orphic egg out of which came the Universe.

DIONUSOS was the Nature-God of the Greeks, as AMUN was of the Egyptians.
In the popular legend, Dionusos, as well as Hercules, was a Theban Hero,
born of a mortal mother. Both were sons of Zeus, both persecuted by
Heré. But in Hercules the God is subordinate to the Hero; while
Dionusos, even in poetry, retains his divine character, and is identical
with Iacchus, the presiding genius of the Mysteries. Personification of
the Sun in Taurus, as his ox-hoofs showed, he delivered earth from the
harsh dominion of Winter, conducted the mighty chorus of the Stars, and
the celestial revolution of the year, changed with the seasons, and
underwent their periodical decay. He was the Sun as invoked by the
Eleans, [Greek: Πυριγενης], ushered into the world amidst lightning and
thunder, the Mighty Hunter of the Zodiac, Zagreus the Golden or
ruddy-faced. The Mysteries taught the doctrine of Divine Unity; and that
Power whose Oneness is a seeming mystery, but really a truism, was
Dionusos, the God of Nature, or of that, moisture, which is the life of
Nature, who prepares in darkness, in Hades or Iasion, the return of life
and vegetation, or is himself the light and change evolving their
varieties. In the Egean Islands he was Butes, Dardanus, Himeros or
Imbros; in Crete he appears as Iasius or even Zeus, whose orgiastic
worship, remaining unveiled by the usual forms of mystery, betrayed to
profane curiosity the symbols which, if irreverently contemplated, were
sure to be misunderstood.

He was the same with the dismembered Zagreus, the son of Persephone, an
Ancient Subterranean Dionusos, the horned progeny of Zeus in the
Constellation of the Serpent, entrusted by his father with the
thunderbolt, and encircled with the protecting dance of Curetes. Through
the envious artifices of Heré, the Titans eluded the vigilance of his
guardians and tore him to pieces; but Pallas restored the still
palpitating heart to his father, who commanded Apollo to bury the
dismembered remains upon Parnassus.

Dionusos, as well as Apollo, was leader of the Muses; the tomb of one
accompanied the worship of the other; they were the same, yet different,
contrasted, yet only as filling separate parts in the same drama; and
the mystic and heroic personifications, the God of Nature and of Art,
seem, at some remote period, to have proceeded from a common source.
Their separation was one of form rather than of substance: and from the
time when Hercules obtained initiation from Triptolemus, or Pythagoras
received Orphic tenets, the two conceptions were tending to re-combine.
It was said that Dionusos or Poseidon had preceded Apollo in the
Oracular office; and Dionusos continued to be esteemed in Greek Theology
as Healer and Saviour, Author of Life and Immortality. The dispersed
Pythagoreans, "Sons of Apollo," immediately betook themselves to the
Orphic Service of Dionusos, and there are indications that there was
always something Dionysiac in the worship of Apollo.

Dionusos is the Sun, that liberator of the elements; and his spiritual
meditation was suggested by the same imagery which made the Zodiac the
supposed path of the Spirits in their descent and their return. His
second birth, as offspring of the highest, is a type of the spiritual
regeneration of man. He, as well as Apollo, was precentor of the Muses
and source of inspiration. His rule prescribed no unnatural
mortification: its yoke was easy, and its mirthful choruses, combining
the gay with the severe, did but commemorate that golden age when earth
enjoyed eternal spring, and when fountains of honey, milk, and wine
burst forth out of its bosom at the touch of the thyrsus. He is the
"Liberator." Like Osiris, he frees the soul, and guides it in its
migrations beyond the grave, preserving it from the risk of again
falling under the slavery of matter or of some inferior animal form. All
soul is part of the Universal Soul, whose totality is Dionusos; and he
leads back the vagrant spirit to its home, and accompanies it through
the purifying processes, both real and symbolical, of its earthly
transit. He died and descended to the Shades; and his suffering was the
great secret of the Mysteries, as death is the grand mystery of
existence. He is the immortal suitor of Psyche (the Soul), the Divine
influence which physically called the world into being, and which,
awakening the soul from its Stygian trance, restores it from earth to
Heaven.

Of HERMES, the Mercury of the Greeks, the Thoth of the Egyptians, and
the Taaut of the Phœnicians, we have heretofore spoken sufficiently at
length. He was the inventor of letters and of Oratory, the winged
messenger of the Gods, bearing the Caduceus wreathed with serpents; and
in our Council he is represented by the ORATOR.

The _Hindūs_ called the Sun SURYA; the _Persians_, MITHRAS; the
_Egyptians_, OSIRIS; the _Assyrians_ and _Chaldæans_, BEL; the
_Scythians_ and _Etruscans_ and the ancient _Pelasgi_, ARKALEUS or
HERCULES; the _Phœnicians_, ADONAI or ADON; and the _Scandinavians_,
ODIN.

From the name SURYA, given by the Hindūs to the Sun, the Sect who paid
him particular adoration were called _Souras_. Their painters describe
his car as drawn by seven green horses. In the Temple of Visweswara, at
Benares, there is an ancient piece of sculpture, well executed in stone,
representing him sitting in a car drawn by a horse with twelve heads.
His charioteer, by whom he is preceded, is ARUN [from [Hebrew: אןך], AUR
the _Crepusculum?_], or the Dawn; and among his many titles are twelve
that denote his distinct powers in each of the twelve months. Those
powers are called Adityas, each of whom has a particular name. Surya is
supposed frequently to have descended upon earth, in a human shape, and
to have left a race on earth, equally renowned in Indian story with the
Heliades of Greece. He is often styled King of the Stars and Planets,
and thus reminds us of the Adon-Tsbauth (Lord of the Starry Hosts) of
the Hebrew writings.

MITHRAS was the Sun-God of the Persians; and was fabled to have been
born in a grotto or cave, at the Winter Solstice. His feasts were
celebrated at that period, at the moment when the sun commenced to
return Northward, and to increase the length of the days. This was the
great Feast of the Magian religion. The Roman Calendar, published in the
time of Constantine, at which period his worship began to gain ground in
the Occident, fixed his feast-day on the 25th of December. His statues
and images were inscribed, _Deo-Soli invicto Mithrœ_--to the invincible
Sun-God Mithras. _Nomen invictum Sol Mithra ... Soli Omnipotenti
Mithrœ_. To him, gold, incense, and myrrh were consecrated. "Thee," says
Martianus Capella, in his hymn to the Sun, "the dwellers on the Nile
adore as Serapis, and Memphis worships as Osiris; in the sacred rites of
Persia thou art Mithras, in Phrygia, Atys, and Libya bows down to thee
as Ammon, and Phœnician Byblos as Adonis; and thus the whole world
adores thee under different names."

OSIRIS was the son of Helios (Phra), the "divine offspring congenerate
with the dawn," and at the same time an incarnation of Kneph or
Agathodæmon, the Good Spirit, including all his possible manifestations,
either physical or moral. He represented in a familiar form the
beneficent aspect of all higher emanations and in him was developed the
conception of a Being purely good, so that it became necessary to set up
another power as his adversary called Seth, Babys or Typhon, to account
for the injurious influences of Nature.

With the phenomena of agriculture, supposed to be the invention of
Osiris, the Egyptians connected the highest truths of their religion.
The soul of man was as the seed hidden in the ground, and the mortal
framework, similarly consigned to its dark resting-place, awaited its
restoration to life's unfailing source. Osiris was not only benefactor
of the living; he was also Hades, Serapis, and Rhadamanthus, the monarch
of the dead. Death, therefore, in Egyptian opinion, was only another
name for _renovation_, since its God is the same power who incessantly
renews vitality in Nature. Every corpse duly embalmed was called
"Osiris," and in the grave was supposed to be united, or at least
brought into approximation, to the Divinity. For when God became
incarnate for man's benefit, it was implied that, in analogy with His
assumed character, He should submit to _all_ the conditions of visible
existence. In death, as in life, Isis and Osiris were patterns and
precursors of mankind; their sepulchres stood within the temples of the
Superior Gods; yet though their remains might be entombed at Memphis or
Abydus, their divinity was unimpeached, and they either shone as
luminaries in the heavens, or in the unseen world presided over the
futurity of the disembodied spirits whom death had brought nearer to
them.

The notion of a dying God, so frequent in Oriental legend, and of which
we have already said much in former Degrees, was the natural inference
from a literal interpretation of nature-worship; since nature, which in
the vicissitudes of the seasons seems to undergo a dissolution, was to
the earliest religionists the express image of the Deity, and at a
remote period one and the same with the "varied God," whose attributes
were seen not only in its vitality, but in its changes. The unseen Mover
of the Universe was rashly identified with its obvious fluctuations. The
speculative Deity suggested by the drama of nature, was worshipped with
imitative and sympathetic rites. A period of mourning about the Autumnal
Equinox, and of joy at the return of Spring, was almost universal.
Phrygians and Paphlagonians, Bœotians, and even Athenians, were all more
or less attached to such observances; the Syrian damsels sat weeping for
Thammuz or Adoni, mortally wounded by the tooth of Winter, symbolized
by the boar, its very general emblem: and these rites, and those of Atys
and Osiris, were evidently suggested by the arrest of vegetation, when
the Sun, descending from his altitude, seems deprived of his generating
power.

Osiris is a being analogous to the Syrian ADONI; and the fable of his
history, which we need not here repeat, is a narrative form of the
popular religion of Egypt, of which the Sun is the Hero, and the
agricultural calendar the moral. The moist valley of the Nile, owing its
fertility to the annual inundation, appeared, in contrast with the
surrounding desert, like life in the midst of death. The inundation was
in evident dependence on the Sun, and Egypt, environed with arid
deserts, like a heart within a burning censer, was the female power,
dependent on the influences personified in its God. Typhon his brother,
the type of darkness, drought, and sterility, threw his body into the
Nile; and thus Osiris, the "good," the "Saviour," perished, in the 28th
year of his life or reign, and on the 17th day of the month Athor, or
the 13th of November. He is also made to die during the heats of the
early Summer, when, from March to July, the earth was parched with
intolerable heat, vegetation was scorched, and the languid Nile
exhausted. From that death he rises when the Solstitial Sun brings the
inundation, and Egypt is filled with mirth and acclamation anticipatory
of the second harvest. From his Wintry death he rises with the early
flowers of Spring, and then the joyful festival of Osiris found was
celebrated.

So the pride of Jemsheed, one of the Persian Sun-heroes, or the solar
year personified, was abruptly cut off by Zohak, the tyrant of the West.
He was sawn asunder by a fish-bone, and immediately the brightness of
Iran changed to gloom. Ganymede and Adonis, like Osiris, were hurried
off in all their strength and beauty; the premature death of Linus, the
burthen of the ancient lament of Greece, was like that of the Persian
Siamek, the Bithynian Hylas, and the Egyptian Maneros, Son of Menes or
the Eternal. The elegy called Maneros was sung at Egyptian banquets, and
an effigy enclosed within a diminutive Sarcophagus was handed round to
remind the guests of their brief tenure of existence. The beautiful
Memnon, also, perished in his prime; and Enoch, whose early death was
lamented at Iconium, lived 365 years, the number of days of the solar
year; a brief space when compared with the longevity of his patriarchal
kindred.

The story of Osiris is reflected in those of Orpheus and Dionusos
Zagreus, and perhaps in the legends of Absyrtus and Pelias, of Æson,
Thyestes, Melicertes, Itys, and Pelops. Io is the disconsolate Isis or
Niobe: and Rhea mourns her dismembered Lord Hyperion, and the death of
her son Helios, drowned in the Eridanus; and if Apollo and Dionusos are
immortal, they had died under other names, as Orpheus, Linus, or
Hyacinthus. The sepulchre of Zeus was shown in Crete. Hippolytus was
associated in divine honors with Apollo, and after he had been torn to
pieces like Osiris, was restored to life by the Pæonian herbs of Diana,
and kept darkling in the secret grove of Egeria. Zeus deserted Olympus
to visit the Ethiopians; Apollo underwent servitude to Admetus; Theseus,
Peirithous, Hercules, and other heroes, descended for a time to Hades; a
dying Nature-God was exhibited in the Mysteries, the Attic women fasted,
sitting on the ground, during the Thesmophoria, and the Bœotians
lamented the descent of Cora-Proserpine to the Shades.

But the death of the Deity, as understood by the Orientals, was not
inconsistent with His immortality. The temporary decline of the Sons of
Light is but an episode in their endless continuity; and as the day and
year are more convenient subdivisions of the Infinite, so the fiery
deaths of Phaëthon or Hercules are but breaks in the same Phœnix process
of perpetual regeneration, by which the spirit of Osiris lives forever
in the succession of the Memphian Apis. Every year witnesses the revival
of Adonis; and the amber tears shed by the Heliades for the premature
death of their brother, are the golden shower full of prolific hope, in
which Zeus descends from the brazen vault of Heaven into the bosom of
the parched ground.

BAL, representative or personification of the sun, was one of the Great
Gods of Syria, Assyria, and Chaldea, and his name is found upon the
monuments of Nimroud, and frequently occurs in the Hebrew writings. He
was the Great Nature-God of Babylonia, the Power of heat, life, and
generation. His symbol was the Sun, and he was figured seated on a bull.
All the accessories of his great temple at Babylon, described by
Herodotus, are repeated with singular fidelity, but on a smaller scale,
in the Hebrew tabernacle and temple. The golden statue alone is wanted
to complete the resemblance. The word _Bal_ or _Baal_, like the word
_Adon_, signifies Lord and Master. He was also the Supreme Deity of the
Moabites, Amonites, and Carthaginians, and of the Sabeans in general;
the Gauls worshipped the Sun under the name of Belin or Belinus: and
Bela is found among the Celtic Deities upon the ancient monuments.

The Northern ancestors of the Greeks maintained with hardier habits a
more manly style of religious symbolism than the effeminate enthusiasts
of the South, and had embodied in their _Perseus_, HERCULES and MITHRAS,
the consummation of the qualities they esteemed and exercised.

Almost every nation will be found to have had a mythical being, whose
strength or weakness, virtues or defects, more or less nearly describe
the Sun's career through the seasons. There was a Celtic, a Teutonic, a
Scythian, an Etruscan, a Lydian Hercules, all whose legends became
tributary to those of the Greek hero. The name of Hercules was found by
Herodotus to have been long familiar in Egypt and the East, and to have
originally belonged to a much higher personage than the comparatively
modern hero known in Greece as the Son of Alcmena. The temple of the
Hercules of Tyre was reported to have been built 2300 years before the
time of Herodotus; and Hercules, whose Greek name has been sometimes
supposed to be of Phœnician origin, in the sense of Circuitor, _i.e._
"rover" and "perambulator" of earth, as well as "Hyperion" of the sky,
was the patron and model of those famous navigators who spread his
altars from coast to coast through the Mediterranean, to the extremities
of the West, where "ARKALEUS" built the City of Gades, and where a
perpetual fire burned in his service. He was the lineal descendant of
Perseus, the luminous child of darkness, conceived within a subterranean
vault of brass; and he a representation of the Persian Mithras, rearing
his emblematic lions above the gates of Mycenæ, and bringing the sword
of Jemsheed to battle against the Gorgons of the West. Mithras is
similarly described in the Zend-Avesta as the "mighty hero, the rapid
runner, whose piercing eye embraces all, whose arm bears the club for
the destruction of the Darood."

Hercules Ingeniculus, who, bending on one knee, uplifts his club and
tramples on the Serpent's head, was, like Prometheus and Tantalus, one
of the varying aspects of the struggling and declining Sun. The
victories of Hercules are but exhibitions of Solar power which have
ever to be repeated. It was in the far North, among the Hyperboreans,
that, divested of his Lion's skin he lay down to sleep, and for a time
lost the horses of his chariot. Henceforth that Northern region of
gloom, called the "place of the death and revival of Adonis," that
Caucasus whose summit was so lofty, that, like the Indian Meru, it
seemed to be both the goal and commencement of the Sun's career, became
to Greek imaginations the final bourne of all things, the abode of
Winter and desolation, the pinnacle of the arch connecting the upper and
lower world, and consequently the appropriate place for the banishment
of Prometheus. The daughters of Israel, weeping for Thammuz, mentioned
by Ezekiel, sat looking to the North, and waiting for his return from
that region. It was while Cybele with the Sun-God was absent among the
Hyperboreans, that Phrygia, abandoned by her, suffered the horrors of
famine. Delos and Delphi awaited the return of Apollo from the
Hyperboreans, and Hercules brought thence to Olympia the olive. To all
Masons, the North has immemorially been the place of darkness; and of
the great lights of the Lodge, none is in the North.

Mithras, the rock-born hero [Greek: Πετρογενης], heralded the Sun's
return in Spring, as Prometheus, chained in his cavern, betokened the
continuance of Winter. The Persian beacon on the mountain-top
represented the Rock-born Divinity enshrined in his worthiest temple;
and the funeral conflagration of Hercules was the sun dying in glory
behind the Western hills. But though the transitory manifestation
suffers or dies, the abiding and eternal power liberates and saves. It
was an essential attribute of a Titan, that he should arise again after
his fall; for the revival of Nature is as certain as its decline, and
its alternations are subject to the appointment of a power which
controls them both.

"God", says Maximus Tyrius, "did not spare His own Son [Hercules], or
exempt Him from the calamities incidental to humanity". The Theban
progeny of Jove had his share of pain and trial. By vanquishing earthly
difficulties he proved his affinity with Heaven. His life was a
continuous struggle. He fainted before Typhon in the desert; and in the
commencement of the Autumnal season (cum longæ redit hora noctis),
descended under the guidance of Minerva to Hades. He died; but first
applied for initiation to Eumolpus, in order to foreshadow that state of
religious preparation which should precede the momentous change. Even in
Hades he rescued Theseus and removed the stone of Ascalaphus,
reanimated the bloodless spirits, and dragged into the light of day the
monster Cerberus, justly reputed invincible because an emblem of Time
itself; he burst the chains of the grave (for Busiris is the grave
personified), and triumphant at the close as in the dawn of his career,
was received after his labors into the repose of the heavenly mansions,
living forever with Zeus in the arms of Eternal Youth.

ODIN is said to have borne twelve names among the old Germans, and to
have had 114 names besides. He was the Apollo of the Scandinavians, and
is represented in the Voluspa as destined to slay the monstrous snake.
Then the Sun will be extinguished, the earth be dissolved in the ocean,
the stars lose their brightness, and all Nature be destroyed, in order
that it may be renewed again. From the bosom of the waters a new world
will emerge clad in verdure; harvests will be seen to ripen where no
seed was sown, and evil will disappear.

The free fancy of the ancients, which wove the web of their myths and
legends, was consecrated by faith. It had not, like the modern mind, set
apart a petty sanctuary of borrowed beliefs, beyond which all the rest
was common and unclean. Imagination, reason, and religion circled round
the same symbol; and in all their symbols there was serious meaning, if
we could but find it out. They did not devise fictions in the same vapid
spirit in which we, cramped by conventionalities, read them. In
endeavoring to interpret creations of fancy, fancy as well as reason
must guide: and much of modern controversy arises out of heavy
misapprehensions of ancient symbolism.

To those ancient peoples, this earth was the centre of the Universe. To
them there were no other worlds, peopled with living beings, to divide
the care and attention of the Deity. To them the World was a great
plain, of unknown, perhaps inconceivable limits, and the Sun, the Moon,
and the Stars journeyed above it, to give them light. The worship of the
Sun became the basis of all the religions of antiquity. To them light
and heat were mysteries; as indeed they still are to us. As the Sun
caused the day, and his absence the night; as, when he journeyed
Northward, Spring and Summer followed him; and when he again turned to
the South, Autumn and inclement Winter, and cold and long dark nights
ruled the earth; ... as his influence produced the leaves and flowers,
and ripened the harvests, and brought regular inundation, he
necessarily became to them the most interesting object of the material
Universe. To them he was the innate fire of bodies, the fire of nature.
Author of Life, heat, and ignition, he was to them the efficient cause
of all generation, for without him there was no movement, no existence,
no form. He was to them immense, indivisible, imperishable, and
everywhere present. It was their need of light, and of his creative
energy, that was felt by all men; and nothing was more fearful to them
than his absence. His beneficent influences caused his identification
with the Principle of Good; and the BRAHMA of the Hindus, the MITHRAS of
the Persians, and ATHOM, AMUN, PHTHA, and OSIRIS, of the Egyptians, the
BEL of the Chaldeans, the ADONAI of the Phœnicians, the ADONIS and
APOLLO of the Greeks became but personifications of the Sun, the
regenerating Principle, image of that fecundity which perpetuates and
rejuvenates the world's existence.

So too the struggle between the Good and Evil Principles was
personified, as was that between life and death, destruction and
re-creation; in allegories and fables which poetically represented the
apparent course of the Sun; who, descending toward the Southern
Hemisphere, was figuratively said to be conquered and put to death by
darkness, or the genius of Evil; but, returning again toward the
Northern Hemisphere, he seemed to be victorious, and to arise from the
tomb. This death and resurrection were also figurative of the succession
of day and night, of death, which is a necessity of life, and of life
which is born of death; and everywhere the ancients still saw the combat
between the two Principles that ruled the world. Everywhere this contest
was embodied in allegories and fictitious histories: into which were
ingeniously woven all the astronomical phenomena that accompanied,
preceded, or followed the different movements of the Sun, and the
changes of Seasons, the approach or withdrawal of inundation. And thus
grew into stature and strange proportions the histories of the contests
between Typhon and Osiris, Hercules and Juno, the Titans and Jupiter,
Ormuzd and Ahriman, the rebellious Angels and the Deity, the Evil Genii
and the Good; and the other like fables, found not only in Asia, but in
the North of Europe, and even among the Mexicans and Peruvians of the
New World; carried thither, in all probability, by those Phœnician
voyagers who bore thither civilization and the arts. The Scythians
lamented the death of Acmon, the Persians that of Zohak conquered by
Pheridoun, the Hindūs that of Soura-Parama slain by Soupra-Muni, as the
Scandinavians did that of Balder, torn to pieces by the blind Hother.

The primitive idea of infinite space existed in the first men, as it
exists in us. It and the idea of infinite time are the first two innate
ideas. Man cannot conceive how thing can be added to thing, or event
follow event, forever. The idea will ever return, that no matter how
long bulk is added to bulk, there must be, still beyond, an empty void
_without_ limit; in which is _nothing_. In the same way the idea of time
without beginning or end forces itself on him. _Time_, without events,
is also a _void_, and _nothing_.

In that empty void space the primitive men knew there was no light nor
warmth. They _felt_, what we know scientifically, that there must be a
thick darkness there, and an intensity of cold of which we have no
conception. Into that void they thought the Sun, the Planets, and the
Stars went down when they set under the Western Horizon. Darkness was to
them an enemy, a harm, a vague dread and terror. It was the very
embodiment of the evil principle; and out of it they said that he was
formed. As the Sun bent Southward toward that void, they shuddered with
dread: and when, at the Winter Solstice, he again commenced his
Northward march, they rejoiced and feasted; as they did at the Summer
Solstice, when most he appeared to smile upon them in his pride of
place. These days have been celebrated by all civilized nations ever
since. The Christian has made them feast-days of the church, and
appropriated them to the two Saints John; and Masonry has done the same.

We, to whom the vast Universe has become but a great _machine_, not
instinct with a great SOUL, but a _clockwork_ of proportions
unimaginable, but still infinitely less than infinite; and part at least
of which we with our orreries can imitate; we, who have measured the
distances and dimensions, and learned the specific gravity and
determined the orbits of the moon and the planets; we, who know the
distance to the sun, and his size; have measured the orbits of the
flashing comets, and the distances of the fixed stars; and know the
latter to be suns like our sun, each with his retinue of worlds, and all
governed by the same unerring, mechanical laws and outwardly imposed
forces, centripetal and centrifugal; we, who with our telescopes have
separated the galaxy and the nebulae into other stars and groups of
stars; discovered new planets, by first discovering their disturbing
forces upon those already known; and learned that they all, Jupiter,
Venus, and the fiery Mars, and Saturn and the others, as well as the
bright, mild, and ever-changing Moon, are mere dark, dull opaque clods
like our earth, and not living orbs of brilliant fire and heavenly
light; we, who have counted the mountains and chasms in the moon, with
glasses that could distinctly reveal to us the temple of Solomon, if it
stood there in its old original glory; we, who no longer imagine that
the stars control our destinies, and who can calculate the eclipses of
the sun and moon, backward and forward, for ten thousand years; we, with
our vastly increased conceptions of the powers of the Grand Architect of
the Universe, but our wholly material and mechanical view of that
Universe itself; we cannot, even in the remotest degree, _feel_, though
we may partially and imperfectly _imagine_, how those great, primitive,
simple-hearted children of Nature felt in regard to the Starry Hosts,
there upon the slopes of the Himalayas, on the Chaldean plains, in the
Persian and Median deserts, and upon the banks of that great, strange
River, the Nile. To them the Universe was _alive_--instinct with forces
and powers, mysterious and beyond their comprehension. To them it was no
machine, no great system of clockwork; but a great live creature, an
army of creatures, in sympathy with or inimical to man. To them, all was
a mystery and a miracle, and the stars flashing overhead spoke to their
hearts almost in an audible language. Jupiter, with his kingly
splendors, was the Emperor of the starry legions. Venus looked lovingly
on the earth and blessed it; Mars, with his crimson fires, threatened
war and misfortune; and Saturn, cold and grave, chilled and repelled
them. The ever-changing Moon, faithful companion of the Sun, was a
constant miracle and wonder; the Sun himself the visible emblem of the
creative and generative power. To them the earth was a great plain, over
which the sun, the moon, and the planets revolved, its servants, framed
to give it light. Of the stars, some were beneficent existences that
brought with them Spring-time and fruits and flowers,--some, faithful
sentinels, advising them of coming inundation, of the season of storm
and of deadly winds; some heralds of evil, which, steadily foretelling,
they seemed to cause. To them the eclipses were portents of evil, and
their causes hidden in mystery, and supernatural. The regular returns of
the stars, the comings of Arcturus, Orion, Sirius, the Pleiades, and
Aldebaran, and the journeyings of the Sun, were voluntary and not
mechanical to them. What wonder that astronomy became to them the most
important of sciences; that those who learned it became rulers; and that
vast edifices, the Pyramids, the tower or temple of Bel, and other like
erections everywhere in the East, were builded for astronomical
purposes?--and what wonder that, in their great child-like simplicity,
they worshipped Light, the Sun, the Planets, and the Stars, and
personified them, and eagerly believed in the histories invented for
them; in that age when the capacity for belief was infinite; as indeed,
if we but reflect, it still is and ever will be?

If we adhered to the literally historic sense, antiquity would be a mere
inexplicable, hideous chaos, and all the Sages deranged: and so it would
be with Masonry and those who instituted it. But when these allegories
are explained, they cease to be absurd fables, or facts purely local;
and become lessons of wisdom for entire humanity. No one can doubt, who
studies them, that they all came from a common source.

And he greatly errs who imagines that, because the mythological legends
and fables of antiquity are referable to and have their foundation in
the phenomena of the Heavens, and all the Heathen Gods are but mere
names given to the Sun, the Stars, the Planets, the Zodiacal Signs, the
Elements, the Powers of Nature, and Universal Nature herself, therefore
the first men worshipped the Stars, and whatever things, animate and
inanimate, seemed to them to possess and exercise a power or influence,
evident or imagined, over human fortunes and human destiny.

For ever, in all the nations, ascending to the remotest antiquity to
which the light of History or the glimmerings of tradition reach, we
find, seated above all the gods which represent the luminaries and the
elements, and those which personify the innate Powers of universal
nature, a still higher Deity, silent, undefined, incomprehensible, the
Supreme, one God, from Whom all the rest flow or emanate, or by Him are
created. Above the Time-God Horus, the Moon-Goddess or Earth-Goddess
Isis, and the Sun-God Osiris, of the Egyptians, was Amun, the
Nature-God; and above him, again, the Infinite, Incomprehensible Deity,
ATHOM. BREHM, the silent, self-contemplative, one original God, was the
Source, to the Hindūs, of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. Above Zeus, or
before him, were Kronos and Ouranos. Over the Alohayim was the great
Nature-God AL, and still beyond him, Abstract Existence, IHUH--He that
IS, WAS, and SHALL BE. Above all the Persian Deities was the Unlimited
Time, ZERUANE-AKHERENE; and over Odin and Thor was the Great
Scandinavian Deity ALFADIR.

The worship of Universal Nature as a God was too near akin to the
worship of a Universal Soul, to have been the instinctive creed of any
savage people or rude race of men. To imagine all nature with all its
apparently independent parts, as forming one consistent whole, and as
itself a unit, required an amount of experience and a faculty of
generalization not possessed by the rude uncivilized mind, and is but a
step below the idea of a universal Soul.

In the beginning man had the WORD; and that WORD was from God; and out
of the living POWER communicated to man in and by that WORD, came THE
LIGHT of His Existence.

God made man in His own likeness. When, by a long succession of
geological changes, He had prepared the earth to be his habitation, He
created him, and placed him in that part of Asia which all the old
nations agreed in calling the cradle of the human race, and whence
afterward the stream of human life flowed forth to India, China, Egypt,
Persia, Arabia, and Phœnicia. HE communicated to him a knowledge of the
nature of his Creator, and of the pure, primitive, undefiled religion.
The peculiar and distinctive excellence and real essence of the
primitive man, and his true nature and destiny, consisted in his
likeness to God. HE stamped His own image upon man's soul. That image
has been, in the breast of every individual man and of mankind in
general, greatly altered, impaired, and defaced; but its old,
half-obliterated characters are still to be found on all the pages of
primitive history; and the impress, not entirely effaced, every
reflecting mind may discover in its own interior.

Of the original revelation to mankind, of the primitive WORD of Divine
TRUTH, we find clear indications and scattered traces in the sacred
traditions of all the primitive Nations; traces which when separately
examined, appear like the broken remnants, the mysterious and
hieroglyphic characters, of a mighty edifice that has been destroyed;
and its fragments, like those of the old Temples and Palaces of Nimroud,
wrought incongruously into edifices many centuries younger. And,
although amid the ever-growing degeneracy of mankind, this primeval word
of revelation was falsified by the admixture of various errors, and
overlaid and obscured by numberless and manifold fictions, inextricably
confused, and disfigured almost beyond the power of recognition, still a
profound inquiry will discover in heathenism many luminous vestiges of
primitive Truth.

For the old Heathenism had everywhere a foundation in Truth; and if we
could separate that pure intuition into nature and into the simple
symbols of nature, that constituted the basis of all Heathenism, from
the alloy of error and the additions of fiction, those first
hieroglyphic traits of the instinctive science of the first men, would
be found to agree with truth and a true knowledge of nature, and to
afford an image of a free, pure, comprehensive, and finished philosophy
of life.

The struggle, thenceforward to be eternal, between the Divine will and
the natural will in the souls of men, commenced immediately after the
creation. Cain slew his brother Abel, and went forth to people parts of
the earth with an impious race, forgetters and defiers of the true God.
The other Descendants of the Common Father of the race intermarried with
the daughters of Cain's Descendants: and all nations preserved the
remembrance of that division of the human family into the righteous and
impious, in their distorted legends of the wars between the Gods, and
the Giants and Titans. When, afterward, another similar division
occurred, the Descendants of Seth alone preserved the true primitive
religion and science, and transmitted them to posterity in the ancient
symbolical character, on monuments of stone: and many nations preserved
in their legendary traditions the memory of the columns of Enoch and
Seth.

Then the world declined from its original happy condition and fortunate
estate, into idolatry and barbarism: but all nations retained the memory
of that old estate; and the poets, in those early days the only
historians, commemorated the succession of the ages of gold, silver,
brass, and iron.

In the lapse of those ages, the sacred tradition followed various
courses among each of the most ancient nations; and from its original
source, as from a common centre, its various streams flowed downward;
some diffusing through favored regions of the world fertility and life;
but others soon losing themselves, and being dried up in the sterile
sands of human error.

After the internal and Divine WORD originally communicated by God to
man, had become obscured; after man's connection with his Creator had
been broken, even outward language necessarily fell into disorder and
confusion. The simple and Divine Truth was overlaid with various and
sensual fictions, buried under illusive symbols, and at last perverted
into horrible phantoms.

For in the progress of idolatry it needs came to pass, that what was
originally revered as the symbol of a higher principle, became gradually
confounded or identified with the object itself, and was worshipped;
until this error led to a more degraded form of idolatry. The early
nations received much from the primeval source of sacred tradition; but
that haughty pride which seems an inherent part of human nature led each
to represent these fragmentary relics of original truth as a possession
peculiar to themselves; thus exaggerating their value, and their own
importance, as peculiar favorites of the Deity, who had chosen them as
the favored people to whom to commit these truths. To make these
fragments, as far as possible, their private property, they reproduced
them under peculiar forms, wrapped them up in symbols, concealed them in
allegories, and invented fables to account for their own special
possession of them. So that, instead of preserving in their primitive
simplicity and purity these blessings of original revelation, they
overlaid them with poetical ornament; and the whole wears a fabulous
aspect, until by close and severe examination we discover the truth
which the apparent fable contains.

These being the conflicting elements in the breast of man; the old
inheritance or original dowry of truth, imparted to him by God in the
primitive revelation; and error, or the foundation for error, in his
degraded sense and spirit now turned from God to nature, false faiths
easily sprung up and grew rank and luxuriant, when the Divine Truth was
no longer guarded with jealous care, nor preserved in its pristine
purity. This soon happened among most Eastern nations, and especially
the Indians, the Chaldeans, the Arabians, the Persians, and the
Egyptians; with whom imagination, and a very deep but still sensual
feeling for nature, were very predominant. The Northern firmament,
visible to their eyes, possesses by far the largest and most brilliant
constellations; and they were more alive to the impressions made by such
objects, than are the men of the present day.

With the Chinese, a patriarchal, simple, and secluded people, idolatry
long made but little progress. They invented writing within three or
four generations after the flood; and they long preserved the memory of
much of the primitive revelation; less overlaid with fiction than those
fragments which other nations have remembered. They were among those who
stood nearest to the source of sacred tradition; and many passages in
their old writings contain remarkable vestiges of eternal truth, and of
the WORD of primitive revelation, the heritage of old thought, which
attest to us their original eminence.

But among the other early nations, a wild enthusiasm and a sensual
idolatry of nature soon superseded the simple worship of the Almighty
God, and set aside or disfigured the pure belief in the Eternal
Uncreated Spirit. The great powers and elements of nature, and the vital
principle of production and procreation through all generations; then
the celestial spirits or heavenly Host, the luminous armies of the
Stars, and the great Sun, and mysterious, ever-changing Moon (all of
which the whole ancient world regarded not as mere globes of light or
bodies of fire, but as animated living substances, potent over man's
fate and destinies); next the genii and tutelar spirits, and even the
souls of the dead, received divine worship. The animals, representing
the starry constellations, first reverenced as symbols merely, came to
be worshipped as gods; the heavens, earth, and the operations of nature
were personified; and fictitious personages invented to account for the
introduction of science and arts, and the fragments of the old religious
truths; and the good and bad principles personified, became also objects
of worship; while, through all, still shone the silver threads of the
old primitive revelation.

Increasing familiarity with early oriental records seems more and more
to confirm the probability that they all originally emanated from one
source. The eastern and southern slopes of the Paropismus, or
Hindukusch, appear to have been inhabited by kindred Iranian races,
similar in habits, language, and religion. The earliest Indian and
Persian Deities are for the most part symbols of celestial light, their
agency being regarded as an eternal warfare with the powers of Winter,
storm, and darkness. The religion of both was originally a worship of
outward nature, especially the manifestations of fire and light; the
coincidences being too marked to be merely accidental. Deva, God, is
derived from the root _div_, to shine. Indra, like Ormuzd or
Ahura-Mazda, is the bright firmament; Sura or Surya, the Heavenly, a
name of the Sun, recurs in the Zend word Huare, the Sun, whence Khur and
Khorshid or Corasch. Uschas and Mitra are Medic as well as Zend Deities
and the Amschaspands or "immortal Holy Ones" of the Zend-Avesta may be
compared with the seven Rishis or Vedic Star-God, of the constellation
of the Bear. Zoroastrianism, like Buddhism, was an innovation in regard
to an older religion; and between the Parsee and Brahmin may be found
traces of disruption as well as of coincidence. The original
Nature-worship, in which were combined the conceptions both of a
Universal Presence and perpetuity of action, took different directions
of development, according to the difference between the Indian and
Persian mind.

The early shepherds of the Punjaub, then called the country of the Seven
Rivers, to whose intuitional or inspired wisdom (Veda) we owe what are
perhaps the most ancient religious effusions extant in any language,
apostrophized as living beings the physical objects of their worship.
First in this order of Deities stands Indra, the God of the "blue" or
"glittering" firmament, called Devaspiti, Father of the Devas or
Elemental Powers, who measured out the circle of the sky, and made fast
the foundations of the Earth; the ideal domain of Varouna, "the
All-encompasser," is almost equally extensive, including air, water,
night, the expanse between Heaven and Earth; Agni, who lives on the fire
of the sacrifice, on the domestic hearth, and in the lightnings of the
sky, is the great Mediator between God and Man; Uschas, or the Dawn,
leads forth the Gods in the morning to make their daily repast in the
intoxicating Soma of Nature's offertory, of which the Priest could only
compound, from simples a symbolical imitation. Then came the various
Sun-Gods, Adityas or Solar Attributes, Surya the Heavenly, Savitri the
Progenitor, Pashan the Nourisher, Bagha the Felicitous, and Mitra the
Friend.

The coming forth of the Eternal Being to the work of creation was
represented as a marriage, his first emanation being a universal mother,
supposed to have potentially existed with him from Eternity, or, in
metaphorical language, to have been "his sister and his spouse." She
became eventually promoted to be the Mother of the Indian Trinity, of
the Deity under His three Attributes, of Creation, Preservation, and
Change or Regeneration.

The most popular forms or manifestations of Vishnu the Preserver, were
his successive avataras or historic impersonations, which represented
the Deity coming forth out of the incomprehensible mystery of His
nature, and revealing Himself at those critical epochs which either in
the physical or moral world seemed to mark a new commencement of
prosperity and order. Combating the power of Evil in the various
departments of Nature, and in successive periods of time, the Divinity,
though varying in form, is ever in reality the same, whether seen in
useful agricultural or social inventions, in traditional victories over
rival creeds, or in physical changes faintly discovered through
tradition, or suggested by cosmogonical theory. As Rama, the Epic hero
armed with sword, club, and arrows, the prototype of Hercules and
Mithras, he wrestles like the Hebrew Patriarch with the Powers of
Darkness; as Chrishna-Govinda, the Divine Shepherd, he is the Messenger
of Peace, overmastering the world by music and love. Under the human
form he never ceases to be the Supreme Being. "The foolish" (he says, in
Bhagavad Ghita), "unacquainted with my Supreme Nature, despise me in
this human form, while men of great minds, enlightened by the Divine
principle within them, acknowledge me as incorruptible and before all
things, and serve me with undivided hearts." "I am not recognized by
all," he says again, "because concealed by the supernatural power which
is in me; yet to me are known all things past, present, and to come; I
existed before Vaivaswata and Menou. I am the Most High God, the Creator
of the World, the Eternal Poorooscha (Man-World or Genius of the World).
And although in my own nature I am exempt from liability to birth or
death, and am Lord of all created things, yet as often as in the world
virtue is enfeebled, and vice and injustice prevail, so often do I
become manifest and am revealed from age to age, to save the just, to
destroy the guilty, and to reassure the faltering steps of virtue. He
who acknowledgeth me as even so, doth not on quitting this mortal frame
enter into another, for he entereth into me; and many who have trusted
in me have already entered into me, being purified by the power of
wisdom. I help those who walk in my path, even as they serve me."

Brahma, the creating agent, sacrificed himself, when, by descending into
material forms, he became incorporated with his work; and his
mythological history was interwoven with that of the Universe. Thus,
although spiritually allied to the Supreme, and Lord of all creatures
(Prajapati), he shared the imperfection and corruption of an inferior
nature, and, steeped in manifold and perishable forms, might be said,
like the Greek Uranus, to be mutilated and fallen. He thus combined two
characters, formless form, immortal and mortal, being and non-being,
motion and rest. As Incarnate Intelligence, or THE WORD, he communicated
to man what had been revealed to himself by the Eternal, since he is
creation's Soul as well as Body, within which the Divine Word is written
in those living letters which it is the prerogative of the
self-conscious spirit to interpret.

The fundamental principles of the religion of the Hindūs consisted in
the belief in the existence of One Being only, of the immortality of the
soul, and of a future state of rewards and punishments. Their precepts
of morality inculcate the practice of virtue as necessary for procuring
happiness even in this transient life; and their religious doctrines
make their felicity in a future state to depend upon it.

Besides their doctrine of the transmigration of souls, their dogmas may
be epitomized under the following heads: 1st. The existence of one God,
from Whom all things proceed, and to Whom all must return. To him they
constantly apply these expressions--The Universal and Eternal Essence;
that which has ever been and will ever continue; that which vivifies and
pervades all things; He who is everywhere present, and causes the
celestial bodies to revolve in the course He has prescribed to them. 2d.
A tripartite division of the Good Principle, for the purposes of
Creation, Preservation, and Renovation by change and death. 3d. The
necessary existence of an Evil Principle, occupied in counteracting the
benevolent purposes of the first, in their execution by the Devata or
Subordinate Genii, to whom is entrusted the control over the various
operations of nature.

And this was part of their doctrine: "One great and incomprehensible
Being has alone existed from all Eternity. Everything we behold and we
ourselves are portions of Him. The soul, mind or intellect, of gods and
men, and of all sentient creatures, are detached portions of the
Universal Soul, to which at stated periods they are destined to return.
But the mind of finite beings is impressed by one uninterrupted series
of illusions, which they consider as real, until again united to the
great fountain of truth. Of these illusions, the first and most
essential is individuality. By its influence, when detached from its
source, the soul becomes ignorant of its own nature, origin, and
destiny. It considers itself as a separate existence, and no longer a
spark of the Divinity, a link of one immeasurable chain, an infinitely
small but indispensable portion of one great whole."

Their love of imagery caused them to personify what they conceived to be
some of the attributes of God, perhaps in order to present things in a
way better adapted to the comprehensions of the vulgar, than the
abstruse idea of an indescribable, invisible God; and hence the
invention of a Brahma, a Vishnu, and a Siva or Iswara. These were
represented under various forms; but no emblem or visible sign of Brihm
or Brehm, the Omnipotent, is to be found. They considered the great
mystery of the existence of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, as beyond
human comprehension. Every creature endowed with the faculty of
thinking, they held, must be conscious of the existence of a God, a
first cause; but the attempt to explain the nature of that Being, or in
any way to assimilate it with our own, they considered not only a proof
of folly, but of extreme impiety.

The following extracts from their books will serve to show what were the
real tenets of their creed:

"By one Supreme Ruler is this Universe pervaded; even every world in the
whole circle of nature.... There is one Supreme Spirit, which nothing
can shake, more swift than the thought of man. That Supreme Spirit moves
at pleasure, but in itself is immovable; it is distant from us, yet near
us; it pervades this whole system of worlds; yet it is infinitely beyond
it. That man who considers all beings as existing even in the Supreme
Spirit, and the Supreme Spirit as pervading all beings, henceforth views
no creature with contempt.... All spiritual beings are the same in kind
with the Supreme Spirit.... The pure enlightened soul assumes a luminous
form, with no gross body, with no perforation, with no veins or tendons,
unblemished, untainted by sin; itself being a ray from the Infinite
Spirit, which knows the Past and the Future, which pervades all, which
existed with no cause but itself, which created all things as they are,
in ages most remote. That all-pervading Spirit which gives light to the
visible Sun, even the same in _kind_ am I, though infinitely distant in
_degree_. Let my soul return to the immortal Spirit of God, and then let
my body, which ends in ashes, return to dust! O Spirit, who pervadest
fire, lead us in a straight path to the riches of beatitude. Thou, O
God, possessest all the treasures of knowledge! Remove each foul taint
from our souls!

"From what root springs mortal man, when felled by the hand of death?
Who can make him spring again to birth? God, who is perfect wisdom,
perfect happiness. He is the final refuge of the man who has liberally
bestowed his wealth, who has been firm in virtue, who knows and adores
that Great One.... Let us adore the supremacy of that Divine Sun, the
Godhead who illuminates all, who re-creates all, from whom all proceed,
to whom all must return, whom we invoke to direct our understandings
aright, in our progress toward his holy seat.... What the Sun and Light
are to this visible world, such is truth to the intellectual and visible
Universe.... Our souls acquire certain knowledge, by meditating on the
light of Truth, which emanates from the Being of Beings.... That Being,
without eyes sees, without ears hears all; he knows whatever can be
known, but there is none who knows him; him the wise call the Great,
Supreme, Pervading Spirit.... Perfect Truth, Perfect Happiness, without
equal, immortal; absolute unity, whom neither speech can describe, nor
mind comprehend: all-pervading, all-transcending, delighted with his own
boundless intelligence, nor limited by space or time; without feet,
running swiftly; without hands, grasping all worlds; without eyes,
all-surveying; without ears, all-hearing; without an intelligent guide,
understanding all; without cause, the first of all causes; all-ruling,
all-powerful, the Creator, Preserver, Transformer of all things: such is
the Great One; this the Vedas declare.

"May that soul of mine, which mounts aloft in my waking hours as an
ethereal spark, and which, even in my slumber, has a like ascent,
soaring to a great distance, as an emanation from the Light of Lights,
be united by devout meditation with the Spirit supremely blest, and
supremely intelligent!.... May that soul of mine, which was itself the
primeval oblation placed within all creatures.... which is a ray of
perfect wisdom, which is the inextinguishable light fixed within created
bodies, without which no good act is performed.... in which as an
immortal essence may be comprised whatever has passed, is present, or
will be hereafter.... be united by devout meditation with the Spirit
supremely blest and supremely intelligent!

"The Being of Beings is the Only God, eternal and everywhere present,
Who comprises everything. There is no God but He.... The Supreme Being
is invisible, incomprehensible, immovable, without figure or shape. No
one has ever seen Him; time never comprised Him; His essence pervades
everything; all was derived from Him.

"The duty of a good man, even in the moment of his destruction, consists
not only in forgiving, but even in a desire of benefiting his destroyer;
as the sandal-tree, in the instant of its overthrow, sheds perfume on
the axe which fells it."

The Vedanta and Nyaya philosophers acknowledge a Supreme Eternal Being,
and the immortality of the soul: though, like the Greeks, they differ in
their ideas of those subjects. They speak of the Supreme Being as an
eternal essence that pervades space, and gives life or existence. Of
that universal and eternal pervading spirit, the Vedanti suppose four
modifications; but as these do not change its nature, and as it would be
erroneous to ascribe to each of them a distinct essence, so it is
equally erroneous, they say, to imagine that the various modifications
by which the All-pervading Being exists, or displays His power, are
individual existences. Creation is not considered as the instant
production of things, but only as the manifestation of that which exists
eternally in the one Universal Being. The Nyaya philosophers believe
that spirit and matter are eternal; but they do not suppose that the
world in its present form has existed from eternity, but only the
primary matter from which it sprang when operated on by the almighty
Word of God, the Intelligent Cause and Supreme Being, Who produced the
combinations or aggregations which compose the material Universe. Though
they believe that soul is an emanation from the Supreme Being, they
distinguish it from that Being, in its individual existence. Truth and
Intelligence are the eternal attributes of God, not, they say, of the
individual soul, which is susceptible both of knowledge and ignorance,
of pleasure and pain; and therefore God and it are distinct. Even when
it returns to the Eternal, and attains supreme bliss, it undoubtedly
does not cease. Though _united_ to the Supreme Being, it is not
_absorbed_ in it, but still retains the abstract nature of definite or
visible existence.

"The dissolution of the world," they say, "consists in the destruction
of the visible forms and qualities of things; but their material essence
remains, and from it new worlds are formed by the creative energy of
God; and thus the Universe is dissolved and renewed in endless
succession."

The Jainas, a sect at Mysore and elsewhere, say that the ancient
religion of India and of the whole world consisted in the belief in one
God, a pure Spirit, indivisible, omniscient and all-powerful; that God,
having given to all things their appointed order and course of action,
and to man a sufficient portion of reason, or understanding, to guide
him in his conduct, leaves him to the operation of free will, without
the entire exercise of which he could not be held answerable for his
conduct.

Menou, the Hindū lawgiver, adored, not the visible, material Sun, but
"that divine and incomparably greater light," to use the words of the
most venerable text in the Indian Scripture, "which illumines all,
delights all, from which all proceed, to which all must return, and
which alone can irradiate our intellects." He thus commences his
Institutes:

"Be it heard!

"This Universe existed only in the first divine idea yet unexpanded, as
if involved in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by
reason, and undiscovered by revelation, as if it were wholly immersed in
sleep:

"Then the Sole Self-existing Power, Himself undiscovered, but making
this world discernible, with five elements, and other principles of
nature, appeared with undiminished glory, _expanding His idea_, or
dispelling the gloom.

"He Whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the eternal
organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from Eternity, even He, the
soul of all beings, Whom no being can comprehend, shone forth.

"He, having willed to produce various beings from His own divine
Substance, first with a thought created the waters ... From that which
is [precisely the Hebrew יהוה], the first cause, not the object of
sense, existing everywhere in substance, not existing to our perception,
without beginning or end" [the A and Ω, or the I A Ω], "was
produced the divine male famed in all worlds under the appellation of
Brahma."

Then recapitulating the different things created by Brahma, he adds:
"He," meaning Brahma [the Λογος, the WORD], "whose powers are
incomprehensible, having thus created this Universe, was again absorbed
in the Supreme Spirit, changing the time of energy for the time of
repose."

The _Antareya A'ran'ya_, one of the Vedas, gives this primitive idea of
the creation: "In the beginning, the Universe was but a Soul: nothing
else, active or inactive, existed. Then HE had this thought, _I will
create worlds_; and thus HE created these different worlds; air, the
light, mortal beings, and the waters.

"HE had this thought: _Behold the worlds; I will create guardians for
the worlds._ So HE took of the water and fashioned a being clothed with
the human form. He looked upon him, and of that being so contemplated,
the mouth opened like an egg, and speech came forth, and from the speech
fire. The nostrils opened, and through them went the breath of
respiration, and by it the air was propagated. The eyes opened; from
then came a luminous ray, and from it was produced the sun. The ears
dilated; from them came hearing, and from hearing space:" ... and, after
the body of man, with the senses, was formed;--"HE, the Universal Soul,
thus reflected: _How can this body exist without Me?_ He examined
through what extremity He could penetrate it. He said to Himself: If,
_without Me, the World is articulated, breath exhales, and sight sees;
if hearing hears, the skin feels, and the mind reflects, deglutition
swallows, and the generative organ fulfills its functions, what then am
I?_ And separating the suture of the cranium, He penetrated into man."

Behold the great fundamental primitive truths! God, an infinite Eternal
Soul or Spirit. Matter, not eternal nor self-existent, but
created--created by a thought of God. After matter, and worlds, then
man, by a like thought: and finally, after endowing him with the senses
and a thinking mind, a portion, a spark, of God Himself penetrates the
man, and becomes a living spirit within him.

The Vedas thus detail the creation of the world:

"In the beginning there was a single God, existing of Himself; Who,
after having passed an eternity absorbed in the contemplation of His own
being, desired to manifest His perfections outwardly of Himself; and
created the matter of the world. The four elements being thus produced,
but still mingled in confusion, He breathed upon the waters, which
swelled up into an immense ball in the shape of an egg, and, developing
themselves, became the vault and orb of Heaven which encircles the
earth. Having made the earth and the bodies of animal beings, this God,
the essence of movement, gave to them, to animate them, a portion of His
own being. Thus, the soul of everything that breathes being a fraction
of the universal soul, none perishes; but each soul merely changes its
mould and form, by passing successively into different bodies. Of all
forms, that which most pleases the Divine Being is Man, as nearest
approaching His own perfections. When a man, absolutely disengaging
himself from his senses, absorbs himself in self-contemplation, he comes
to discern the Divinity, and becomes part of Him."

The Ancient Persians in many respects resembled the Hindūs,--in their
language, their poetry, and their poetic legends. Their conquests
brought them in contact with China; and they subdued Egypt and Judea.
Their views of God and religion more resembled those of the Hebrews than
those of any other nation; and indeed the latter people borrowed from
them some prominent doctrines, that we are in the habit of regarding as
an essential part of the original Hebrew creed.

Of the King of Heaven and Father of Eternal Light, of the pure World of
LIGHT, of the Eternal WORD by which all things were created, of the
Seven Mighty Spirits that stand next to the Throne of Light and
Omnipotence, and of the glory of those Heavenly Hosts that encompass
that Throne, of the Origin of Evil, and the Prince of Darkness, Monarch
of the rebellious spirits, enemies of all good, they entertained tenets
very similar to those of the Hebrews. Toward Egyptian idolatry they felt
the strongest abhorrence, and under Cambyses pursued a regular plan for
its utter extirpation. Xerxes, when he invaded Greece, destroyed the
Temples and erected fire-chapels along the whole course of his march.
Their religion was eminently spiritual, and the earthly fire and earthly
sacrifice were but the signs and emblems of another devotion and a
higher power.

Thus the fundamental doctrine of the ancient religion of India and
Persia was at first nothing more than a simple veneration of nature, its
pure elements and its primary energies, the sacred fire, and above all,
Light,--the air, not the lower atmospheric air, but the purer and
brighter air of Heaven, the breath that animates and pervades the breath
of mortal life. This pure and simple veneration of nature is, perhaps
the most ancient, and was by far the most generally prevalent in the
primitive and patriarchal world. It was not originally a deification of
nature, or a denial of the sovereignty of God. Those pure elements and
primitive essences of created nature offered to the first men, still in
a close communication with the Deity, not a likeness of resemblance,
nor a mere fanciful image or a poetical figure, but a natural and true
symbol of Divine power. Everywhere in the Hebrew writings the pure light
or sacred fire is employed as an image of the all-prevading and
all-consuming power and omnipresence of the Divinity. His breath was the
source of life; and the faint whisper of the breeze announced to the
prophet His immediate presence.

"All things are the progeny of one fire. The Father perfected all
things, and delivered them over to the Second Mind, whom all nations of
men call the First. Natural works co-exist with the intellectual light
of the Father; for it is the Soul which adorns the great Heaven, and
which adorns it after the Father. The Soul, being a bright fire, by the
power of the Father, remains immortal, and is mistress of life, and
fills up the recesses of the world. For the fire which is first beyond,
did not shut up his power in matter by works, but by mind, for the
framer of the fiery world is the mind of mind, who first sprang from
mind, clothing fire with fire. Father-begotten Light! for He alone,
having from the Father's power received the essence of intellect, is
enabled to understand the mind of the Father; and to instill into all
sources and principles the capacity of understanding, and of ever
continuing in ceaseless revolving motion." Such was the language of
Zoroaster, embodying the old Persian ideas.

And the same ancient sage thus spoke of the Sun and Stars: The Father
made the whole Universe of fire and water and earth, and all-nourishing
ether. He fixed a great multitude of moveless stars, that stand still
forever, not by compulsion and unwillingly, but without desire to
wander, fire acting upon fire. He congregated the seven firmaments of
the world, and so surrounded the earth with the convexity of the
Heavens; and therein set seven living existences, arranging their
apparent disorder in regular orbits, six of them planets, and the Sun,
placed in the centre, the seventh;--in that centre from which all lines,
diverging which way soever, are equal; and the swift sun himself,
revolving around a principal centre, and ever striving to reach the
central and all-pervading light, bearing with him the bright Moon.

And yet Zoroaster added: "Measure not the journeyings of the Sun, nor
attempt to reduce them to rule; for he is carried by the eternal will of
the Father, not for your sake. Do not endeavor to understand the
impetuous course of the Moon; for she runs evermore under the impulse
of necessity; and the progression of the Stars was not generated to
serve any purpose of yours."

Ormuzd says to Zoroaster, in the Boundehesch: "I am he who holds the
Star-Spangled Heaven in ethereal space; who makes this sphere, which
once was buried in darkness, a flood of light. Through me the Earth
became a world firm and lasting--the earth on which walks the Lord of
the world. I am he who makes the light of Sun, Moon, and Stars pierce
the clouds. I make the corn seed, which perishing in the ground sprouts
anew.... I created man, whose eye is light, whose life is the breath of
his nostrils. I placed within him life's unextinguishable power."

Ormuzd or Ahura-Mazda himself represented the primal light, distinct
from the heavenly bodies, yet necessary to their existence, and the
source of their splendor. The Amschaspands (Ameschaspenta, "immortal
Holy Ones"), each presided over a special department of nature. Earth
and Heaven, fire and water, the Sun and Moon, the rivers, trees, and
mountains, even the artificial divisions of the day and year were
addressed in prayer as tenanted by Divine beings, each separately ruling
within his several sphere. Fire, in particular, that "most energetic of
immortal powers," the visible representative of the primal light, was
invoked as "Son of Ormuzd." The Sun, the Archimagus, that noblest and
most powerful agent of divine power, who "steps forth as a Conqueror
from the top of the terrible Alborj to rule over the world which he
enlightens from the throne of Ormuzd," was worshipped among other
symbols by the name of MITHRAS, a beneficent and friendly genius, who,
in the hymn addressed to him in the Zend-Avesta, bears the names given
him by the Greeks, as the "Invincible" and the "Mediator"; the former,
because in his daily strife with darkness he is the most active
confederate of Ormuzd; the latter, as being the medium through which
Heaven's choicest blessings are communicated to men. He is called "the
eye of Ormuzd, the effulgent Hero, pursuing his course triumphantly,
fertilizer of deserts, most exalted of the Izeds or Yezatas, the
never-sleeping, the protector of the land." "When the dragon foe
devastates my provinces," says Ormuzd, "and afflicts them with famine,
then is he struck down by the strong arm of Mithras, together with the
Devs of Mazanderan. With his lance and his immortal club, the Sleepless
Chief hurls down the Devs into the dust, when as Mediator he interposes
to guard the City from evil."

Ahriman was by some Parsee sects considered older than Ormuzd, as
darkness is older than light; he is imagined to have been unknown as a
Malevolent Being in the early ages of the world, and the fall of man is
attributed in the Boundehesch to an apostate worship of him, from which
men were converted by a succession of prophets terminating with
Zoroaster.

Mithras is not only light, but intelligence; that luminary which, though
born in obscurity, will not only dispel darkness but conquer death. The
warfare through which this consummation is to be reached, is mainly
carried on through the instrumentality of the "Word," that "ever-living
emanation of the Deity, by virtue of which the world exists," and of
which the revealed formulas incessently repeated in the liturgies of the
Magi are but the expression. "What shall I do," cried Zoroaster, "O
Ormuzd, steeped in brightness, in order to battle with Daroodj-Ahriman,
father of the Evil Law; how shall I make men pure and holy?" Ormuzd
answered and said: "Invoke, O Zoroaster, the pure law of the Servants of
Ormuzd; invoke the Amschaspands who shed abundance throughout the seven
Keshwars; invoke the Heaven, Zeruana-Akarana, the birds travailing on
high, the swift wind, the Earth; invoke my Spirit, me who am
Ahura-Mazda, the purest, strongest, wisest, best of beings; me who have
the most majestic body, who through purity am Supreme, whose Soul is the
Excellent Word; and ye, all people, invoke me as I have commanded
Zoroaster."

Ahura-Mazda himself is the living WORD; he is called "First-born of all
things, express image of the Eternal, very light of very light, the
Creator, who by power of the Word which he never ceases to pronounce,
made in 365 days the Heaven and the Earth." The Word is said in the
Yashna to have existed before all, and to be itself a Yazata, a
personified object of prayer. It was revealed in Serosch, in Homa, and
again, under Gushtasp, was manifested in Zoroaster.

Between life and death, between sunshine and shade, Mithras is the
present exemplification of the Primal Unity from which all things arose,
and into which, through his mediation, all contrarieties will ultimately
be absorbed. His annual sacrifice is the passover of the Magi, a
symbolical atonement or pledge of moral and physical regeneration. He
created the world in the beginning; and as at the close of each
successive year he sets free the current of life to invigorate a fresh
circle of being, so in the end of all things he will bring the weary
sum of ages as a hecatomb before God, releasing by a final sacrifice the
Soul of Nature from her perishable frame, to commence a brighter and
purer existence.

Iamblichus (_De Mys_. viii. 4) says: "The Egyptians are far from
ascribing all things to physical causes; life and intellect they
distinguish from physical being, both in man and in the Universe. They
place intellect and reason first as self-existent, and from these they
derive the created world. As Parent of generated things they constitute
a Demiurge, and acknowledge a vital force both in the Heavens and before
the Heavens. They place Pure Intellect above and beyond the Universe,
and another (that is, Mind revealed in the Material World), consisting
of one continuous mind pervading the Universe, and apportioned to all
its parts and spheres." The Egyptian idea, then, was that of all
transcendental philosophy--that of a Deity both immanent and
transcendent--spirit passing into its manifestations, but not exhausted
by so doing.

The wisdom recorded in the canonical rolls of Hermes quickly attained in
this transcendental lore, all that human curiosity can ever discover.
Thebes especially is said to have acknowledged a being without beginning
or end, called Amun or Amun-Kneph, the all-prevading Spirit or Breath of
Nature, or perhaps even some still more lofty object of reverential
reflection, whom it was forbidden even to name. Such a being would in
theory stand at the head of the three orders of Gods mentioned by
Herodotus, these being regarded as arbitrary classifications of similar
or equal beings, arranged in successive emanations, according to an
estimate of their comparative dignity. The Eight Great Gods, or primary
class, were probably manifestations of the emanated God in the several
parts and powers of the Universe, each potentially comprising the whole
Godhead.

In the ancient Hermetic books, as quoted by Iamblichus, occurred the
following passage in regard to the Supreme Being:

"Before all the things that actually exist, and before all beginnings,
there is one God, prior even to the first God and King, remaining
unmoved in the singleness of his own Unity: for neither is anything
conceived by intellect inwoven with him, nor anything else; but he is
established as the exemplar of the God who is good, who is his own
father, self-begotten, and has only Parent. For he is something greater
and prior to, and the fountain of all things, and the foundation of
things conceived by the intellect, which are the first species. And from
this ONE, the self-originated God caused himself to shine forth; for
which reason he is his own father, and self-originated. For he is both a
beginning and God of Gods, a Monad from the One, prior to substance and
the beginning of substance; for from him is substantiality and
substance, whence also he is called the beginning of things conceived by
the intellect. These then are the most ancient beginnings of all things,
which Hermes places before the ethereal and empyrean and celestial
Gods."

"CHANG-TI, or the Supreme Lord or Being," said the old Chinese creed,
"is the principle of everything that exists, and Father of all living.
He is eternal, immovable, and independent: His power knows no bounds:
His sight equally comprehends the Past, the Present, and the Future, and
penetrates even to the inmost recesses of the heart. Heaven and earth
are under his government: all events, all revolutions, are the
consequences of his dispensation and will. He is pure, holy, and
impartial; wickedness offends his sight; but he beholds with an eye of
complacency the virtuous actions of men. Severe, yet just, he punishes
vice in an exemplary manner, even in Princes and Rulers; and often casts
down the guilty, to crown with honor the man who walks after his own
heart, and whom he raises from obscurity. Good, merciful, and full of
pity, he forgives the wicked upon their repentance: and public
calamities and the irregularity of the seasons are but salutary
warnings, which his fatherly goodness gives to men, to induce them to
reform and amend."

Controlled by reason infinitely more than by the imagination, that
people, occupying the extreme East of Asia, did not fall into idolatry
until after the time of Confucius, and within two centuries of the birth
of Christ; when the religion of BUDDHA or FO was carried thither from
India. Their system was long regulated by the pure worship of God, and
the foundation of their moral and political existence laid in a sound,
upright reason, conformable to true ideas of the Deity. They had no
false gods or images, and their third Emperor _Hoam-ti_ erected a
Temple, the first probably ever erected, to the Great Architect of the
Universe. And though they offered sacrifices to divers tutelary angels,
yet they honored them infinitely less than XAM-TI or CHANG-TI, the
Sovereign Lord of the World.

Confucius forbade making images or representations of the Deity. He
attached no idea of personality to Him; but considered Him as a Power or
Principle, pervading all Nature. And the Chinese designated the Divinity
by the name of THE DIVINE REASON.

The Japanese believe in a Supreme Invisible Being, not to be represented
by images or worshipped in Temples. They styled him AMIDA or OMITH; and
say that he is without beginning or end; that he came on earth, where he
remained a thousand years, and became the Redeemer of our fallen race:
that he is to judge all men; and the good are to live forever, while the
bad are to be condemned to Hell.

"The Chang-ti is represented," said Confucius, "under the general emblem
of the visible firmament, as well as under the particular symbols of the
Sun, the Moon, and the Earth, because by their means we enjoy the gifts
of the Chang-ti. The Sun is the source of life and light: the Moon
illuminates the world by night. By observing the course of these
luminaries, mankind are enabled to distinguish times and seasons. The
Ancients, with the view of connecting the act with its object, when they
established the practice of sacrificing to the Chang-ti, fixed the day
of the Winter Solstice, because the Sun, after having passed through the
twelve places assigned apparently by the Chang-ti as its annual
residence, began its career anew, to distribute blessings throughout the
Earth."

He said: "The TEEN is the universal principle and prolific source of all
things.... The Chang-ti is the universal principle of existence."

The Arabians never possessed a poetical, high-wrought, and
scientifically arranged system of Polytheism. Their historical
traditions had much analogy with those of the Hebrews, and coincided
with them in a variety of points. The tradition of a purer faith and the
simple Patriarchal worship of the Deity appear never to have been
totally extinguished among them; nor did idolatry gain much foothold
until near the time of Mahomet; who, adopting the old primeval faith,
taught again the doctrine of one God, adding to it that he was His
Prophet.

To the mass of Hebrews, as well as to other nations, seem to have come
fragments only of the primitive revelation: nor do they seem, until
after their captivity among the Persians, to have concerned themselves
about metaphysical speculations in regard to the Divine Nature and
essence; although it is evident, from the Psalms of David, that a select
body among them preserved a knowledge, in regard to the Deity, which was
wholly unknown to the mass of the people; and those chosen few were made
the medium of transition for certain truths, to later ages.

Among the Greeks, the scholars of the Egyptians, all the higher ideas
and severer doctrines on the Divinity, his Sovereign Nature and Infinite
Might, the Eternal Wisdom and Providence that conducts and directs all
things to their proper end, the Infinite Mind and Supreme Intelligence
that created all things, and is raised far above external nature,--all
these loftier ideas and nobler doctrines were expounded more or less
perfectly by Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, and Socrates, and developed in the
most beautiful and luminous manner by Plato, and the philosophers that
succeeded him. And even in the popular religion of the Greeks are many
things capable of a deeper import and more spiritual signification;
though they seem only rare vestiges of ancient truth, vague
presentiments, fugitive tones, and momentary flashes, revealing a belief
in a Supreme Being, Almighty Creator of the Universe, and Common Father
of Mankind.

Much of the primitive Truth was taught to Pythagoras by Zoroaster, who
himself received it from the Indians. His disciples rejected the use of
Temples, of Altars, and of Statues; and smiled at the folly of those
nations who imagined that the Deity sprang from or had any affinity with
human nature. The tops of the highest mountains were the places chosen
for sacrifices. Hymns and prayers were their principal worship. The
Supreme God, who fills the wide circle of Heaven, was the object to Whom
they were addressed. Such is the testimony of Herodotus. Light they
considered not so much as an object of worship, as rather the most pure
and lively emblem of, and first emanation from, the Eternal God; and
thought that man required something visible or tangible to exalt his
mind to that degree of adoration which is due to the Divine Being.

There was a surprising similarity between the Temples, Priests,
doctrines, and worship of the Persian Magi and the British Druids. The
latter did not worship idols in the human shape, because they held that
the Divinity, being invisible, ought to be adored without being seen.
They asserted the Unity of the Godhead. Their invocations were made to
the One All-preserving Power; and they argued that, as this power was
not matter, it must necessarily be the Deity; and the secret symbol used
to express his name was O.I.W. They believed that the earth had
sustained one general destruction by water; and would again be destroyed
by fire. They admitted the doctrines of the immortality of the soul, a
future state, and a day of judgment, which would be conducted on the
principle of man's responsibility. They even retained some idea of the
redemption of mankind through the death of a Mediator. They retained a
tradition of the Deluge, perverted and localized. But, around these
fragments of primitive truth they wove a web of idolatry, worshipped two
Subordinate Deities under the names of HU and CERIDWEN, male and female
(doubtless the same as Osiris and Isis), and held the doctrine of
transmigration.

The early inhabitants of Scandinavia believed in a God who was "the
Author of everything that existeth; the Eternal, the Ancient, the Living
and Awful Being, the Searcher into concealed things, the Being that
never changeth." Idols and visible representations of the Deity were
originally forbidden, and He was directed to be worshipped in the lonely
solitude of sequestered forests, where He was said to dwell, invisible,
and in perfect silence.

The Druids, like their Eastern ancestors, paid the most sacred regard to
the odd numbers, which, traced backward, ended in Unity or Deity, while
the even numbers ended in nothing. 3 was particularly reverenced.
19(7+3+3²): 30 (7x3+3x3): and 21 (7x3) were numbers observed in the
erection of their temples, constantly appearing in their dimensions, and
the number and distances of the huge stones.

They were the sole interpreters of religion. They superintended all
sacrifices; for no private person could offer one without their
permission. They exercised the power of excommunication; and without
their concurrence war could not be declared nor peace made: and they
even had the power of inflicting the punishment of death. They professed
to possess a knowledge of magic, and practised augury for the public
service.

They cultivated many of the liberal sciences, and particularly
astronomy, the favorite science of the Orient; in which they attained
considerable proficiency. They considered day as the offspring of night,
and therefore made their computations by nights instead of days; and we,
from them, still use the words fortnight and sen'night. They knew the
division of the heavens into constellations; and finally, they practised
the strictest morality, having particularly the most sacred regard for
that peculiarly Masonic virtue, Truth.

In the Icelandic Prose Edda is the following dialogue:

"Who is the first or eldest of the Gods?

"In our language he is called ALFADIR (All-Father, or the Father of
All); but in the old Asgard he had twelve names.

"Where is this God? What is his power? and what hath he done to display
his glory?

"He liveth from all ages, he governeth all realms, and swayeth all
things both great and small.

"He hath formed Heaven and earth, and the air, and all things thereunto
belonging.

"He hath made man and given him a soul which shall live and never
perish, though the body shall have mouldered away or have been burnt to
ashes. And all that are righteous shall dwell with him in the place
called _Gimli_ or _Vingolf_; but the wicked shall go to _Hel_ and thence
to _Niflhel_ which is below, in the ninth world."

Almost every heathen nation, so far as we have any knowledge of their
mythology, believed in one Supreme Overruling God, whose name it was not
lawful to utter.

"When we ascend", says MÜLLER, "to the most distant heights of Greek
history, the idea of God as the Supreme Being stands before us as a
simple fact. Next to this adoration of One God, the Father of Heaven,
the Father of men, we find in Greece a Worship of Nature." The original
Ζεύς was the God or Gods, called by the Greeks the Son of Time, meaning
that there was no God before Him, but He was Eternal. "Zeus," says the
Orphic line, "is the Beginning, Zeus the Middle; out of Zeus all things
have been made". And the Peleides of Dodona said, "Zeus was, Zeus is,
Zeus will be; O great Zeus!" Ζεύς νή, Ζεύς έστίν, Ζεύς ἐσσεται ώ μεγάλη
Ζεύ: and he was Ζεύς, κύδιστος, μέγιστος, Ζεus, Best and Greatest.

The Parsees, retaining the old religion taught by Zaradisht, say in
their catechism: "We believe in only one God, and do not believe in any
beside Him; Who created the Heavens, the Earth the Angels.... Our God
has neither face nor form, color nor shape, nor fixed place. There is no
other like Him, nor can our mind comprehend Him."

The Tetragrammaton, or _some other word covered by it_, was forbidden to
be pronounced. But that its pronunciation might not be lost among the
Levites, the High-Priest uttered it in the Temple once a year, on the
10th day of the Month Tisri, the day of the great feast of expiation.
During this ceremony, the people were directed to make a great noise,
that the Sacred Word might not be heard by any who had not a right to
it; for every other, said the Jews, would be incontinently stricken
dead.

The Great Egyptian Initiates, before the time of the Jews, did the same
thing in regard to the word Isis; which they regarded as sacred and
incommunicable.

Origen says: "There are names which have a natural potency. Such as
those which the Sages used among the Egyptians, the Magi in Persia, the
Brahmins in India. What is called Magic is not a vain and chimerical
act, as the Stoics and Epicureans pretend. The names SABAOTH and ADONAI
were not made for created beings; but they belong to a mysterious
theology, which goes back to the Creator. From Him comes the virtue of
these names, when they are arranged and pronounced according to the
rules."

The Hindū word AUM represented the three Powers combined in their Deity:
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva; or the Creating, Preserving, and Destroying
Powers: A, the first; U or Ŏ-Ŏ, the second; and M, the third. This word
could not be pronounced, except by the letters: for its pronunciation as
one word was said to make Earth tremble, and even the Angels of Heaven
to quake for fear.

The word AUM, says the Ramayan, represents "The Being of Beings, One
Substance in three forms; without mode, without quality, without
passion: Immense, Incomprehensible, Infinite, Indivisible, Immutable,
Incorporeal, Irresistible."

An old passage in the Purana says: "All the rites ordained in the Vedas,
the sacrifices to the fire, and all other solemn purifications, shall
pass away; but that which shall never pass away is the word A-Ŏ-Ŏ-M
for it is the symbol of the Lord of all things."

Herodotus says that the Ancient Pelasgi built no temples and worshipped
no idols, and had a sacred name of Deity, which it was not permissible
to pronounce.

The Clarian Oracle, which was of unknown antiquity, being asked which of
the Deities was named IAΩ, answered in these remarkable words: "The
Initiated are bound to conceal the mysterious secrets. Learn, then, that
IAΩ is the Great God Supreme, that ruleth over all."

The Jews consider the True Name of God to be irrecoverably lost by
disuse, and regard its pronunciation as one of the Mysteries that will
be revealed at the coming of their Messiah. And they attribute its loss
to the illegality of applying the Masoretic points to so sacred a Name,
by which a knowledge of the proper vowels is forgotten. It is even said,
in the Gemara of Abodah Zara, that God permitted a celebrated Hebrew
Scholar to be burned by a Roman Emperor, because he had been heard to
pronounce the Sacred Name with points.

The Jews feared that the Heathen would get possession of the Name: and
therefore, in their copies of the Scriptures, they wrote it in the
Samaritan character, instead of the Hebrew or Chaldaic, that the
adversary might not make an improper use of it: for they believed it
capable of working miracles; and held that the wonders in Egypt were
performed by Moses, in virtue of this name being engraved on his rod:
and that any person who knew the true pronunciation would be able to do
as much as he did.

Josephus says it was unknown until God communicated it to Moses in the
wilderness: and that it was lost through the wickedness of man.

The followers of Mahomet have a tradition that there is a secret name of
the Deity which possesses wonderful properties; and that the only method
of becoming acquainted with it, is by being initiated into the Mysteries
of the _Ism Abla_.

H O M  was the first framer of the new religion among the Persians, and
His Name was Ineffable.

AMUN, among the Egyptians, was a name pronounceable by none save the
Priests.

The old Germans adored God with profund reverence, without daring to
name Him, or to worship Him in Temples. The Druids expressed the name
of Deity by the letters O-I-W.

Among all the nations of primitive antiquity, the doctrine of the
immortality of the soul was not a mere probable hypothesis, needing
laborious researches and diffuse argumentation to produce conviction of
its truth. Nor can we hardly give it the name of _Faith_; for it was a
lively _certainty_, like the feeling of one's own existence and
identity, and of what is actually present; exerting its influence on all
sublunary affairs, and the motive of mightier deeds and enterprises than
any mere earthly interest could inspire.

Even the doctrine of transmigration of souls, universal among the
Ancient Hindūs and Egyptians, rested on a basis of the old primitive
religion, and was connected with a sentiment purely religious. It
involved this noble element of truth: That since man had gone astray,
and wandered far from God, he must needs make many efforts, and undergo
a long and painful pilgrimage, before he could rejoin the Source of all
Perfection: and the firm conviction and positive certainty, that nothing
defective, impure, or defiled with earthy stains, could enter the pure
region of perfect spirits, or be eternally united to God; wherefore the
soul had to pass through long trials and many purifications before it
could attain that blissful end. And the end and aim of all these systems
of philosophy was the final deliverance of the soul from the old
calamity, the dreaded fate and frightful lot of being compelled to
wander through the dark regions of nature and the various forms of the
brute creation, ever changing its terrestrial shape, and its union with
God, which they held to be the lofty destiny of the wise and virtuous
soul.

Pythagoras gave to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls that
meaning which the wise Egyptians gave to it in their Mysteries: He never
taught the doctrine in that literal sense in which it was understood by
the people. Of that literal doctrine not the least vestige is to be
found in such of his symbols as remain, nor in his precepts collected by
his disciple Lysias. He held that men always remain, in their essence,
such as they were created; and can degrade themselves only by vice, and
ennoble themselves only by virtue.

Hierocles, one of his most zealous and celebrated disciples, expressly
says that he who believes that the soul of man, after his death, will
enter the body of a beast, for his vices, or become a plant for his
stupidity, is deceived; and is absolutely ignorant of the eternal form
of the soul, which can never change; for, always remaining man, it is
said to become God or beast, through virtue or vice, though it can
become neither one nor the other by nature, but solely by resemblance of
its inclinations to theirs.

And Timæus of Locria, another disciple, says that to alarm men and
prevent them from committing crimes, they menaced them with strange
humiliations and punishments; even declaring that their souls would pass
into new bodies,--that of a coward into the body of a deer; that of a
ravisher into the body of a wolf; that of a murderer into the body of
some still more ferocious animal; and that of an impure sensualist into
the body of a hog.

So, too, the doctrine is explained in the Phædo. And Lysias says, that
after the soul, purified of its crimes, has left the body and returned
to Heaven, it is no longer subject to change or death, but enjoys an
eternal felicity. According to the Indians, it returned to, and became a
part of, the universal soul which animates everything.

The Hindūs held that Buddha descended on earth to raise all human beings
up to the perfect state. He will ultimately succeed, and all, himself
included, be merged in Unity.

Vishnu is to judge the world at the last day. It is to be consumed by
fire: The Sun and Moon are to lose their light; the Stars to fall; and a
New Heaven and Earth to be created.

The legend of the fall of the Spirits, obscured and distorted, is
preserved in the Hindū Mythology. And their traditions acknowledged, and
they revered, the succession of the first ancestors of mankind, or the
Holy Patriarchs of the primitive world, under the name of the Seven
Great RISHIS, or Sages of hoary antiquity; though they invested their
history with a cloud of fictions.

The Egyptians held that the soul was immortal; and that Osiris was to
judge the world.

And thus reads the Persian legend:

"After Ahriman shall have ruled the world until the end of time,
SOSIOSCH, the promised Redeemer, will come and annihilate the power of
the DEVS (or Evil Spirits), awaken the dead, and sit in final judgment
upon spirits and men. After that the comet _Gurzsher_ will be thrown
down, and a general conflagration take place, which will consume the
whole world. The remains of the earth will then sink down into
_Duzakh_, and become for three periods a place of punishment for the
wicked. Then, by degrees all will be pardoned, even _Ahriman_ and the
_Devs_, and admitted to the regions of bliss, and thus there will be a
new Heaven and a new earth."

In the doctrines of Lamaism also, we find, obscured, and partly
concealed in fiction, fragments of the primitive truth. For according to
that faith, "There is to be a final judgment before ESLIK KHAN: The good
are to be admitted to Paradise, the bad to be banished to hell, where
there are eight regions burning hot and eight freezing cold."

In the Mysteries, wherever they were practised, was taught that truth of
the primitive revelation, the existence of One Great Being, Infinite and
pervading the Universe, Who was there worshipped without superstition;
and His marvellous nature, essence, and attributes taught to the
Initiates; while the vulgar attributed His works to Secondary Gods,
personified, and isolated from Him in fabulous independence.

These truths were covered from the common people as with a veil; and the
Mysteries were carried into every country, that, without disturbing the
popular beliefs, truth, the arts, and the sciences might be known to
those who were capable of understanding them, and maintaining the true
doctrine incorrupt; which the people, prone to superstition and
idolatry, have in no age been able to do; nor, as many strange
aberrations and superstitions of the present day prove, any more now
than heretofore. For we need but point to the doctrines of so many sects
that degrade the Creator to the rank, and assign to Him the passions of
humanity, to prove that now, as always, the old truths must be committed
to a few, or they will be overlaid with fiction and error, and
irretrievably lost.

Though Masonry is identical with the Ancient Mysteries, it is so in this
qualified sense; that it presents but an imperfect image of their
brilliancy; the ruins only of their grandeur, and a system that has
experienced progressive alterations, the fruits of social events and
political circumstances. Upon leaving Egypt, the Mysteries were modified
by the habits of the different nations among whom they were introduced.
Though originally more moral and political than religious, they soon
became the heritage, as it were, of the priests, and essentially
religious, though in reality limiting the sacerdotal power, by teaching
the intelligent laity the folly and absurdity of the creeds of the
populace. They were therefore necessarily changed by the religious
systems of the countries into which they were transplanted. In Greece,
they were the Mysteries of Ceres; in Rome, of _Bona Dea_, the Good
Goddess; in Gaul, the School of Mars; in Sicily, the Academy of the
Sciences; among the Hebrews, they partook of the rites and ceremonies of
a religion which placed all the powers of government, and all the
knowledge, in the hands of the Priests and Levites. The pagodas of
India, the retreats of the Magi of Persia and Chaldea, and the pyramids
of Egypt, were no longer the sources at which men drank in knowledge.
Each people, at all informed, had its Mysteries. After a time the
Temples of Greece and the School of Pythagoras lost their reputation,
and Freemasonry took their place.

Masonry, when properly expounded, is at once the interpretation of the
great book of nature, the recital of physical and astronomical
phenomena, the purest philosophy, and the place of deposit, where, as in
a Treasury, are kept in safety all the great truths of the primitive
revelation, that form the basis of all religions. In the modern Degrees
three things are to be recognized: The image of primeval times, the
tableau of the efficient causes of the Universe, and the book in which
are written the morality of all peoples, and the code by which they must
govern themselves if they would be prosperous.

The Kabalistic doctrine was long the religion of the Sage and the
Savant; because, like Freemasonry, it incessantly tends toward spiritual
perfection, and the fusion of the creeds and Nationalities of Mankind.
In the eyes of the Kabalist, all men are his brothers; and their
relative ignorance is, to him, but a reason for instructing them. There
were illustrious Kabalists among the Egyptians and Greeks, whose
doctrines the Orthodox Church has accepted; and among the Arabs were
many, whose wisdom was not slighted by the Mediæval Church.

The Sages proudly wore the name of Kabalists. The Kabalah embodied a
noble philosophy, pure, not mysterious, but symbolic. It taught the
doctrine of the Unity of God, the art of knowing and explaining the
essence and operations of the Supreme Being, of spiritual powers and
natural forces, and of determining their action by symbolic figures; by
the arrangement of the alphabet, the combinations of numbers, the
inversion of letters in writing and the concealed meanings which they
claimed to discover therein. The Kabalah is the key of the occult
sciences; and the Gnostics, were born of the Kabalists.

The science of numbers represented not only arithmetical qualities, but
also all grandeur, all proportion. By it we necessarily arrive at the
discovery of the Principle or First Cause of things, called at the
present day THE ABSOLUTE.

Or UNITY,--that loftiest term to which all philosophy directs itself;
that imperious necessity of the human mind, that pivot round which it is
compelled to group the aggregate of its ideas: Unity, this source, this
centre of all systematic order, this principle of existence, this
central point, unknown in its essence, but manifest in its effects;
Unity, that sublime centre to which the chain of causes necessarily
ascends, was the august Idea toward which all the ideas of Pythagoras
converged. He refused the title of _Sage_, which means _one who knows_.
He invented, and applied to himself that of _Philosopher_, signifying
one who _is fond of_ or _studies things secret and occult_. The
astronomy which he mysteriously taught, was _astrology_: his science of
numbers was based on Kabalistical principles.

The Ancients, and Pythagoras himself, whose real principles have not
been always understood, never meant to ascribe to numbers, that is to
say, to abstract signs, any special virtue. But the Sages of Antiquity
concurred in recognizing a ONE FIRST CAUSE (material or spiritual) of
the existence of the Universe. Thence UNITY became the symbol of the
Supreme Deity. It was made to express, to represent God; but without
attributing to _the mere number_ ONE any divine or supernatural virtue.

The Pythagorean ideas as to particular numbers are partially expressed
in the following:

LECTURE OF THE KABALISTS.

_Qu_ Why did you seek to be received a Knight of the Kabalah?

_Ans_ To know, by means of numbers, the admirable harmony which there
is between nature and religion.

_Qu_ How were you announced?

_Ans_ By twelve raps.

_Qu_ What do they signify?

_Ans_ The twelve bases of our temporal and spiritual happiness.

_Qu_ What is a Kabalist?

_Ans_ A man who has learned, by tradition, the Sacerdotal Art and the
Royal Art.

_Qu_ What means the device, _Omnia in numeris sita sunt_?

_Ans_ That everything lies veiled in numbers.

_Qu_ Explain me that.

_Ans_ I will do so, as far as the number 12. Your sagacity will discern
the rest.

_Qu_ What signifies the _unit_ in the number 10?

_Ans_ GOD, creating and animating matter, expressed by 0, which, alone,
is of no value.

_Qu_ What does the unit _mean_?

_Ans_ In the moral order, a Word incarnate in the bosom of a virgin--or
religion.... In the physical, a spirit embodied in the virgin earth--or
nature.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the number _two_?

_Ans_ In the moral order, _man_ and _woman_.... In the physical, the
_active_ and the _passive_.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the number 3?

_Ans_ In the moral order, the three theological virtues.... In the
physical, the three principles of bodies.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the number 4?

_Ans_ The four cardinal virtues.... The four elementary qualities.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the number 5?

_Ans_ The quintessence of religion.... The quintessence of matter.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the number 6?

_Ans_ The theological cube.... The physical cube.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the number 7?

_Ans_ The seven sacraments.... The seven planets.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the number 8?

_Ans_ The small number of Elus.... The small number of wise men.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the number 9?

_Ans_ The exaltation of religion.... The exaltation of matter.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the number 10?

_Ans_ The ten commandments.... The ten precepts of nature.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the number 11?

_Ans_ The multiplication of religion.... The multiplication of nature.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the number 12?

_Ans_ The twelve Articles of Faith; the twelve Apostles, foundation of
the Holy City, who preached throughout the whole world, for our
happiness and spiritual joy.... The twelve operations of nature: The
twelve signs of the Zodiac, foundation of the _Primum Mobile_, extending
it throughout the Universe for our temporal felicity.

[The Rabbi (President of the Sanhedrim) adds: From all that you have
said, it results that the unit develops itself in 2, is completed in
three internally, and so produces 4 externally; whence, through 6, 7, 8,
9, it arrives at 5, half of the spherical number 10, to ascend, passing
through 11, to 12, and to raise itself, by the number 4 times 10, to the
number 6 times 12, the final term and summit of our eternal happiness.]

_Qu_ What is the generative number?

_Ans_ In the Divinity, it is the unit; in created things, the number 2:
Because the Divinity, 1, engenders 2, and in created things 2 engenders
1.

_Qu_ What is the most majestic number?

_Ans_ 3, because it denotes the triple divine essence.

_Qu_ What is the most mysterious number?

_Ans_ 4, because it contains all the mysteries of nature.

_Qu_ What is the most occult number?

_Ans_ 5, because it is inclosed in the centre of the series.

_Qu_ What is the most salutary number?

_Ans_ 6, because it contains the source of our spiritual and corporeal
happiness.

_Qu_ What is the most fortunate number?

_Ans_ 7, because it leads us to the decade, the perfect number.

_Qu_ Which is the number most to be desired?

_Ans_ 8, because he who possesses it, is of the number of the Elus and
Sages.

_Qu_ Which is the most sublime number?

_Ans_ 9, because by it religion and nature are exalted.

_Qu_ Which is the most perfect number?

_Ans_ 10, because it includes unity, which created everything, and
zero, symbol of matter and chaos, whence everything emerged. In its
figures it comprehends the created and uncreated, the commencement and
the end, power and force, life and annihilation. By the study of this
number, we find the relations of all things; the power of the Creator,
the faculties of the creature, the Alpha and Omega of divine knowledge.

_Qu_ Which is the most multiplying number?

_Ans_ 11, because with the possession of two units, we arrive at the
multiplication of things.

_Qu_ Which is the most solid number?

_Ans_ 12, because it is the foundation of our spiritual and temporal
happiness.

_Qu_ Which is the favorite number of religion and nature?

_Ans_ 4 times 10, because it enables us, rejecting everything impure,
eternally to enjoy the number 6 times 12, term and summit of our
felicity.

_Qu_ What is the meaning of the square?

_Ans_ It is the symbol of the four elements contained in the triangle,
or the emblem of the three chemical principles: these things united form
absolute unity in the primal matter.

_Qu_ What is the meaning of the centre of the circumference?

_Ans_ It signifies the universal spirit, vivifying centre of nature.

_Qu_ What do you mean by the quadrature of the circle?

_Ans_ The investigation of the quadrature of the circle indicates the
knowledge of the four vulgar elements, which are themselves composed of
elementary spirits or chief principles; as the circle, though round, is
composed of lines, which escape the sight, and are seen only by the
mind.

_Qu_ What is the profoundest meaning of the figure 3?

_Ans_ The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. From the action of
these three results the triangle within the square; and from the seven
angles, the decade or perfect number.

_Qu_ Which is the most confused figure?

_Ans_ Zero,--the emblem of chaos, formless mixture of the elements.

_Qu_ What do the four devices of the Degree signify?

_Ans_ That we are to hear, see, be silent, and enjoy our happiness.

The _unit_ is the symbol of identity, equality, existence, conservation,
and general harmony; the Central Fire, the Point within the Circle.

_Two_, or the _duad_, is the symbol of diversity, inequality, division,
separation, and vicissitudes.

The figure 1 signifies the living man [a body standing upright]; man
being the only living being possessed of this faculty. Adding to it a
head, we have the letter P, the sign of Paternity, Creative Power; and
with a further addition, R, signifying man in motion, going, _Iens_,
_Iturus_.

The Duad is the origin of contrasts. It is the imperfect condition into
which, according to the Pythagoreans, a being falls, when he detaches
himself from the Monad, or God. Spiritual beings, emanating from God,
are enveloped in the duad, and therefore receive only illusory
impressions.

As formerly the number ONE designated harmony, order, or the Good
Principle (the ONE and ONLY GOD, expressed in Latin by _Solus_, whence
the words _Sol_, _Soleil_, symbol of this God), the number Two expressed
the contrary idea. There commenced the fatal knowledge of good and evil.
Everything double, false, opposed to the single and sole reality, was
expressed by the Binary number. It expressed also that state of
contrariety in which nature exists, where everything is double; night
and day, light and darkness, cold and heat, wet and dry, health and
sickness, error and truth, one and the other sex, etc. Hence the Romans
dedicated the second month in the year to Pluto, the God of Hell, and
the second day of that month to the _manès_ of the dead.

The number _One_, with the Chinese, signified unity, harmony, order, the
Good Principle, or God; _Two_, disorder, duplicity, falsehood. That
people, in the earliest ages, based their whole philosophical system on
the two primary figures or lines, one straight and unbroken, and the
other broken or divided into two; doubling which, by placing one under
the other, and trebling by placing three under each other, they made the
four symbols and eight _Koua_; which referred to the natural elements,
and the primary principles of all things, and served symbolically or
scientifically to express them. Plato terms unity and duality the
original elements of nature, and first principles of all existence: and
the oldest sacred book of the Chinese says: "The Great First Principle
has produced two equations and differences, or primary rules of
existence; but the two primary rules or two oppositions, namely YN and
YANG, or repose and motion, have produced four signs or symbols, and
the four symbols have produced the eight KOUA or further combinations."

The interpretation of the Hermetic fables shows, among every ancient
people, in their principal gods, first, 1, the Creating Monad, then 3,
then 3 times 3, 3 times 9, and 3 times 27. This triple progression has
for its foundation the three ages of Nature, the Past, the Present, and
the Future; or the three degrees of universal generation ... Birth,
Life, Death ... Beginning, middle, end.

The Monad was male, because its action produces no change _in_ itself,
but only _out_ of itself. It represented the creative principle.

The Duad, for a contrary reason, was female, ever changing by addition,
subtraction, or multiplication. It represents matter capable of form.

The union of the Monad and Duad produces the Triad, signifying the world
formed by the creative principle out of matter. Pythagoras represented
the world by the right-angled triangle, in which the squares of the two
shortest sides are equal, added together, to the square of the longest
one; as the world, as formed, is equal to the creative cause, and matter
clothed with form.

The ternary is the first of the unequal numbers. The Triad, mysterious
number, which plays so great a part in the traditions of Asia and the
philosophy of Plato, image of the Supreme Being, includes in itself the
properties of the first two numbers. It was, to the Philosophers, the
most excellent and favorite number: a mysterious type, revered by all
antiquity, and consecrated in the Mysteries; wherefore there are but
three essential Degrees among Masons; who venerate, in the triangle, the
most august mystery, that of the Sacred Triad, object of their homage
and study.

In geometry, a line cannot represent a body absolutely perfect. As
little do two lines constitute a figure demonstratively perfect. But
three lines form, by their junction, the TRIANGLE, or the first figure
regularly perfect; and this is why it has served and still serves to
characterize The Eternal; Who, infinitely perfect in His nature, is, as
Universal Creator, the first Being, and consequently the first
Perfection.

The Quadrangle or Square, perfect as it appears, being but the second
perfection, can in no wise represent God; Who is the first. It is to be
noted that the name of God in Latin and French (Deus, Dieu), has for its
initial the Delta or Greek Triangle. Such is the reason, among ancients
and moderns, for the consecration of the Triangle, whose three sides
are emblems of the three Kingdoms, or Nature, or God. In the centre is
the Hebrew JOD (initial of יהוה), the Animating Spirit of Fire, the
generative principle, represented by the letter G., initial of the name
of Deity in the languages of the North, and the meaning whereof is
Generation.

The first side of the Triangle, offered to the study of the Apprentice,
is the mineral kingdom, symbolized by Tub ¤.

The second side, the subject of the meditations of the Fellow Craft, is
the vegetable kingdom, symbolized by Schib (an ear of corn). In this
reign begins the Generation of bodies; and this is why the letter G., in
its radiance, is presented to the eyes of the adept.

The third side, the study whereof is devoted to the animal kingdom, and
completes the instruction of the Master, is symbolized by Mach (Son of
putrefaction).

The figure 3 symbolizes the Earth. It is a figure of the terrestrial
bodies. The 2, upper half of 3, symbolizes the vegetable world, the
lower half being hidden from our sight.

Three also referred to harmony, friendship, peace, concord, and
temperance; and was so highly esteemed among the Pythagoreans that they
called it perfect harmony.

Three, four, ten, and twelve were sacred numbers among the Etrurians, as
they were among the Jews, Egyptians, and Hindūs.

The name of Deity, in many Nations, consisted of three letters: among
the Greeks, Ι.Α.Ω.; among the Persians, H.O.M.; among the Hindūs, AUM;
among the Scandinavians, I.O.W. On the upright Tablet of the King,
discovered at Nimroud, no less than five of the thirteen names of the
Great Gods consist of three letters each,--ANU, SAN, YAV, BAR, and BEL.

The quaternary is the most perfect number, and the root of other
numbers, and of all things. The tetrad expresses the first mathematical
power. Four represents also the generative power, from which all
combinations are derived. The Initiates considered it the emblem of
Movement and the Infinite, representing everything that is neither
corporeal nor sensible. Pythagoras communicated it to his disciples as a
symbol of the Eternal and Creative Principle, under the name of
Quaternary, the Ineffable Name of God, which signifies Source of
everything that has received existence: and which, in Hebrew, is
composed of four letters.

In the Quaternary we find the first solid figure, the universal symbol
of immortality, the pyramid. The Gnostics claimed that the whole edifice
of their science rested on a square whose angles were ... Σιγή,
_Silence_: Βυθος, _Profundity_: Νοος, _Intelligence_: and Αληθεια,
_Truth_. For if the Triangle, figured by the number 3, forms the
triangular base of the pyramid, it is unity which forms its point or
summit.

Lysias and Timæus of Locria said that not a single thing could be named,
which did not depend on the quaternary as its root.

There is, according to the Pythagoreans, a connection between the gods
and numbers, which constitutes the kind of Divination called
Arithmomancy. The soul is a number: it is moved of itself: it contains
in itself the quaternary number.

Matter being represented by the number 9, or 3 times 3, and the Immortal
Spirit having for its essential hieroglyphic the quaternary or the
number 4, the Sages said that Man, having gone astray and become
entangled in an inextricable labyrinth, in going from _four_ to _nine_,
the only way which he could take to emerge from these deceitful paths,
these disastrous detours, and the abyss of evil into which he had
plunged, was to retrace his steps, and go from _nine_ to _four_.

The ingenious and mystical idea which caused the Triangle to be
venerated, was applied to the figure 4 (4). It was said that it
expressed a living being, I, bearer of the Triangle Δ, the emblem of
God; _i.e._, man bearing with himself a Divine principle.

Four was a divine number; it referred to the Deity, and many Ancient
Nations gave God a name of four letters; as the Hebrews יהוה, the
Egyptians AMUN, the Persians SURA, the Greeks ΘΕΟΣ, and the Latins DEUS.
This was the Tetragrammaton of the Hebrews, and the Pythagoreans called
it Tetractys, and swore their most solemn oath by it. So too ODIN among
the Scandinavians, ΖΕΥΣ among the Greeks, PHTA among the Egyptians,
THOTH among the Phoenicians, and AS-UR and NEBO among the Assyrians. The
list might be indefinitely extended.

The number 5 was considered as mysterious, because it was compounded of
the Binary, Symbol of the False and Double, and the Ternary, so
interesting in its results. It thus energetically expresses the state of
imperfection, of order and disorder, of happiness and misfortune, of
life and death, which we see upon the earth. To the Mysterious Societies
it offered the fearful image of the Bad Principle, bringing trouble
into the inferior order,--in a word, the Binary acting in the Ternary.

Under another aspect it was the emblem of marriage; because it is
composed of 2, the first equal number, and of 3, the first unequal
number. Wherefore Juno, the Goddess of Marriage, had for her
hieroglyphic the number 5.

Moreover, it has one of the properties of the number 9, that of
reproducing itself, when multiplied by itself: there being always a 5 on
the right hand of the product; a result which led to its use as a symbol
of material changes.

The ancients represented the world by the number 5. A reason for it,
given by Diodorus, is, that it represents earth, water, air, fire, and
ether or spirit. Thence the origin of πεντε (5) and Παν the Universe, as
the whole.

The number 5 designated the universal quintessence, and symbolized, by
its form ς, the vital essence, the animating spirit, which flows
[_serpentat_] through all nature. In fact, this ingenious figure is the
union of the two Greek accents, placed over those vowels which ought
to be or ought not to be aspirated. The first sign [?] bears the name of
potent spirit; and signifies the Superior Spirit, the Spirit of God
aspirated (_spiratus_), respired by man. The second sign is styled
mild spirit, and represents the secondary spirit, the spirit purely
human.

The triple triangle, a figure of five lines uniting in five points, was
among the Pythagoreans an emblem of Health.

It is the Pentalpha of Pythagoras, or Pentangle of Solomon; has five
lines and five angles; and is, among Masons, the outline or origin of
the five-pointed Star, and an emblem of Fellowship.

The number 6 was, in the Ancient Mysteries, a striking emblem of nature;
as presenting the six dimensions of all bodies; the six lines which make
up their form, viz., the four lines of direction, toward the North,
South, East, and West; with the two lines of height and depth,
responding to the zenith and nadir. The sages applied the senary to the
physical man; while the septenary was, for them, the symbol of his
immortal spirit.

The hieroglyphical senary (the double equilateral triangle) is the
symbol of Deity.

Six is also an emblem of health, and the symbol of justice; because it
is the first perfect number; that is, the first whose aliquot parts
(1/2, 1/3, 1/6, or 3, 2, and 1), added together, make itself.

Ormuzd created six good spirits, and Ahriman six evil ones. These typify
the six Summer and the six Winter months.

No number has ever been so universally in repute as the septenary. Its
celebrity is due, no doubt, to the planets being _seven_ in number. It
belongs also to sacred things. The Pythagoreans regarded it as formed of
the numbers 3 and 4; the first whereof was, in their eyes, the image of
the three material elements, and the second the principle of everything
that is neither corporeal nor sensible. It presented them, from that
point of view, the emblem of everything that is perfect.

Considered as composed of 6 and unity, it serves to designate the
invisible centre or soul of everything; because no body exists, of which
six lines do not constitute the form, nor without a seventh interior
point, as the centre and reality of the body, whereof the external
dimensions give only the appearance.

The numerous applications of the septenary confirmed the ancient sages
in the use of this symbol. Moreover, they exalted the properties of the
number 7, as having, in a subordinate manner, the perfection of the
unit: for if the unit is uncreated, if no number produces it, the seven
is also not engendered by any number contained in the interval between 1
and 10. The number 4 occupies an arithmetical middle-ground between the
unit and 7, inasmuch as it is as much over 1, as it is under 7, the
difference each way being 3.

The number 7, among the Egyptians, symbolized life; and this is why the
letter Z of the Greeks was the initial of the verb Ζάω, I live; and
Ζεύς (Jupiter), Father of Life.

The number 8, or the octary, is composed of the sacred numbers 3 and 5.
Of the heavens, of the seven planets, and of the sphere of the fixed
stars, or of the eternal unity and the mysterious number 7, is composed
the ogdoade, the number 8, the first cube of equal numbers, regarded as
sacred in the arithmetical philosophy.

The Gnostic ogdoade had eight stars, which represented the eight Cabiri
of Samothrace, the eight Egyptian and Phœnician principles, the eight
gods of Xenocrates, the eight angles of the cubic stone.

The number eight symbolizes perfection: and its figure, 8 or ∞ indicates
the perpetual and regular course of the Universe.

It is the first cube (2 X 2 X 2), and signifies friendship, prudence,
counsel, and justice. It was a symbol of the primeval law which regarded
all men as equal.

The novary, or triple ternary. If the number three was celebrated among
the ancient sages, that of three times three had no less celebrity;
because, according to them, each of the three elements which constitute
our bodies is ternary: the water containing earth and fire; the earth
containing igneous and aqueous particles; and the fire being tempered by
globules of water and terrestrial corpuscles which serve to feed it. No
one of the three elements being entirely separated from the others, all
material beings composed of these three elements, whereof each is
triple, may be designated by the figurative number of three times three,
which has become the symbol of all formations of bodies. Hence the name
of ninth envelope, given to matter. Every material extension, every
circular line, has for representative sign the number nine, among the
Pythagoreans; who had observed the property which this number possesses,
of reproducing itself incessantly and entire, in every multiplication;
thus offering to the mind a very striking emblem of matter which is
incessantly composed before our eyes, after having undergone a thousand
decompositions.

The number nine was consecrated to the Spheres and the Muses. It is the
sign of every circumference; because a circle of 360 degrees is equal to
9, that is to say, 3+6+0=9. Nevertheless, the ancients regarded this
number with a sort of terror: they considered it a bad presage; as the
symbol of versatility, of change, and the emblem of the frailty of human
affairs. Wherefore they avoided all numbers where nine appears, and
chiefly 81, the product of 9 multiplied by itself, and the addition
whereof, 8+1, again presents the number 9.

As the figure of the number 6 was the symbol of the terrestrial globe,
animated by a divine spirit, the figure of the number 9 symbolized the
earth, under the influence of the Evil Principle; and thence the terror
it inspired. Nevertheless, according to the Kabalists, the figure 9
symbolizes the generative egg, or the image of a little globular being,
from whose lower side seems to flow its spirit of life.

The E_n_nead, signifying an aggregate of 9 things or persons, is the
first square of unequal numbers.

Every one is aware of the singular properties of the number 9, which,
multiplied by itself or any other number whatever, gives a result whose
final sum is always 9, or always divisible by 9.

Nine, multiplied by each of the ordinary numbers, produces an
arithmetical progression, each member whereof, composed of two figures,
presents a remarkable fact; for example:

1...2...3...4...5...6...7...8...9..10
9..18..27..36..45..54..63..72..81..90

The first line of figures gives the regular series, from 1 to 10.

The second reproduces this line doubly; first ascending, from the first
figure of 18, and then returning from the second figure of 81.

It follows, from the curious fact, that the half of the numbers which
compose this progression represents, in inverse order, the figures of
the second half:

9...18..27..36..45 = 135 = 9.._and_ 1 + 3 + 5 = 45 = 9
90..81..72..63..54 = 360 = 9.
--  --  --  --  --   ---   --
99  99  99  99  99   495 = 18 = 9.


So 9² = 81 ...81² = 6561 = 19 = 9 ...9x2 = 18 ...18² = 324 = 9.

9x3=27 ...27² = 729 = 18 = 9. 9x4 = 36 ...36² = 1296 = 18 = 9.

_And so with every multiple of_ 9--_say_ 45, 54, 63, 72, etc.

Thus 9x8 = 72 ...72² = 5184 = 18 = 9.

And further:

 18             27             36            72
 18             27             36            72
---            ---            ---           ---
144      = 9   189 = 18 = 9   216 =  9      144 =  9
18       = 9   54  = 9   =   108  =  9     504  =  9

324 = 9...18 = 9 729 = 18= 9 1296 = 18 = 9 5184 = 18 = 9
 108
 108
----
 864 = 18
108  = 9
-----
11664 = 18 = 9.

_And so the cubes:_

27²=729x729=18=9 18²=324=9   9²=81 81²=6561=18=9
         729           324                 6561
        ----          ----                 ----
        6561=18=9     1296=18=9            6561=18=9
       1458 =18=9     648 =18=9          39366 =27=9
      5103  =9       972  =18=9         32805  =18=9
                                       39366   =27=9
      ------          ------          ------
      531441=18=9   104976=27=9      43,046,721=27=9.

The number 10, or the Denary, is the measure of everything; and reduces
multiplied numbers to unity. Containing all the numerical and harmonic
relations, and all the properties of the numbers which precede it, it
concludes the Abacus or Table of Pythagoras. To the Mysterious
Societies, this number typified the assemblage of all the wonders of the
Universe. They wrote it thus Θ[Greek: THETA], that is to say, Unity in
the middle of Zero, as the centre of a circle, or symbol of Deity. They
saw in this figure everything that should lead to reflection: the
centre, the ray, and the circumference, represented to them God, Man,
and the Universe.

This number was, among the Sages, a sign of concord, love, and peace. To
Masons it is a sign of union and good faith; because it is expressed by
joining two hands, or the Master's grip, when the number of fingers
gives 10: and it was represented by the Tetractys of Pythagoras.

The number 12, like the number 7, is celebrated in the worship of
nature. The two most famous divisions of the heavens, that by 7, which
is that of the planets, and that by 12, which is that of the Signs of
the Zodiac, are found upon the religious monuments of all the peoples of
the Ancient World, even to the remote extremes of the East. Although
Pythagoras does not speak of the number 12, it is none the less a sacred
number. It is the image of the Zodiac; and consequently that of the Sun,
which rules over it.

Such are the ancient ideas in regard to those numbers which so often
appear in Masonry; and rightly understood, as the old Sages understood
them, they contain many a pregnant lesson.

Before we enter upon the final lesson of Masonic Philosophy, we will
delay a few moments to repeat to you the Christian interpretations of
the Blue Degrees.

In the First Degree, they said, there are three symbols to be applied.

1st. Man, after the fall, was left naked and defenceless against the
just anger of the Deity. Prone to evil, the human race staggered blindly
onward into the thick darkness of unbelief, bound fast by the strong
cable-tow of the natural and sinful will. Moral corruption was followed
by physical misery. Want and destitution invaded the earth. War and
Famine and Pestilence filled up the measure of evil, and over the sharp
flints of misfortune and wretchedness man toiled with naked and bleeding
feet. This condition of blindness, destitution, misery, and bondage,
from which to save the world the Redeemer came, is symbolized by the
condition of the candidate, when he is brought up for the first time to
the door of the Lodge.

2d. Notwithstanding the death of the Redeemer, man can be saved only by
faith, repentance, and reformation. To repent, he must feel the sharp
sting of conscience and remorse, like a sword piercing his bosom. His
confidence in his guide, whom he is told to follow and fear no danger;
his trust in God, which he is caused to profess; and the point of the
sword that is pressed against his naked left breast over the heart, are
symbolical of the faith, repentance and reformation necessary to bring
him to the light of a life in Christ the Crucified.

3d. Having repented and reformed, and bound himself to the service of
God by a firm promise and obligation, the light of Christian hope shines
down into the darkness of the heart of the humble penitent, and blazes
upon his pathway to Heaven. And this is symbolized by the candidate's
being brought to light, after he is obligated, by the Worshipful Master,
who in that is a symbol of the Redeemer, and so brings him to light,
with the help of the brethren, as He taught the Word with the aid of the
Apostles.

In the Second Degree there are two symbols:

4th. The Christian assumes new duties toward God and his fellows. Toward
God, of love, gratitude, and veneration, and an anxious desire to serve
and glorify Him; toward his fellows, of kindness, sympathy, and justice.
And this assumption of duty, this entering upon good works, is
symbolized by the Fellow-Craft's obligation; by which, bound as an
apprentice to secrecy merely, and set in the Northeast corner of the
Lodge, he descends as a Fellow-Craft into the body of the brethren, and
assumes the active duties of a good Mason.

5th. The Christian, reconciled to God, sees the world in a new light.
This great Universe is no longer a mere machine, wound up and set going
six thousand or sixty millions years ago, and left to run on afterward
forever, by virtue of a law of mechanics created at the beginning,
without further care or consideration on the part of the Deity; but it
has now become to him a great emanation from God, the product of His
thought, not a mere dead machine, but a thing of life, over which God
watches continually, and every movement of which is immediately produced
by His present action, the law of harmony being the essence of the
Deity, re-enacted every instant. And this is symbolized by the imperfect
instruction given in the Fellow-Craft's Degree, in the sciences, and
particularly geometry, connected as the latter is with God Himself in
the mind of a Mason, because the same letter, suspended in the East,
represents both; and astronomy, or the knowledge of the laws of motion
and harmony that govern the spheres, is but a portion of the wider
science of geometry. It is so symbolized, because it is here, in the
Second Degree, that the candidate first receives an other than moral
instruction.

There are also two symbols in the Third Degree, which, with the 3 in the
first, and 2 in the second, make the 7.

6th. The candidate, after passing through the first part of the
ceremony, imagines himself a Master; and is surprised to be informed
that as yet he is not, and that it is uncertain whether he ever will be.
He is told of a difficult and dangerous path yet to be travelled, and is
advised that upon that journey it depends whether he will become a
Master. This is symbolical of that which our Saviour said to Nicodemus,
that, notwithstanding his morals might be beyond reproach, he could not
enter the Kingdom of Heaven unless he were born again; symbolically
dying, and again entering the world regenerate, like a spotless infant.

7th. The murder of Hiram, his burial, and his being raised again by the
Master, are symbols, both of the death, burial, and resurrection of the
Redeemer; and of the death and burial in sins of the natural man, and
his being raised again to a new life or born again, by the direct action
of the Redeemer; after Morality (symbolized by the Entered Apprentice's
grip), and Philosophy (symbolized by the grip of the Fellow-Craft), had
failed to raise him. That of the Lion of the House of Judah is the
strong grip, never to be broken, with which Christ, of the royal line of
that House, has clasped to Himself the whole human race, and embraces
them in His wide arms as closely and affectionately as brethren embrace
each other on the five points of fellowship.

As Entered Apprentices and Fellow-Crafts, Masons are taught to imitate
the laudable example of those Masons who labored at the building of King
Solomon's Temple; and to plant firmly and deep in their hearts those
foundation-stones of principle, truth, justice, temperance, fortitude,
prudence, and charity, on which to erect that Christian character which
all the storms of misfortune and all the powers and temptations of Hell
shall not prevail against; those feelings and noble affections which are
the most proper homage that can be paid to the Grand Architect and Great
Father of the Universe, and which make the heart a living temple builded
to Him: when the unruly passions are made to submit to rule and
measurement, and their excesses are struck off with the gavel of
self-restraint; and when every action and every principle is accurately
corrected and adjusted by the square of wisdom, the level of humility,
and the plumb of justice.

The two columns, Jachin and Boaz, are the symbols of that profound faith
and implicit trust in God and the Redeemer that are the Christian's
_strength_; and of those good works by which alone that faith can be
_established_ and made operative and effectual to salvation.

The three pillars that support the Lodge are symbols of a Christian's
HOPE in a future state of happiness; FAITH in the promises and the
divine character and mission of the Redeemer; and CHARITABLE JUDGMENT of
other men.

The three murderers of Khir-Om symbolize Pontius Pilate, Caiaphas the
High-Priest, and Judas Iscariot: and the three blows given him are the
betrayal by the last, the refusal of Roman protection by Pilate, and the
condemnation by the High-Priest. They also symbolize the blow on the
ear, the scourging, and the crown of thorns. The twelve fellow-crafts
sent in search of the body are the twelve disciples, in doubt whether to
believe that the Redeemer would rise from the dead.

The Master's word, supposed to be lost, symbolizes the Christian faith
and religion, supposed to have been crushed and destroyed when the
Saviour was crucified, after Iscariot had betrayed Him, and Peter
deserted Him, and when the other disciples doubted whether He would
arise from the dead; but which rose from His tomb and flowed rapidly
over the civilized world; and so that which was supposed to be _lost_
was _found_. It symbolizes also the Saviour Himself; the WORD that was
in the beginning--that was _with_ God, and that _was_ God; the Word of
life, that was made flesh and dwelt among us, and was supposed to be
lost, while He lay in the tomb, for three days, and His disciples "as
yet knew not the scripture that He must rise again from the dead," and
doubted when they heard of it, and were amazed and frightened and still
doubted when He appeared among them.

The bush of acacia placed at the head of the grave of Khir-Om is an
emblem of resurrection and immortality.

Such are the explanations of our Christian brethren; entitled, like
those of all other Masons, to a respectful consideration.


CLOSING INSTRUCTION,

There is no pretence to infallibility in Masonry. It is not for us to
dictate to any man what he shall believe. We have hitherto, in the
instruction of the several Degrees, confined ourselves to laying before
you the great thoughts that have found expression in the different ages
of the world, leaving you to decide for yourself as to the orthodoxy or
heterodoxy of each, and what proportion of truth, if any, each
contained. We shall pursue no other course in this closing Philosophical
instruction; in which we propose to deal with the highest questions that
have ever exercised the human mind,--with the existence and the nature
of a God, with the existence and the nature of the human soul, and with
the relations of the divine and human spirit with the merely material
Universe. There can be no questions more important to an intelligent
being, none that have for him a more direct and personal interest; and
to this last word of Scottish Masonry we invite your serious and
attentive consideration. And, as what we shall now say will be but the
completion and rounding-off of what we have already said in several of
the preceding Degrees, in regard to the Old Thought and the Ancient
Philosophies, we hope that you have noted and not forgotten our previous
lessons, without which this would seem imperfect and fragmentary.

In its idea of rewarding a faithful and intelligent workman by
conferring upon him a knowledge of the True Word, Masonry has
perpetuated a very great truth, because it involves the proposition that
the idea which a man forms of God is always the most important element
in his speculative theory of the Universe, and in his particular
practical plan of action for the Church, the State, the Community, the
Family, and his own individual life. It will ever make a vast difference
in the conduct of a people in war or peace, whether they believe the
Supreme God to be a cruel Deity, delighting in sacrifice and blood, or a
God of Love; and an individual's speculative theory as to the mode and
extent of God's government, and as to the nature and reality of his own
free-will and consequent responsibility, will needs have great influence
in shaping the course of his life and conversation.

We see every day the vast influence of the popular idea of God. All the
great historical civilizations of the race have grown out of the
national ideas which were formed of God; or have been intimately
connected with those ideas. The popular Theology, which at first is only
an abstract idea in the heads of philosophers, by and by shows itself in
the laws, and in the punishments for crime, in the churches, the
ceremonies and the sacraments, the festivals and the fasts, the
weddings, the baptisms and the funerals, in the hospitals, the colleges,
the schools, and all the social charities, in the relations of husband
and wife, parent and child, in the daily work and the daily prayer of
every man.

As the world grows in its development, it necessarily _out_grows its
ancient ideas of God, which were only temporary and provisional. A man
who has a higher conception of God than those about him, and who denies
that their conception _is_ God, is very likely to be called an Atheist
by men who are really far less believers in a God than he. Thus the
Christians, who said the Heathen idols were no Gods, were accounted
Atheists by the People, and accordingly put to death; and Jesus of
Nazareth was crucified as an unbelieving blasphemer, by the Jews.

There is a mere formal Atheism, which is a denial of God in _terms_, but
not in _reality_. A man says, There is no God; that is, no God that is
self-originated, or that never originated, but always WAS and HAD BEEN,
who is the cause of existence, who is the Mind and the Providence of the
Universe; and so the order, beauty, and harmony of the world of matter
and mind do not indicate any plan or purpose of Deity. But, he says,
NATURE,--meaning by that the whole sum-total of existence,--_that_ is
powerful, active, wise, and good; _Nature_ is self-originated, or
always was and had been, the cause of its own existence, the mind of the
Universe and the Providence of itself. There is obviously a plan and
purpose whereby order, beauty, and harmony are brought about; but all
that is the plan and purpose of nature.

In such cases, the absolute denial of God is only formal and not real.
The _qualities_ of God are admitted, and affirmed to be real; and it is
a mere change of name to call the possessor of those qualities,
_Nature_, and not _God_. The real question is, whether such Qualities
exist, as we call God; and not, by what particular name we shall
designate the Qualities. One man may call the sum total of these
Qualities, Nature; another, Heaven; a third, Universe, a fourth, Matter;
a fifth, Spirit; a sixth, God, Theos, Zeus, Alfadir, Allah, or what he
pleases. All admit the existence of the Being, Power, or ENS, thus
diversely named. The name is of the smallest consequence.

_Real_ Atheism is the denial of the existence of _any_ God, of the
actuality of all possible ideas of God. It denies that there is _any_
Mind, Intelligence, or ENS, that is the Cause and Providence of the
Universe, and of any Thing or any Existence, Soul, Spirit, or Being,
that _intentionally_ or _intelligently_ produces the Order, Beauty, and
Harmony thereof, and the constant and regular modes of operation
therein. It must necessarily deny that there is any law, order, or
harmony in existence, or any constant mode of operation in the world;
for it is utterly impossible for any human creature to conceive, however
much he may _pretend_ to do so, of either of these, except as a
consequence of the action of Intelligence; which is, indeed, that
otherwise unknown thing, the existence of which these alone prove;
otherwise than as the cause of these, not a thing at all; a mere _name_
for the wholly uncognizable cause of these.

The _real_ atheist must deny the existence of the Qualities of God, deny
that there is any mind of or in the Universe, any self-conscious
Providence, any Providence at all. He must deny that there is any Being
or Cause of Finite things, that is self-consciously powerful, wise,
just, loving, and faithful to itself and its own nature. He must deny
that there is any _plan_ in the Universe or any part of it. He must
hold, either that matter is eternal, or that it originated itself, which
is absurd, or that it was originated by an Intelligence, or at least by
a Cause; and then he admits a God. No doubt it is beyond the reach of
our faculties to imagine _how_ matter originated,--how it began to _be_,
in space where before was nothing, or God only. But it is equally beyond
the reach of our faculties to imagine it eternal and _un_originated. To
hold it to be eternal, without thought or will; that the specific forms
of it, the seed, the rock, the tree, the man, the solar system, all came
with no forethought planning or producing them, by "chance" or "the
fortuitous concourse of atoms" of matter that has no thought or will;
and that they indicate no mind, no plan, no purpose, no providence, is
absurd. It is not to deny the _existence_ of what we understand by mind,
plan, purpose, Providence; but to insist that these words shall have
some other meaning than that which the human race has ever attached to
them: shall mean some unknown thing, for which the human race has no
_name_, because it has of such a thing no possible idea. Either there
never was any such thing as a "plan," and the word is nonsense, or the
Universe exists in conformity to a plan. The _word_ never meant, and
never can mean, any other _thing_ than that which the Universe exhibits.
So with the word "_purpose_;" so with the word "_Providence_." They mean
nothing, or else only what the Universe proves.

It was soon found that the denial of a Conscious Power, the cause of man
and of his life, of a Providence, or a Mind and Intelligence arranging
man in reference to the world, and the world in reference to man, would
not satisfy the instinctive desires of _human_ nature, or account for
the facts of _material_ nature. It did not long answer to say, if it
ever _was_ said, that the Universe was drifting in the void inane, and
neither it, nor any mind within or without it, knew of its whence, its
whither, or its whereabouts; that man was drifting in the Universe,
knowing little of his whereabouts, nothing of his whence or whither;
that there was no Mind, no Providence, no Power, that knew any better;
nothing that guided and directed man in his drifting, or the Universe in
the weltering waste of Time. To say to man and woman, "your heroism,
your bravery, your self-denial all comes to nothing: your nobleness will
do you no good: you will die, and your nobleness will do mankind no
service; for there is no plan or order in all these things; everything
comes and goes by the fortuitous concourse of atoms;" did not, nor ever
will, long satisfy the human mind.

True, the theory of Atheism has been uttered. It has been said, "Death
is the end: this is a world without a God: you are a body without a
soul: there is a Here, but no Hereafter for you; an Earth, but no
Heaven. Die, and return to your dust. Man is bones, blood, bowels, and
brain; mind is matter: there is no soul in the brain, nothing but
nerves. We can see all the way to a little star in the nebula of Orion's
belt; so distant that it will take light a thousand millions of years to
come from it to the earth, journeying at the rate of twelve millions of
miles a minute. There is no Heaven this side of that: you see all the
way through: there is not a speck of Heaven; and do you think there is
any beyond it; and if so, when would you reach it? There is no
Providence. Nature is a fortuitous concourse of atoms; thought is a
fortuitous function of matter, a fortuitous result of a fortuitous
result, a chance-shot from the great wind-gun of the Universe,
accidentally loaded, pointed at random, and fired off by chance. Things
_happen_; they are not _arranged_. There is luck, and there is ill-luck;
but there is no Providence. Die you into dust!" Does all this satisfy
the human instinct of immortality, that makes us ever long, with
unutterable longing, to join ourselves again to our dear ones who have
gone away before us, and to mankind, for eternal life? Does it satisfy
our mighty hungering and thirst for immortality, our anxious longing to
come nearer to, and to know more of, the Eternal Cause of all things?

Men never could be content to believe that there was no mind that
thought for man, no conscience to enact eternal laws, no heart to love
those whom nothing of earth loves or cares for, no will of the Universe
to marshal the nations in the way of wisdom, justice, and love. History
is not--thank God! we _know_ it is not,--the fortuitous concourse of
events, or Nature that of atoms. We cannot believe that there is no plan
nor purpose in Nature, to guide our going out and coming in: that there
is a mighty going, but it goes nowhere; that all beauty, wisdom,
affection, justice, morality in the world, is an accident, and may end
to-morrow.

All over the world there is heroism unrequited, or paid with misery;
vice on thrones, corruption in high places, nobleness in poverty or even
in chains, the gentle devotion of woman rewarded by brutal neglect or
more brutal abuse and violence; everywhere want, misery, over-work, and
under-wages. Add to these the Atheist's creed,--a body without a soul,
an earth without a Heaven, a world without a God; and what a
Pandemonium would we make of this world!

The intellect of the Atheist would find matter everywhere; but no
Causing and Providing Mind: his moral sense would find no Equitable
Will, no Beauty of Moral Excellence, no Conscience enacting justice into
the unchanging law of right, no spiritual Order or spiritual Providence,
but only material Fate and Chance. His affections would find only finite
things to love; and to them the dead who _were_ loved and who died
yesterday, are like the rainbow that yesterday evening lived a moment
and then passed away. His soul, flying through the vast Inane, and
feeling the darkness with its wings, seeking the Soul of all, which at
once is Reason, Conscience, and the Heart of all that is, would find no
God, but a Universe all disorder; no Infinite, no Reason, no Conscience,
no Heart, no Soul of things; nothing to reverence, to esteem, to love,
to worship, to trust in; but only an Ugly Force, alien and foreign to
us, that strikes down those we love, and makes us mere worms on the hot
sand of the world. No voice would speak from the Earth to comfort him.
It is a cruel mother, that great Earth, that devours her young,--a Force
and nothing more. Out of the sky would smile no kind Providence, in all
its thousand starry eyes; and in storms a malignant violence, with its
lightning-sword, would stab into the darkness, seeking for men to
murder.

No man ever was or ever can be content with that. The evidence of God
has been ploughed into Nature so deeply, and so deeply woven into the
texture of the human soul, that Atheism has never become a faith, though
it has sometimes assumed the shape of theory. Religion is natural to
man. Instinctively he turns to God and reverences and relies on Him. In
the Mathematics of the Heavens, written in gorgeous diagrams of fire, he
sees law, order, beauty, harmony without end: in the ethics of the
little nations that inhabit the ant-hills he sees the same; in all
Nature, animate and inanimate, he sees the evidences of a Design, a
Will, an Intelligence, and a God,--of a God beneficent and loving as
well as wise, and merciful and indulgent as well as powerful.

To man, surrounded by the material Universe, and conscious of the
influence that his material environments exercised upon his fortunes and
his present destiny;--to man, ever confronted with the splendors of the
starry heavens, the regular march of the seasons, the phenomena of
sunrise and moonrise, and all the evidences of intelligence and design
that everywhere pressed upon and overwhelmed him, all imaginable
questions as to the nature and cause of these phenomena constantly
recurred, demanding to be solved, and refusing to be sent away
unanswered. And still, after the lapse of ages, press upon the human
mind and demand solution, the same great questions--perhaps still
demanding it in vain.

Advancing to the period when man had ceased to look upon the separate
parts and individual forces of the Universe as gods,--when he had come
to look upon it as a whole, this question, among the earliest, occurred
to him, and insisted on being answered: "Is this material Universe
self-existent, or was it created? Is it eternal, or did it originate?"

And then in succession came crowding on the human mind these other
questions:

"Is this material Universe a mere aggregate of fortuitous combinations
of matter, or is it the result and work of intelligence, acting upon a
plan?

"If there _be_ such an Intelligence, what and where is it? Is the
material Universe _itself_ an Intelligent being? Is it like man, a body
and a soul? Does Nature act upon itself, or is there a Cause beyond it
that acts upon it?

"If there is a _personal_ God, _separate from_ the material Universe,
that created all things, Himself uncreated, is He corporeal or
incorporeal, material or spiritual, the soul of the Universe or wholly
apart from it? and if He be Spirit, what then is spirit?

"Was that Supreme Deity active or quiescent before the creation; and if
quiescent during a previous eternity, what necessity of His nature moved
Him at last to create a world; or was it a mere whim that had no motive?

"Was matter co-existent with Him, or absolutely created by him out of
nothing? Did He _create_ it, or only _mould_ and _shape_ and _fashion_ a
chaos already existing, co-existent with Himself?

"Did the Deity _directly_ create matter, or was creation the work of
inferior deities, emanations from Himself?

"If He be good and just, whence comes it that, foreknowing everything,
He has allowed sorrow and evil to exist; and how to reconcile with His
benevolence and wisdom the prosperity of vice and the misfortunes of
virtue in this world?" And then, as to man himself, recurred these
other questions, as they continue to recur to all of us:

"What is it in us that thinks? Is Thought the mere result of material
organization; or is there in us a _soul_ that thinks, separate from and
resident in the body? If the latter, is it eternal and uncreated; and if
not, how created? Is it distinct from God, or an emanation from Him? Is
it _inherently_ immortal, or only so by destination, because God has
willed it? Is it to return to and be merged in Him, or ever to exist,
separately from Him, with its present identity?

"If God has fore-seen and fore-arranged all that occurs, how has man any
real free-will, or the least control over circumstances? How can
anything be done _against_ the will of Infinite Omnipotence; and if all
is done _according_ to that will, how is there any wrong or evil, in
what Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Power does not choose to prevent?

"What is the foundation of the moral law? Did God enact it of His own
mere pleasure; and if so, can He not, when He pleases, repeal it? Who
shall assure us He will not repeal it, and make right wrong, and virtue
vice? Or is the moral law a necessity of His nature; and if so, who
enacted it; and does not that assert a power, like the old Necessity,
superior to Deity?"

And, close-following after these, came the great question of HEREAFTER,
of another Life, of the soul's Destiny; and the thousand other
collateral and subordinate questions, as to matter, spirit, futurity,
and God, that have produced all the systems of philosophy, all
metaphysics, and all theology, since the world began.

What the old philosophic mind thought upon these great questions, we
have already, to some extent, developed. With the Emanation-doctrine of
the Gnostics and the Orient, we have endeavored to make you familiar. We
have brought you face to face with the Kabalists, the Essenes, and Philo
the Jew. We have shown that, and how, much of the old mythology was
derived from the daily and yearly recurring phenomena of the heavens. We
have exhibited to you the ancient notions by which they endeavored to
explain to themselves the existence and prevalence of evil; and we have
in some degree made known to you their metaphysical ideas as to the
nature of the Deity. Much more remains to be done than it is within our
power to do. We stand upon the sounding shore of the great ocean of
Time. In front of us stretches out the heaving waste of the illimitable
Past; and its waves, as they roll up to our feet along the sparkling
slope of the yellow sands, bring to us, now and then, from the depths of
that boundless ocean, a shell, a few specimens of algæ torn rudely from
their stems, a rounded pebble; and that is all; of all the vast
treasures of ancient thought that lie buried there, with the mighty
anthem of the boundless ocean thundering over them forever and forever.

Let us once more, and for the last time, along the shore of that great
ocean, gather a few more relics of the Past, and listen to its mighty
voices, as they come, in fragmentary music, in broken and interrupted
rhythm, whispering to us from the great bosom of the Past.

Rites, creeds, and legends express, directly or symbolically, some
leading idea, according to which the Mysteries of Being are supposed to
be, explained in Deity. The intricacies of mythical genealogies are a
practical acknowledgment of the mysterious nature of the Omnipotent
Deity; displaying in their beautiful but ineffectual imagery the first
efforts of the mind to communicate with nature: the flowers which fancy
strewed before the youthful steps of Psyche, when she first set out in
pursuit of the immortal object of her love. Theories and notions, in all
their varieties of truth and falsehood, are a machinery more or less
efficacious, directed to the same end. Every religion was, in its
origin, an embryo philosophy, or an attempt to interpret the unknown by
mind; and it was only when philosophy, which is essentially progress,
outgrew its first acquisitions, that religion became a thing apart,
cherishing as unalterable dogmas the notions which philosophy had
abandoned. Separated from philosophy, it became arrogant and
fantastical, professing to have already attained what its more authentic
representative was ever pursuing in vain; and discovering, through its
initiations and Mysteries, all that to its contracted view seemed
wanting to restore the well-being of mankind, the means of purification
and expiation, remedies for disease, expedients to cure the disorders of
the soul, and to propitiate the gods.

Why should we attempt to confine the idea of the Supreme Mind within an
arbitrary barrier, or exclude from the limits of veracity any conception
of the Deity, which, if imperfect and inadequate, may be only a little
more so than our own? "The name of God," says Hobbes, "is used not to
make us _conceive_ Him, for He is inconceivable, but that we may _honor_
Him." "Believe in God, and adore Him," said the Greek Poet, "but
investigate Him not; the inquiry is fruitless, seek not to discover who
God is; for, by the desire to know, you offend Him who chooses to remain
unknown." "When we attempt," says Philo, "to investigate the essence of
the Absolute Being, we fall into an abyss of perplexity; and the only
benefit to be derived from such researches is the conviction of their
absurdity."

Yet man, though ignorant of the constitution of the dust on which he
treads, has ventured, and still ventures, to speculate on the nature of
God, and to define dogmatically in creeds the subject least within the
compass of his faculties; and even to hate and persecute those who will
not accept his views as true.

But though a knowledge of the Divine Essence is impossible, the
conceptions formed respecting it are interesting, as indications of
intellectual development. The history of religion is the history of the
human mind; and the conception formed by it of Deity is always in exact
relation to its moral and intellectual attainments. The one is the index
and the measure of the other.

The _negative_ notion of God, which consists in abstracting the inferior
and finite, is, according to Philo, the only way in which it is possible
for man worthily to apprehend the nature of God. After exhausting the
varieties of symbolism, we contrast the Divine Greatness with human
littleness, and employ expressions apparently affirmative, such as
"Infinite," "Almighty," "All-wise," "Omnipotent," "Eternal," and the
like; which in reality amount only to denying, in regard to God, those
limits which confine the faculties of man; and thus we remain content
with a name which is a mere conventional sign and confession of our
ignorance.

The Hebrew יהוה and the Greek _To ON_ expressed abstract existence,
without outward manifestation or development. Of the same nature are the
definitions, "God is a sphere whose centre is everywhere, and whose
circumference nowhere;" "God is He who sees all, Himself unseen:" and
finally, that of Proclus and Hegel--"the _To_ μη ον--that which has no
outward and positive existence." Most of the so-called ideas or
definitions of the "Absolute" are only a collection of negations; from
which, as they affirm nothing, nothing is learned.

God was first recognized in the heavenly bodies and in the elements.
When man's consciousness of his own intellectuality was matured, and he
became convinced that the internal faculty of thought was something more
subtle than even the most subtle elements, he transferred that new
conception to the object of his worship, and deified a mental principle
instead of a physical one. He in every case makes God after his own
image; for do what we will, the highest efforts of human thought can
conceive nothing higher than the supremacy of intellect; and so he ever
comes back to some familiar type of exalted humanity. He at first
deifies nature, and afterward himself.

The eternal aspiration of the religious sentiment in man is to become
united with God. In his earliest development, the wish and its
fulfillment were simultaneous, through unquestioning belief. In
proportion as the conception of Deity was exalted, the notion of His
terrestrial presence or proximity was abandoned; and the difficulty of
comprehending the Divine Government, together with the glaring
superstitious evils arising out of its misinterpretation, endangered the
belief in it altogether.

Even the lights of Heaven, which, as "bright potentates of the sky,"
were formerly the vigilant directors of the economy of earth, now shine
dim and distant, and Uriel no more descends upon a sunbeam. But the real
change has been in the progressive ascent of man's own faculties, and
not in the Divine Nature; as the Stars are no more distant now than when
they were supposed to rest on the shoulders of Atlas. And yet a little
sense of disappointment and humiliation attended the first awakening of
the soul, when reason, looking upward toward the Deity, was impressed
with a dizzy sense of having fallen.

But hope revives in despondency; and every nation that ever advanced
beyond the most elementary conceptions, felt the necessity of an attempt
to fill the chasm, real or imaginary, separating man from God. To do
this was the great task of poetry, philosophy, and religion. Hence the
personifications of God's attributes, developments, and manifestations,
as "Powers," "Intelligences," "Angels," "Emanations;" through which and
the oracular faculty in himself, man could place himself in communion
with God.

The various ranks and orders of mythical beings imagined by Persians,
Indians, Egyptians, or Etrurians, to preside over the various
departments of nature, had each his share in a scheme to bring man into
closer approximation to the Deity; they eventually gave way only before
an analogous though less picturesque symbolism; and the Deities and
Dæmons of Greece and Rome were perpetuated with only a change of names,
when their offices were transferred to Saints and Martyrs. The attempts
by which reason had sometimes endeavored to span the unknown by a bridge
of metaphysics, such as the idealistic systems of Zoroaster, Pythagoras,
or Plato, were only a more refined form of the poetical illusions which
satisfied the vulgar; and man still looked back with longing to the lost
golden age, when his ancestors communed face to face with the Gods; and
hoped that, by propitiating Heaven, he might accelerate the renewal of
it in the islands of the Far West, under the sceptre of Kronos, or in a
centralization of political power at Jerusalem. His eager hope overcame
even the terrors of the grave; for the Divine power was as infinite as
human expectation, and the Egyptian, duly ensepulchred in the Lybian
Catacombs, was supposed to be already on his way to the Fortunate Abodes
under the guidance of Hermes, there to obtain a perfect association and
reunion with his God.

Remembering what we have already said elsewhere in regard to the old
ideas concerning the Deity, and repeating it as little as possible, let
us once more put ourselves in communion with the Ancient poetic and
philosophic mind, and endeavor to learn of it what it thought, and how
it solved the great problems that have ever tortured the human
intellect.

The division of the First and Supreme Cause into two parts, one Active
and the other Passive, the Universe Agent and Patient, or the
hermaphroditic God-World, is one of the most ancient and widespread
dogmas of philosophy or natural theology. Almost every ancient people
gave it a place in their worship, their mysteries, and their ceremonies.

Ocellus Lucanus, who seems to have lived shortly after Pythagoras opened
his School in Italy, five or six hundred years before our era, and in
the time of Solon, Thales, and the other Sages who had studied in the
Schools of Egypt, not only recognizes the eternity of the Universe, and
its divine character as an unproduced and indestructible being, but also
the distinction of Active and Passive causes in what he terms the Grand
Whole, or the single hermaphroditic Being that comprehends all
existences, as well causes as effects; and which is a system regularly
ordered, perfect and complete, of all Natures. He well apprehended the
dividing-line that separates existence eternally the same, from that
which eternally changes; the nature of celestial from that of
terrestrial bodies, that of causes from that of effects, that which is
from that which only BECOMES,--a distinction that naturally struck every
thinking man.

We shall not quote his language at full length. The heavenly bodies, he
thought, are first and most noble; they move of themselves, and ever
revolve, without change of form or essence. Fire, water, earth, and air
change incessantly and continually, not place, but form. Then, as in the
Universe there are generation and cause of generation,--as generation is
where there are change and displacement of parts, and cause where there
is stability of nature, evidently it belongs to what is the cause of
generation, to move and to act, and to the recipient, to be made and
moved. In his view, everything above the Moon was the habitation of the
gods; all below, that of Nature and discord; _this_ operates dissolution
of things made; _that_, production of those that are being made. As the
world is unproduced and indestructible, as it had no beginning, and will
have no end, necessarily the principle that operates generation in
another than itself, and that which operates it _in_ itself, have
co-existed.

The former is all above the moon, and especially the sun: the latter is
the sublunary world. Of these two parts, one active, the other
passive--one divine and always the same, the other mortal and ever
changing, all that we call the "world" or "universe" is composed.

These accorded with the principles of the Egyptian philosophy, which
held that man and the animals had always existed together with the
world; that they were its effects, eternal like itself. The chief
divisions of nature into active and passive causes, its system of
generation and destruction, and the concurrence of the two great
principles, Heaven and earth, uniting to form all things, will,
according to Ocellus, always continue to exist. "Enough," he concludes,
"as to the Universe, the generations and destructions effected in it,
the mode in which it now exists, the mode in which it will ever exist,
by the eternal qualities of the two principles, one always moving, the
other always moved; one always _governing_, the other always
_governed_."

Such is a brief summary of the doctrine of this philosopher, whose work
is one of the most ancient that has survived to us. The subject on which
he treated occupied in his time all men's minds: the poets sang of
cosmogonies and theogonies, and the philosophers wrote treatises on the
birth of the world and the elements of its composition. The cosmogony of
the Hebrews, attributed to Moses; that of the Phœnicians, ascribed to
Sanchoniathon; that of the Greeks, composed by Hesiod; that of the
Egyptians, the Atlantes, and the Cretans, preserved by Diodorus Siculus;
the fragments of the theology of Orpheus, divided among different
writers; the books of the Persians, or their Boundehesh; those of the
Hindūs; the traditions of the Chinese and the people of Macassar; the
cosmogonic chants which Virgil puts in the mouth of Iopas at Carthage;
and those of the old Silenus, the first book of the Metamorphoses of
Ovid; all testify to the antiquity and universality of these fictions as
to the origin of the world and its causes.

At the head of the causes of nature, Heaven and earth were placed; and
the most apparent parts of each, the sun, the moon, the fixed stars and
planets, and, above all, the zodiac, among the _active_ causes of
generation; and among the _passive_, the several elements. These causes
were not only classed in the progressive order of their energy, Heaven
and earth heading the respective lists, but distinct sexes were in some
sort assigned to them, and characteristics analogous to the mode in
which they concur in universal generation.

The doctrine of Ocellus was the general doctrine everywhere, it
naturally occurring to all to make the same distinction. The Egyptians
did so, in selecting those animals in which they recognized these
emblematic qualities, in order to symbolize the double sex of the
Universe. Their God KNEPH, out of whose mouth issued the Orphic egg,
whence the author of the Clementine Recognitions makes a hermaphroditic
figure to emerge, uniting in itself the two principles whereof Heaven
and the earth are forms, and which enter into the organization of all
beings which the heavens and the earth engender by their concourse,
furnishes another emblem of the double power, active and passive, which
the ancients saw in the Universe, and which they symbolized by the egg.
Orpheus, who studied in Egypt, borrowed from the theologians of that
country the mysterious forms under which the science of nature was
veiled, and carried into Greece the symbolic egg, with its division
into two parts or causes figured by the hermaphroditic being that issued
from it, and whereof Heaven and earth are composed.

The Brahmins of India expressed the same cosmogonic idea by a statue,
representative of the Universe, uniting in itself both sexes. The male
sex offered an image of the sun, centre of the active principle, and the
female sex that of the moon, at the sphere whereof, proceeding downward,
the passive portion of nature begins. The Lingam, unto the present day
revered in the Indian temples, being but the conjunction of the organs
of generation of the two sexes, was an emblem of the same. The Hindūs
have ever had the greatest veneration for this symbol of
ever-reproductive nature. The Greeks consecrated the same symbols of
universal fruitfulness in their Mysteries; and they were exhibited in
the sanctuaries of Eleusis. They appear among the sculptured ornaments
of all the Indian temples. Tertullian accuses the Valentinians of having
adopted the custom of venerating them; a custom, he says, introduced by
Melampus from Egypt into Greece. The Egyptians consecrated the Phallus
in the Mysteries of Osiris and Isis, as we learn from Plutarch and
Diodorus Siculus; and the latter assures us that these emblems were not
consecrated by the Egyptians alone, but by every people. They certainly
were so among the Persians and Assyrians; and they were regarded
everywhere as symbolic of the generative and productive powers of all
animated beings. In those early ages, the works of Nature and all her
agents were sacred like herself.

For the union of Nature with herself is a chaste marriage, of which the
union of man and woman was a natural image, and their organs were an
expressive emblem of the double energy which manifests itself in Heaven,
and Earth uniting together to produce all beings. "The Heavens," says
Plutarch, "seemed to men to fulfill the functions of father, and the
Earth of mother. The former impregnated the earth with its fertilizing
rains, and the earth, receiving them, became fruitful and brought
forth." Heaven, which covers and embraces the earth everywhere, is her
potent spouse, uniting himself to her to make her fruitful, without
which she would languish in everlasting sterility, buried in the shades
of chaos and of night. Their union is their marriage; their productions
or parts are their children. The skies are our Father, and Nature the
great Mother of us all.

This idea was not the dogma of a single sect, but the general opinion of
all the Sages. "Nature was divided," says Cicero, "into two parts, one
active, and the other that submitted itself to this action, which it
received, and which modified it. The former was deemed to be a Force,
and the latter the material on which that Force exerted itself."
Macrobius repeated almost literally the doctrine of Ocellus. Aristotle
termed the earth the fruitful mother, environed on all sides by the air.
Above it was Heaven, the dwelling-place of the gods and the divine
stars, its substance ether, or a fire incessantly moving in circles,
divine and incorruptible, and subject to no change. Below it, nature,
and the elements, mutable and acted on, corruptible and mortal.

Synesius said that generations were effected in the portions of the
Universe which we inhabit; while the cause of generations resided in the
portions above us, whence descend to us the germs of the effects
produced here below. Proclus and Simplicius deemed Heaven the Active
Cause and Father, relatively to the earth. The former says that the
World or the Whole is a single Animal; what is done _in_ it, is done
_by_ it; the same World _acts_, and _acts upon itself_. He divides it
into "Heaven" and "Generation." In the former, he says, are placed and
arranged the conservative causes of generation, superintended by the
Genii and Gods. The Earth, or Rhea, associated ever with Saturn in
production, is mother of the effects of which Heaven is Father; the womb
or bosom that receives the fertilizing energy of the God that engenders
ages. The great work of generation is operated, he says, primarily by
the action of the Sun, and secondarily by that of the Moon, so that the
Sun is the primitive source of this energy, as father and chief of the
male gods that form his court. He follows the action of the male and
female principles through all the portions and divisions of nature,
attributing to the former the origin of stability and identity, to the
latter, that of diversity and mobility. Heaven is to the earth, he says,
as the male to the female. It is the movement of the heavens that, by
their revolutions, furnished the seminal incitements and forces, whose
emanations received by the earth, make it fruitful, and cause it to
produce animals and plants of every kind.

Philo says that Moses recognized this doctrine of two causes, active and
passive; but made the former to reside in the Mind or Intelligence
external to matter.

The ancient astrologers divided the twelve signs of the Zodiac into six
male and six female, and assigned them to six male and six female Great
Gods. Heaven and Earth, or Ouranos and Ghê, were among most ancient
nations, the first and most ancient Divinities. We find them in the
Phœenician history of Sanchoniathon, and in the Grecian Genealogy of the
Gods given by Hesiod. Everywhere they marry, and by their union produce
the later Gods. "In the beginning," says Apollodorus, "Ouranos or the
Heavens was Lord of all the Universe: he took to wife Ghê or the earth,
and had by her many children." They were the first Gods of the Cretans,
and under other names, of the Armenians, as we learn from Berosus, and
of Panchaia, an island South of Arabia, as we learn from Euhemerus.
Orpheus made the Divinity, or the "Great Whole," male and female,
because, he said, it could produce nothing, unless it united in itself
the productive force of both sexes. He called Heaven PANGENETOR, the
Father of all things, most ancient of Beings, beginning and end of all,
containing in Himself the incorruptible and unwearying force of
Necessity.

The same idea obtained in the rude North of Europe. The Scythians made
the earth to be the wife of Jupiter; and the Germans adored her under
the name of HERTA. The Celts worshipped the Heavens and the Earth, and
said that without the former the latter would be sterile, and that their
marriage produced all things. The Scandinavians acknowledged BÖR or the
Heavens, and gave FURTUR, his son, the Earth as his wife. Olaus Rudbeck
adds, that their ancestors were persuaded that Heaven intermarried with
the Earth, and thus uniting his forces with hers, produced animals and
plants. This marriage of Heaven and Earth produced the AZES, Genii
famous in the theology of the North. In the theology of the Phrygians
and Lydians, the ASII were born of the marriage of the Supreme God with
the Earth, and Firmicus informs us that the Phrygians attributed to the
Earth supremacy over the other elements, and considered her the Great
Mother of all things.

Virgil sings the impregnation of the joyous earth, by the Ether, its
spouse, that descends upon its bosom, fertilizing it with rains.
Columella sings the loves of Nature and her marriage with Heaven
annually consummated at the sweet Spring-time. He describes the Spirit
of Life, the soul that animates the world, fired with the passion of
Love, uniting with Nature and itself, itself a part of Nature, and
filling its own bosom with new productions. This union of the Universe
with itself, this mutual action of two sexes, he terms "the great
Secrets of Nature," "the Mysteries of the Union of Heaven with Earth,
imaged in the Sacred Mysteries of Atys and Bacchus."

Varro tells us that the great Divinities adored at Samothrace were the
Heavens and the Earth, considered as First Causes or Primal Gods, and as
male and female agents, one bearing to the other the relations that the
Soul and Principle of Movement bear to the body or the matter that
receives them. These were the gods revered in the Mysteries of that
Island, as they were in the orgies of Phœnicia.

Everywhere the sacred body of Nature was covered with the veil of
allegory, which concealed it from the profane, and allowed it to be seen
only by the sage who thought it worthy to be the object of his study and
investigation. She showed herself to those only who loved her in spirit
and in truth, and she abandoned the indifferent and careless to error
and to ignorance. "The Sages of Greece," says Pausanias, "never wrote
otherwise than in an enigmatical manner, never naturally and directly."
"Nature," says Sallust the Philosopher, "should be sung only in a
language that imitates the secrecy of her processes and operations. She
is herself an enigma. We see only bodies in movement; the forces and
springs that move them are hidden from us." The poets inspired by the
Divinity, the wisest philosophers, all the theologians, the chiefs of
the initiations and Mysteries, even the gods uttering their oracles,
have borrowed the figurative language of allegory. "The Egyptians," says
Proclus, "preferred that mode of teaching, and spoke of the great
secrets of Nature, only in mythological enigmas." The Gymnosophists of
India and the Druids of Gaul lent to science the same enigmatic
language, and in the same style wrote the Hierophants of Phœnicia.

The division of things into the active and the passive cause leads to
that of the two Principles of Light and Darkness, connected with and
corresponding with it. For Light comes from the ethereal substance that
composes the active cause, and darkness from earth or the gross matter
which composes the passive cause. In Hesiod, the Earth, by its union
with Tartarus, engenders Typhon, Chief of the Powers or Genii of
Darkness. But it unites itself with the Ether or Ouranos, when it
engenders the Gods of Olympus, or the Stars, children of Starry Ouranos.

Light was the first Divinity worshipped by men. To it they owed the
brilliant spectacle of Nature. It seems an emanation from the Creator of
all things, making known to our senses the Universe which darkness hides
from our eyes, and, as it were, giving it existence. Darkness, as it
were, reduces all nature again to nothingness, and almost entirely
annihilates man.

Naturally, therefore, two substances of opposite natures were imagined,
to each of which the world was in turn subjected, one contributing to
its felicity and the other to its misfortune. Light multiplied its
enjoyments; Darkness despoiled it of them: the former was its friend,
the latter its enemy. To one all good was attributed; to the other all
evil; and thus the words "Light" and "Good" became synonymous, and the
words "Darkness" and "Evil." It seeming that Good and Evil could not
flow from one and the same source, any more than could Light and
Darkness, men naturally imagined two Causes or Principles, of different
natures and opposite in their effects, one of which shed Light and Good,
and the other Darkness and Evil, on the Universe.

This distinction of the two Principles was admitted in all the
Theologies, and formed one of the principal bases of all religions. It
entered as a primary element into the sacred fables, the cosmogonies and
the Mysteries of antiquity. "We are not to suppose," says Plutarch,
"that the Principles of the Universe are inanimate bodies, as Democritus
and Epicurus thought; nor that a matter devoid of qualities is organized
and arranged by a single Reason or Providence, Sovereign over all
things, as the Stoics held; for it is not possible that a single Being,
good or evil, is the cause of all, inasmuch as God can in nowise be the
cause of any evil. The harmony of the Universe is a combination of
contraries, like the strings of a lyre, or that of a bow, which
alternately is stretched and relaxed." "The good," says Euripides, "is
never separated from the Evil. The two must mingle, that all may go
well." And this opinion as to the two principles, continues Plutarch,
"is that of all antiquity. From the Theologians and Legislators it
passed to the Poets and Philosophers. Its author is unknown; but the
opinion itself is established by the traditions of the whole human race,
and consecrated in the mysteries and sacrifices both of the Greeks and
Barbarians, wherein was recognized the dogma of opposing principles in
nature, which, by their contrariety, produce the mixture of good and
evil. We must admit two contrary causes, two opposing powers, which
lead, one to the right and the other to the left, and thus control our
life, as they do the sublunary world, which is therefore subject to so
many changes and irregularities of every kind. For if there can be no
effect without a cause, and if the Good cannot be the cause of the Evil,
it is absolutely necessary that there should be a cause for the Evil, as
there is one for the Good." This doctrine, he adds, has been generally
received among most nations, and especially by those who have had the
greatest reputation for wisdom. All have admitted two gods, with
different occupations, one making the good and the other the evil found
in nature. The former has been styled "God," the latter "Demon." The
Persians, or Zoroaster, named the former Ormuzd and the latter Ahriman;
of whom they said one was of the nature of Light, the other of that of
Darkness. The Egyptians called the former Osiris, and the latter Typhon,
his eternal enemy.

The Hebrews, at least after their return from the Persian captivity, had
their good Deity, and the Devil, a bad and malicious Spirit, ever
opposing God, and Chief of the Angels of Darkness, as God was of those
of Light. The word "Satan" means, in Hebrew, simply, "The Adversary."

The Chaldeans, Plutarch says, had their good and evil stars. The Greeks
had their Jupiter and Pluto, and their Giants and Titans, to whom were
assigned the attributes of the Serpent with which Pluto or Serapis was
encircled, and the shape whereof was assumed by Typhon, Ahriman, and the
Satan of the Hebrews. Every people had something equivalent to this.

The People of Pegu believe in two Principles, one author of Good and the
other of Evil, and strive to propitiate the latter, while they think it
needless to worship the former, as he is incapable of doing evil. The
people of Java, of the Moluccas, of the Gold Coast, the Hottentots, the
people of Teneriffe and Madagascar, and the Savage Tribes of America,
all worship and strive to avert the anger and propitiate the good-will
of the Evil Spirit.

But among the Greeks, Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, and Assyrians, the
doctrine of the two Principles formed a complete and regularly arranged
theological system. It was the basis of the religion of the Magi and of
Egypt. The author of an ancient work, attributed to Origen, says that
Pythagoras learned from Zarastha, a Magus at Babylon (the same, perhaps,
as Zerdusht or Zoroaster), that there are two principles of all things,
whereof one is the _father_ and the other the _mother_; the former,
Light, and the latter, Darkness. Pythagoras thought that the
Dependencies on Light were warmth, dryness, lightness, swiftness; and
those of Darkness, cold, wet, weight, and slowness; and that the world
derived its existence from these two principles, as from the male and
the female. According to Porphyry, he conceived two opposing powers, one
good, which he termed Unity, the Light, Right, the Equal, the Stable,
the Straight; the other evil, which he termed Binary, Darkness, the
Left, the Unequal, the Unstable, the Crooked. These ideas he received
from the Orientals, for he dwelt twelve years at Babylon, studying with
the Magi. Varro says he recognized two Principles of all things,--the
Finite and the Infinite, Good and Evil, Life and Death, Day and Night.
White he thought was of the nature of the Good Principle, and Black of
that of the Evil; that Light and Darkness, Heat and Cold, the Dry and
the Wet, mingled in equal proportions; that Summer was the triumph of
heat, and Winter of cold; that their equal combination produced Spring
and Autumn, the former producing verdure and favorable to health, and
the latter, deteriorating everything, giving birth to maladies. He
applied the same idea to the rising and setting of the sun; and, like
the Magi, held that God or Ormuzd in the body resembled light, and in
the soul, truth.

Aristotle, like Plato, admitted a principle of Evil, resident in matter
and in its eternal imperfection.

The Persians said that Ormuzd, born of the pure Light, and Ahriman, born
of darkness, were ever at war. Ormuzd produced six Gods, Beneficence,
Truth, Good Order, Wisdom, Riches, and Virtuous Joy. These were so many
emanations from the Good Principle, so many blessings bestowed by it on
men. Ahriman, in his turn, produced six Devs, opponents of the six
emanations from Ormuzd. Then Ormuzd made himself three times as great as
before, ascended as far above the sun as the sun is above the earth, and
adorned the heavens with stars, of which he made Sirius the sentinel or
advance-guard: that he then created twenty-four other Deities, and
placed them in an egg, where Ahriman also placed twenty-four others,
created by him, who broke the egg; and so intermingled Good and Evil.
Theopompus adds that, according to the Magi, for two terms of three
thousand years, each of the two Principles is to be by turns victor and
the other vanquished; then for three thousand more for each they are to
contend with each other, each destroying reciprocally the works of the
other; after which Ahriman is to perish, and men, wearing transparent
bodies, to enjoy unutterable happiness.

The twelve great Deities of the Persians, the six Amshaspands and six
Devs, marshalled, the former under the banner of Light, and the latter
under that of Darkness, are the twelve Zodiacal Signs or Months; the six
supreme signs, or those of Light, or of Spring and Summer, commencing
with Aries, and the six inferior, of Darkness, or of Autumn and Winter,
commencing with Libra. Limited Time, as contradistinguished from Time
without limits, or Eternity, is Time created and measured by the
celestial revolutions. It is comprehended in a period divided into
twelve parts, each subdivided into a thousand parts, which the Persians
termed years. Thus the circle annually traversed by the Sun was divided
into 12,000 parts, or each sign into 3,000: and thus, each year, the
Principle of Light and Good triumphed for 3,000 years, that of Evil and
Darkness for 3,000, and they mutually destroyed each other's labors for
6,000, or 3,000 for each: so that the Zodiac was equally divided between
them. And accordingly Ocellus Lucanus, the Disciple of Pythagoras, held
that the principal cause of all sublunary effects resided in the Zodiac,
and that from it flowed the good or bad influences of the planets that
revolved therein.

The twenty-four good and twenty-four evil Deities, enclosed in the Egg,
are the forty-eight constellations of the ancient sphere, equally
divided between the realms of Light and Darkness, on the concavity of
the celestial sphere which was apportioned among them; and which,
enclosing the world and planets, was the mystic and sacred egg of the
Magi, the Indians, and the Egyptians,--the egg that issued from the
mouth of the God Kneph, that figured as the Orphic Egg in the Mysteries
of Greece, that issued from the God Chumong of the Coresians, and from
the Egyptian Osiris and the God Phanes of the Modern Orphics, Principle
of Light,--the egg crushed by the Sacred Bull of the Japanese, and from
which the world emerged; that placed by the Greeks at the feet of
Bacchus the bull-horned God, and from which Aristophanes makes Love
emerge, who with Night organizes Chaos.

Thus the Balance, the Scorpion, the Serpent of Ophiucus, and the Dragon
of the Hesperides became malevolent Signs and Evil Genii; and entire
nature was divided between the two principles, and between the agents or
partial causes subordinate to them. Hence Michael and his Archangels,
and Satan and his fallen compeers. Hence the wars of Jupiter and the
Giants, in which the Gods of Olympus fought on the side of the
Light-God, against the dark progeny of earth and Chaos; a war which
Proclus regarded as symbolizing the resistance opposed by dark and
chaotic matter to the active and beneficent force which gives it
organization; an idea which in part appears in the old theory of two
Principles, one innate in the active and luminous substance of Heaven,
and the other in the inert and dark substance of matter that resists the
order and the good that Heaven communicates to it.

Osiris conquers Typhon, and Ormuzd, Ahriman, when, at the Vernal
Equinox, the creative action of Heaven and its demiourgic energy is most
strongly manifested. Then the principle of Light and Good overcomes that
of Darkness and Evil, and the world rejoices, redeemed from cold and
wintry darkness by the beneficent Sign into which the Sun then enters
triumphant and rejoicing, after his resurrection.

From the doctrine of the two Principles, Active and Passive, grew that
of the Universe, animated by a Principle of Eternal Life, and by a
Universal Soul, from which every isolated and temporary being received
at its birth an emanation, which, at the death of such being, returned
to its source. The life of matter as much belonged to nature as did
matter itself; and as life is manifested by movement, the sources of
life must needs seem to be placed in those luminous and eternal bodies,
and above all in the Heaven in which they revolve, and which whirls them
along with itself in that rapid course that is swifter than all other
movement. And fire and heat have so great an analogy with life, that
cold, like absence of movement, seemed the distinctive characteristic of
death. Accordingly, the vital fire that blazes in the Sun and produces
the heat that vivifies everything, was regarded as the principle of
organization and life of all sublunary beings.

According to this doctrine, the Universe is not to be regarded, in its
creative and eternal action, merely as an immense machine, moved by
powerful springs and forced into a continual movement, which, emanating
from the circumference, extends to the centre, acts and re-acts in
every possible direction, and re-produces in succession all the varied
forms which matter receives. So to regard it would be to recognize a
cold and purely mechanical action, the energy of which could never
produce life.

On the contrary, it was thought, the Universe should be deemed an
immense Being, always living, always moved and always moving in an
eternal activity inherent in itself, and which, subordinate to no
foreign cause, is communicated to all its parts, connects them together,
and makes of the world of things a complete and perfect whole. The order
and harmony which reign therein seem to belong to and be a part of it,
and the design of the various plans of construction of organized beings
would seem to be graven in its Supreme Intelligence, source of all the
other Intelligences which it communicates together with life to man.
Nothing existing out of it, it must be regarded as the principle and
term of all things.

Chæremon had no reason for saying that the Ancient Egyptians, inventors
of the sacred fables, and adorers of the Sun and the other luminaries,
saw in the Universe only a machine, without life and without
intelligence, either in its whole or in its parts; and that their
cosmogony was a pure Epicureanism, which required only matter and
movement to organize its world and govern it. Such an opinion would
necessarily exclude all religious worship. Wherever we suppose a
worship, there we must suppose intelligent Deities who receive it, and
are sensible to the homage of their adorers; and no other people were so
religious as the Egyptians.

On the contrary, with them the immense, immutable, and Eternal Being,
termed "God" or "the Universe," had eminently, and in all their
plenitude, that life and intelligence which sublunary beings, each an
infinitely small and temporary portion of itself, possess in a far
inferior degree and infinitely less quantity. It was to them, in some
sort, like the Ocean, whence the springs, brooks, and rivers have risen
by evaporation, and to the bosom whereof they return by a larger or
shorter course, and after a longer or shorter separation from the
immense mass of its waters. The machine of the Universe was, in their
view, like that of man, moved by a Principle of Life which kept it in
eternal activity, and circulated in all its parts. The Universe was a
living and animated being, like man and the other animals; or rather
they were so only because the Universe was essentially so, and for a few
moments communicated to each an infinitely minute portion of its
eternal life, breathed by it into the inert and gross matter of
sublunary bodies. That withdrawn, man or the animal died; and the
Universe alone, living and circulating around the wrecks of their
bodies, by its eternal movement, organized and animated new bodies,
returning to them the eternal fire and subtle substance which vivifies
itself, and which, incorporated in its immense mass, was its universal
soul.

These were the ancient ideas as to this Great GOD, Father of all the
gods, or of the World; of this BEING, Principle of all things, and of
which nothing other than itself is Principle,--the Universal cause that
was termed God. Soul of the Universe, eternal like it, immense like it,
supremely active and potent in its varied operations, penetrating all
parts of this vast body, impressing a regular and symmetrical movement
on the spheres, making the elements instinct with activity and order,
mingling with everything, organizing everything, vivifying and
preserving everything,--this was the UNIVERSE-GOD which the ancients
adored as Supreme Cause and God of Gods.

Anchises, in the Æneid, taught Æneas this doctrine of Pythagoras,
learned by him from his Masters, the Egyptians, in regard to the Soul
and Intelligence of the Universe, from which _our_ souls and
intelligences, as well as our life and that of the animals, emanate,
Heaven, Earth, the Sea, the Moon and the Stars, he said, are moved by a
principle of internal life which perpetuates their existence; a great
intelligent soul, that penetrates every part of the vast body of the
Universe, and, mingling with everything, agitates it by an eternal
movement. It is the source of life in all living things. The force which
animates all, emanates from the eternal fire that burns in Heaven. In
the Georgics, Virgil repeats the same doctrine; and that, at the death
of every animal, the life that animated it, part of the universal life,
returns to its Principle and to the source of life that circulates in
the sphere of the Stars.

Servius makes God the active Cause that organizes the elements into
bodies, the vivifying breath or spirit, that, spreading through matter
or the elements, produces and engenders all things. The elements compose
the substance of our bodies: God composes the souls that vivify these
bodies. From it come the instincts of animals, from it their life, he
says: and when they die, that life returns to and re-enters into the
Universal Soul, and their bodies into Universal Matter.

Timæus of Locria and Plato his Commentator wrote of the Soul of the
World, developing the doctrine of Pythagoras, who thought, says Cicero,
that God is the Universal Soul, resident everywhere in nature, and of
which our Souls are but emanations. "_God is one_," says Pythagoras, as
cited by Justin Martyr: "He is not, as some think, _without_ the world,
but within it, and entire in its entirety. He sees all that _becomes_,
forms all immortal beings, is the author of their powers and
performances, the origin of all things, the Light of Heaven, the
_Father_, the _Intelligence_, the _Soul_ of all beings, the Mover of all
spheres."

God, in the view of Pythagoras, was ONE, a single substance, whose
continuous parts extended through all the Universe, without separation,
difference, or inequality, like the soul in the human body. He denied
the doctrine of the spiritualists, who had severed the Divinity from the
Universe, making Him exist apart from the Universe, which thus became no
more than a material work, on which acted the Abstract Cause, a God,
isolated from it. The Ancient Theology did not so separate God from the
Universe. This Eusebius attests, in saying that but a small number of
wise men, like Moses, had sought for God or the Cause of all, outside of
that ALL; while the Philosophers of Egypt and Phœnicia, real authors of
all the old Cosmogonies, had placed the Supreme Cause _in_ the Universe
itself, and in its parts, so that, in their view, the world and all its
parts are _in_ God.

The World or Universe was thus compared to man: the Principle of Life
that moves it, to that which moves man; the Soul of the World to that of
man. Therefore Pythagoras called man a _microcosm_, or little world, as
possessing in miniature all the qualities found on a great scale in the
Universe; by his reason and intelligence partaking of the Divine Nature:
and by his faculty of changing aliments into other substances, of
growing, and reproducing himself, partaking of elementary Nature. Thus
he made the Universe a great intelligent Being, like man--an immense
Deity, having in itself, what man has in himself, movement, life, and
intelligence, and besides, a perpetuity of existence, which man has not;
and, as having in itself perpetuity of movement and life, therefore the
Supreme Cause of all.

Everywhere extended, this Universal Soul does not, in the view of
Pythagoras, act everywhere equally nor in the same manner. The highest
portion of the Universe, being as it were its head, seemed to him its
principal seat, and there was the guiding power of the rest of the
world. In the seven concentric spheres is resident an eternal order,
fruit of the intelligence, the Universal Soul that moves, by a constant
and regular progression, the immortal bodies that form the harmonious
system of the heavens.

Manilius says: "I sing the invisible and potent Soul of Nature; that
Divine Substance which, everywhere inherent in Heaven, Earth, and the
Waters of the Ocean, forms the bond that holds together and makes one
all the parts of the vast body of the Universe. It, balancing all
Forces, and harmoniously arranging the varied relations of the many
members of the world, maintains in it the life and regular movement that
agitate it, as a result of the action of the living breath or single
spirit that dwells in all its parts, circulates in all the channels of
universal nature, flashes with rapidity to all its points, and gives to
animated bodies the configurations appropriate to the organization of
each.... This eternal Law, this Divine Force, that maintains the harmony
of the world, makes use of the Celestial Signs to organize and guide the
animated creatures that breathe upon the earth; and gives to each of
them the character and habits most appropriate. By the action of this
Force Heaven rules the condition of the Earth and of its fields
cultivated by the husbandman: it gives us or takes from us vegetation
and harvests: it makes the great ocean overpass its limits at the flow,
and retire within them again at the ebbing, of the tide."

Thus it is no longer by means of a poetic fiction only that the heavens
and the earth become animated and personified, and are deemed living
existences, from which other existences proceed. For now they live, with
their own life, a life eternal like their bodies, each gifted with a
life and perhaps a soul, like those of man, a portion of the universal
life and universal soul; and the other bodies that they form, and which
they contain in their bosoms, live only through them and with their
life, as the embryo lives in the bosom of its mother, in consequence and
by means of the life communicated to it, and which the mother ever
maintains by the active power of her own life. Such is the universal
life of the world, reproduced in all the beings which its superior
portion creates in its inferior portion, that is as it were the _matrix_
of the world, or of the beings that the heavens engender in its bosom.

"The soul of the world," says Macrobius, "is nature itself" [as the
soul of man is man himself], "always acting through the celestial
spheres which it moves, and which but follow the irresistible impulse it
impresses on them. The heavens, the sun, great seat of generative power,
the signs, the stars, and the planets act only with the activity of the
soul of the Universe. From that soul, through them, come all the
variations and changes of sublunary nature, of which the heavens and
celestial bodies are but the secondary causes. The zodiac, with its
signs, is an existence, immortal and divine, organized by the universal
soul, and producing, or gathering in itself, all the varied emanations
of the different powers that make up the nature of the Divinity."

This doctrine, that gave to the heavens and the spheres living souls,
each a portion of the universal soul, was of extreme antiquity. It was
held by the old Sabræns. It was taught by Timæsus, Plato, Speusippus,
Iamblichus, Macrobius, Marcus Aurelius, and Pythagoras. When once men
had assigned a soul to the Universe, containing in itself the plenitude
of the animal life of particular beings, and even of the stars, they
soon supposed that soul to be essentially intelligent, and the source of
intelligence of all intelligent beings. Then the Universe became to them
not only animated but intelligent, and of that intelligence the
different parts of nature partook. Each soul was the vehicle, and, as it
were, the envelope of the intelligence that attached itself to it, and
could repose nowhere else. Without a soul there could be no
intelligence; and as there was a universal soul, source of all souls,
the universal soul was gifted with a universal intelligence, source of
all particular intelligences. So the soul of the world contained in
itself the intelligence of the world. All the agents of nature into
which the universal soul entered, received also a portion of its
intelligence, and the Universe, in its totality and in its parts, was
filled with intelligences, that might be regarded as so many emanations
from the sovereign and universal intelligence. Wherever the divine soul
acted as a cause, there also was intelligence; and thus Heaven, the
stars, the elements, and all parts of the Universe, became the seats of
so many divine intelligences. Every minutest portion of the great soul
became a partial intelligence, and the more it was disengaged from gross
matter, the more active and intelligent it was. And all the old adorers
of nature, the theologians, astrologers, and poets, and the most
distinguished philosophers, supposed that the stars were so many
animated and intelligent beings, or eternal bodies, active causes of
effects here below, whom a principle of life animated, and whom an
intelligence directed, which was but an emanation from, and a portion
of, the universal life and intelligence of the world.

The Universe itself was regarded as a supremely intelligent being. Such
was the doctrine of Timæus of Locria. The soul of man was part of the
intelligent soul of the Universe, and therefore itself intelligent. His
opinion was that of many other philosophers. Cleanthes, a disciple of
ZENO, regarded the Universe as God, or as the unproduced and universal
cause of all effects produced. He ascribed a soul and intelligence to
universal nature, and to this intelligent soul, in his view, divinity
belonged. From it the intelligence of man was an emanation, and shared
its divinity. Chrysippus, the most subtle of the Stoics, placed in the
universal reason that forms the soul and intelligence of nature, that
divine force or essence of the Divinity which he assigned to the world
moved by the universal soul that pervades its every part.

An interlocutor in Cicero's work, _De Natura Deorum_, formally argues
that the Universe is necessarily intelligent and wise, because man, an
infinitely small portion of it, is so. Cicero makes the same argument in
his oration for Milo. The physicists came to the same conclusion as the
philosophers. They supposed that movement essentially belonged to the
soul, and the direction of regular and ordered movements to the
intelligence. And, as both movement and order exist in the Universe,
therefore, they held, there must be in it a soul and an intelligence
that rule it, and are not to be distinguished from itself; because the
idea of the Universe is but the aggregate of all the particular ideas of
all things that exist.

The argument was, that the Heavens, and the Stars which make part of
them, are _animated_, because they possess a portion of the Universal
Soul: they are _intelligent_ beings, because that Universal Soul, part
whereof they possess, is supremely intelligent; and they share
_Divinity_ with Universal Nature, because Divinity resides in the
Universal Soul and Intelligence which move and rule the world, and of
each of which they hold a share. By this process of logic, the
interlocutor in Cicero assigned Divinity to the Stars, as animated
beings gifted with sensibility and intelligence, and composed of the
noblest and purest portions of the ethereal substance, unmixed with
matter of an alien nature, and essentially containing light and heat.
Hence he concluded them to be so many gods, of an intelligence superior
to that of other existences, corresponding to the lofty height in which
they moved with such perfect regularity and admirable harmony, with a
movement spontaneous and free. Hence he made them "Gods," active,
eternal, and intelligent "Causes"; and peopled the realm of Heaven with
a host of Eternal Intelligences, celestial Genii or Angels, sharing the
universal Divinity, and associated with it in the administration of the
Universe, and the dominion exercised over sublunary nature and man.

_We_ make the motive-force of the planets to be a mechanical law, which
we explain by the combination of two forces, the centripetal and
centrifugal, whose _origin_ we cannot demonstrate, but whose _force_ we
can calculate. The ancients regarded them as moved by an intelligent
force that had its origin in the first and universal Intelligence. Is it
so certain, after all, that we are any nearer the truth than they were;
or that we know what our "centripetal and centrifugal forces" _mean_;
for what _is_ a _force?_ With us, the entire Deity acts upon and moves
each planet, as He does the sap that circulates in the little blade of
grass, and in the particles of blood in the tiny veins of the invisible
rotifer. With the Ancients, the Deity of each Star was but a portion of
the Universal God, the Soul of Nature. Each Star and Planet, with them,
was moved of _itself_, and directed by _its own_ special intelligence.
And this opinion of Achilles Tatius, Diodorus, Chrysippus, Aristotle,
Plato, Heraclides of Pontus, Theophrastus, Simplicius, Macrobius, and
Proclus, that in each Star there is an immortal Soul and
Intelligence,--part of the Universal Soul and Intelligence of the
Whole,--this opinion of Orpheus, Plotinus, and the Stoics, was in
reality, that of many Christian philosophers. For Origen held the same
opinion; and Augustin held that every visible thing in the world was
superintended by an Angelic Power: and Cosma the Monk, believed that
every Star was under the guidance of an Angel; and the author of the
Octateuch, written in the time of the Emperor Justin, says that they are
moved by the impulse communicated to them by Angels stationed above the
firmament. Whether the stars were animated beings, was a question that
Christian antiquity did not decide. Many of the Christian doctors
believed they were. Saint Augustin hesitates, Saint Jerome doubts, if
Solomon did not assign souls to the Stars. Saint Ambrose does not doubt
they _have_ souls; and Pamphilus says that many of the Church believe
they are reasonable beings, while many think otherwise, but that neither
one nor the other opinion is heretical.

Thus the Ancient Thought, earnest and sincere, wrought out the idea of a
Soul _inherent_ in the Universe and in its several parts. The next step
was to _separate_ that Soul from the Universe, and give to it an
external and independent existence and personality; still omnipresent,
in every inch of space and in every particle of matter, and yet not a
part of Nature, but its Cause and its Creator. This is the middle ground
between the two doctrines, of Pantheism (or that all is God, and God is
_in_ all and is all), on the one side, and Atheism (or that all is
nature, and there is no other God), on the other; which doctrines, after
all, when reduced to their simplest terms, seem to be the same.

We complacently congratulate ourselves on our recognition of a
_personal_ God, as being the conception most suited to human sympathies,
and exempt from the mystifications of Pantheism. But the Divinity
remains still a mystery, notwithstanding all the devices which
symbolism, either from the organic or inorganic creation, can supply;
and personification is itself a symbol, liable to misapprehension as
much as, if not more so than, any other, since it is apt to degenerate
into a mere reflection of our own infirmities; and hence _any_
affirmative idea or conception that we can, in our own minds, picture of
the Deity, must needs be infinitely inadequate.

The spirit of the Vedas (or sacred Indian Books, of great antiquity), as
understood by their earliest as well as most recent expositors, is
decidedly a pantheistic monotheism--one God, and He all in all; the many
divinities, numerous as the prayers addressed to them, being resolvable
into the titles and attributes of a few, and ultimately into THE ONE.
The machinery of personification was understood to have been
unconsciously assumed as a mere expedient to supply the deficiencies of
language; and the Mimansa justly considered itself as only interpreting
the true meaning of the Mantras, when it proclaimed that, in the
beginning, "Nothing was but Mind, the Creative Thought of Him which
existed alone from the beginning, and breathed without afflation." The
idea suggested in the Mantras is dogmatically asserted and developed in
the Upanischadas. The Vedanta philosophy, assuming the mystery of the
"ONE IN MANY" as the fundamental article of faith, maintained not only
the Divine Unity, but the identity of matter and spirit. The unity which
it advocates is that of mind. Mind is the Universal Element, the One
God, the Great Soul, Mahaatma. He is the material as well as efficient
cause, and the world is a texture of which he is both the web and the
weaver. He is the Macrocosmos, the universal organism called Pooroosha,
of which Fire, Air, and Sun are only the chief members. His head is
light, his eyes the sun and moon, his breath the wind, his voice the
opened Vedas. All proceeds from Brahm, like the web from the spider and
the grass from the earth.

Yet it is only the impossibility of expressing in language the
origination of matter from spirit, which gives to Hindū philosophy the
appearance of materialism. Formless Himself, the Deity is present in all
forms. His glory is displayed in the Universe as the image of the sun in
water, which is, yet is not, the luminary itself. All maternal agency
and appearance, the subjective world, are to a great extent phantasms,
the notional representations of ignorance. They occupy, however, a
middle ground between reality and non-reality; they are unreal, because
nothing exists but Brahm; yet in some degree real, inasmuch as they
constitute an outward manifestation of him. They are a self-induced
hypostasis of the Deity, under which He _presents to Himself_ the whole
of animate and inanimate Nature, the actuality of the moment, the
diversified _appearances_ which successively invest the one Pantheistic
Spirit.

The great aim of reason is to generalize; to discover unity in
multiplicity, order in apparent confusion; to separate from the
accidental and the transitory, the stable and universal. In the
contemplation of Nature, and the vague, but almost intuitive perception
of a general uniformity of plan among endless varieties of operation and
form, arise those solemn and reverential feelings, which, if accompanied
by intellectual activity, may eventually ripen into philosophy.

Consciousness of self and of personal identity is co-existent with our
existence. We cannot conceive of mental existence without it. It is not
the work of reflection nor of logic, nor the result of observation,
experiment, and experience. It is a gift from God, like instinct; and
that consciousness of a thinking soul which is really the person that
we are, and other than our body, is the best and most solid proof of the
soul's existence. We have the same consciousness of a Power on which we
are dependent; which we can _define_ and form an idea or picture of, as
little as we can of the soul, and yet which we _feel_, and therefore
know, exists. True and correct ideas of that Power, of the Absolute
Existence from which all proceeds, we cannot trace; if by true and
correct we mean _adequate_ ideas; for of such we are not, with our
limited faculties, capable. And ideas of His nature, so far correct as
we are capable of entertaining, can only be attained either by direct
inspiration or by the investigations of philosophy.

The idea of the universal preceded the recognition of any system for its
explanation. It was _felt_ rather than understood; and it was long
before the grand conception on which all philosophy rests received
through deliberate investigation that analytical development which might
properly entitle it to the name. The sentiment, when first observed by
the self-conscious mind, was, says Plato, "a Divine gift, communicated
to mankind by some Prometheus, or by those ancients who lived nearer to
the gods than our degenerate selves." The mind deduced from its first
experiences the notion of a general Cause or Antecedent, to which it
shortly gave a name and personified it. This was the statement of a
theorem, obscure in proportion to its generality. _It explained all
things but itself_. It was _a true_ cause, but an _incomprehensible_
one. Ages had to pass before the nature of the theorem could be rightly
appreciated, and before men, acknowledging the First Cause to be an
object of faith rather than science, were contented to confine their
researches to those nearer relations of existence and succession, which
are really within the reach of their faculties. At first, and for a long
time, the intellect deserted the real for a hastily-formed ideal world,
and the imagination usurped the place of reason, in attempting to put a
construction on the most general and inadequate of conceptions, by
transmuting its symbols into realities, and by substantializing it under
a thousand arbitrary forms.

In poetry, the idea of Divine unity became, as in Nature, obscured by a
multifarious symbolism; and the notionalities of transcendental
philosophy reposed on views of nature scarcely more profound than those
of the earliest symbolists. Yet the idea of unity was rather obscured
than extinguished; and Xenophanes appeared as an enemy of Homer, only
because he more emphatically insisted on the monotheistic element,
which, in poetry, has been comparatively overlooked. The first
philosophy reasserted the unity which poetry had lost; but being unequal
to investigate its nature, it again resigned it to the world of
approximate sensations, and became bewildered in materialism,
considering the conceptional whole or First Element as some refinement
of matter, unchangeable in its essence, though subject to mutations of
quality and form in an eternal succession of seeming decay and
regeneration; comparing it to water, air, or fire, as each endeavored to
refine on the doctrine of his predecessor, or was influenced by a
different class of theological traditions.

In the philosophical systems, the Divine Activity, divided by the poets
and by popular belief among a race of personifications, in whom the idea
of descent replaced that of cause, or of pantheistic evolution, was
restored, without subdivision or reservation, to nature as a whole; at
first as a mechanical _force_ or _life_; afterward as an all-pervading
_soul_ or inherent _thought_; and lastly as an external directing
_Intelligence_.

The Ionian revival of pantheism was materialistic. The Moving Force was
inseparable from a material element, a subtle yet visible ingredient.
Under the form of _air_ or _fire_, the principle of life was associated
with the most obvious material machinery of nature. Everything, it was
said, is alive and full of gods. The wonders of the volcano, the magnet,
the ebb and flow of the tide, were vital indications, the breathing or
moving of the Great World-Animal. The imperceptible ether of Anaximenes
had no _positive_ quality beyond the atmospheric air with which it was
easily confused: and even the "Infinite" of Anaximander, though free of
the conditions of quality or quantity, was only an ideal chaos, relieved
of its coarseness by negations. It was the illimitable storehouse or
Pleroma, out of which is evolved the endless circle of phenomenal
change. A moving Force was recognized _in_, but not clearly
distinguished _from_, the material. Space, Time, Figure, and Number, and
other common forms or properties, which exist only as _attributes_, were
treated as _substances_, or at least as making a substantial connection
between the objects to which they belong: and all the conditions of
material existence were supposed to have been evolved out of the
Pythagorean Monad.

The Eleatic philosophers treated conceptions not only as entities, but
as the only entities, alone possessing the stability and certainty and
reality vainly sought among phenomena. The only reality was Thought.
"All _real_ existence," they said, "is _mental_ existence;
non-existence, being inconceivable, is therefore impossible; existence
fills up the whole range of thought, and is inseparable from its
exercise; thought and its object are one."

Xenophanes used ambiguous language, applicable to the material as well
as to the mental, and exclusively appropriate to neither. In other
words, he availed himself of material imagery to illustrate an
indefinite meaning. In announcing the universal being, he appealed to
the heavens as the visible manifestation, calling it _spherical_; a term
borrowed from the material world. He said that God was neither moved nor
unmoved, limited nor unlimited. He did not even attempt to express
clearly, what cannot be conceived clearly; admitting, says Simplicius,
that such speculations were above physics. Parmenides employed similar
expedients, comparing his metaphysical Deity to a sphere, or to heat, an
aggregate or a continuity, and so involuntarily withdrawing its nominal
attributes.

The Atomic school, dividing the All into Matter and Force, deemed matter
unchangeable in its ultimate constitution, though infinitely variable in
its resultant forms. They made all variety proceed from the varied
combinations of atoms; but they required no mover nor director of the
atoms external to themselves; no universal Reason; but a Mechanical
Eternal _Necessity_, like that of the Poets. Still it is doubtful
whether there ever was a time when reason could be said to be entirely
asleep, a stranger to its own existence, notwithstanding this apparent
materialism. The earliest contemplation of the external world, which
brings it into an imagined association with ourselves, assigns, either
to its whole or its parts, the sensation and volition which belong to
our own souls.

Anaxagoras admitted the existence of ultimate elementary particles, as
Empedocles did, from the combinations whereof all material phenomena
resulted. But he asserted the Moving Force to be Mind; and yet, though
he clearly saw the impossibility of advancing by illustration or
definition beyond a reasonable faith, or a simple negation of
materiality, yet he could not wholly desist from the endeavor to
illustrate the nature of this non-matter or mind, by symbols drawn from
those physical considerations which decided him in placing it in a
separate category. Whether as human reason, or as the regulating
Principle in nature, he held it different from all other things in
character and effect, and that therefore it must necessarily differ in
its essential constitution. It was neither Matter, nor a Force conjoined
with matter, or homogeneous with it, but independent and generically
distinct, especially in this, that, being the source of all motion,
separation, and cognition, it is something entirely unique, pure, and
unmixed; and so, being unhindered by any interfering influence limiting
its independence of individual action, it has Supreme Empire over all
things, over the vortex of worlds as well as over all that live in them.
It is most penetrating and powerful, mixing with other things, though no
other thing mixes with it; exercises universal control and cognition,
and includes the _Necessity_ of the Poets, as well as the independent
power of thought which we exercise within ourselves. In short, it is the
self-conscious power of thought extended to the Universe, and exalted
into the Supreme External Mind which sees, knows, and directs all
things.

Thus Pantheism and Materialism were both avoided; and matter, though as
infinitely varied as the senses represent it, was held in a bond of
unity transferred to a ruling power apart from it. That Power could not
be Prime Mover, if it were itself moved; nor All-Governing, if not apart
from the things it governs. If the arranging Principle were _inherent_
in matter, it would have been impossible to account for the existence of
a chaos: if something _external_, then the old Ionian doctrine of a
"beginning" became more easily conceivable, as being the epoch at which
the Arranging Intelligence commenced its operations.

But this grand idea of an all-governing independent mind involved
difficulties which proved insuperable; because it gave to matter, in the
form of chaos, an independent and eternal self-existence, and so
introduced a dualism of mind and matter. In the Mind or Intelligence,
Anaxagoras included not only life and motion, but the moral principles
of the noble and good; and probably used the term on account of the
popular misapplication of the word "God," and as being less liable to
misconstruction, and more specifically marking his idea. His
"Intelligence" principle remained practically liable to many of the same
defects as the "Necessity" of the poets. It was the presentiment of a
great idea, which it was for the time impossible to explain or follow
out. It was not yet intelligible, nor was even the road opened through
which it might be approached.

Mind cannot advance in metaphysics beyond self-deification. In
attempting to go further, it only enacts the apotheosis of its own
subtle conceptions, and so sinks below the simpler ground already taken.
The realities which Plato could not recognize in phenomena, he
discovered within his own mind, and as unhesitatingly as the old
Theosophists installed its creations among the gods. He, like most
philosophers after Anaxagoras, made the Supreme Being to be
Intelligence; but in other respects left His nature undefined, or rather
indefinite through the variety of definitions, a conception vaguely
floating between Theism and Pantheism. Though deprecating the
demoralizing tendencies of poetry, he was too wise to attempt to replace
them by other representations of a positive kind. He justly says, that
spiritual things can be made intelligible only through figures; and the
forms of allegorical expression which, in a rude age, had been adopted
unconsciously, were designedly chosen by the philosopher as the most
appropriate vehicles for theological ideas.

As the devices of symbolism were gradually stripped away, in order, if
possible, to reach the fundamental conception, the religious feeling
habitually connected with it seemed to evaporate under the process. And
yet the advocates of Monotheism, Xenophanes and Heraclitus, declaimed
only against the making of gods in human form. They did not attempt to
strip nature of its divinity, but rather to recall religious
contemplation from an exploded symbolism to a purer one. They continued
the veneration which, in the background of poetry, has been maintained
for Sun and Stars, the Fire or Ether. Socrates prostrated himself before
the rising luminary; and the eternal spheres, which seem to have shared
the religious homage of Xenophanes, retained a secondary and qualified
Divinity in the Schools of the Peripatetics and Stoics.

The unseen being or beings revealed only to the Intellect became the
theme of philosophy; and their more ancient symbols, if not openly
discredited, were passed over with evasive generality, as beings
respecting whose problematical existence we must be "content with what
has been reported by those ancients, who, assuming to be their
descendants, must therefore be supposed to have been well acquainted
with their own ancestors and family connections." And the Theism of
Anaxagoras was still more decidedly subversive, not only of Mythology,
but of the whole religion of outward nature; it being an appeal from the
world without, to the consciousness of spiritual dignity within man.

In the doctrines of Aristotle, the world moves on uninterruptedly,
always changing, yet ever the same, like Time, the Eternal Now, knowing
neither repose nor death. There is a principle which makes good the
failure of _identity_, by multiplying _resemblances_; the destruction of
the _individual_ by an eternal renewal of the _form_ in which matter is
manifested. This regular eternal _movement_ implies an Eternal Mover;
not an inert Eternity, such as the Platonic _Eidos_, but one always
_acting_, His _essence_ being _to act_, for otherwise he might _never_
have acted, and the existence of the world would be an accident; for
what should have, in that case, decided Him to act, after long
inactivity? Nor can He be partly _in act_ and partly _potential_, that
is, quiescent and undetermined to act or not to act, for even in that
case motion would not be eternal, but contingent and precarious. He is
therefore _wholly in act_, a pure, untiring activity, and for the same
reasons wholly immaterial. Thus Aristotle avoided the idea that God was
inactive and self-contemplative for an eternity, and then for some
unknown reason, or by some unknown motive, commenced to act outwardly
and produce; but he incurred the opposite hazard, of making the result
of His action, matter and the Universe, be co-existent with Himself; or,
in other words, of denying that there was any time when His outward
action _commenced_.

The First Cause, he said, unmoved, moves all. _Act_ was _first_, and the
Universe has existed forever; one persistent cause directing its
continuity. The _unity_ of the First Mover follows from His
immateriality. If He were not Himself unmoved, the series of motions and
causes of motion would be infinite. Unmoved, therefore, and unchangeable
Himself, all movement, even that in space, is caused by Him: He is
necessary: He cannot be otherwise than as He is; and it is only through
the necessity of His being that we can account for those necessary
eternal relations which make a science of Being possible. Thus Aristotle
leaned to a seemingly personal God; not a Being of parts and passions,
like the God of the Hebrews, or that of the mass even of educated men in
our own day, but a Substantial Head of all the categories of being, an
Individuality of Intelligence, the dogma of Anaxagoras revived out of a
more elaborate and profound analysis of Nature; something like that
living unambiguous Principle which the old poets, in advance of the
materialistic cosmogonists from Night and Chaos, had discovered in
Ouranos or Zeus. Soon, however, the vision of personality is withdrawn,
and we reach that culminating point of thought where the real blends
with the ideal; where moral action and objective thought (that is,
thought exercised as to anything outside of itself), as well as the
material body, are excluded; and where the divine action in the world
retains its veil of impenetrable mystery, and to the utmost ingenuity of
research presents but a contradiction. At this extreme, the series of
efficient causes resolves itself into the Final Cause. That which moves,
itself _un_moved, can only be the immobility of Thought or Form. God is
both formal, efficient, and final cause; the One Form comprising all
forms, the one good including all good, the goal of the longing of the
University, moving the world as the object of love or rational desire
moves the individual. He is the internal or self-realized Final Cause,
having no end beyond Himself. He is no moral agent; for if He were, He
would be but an instrument for producing something still higher and
greater. One sort of act only, activity of mind or thought, can be
assigned to Him who is at once all act yet all repose. What we call our
highest pleasure, which distinguishes wakefulness and sensation, and
which gives a reflected charm to hope and memory, is with Him perpetual.
His existence is unbroken enjoyment of that which is most excellent but
only temporary with us. The divine quality of active and yet tranquil
self-contemplation characterizing intelligence, is pre-eminently
possessed by the divine mind; His thought, which is His existence,
being, unlike ours, unconditional and wholly _act_. If He can receive
any gratification or enjoyment from that which exists beyond Himself, He
can also be displeased and pained with it, and then He would be an
imperfect being. To suppose pleasure experienced by Him from anything
outward, supposes an insufficient _prior_ enjoyment and happiness, and a
sort of dependency. Man's Good is beyond himself; not so God's. The
eternal act which produces the world's life is the eternal desire of
good. The object of the Absolute Thought is the Absolute Good. Nature is
all movement, and Thought all repose. In contemplating that absolute
good, the Finality can contemplate only itself; and thus, all material
interference being excluded, the distinction of subject and object
vanishes in complete identification, and the Divine Thought is "the
thinking of thought". The energy of mind is life, and God is that energy
in its purity and perfection. He is therefore life itself, eternal and
perfect; and this sums up all that is meant by the term "God". And yet,
after all this transcendentalism, the very essence of thought consists
in its mobility and power of transference from object to object; and we
can conceive of no thought, without an object beyond itself, about which
to think, or of any activity in mere self-contemplation, without outward
act, movement, or manifestation.

Plato endeavors to show how the Divine Principle of Good becomes
realized in Nature: Aristotle's system is a vast analogical induction to
prove how all Nature tends toward a final good. Plato considered Soul as
a principle of movement, and made his Deity realize, that is, turn into
realities, his ideas as a free, intelligent Force. Aristotle, for whom
Soul is the motionless centre from which motion radiates, and to which
it converges, conceives a correspondingly unmoved God. The Deity of
Plato creates, superintends, and rejoices in the universal joy of, His
creatures. That of Aristotle is the perfection of man's intellectual
activity extended to the Universe. When he makes the Deity to be an
eternal act of self-contemplation, the world is not excluded from His
cognizance, for He contemplates it within Himself. Apart from and beyond
the world, He yet mysteriously intermingles with it. He is universal as
well as individual; His agency is necessary and general, yet also makes
the real and the good of the particular.

When Plato had given to the unformed world the animal life of the
Ionians, and added to that the Anaxagorean Intelligence, overruling the
wild principle of Necessity; and when to Intelligence was added
Beneficence; and the dread Wardours, Force and Strength, were made
subordinate to Mildness and Goodness, it seemed as if a further advance
were impossible, and that the Deity could not be more than The Wise and
The Good.

But the contemplation of the Good implies that of its opposite, Evil.
When God is held to be "The Good," it is not because Evil is unknown,
but because it is designedly excluded from His attributes. But if Evil
be a separate and independent existence, how would it fare with His
prerogative of Unity and Supremacy? To meet this dilemma, it remained
only to fall back on something more or less akin to the vagueness of
antiquity; to make a virtual confession of ignorance, to deny the
ultimate reality of evil, like Plato and Aristotle, or, with Speusippus,
the eternity of its antithetical existence, to surmise that it is only
one of those notions which are indeed provisionally indispensable in a
condition of finite knowledge, but of which so many have been already
discredited by the advance of philosophy; to revert, in short, to the
original conception of "The Absolute," or of a single Being, in whom all
mysteries are explained, and before whom the disturbing principle is
reduced to a mere turbid spot on the ocean of Eternity, which to the eye
of faith may be said no longer to exist.

But the absolute is nearly allied to the non-existent. Matter and evil
obtruded themselves too constantly and convincingly to be confuted or
cancelled by subtleties of Logic. It is in vain to attempt to merge the
world in God, while the world of experience exhibits contrariety,
imperfection, and mutability, instead of the immutability of its source.
Philosophy was but another name for uncertainty; and after the mind had
successively deified Nature and its own conceptions, without any
practical result but toilsome occupation; when the reality it sought,
without or within, seemed ever to elude its grasp, the intellect,
baffled in its higher flights, sought advantage and repose in aiming at
truth of a lower but more applicable kind.

The Deity of Plato is a Being proportioned to human sympathies; the
Father of the World, as well as its Creator; the author of good only,
not of evil. "Envy," he says, "is far removed from celestial beings, and
man, if willing, and braced for the effort, is permitted to aspire to a
communion with the solemn troops and sweet societies of Heaven. God is
the Idea or Essence of Goodness, the Good itself [τό άγαθόν]: in
goodness, He created the World, and gave to it the greatest perfection
of which it was susceptible; making it, as far as possible, an image of
Himself. The sublime type of all excellence is an object not only of
veneration but love." The Sages of old had already intimated in enigmas
that God is the Author of Good; that like the Sun in Heaven, or
Æsculapius on earth, He is "Healer," "Saviour," and "Redeemer," the
destroyer and averter of Evil, ever healing the mischiefs inflicted by
Herè, the wanton or irrational power of nature.

Plato only asserts with more distinctness the dogma of antiquity when he
recognizes LOVE as the highest and most beneficent of gods, who gives to
nature the invigorating energy restored by the art of medicine to the
body; since Love is emphatically the physician of the Universe, the
Æsculapius to whom Socrates wished to sacrifice in the hour of his
death.

A figurative idea, adopted from familiar imagery, gave that endearing
aspect to the divine connection with the Universe which had commanded
the earliest assent of the sentiments, until, rising in refinement with
the progress of mental cultivation, it ultimately established itself as
firmly in the deliberate approbation of the understanding, as it had
ever responded to the sympathies. Even the rude Scythians, Bithynians,
and Scandinavians, called God their "Father"; all nations traced their
ancestry more or less directly to Heaven. The Hyperborean Olen, one of
the oldest symbols of the religious antiquity of Greece, made Love the
First-born of Nature. Who will venture to pronounce at what time God was
first worthily and truly honored, or when man first began to feel aright
the mute eloquence of nature? In the obscure physics of the mystical
Theologers who preceded Greek philosophy, Love was the Great First Cause
and Parent of the Universe. "Zeus," says Proclus, "when entering upon
the work of creation, changed Himself into the form of Love: and He
brought forward Aphrodite, the principle of Unity and Universal Harmony,
to display her light to all. In the depths of His mysterious being, He
contains the principle of love within Himself; in Him creative wisdom
and blessed love are united."

                       "From the first
    Of Days on these his love divine be fixed,
    His admiration; till in time complete
    What he admired and loved, his vital smile
    Unfolded into being."

The speculators of the venerable East, who had conceived the idea of an
Eternal Being superior to all affection and change, in his own
sufficiency enjoying a plenitude of serene and independent bliss, were
led to inquire into the apparently inconsistent fact of the creation of
the world. Why, they asked, did He, who required nothing external to
Himself to complete His already-existing Perfection, come forth out of
His unrevealed and perfect existence, and become incorporated in the
vicissitudes of nature? The solution of the difficulty was Love. The
Great Being beheld the beauty of His own conception, which dwelt with
Him alone from the beginning, Maia, or Nature's loveliness, at once the
germ of passion and the source of worlds. Love became the universal
parent, when the Deity, before remote and inscrutable, became ideally
separated into the loving and the beloved.

And here again recurs the ancient difficulty; that, at whatever early
period this creation occurred, an eternity had previously elapsed,
during which God, dwelling alone in His unimpeached unity, had no object
for His love; and that the very word implies to us an existing object
toward which the love is directed; so that we cannot conceive of love in
the absence of any object to be loved; and therefore we again return to
this point, that if love is of God's essence, and He is unchangeable,
the same necessity of His nature, supposed to have caused creation, must
ever have made His existence without an object to love impossible: and
so that the Universe must have been co-existent with Himself.

The questions how and why evil exists in the Universe: how its existence
is to be reconciled with the admitted wisdom and goodness and
omnipotence of God; and how far man is a free agent, or controlled by an
inexorable necessity or destiny, have two sides. On one, they are
questions as to the qualities and attributes of God; for we must infer
His moral nature from His mode of governing the Universe, and they ever
enter into any consideration of His intellectual nature: and on the
other, they directly concern the moral responsibility, and therefore the
destiny, of man. All-important, therefore, in both points of view, they
have been much discussed in all ages of the world, and have no doubt
urged men, more than all other questions have, to endeavor to fathom the
profound mysteries of the Nature and the mode of Existence and action of
an incomprehensible God.

And, with these, still another question also presents itself: whether
the Deity governs the Universe by fixed and unalterable laws, or by
special Providences and interferences, so that He may be induced to
change His course and the results of human or material action, by prayer
and supplication.

God alone is all-powerful; but the human soul has in all ages asserted
its claim to be considered as part of the Divine. "The purity of the
spirit," says Van Helmont, "is shown through energy and efficaciousness
of will. God, by the agency of an infinite will, created the Universe,
and the same sort of power in an inferior degree, limited more or less
by external hindrances, exists in all spiritual beings." The higher we
ascend in antiquity, the more does prayer take the form of incantation;
and that form it still in a great degree retains, since the rites of
public worship are generally considered not merely as an expression of
trust or reverence, as real spiritual acts, the effect of which is
looked for only within the mind of the worshipper, but as acts from
which some direct outward result is anticipated, the attainment of some
desired object, of health or wealth, of supernatural gifts for body or
soul, of exemption from danger, or vengeance upon enemies. Prayer was
able to change the purposes of Heaven, and to make the Devs tremble
under the abyss. It exercised a compulsory influence over the gods. It
promoted the magnetic sympathy of spirit with spirit; and the Hindū and
Persian liturgies, addressed not only to the Deity Himself, but to His
diversified manifestations, were considered wholesome and necessary
iterations of the living or creative Word which at first effectuated the
divine will, and which from instant to instant supports the universal
frame by its eternal repetition.

In the narrative of the Fall, we have the Hebrew mode of explaining the
great moral mystery, the origin of evil and the apparent estrangement
from Heaven; and a similar idea, variously modified, obtained in all the
ancient creeds. Everywhere, man had at the beginning been innocent and
happy, and had lapsed, by temptation and his own weakness, from his
first estate. Thus was accounted for the presumed connection of increase
of knowledge with increase of misery, and, in particular, the great
penalty of death was reconciled with Divine Justice. Subordinate to
these greater points were the questions, Why is the earth covered with
thorns and weeds? whence the origin of clothing, of sexual shame and
passion? whence the infliction of labor, and how to justify the degraded
condition of woman in the East, or account for the loathing so generally
felt toward the Serpent Tribe?

The hypothesis of a fall, required under some of its modifications in
all systems, to account for the apparent imperfection in the work of a
Perfect Being, was, in Eastern philosophy, the unavoidable accompaniment
and condition of limited or individual existence; since the Soul,
considered as a fragment of the Universal Mind, might be said to have
lapsed from its pre-eminence when parted from its source, and ceasing to
form part of integral perfection. The theory of its reunion was
correspondent to the assumed cause of its degradation. To reach its
prior condition, its individuality must cease; it must be emancipated
by re-absorption into the Infinite, the consummation of all things in
God, to be promoted by human effort in spiritual meditation or
self-mortification, and completed in the magical transformation of
death.

And as man had fallen, so it was held that the Angels of Evil had, from
their first estate, to which, like men, they were, in God's good time,
to be restored, and the reign of evil was then to cease forever. To this
great result all the Ancient-Theologies point; and thus they all
endeavored to reconcile the existence of Sin and Evil with the perfect
and undeniable wisdom and beneficence of God.

With man's exercise of thought are inseparably connected freedom and
responsibility. Man assumes his proper rank as a moral agent, when with
a sense of the limitations of his nature arise the consciousness of
freedom, and of the obligations accompanying its exercise, the sense of
duty and of the capacity to perform it. To suppose that man ever
imagined himself not to be a free agent until he had argued himself into
that belief, would be to suppose that he was in that below the brutes;
for he, like them, is _conscious_ of his freedom to act. Experience
alone teaches him that this freedom of action is limited and controlled;
and when what is outward to him restrains and limits this freedom of
action, he instinctively rebels against it as a wrong. The rule cf duty
and the materials of experience are derived from an acquaintance with
the conditions of the external world, in which the faculties are
exerted; and thus the problem of man involves those of Nature and God.
Our freedom, we learn by experience, is determined by an agency external
to us; our happiness is intimately dependent on the relations of the
outward World, and on the moral character of its Ruler.

Then at once arises this problem: The God of Nature must be One, and His
character cannot be suspected to be other than good. Whence, then, came
the evil, the consciousness of which must invariably have preceded or
accompanied man's moral development? On this subject human opinion has
ebbed and flowed between two contradictory extremes, one of which seems
inconsistent with God's Omnipotence, and the other with His beneficence.
If God, it was said, is perfectly wise and good, evil must arise from
some _independent_ and _hostile_ principle: if, on, the other hand, all
agencies are subordinate to One, it is difficult, if evil does indeed
exist, if there is any such thing as Evil, to avoid the impiety of
making God the Author of it.

The recognition of a moral and physical dualism in nature was adverse to
the doctrine of Divine Unity. Many of the Ancients thought it absurd to
imagine one Supreme Being, like Homer's Jove, distributing good and evil
out of two urns. They therefore substituted, as we have seen, the
doctrine of two distinct and eternal principles; some making the cause
of evil to be the inherent imperfection of matter and the flesh, without
explaining how God was not the cause of that; while others personified
the required agency, and fancifully invented an Evil Principle, the
question of whose origin indeed involved all the difficulty of the
original problem, but whose existence, if once taken for granted, was
sufficient as a popular solution of the mystery; the difficulty being
supposed no longer to exist when pushed a step further off, as the
difficulty of conceiving the world upheld by an elephant was supposed to
be got rid of when it was said that the elephant was supported by a
tortoise.

The simpler, and probably the older, notion, treated the one only God as
the Author of all things. "I form the light," says Jehovah, "and create
darkness; I cause prosperity and create evil; I, the Lord, do all these
things." "All mankind," says Maximus Tyrius, "are agreed that there
exists one only Universal King and Father, and that the many gods are
His Children." There is nothing improbable in the supposition that the
primitive idea was that there was but one God. A vague sense of Nature's
Unity, blended with a dim perception of an all-pervading Spiritual
Essence, has been remarked among the earliest manifestations of the
Human Mind. Everywhere it was the dim remembrance, uncertain and
indefinite, of the original truth taught by God to the first men.

The Deity of the Old Testament is everywhere represented as the direct
author of Evil, commissioning evil and lying spirits to men, hardening
the heart of Pharaoh, and visiting the iniquity of the individual sinner
on the whole people. The rude conception of sternness predominating over
mercy in the Deity, can alone account for the human sacrifices,
purposed, if not executed, by Abraham and Jephthah. It has not been
uncommon, in any age or country of the world, for men to recognize the
existence of one God, without forming any becoming estimate of His
dignity. The causes of both good and ill are referred to a mysterious
centre, to which each assigns such attributes as correspond with his own
intellect and advance in civilization. Hence the assignment to the Deity
of the feelings of envy and jealousy. Hence the provocation given by the
healing skill of Æsculapius and the humane theft of fire by Prometheus.
The very spirit of Nature, personified in Orpheus, Tantalus, or Phineus
was supposed to have been killed, confined, or blinded, for having too
freely divulged the Divine Mysteries to mankind. This Divine Envy still
exists in a modified form, and varies according to circumstances. In
Hesiod it appears in the lowest type of human malignity. In the God of
Moses, it is jealousy of the infringement of the autocratic power, the
check to political treason; and even the penalties denounced for
worshipping other gods often seem dictated rather by a jealous regard
for His own greatness in Deity, than by the immorality and degraded
nature of the worship itself. In Herodotus and other writers it assumes
a more philosophical shape, as a strict adherence to a moral equilibrium
in the government of the world, in the punishment of pride, arrogance,
and insolent pretension.

God acts providentially in Nature by regular and universal laws, by
constant modes of operation; and so takes care of material things
without violating their constitution, acting always according to the
nature of the things which He has made. It is a fact of observation
that, in the material and unconscious world, He works _by_ its
materiality and unconsciousness, not against them; in the animal world,
_by_ its animality and partial consciousness, not against them. So in
the providential government of the world, He acts by regular and
universal laws, and constant modes of operation; and so takes care of
human things without violating their constitution, acting always
according to the human nature of man, not against if, working in the
human world by means of man's consciousness and partial freedom, not
against them.

God acts by general laws for general purposes. The attraction of
gravitation is a good thing, for it keeps the world together; and if the
tower of Siloam, thereby falling to the ground, slays eighteen men of
Jerusalem, that number is too small to think of, considering the myriad
millions who are upheld by the same law. It could not well be repealed
for _their_ sake, and to hold up that tower; nor could it remain in
force, and the tower stand.

It is difficult to conceive of a Perfect _Will_ without confounding it
with something like mechanism; since language has no name for that
combination of the Inexorable with the Moral, which the old poets
personified separately in Ananke or Eimarmene and Zeus. How combine
understandingly the Perfect Freedom of the Supreme and All-Sovereign
Will of God with the inflexible necessity, as part of His Essence, that
He should and must continue to be, in all His great attributes, of
justice and mercy for example, what He is now and always has been, and
with the impossibility of His changing His nature and becoming unjust,
merciless, cruel, fickle, or of His repealing the great moral laws which
make crime wrong and the practice of virtue right?

For all that we familiarly know of Free-Will is that capricious exercise
of it which we experience in ourselves and other men; and therefore the
notion of Supreme Will, still guided by Infallible Law, even if that law
be self-imposed, is always in danger of being either stripped of the
essential quality of Freedom, or degraded under the ill-name of
Necessity to something of even less moral and intellectual dignity than
the fluctuating course of human operations.

It is not until we elevate the idea of law above that of partiality or
tyranny, that we discover that the self-imposed limitations of the
Supreme Cause, constituting an array of certain alternatives, regulating
moral choice, are the very sources and safeguards of human freedom; and
the doubt recurs, whether we do not set a law above God Himself; or
whether laws self-imposed may not be self-repealed: and if not, what
power prevents it.

The Zeus of Homer, like that of Hesiod, is an array of antitheses,
combining strength with weakness, wisdom with folly, universal parentage
with narrow family limitation, omnipotent control over events with
submission to a superior destiny;--DESTINY, a name by means of which the
theological problem was cast back into the original obscurity out of
which the powers of the human mind have proved themselves as incapable
of rescuing it, as the efforts of a fly caught in a spider's web to do
more than increase its entanglement.

The oldest notion of Deity was rather indefinite than repulsive. The
positive degradation was of later growth. The God of nature reflects the
changeful character of the seasons, varying from dark to bright.
Alternately angry and serene, and lavishing abundance which she again
withdraws, nature seems inexplicably capricious, and though capable of
responding to the highest requirements of the moral sentiment through a
general comprehension of her mysteries, more liable, by a partial or
hasty view to become darkened into a Siva, a Saturn, or a Mexitli, a
patron of fierce orgies or blood-stained altars. All the older poetical
personifications exhibit traces of this ambiguity. They are neither
wholly immoral nor purely beneficent.

No people have ever deliberately made their Deity a malevolent or guilty
Being. The simple piety which ascribed the origin of all things to God,
took all in good part, trusting and hoping all things. The Supreme Ruler
was at first looked up to with unquestioning reverence. No startling
discords or contradictions had yet raised a doubt as to His beneficence,
or made men dissatisfied with His government. Fear might cause anxiety,
but could not banish hope, still less inspire aversion. It was only
later, when abstract notions began to assume the semblance of realities,
and when new or more distinct ideas suggested new words for their
expression, that it became necessary to fix a definite barrier between
Evil and Good.

To account for moral evil, it became necessary to devise some new
expedient suited both to the piety and self-complacency of the inventor,
such as the perversity of woman, or an agent distinct from God, a Typhon
or Ahriman, obtained either by dividing the Gods into two classes, or by
dethroning the Ancient Divinity, and changing him into a Dev or Dæmon.
Through a similar want, the Orientals devised the inherent corruption of
the fleshy and material; the Hebrew transferred to Satan everything
illegal and immoral; and the Greek reflection, occasionally adopting the
older and truer view, retorted upon man the obloquy cast on these
creatures of his imagination, and showed how he has to thank himself
alone for his calamities, while his good things are the voluntary
_gifts_, not the _plunder_ of Heaven. Homer had already made Zeus
exclaim, in the Assembly of Olympus, "Grievous it is to hear these
mortals accuse the Gods; they pretend that evils come from us; but they
themselves occasion them gratuitously by their own wanton folly." "It is
the fault of man," said Solon, in reference to the social evils of his
day, "not of God, that destruction comes;" and Euripides, after a formal
discussion of the origin of evil, comes to the conclusion that men act
wrongly, not from want of natural good sense and feeling, but because
knowing what is good, they yet for various reasons neglect to practise
it.

And at last reaching the highest truth, Pindar, Hesiod, Æschylus, Æsop,
and Horace said, "All virtue is a struggle; life is not a scene of
repose, but of energetic action. Suffering is but another name for the
teaching of experience, appointed by Zeus himself, the giver of all
understanding, to be the parent of instruction, the schoolmaster of
life. He indeed put an end to the golden age; he gave venom to serpents
and predacity to wolves; he shook the honey from the leaf, and stopped
the flow of wine in the rivulets; he concealed the element of fire, and
made the means of life scanty and precarious. But in all this his object
was beneficent; it was not to destroy life, but to improve it. It was a
blessing to man, not a curse, to be sentenced to earn his bread by the
sweat of his brow; for nothing great or excellent is attainable without
exertion; safe and easy virtues are prized neither by gods nor men; and
the parsimoniousness of nature is justified by its powerful effect in
rousing the dormant faculties, and forcing on mankind the invention of
useful arts by means of meditation and thought."

Ancient religious reformers pronounced the worship of "idols" to be the
root of all evil; and there have been many iconoclasts in different ages
of the world. The maxim still holds good; for the worship of idols, that
is, of fanciful conceits, if not the source of _all_ evil, is still the
cause of much; and it prevails as extensively now as it ever did. Men
are ever engaged in worshipping the picturesque fancies of their own
imaginations.

Human wisdom must always be limited and incorrect; and even right
opinion is only a something intermediate between ignorance and
knowledge. The normal condition of man is that of progress. Philosophy
is a kind of journey, ever learning, yet never arriving at the ideal
perfection of truth. A Mason should, like the wise Socrates, assume the
modest title of a "lover of wisdom"; for he must ever long after
something more excellent than he possesses, something still beyond his
reach, which he desires to make eternally his own.

Thus the philosophic sentiment came to be associated with the poetical
and the religious, under the comprehensive name of Love. Before the
birth of Philosophy, Love had received but scanty and inadequate homage.
This mightiest and most ancient of gods, coeval with the existence of
religion and of the world, had been indeed unconsciously felt, but had
neither been worthily honored nor directly celebrated in hymn or pæan.
In the old days of ignorance it could scarcely have been recognized. In
order that it might exercise its proper influence over religion and
philosophy, it was necessary that the God of Nature should cease to be a
God of terrors, a personification of mere Power or arbitrary Will, a
pure and stern Intelligence, an inflictor of evil, and an unrelenting
Judge. The philosophy of Plato, in which this charge became forever
established, was emphatically a mediation of Love. With him, the
inspiration of Love first kindled the light of arts and imparted them to
mankind; and not only the arts of mere existence, but the heavenly art
of wisdom, which supports the Universe. It inspires high and generous
deeds and noble self-devotion. Without it, neither State nor individual
could do anything beautiful or great. Love is our best pilot,
confederate, supporter, and saviour; the ornament and governor of all
things human and divine; and he with divine harmony forever soothes the
minds of men and gods.

Man is capable of a higher Love, which, marrying mind with mind and with
the Universe, brings forth all that is noblest in his faculties, and
lifts him beyond himself. This higher love is neither mortal nor
immortal, but a power intermediate between the human and the Divine,
filling up the mighty interval, and binding the Universe together. He is
chief of those celestial emissaries who carry to the gods the prayers of
men, and bring down to men the gifts of the gods. "He is forever poor,
and far from being beautiful as mankind imagine, for he is squalid and
withered; he flies low along the ground, is homeless and unsandalled;
sleeping without covering before the doors and in the unsheltered
streets, and possessing so far his mother's nature as being ever the
companion of want. Yet, sharing also that of his father, he is forever
scheming to obtain things good and beautiful; he is fearless, vehement,
and strong; always devising some new contrivance; strictly cautious and
full of inventive resource; a philosopher through his whole existence, a
powerful enchanter, and a subtle sophist."

The ideal consummation of Platonic science is the arrival at the
contemplation of that of which earth exhibits no express image or
adequate similitude, the Supreme Prototype of all beauty, pure and
uncontaminated with human intermixture of flesh or color, the Divine
Original itself. To one so qualified is given the prerogative of
bringing forth not mere images and shadows of virtue, but virtue itself,
as having been conversant not with shadows, but with the truth; and
having so brought forth and nurtured a progeny of virtue, he becomes the
friend of God, and, so far as such a privilege can belong to any human
being, immortal.

Socrates believed, like Heraclitus, in a Universal Reason pervading all
things and all minds, and consequently revealing itself in ideas. He
therefore sought truth in general opinion, and perceived in the
communication of mind with mind one of the greatest prerogatives of
wisdom and the most powerful means of advancement. He believed true
wisdom to be an attainable idea, and that the moral convictions of the
mind, those eternal instincts of temperance, conscientiousness, and
justice, implanted in it by the gods, could not deceive, if rightly
interpreted.

This metaphysical direction given to philosophy ended in visionary
extravagance. Having assumed truth to be discoverable in thought, it
proceeded to treat thoughts as truths. It thus became an idolatry of
notions, which it considered either as phantoms exhaled from objects, or
as portions of the divine pre-existent thought; thus creating a
mythology of its own, and escaping from one thraldom only to enslave
itself afresh. Theories and notions indiscriminately formed and defended
are the false gods or "idols" of philosophy. For the word _idolon_ means
_image_, and a false _mind_-picture of God is as much an idol as a false
_wooden_ image of Him. Fearlessly launching into the problem of
universal being, the first philosophy attempted to supply a compendious
and decisive solution of every doubt. To do this, it was obliged to make
the most sweeping assumptions; and as poetry had already filled the vast
void between the human and the divine, by personifying its Deity as man,
so philosophy bowed down before the supposed reflection of the divine
image in the mind of the inquirer, who, in worshipping his own notions,
had unconsciously deified himself. Nature thus was enslaved to common
notions, and notions very often to words.

By the clashing of incompatible opinions, philosophy was gradually
reduced to the ignominious confession of utter incapacity, and found its
check or intellectual fall in skepticism. Xenophanes and Heraclitus
mournfully acknowledged the unsatisfactory result of all the struggles
of philosophy, in the admission of a universality of doubt; and the
memorable effort of Socrates to rally the discomfited champions of
truth, ended in a similar confession.

The worship of abstractions continued the error which personified Evil
or deified Fortune; and when mystical philosophy resigned its place to
mystical religion, it changed not its nature, but only its name. The
great task remained unperformed, of reducing the outward world and its
principles to the dominion of the intellect, and of reconciling the
conception of the supreme unalterable power asserted by reason, with the
requisitions of human sympathies.

A general idea of purpose and regularity in nature had been suggested by
common appearances to the earliest reflection. The ancients perceived a
natural order, a divine legislation, from which human institutions were
supposed to be derived, laws emblazoned in Heaven, and thence revealed
to earth. But the divine law was little more than an analogical
inference from human law, taken in the vulgar sense of arbitrary will or
partial covenant. It was surmised rather than discovered, and remained
unmoral because unintelligible. It mattered little, under the
circumstances, whether the Universe were said to be governed by chance
or by reason, since the latter, if misunderstood, was virtually one with
the former. "Better far," said Epicurus, "acquiesce in the fables of
tradition, than acknowledge the oppressive necessity of the physicists";
and Menander speaks of God, Chance, and Intelligence as
undistinguishable. Law unacknowledged goes under the name of _Chance_:
perceived, but not understood, it becomes _Necessity_. The wisdom of the
Stoic was a dogged submission to the arbitrary behests of one; that of
the Epicurean an advantage snatched by more or less dexterous management
from the equal tyranny of the other.

Ignorance sees nothing necessary, and is self abandoned to a power
tyrannical because defined by no rule, and paradoxical because
permitting evil, while itself assumed to be unlimited, all-powerful, and
perfectly good. A little knowledge, presuming the identification of the
Supreme Cause with the inevitable certainty of perfect reason, but
omitting the analysis or interpretation of it, leaves the mind
chain-bound in the ascetic fatalism of the Stoic. Free-will, coupled
with the universal rule of Chance; or Fatalism and Necessity, coupled
with Omniscience and fixed and unalterable Law,--these are the
alternatives, between which the human mind has eternally vacillated.
The Supernaturalists, contemplating a Being acting through impulse,
though with superhuman wisdom, and considering the best courtier to be
the most favored subject, combines contradictory expedients,
inconsistently mixing the assertion of free action with the enervating
service of petition; while he admits, in the words of a learned
archbishop, that "if the production of the things we ask for depend on
antecedent, natural, and necessary causes, our desires will be answered
no less by the omission than the offering of prayers, which, therefore,
are a vain thing."

The last stage is that in which the religion of action is made
legitimate through comprehension of its proper objects and conditions.
Man becomes morally free only when both notions, that of Chance and that
of incomprehensible Necessity, are displaced by that of Law. Law, as
applied to the Universe, means that universal, providential
pre-arrangement, whose conditions can be discerned and discretionally
acted on by human intelligence. The sense of freedom arises when the
individual independence develops itself according to its own laws,
without external collisions or hindrance; that of constraint, where it
is thwarted or confined by other Natures, or where, by combination of
external forces, the individual force is compelled into a new direction.
Moral choice would not exist safely, or even at all, unless it were
bounded by conditions determining its preferences. Duty supposes a rule
both intelligible and certain, since an uncertain rule would be
unintelligible, and if unintelligible, there could be no responsibility.
No law that is unknown can be obligatory; and that Roman Emperor was
justly execrated, who pretended to promulgate his penal laws, by putting
them up at such a height that none could read them.

Man commands results, only by selecting among the contingent the
pre-ordained results most suited to his purposes. In regard to absolute
or divine morality, meaning the final cause or purpose of those
comprehensive laws which often seem harsh to the individual, because
inflexibly just and impartial to the universal, speculation must take
refuge in faith; the immediate and obvious purpose often bearing so
small a proportion to a wider and unknown one as to be relatively
absorbed or lost. The rain that, unseasonable to me, ruins my hopes of
an abundant crop, does so because it could not otherwise have blessed
and prospered the crops of another kind of a whole neighboring district
of country. The obvious purpose of a sudden storm of snow, or an
unexpected change of wind, exposed to which I lose my life, bears small
proportion to the great results which are to flow from that storm or
wind over a whole continent. So always, of the good and ill which at
first seemed irreconcilable and capriciously distributed, the one holds
its ground, the other diminishes by being explained. In a world of a
multitude of individuals, a world of action and exertion, a world
affording, by the conflict of interests and the clashing of passions,
any scope for the exercise of the manly and generous virtues, even
Omnipotence cannot make it, that the comfort and convenience of one man
alone shall always be consulted.

Thus the educated mind soon begins to appreciate the moral superiority
of a system of law over one of capricious interference; and as the
jumble of means and ends is brought into more intelligible perspective,
partial or seeming good is cheerfully resigned for the disinterested and
universal. Self-restraint is found not to imply self-sacrifice. The true
meaning of what appeared to be Necessity is found to be, not arbitrary
Power, but Strength and Force enlisted in the service of Intelligence.
God having made us men, and placed us in a world of change and eternal
renovation, with ample capacity and abundant means for rational
enjoyment, we learn that it is folly to repine because we are not
angels, inhabiting a world in which change and the clashing of interests
and the conflicts of passion are unknown.

The mystery of the world remains, but is sufficiently cleared up to
inspire confidence. We are constrained to admit that if every man would
but do the best in his power to do, and that which he knows he ought to
do, we should need no better world than this. Man, surrounded by
necessity, is free, not in a dogged determination of isolated will,
because, though inevitably complying with nature's laws, he is able,
proportionately to his knowledge, to modify, in regard to himself, the
conditions of their action, and so to preserve an average uniformity
between their forces and his own.

Such are some of the conflicting opinions of antiquity; and we have to
some extent presented to you a picture of the Ancient Thought. Faithful,
as far as it goes, it exhibits to us Man's Intellect ever struggling to
pass beyond the narrow bounds of the circle in which its limited powers
and its short vision confine it; and ever we find it travelling round
the circle, like one lost in a wood, to meet the same unavoidable and
insoluble difficulties. Science with her many instruments, Astronomy,
particularly, with her telescope, Physics with the microscope, and
Chemistry with its analyses and combinations, have greatly enlarged our
ideas of the Deity, by discovering to us the vast extent of the Universe
in both directions, its star-systems and its invisible swarms of
minutest animal life; by acquainting us with the new and wonderful Force
or Substance we call Electricity, apparently a link between Matter and
Spirit: and still the Deity only becomes more incomprehensible to us
than ever, and we find that in our speculations we but reproduce over
and over again the Ancient Thought.

Where, then, amid all these conflicting opinions, is the True Word of a
Mason?

My Brother, most of the questions which have thus tortured men's minds,
it is not within the reach and grasp of the Human Intellect to
understand; but without understanding, as we have explained to you
heretofore, we may and must _believe_.

The True Word of a Mason is to be found in the concealed and profound
meaning of the Ineffable Name of Deity, communicated by God to Moses;
and which meaning was long lost by the very precautions taken to conceal
it. The true pronunciation of that name was in truth a secret, in which,
however, was involved the far more profound secret of its meaning. In
that meaning is included all the truth than can be known by us, in
regard to the nature of God.

Long known as AL, AL SCHADAI, ALOHAYIM, and ADONAI; as the Chief or
Commander of the Heavenly Armies; as the aggregate of the Forces
[ALOHAYIM] of Nature; as the Mighty, the Victorious, the Rival of Bal
and Osiris; as the Soul of Nature, Nature itself, a God that was but Man
personified, a God with human passions, the God of the Heathen with but
a mere change of name, He assumes, in His communications to Moses, the
name יהוה [IHUH], and says to Him, אהיה אשר אהיה [AHIH ASHR AHIH], I AM
WHAT I AM. Let us examine the esoteric or inner meaning of this
Ineffable Name.

היה [HIH] is the imperfect tense of the verb To BE, of which יהיה [HIHI]
is the present; אהי [AHI--א being the personal pronoun "I" affixed] the
first person, by apocope; and יהי [IHI] the third. The verb has the
following forms: ... Preterite, 3d person, masculine singular, היה
[HIH], did exist, was; 3d person com. plural, היו [HIU] ... Present, 3d
pers. masc. sing. יהיה [IHIH], once יהוא [IHUA], by apocope יהי,אהי
[AHI, IHI].. Infinitive, היה, היו [HIH, HIU] ... Imperative, 2d pers.
masc. sing., היה [HIH], fem. הוי [HUI] ... Participle, masc. sing., הוה
[HUH], ENS--EXISTING .. EXISTENCE.

The verb is never used, as the mere logical copula or connecting word,
_is, was_, etc., is used with the Greeks, Latins, and ourselves. It
always implies _existence, actuality_. The _present_ form also includes
the _future_ sense,... _shall_ or _may_ be or exist. And הוה and הוא [HUH
and HUA] Chaldaic forms of the imperfect tense of the verb, are the same
as the Hebrew היה and הוה [HUH and HIH], and mean _was, existed,
became_.

Now הוא and היא [HUA and HIA] are the Personal Pronoun [Masculine and
Feminine], HE, SHE. Thus in Gen. iv. 20 we have the phrase, הוא היה [HUA
HIH], HE WAS: and in Lev. xxi. 9, אה אביה היא [ATH ABIH HIA], HER
Father. This feminine pronoun, however, is often written הוא [HUA], and
היא [HiA] occurs only eleven times in the Pentateuch. Sometimes the
feminine form means IT; but _that_ pronoun is generally in the masculine
form.

When either ה,ו,י, or א [Yod, Vav, He, or Aleph] terminates a word, and
has no vowel either immediately preceding or following it, it is often
rejected; as in ני [GI], for ניא [GIA], a valley.

So הוא-היא [HUA-HIA], He-She, could properly be written הו-הי [Hu-HI];
or by transposition of the letters, common with the Talmudists, יה-וה
[IH-UH], which is the Tetragrammaton or Ineffable Name.

In Gen. i. 27, it is said, "So the ALHIM created man in His image: _in
the image_ of ALHIM created He him: MALE and FEMALE created He them."

Sometimes the word was thus expressed; triangularly:

ה ו ה ה י ה י ה ו ה

And we learn that this designation of the Ineffable Name was, among the
Hebrews, a symbol of Creation. The mysterious union _of God with His
creatures_ was in the letter ה, which they considered to be the Agent of
Almighty Power; and to enable the possessor of the Name to work
miracles.

The Personal Pronoun הוא [HuA], HE, is often used _by itself_, to
express the Deity, Lee says that in such cases, IHUH, IH, or ALHIM, or
some other name of God, is _understood_; but there is no necessity for
that. It means in such cases the Male, Generative, or Creative Principle
or Power.

It was a common practice with the Talmudists to conceal secret meanings
and sounds of words by transposing the letters.

The reversal of the letters of words was, indeed, anciently common
everywhere. Thus from _Neitha_, the name of an Egyptian Goddess, the
Greeks, writing backward, formed _Athenè_, the name of Minerva. In
Arabic we have _Nahid_, a name of the planet Venus, which, reversed,
gives _Dihan_, Greek, in Persian, _Nihad_, Nature; which Sir William
Jones writes also Nahid. Strabo informs us that the Armenian name of
Venus was _Anaitis_.

_Tien_, Heaven, in Chinese, reversed, is _Neit_, or _Neith_, worshipped
at _Sais_ in Egypt. Reverse Neitha, drop the _i_, and add an _e_, and
we, as before said, _Athenè. Mitra_ was the name of Venus among the
ancient Persians. Herodotus, who tells us this, also informs us that her
name, among the Scythians, was _Artim pasa. Artim_ is _Mitra_, reversed.
So, by reversing it, the Greeks formed Artemis, Diana.

One of the meanings of _Rama_, in Sanscrit, is _Kama_, the Deity of
_Love_. Reverse this, and we have _Amar_, and by changing _a_ into _o,
Amor_, the Latin word for _Love_. Probably, as the verb is _Amare_, the
oldest reading was _Amar_ and not _Amor_. So _Dipaka_, in Sanscrit, one
of the meanings whereof is _love_, is often written _Dipuc_. Reverse
this, and we have, adding _o_, the Latin word _Cupido_.

In Arabic, the radical letters _rhm_, pronounced _rahm_, signify the
_trunk, compassion, mercy_; this reversed, we have _mhr_, in Persic,
_love_ and the _Sun_. In Hebrew we have _Lab_, the _heart_; and in
Chaldee, _Bal_, the _heart_; the radical letters of both being _b_ and
_l_.

The Persic word for _head_ is _Sar_. Reversed, this becomes _Ras_ in
Arabic and Hebrew, Raish in Chaldee, Rash in Samaritan, and Ryas in
Ethiopic; all meaning _head, chief_, etc. In Arabic we have _Kid_, in
the sense of _rule_, regulation, article of agreement, obligation;
which, reversed, becomes, adding _e_, the Greek _dikè_ justice. In
Coptic we have _Chlom_, a crown. Reversed, we have in Hebrew, _Moloch_
or _Malec_, a King, or he who wears a crown.

In the Kou-onen, or oldest Chinese writing, by Hieroglyphics, [Glyph]
_Ge_ [_Hi_ or _Khi_, with the initial letter modified], was the Sun: in
Persic. _Gaw:_ and in Turkish _Giun. Yue_, was the Moon; in
Sanscrit _Uh_, and in Turkish _Ai_. It will be remembered that, in Egypt
and elsewhere, the Sun was originally feminine, and the Moon masculine.
In Egypt, _Ioh_ was the moon; and in the feasts of Bacchus they cried
incessantly, _Euoï Sabvi! Euoï Bakhè! Io Bakhe! lo Bakhe!_

Bunsen gives the following personal pronouns for _he_ and _she_;

                        _He      She_

Christian Aramtic          Hû       Hî

Jewish Aramaic             Hû       Hî

Hebrew                     Hû᾿       Hî᾿

Arabic                     Huwa     Hiya

Thus the Ineffable Name not only embodies the Great Philosophical Idea,
that the Deity is the ENS, the TO ON, the Absolute Existence, that of
which the Essence is To Exist, the only Substance of Spinoza, the BEING,
that never could _not_ have existed, as contradistinguished from that
which only _becomes_, not Nature or the Soul of Nature, but that which
created Nature; but also the idea of the Male and Female Principles, in
its highest and most profound sense; to wit, that God originally
comprehended in Himself all that is: that matter was not co-existent
with Him, or independent of Him; that He did not merely fashion and
shape a pre-existing chaos into a Universe; but that His Thought
manifested itself outwardly in that Universe, which so _became_, and
before _was not_, except as comprehended in Him: that the Generative
Power or Spirit, and Productive Matter, ever among the ancients deemed
the Female, originally were in God; and that He Was and Is all that Was,
that Is, and that Shall be: _in_ Whom all else lives, moves, and has its
being.

This was the great Mystery of the Ineffable Name; and this true
arrangement of its letters, and of course its true pronunciation and its
meaning, soon became lost to all except the select few to whom it was
confided; it being concealed from the common people, because the Deity
thus metaphysically named was not that personal and capricious, and as
it were tangible God in whom they believed, and who alone was within the
reach of their rude capacities.

Diodorus says that the name given by Moses to God was ΙΑΩ. Theodoras
says that the Samaritans termed God _IABE_, but the Jews ΙΑΩ. Philo
Byblius gives the form ΙΕΥΩ; and Clemens of Alexandria ΙΑΟΥ. Macrobius
says that it was an admitted axiom among the Heathen, that the
triliteral ΙΑΩ was the sacred name of the Supreme God. And the Clarian
oracle said: "Learn thou that ΙΑΩ is the great God Supreme, that ruleth
over all." The letter Ι signified Unity. Α and Ω are the first and last
letters of the Greek Alphabet.

Hence the frequent expression: "I am the First, and I am the Last; and
besides Me there is no other God. I am A and Ω, the First and the Last.
I am A and Ω, the Beginning and the Ending, which Is, and Was, and Is to
come: the Omnipotent." For in this we see shadowed forth the same great
truth; that God is all in all--the Cause and the Effect--the beginning,
or Impulse, or Generative Power: and the Ending, or Result, or that
which is produced: that He is in reality all that is, all that ever was,
and all that ever will be; in this sense, that nothing besides Himself
has existed eternally, and co-eternally with Him, independent of Him,
and self-existent, or self-originated.

And thus the meaning of the expression, ALOHAYIM, a _plural_ noun, used,
in the account of the Creation with which Genesis commences, with a
singular verb, and of the name or title IHUH-ALHIM, used for the first
time in the 4th verse of the 2d chapter of the same book, becomes clear.
The ALHIM is the aggregate unity of the manifested Creative Forces or
Powers of Deity, His Emanations; and IHUH-ALHIM is the ABSOLUTE
Existence, or Essence of these Powers and Forces, of which they are
Active Manifestations and Emanations.

This was the profound truth hidden in the ancient allegory and covered
from the general view with a double veil. This was the esoteric meaning
of the generation and production of the Indian, Chaldean, and Phœnician
cosmogonies; and the Active and Passive Powers, of the Male and Female
Principles; of Heaven and its Luminaries generating, and the Earth
producing; all hiding from vulgar view, as above its comprehension, the
doctrine that matter is not eternal, but that God was the only original
Existence, the ABSOLUTE, from Whom everything has proceeded, and to Whom
all returns: and that all moral law springs not from the relation of
things, but from His Wisdom and Essential Justice, as the Omnipotent
Legislator. And this TRUE WORD is with entire accuracy said to have been
_lost_; because its _meaning_ was lost, even among the Hebrews, although
we still find the name (its real meaning unsuspected), in the Hu of the
Druids and the Fo-Hi of the Chinese.

When we conceive of the Absolute Truth, Beauty, or Good, we cannot stop
short at the abstraction of either. We are forced to refer each to some
living and substantial Being, in which they have their foundations, some
being that is the first and last principle of each.

Moral Truth, like every other universal and necessary truth, cannot
remain a mere abstraction. Abstractions are unrealities. In ourselves,
moral truth is merely conceived of. There must be _somewhere_ a Being
that not only _conceives_ of, but _constitutes_ it. It has this
characteristic; that it is not only, to the eyes of our intelligence, an
universal and necessary truth, but one obligatory on our will. It is A
LAW. _We_ do not establish that law _ourselves_. It is imposed on us
_despite_ ourselves: its principle must be _without_ us. It supposes a
legislator. He cannot be the being to whom the law applies; but must be
one that possesses in the highest degree all the characteristics of
moral truth. The moral law, universal and necessary, necessarily has as
its author a necessary being--composed of justice and charity, its
author must be a being possessing the plenitude of both.

As all _beautiful_ and all _true_ things refer themselves, _these_ to a
Unity which is absolute TRUTH, and those to a Unity which is absolute
BEAUTY, so all the _moral_ principles centre in a single principle,
which is THE GOOD. Thus we arrive at the conception of THE GOOD _in
itself_, the ABSOLUTE Good, superior to all _particular_ duties, and
determinate in those duties. This Absolute _Good_ must necessarily be an
attribute of the Absolute BEING. There cannot be _several_ Absolute
Beings; the one in whom are realized Absolute Truth and Absolute Beauty
being different from the one in whom is realized Absolute Good. The
Absolute necessarily implies absolute Unity. The True, the Beautiful,
and the Good are not three distinct essences: but they are one and the
same essence, considered in its fundamental attributes: the different
phases which, in our eyes, the Absolute and Infinite Perfection assumes.
Manifested in the World of the Finite and Relative, these three
attributes separate from each other, and are distinguished by our minds,
which can comprehend nothing except by division. But in the Being from
Whom they emanate, they are indivisibly united; and this Being, at once
triple and one, Who sums up in Himself perfect _Beauty_, perfect
_Truth_, and the perfect _Good_, is GOD.

God is necessarily the principle of Moral Truth, and of personal
morality. Man is a moral person, that is to say, one endowed with reason
and liberty. He is capable of Virtue: and Virtue has with him two
principal forms, respect for others and love of others,--_justice_ and
_charity_.

The _creature_ can possess no real and essential attribute which the
_Creator_ does not possess. The _effect_ can draw its reality and
existence only from its _cause_. The _cause_ contains in itself, at
least, what is essential in the _effect_. The characteristic of the
effect is inferiority, short-coming, imperfection. Dependent and
derivate, it bears in itself the marks and conditions of dependence; and
its imperfection proves the perfection of the cause; or else there would
be in the effect something immanent, without a cause.

God is not a logical Being, whose Nature may be explained by deduction,
and by means of algebraic equations. When, setting out with a primary
attribute, the attributes of God are deduced one from the other, after
the manner of the Geometricians and Scholastics, we have nothing but
abstractions. We must emerge from this empty dialetic, to arrive at a
true and living God. The first notion which we have of God, that of an
_Infinite_ Being, is not given us _à priori_, independently of all
experience. It is our consciousness of ourself, as at once a Being and a
limited Being, that immediately raises us to the conception of a Being,
the principle of _our_ being, and Himself without limits. If the
existence that we possess forces us to recur to a cause possessing the
same existence in an infinite degree, all the substantial attributes of
existence that we possess equally require each an infinite cause. God,
then, is no longer the Infinite, Abstract, Indeterminate Being, of which
reason and the heart cannot lay hold, but a real Being, determinate like
ourselves, a moral person like ourself; and the study of our own souls
will conduct us, without resort to hypothesis, to a conception of God,
both sublime and having a connection with ourselves.

If man be free, God must be so. It would be strange if, while the
creature has that marvellous power of disposing of himself, of choosing
and willing freely, the Being that has made him should be subject to a
necessary development, the cause of which, though in Himself, is a sort
of abstract, mechanical, or metaphysical power, inferior to the
personal, voluntary cause which we are, and of which we have the
clearest consciousness. God is free _because_ we are: but he is not free
as we are. He is at once _everything_ that we are, and _nothing_ that we
are. He possesses the same attributes as we, but extended to infinity.
He possesses, then, an infinite liberty, united to an infinite
intelligence; and as His intelligence is infallible, exempt from the
uncertainty of deliberation, and perceiving at a glance where the Good
is, so His liberty accomplishes it spontaneously and without effort.

As we assign to God that liberty which is the basis of our existence, so
also we transfer to His character, from our own, justice and charity. In
man they are virtues: in God, His attributes. What is in us the
laborious conquest of liberty, is in Him His very nature. The idea of
the right, and the respect paid to the right, are signs of the dignity
of our existence. If respect of rights is the very essence of justice,
the Perfect Being must know and respect the rights of the lowest of His
creatures; for He assigned them those rights. In God resides a sovereign
justice, that renders to every one what is due him, not according to
deceitful appearances, but according to the truth of things. And if man,
a limited being, has the power to go out of himself, to forget his own
person, to love another like himself, and devote himself to his
happiness, dignity, and perfection, the Perfect Being must have, in an
infinite degree, that disinterested tenderness, that Charity, the
Supreme Virtue of the human person. There is in God an infinite
tenderness for His creatures, manifested in His giving us existence,
which He might have withheld; and every day it appears in innumerable
marks of His Divine Providence.

Plato well understood that love of God, and expresses it in these great
words: "Let us speak of the cause which led the Supreme Arranger of the
Universe to produce and regulate that Universe. He was good; and he who
is good has no kind of ill-will. Exempt from that, He willed that
created things should be, as far as possible, like Himself." And
Christianity in its turn said, "_God has so loved men that He has given
them His only Son_."

It is not correct to affirm, as is often done, that Christianity has in
some sort _discovered_ this noble sentiment. We must not lower human
nature, to raise Christianity. Antiquity knew, described, and practised
charity; the first feature of which, so touching, and thank God! so
common, is goodness, as its loftiest one is heroism. Charity is devotion
to another; and it is ridiculously senseless to pretend that there ever
was an age of the world, when the human soul was deprived of that part
of its heritage, the power of devotion. But it is certain that
Christianity has diffused and popularized this virtue, and that, before
Christ, these words were never spoken: "LOVE ONE ANOTHER; FOR THAT IS
THE WHOLE LAW." _Charity_ presupposes _Justice_. He who truly loves his
brother respects the rights of his brother; but he does more, he forgets
his own. Egoism _sells_ or _takes_. Love delights in _giving_. In God,
love is what it is in us; but in an infinite degree. God is
inexhaustible in His charity, as He is inexhaustible in His essence.
That Infinite Omnipotence and Infinite Charity, which, by an admirable
good-will, draws from the bosom of its immense love the favors which it
incessantly bestows on the world and on humanity, teaches us that the
more we give, the more we possess.

God being all just and all good, He can will nothing but what is good
and just. Being Omnipotent, whatever He wills He can do, and
consequently does. The world is the work of God: it is therefore
perfectly made.

Yet there is disorder in the world, that seems to impugn the justice and
goodness of God.

A principle indissolubly connected with the very idea of good, tells us
that every moral agent deserves reward when he does well, and punishment
when he does ill. This principle is universal and necessary. It is
absolute. If it does not apply in this world, it is false, or the world
is badly ordered.

But good actions are not always followed by happiness, nor evil ones by
misery. Though often this fact is more apparent than real; though
virtue, a war against the passions, full of dignity but full of sorrow
and pain, has the latter as its condition, yet the pains that follow
vice are greater; and virtue conduces most to health, strength, and long
life;--though the peaceful conscience that accompanies virtue creates
internal happiness; though public opinion generally decides correctly on
men's characters, and rewards virtue with esteem and consideration, and
vice with contempt and infamy; and though, after all, justice reigns in
the world, and the surest road to happiness is still that of virtue, yet
there are exceptions. Virtue is not always rewarded, nor vice punished,
in this life.

The data of this problem are these: 1st. The principle of merit and
demerit within us is absolute: every good action _ought_ to be rewarded,
every bad one punished: 2d. God is just as He is all-powerful: 3d. There
are in this world particular cases, contradicting the necessary and
universal law of merit and demerit. What is the result?

To reject the two principles, that God is just, and the law of merit and
demerit absolute, is to raze to the foundations the whole edifice of
human faith.

To maintain them, is to admit that the present life is to be terminated
or continued elsewhere. The moral person who acts well or ill, and
awaits reward or punishment, is connected with a body, lives with it,
makes use of it, depends upon it in a measure, but is not _it_. The
_body_ is composed of parts. It diminishes or increases, it is divisible
even to infinity. But this _something_ which has a consciousness of
itself, and says "I, ME"; that feels itself free and responsible, feels
too that it is incapable of division, that it is a being _one_ and
_simple_; that the ME cannot be halved, that if a limb is cut off and
thrown away, no part of the ME goes with it: that it remains identical
with itself under the variety of phenomena which successively manifest
it. This identity, indivisibility, and absolute unity of the person, are
its _spirituality_, the very essence of the person. It is not in the
least an hypothesis to affirm that the soul differs essentially from the
body. By the soul we mean _the person_, not separated from the
consciousness of the attributes which constitute it,--_thought_ and
_will_. The Existence without consciousness is an abstract being, and
not a person. It is _the person_, that is _identical, one, simple_. Its
attributes, developing it, do not divide it. Indivisible, it is
indissoluble, and, may be immortal. If absolute justice requires this
immortality, it does not require what is impossible. The spirituality of
the soul is the condition and necessary foundation of immortality: the
law of merit and demerit the direct demonstration of it. The first is
the metaphysical, the second the moral proof. Add to these the tendency
of all the powers of the soul toward the Infinite, and the principle of
final causes, and the proof of the immortality of the soul is complete.

God, therefore, in the Masonic creed, is INFINITE TRUTH, INFINITE
BEAUTY, INFINITE GOODNESS. He is the Holy of Holies, as Author of the
Moral Law, as the PRINCIPLE of Liberty, of Justice, and of Charity,
Dispenser of Reward and Punishment. Such a God is not an abstract God;
but an intelligent and free _person_, Who has made us in His image, from
Whom we receive the law that presides over our destiny, and Whose
judgment we await. It is His love that inspires us in _our_ acts of
charity: it is His justice that governs _our_ justice, and that of
society and the laws. We continually remind ourselves that He is
infinite; because otherwise we should degrade His nature: but He would
be for us as if He were not, if His infinite nature had not forms
inherent in ourselves, the forms of our own reason and soul.

When we love Truth, Justice, and Nobility of Soul, we should know that
it is God we love underneath these special forms, and should unite them
all into one great act of total piety. We should feel that we go in and
out continually in the midst of the vast forces of the Universe, which
are only the Forces of God; that in our studies, when we attain a truth,
we confront the thought of God; when we learn the right, we learn the
will of God laid down as a rule of conduct for the Universe; and when we
feel disinterested love, we should know that we partake the feeling of
the Infinite God. Then, when we reverence the mighty cosmic force, it
will not be a blind Fate in an Atheistic or Pantheistic world, but the
Infinite God, that we shall confront and feel and know. Then we shall be
mindful of the mind of God, conscious of God's conscience, sensible of
His sentiments, and our own existence will be in the infinite being of
God.

The world is a whole, which has its harmony; for a God who is One, could
make none but a complete and harmonious work. The harmony of the
Universe responds to the unity of God, as the indefinite quantity is the
defective sign of the infinitude of God. To say that the Universe is
God, is to admit the world only, and deny God. Give it what name you
please, it is atheism at bottom. On the other hand, to suppose that the
Universe is void of God, and that He is wholly apart from it, is an
insupportable and almost impossible abstraction. To distinguish is not
to separate. I distinguish, but do not separate myself from my qualities
and effects. So God is not the Universe, although He is everywhere
present in spirit and in truth.

To us, as to Plato, absolute truth is in God. It is God Himself under
one of His phases. In God, as their original, are the immutable
principles of reality and cognizance. In Him things receive at once
their existence and their intelligibility. It is by participating in the
Divine reason that our own reason possesses something of the Absolute.
Every judgment of reason envelopes a necessary truth, and every
necessary truth supposes the necessary Existence.

Thus, from every direction,--from metaphysics, aesthetics, and morality
above all, we rise to the same Principle, the common centre, and
ultimate foundation of all truth, all beauty, all good. The True, the
Beautiful, the Good, are but diverse revelations of one and the same
Being. Thus we reach the threshold of religion, and are in communion
with the great philosophies which all proclaim a God; and at the same
time with the religions which cover the earth, and all repose on the
sacred foundation of natural religion; of that religion which reveals to
us the natural light given to all men, without the aid of a particular
revelation. So long as philosophy does not arrive at religion, it is
below all worships, even the most imperfect; for they at least give man
a Father, a Witness, a Consoler, a Judge. By religion, philosophy
connects itself with humanity, which, from one end of the world to the
other, aspires to God, believes in God, hopes in God. Philosophy
contains in itself the common basis of all religious beliefs; it, as it
were, borrows from them their principle, and returns it to them
surrounded with light, elevated above uncertainty, secure against all
attack.

From the necessity of His Nature, the Infinite Being must create and
preserve the Finite, and to the Finite must, in its forms, give and
communicate of His own kind. We cannot conceive of any finite thing
existing without God, the Infinite basis and ground thereof; nor of God
existing without something. God is the necessary logical condition of a
world, its necessitating cause; a world, the necessary logical condition
of God, His necessitated consequence. It is according to His Infinite
Perfection to create, and then to preserve and bless whatever He
creates. That is the conclusion of modern metaphysical science. The
stream of philosophy runs down from Aristotle to Hegel, and breaks off
with this conclusion: and then again recurs the ancient difficulty. If
it be of His nature to create,--if we cannot conceive of His existing
_alone_, without creating, without _having_ created, then what He
created was co-existent with Himself. If He could exist an instant
without creating, He could as well do so for a myriad of eternities.
And so again comes round to us the old doctrine of a God, the Soul of
the Universe, and co-existent with it. For what He created had a
_beginning_; and however long since that creation occurred, an eternity
had before elapsed. The difference between _a_ beginning and _no_
beginning is infinite.

But of some things we can be certain. We are conscious of ourselves--of
ourselves if not as substances, at least as Powers to be, to do, to
suffer. We are conscious of ourselves not as self-originated at all or
as self-sustained alone; but only as dependent, first for existence,
ever since for support.

Among the primary ideas of consciousness, that are inseparable from it,
the atoms of self-consciousness, we find the idea of God. Carefully
examined by the scrutizing intellect, it is the idea of God as infinite,
perfectly powerful, wise, just, loving, holy; absolute being with no
limitation. This made us, made all, sustains us, sustains all; made our
body, not by a single act, but by a series of acts extending over a vast
succession of years,--for man's body is the resultant of all created
things,--made our spirit, our mind, conscience, affections, soul, will,
appointed for each its natural mode of action, set each at its several
aim. Thus self-consciousness leads us to consciousness of God, and at
last to consciousness of an infinite God. That is the highest evidence
of our own existence, and it is the highest evidence of His.

If there is a God at all, He must be omnipresent in space. Beyond the
last Stars He must be, as He is here. There can be no mote that peoples
the sunbeams, no little cell of life that the microscope discovers in
the seed-sporule of a moss, but He is there.

He must also be omnipresent in time. There was no second of time before
the Stars began to burn, but God was in that second. In the most distant
nebulous spot in Orion's belt, and in every one of the millions that
people a square inch of limestone, God is alike present. He is in the
smallest imaginable or even unimaginable portion of time, and in every
second of its most vast and unimaginable volume; His Here conterminous
with the All of Space, His Now coeval with the All of Time.

Through all this Space, in all this Time, His Being extends, spreads
undivided, operates unspent; God in all His infinity, perfectly
powerful, wise, just, loving, and holy. His being is an infinite
activity, a creating, and so a giving of Himself to the World. The
World's being is a _becoming_, a being created and continued. It is so
now, and was so, incalculable and unimaginable millions of ages ago.

All this is philosophy, the unavoidable conclusion of the human mind. It
is not the _opinion_ of Coleridge and Kant, but their _science_; not
what they _guess_, but what they _know_.

In virtue of this in-dwelling of God in matter, we say that the world is
a revelation of Him, its existence a show of His. He is _in_ His work.
The manifold action of the Universe is only His mode of operation, and
all material things are in communion with Him. All grow and move and
live in Him, and by means of Him, and only so. Let Him withdraw from the
space occupied by anything, and it ceases to be. Let Him withdraw any
quality of His nature from anything, and it ceases to be. All must
partake of Him, He dwelling in each, and yet transcending all.

The failure of fanciful religion to become philosophy, does not preclude
philosophy from coinciding with true religion. Philosophy, or rather its
object, the divine order of the Universe, is the intellectual guide
which the religious sentiment needs; while exploring the real relations
of the finite, it obtains a constantly improving and self-correcting
measure of the perfect law of the Gospel of Love and Liberty, and a
means of carrying into effect the spiritualism of revealed religion. It
establishes law, by ascertaining its terms; it guides the spirit to see
its way to the amelioration of life and the increase of happiness. While
religion was stationary, science could not walk alone; when both are
admitted to be progressive, their interests and aims become identified.
Aristotle began to show how religion may be founded on an intellectual
basis; but the basis he laid was too narrow. Bacon, by giving to
philosophy a definite aim and method, gave it at the same time a safer
and self-enlarging basis. Our position is that of intellectual beings
surrounded by limitations; and the latter being constant, have to
intelligence the practical value of laws, in whose investigation and
application consists that seemingly endless career of intellectual and
moral progress which the sentiment of religion inspires and ennobles.
The title of Saint has commonly been claimed for those whose boast it
has been to despise philosophy yet faith will stumble and sentiment
mislead, unless knowledge be present, in amount and quality sufficient
to purify the one and to give beneficial direction to the other.

Science consists of those matured inferences from experience which all
other experience confirms. It is no fixed system superior to revision,
but that progressive mediation between ignorance and wisdom in part
conceived by Plato, whose immediate object is happiness, and its impulse
the highest kind of love. Science realizes and unites all that was truly
valuable in both the old schemes of mediation; the heroic, or system of
action and effort; and the mystical theory of spiritual, contemplative
communion. "Listen to me," says Galen, "as to the voice of the
Eleusinian Hierophant, and believe that the study of nature is a mystery
no less important than theirs, nor less adapted to display the wisdom
and power of the Great Creator. Their lessons and demonstrations were
obscure, but ours are clear and unmistakable."

To science we owe it that no man is any longer entitled to consider
himself the central point around which the whole Universe of life and
motion revolves--the immensely important individual for whose
convenience and even luxurious ease and indulgence the whole Universe
was made. On one side it has shown us an infinite Universe of stars and
suns and worlds at incalculable distances from each other, in whose
majestic and awful presence we sink and even our world sinks into
insignificance; while, on the other side, the microscope has placed us
in communication with new worlds of organized livings beings, gifted
with senses, nerves, appetites, and instincts, in every tear and in
every drop of putrid water.

Thus science teaches us that we are but an infinitesimal portion of a
great whole, that stretches out on every side of us, and above and below
us, infinite in its complications, and which infinite wisdom alone can
comprehend. Infinite wisdom has arranged the infinite succession of
beings, involving the necessity of birth, decay, and death, and made the
loftiest virtues possible by providing those conflicts, reverses,
trials, and hardships, without which even their names could never have
been invented.

Knowledge is convertible into power, and axioms into rules of utility
and duty. Modern science is social and communicative. It is moral as
well as intellectual; powerful, yet pacific and disinterested; binding
man to man as well as to the Universe; filling up the details of
obligation, and cherishing impulses of virtue, and, by affording clear
proof of the consistency and identity of all interests, substituting
co-operation for rivalry, liberality for jealousy, and tending far more
powerfully than any other means to realize the spirit of religion, by
healing those inveterate disorders which, traced to their real origin,
will be found rooted in an ignorant assumption as to the penurious
severity of Providence, and the consequent greed of selfish men to
confine what seemed as if extorted from it to themselves, or to steal
from each other rather than quietly to enjoy their own.

We shall probably never reach those higher forms containing the true
differences of things, involving the full discovery and correct
expression of their very self or essence. We shall ever fall short of
the most general and most simple nature, the ultimate or most
comprehensive law. Our widest axioms explain many phenomena, but so too
in a degree did the principles or elements of the old philosophers, and
the cycles and epicycles of ancient astronomy. We cannot in any case of
causation assign the whole of the conditions, nor though we may
reproduce them in practice, can we mentally distinguish them all,
without knowing the essences of the things including them; and we
therefore must not unconsciously ascribe that absolute certainty to
axioms, which the ancient religionists did to creeds, nor allow the
mind, which ever strives to insulate itself and its acquisitions, to
forget the nature of the process by which it substituted scientific for
common notions, and so with one as with the other lay the basis of
self-deception by a pedantic and superstitious employment of them.

Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must
accompany all the stages of man's onward progress. His intellectual life
is a perpetual beginning, a preparation for a birth. The faculty of
doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment
would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason.
Knowledge is always imperfect, or complete only in a prospectively
boundless career, in which discovery multiplies doubt, and doubt leads
on to new discovery. The boast of science is not so much its manifested
results, as its admitted imperfection and capacity of unlimited
progress. The true religious philosophy of an imperfect being is not a
system of creed, but, as Socrates thought, an infinite search or
approximation. Finality is but another name for bewilderment or defeat.
Science gratifies the religious feeling without arresting it, and opens
out the unfathomable mystery of the One Supreme into more explicit and
manageable Forms, which express not indeed His Essence, which is wholly
beyond our reach and higher than our faculties can climb, but His Will,
and so feeds an endless enthusiasm by accumulating forever new objects
of pursuit. We have long experienced that knowledge is profitable, we
are beginning to find out that it is moral, and we shall at last
discover it to be religious.

God and truth are inseparable; a knowledge of God is possession of the
saving oracles of truth. In proportion as the thought and purpose of the
individual are trained to conformity with the rule of right prescribed
by Supreme Intelligence, so far is his happiness promoted, and the
purpose of his existence fulfilled. In this way a new life arises in
him; he is no longer isolated, but is a part of the eternal harmonies
around him. His erring will is directed by the influence of a higher
will, informing and moulding it in the path of his true happiness.

Man's power of apprehending outward truth is a qualified privilege; the
mental like the physical inspiration passing through a diluted medium;
and yet, even when truth, imparted, as it were, by intuition, has been
specious, or at least imperfect, the intoxication of sudden discovery
has ever claimed it as full, infallible, and divine. And while human
weakness needed ever to recur to the pure and perfect source, the
revelations once popularly accepted and valued assumed an independent
substantiality, perpetuating not themselves only, but the whole mass of
derivitive forms accidentally connected with them, and legalized in
their names. The mists of error thickened under the shadows of
prescription, until the free light again broke in upon the night of
ages, redeeming the genuine treasure from the superstition which
obstinately doted on its accessories.

Even to the Barbarian, Nature reveals a mighty power and a wondrous
wisdom, and continually points to God. It is no wonder that men
worshipped the several things of the world. The world of matter is a
revelation of fear to the savage in Northern climes; he trembles at his
deity throned in ice and snow. The lightning, the storm, the earthquake
startle the rude man, and he sees the divine in the extraordinary.

The grand objects of Nature perpetually constrain men to think of their
Author. The Alps are the great altar of Europe; the nocturnal sky has
been to mankind the dome of a temple, starred all over with admonitions
to reverence, trust, and love. The Scriptures for the human race are
writ in earth and Heaven. No organ or miserere touches the heart like
the sonorous swell of the sea or the ocean-wave's immeasurable laugh.
Every year the old world puts on new bridal beauty, and celebrates its
Whit-Sunday, when in the sweet Spring each bush and tree dons reverently
its new glories. Autumn is a long All-Saints' day; and the harvest is
Hallowmass to Mankind. Before the human race marched down from the
slopes of the Himalayas to take possession of Asia, Chaldea, and Egypt,
men marked each annual crisis, the solstices and the equinoxes, and
celebrated religious festivals therein; and even then, and ever since,
the material was and has been the element of communion between man and
God.

Nature is full of religious lessons to a thoughtful man. He dissolves
the matter of the Universe, leaving only its forces; he dissolves away
the phenomena of human history, leaving only immortal spirit; he studies
the law, the mode of action of these forces and this spirit, which make
up the material and the human world, and cannot fail to be filled with
reverence, with trust, with boundless love of the Infinite God, who
devised these laws of matter and of mind, and thereby bears up this
marvellous Universe of things and men. Science has its New Testament;
and the beatitudes of Philosophy are profoundly touching. An undevout
astronomer is mad. Familiarity with the grass and the trees teaches us
deeper lessons of love and trust than we can glean from the writings of
Fénélon and Augustine. The great Bible of God is ever open before
mankind. The eternal flowers of Heaven seem to shed sweet influence on
the perishable blossoms of the earth. The great sermon of Jesus was
preached on a mountain, which preached to Him as He did to the people,
and His figures of speech were first natural figures of fact.

If to-morrow I am to perish utterly, then I shall only take counsel for
to-day, and ask for qualities which last no longer. My fathers will be
to me only as the ground out of which my bread-corn is grown; dead, they
are but the rotten mould of earth, their memory of small concern to me.
Posterity!--I shall care nothing for the future generations of mankind!
I am one atom in the trunk of a tree, and care nothing for the roots
below, or the branch above, I shall sow such seed only as will bear
harvest to-day. Passion may enact my statutes to-day, and ambition
repeal them to-morrow. I will know no other legislators. Morality will
vanish, and expediency take its place. Heroism will be gone; and instead
of it there will be the savage ferocity of the he-wolf, the brute
cunning of the she-fox, the rapacity of the vulture, and the headlong
daring of the wild bull; but no longer the cool, calm courage that, for
truth's sake, and for love's sake, looks death firmly in the face, and
then wheels into line ready to be slain. Affection, friendship,
philanthropy, will be but the wild fancies of the monomaniac, fit
subjects for smiles or laughter or for pity.

But knowing that we shall live forever, and that the Infinite God loves
all of us, we can look on all the evils of the world, and see that it is
only the hour before sunrise, and that the light is coming; and so we
also, even we, may light a little taper, to illuminate the darkness
while it lasts, and help until the day-spring come. Eternal morning
follows the night: a rainbow scarfs the shoulders of every cloud that
weeps its rain away to be flowers on land and pearls at sea: Life rises
out of the grave, the soul cannot be held by fettering flesh. No dawn is
hopeless; and disaster is only the threshold of delight.

Beautifully, above the great wide chaos of human errors, shines the
calm, clear light of natural human religion, revealing to us God as the
Infinite Parent of all, perfectly powerful, wise, just, loving, and
perfectly holy too. Beautiful around stretches off every way the
Universe, the Great Bible of God. Material nature is its Old Testament,
millions of years old, thick with eternal truths under our feet,
glittering with everlasting glories over our heads; and Human Nature is
the New Testament from the Infinite God, every day revealing a new page
as Time turns over the leaves. Immortality stands waiting to give a
recompense for every virtue not rewarded, for every tear not wiped away,
for every sorrow undeserved, for every prayer, for every pure intention
and emotion of the heart. And over the whole, over Nature, Material and
Human, over this Mortal Life and over the eternal Past and Future, the
infinite Loving-kindness of God the Father comes enfolding all and
blessing everything that ever was, that is, that ever shall be.

Everything is a thought of the Infinite God. Nature is His prose, and
man His Poetry. There is no Chance, no Fate; but God's Great Providence,
enfolding the whole Universe in its bosom, and feeding it with
everlasting life. In times past there has been evil which we cannot
understand; now there are evils which we cannot solve, nor make square
with God's perfect goodness by any theory our feeble intellect enables
us to frame. There are sufferings, follies, and sins for all mankind,
for every nation, for every man and every woman. They were all foreseen
by the infinite wisdom of God, all provided for by His infinite power
and justice, and all are consistent with His infinite love. To believe
otherwise would be to believe that He made the world, to amuse His idle
hours with the follies and agonies of mankind, as Domitian was wont to
do with the wrigglings and contortions of insect agonies. Then indeed we
might despairingly unite in that horrible utterance of Heine: "Alas,
God's Satire weighs heavily on me! The Great Author of the Universe, the
Aristophanes of Heaven, is bent on demonstrating, with crushing force,
to me, the little, earthly, German Aristophanes, how my wittiest
sarcasms are only pitiful attempts at jesting, in comparison with His,
and how miserably I am beneath Him, in humor, in colossal mockery."

No, no! God is not thus amused with and prodigal of human suffering. The
world is neither a Here without a Hereafter, a body without a soul, a
chaos with no God; nor a body blasted by a soul, a Here with a worse
Hereafter, a world with a God that hates more than half the creatures He
has made. There is no Savage, Revengeful, and Evil God: but there is an
Infinite God, seen everywhere as Perfect Cause, everywhere as Perfect
Providence, transcending all, yet in-dwelling everywhere, with perfect
power, wisdom, justice, holiness, and love, providing for the future
welfare of each and all, foreseeing and forecaring for every bubble that
breaks on the great stream of human life and human history.

The end of man and the object of existence in this world, being not only
happiness, but happiness in virtue and through virtue, virtue in this
world is the condition of happiness in another life, and the condition
of virtue in this world is suffering, more or less frequent, briefer or
longer continued, more or less intense. Take away suffering, and there
is no longer any resignation or humanity, no more self-sacrifice, no
more devotedness, no more heroic virtues, no more sublime morality. We
are subjected to suffering, both because we are sensible, and because we
ought to be virtuous. If there were no physical evil, there would be no
possible virtue, and the world would be badly adapted to the destiny of
man. The apparent disorders of the physical world, and the evils that
result from them, are not disorders and evils that occur despite the
power and goodness of God. God not only allows, but wills them. It is
His will that there shall be in the physical world causes enough of pain
for man, to afford him occasions for resignation and courage.

Whatever is favorable to virtue, whatever gives the moral liberty more
energy, whatever can serve the greater moral development of the human
race, is good. Suffering is not the worst condition of man on earth. The
worst condition is the moral brutalization which the absence of physical
evil would engender.

External or internal physical evil connects itself with the object of
existence, which is to accomplish the moral law here below, whatever the
consequences, with the firm hope that virtue unfortunate will not fail
to be rewarded in another life. The moral law has its sanction and its
reason in itself. It owes nothing to that law of merit and demerit that
accompanies it, but is not its basis. But, though the principle of merit
and demerit ought not to be the determining principle of virtuous
action, it powerfully concurs with the moral law, because it offers
virtue a legitimate ground of consolation and hope.

Morality is the recognition of duty, as duty, and its accomplishment,
whatever the consequences.

Religion is the recognition of duty in its necessary harmony with
goodness; a harmony that must have its realization in another life,
through the justice and omnipotence of God.

Religion is as true as morality; for once morality is admitted, its
consequences must be admitted.

The whole moral existence is included in these two words, harmonious
with each other: DUTY and HOPE.

Masonry teaches that God is infinitely good. What motive, what reason,
and, morally speaking, what possibility can there be to Infinite Power
and Infinite Wisdom, to be anything but good? Our very sorrows,
proclaiming the loss of objects inexpressibly dear to us, demonstrate
His Goodness. The Being that made us intelligent cannot Himself be
without intelligence; and He Who has made us so to love and to sorrow
for what we love, must number love for the creatures He has made, among
His infinite attributes. Amid all our sorrows, we take refuge in the
assurance that He loves us; that He does not capriciously, or through
indifference, and still less in mere anger, grieve and afflict us; that
He chastens us, in order that by His chastisements, which are by His
universal law only the consequences of our acts, we may be profited; and
that He could not show so much love for His creatures, by leaving them
unchastened, untried, undisciplined. We have faith in the Infinite;
faith in God's Infinite Love; and it is that faith that must save us.

No dispensations of God's Providence, no suffering or bereavement is a
messenger of wrath: none of its circumstances are indications of God's
Anger. He is incapable of Anger; higher above any such feelings than the
distant stars are above the earth. Bad men do not die because God hates
them. They die because it is best for them that they should do so; and,
bad as they are, it is better for them to be in the hands of the
infinitely good God, than anywhere else.

Darkness and gloom lie upon the paths of men. They stumble at
difficulties, are ensnared by temptations, and perplexed by trouble.
They are anxious, and troubled, and fearful. Pain and affliction and
sorrow often gather around the steps of their earthly pilgrimage. All
this is written indelibly upon the tablets of the human heart. It is not
to be erased; but Masonry sees and reads it in a new light. It does not
expect these ills and trials and sufferings to be removed from life; but
that the great truth will at some time be believed by all men, that they
are the means, selected by infinite wisdom, to purify the heart, and to
invigorate the soul whose inheritance is immortality, and the world its
school.

Masonry propagates no creed except its own most simple and Sublime One;
that universal religion, taught by Nature and by Reason. Its Lodges are
neither Jewish, Moslem, nor Christian Temples. It reiterates the
precepts of morality of all religions. It venerates the character and
commends the teachings of the great and good of all ages and of all
countries. It extracts the good and not the evil, the truth, and not the
error, from all creeds; and acknowledges that there is much which is
good and true in all.

Above all the other great teachers of morality and virtue, it reveres
the character of the Great Master Who, submissive to the will of His and
our Father, died upon the Cross. All must admit, that if the world were
filled with beings like Him, the great ills of society would be at once
relieved. For all coercion, injury, selfishness, and revenge, and all
the wrongs and the greatest sufferings of life, would disappear at
once. These human years would be happy; and the eternal ages would roll
on in brightness and beauty; and the still, sad music of Humanity, that
sounds through the world, now in the accents of grief, and now in
pensive melancholy, would change to anthems, sounding to the March of
Time, and bursting out from the heart of the world.

If every man were a perfect imitator of that Great, Wise, Good Teacher,
clothed with all His faith and all His virtues, how the circle of Life's
ills and trials would be narrowed! The sensual passions would assail the
heart in vain. Want would no longer successfully tempt men to act
wrongly, nor curiosity to do rashly. Ambition, spreading before men its
Kingdoms and its Thrones, and offices and honors, would cause none to
swerve from their great allegiance. Injury and insult would be shamed by
forgiveness. "Father," men would say, "forgive them; for they know not
what they do." None would seek to be enriched at another's loss or
expense. Every man would feel that the whole human race were his
brothers. All sorrow and pain and anguish would be soothed by a perfect
faith and an entire trust in the Infinite Goodness of God. The world
around us would be new, and the Heavens above us; for here, and there,
and everywhere, through all the ample glories and splendors of the
Universe, all men would recognize and feel the presence and the
beneficent care of a loving Father.

However the Mason may believe as to creeds, and churches, and miracles,
and missions from Heaven, he must admit that the Life and character of
Him who taught in Galilee, and fragments of Whose teachings have come
down to us, are worthy of all imitation. That Life is an undenied and
undeniable Gospel. Its teachings cannot be passed by and discarded. All
must admit that it would be happiness to follow and perfection to
imitate Him. None ever felt for Him a sincere emotion of contempt, nor
in anger accused Him of sophistry, nor saw immorality lurking in His
doctrines; however they may judge of those who succeeded Him, and
claimed to be His apostles. Divine or human, inspired or only a
reforming Essene, it must be agreed that His teachings are far nobler,
far purer, far less alloyed with error and imperfection, far less of the
earth earthly, than those of Socrates, Plato, Seneca, or Mahomet, or any
other of the great moralists and Reformers of the world.

If our aims went as completely as His beyond personal care and selfish
gratification; if our thoughts and words and actions were as entirely
employed upon the great work of benefiting our kind--the true work which
we have been placed here to do--as His were; if our nature were as
gentle and as tender as His; and if society, country, kindred,
friendship, and home were as dear to us as they were to Him, we should
be at once relieved of more than half the difficulties and the diseased
and painful affections of our lives. Simple obedience to rectitude,
instead of self-interest; simple self-culture and self-improvement,
instead of constant cultivation of the good opinion of others;
single-hearted aims and purposes, instead of improper objects, sought
and approached by devious and crooked ways, would free our meditations
of many disturbing and irritating questions.

Not to renounce the nobler and better affections of our natures, nor
happiness, nor our just dues of love and honor from men; not to vilify
ourselves, nor to renounce our self-respect, nor a just and reasonable
sense of our merits and deserts, nor our own righteousness of virtue,
does Masonry require, nor would our imitation of Him require; but to
renounce our vices, our faults, our passions, our self-flattering
delusions; to forego all outward advantages, which are to be gained only
through a sacrifice of our inward integrity, or by anxious and petty
contrivances and appliances; to choose and keep the better part; to
secure that, and let the worst take care of itself; to keep a good
conscience, and let opinion come and go as it will; to retain a lofty
self-respect, and let low self-indulgence go; to keep inward happiness,
and let outward advantages hold a subordinate place; to renounce our
selfishness, and that eternal anxiety as to what we are to have, and
what men think of us; and be content with the plenitude of God's great
mercies, and so to be happy. For it is the inordinate devotion to self,
and consideration of self, that is ever a stumbling-block in the way;
that spreads questions, snares, and difficulties around us, darkens the
way of Providence, and makes the world a far less happy one to us than
it might be.

As He taught, so Masonry teaches, affection to our kindred, tenderness
to our friends, gentleness and forbearance toward our inferiors, pity
for the suffering, forgiveness of our enemies; and to wear an
affectionate nature and gentle disposition as the garment of our life,
investing pain, and toil, and agony, and even death, with a serene and
holy beauty. It does not teach us to wrap ourselves in the garments of
reserve and pride, to care nothing for the world because it cares
nothing for us, to withdraw our thoughts from society because it does us
not justice, and see how patiently we can live within the confines of
our own bosoms, or in quiet communion, through books, with the mighty
dead. No man ever found peace or light in that way. Every relation, of
hate, scorn, or neglect, to mankind, is full of vexation and torment.
There is nothing to do with men but to love them, to admire their
virtues, pity and bear with their faults, and forgive their injuries. To
hate your adversary will not help you; to kill him will help you still
less: nothing within the compass of the Universe will help you, but to
pity, forgive, and love him.

If we possessed His gentle and affectionate disposition, His love and
compassion for all that err and all that offend, how many difficulties,
both within and without us, would they relieve! How many depressed minds
should we console! How many troubles in society should we compose! How
many enmities soften! How many a knot of mystery and misunderstanding
would be untied by a single word, spoken in simple and confiding truth!
How many a rough path would be made smooth, and how many a crooked path
be made straight! Very many places, now solitary, would be made glad;
very many dark places be filled with light.

Morality has its axioms, like the other sciences; and these axioms are,
in all languages, justly termed moral truths. Moral truths, considered
in themselves, are equally as certain as mathematical truths. Given the
idea of a deposit, the idea of keeping it faithfully is attached to it
as necessarily, as to the idea of a triangle is attached the idea that
its three angles are equal to two right angles. You may violate a
deposit; but in doing so, do not imagine that you change the nature of
things, or make what is in itself a deposit become your own property.
The two ideas exclude each other. You have but a false semblance of
property: and all the efforts of the passions, all the sophisms of
interest, will not overturn essential differences. Therefore it is that
a moral truth is so imperious; because, like all truth, it is what it
is, and shapes itself to please no caprice. Always the same, and always
present, little as we may like it, it inexorably condemns, with a voice
always heard, but not always regarded, the insensate and guilty will
which thinks to prevent its existing, by denying, or rather by
pretending to deny, its existence.

The moral truths are distinguished from other truths by this singular
characteristic: so soon as we perceive them, they appear to us as the
rule of our conduct. If it is true that a deposit is made in order to be
returned to its legitimate possessor, it _must_ be returned. To the
necessity of _believing_ the truth, the necessity of _practising_ it is
added.

The necessity of practising the moral truths is obligation. The moral
truths, necessary to the eye of reason, are obligatory on the will. The
moral obligation, like the moral truth which is its basis, is absolute.
As necessary truths are not _more_ or _less_ necessary, so obligation is
not more or less _obligatory_. There are degrees of importance among
different obligations; but there are no degrees in _the obligation
itself_. One is not nearly obliged, _almost_ obliged; but _wholly_ so,
or _not at all_. If there be any place of refuge against the obligation,
it ceases to exist.

If the obligation is absolute, it is _immutable_ and _universal_. For if
what is obligation to-day may not be so _to-morrow_, if what is
obligatory for _me_ may not be so for you, the obligation differing from
itself, it would be relative and contingent. This fact of absolute,
immutable, universal obligation is certain and manifest. _The good_ is
the foundation of obligation. If it be not, obligation has _no_
foundation; and that is impossible. If one act ought to be done, and
another ought not, it must be because evidently there is an essential
difference between the two acts. If one be not good and the other bad,
the obligation imposed on us is arbitrary.

To make the Good a _consequence_, of anything whatever, is to annihilate
it. It is the first, or it is nothing. When we ask an honest man why,
despite his urgent necessities, he has respected the sanctity of a
deposit, he answers, because it was _his duty_. Asked why it was his
duty, he answers, because it was _right_, was _just_, was _good_. Beyond
that there is no answer to be made, but there is also no question to be
asked. No one permits a duty to be imposed on him without giving himself
a reason for it: but when it is admitted that the duty is commanded by
justice, the mind is satisfied; for it has arrived at a principle beyond
which there is nothing to seek, justice being its own principle. The
primary truths include their own reason: and justice, the essential
distinction between good and evil, is the first truth of morality.

Justice is not a _consequence_; because we cannot ascend to any
principle above it. Moral truth _forces itself_ on man, and does not
_emanate from him_. It no more becomes subjective, by appearing to us
obligatory, than truth does by appearing to us necessary. It is in the
very nature of the true and the good that we must seek for the reason of
necessity and obligation. Obligation is founded on the necessary
distinction between the good and the evil; and it is itself the
foundation of liberty. If man has his duties to perform, he must have
the faculty of accomplishing them, of resisting desire, passion, and
interest, in order to obey the law. He must be free; therefore he is so,
or human nature is in contradiction with itself. The certainty of the
_obligation_ involves the corresponding certainty of _free will_.

It is the _will_ that is free: though sometimes that will may be
ineffectual. The power _to do_ must not be confounded with the power _to
will_. The former may be _limited_: the latter is _sovereign_. The
_external effects_ may be prevented: _the resolution_ itself cannot. Of
this sovereign power of the will we are conscious. We feel in ourselves,
before it becomes determinate, the force which can determine itself in
one way or another. At the same time when I will this or that, I am
equally conscious that I _can_ will the contrary. I am conscious that I
am the master of my resolution: that I may check it, continue it, retake
it. When _the act_ has ceased, the consciousness of _the power_ which
produced it has not. That consciousness and the power remain, superior
to all the manifestations of the power. Wherefore free-will is the
essential and ever-subsisting attribute of the will itself.

At the same time that we judge that a free agent has done a good or a
bad act, we form another judgment, as necessary as the first; that if he
has done well, he deserves compensation; if ill, punishment. That
judgment may be expressed in a manner more or less vivid, according as
it is mingled with sentiments more or less ardent. Sometimes it will be
a merely kind feeling toward a virtuous agent, and moderately hostile to
a guilty one; sometimes enthusiasm or indignation. The judgment of merit
and demerit is intimately connected with the judgment of good and evil.
Merit is the natural right which we have to be rewarded; demerit the
natural right which others have to punish us. But whether the reward is
received, or the punishment undergone, or not, the merit or demerit
equally subsists. Punishment and reward are the satisfaction of merit
and demerit, but do not constitute them. Take away the former, and the
latter continue. Take away the latter, and there are no longer real
rewards or punishments. When a base man encompasses our merited honors,
he has obtained but the mere appearance of a reward; a mere material
advantage. The reward is essentially moral; and its value is independent
of its form. One of those simple crowns of oak with which the early
Romans rewarded heroism, was of more real value than all the wealth of
the world, when it was the sign of the gratitude and admiration of a
people. Reward accorded to merit is a debt; without merit it is an alms
or a theft.

The Good is good in itself, and to be accomplished, whatever the
consequences. The results of the Good cannot but be fortunate.
Happiness, separated from the Good, is but a fact to which no moral idea
is attached. As an effect of the Good, it enters into the moral order,
completes and crowns it.

Virtue without happiness, and crime without misery, is a contradiction
and disorder. If virtue suppose sacrifice (that is, suffering), eternal
justice requires that sacrifice generously accepted and courageously
borne, shall have for its reward the same happiness that was sacrificed:
and it also requires that crime shall be punished with unhappiness, for
the guilty happiness which it attempted to procure.

This law that attaches pleasure and sorrow to the good and the evil, is,
in general, accomplished even here below. For order rules in the world;
because the world lasts. Is that order sometimes disturbed? Are
happiness and sorrow not always distributed in legitimate proportion to
crime and virtue? The absolute judgment of the Good, the absolute
judgment of obligation, the absolute judgment of merit and demerit,
continue to subsist, inviolable and imprescriptible; and we cannot help
but believe that He Who has implanted in us the sentiment and idea of
order, cannot therein Himself be wanting; and that He will, sooner or
later, reestablish the holy harmony of virtue and happiness, by means
belonging to Himself.

The Judgment of the Good, the decision that such a thing is good, and
that such another is not,--this is the primitive fact, and reposes on
itself. By its intimate resemblances to the judgment of the true and the
beautiful, it shows us the secret affinities of morality, metaphysics,
and aesthetics. The good, so especially united to the true, is
distinguished from it, only because it is truth put in practice. The
good is obligatory. These are two indivisible but not identical ideas.
The idea of obligation reposes on the idea of the Good. In this intimate
alliance, the former borrows from the latter its universal and absolute
character.

The obligatory good is the moral law. That is the foundation of all
morality. By it we separate ourselves from the morality of interest and
the morality of sentiment. We admit the existence of those facts, and
their influence; but we do not assign them the same rank.

To the moral law, in the reason of man, corresponds liberty in action.
Liberty is deduced from obligation, and is a fact irresistibly evident.
Man, as free, and subject to obligation, is a moral person; and that
involves the idea of rights. To these ideas is added that of merit and
demerit; which supposes the distinction between good and evil,
obligation and liberty; and creates the idea of reward and punishment.

The sentiments play no unimportant part in morality. All the moral
judgments are accompanied by sentiments that respond to them. From the
secret sources of enthusiasm the human will draws the mysterious virtue
that makes heroes. Truth enlightens and illumines. Sentiment warms and
inclines to action. Interest also bears its part; and the hope of
happiness is the work of God, and one of the motive powers of human
action.

Such is the admirable economy of the moral constitution of man. His
Supreme Object, the Good: his law, Virtue, which often imposes upon him
suffering, thus making him to excel all other created beings known to
us. But this law is harsh, and in contradiction with the instinctive
desire for happiness. Wherefore the Beneficent Author of his being has
placed in his soul, by the side of the severe law of duty, the sweet,
delightful force of sentiment. Generally he attaches happiness to
virtue; and for the exceptions, for such there are, he has placed Hope
at the end of the journey to be travelled.

Thus there is a side on which morality touches religion. It is a sublime
necessity of Humanity to see in God the Legislator supremely wise, the
Witness always present, the infallible Judge of virtue. The human mind,
ever climbing up to God, would deem the foundations of morality too
unstable, if it did not place in God the first principle of the moral
law. Wishing to give to the moral law a _religious_ character, we run
the risk of taking from it its _moral_ character. We may refer it so
entirely to God as to make His will an arbitrary degree. But the will of
God, whence we deduce morality, in order to give it authority, itself
has no moral authority, except as it is just. The Good comes from the
will of God alone; but from His will, in so far as it is the expression
of His wisdom and justice. The Eternal Justice of God is the sole
foundation of Justice, such as Humanity perceives and practises it. The
Good, duty, merit and demerit, are referred to God, as everything is
referred to Him; but they have none the less a proper evidence and
authority. Religion is the crown of Morality, not its base. The base of
Morality is in itself.

The Moral Code of Masonry is still more extensive than that developed by
philosophy. To the requisitions of the law of Nature and the law of God,
it adds the imperative obligation of a contract. Upon entering the
Order, the Initiate binds to himself every Mason in the world. Once
enrolled among the children of Light, every Mason on earth becomes his
brother, and owes him the duties, the kindnesses, and the sympathies of
a brother. On every one he may call for assistance in need, protection
against danger, sympathy in sorrow, attention in sickness, and decent
burial after death. There is not a Mason in the world who is not bound
to go to his relief, when he is in danger, if there be a greater
probability of saving his life than of losing his own. No Mason can
wrong him to the value of anything, knowingly, himself, nor suffer it to
be done by others, if it be in his power to prevent it. No Mason can
speak evil of him, to his face or behind his back. Every Mason must keep
his lawful secrets, and aid him in his business, defend his character
when unjustly assailed, and protect, counsel, and assist his widow and
his orphans. What so many thousands owe to him, he owes to each of them.
He has solemnly bound himself to be ever ready to discharge this sacred
debt. If he fails to do it he is dishonest and forsworn; and it is an
unparalleled meanness in him to obtain good offices by false pretences,
to receive kindness and service, rendered him under the confident
expectation that he will in his turn render the same, and then to
disappoint, without ample reason, that just expectation.

Masonry holds him also, by his solemn promise, to a purer life, a nobler
generosity, a more perfect charity of opinion and action; to be
tolerant, catholic in his love for his race, ardent in his zeal for the
interest of mankind, the advancement and progress of humanity.

Such are, we think, the Philosophy and the Morality, such the TRUE WORD
of a Master Mason.

The world, the ancients believed, was governed by Seven Secondary
Causes; and these were the universal forces, known to the Hebrews by the
plural name ELOHIM. These forces, analogous and contrary one to the
other, produce equilibrium by their contrasts, and regulate the
movements of the spheres. The Hebrews called them the Seven great
Archangels, and gave them names, each of which, being a combination of
another word with AL, the first Phœnician Nature-God, considered as the
Principle of Light, represented them as His manifestations. Other
peoples assigned to these Spirits the government of the Seven Planets
then known, and gave them the names of their great divinities.

So, in the Kabala, the last Seven Sephiroth constituted ATIK YOMIN, the
Ancient of Days; and these, as well as the Seven planets, correspond
with the Seven colors separated by the prism, and the Seven notes of the
musical octave.

Seven is the sacred number in all theogonies and all symbols, because it
is composed of 3 and 4. It represents the magical power in its full
force. It is the Spirit assisted by all the Elementary Powers, the Soul
served by Nature, the Holy Empire spoken of in the clavicules of
Solomon, symbolized by a warrior, crowned, bearing a triangle on his
cuirass, and standing on a cube, to which are harnessed two Sphinxes,
one white and the other black, pulling contrary ways, and turning the
head to look backward.

The vices are Seven, like the virtues; and the latter were anciently
symbolized by the Seven Celestial bodies then known as planets. FAITH,
as the converse of arrogant Confidence, was represented by the Sun;
HOPE, enemy of Avarice, by the _Moon_; CHARITY, opposed to Luxury, by
_Venus_; FORCE, stronger than Rage, by _Mars_; PRUDENCE, the opposite of
Indolence, by _Mercury_; TEMPERANCE, the antipodes of Gluttony, by
Saturn; and JUSTICE, the opposite of Envy, by _Jupiter_.

The Kabalistic book of the Apocalypse is represented as closed with
Seven Seals. In it we find the Seven genii of the Ancient Mythologies;
and the doctrine concealed under its emblems is the pure Kabala, already
lost by the Pharisees at the advent of the Saviour. The pictures that
follow in this wondrous epic are so many pantacles, of which the
numbers 3, 4, 7, and 12 are the keys.

The Cherub, or symbolic bull, which Moses places at the gate of the
Edenic world, holding a blazing sword, is a Sphinx, with the body of a
bull and a human head; the old Assyrian Sphinx whereof the combat and
victory of Mithras were the hieroglyphic analysis. This armed Sphinx
represents the law of the Mystery, which keeps watch at the door of
initiation, to repulse the Profane. It also represents the grand Magical
Mystery, all the elements whereof the number 7 expresses, still without
giving its last word. This "unspeakable word" of the Sages of the school
of Alexandria, this word, which the Hebrew Kabalists wrote יהוה [IHUH],
and translated by אראריהא, [ARARITA,] so expressing the threefoldness of
the Secondary Principle, the dualism of the middle ones, and the Unity
as well of the first Principle as of the end; and also the junction of
the number 3 with the number 4 in a word composed of four letters, but
formed of seven by one triplicate and two repeated,--this word is
pronounced _Ararita_.

The vowels in the Greek language are also _Seven_ in number, and were
used to designate the Seven planets.

Tsadok or Sydyc was the Supreme God in Phœnicia. His Seven Sons were
probably the Seven Cabiri; and he was the Heptaktis, the God of Seven
Rays.

Kronos, the Greek Saturn, Philo makes Sanchoniathon say, had six sons,
and by Astarte Seven daughters, the Titanides. The Persians adored Ahura
Masda or Ormuzd and the Six Amshaspands, the first three of whom were
Lords of the Empires of Light, Fire, and Splendor; the Babylonians, Bal
and the Gods; the Chinese, Shangti, and the Six Chief Spirits; and the
Greeks, Kronos, and the Six great Male Gods, his progeny, Zeus,
Poseidon, Apollo, Arēs, Hēphaistos, and Hermes; while the female deities
were also Seven: Rhea, wife of Kronos, Hērē, Athēnē, Artemis, Aphrodite,
Hestia, and Dēmētēi. In the Orphic Theogony, Gaia produced the fourteen
Titans, Seven male and Seven female, Kronos being the most potent of the
males; and as the number _Seven_ appears in these, nine by threes, or
the triple triangle, is found in the three Mœraê or Fates, the three
Centimanēs, and the three Cyclopēs, offspring of Ouranos and Gaia, or
Heaven and Earth.

The metals, like the colors, were deemed to be Seven in number, and a
metal and color were assigned to each planet. Of the metals, gold was
assigned to the Sun and silver to the Moon.

The palace of Deioces in Echatana had Seven circular walls of different
colors, the two innermost having their battlements covered respectively
with silvering and gilding.

And the Seven Spheres of Borsippa were represented by the Seven Stories,
each of a different color, of the tower or truncated pyramid of Bel at
Babylon.

Pharaoh saw in his dream, which Joseph interpreted, _Seven_ ears of
wheat on one stalk, full and good, and after them _Seven_ ears,
withered, thin, and blasted with the East wind; and the Seven thin ears
devoured the Seven good ears; and Joseph interpreted these to mean Seven
years of plenty succeeded by Seven years of famine.

Connected with this Ebn Hesham relates that a flood of rain laid bare to
view a sepulchre in Yemen, in which lay a woman having on her neck
_Seven_ collars of _pearls_, and on her hands and feet bracelets and
ankle-rings and armlets, Seven on each, with an inscription on a tablet
showing that, after attempting in vain to purchase grain of Joseph, she,
Tajah, daughter of Dzu Shefar, and her people, died of famine.

Hear again the words of an adept, who had profoundly studied the
mysteries of science, and wrote, as the Ancient Oracles spoke, in
enigmas; but who knew that the theory of mechanical forces and of the
materiality of the most potent agents of Divinity, explains nothing, and
ought to satisfy no one!

Through the veil of all the hieratic and mystic allegories of the
ancient dogmas, under the seal of all the sacred writings, in the ruins
of Nineveh or Thebes, on the worn stones of the ancient temples, and on
the blackened face of the sphinx of Assyria or Egypt, in the monstrous
or marvellous pictures which the sacred pages of the Vedas translate for
the believers of India, in the strange emblems of our old books of
alchemy, in the ceremonies of reception practised by all the mysterious
Societies, we find the traces of a doctrine, everywhere the same, and
everywhere carefully concealed. The occult philosophy seems to have been
the nurse or the godmother of all religions, the secret lever of all the
intellectual forces, the key of all divine obscurities, and the absolute
Queen of Society, in the ages when it was exclusively reserved for the
education of the Priests and Kings.

It had reigned in Persia with the Magi, who perished one day, as the
masters of the world had perished, for having abused their power. It had
endowed India with the most marvellous traditions, and an incredible
luxury of poetry, grace, and terror in its emblems: it had civilized
Greece by the sounds of the lyre of Orpheus: it hid the principles of
all the sciences, and of the whole progression of the human spirit, in
the audacious calculations of Pythagoras: fable teemed with its
miracles; and history, when it undertook to judge of this unknown power,
confounded itself with fable: it shook or enfeebled empires by its
oracles; made tyrants turn pale on their thrones, and ruled over all
minds by means of curiosity or fear. To this science, said the crowd,
nothing is impossible; it commands the elements, knows the language of
the planets, and controls the movements of the stars; the moon, at its
voice, falls, reeking with blood, from Heaven; the dead rise upright on
their graves, and shape into fatal words the wind that breathes through
their skulls. Controller of Love or Hate, this science can at pleasure
confer on human hearts Paradise or Hell: it disposes at will of all
forms, and distributes beauty or deformity as it pleases: it changes in
turn, with the rod of Circe, men into brutes and animals into men: it
even disposes of Life or of Death, and can bestow on its adepts riches
by the transmutation of metals, and immortality by its quintessence and
elixir, compounded of gold and light.

This is what magic had been, from Zoroaster to Manes, from Orpheus to
Apollonius Thyaneus; when positive Christianity, triumphing over the
splendid dreams and gigantic aspirations of the school of Alexandria,
publicly crushed this philosophy with its anathemas, and compelled it to
become more occult and more mysterious than ever.

At the bottom of magic, nevertheless, was science, as at the bottom of
Christianity there was love; and in the Evangelic Symbols we see the
incarnate WORD adored in its infancy by three magi whom a star guides
(the ternary and the sign of the microcosm), and receiving from them
gold, frankincense, and myrrh; another mysterious ternary, under the
emblem whereof are allegorically contained the highest secrets of the
Kabala.

Christianity should not have hated magic; but human ignorance always
fears the unknown. Science was obliged to conceal itself, to avoid the
impassioned aggressions of a blind love. It enveloped itself in new
hieroglyphs, concealed its efforts, disguised its hopes. Then was
created the jargon of alchemy, a continual deception for the vulgar
herd, greedy of gold, and a living language for the true disciples of
Hermes alone.

Resorting to Masonry, the alchemists there invented Degrees, and partly
unveiled their doctrine to their Initiates; not by the language of their
receptions, but by oral instruction afterward; for their rituals, to one
who has not the key, are but incomprehensible and absurd jargon.

Among the sacred books of the Christians are two works which the
infallible church does not pretend to understand, and never attempts to
explain,--the prophecy of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse; two cabalistic
clavicules, reserved, no doubt, in Heaven, for the exposition of the
Magian kings; closed with Seven seals for all faithful believers; and
perfectly clear to the unbeliever initiated in the occult sciences.

For Christians, and in their opinion, the scientific and magical
clavicules of Solomon are lost. Nevertheless, it is certain that, in the
domain of intelligence governed by the WORD, nothing that is written is
lost. Only those things which men cease to understand no longer exist
for them, at least as WORD; then they enter into the domain of enigmas
and mystery.

The mysterious founder of the Christian Church was saluted in His cradle
by the three Magi, that is to say by the hieratic ambassadors from the
three parts of the known world, and from the three analogical worlds of
the occult philosophy.

In the school of Alexandria, Magic and Christianity almost take each
other by the hand under the auspices of Ammonius Saccos and Plato. The
dogma of Hermes is found almost entire in the writings attributed to
Dionysius the Areopagite. Synesius traces the plan of a treatise on
dreams, which was subsequently to be commented on by Cardan, and
composes hymns which might serve for the liturgy of the Church of
Swedenborg, if a church of illuminati could have a liturgy.

To this epoch of ardent abstractions and impassioned logomachies belongs
the philosophical reign of Julian, an illuminatus and Initiate of the
first order, who believed in the unity of God and the universal Dogma of
the Trinity, and regretted the loss of nothing of the old world but its
magnificent symbols and too graceful images. He was no Pagan, but a
Gnostic, infected with the allegories of Grecian polytheism, and whose
misfortune it was to find the name of Jesus Christ less sonorous than
that of Orpheus.

We may be sure that so soon as Religion and Philosophy become distinct
departments, the mental activity of the age is in advance of its Faith;
and that, though habit may sustain the latter for a time, its vitality
is gone.

The dunces who led primitive Christianity astray, by substituting faith
for science, reverie for experience, the fantastic for the reality; and
the inquisitors who for so many ages waged against Magism a war of
extermination, have succeeded in shrouding in darkness the ancient
discoveries of the human mind; so that we now grope in the dark to find
again the key of the phenomena of nature. But all natural phenomena
depend on a single and immutable law, represented by the philosophal
stone and its symbolic form, which is that of a cube. This law,
expressed in the Kabala by the number 4, furnished the Hebrews with all
the mysteries of their divine Tetragram.

Everything is contained in that word of four letters. It is the _Asot_
of the Alchemists, the _Thot_ of the Bohemians, the _Taro_ of the
Kabalists. It supplies to the Adept the last word of the human Sciences,
and the Key of the Divine Power: but he alone understands how to avail
himself of it who comprehends the necessity of never revealing it. If
Œdipus, in place of _slaying_ the Sphynx, had _conquered_ it, and driven
it into Thebes harnessed to his chariot, he would have been King,
without incest, calamities, or exile. If Psyche, by submission and
caresses, had persuaded Love to reveal himself, she would never have
lost him. Love is one of the mythological images of the grand secret and
the grand agent, because it expresses at once an action and a passion, a
void and a plenitude, an arrow and a wound. The Initiates ought to
understand this, and, lest the profane should overhear, Masonry never
says too much.

When Science had been overcome in Alexandria by the fanaticism of the
murderers of Hypalia, it became Christian, or, rather, it concealed
itself under Christian disguises, with Ammonius, Synosius, and the
author of the books of Dionysius the Areopagite. Then it was necessary
to win the pardon of miracles by the appearances of superstition, and of
science by a language unintelligible. Hieroglyphic writing was revived,
and pantacles and characters were invented, that summed up a whole
doctrine in a sign, a whole series of tendencies and revelations in a
word. What was the object of the aspirants to knowledge? They sought for
the secret of the great work, or the Philosophal Stone, or the perpetual
motion, or the squaring of the circle, or the universal medicine;
formulas which often saved them from persecution and general ill-will,
by exposing them to the charge of folly; and each of which expressed one
of the forces of the grand magical secret. This lasted until the time of
the Roman de la Rose, which also expresses the mysterious and magical
meaning of the poem of Dante, borrowed from the High Kabalah, that
immense and concealed source of the universal philosophy.

It is not strange that man knows but little of the powers of the human
will, and imperfectly appreciates them; since he knows nothing as to the
nature of the will and its mode of operation. That his own will can move
his arm, or compel another to obey him; that his thoughts, symbolically
expressed by the signs of writing, can influence and lead other men, are
mysteries as incomprehensible to him, as that the will of Deity could
effect the creation of a Universe.

The powers of the will are as yet chiefly indefinite and unknown.
Whether a multitude of well-established phenomena are to be ascribed to
the power of the will alone, or to magnetism or some other natural
agent, is a point as yet unsettled; but it is agreed by all that a
concentrated effort of the will is in every case necessary to success.

That the phenomena are real is not to be doubted, unless credit is no
longer to be given to human testimony; and if they are real, there is no
reason for doubting the exercise heretofore, by many adepts, of the
powers that were then termed magical. Nothing is better vouched for than
the extraordinary performances of the Brahmins. No religion is supported
by stronger testimony; nor has any one ever even attempted to explain
what may well be termed their miracles.

How far, in this life, the mind and soul can act without and
independently of the body, no one as yet knows. That the will can act at
all without bodily contact, and the phenomena of dreams, are mysteries
that confound the wisest and most learned, whose explanations are but a
Babel of words.

Man as yet knows little of the forces of nature. Surrounded,
controlled, and governed by them, while he vainly thinks himself
independent, not only of his race, but the universal nature and her
infinite manifold forces, he is the slave of these forces, unless he
becomes their master. He can neither ignore their existence nor be
simply their neighbor.

There is in nature one most potent force, by means whereof a single man,
who could possess himself of it, and should know how to direct it, could
revolutionize and change the face of the world.

This force was known to the ancients. It is a universal agent, whose
Supreme law is equilibrium; and whereby, if science can but learn how to
control it, it will be possible to change the order of the Seasons, to
produce in night the phenomena of day, to send a thought in an instant
round the world, to heal or slay at a distance, to give our words
universal success, and make them reverberate everywhere.

This agent, partially revealed by the blind guesses of the disciples of
Mesmer, is precisely what the Adepts of the middle ages called the
elementary matter of the great work. The Gnostics held that it composed
the igneous body of the Holy Spirit; and it was adored in the secret
rites of the Sabbat or the Temple, under the hieroglyphic figure of
Baphomet or the hermaphroditic goat of Mendes.

There is a Life-Principle of the world, a universal agent, wherein are
two natures and a double current, of love and wrath. This ambient fluid
penetrates everything. It is a ray detached from the glory of the Sun,
and fixed by the weight of the atmosphere and the central attraction. It
is the body of the Holy Spirit, the universal Agent, the Serpent
devouring his own tail. With this electro-magnetic ether, this vital and
luminous caloric, the ancients and the alchemists were familiar. Of this
agent, that phase of modern ignorance termed physical science talks
incoherently, knowing naught of it save its effects; and theology might
apply to it all its pretended definitions of spirit. Quiescent, it is
appreciable by no human sense; disturbed or in movement, none can
explain its mode of action; and to term it a "fluid," and speak of its
"currents," is but to veil a profound ignorance under a cloud of words.

Force attracts force, life attracts life, health attracts health. It is
a law of nature.

If two children live together, and still more if they sleep together,
and one is feeble and the other strong, the strong will absorb the
feeble, and the latter will perish.

In schools, some pupils absorb the intellect of the others, and in every
circle of men some one individual is soon found, who possesses himself
of the wills of the others.

Enthralments by currents is very common; and one is carried away by the
crowd, in morals as in physics. The human will has an almost absolute
power in determining one's acts; and every external demonstration of a
will has an influence on external things.

Tissot ascribed most maladies to disorders of the will, or the perverse
influences of the wills of others. We become subject to the wills of
others by the analogies of our inclinations, and still more by those of
our defects. To caress the weaknesses of an individual, is to possess
ourself of him, and make of him an instrument in the order of the same
errors or depravations. But when two natures, analogical in defects, are
subordinated one to the other, there is effected a kind of substitution
of the stronger instead of the weaker, and a genuine imprisonment of one
mind by the other. Often the weaker struggles, and would fain revolt;
and then falls lower than ever in servitude.

We each have some dominant defect, by which the enemy can grasp us. In
some it is vanity, in others indolence, in most egotism. Let a cunning
and evil spirit possess himself of this, and you are lost. Then you
become, not foolish, nor an idiot, but positively a lunatic, the slave
of an impulse from without. You have an instinctive horror for
everything that could restore you to reason, and will not even listen to
representations that contravene your insanity.

Miracles are the natural effects of exceptional causes.

The immediate action of the human will on bodies, or at least this
action exercised without visible means, constitutes a miracle in the
physical order.

The influence exercised on wills or intellects, suddenly or within a
given time, and capable of taking captive the thoughts, changing the
firmest resolutions, paralyzing the most violent passions, constitutes a
miracle in the moral order.

The common error in relation to miracles is, to regard them as effects
without causes; as contradictions of nature; as sudden fictions of the
Divine imagination; and men do not reflect that a single miracle of
this sort would break the universal harmony and re-plunge the Universe
into Chaos.

There are miracles impossible to God Himself: absurd miracles are so. If
God could be absurd for a single instant, neither He nor the Universe
would exist an instant afterward. To expect of the Divine Free-Will an
effect whose cause is unacknowledged or does not exist, is what is
termed tempting God. It is to precipitate one's self into the void.

God acts by His works: in Heaven, by angels; on earth, by men.

In the heaven of human conceptions, it is humanity that creates God; and
men think that God has made them in His image, because they make Him in
theirs.

The domain of man is all corporeal nature, visible on earth; and if he
does not rule the planets or the stars, he can at least calculate their
movement, measure their distances, and identify his will with their
influence: he can modify the atmosphere, act to a certain point on the
seasons, cure and afflict with sickness other men, preserve life and
cause death.

The absolute in reason and will is the greatest power which it is given
to men to attain; and it is by means of this power that what the
multitude admires under the name of miracles, are effected.

POWER is the wise use of the will, which makes Fatality itself serve to
accomplish the purposes of Sages.

Omnipotence is the most absolute Liberty; and absolute Liberty cannot
exist without a perfect equilibrium; and the columns JACHIN and BOAZ are
also the unlimited POWER and SPLENDOR OF PERFECTION of the Deity, the
seventh and eighth SEPHIROTH of the Kabalah, from whose equilibrium
result the eternal permanence and Stability of His plans and works, and
of that perfect Success and undivided, unlimited Dominion, which are the
ninth and tenth SEPHIROTH, and of which the Temple of Solomon, in its
stately symmetry, erected without the sound of any tool of metal being
heard, is to us a symbol. "For Thine," says the Most Perfect of Prayers,
"is the DOMINION, the POWER, and the GLORY, during all the ages! Amen!"

The ABSOLUTE is the very _necessity_ of BEING, the immutable law of
Reason and of Truth. It is THAT WHICH IS. BUT THAT WHICH IS is in some
sort before HE WHO IS. God Himself is not without a _reason of
existence_. He does not exist _accidentally_. He could not _not_ have
been. His Existence, then, is _necessitated_ is _necessary_. He _can_
exist only in virtue of a Supreme and inevitable REASON. That REASON,
then, is THE ABSOLUTE; for it is in IT we must believe, if we would that
our faith should have a reasonable and solid basis. It has been said in
our times, that God is a Hypothesis; but Absolute Reason is not one: it
is essential to Existence.

Saint Thomas said, "_A thing is not just because God wills it_, BUT GOD
WILLS IT BECAUSE IT IS JUST." If he had deduced all the consequences of
this fine thought, he would have discovered the true Philosopher's
Stone; the magical elixir, to convert all the trials of the world into
golden mercies. Precisely as it is a necessity for God to BE, so it is a
necessity for Him to be just, loving, and merciful. He cannot be unjust,
cruel, merciless. He cannot repeal the law of right and wrong, of merit
and demerit; for the moral laws are as absolute as the physical laws.
There are impossible things, As it is impossible to make two and two be
five and not four; as it is impossible to make a thing be and not be at
the same time; so it is impossible for the Deity to make crime a merit,
and love and gratitude crimes. So, too, it was impossible to make Man
perfect, with his bodily senses and appetites, as it was to make his
nerves susceptible of pleasure and not also of pain.

Therefore, according to the idea of Saint Thomas, the moral laws are the
_enactments_ of the Divine WILL, only because they are the _decisions_
of the Absolute WISDOM and REASON, and the _Revelations_ of the Divine
NATURE. In this alone consists the _right_ of Deity to enact them; and
thus only do we attain the certainty in Faith that the Universe is one
Harmony.

To believe in the Reason of God, and in the God of Reason, is to make
Atheism impossible. It is the Idolaters who have made the Atheists.

Analogy gives the Sage all the forces of Nature. It is the key of the
Grand Arcanum, the root of the Tree of Life, the science of Good and
Evil.

The Absolute, is REASON. Reason IS, by means of Itself. It IS BECAUSE IT
IS, and not because we suppose it. IT IS, where nothing _exists_; but
nothing could possibly exist without IT. Reason is Necessity, Law, the
Rule of all Liberty, and the direction of every Initiative. If God IS,
HE IS by Reason. The conception of an Absolute Deity, outside of, or
independent of, Reason, is the IDOL of Black Magic, the PHANTOM of the
Dæmon.

The Supreme Intelligence is necessarily _rational_. God, in philosophy,
can be no more than a Hypothesis; but a Hypothesis imposed by good sense
on Human Reason. To personify the Absolute Reason, is to determine the
Divine Ideal.

NECESSITY, LIBERTY, and REASON! Behold the great and Supreme Triangle of
the Kabalists!

FATALITY, WILL, and POWER! Such is the magical ternary which, in human
things, corresponds with the Divine Triangle.

FATALITY is the inevitable linking together, in succession, of effects
and causes, in a given order.

WILL is the faculty that directs the forces of the Intellect, so as to
reconcile the liberty of persons with the necessity of things.

The argument from these premises must be made by yourself. Each one of
us does that. "Seek," say the Holy Writings, "and ye shall find." Yet
discussion is not forbidden; and without doubt the subject will be fully
treated of in your hearing hereafter. Affirmation, negation,
discussion,--it is by these the truth is attained.

To explore the great Mysteries of the Universe and seek to solve its
manifold enigmas, is the chief use of Thought, and constitutes the
principal distinction between Man and the animals. Accordingly, in all
ages the Intellect has labored to understand and explain to itself the
Nature of the Supreme Deity.

That one Reason and one Will created and governed the Universe was too
evident not to be at once admitted by the _philosophers_ of all ages. It
was the ancient _religions_ that sought to multiply gods. The _Nature_
of the One Deity, and the mode in which the Universe had its beginning,
are questions that have always been the racks in which the human
intellect has been tortured: and it is chiefly with these that the
Kabalists have dealt.

It is true that, in one sense, we can have no actual knowledge of the
Absolute Itself, the _very_ Deity. Our means of obtaining what is
commonly termed _actual_ knowledge, are our senses only. If to _see_ and
_feel_ be _knowledge_, we have none of our own Soul, of electricity, of
magnetism. We see and feel and taste an acid or an alkali, and know
something of the _qualities_ of each; but it is only when we use them in
combination with other substances, and learn their _effects_, that we
really begin to know their _nature_. It is the combination and
experiments of Chemistry that give us a knowledge of the nature and
powers of most animal and vegetable substances. As these are cognizable
by inspection by our senses, we may partially know them by that alone:
but the Soul, either of ourself or of another, being beyond that
cognizance, can only be known by the acts and words which are its
effects. Magnetism and electricity, when at rest, are equally beyond the
jurisdiction of the senses; and when they are in action, we see, feel,
hear, taste, and smell only their effects. We do not know what they
_are_, but only what they _do_. We can know the attributes of Deity only
through His manifestations. To ask anything more, is to ask, not
_knowledge_, but something else, for which we have no name. God is a
Power; and we know nothing of any Power _itself_, but only its effects,
results, and action, and what Reason teaches us by analogy.

In these later days, in laboring to escape from all _material_ ideas in
regard to Deity, we have so refined away our notions of GOD, as to have
no idea of Him at all. In struggling to regard Him as a pure immaterial
Spirit, we have made the word _Spirit_ synonymous with _nothing_, and
can only say that He is a _Somewhat_, with certain attributes, such as
Power, Wisdom, and Intelligence. To compare Him to LIGHT, would now be
deemed not only unphilosophical, but the equivalent of Atheism; and we
find it necessary to excuse and pity the ancients for their inadequate
and gross ideas of Deity, expressed in considering Him as the
Light-Principle, the invisible essence or substance from which visible
Light flows.

Yet our own holy writings continually speak of Him as Light; and
therefore the Tsabeans and the Kabala may well be pardoned for doing the
same; especially since they did not regard Him as the _visible_ Light
known to us, but as the Primordial Ether-Ocean from which light flows.

Before the creation, did the Deity dwell alone in the Darkness, or in
the Light? Did the Light co-exist with Him, or was it created, after an
eternity of darkness? and if it co-existed, was it an effluence from
Him, filling all space as He also filled it, He and the Light at the
same time filling the same place and every place?

MILTON says, expressing the Hebraic doctrine:

         Hail, Holy Light, offspring of Heaven first-born,
         Or of th' Eternal, co-eternal beam!
         May I express thee unblamed, _since God is Light_.

         And never but in unapproached Light
         Dwelt from Eternity; dwelt then in Thee,
         _Bright effluence of bright Essence uncreate_.

"The LIGHT," says the Book _Omschim_, or Introduction to the Kabala,
"Supremest of all things, and most Lofty, and Limitless, and styled
INFINITE, can be attained unto by no cogitation or speculation; and its
VERY SELF is evidently withdrawn and removed beyond all intellection. It
WAS, before all things whatever, produced, created, formed, and made by
Emanation; and in it was neither Time, Head, or Beginning; since it
always existed, and remains forever, without commencement or end."

"Before the Emanations flowed forth, and created things were created,
the Supreme Light was infinitely extended, and filled the whole WHERE;
so that with reference to Light no vacuum could be affirmed, nor any
unoccupied space; but the ALL was filled with that Light of the
Infinite, thus extended, whereto in every regard was no end, inasmuch as
nothing was, except that extended Light, which, with a certain single
and simple equality, was everywhere like unto itself."

AINSOPH is called _Light_, says the Introduction to the Sohar, because
it is impossible to express it by any other word.

To conceive of God as an actuality, and not as a mere non-substance or
name, which involved non-_existence_, the Kabala, like the Egyptians,
imagined Him to be "a most occult Light," AUR; not our material and
visible Light, but the Substance out of which Light flows, the _fire_,
as relative to its heat and flame. Of this Light or Ether, the Sun was
to the Tsabeans the only manifestation or out-shining, and as such it
was worshipped, and not as the type of dominion and power. God was the
_Phōs Noēton_, the Light cognisable only by the Intellect, the
Light-Principle, the Light-Ether, from which souls emanate, and to which
they return.

Light, Fire, and Flame, with the Phœnicians, were the sons of Kronos.
They are the Trinity in the Chaldæan Oracles, the AOR of the Deity,
manifested in _flame_, that issues out of the invisible _Fire_.

In the first three Persian Amshaspands, Lords of LIGHT, FIRE, and
SPLENDOR, we recognize the AOR, ZOHAR, and ZAYO, _Light, Splendor_, and
_Brightness_, of the Kabalah. The first of these is termed AOR MUPALA,
_Wonderful_ or _Hidden_ Light, unrevealed, undisplayed--which is KETHER,
the first Emanation or _Sephirah_, the _Will_ of Deity: the second is
NESTAR, _Concealed_--which is HAKEMAH, the second _Sephirah_, or the
Intellectual Potence of the Deity: and the third is METANOTSATS,
_coruscating_--which is BINAH, the third _Sephirah_, or the intellectual
_producing_ capacity. In other words, they are THE VERY SUBSTANCE of
light, _in_ the Deity: _Fire_, which is that light, limited and
furnished with attributes, so that it _can_ be revealed, but yet remains
unrevealed, and its _splendor_ or out-shining, or the _light_ that goes
out from the fire.

Masonry is a search after Light. That search leads us directly back, as
you see, to the Kabalah. In that ancient and little understood medley of
absurdity and philosophy, the Initiate will find the source of many
doctrines; and may in time come to understand the Hermetic philosophers,
the Alchemists, all the Anti-papal Thinkers of the Middle Ages, and
Emanuel Swedenborg.

The Hansavati Rich, a celebrated Sanscrit Stanza, says: "He is Hansa
(the Sun), dwelling in light; Vasu, the atmosphere dwelling in the
firmament; the invoker of the gods (Agni), dwelling on the altar
(_i.e._, the altar fire); the guest (of the worshipper), dwelling in the
house (the domestic fire); the dweller amongst men (as consciousness);
the dweller in the most excellent orb, (the Sun); the dweller in truth;
the dweller in the sky (the air); born in the waters, in the rays of
light, in the verity (of manifestation), in the Eastern mountains; the
Truth (itself)."

"In the beginning," says a Sanscrit hymn, "arose the Source of golden
light. _He was the only born Lord of all that is_. He established the
earth and the sky. Who is the God to Whom we shall offer our sacrifice?"

"He who gives life, He who gives strength; Whose blessing all the bright
gods desire; _Whose shadow is immortality; Whose shadow is death_; Who
is the God, etc?"

"He through Whom the sky is bright and the earth for us; He through Whom
the Heaven was established, nay, the highest Heaven; He who measured out
the light in the air; Who is the God, etc?"

"He to Whom the Heaven and earth, standing firm by His will, look up
trembling inwardly; He over Whom the rising sun shines forth; Who is the
God, etc?"

"Wherever the mighty water-clouds went, where they placed the seed and
lit the fire, thence arose He Who is the only life of the bright gods;
Who is the God, etc?"

The WORD of God, said the Indian philosophy, is the universal and
invisible Light, cognizable by the senses, that emits its blaze in the
Sun, Moon, Planets, and other Stars. Philo calls it the "Universal
Light," which loses a portion of its purity and splendor in descending
from the intellectual to the sensible world, manifesting itself
outwardly from, the Deity; and the Kabalah represents that only so much
of the Infinite Light flowed into the circular void prepared for
creation within the Infinite Light and Wisdom, as could pass by a canal
like a line or thread. The Sephiroth, emanating from the Deity, were the
rays of His splendor.

The Chaldæan Oracles said: "The intellect of the Generator, stirred to
action, out-spoke, forming within itself, by intellection, universals of
every possible form and fashion, which issued out, flowing forth from
the One Source ... For Deity, impersonated as Dominion, before
fabricating the manifold Universe, posited an intellected and
unchangeable universal, the impression of the form whereof goes forth
through the Universe; and that Universe, formed and fashioned
accordingly, becomes visibly beautified in infinitely varying types and
forms, the Source and fountain whereof is one.... Intellectual
conceptions and forms from the Generative source, succeeding each other,
considered in relation to ever-progressing Time, and intimately
partaking of THE PRIMAL ETHER or FIRE; but yet all these Universals and
Primal Types and Ideas flowed forth from, and are part of, the first
Source of the Generative Power, perfect in itself."

The Chaldeans termed the Supreme Deity ARAOR, Father of Light. From Him
was supposed to flow the light above the world, which illuminates the
heavenly regions. This Light or Fire was considered as the Symbol of the
Divine Essence, extending itself to inferior spiritual natures. Hence
the Chaldean oracles say: "The Father took from Himself, and did not
confine His proper fire within His intellectual potency:" ... "All
things are begotten from one Fire."

The Tsabeans-held that all inferior spiritual beings were emanations
from the Supreme Deity; and therefore Proclus says: "The progression of
the gods is one and continuous, proceeding downward from the
intelligible and latent unities, and terminating in the last partition
of the Divine cause."

It is impossible to speak clearly of the Divinity. Whoever attempts to
express His attributes by the help of abstractions, confines himself to
negatives, and at once loses sight of his ideas, in wandering through a
wilderness of words. To heap Superlatives on Superlatives, and call Him
_best, wisest, greatest_, is but to exaggerate qualities which are found
in man. That there exists one only God, and that He is a Perfect and
Beneficent Being, Reason legitimately teaches us; but of the Divine
_Nature_, of the _Substance_ of the Deity, of the manner of His
Existence, or of the mode of creation of His Universe, the human mind is
inadequate to form any just conception. We can affix no clear ideas to
Omnipotence, Omniscience, Infinity or Eternity; and we have no more
right to attribute intelligence to Him, than any other mental quality of
ourselves, extended indefinitely; or than we have to attribute our
senses to Him, and our bodily organs, as the Hebrew writings do.

We satisfy ourselves with negativing in the Deity everything that
constitutes existence, so far as we are capable of conceiving of
existence. Thus He becomes to us logically nothing, _Non-Ens_. The
Ancients saw no difference between that and Atheism, and sought to
conceive of Him as something real. It is a necessity of Human Nature.
The theological idea, or rather non-idea, of the Deity, is not shared or
appreciated by the unlearned. To them God will always be The Father Who
is in Heaven, a Monarch on His Throne, a Being with human feelings and
human sympathies, angry at their misdeeds, lenient if they repent,
accessible to their supplications. It is the Humanity, far more than the
Divinity, of Christ, that makes the mass of Christians worship Him, far
more than they do the Father.

"The Light of the Substance of The Infinite," is the Kabalistic
expression. Christ was, according to Saint John, "the Light that
lighteth every man that cometh into the world"; and "that Light was the
life of men." "The Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness
comprehended it not."

The ancient ideas in respect to Light were perhaps quite as correct as
our own. It does not appear that they ascribed to Light any of the
qualities of matter. But modern Science defines it to be a flood of
particles of _matter_, flowing or shot out from the Sun and Stars, and
moving through space to come to us. On the theories of mechanism and
force, what force of attraction here or repulsion at the Sun or at the
most distant Star could draw or drive these impalpable, weightless,
infinitely minute particles, appreciably by the Sense of Sight alone, so
far through space? What has become of the immense aggregate of particles
that have reached the earth since the creation? Have they increased its
bulk? Why cannot chemistry detect and analyze them? If matter, why can
they travel only in right lines?

No characteristic of matter belongs to Light, or Heat, or flame, or to
Galvanism, Electricity, and Magnetism. The electric spark is light, and
so is that produced by the flint, when it cuts off particles of steel.
Iron, melted or heated, radiates light; and insects, infusoria, and
decayed wood emit it. Heat is produced by friction and by pressure; to
explain which, Science tells us of _latent_ Caloric, thus representing
it to us as existing without its only known distinctive quality. What
quality of matter enables lightning, blazing from the Heavens, to rend
the oak? What quality of matter enables it to make the circuit of the
earth in a score of seconds?

Profoundly ignorant of the nature of these mighty agents of Divine
Power, we conceal our ignorance by words that have no meaning; and we
might well be asked _why_ Light may not be an effluence from the Deity,
as has been agreed by all the religions of all the Ages of the World.

All truly dogmatic religions have issued from the Kabalah and return to
it: everything scientific and grand in the religious dreams of all the
illuminati, Jacob Bœhme, Swedenborg, Saint-Martin, and others, is
borrowed from the Kabalah; all the Masonic associations owe to it their
Secrets and their Symbols.

The Kabalah alone consecrates the alliance of the Universal Reason and
the Divine Word; it establishes, by the counterpoises of two forces
apparently opposite, the eternal balance of being; it alone reconciles
Reason with Faith, Power with Liberty, Science with Mystery; it has the
keys of the Present, the Past, and the Future.

The Bible, with all the allegories it contains, expresses, in an
incomplete and veiled manner only, the religious science of the Hebrews.
The doctrine of Moses and the Prophets, identical at bottom with that of
the ancient Egyptians, also had its outward meaning and its veils. The
Hebrew books were written only to recall to memory the traditions; and
they were written in Symbols unintelligible to the Profane. The
Pentateuch and the prophetic poems were merely elementary books of
doctrine, morals, or liturgy; and the true secret and traditional
philosophy was only written afterward, under veils still less
transparent. Thus was a second Bible born, unknown to, or rather
uncomprehended by, the Christians; a collection, _they_ say, of
monstrous absurdities; a monument, the adept says, wherein is everything
that the genius of philosophy and that of religion have ever formed or
imagined of the sublime; a treasure surrounded by thorns; a diamond
concealed in a rough dark stone.

One is filled with admiration, on penetrating into the Sanctuary of the
Kabalah, at seeing a doctrine so logical, so simple, and at the same
time so absolute. The necessary union of ideas and signs, the
consecration of the most fundamental realities by the primitive
characters; the Trinity of Words, Letters, and Numbers; a philosophy
simple as the alphabet, profound and infinite as the Word; theorems more
complete and luminous than those of Pythagoras; a theology summed up by
counting on one's fingers; an Infinite which can be held in the hollow
of an infant's hand; ten ciphers, and twenty-two letters, a triangle, a
square, and a circle,--these are all the elements of the Kabalah. These
are the elementary principles of the written Word, reflection of that
spoken Word that created the world!

This is the doctrine of the Kabalah, with which you will no doubt seek
to make yourself acquainted, as to the Creation.

The Absolute Deity, with the Kabalists, has no name. The terms applied
to Him are אור פשו, AOR PASOT, the Most Simple [or Pure] Light, "called
אור סוףּ, AYEN SOPI, or INFINITE, before any Emanation. For then there
was no space or vacant place, but all was infinite Light."

Before the Deity created any Ideal, any limited and intelligible Nature,
or any form whatever, He was alone, and without form or similitude, and
there could be no cognition or comprehension of Him in any wise. He was
without Idea or Figure, and it is forbidden to form any Idea or Figure
of Him, neither by the letter He (ה), nor by the letter Yōd (י), though
these are contained in the Holy Name; nor by any other letter or point
in the world.

But after He created this Idea [this limited and
existing-in-intellection Nature, which the ten Numerations, SEPHIROTH
or Rays are], of the Medium, the First Man ADAM KADMON, He descended
therein, that, by means of this Idea, He might be called by the name
TETRAGRAMMATON; that created things might have cognition of Him, in His
own likeness.

When the Infinite God willed to emit what were to flow forth, He
contracted Himself in the centre of His light, in such manner that most
intense light should recede to a certain circumference, and on all sides
upon itself. And this is the first contraction, and termed צמצם,
_Tsemsum_.

אדם קדמון, ADAM KADMON, the Primal or First Man, is the first Aziluthic
emanant from the Infinite Light, immitted into the evacuated Space, and
from which, afterward, all the other degrees and systems had their
beginnings. It is called the Adam prior to all the first. In it are
imparted ten spherical numerations; and thereafter issued forth the
rectilinear figure of a man in his sephirothic decade, as it were the
diameter of the said circles; as it were the axis of these spheres,
reaching from their highest point to their lowest; and from it depend
all the systems.

But now, as the Infinite Light would be too excellent and great to be
borne and endured, except through the medium of this Adam Kadmon, its
most Secret Nature preventing this, its illuminating light had again to
emanate in streams out of itself, by certain apertures, as it were, like
windows, and which are termed the ears, eyes, nostrils, and mouth.

The light proceeding from this Adam Kadmon is indeed but one; but in
proportion to its remoteness from the place of out-flowing, and to the
grades of its descent, it is more dense.

From the word אצל, ATSIL, to emanate or flow forth, comes the word
אצילוח, ATSILOTH or Aziluth, Emanation, or the System of Emanants. When
the primal space was evacuated, the surrounding Light of the Infinite,
and the Light immitted into the void, did not touch each other; but the
Light of the Infinite flowed into that void through a line or certain
slender canal; and that Light is the Emanative and emitting Principle,
or the out-flow and origin of Emanation: but the Light within the void
is the emanant subordinate; and the two cohere only by means of the
aforesaid line.

Aziluth means specifically and principally the first system of the four
Olamoth [עלמות], worlds or systems; which is thence called the Aziluthic
World.

The ten Sephiroth of the general Aziluthic system are ten Nekudoth or
Points.

איןות, AINSOPH, AENSOPH, or AYENSOPH, is the title of the Cause of
Causes, its meaning being "_endless_" because there is no limit to Its
loftiness, and nothing can comprehend it. Sometimes, also, the name is
applied to KETHER, or the CROWN, the first emanation, because that is
the Throne of the Infinite, that is, its first and highest Seat, than
which none is higher, and because Ainsoph resides and is concealed
therein: hence it rejoices in the same name.

Before that anything was, says the _Emech Hammelech_, He, of His mere
will, proposed to Himself to make worlds ... but at that time there was
no vacant space for worlds; but all space was filled with the light of
His Substance, which He had with fixed limits placed in the centre of
Himself, and of the parts whereof, and wherein, He was thereafter to
effect a folding together.

What then did the Lord of the Will, that most perfectly free Agent, do?
By His own estimation, He measured off within His own Substance the
width and length of a circular space to be made vacant, and wherein
might be posited the worlds aforesaid; and of that Light which was
included within the circle so measured, He compressed and folded over a
certain portion ... and that Light He lifted higher up, and so a place
was left unoccupied by the Primal Light.

But yet was not this space left altogether empty of that Light; for the
vestiges of the Primal Light still remained in the place where Itself
had been; and they did not recede therefrom.

Before the Emanations out-flowed, and created things were created, the
Supreme Light was infinitely extended, and filled the whole _Where_:
nothing _was_, except that extended light, called AOR H' AINSOPH, the
Light of the non-finite.

When it came into the mind of the Extended to will to make worlds, and
by forth-flowing to utter Emanations, and to emit as Light the
perfection of His active powers, and of His aspects and attributes,
which was the impelling cause of the creation of worlds; then that
Light, in some measure compressed, receded in every direction from a
particular central point, and on all sides of it drew back, and so a
certain vacuum was left, called void space, its circumference everywhere
equidistant from that point which was exactly in the centre of the
space ... a certain void place and space left in Mid-Infinite: a certain
_Where_ was thereby constituted wherein Emanations might BE, and the
Created, the Fashioned and the Fabricated.

This world of the _garmenting_,--this circular vacant space, with the
vestiges of the withdrawn light of the Infinite yet remaining, is the
inmost garment, nearest to His substance; and to it belongs the name AOR
PENAI-AL, _Light of the Countenance of God_.

An interspace surrounds this great circle, established _between_ the
light of the _very_ substance, surrounding the circle on its outside,
and the substance contained _within_ the circle. This is called SPLENDOR
EXCELSES, in contradistinction to Simple Splendor.

This light "of the vestige of the garment," is said to be, relatively to
that of the vestige of the substance, like a point in the centre of a
circle. This light, a point in the centre of the Great Light, is called
Auir, Ether, or Space.

This Ether is somewhat more gross than the Light--not so Subtle--_though
not perceptible by the Senses_--is termed the Primal Ether--extends
everywhere; Philosophers call it _the Soul of the World._

The Light so _forth-shown_ from the Deity, cannot be said to be
_severed_ or _diverse_ from Him. "It is flashed forth from Him, and yet
all continues to be perfect unity..." The Sephiroth, sometimes called
the _Persons_ of the Deity, _are His rays_, by which He is enabled most
perfectly to manifest Himself.

The Introduction to the Book SOHAR says:

The first compression was effected, in order that the Primal Light might
be upraised, and a space become vacant. The second compression occurred
when the vestiges of the removed Light remaining were compressed into
points; and that compression was effected by means of the emotion of
joy; the Deity rejoicing, it had already been said, on account of His
Holy People, thereafter to come into being; and that joy being vehement,
and a commotion and exhilaration in the Deity being caused by it, so
that He flowed forth in His delight; and of this commotion an abstract
power of judgment being generated, which is a collection of the letters
generated by the points of the vestiges of Light left within the circle.
_For He writes the finite expressions, or limited manifestations of
Himself upon the Book, in single letters_.

Like as when water or fire, it had been said, is blown upon by the wind,
it is wont to be greatly moved, and with flashes like lightning to
smite the eyes, and gleam and coruscate hither and thither, even so The
Infinite was moved within Himself, and shone and coruscated in that
circle, from the centre outward and again to the centre: and that
commotion we term exhilaration; and from that exhilaration, variously
divided within Himself, was generated the potency of determining the
fashioning of the letters.

Of that exhilaration, it had also been said, was generated the
determination of _forms_, by which determination the Infinite determined
them within Himself, as if by saying: "Let this Sphere be the appointed
place, wherein let all worlds be created!"

He, by radiating and coruscating, effected the points, so that their
sparkling should smite the eyes like lightning. Then He combined
diversely the single points, until _letters_ were fashioned thereof, in
the similitude and image of those wherewith THE BLESSED had set forth
the decrees of His Wisdom.

It is not possible to attain to an understanding of the creation of man,
except by the mystery of letters; and in these worlds of The Infinite is
nothing, except the letters of the Alphabet and their combinations. All
the worlds are Letters and Names; but He Who is the Author of all, has
no name.

This world of the covering [or _garment--vestimenti_], [that is, the
circular vacant space, with the vestiges of the removed Light of The
Infinite still remaining after the first contraction and compression],
is the _inmost_ covering, _nearest_ to His substance; and to this
covering belongs the general name AUR PENIAL, _Light of the Countenance
of God_: by which we are to understand the Light of The Substance.

And after this covering was effected, He contracted it, so as to lift up
the lower moiety; ... and this is the _third_ contraction; and in this
manner He made vacant a space for the worlds, which had not the capacity
to use the great Light of the covering, the end whereof was lucid and
excellent as its beginning. And so [by drawing up the lower half and
half the letters], are made the _Male_ and _Female_, that is, the
anterior and posterior adhering mutually to one another.

The vacant space effected by this retraction is called AUIR KADMON, the
PRIMAL SPACE: for it was the first of all Spaces; nor was it allowable
to call it _covering_, which is AUR PENI-BAL, the Light of the
Countenance of God.

The vestiges of the Light of the Garment still remained there. And this
world of the garment has a name _that includes all things_, which is the
name IHUH. Before the world of the vacant space was created, HE was, and
His Name, and they alone; that is, AINSOPH and His garmenting.

The EMECH HAMMELECH says again:

The lower half of the garment [by the third retraction], was left empty
of the light of the garment. But the vestiges of that light remained in
the place so vacated ... and _this_ garment is called SHEKINAH, God
in-dwelling; that is, the place where יה Yöd He, of the anterior [or
male], and וה Vav He, of the posterior [or female], combinations of
letters dwelt.

This vacant space was square, and is called the _Primal Space_; and in
Kabalah it is called _Auira Kadmah_, or _Rasimu Ailah_, The Primal
Space, or The Sublime Vestige. It is the vestige of the Light of the
Garment, with which is intermingled somewhat of the vestige of the Very
Substance. It is called _Primal Ether_, but not void Space ... The Light
of the Vestige still remains in the place it occupied, and adheres
there, like somewhat spiritual, of extreme tenuity.

In this Ether are two Lights; that is, the Light of the SUBSTANCE, which
was taken away, and that of the Garment. There is a vast difference
between the two; for that of the Vestige of the Garment is, relatively
to that of the Vestige of the Substance, _like a point in the centre of
a circle_. And as the only appropriate name for the Light of the Vestige
of Ainsoph is AUR, _Light_, therefore the Light of the Vestige of the
Garment could not be called by _that_ name; and so we term it a point,
that is, Yōd [' or י], which is that point in the centre of Light ...
and _this_ Light, a point in the centre of the Great Light, is called
_Auir_, Ether, or Space.

This Ether is somewhat more gross than The Light ... not so subtle,
though not perceptible by the senses ... is termed the Primal Ether ...
extends everywhere; whence the Philosophers call it The Soul of the
World ... Light is visible, though not perceptible. _This Ether is
neither perceptible nor visible_.

The Introduction to the Book Sohar continues, in the Section of the
Letter Yōd, etc:

Worlds could not be framed in this Primal Ether, on account of its
extreme tenuity and the excess of Light; and also, because in it
remained the vital Spirit of the Vestige of the Light Ainsoph, and that
of the Vestige of the Light of the Garment; whereby such manifestation
was prevented.

Wherefore HE directed the letter Yōd, since it was not so brilliant as
the Primal Ether, to descend, and take to itself the light remaining in
the Primal Ether, and return above, with that Vestige which so impeded
the manifestation; which Yōd did.

It descended below five times, to remove the vital Spirit of the Vestige
of the Light Ainsoph; and the Vestige of the Light and vital Spirit of
the Garment from the Sphere of Splendor, so as to make of it ADAM,
called KADMON. And by its return, manifestation is effected in the space
below, and a Vestige of the Sublime Brilliance yet remains there,
existing as a Spherical Shape, and termed in the Sohar simply _Tehiru_,
that is, Splendor; and it is styled The First Matter ... it being, as it
were, vapor, and, as it were, smoke. And as smoke is formless, not
comprehended under any fixed definite form, so this Sphere is a formless
somewhat, since it seems to be somewhat that is spherical, and yet is
not limited.

The letter Yōd, while adhering to the Shekinah, had adhering, to himself
the Light of the Shekinah, though his light was not so great as that of
the Shekinah. But when he descended, he left that light of his own
below, and the Splendor consisted of it. After which there was left in
Yōd only a vestige of that light, inasmuch as he could not re-ascend to
the Shekinah and adhere to it. Wherefore The Holy and Blessed directed
the letter He [Hebrew: ה], the female letter, to communicate to Yōd of
her Light; and sent him forth, to descend and share with _that_ light in
the Splendor aforesaid ... and when he re-descended into the Sphere of
Splendor, he diffused abroad in it the Light communicated to him by the
letter He.

And when he again ascended he left behind him the productive light of
the letter He, and thereof was constituted another Sphere, _within_ the
Sphere of Splendor; which _lesser_ Sphere is termed in the Sohar KETHER
AILAH, CORONA SUMMA, _The Supreme Crown_, and also ATIKA DE ATIKIM,
_Antiquus Antiquum, The Ancient of Ancients_, and even AIUT H' AIUT,
_Causa Causarum, the Cause of Causes_. But the Crown is very far smaller
than the Sphere of Splendor, so that within the latter an immense
unoccupied place and space is still left.

The BETH ALOHIM says:

Before the Infinite God, the Supreme and First Good, formed objectively
within Himself a particular conception, definite, limited, and the
object of intellection, and gave form and shape to an intellectual
conception and image. HE was alone, companionless, without form or
similitude, utterly without Ideal or Figure ... It is forbidden to make
of Him any figure whatever, by any image in the world, neither by the
letter He nor by the letter Yōd, nor by any other letter or point in the
world.

But after He had formed this Idea, the particular conception, limited
and intelligible, which the Ten Numerations are, of the medium of
transmission, Adam Kadmon, the Primal or Supreme Man, He by that medium
descended, and may, through that Idea, be called by the name IHUH, and
so created things have cognizance of Him, by means of His proper
likeness.

Woe unto him who makes God to be like unto any mode or attribute
whatever, even were it to one of His own; and still more if he make Him
like unto the Sons of Men, whose elements are earthly, and so are
consumed and perish!

There can be no conception had of Him, except in so far as He manifests
Himself, in exercising dominion by and through some attribute ...
Abstracted from this, there can be no attribute, conception, or ideal of
Him. He is comparable only to the Sea, filling some great reservoir, its
bed in the earth, for example; wherein it fashions for itself a certain
concavity, so that thereby we may begin to compute the dimensions of the
Sea itself.

For example, the Spring and Source of the Ocean is a somewhat, which is
_one_. If from this Source or Spring there issues forth a certain
fountain, proportioned to the space occupied by the Sea in that
hemispherical reservoir, such as is the letter Yōd, there the Source of
Spring is the first somewhat, and the fountain that flows forth from it
is the second. Then let there be made a great reservoir, as by
excavation, and let this be called the Ocean, and we have the third
thing, a vessel [_Vas_]. Now let this great reservoir be divided into
seven beds of rivers, that is, into seven oblong reservoirs, so that
from this ocean the waters may flow forth in seven rivers; and the
Source, Fountain, and Ocean thus make _ten_ in all.

The Cause of Causes made ten Numerations, and called the Source of
Spring KETHER, _Corona_, the Crown, in which the idea of circularity is
involved, for there is no _end_ to the out-flow of Light; and therefore
He called this, like Himself, _endless_; for this also, like Him, has no
similitude or configuration, nor hath it any vessel or receptacle
wherein it may be contained, or by means whereof any possible cognizance
can be had of it.

After thus forming the Crown, He constituted a certain smaller
receptacle, the letter Yōd, and filled it from that source; and this is
called "The Fountain gushing with Wisdom," and, manifested in this, He
called Himself WISE, and the vessel He called HAKEMAH, _Wisdom,
Sapientia_.

Then He also constituted a great reservoir, which He called the Ocean;
and to it He gave the name of BINAH, Understanding, _Intelligentia_. In
this He characterized Himself as Intelligent or _Conceiver_. HE is
indeed the Absolutely Wise and Intelligent, but Hakemah is not Absolute
Wisdom of itself, _but is wise by means of Binah_, who fills Himself
from it, and if this supply were taken from it, would be dry and
unintelligent.

And thereupon seven precious vessels become, to which are given the
following names: GEDULAH, _Magnificence_ or _Benignity_ [or KHASED,
_Mercy_]; GEBURAH, _Austerity, Rigor_ or _Severity_; TEPHARETH;
_Beauty_; NETSAKH, _Victory_; HŌD, _Glory_; YESOD, _Foundation_ or
_Basis_; and MALAKOTH, _Rule, Reign, Royalty, Dominion_ or _Power_. And
in GEDULAH He took the character of _Great_ and _Benignant_; in GEBURAH,
of _Severe_; in TEPHARETH, of _Beautiful_; in NETSAKH, of _Overcoming_;
in HŌD, of OUR GLORIOUS AUTHOR; in YESOD, of _Just_, by Yesod all
vessels and worlds being upheld; and in MALAKOTH He applied to Himself
the title of _King_.

These numerations or Sephiroths are held in the Kabala to have been
originally contained in each other; that is, Kether contained the nine
others, Hakemah contained Binah, and Binah contained the last seven.

For all things, says the commentary of Rabbi _Jizchak Lorja_, in a
certain most abstruse manner, consist or reside and are contained in
Binah, and it projects them, and sends them downward, species by
species, into the several worlds of Emanation, Creation, Formation, and
Fabrication; all whereof are derived from what are above them, and are
termed their out-flowings; for, from the potency which was their state
there, they descend into actuality.

The INTRODUCTION says:

It is said in many places in the Sohar, that all things that emanate or
are created have their root above. Hence also the Ten Sephiroth have
their root above, in the world of the garment, with the very Substance
of HIM. And AINSOPH had full consciousness and appreciation, prior to
their actual existence, of all the Grades and Impersonations contained
unmanifested within Himself, with regard to the essence of each, and its
domination then in potency ... When He came to the Sephirah of the
Impersonation Malakoth, which He then contained hidden within Himself,
He concluded within Himself that therein worlds should be framed; since
the scale of the first nine Sephiroths was so constituted, that it was
neither fit nor necessary for worlds to be framed from _them_; for all
the attributes of these nine Superior Sephiroth could be assigned to
Himself, even if He should never operate outwardly; but Malakoth, which
is Empire or Dominion, could not be attributed to Him, unless He ruled
over other Existences; whence from the point Malakoth He produced all
the worlds into actuality.

These circles are ten in number. Originated by points, they expanded in
circular shape. Ten Circles, under the mystery of the ten Sephiroth, and
between them ten Spaces; whence it appears that the sphere of Splendor
is in the centre of the space Malakoth of the First Occult Adam.

The First Adam, _in the ten circles above the Splendor_, is called the
First _occult_ Adam; and in each of these spaces are formed many
thousand worlds. The first Adam is _involved_ in the Primal Ether, and
is the analogue of the world Binah.

Again the Introduction repeats the first and second descent of Yōd into
the vacated space, to make the light there less great and subtile; the
constitution of the _Tehiru_, Splendor, from the light left behind there
by him; the communication of Light to him by the female letter He; the
emission by him of that Light, within the sphere of Splendor, and the
formation thereof, within the sphere "of a certain sphere called the
Supreme Crown," _Corona Summa_, KETHER, "wherein were contained, in
potence, all the remaining Numerations, so that they were not
distinguishable from it. Precisely as in man exist the four elements, in
potence specifically undistinguishable, so in this Corona were in
potence all the ten Numerations, specifically undistinguishable." This
Crown, it is added, was called, after the restoration, The Cause of
Causes, and the Ancient of the Ancients.

The point, Kether, adds the Introduction, was the aggregate of all the
Ten ... when it first emanated, it consisted of all the Ten; and the
Light which extended from the Emanative Principle simultaneously flowed
into _it_; and beheld the two _Universals_ [that is, the Unities out of
which manifoldness flows; as, for example, the _idea_, within the Deity,
of Humanity as a Unit, out of which the individuals were to flow], the
Vessel or Receptacle containing this immitted Light, and the Light
Itself within it. And _this Light is the Substance of the point Kether;
for the WILL, of God is the Soul of all things that are_.

The Ainsophic Light, it had said, was infinite in every direction, and
without end or limit. To prevent it from flowing into and re-filling the
quasi-vacant space, occupied by an infinitely less Splendor, a partition
between the greater and lesser Splendor was necessary; and this
partition, the boundary of the sphere of Splendor, and a like one
bounding the sphere Kether, were called _Vessels_ or _Receptacles,
containing_, including, and enclosing within themselves the light of the
sphere. Imagine a sea of pellucid water, and in the centre of it a
spherical mass of denser and darker water. The outer surface of this
sphere, or its limits every way, is the vessel containing it. The
Kabalah regards the vessels "as by their nature somewhat opaque, and not
so splendid as the light they enclose."

The contained Light is the Soul of the vessels, and is active in them,
like the Human Soul in the human body. The Light of the Emanative
Principle [Ainsoph] _inheres_ in the vessels, as their _Life_, internal
_Light_, and _Soul_ ... Kether emanated, with its Very Substance, at the
same time as Substance and Vessel, in like manner as the flame is
annexed to the live coal, and as the Soul pervades, and is within, the
body. All the Numerations were potentially contained in it.

And this potentiality is thus explained: When a woman conceives, a Soul
is immediately sent into the embryo which is to become the infant, in
which Soul are then, potentially, all the members and veins of the body,
which afterward, from that potency of the Soul, _become_ in the human
body of the child to be born.

Then the wisdom of God commanded that these Numerations potentially in
Kether, should be produced from potentiality into actuality, in order
that worlds might consist; and HE directed Yōd again to descend, and to
enter into and shine within Kether, and then to re-ascend: which was so
done. From which illumination and re-ascension, all the other
numerations, potentially in Kether, were manifested and disclosed; but
they continued still compacted together, remaining within Kether in a
circle.

When God willed to produce the other emanations or numerations from
Kether, it is added, HE sent Yōd down again, to the upper part of
Kether, one-half of him to remain without and one-half to penetrate
within the sphere of Kether. Then He sent the letter Vav into the
Splendor, to pour out its light on Yōd: and thus,--

Yōd received light from Vav, and thereby so directed his countenance
that it should illuminate and confer exceeding great energy on Hakemah,
which yet remained in Kether; so giving it the faculty to proceed forth
therefrom; and that it might collect and contain within itself, and
there reveal, all the other eight numerations, until that time in
Kether.

The sphere of Kether opened, and thereout issued Hakemah, to remain
below Kether, containing in itself all the other numerations.

By a similar process, Binah, illuminated within Hakemah by a second Yōd,
"issued forth out of Hakemah, having within itself the Seven lower
Numerations."

And since the vessel of Binah was excellent, and coruscated with rays of
the color of sapphire, and was so nearly of the same color as the vessel
of Hakemah that there was scarcely any difference between them, hence it
would not quietly remain below Hakemah, but rose, and placed itself on
his left side.

And because the light from above profusely flowed into and accumulated
in the vessel of Hakemah, to so great an extent that it overflowed, and
escaped, coruscating, outside of that vessel, and, flowing off to the
left, communicated potency and increase to the vessel of Binah.... For
Binah is _female_....

Binah, therefore, by means of this energy that flowed into it from the
left side of Hakemah, by virtue of the second Yōd, came to possess such
virtue and potency, as to project beyond itself the Seven remaining
vessels contained within itself, and so emitted them all, continuously,
one after the other ... all connected and linked one with the other,
like the links of a chain.

Three points first emanated, one under the other; Kether, Hakemah, and
Binah; and, so far, there was no copulation. But afterward the positions
of Hakemah and Binah changed, so that they were side by side, Kether
remaining above them; and then conjunction of the Male and Female, ABA
and IMMA, _Father_ and _Mother_, as points.

He, from Whom all emanated, created Adam Kadmon, consisting of all the
worlds, so that in him should be somewhat from those above, and somewhat
from those below. Hence in Him was NEPHESCH [PSYCHE, _anima infima_, the
lowest spiritual part of man, _Soul_], from the world ASIAH, which is
one letter _He_ of the Tetragrammaton; _RUACH_ [SPIRITUS, _anima media_,
the next higher spiritual part, or _Spirit_], from the world YEZIRAH,
which is the _Vav_ of the Tetragrammaton; NESCHAMAH [the highest
spiritual part, _mens_ or _anima superior_], from the world BRIAH, which
is the other letter _He_; and NESCHAMAH LENESCHAMAH, from the world
ATSILUTH, which is the YŌD of the Tetragrammaton.

And these letters [the Sephiroth] were changed from the spherical form
into the form of a person, the symbol of which person is the BALANCE, it
being _Male_ and _Female_ ... Hakemah on one side, Binah on the other,
and Kether over them: and so Gedulah on one side, Geburah on the other,
and Tephareth under them.

The Book _Omschim_ says: Some hold that the ten Sephiroth succeeded one
another in ten degrees, one above the other, in regular gradation, one
connected with the other in a direct line, from the highest to the
lowest. Others hold that they issued forth in three lines, parallel with
each other, one on the right hand, one on the left, and one in the
middle; so that, beginning with the highest and going clown to the
lowest, Hakemah, Khased [or Gedulah], and Netsach are one over the
other, in a perpendicular line, on the right hand; Binah, Geburah, and
Hōd on the left; and Kether, Tephareth, Yesod, and Malakoth in the
middle: and many hold that all the ten subsist in circles, one within
the other, and all homocentric.

It is also to be noted, that the Sephirothic tables contain still
another numeration, sometimes called also a Sephirah, which is called
Daath, cognition. It is in the middle, below Hakemah and Binah, and is
the result of the conjunction of these two.

To Adam Kadmon, the Idea of the Universe, the Kabalah assigns a human
form. In this, Kether is the cranium, Hakemah and Binah the two lobes
of the brain, Gedulah and Geburah the two arms, Tephareth the trunk,
Netsach and Hōd the thighs, Yesod the male organ, and Malkuth the female
organ, of generation.

Yōd is Hakemah, and He Binah; Vav is Tephareth, and the last He,
Malkuth.

The whole, say the Books _Mysterii_ or of _Occultation_, is thus summed
up: The intention of God The Blessed was to form Impersonations, in
order to diminish the Light. Wherefore HE constituted, in
Macroprosopos, Adam Kadmon, or Arik Anpin; three Heads. The first is
called, "The Head whereof is no cognition"; the second, "The Head of
that which is non-existent"; and the third, "The Very Head of
Macroprosopos"; and these three are _Corona, Sapientia_, and
_Informatio_, Kether, Hakemah, and Binah, existent in the Corona of the
World of Emanation, or in Macroprosopos; and these three are called in
the Sohar ATIKA KADISCHA, _Senex Sanctissimus_, The Most Holy Ancient.
But the Seven inferior Royalties of the first Adam are called "The
Ancient of Days"; and this Ancient of Days is the internal part, or
Soul, of Macroprosopos.

The human mind has never struggled harder to understand and explain to
itself the process of creation, and of Divine manifestation, _and at the
same time to conceal its thoughts from all but the initiated_, than in
the Kabalah. Hence, much of it seems at first like jargon. Macroprosopos
or Adam Kadmon is, we have said, the idea or intellectual aggregate of
the whole Universe, included and contained unevolved in the manifested
Deity, Himself yet contained unmanifested in the Absolute. The Head,
Kether, "whereof is no cognition," is the _Will_ of the Deity, or the
Deity _as_ Will. Hakemah, the head "of that which is non-existent," is
the Generative Power of begetting or producing Thought; yet _in_ the
Deity, not in action, and therefore non-existent. Binah, "the very or
actual head" of Macroprosopos, is the productive intellectual capacity,
which, impregnated by Hakemah, is to _produce_ the Thought. This Thought
is Daath; or rather, the result is Intellection, Thinking; the Unity, of
which Thoughts are the manifold outflowings.

This may be illustrated by a comparison. Pain, in the human being, is a
feeling or sensation. It must be _produced_. To produce it, there must
be, not only the _capacity_ to _produce_ it, in the nerves, but also the
_power_ of _generating_ it by means of that capacity. This generative
Power, the Passive Capacity which produces, and the pain produced, are
like Hakemah, Binah, and Daath.

The four Worlds or Universals, Aziluth, Briah, Yetzirah, and Asiah, of
Emanation, Creation, Formation, and Fabrication, are another enigma of
the Kabalah. The first three are wholly _within_ the Deity. The first is
the Universe, as it exists potentially in the Deity, determined and
imagined, but as yet wholly formless and undeveloped, except so far as
it is contained in His Emanations. The second is the Universe in idea,
distinct within the Deity, but not invested with forms; a simple unity.
The third is the same Universe in potence in the Deity, unmanifested,
but invested with forms,--the idea developed into manifoldness and
individuality, and succession of species and individuals; and the fourth
is the potentiality become the Actuality, the Universe fabricated, and
existing as it exists for us.

The Sephiroth, says the _Porta Cœlorum_, by the virtue of their Infinite
Emanator, who uses them as a workman uses his tools, and who operates
with and through them, are the cause of existence of everything created,
formed, and fashioned, employing in their production certain _media_.
But these same _Sephiroth, Persons_ and _Lights_, are not creatures _per
se_, but _ideas_, and _Rays_ of THE INFINITE, which, by different
gradations, so descended from the Supreme Source as still not to be
severed from It; but It, through them, is extended to the production and
government of all Entities, and is the Single and Perfect Universal
Cause of All, though becoming determinate for this or the other
operation, through this or that Sephiroth or MODE.

God produced all things by His Intellect and Will and free
Determination. He willed to produce them by the mediation of His
Sephiroth, and Persons ... by which He is enabled most perfectly to
manifest Himself; and that the _more_ perfectly, by producing the causes
themselves, and the Causes of Causes, and not merely the viler effects.

God produced, in the first Originate, all the remaining causates. For,
as He Himself is most simply One, and from One Simple Being One only can
_im_mediately proceed, hence it results that from the First Supreme
Infinite Unity flowed forth at the same time All and One. One, that is,
in so far as flowing from the Most Simple Unity, and being like unto It;
but also All, in so far as, departing from that perfect Singleness which
can be measured by no other Singleness, it became, to a certain extent,
manifold, though still Absolute and Perfect.

Emanation, says the same, is the Resulting displayed from the
Unresulting, the Finite from the Infinite, the Manifold and Composite
from the Perfect Single and Simple, Potentiality from that which is
Infinite Power _and_ Act, the mobile from that which is perennially
permanent; and therefore in a more imperfect and diminished mode than
His Infinite Perfection is. As the First Cause is all things, in an
unresulting and Infinite mode, so the Entities that flow from Him are
the First Causes, in a resulting and finite mode.

THE NECESSARY ENTITY, subsisting of Itself, as It cannot be dissevered
into the manifold, yet becomes, as it were, multiplied in the Causates,
in respect of their Nature, or of the Subsistences, Vessels, and
openings assigned to them; whereby the Single and Infinite Essence,
being inclosed or comprehended in these limits, bounds, or
externalnesses, takes on Itself Definiteness of dimension, and becomes
Itself manifold, by the manifoldness of these envelopes.

As man [the unit of Humanity] is a microcosm, so Adam Kadmon is a
macrocosm, containing all the Causates of the First Cause ... as the
Material Man is the end and completion of all creation, so in the Divine
Man is the beginning thereof. As the inferior Adam _receives_ all things
_from_ all, so the superior Adam _supplies_ all things _to_ all. As the
former is the principle of _reflected_ light, so the latter is of
_Direct_ Light. The former is the terminus of the Light, descending; the
latter its terminus, ascending. As the Inferior man ascends from the
lowest matter even to the First Cause, so the Superior Adam descends
from the Simple and Infinite Act, even to the lowest and most attenuated
Potence.

The Ternary is the bringing back of duality to unity.

The Ternary is the Principle of Number, because, bringing back the
binary to unity, it restores to it the same quantity whereby it had
departed from unity. It is the first odd number, containing in itself
the first even number and the unit, which are the Father and Mother of
all Numbers; and it has in itself the beginning, middle, and end.

Now, Adam Kadmon emanated from the Absolute Unity, and so is himself a
unit; but he also descends and flows downward into his own Nature, and
so is duality. Again, he returns to the Unity, which he hath in himself,
and to The Highest, and so is the Ternary and Quaternary.

And this is why the Essential Name has four letters,--three different
ones, and one of them once repeated; since the first He is the wife of
the Yōd, and the second He is the wife of the Vav.

Those _media_ which manifest the First Cause, in Himself profoundly
hidden, are the Sephiroth, which emanate immediately from that First
Cause, and by Its Nature have produced and do control all the rest.

These Sephiroth were put forth from the One First and Simple,
manifesting His Infinite Goodness. They are the mirrors of His Truth,
and the analogues of His Supremest Essence, the Ideas of His Wisdom, and
the representations of His will; the receptacles of His Potency, and the
instruments with which He operates; the Treasury of His Felicity, the
dispensers of His Benignity, the Judges of His Kingdom, and reveal His
Law; and finally, the Denominations, Attributes, and Names of Him Who is
above all and the Cause of all ... the ten categories, wherein all
things are contained; the universal genera, which in themselves include
all things, and utter them outwardly ... the Second Causes, whereby the
First Cause effects, preserves, and governs all things; the rays of the
Divinity, whereby all things are illumined and manifested; the Forms and
Ideas and Species, out whereof all things issue forth; the Souls and
Potencies, whereby essence, life, and movement are given to all things;
the Standard of times, whereby all things are measured; the incorporeal
Spaces which, in themselves, hold and inclose the Universe; the Supernal
Monads to which all manifolds are referred, and through them to The One
and Simple; and finally the Formal Perfections, flowing forth from and
still connected with the One Eminent Limitless Perfection, are the
Causes of all dependent Perfections, and so illuminate the elementary
Intelligences, not adjoined to matter, and the intellectual Souls, and
the Celestial, Elemental and Element-produced bodies.

The IDRA SUTA says:

HE, the Most Holy Hidden Eldest, separates Himself, and is ever more and
more separated from all that are; nor yet does HE in very deed separate
Himself; because all things cohere with Him and HE with All. HE is All
that is, the Most Holy Eldest of All, the Occult by all possible
occultations.

When HE takes shape, HE produces nine Lights, which shine forth from
Him, from His outforming. And those Lights outshine from Him and emit
flames, and go forth and spread out on every side; as from one elevated
Lamp the Rays are poured forth in every direction, and these Rays thus
diverging, are found to be, when one approaching has cognizance of them,
but a single Lamp.

The Space in which to create is fixed by THE MOST HOLY ANCIENT, and
illuminated by His inflowing, which is the Light of Wisdom, and the
Beginning from which manifestation flows.

And HE is conformed in three Heads, which are but one Head; and these
three are extended into Microprosopos, and from them shines out all that
is.

Then this Wisdom instituted investiture with form, whereby the
unmanifested and informous became manifested, putting on form; and
produced a certain outflow.

When this Wisdom is thus expanded by flowing forth, then it is called
"Father of Fathers," the whole Universe of Things being contained and
comprehended in it. This Wisdom is the principle of all things, and in
it beginning and end are found.

The Book of the Abstruse, says the _Siphra de Zeniutha_, is that which
describes the equilibrium of the Balance. Before the Balance was, face
did not look toward face.

And the _Commentary_ on it says: The Scales of the Balance are
designated as Male and Female. In the Spiritual world Evil and Good are
_in equilibrio_, and it will be restored, when of the Evil Good becomes,
until all is Good. Also this other world is called the World of the
Balance. For, as in the Balance are two scales, one on either side and
the beam and needle between them, so too in this world of restoration,
the Numerations are arranged as distinct persons. For Hakemah is on the
right hand, on the side of Gedulah, and Binah on the left, on the side
of Geburah; and Kether is the beam of the Balance above them in the
middle. So Gedulah or Khased is on one hand, and Geburah on the other,
and under these Tephareth; and Netsach is on one side, and Hōd on the
other, and under these Yesōd.

The Supreme Crown, which is the Ancient Most Holy, the most Hidden of
the Hidden, is fashioned, _within_ the occult Wisdom, of both sexes,
Male and Female.

Hakemah, and Binah, the Mother, whom it impregnates, are quantitatively
equal. Wisdom and the Mother of Intellection go forth at once and dwell
together; for when the Intellectual Power emanates, the productive
_Source_ of intellection is included in Him.

Before Adam Kadmon was fashioned into Male and Female, and the state of
equilibrium introduced, the Father and Mother did not look each other in
the face; for the Father denotes most perfect Love, and the Mother most
perfect Rigor; and she averted her face.

There is no _left_ [female], says the _Idra Rabba_, in the Ancient and
Hidden One; but His totality is Right [male]. The totality of things is
HUA, HE, and HE is hidden on every side.

Macroprosopos [Adam Kadmon] is not so near unto us as to speak to us in
the first person; but is designated in the third person, HUA, HE.

Of the letters it says:

Yōd is male, He is female, Vav is both.

In Yōd [י] are three Yōds, the upper and the lower apex, and Vav in the
middle. By the upper apex is denoted the Supreme Kether; by Vav in the
middle, Hakemah; and by the lower apex, Binah.

The IDRA SUTA says:

The Universe was out-formed in the form of Male and Female. Wisdom,
pregnant with all that is, when it flowed and shone forth, shone
altogether under the form of male and female. Hakemah is the Father, and
Binah is the Mother; and so the two are in equilibrium as male and
female, and for this reason, all things whatsoever are constituted in
the form of male and female; _and if it were not_ so _they would not
exist_.

This Principle, Hakemah, is the Generator of all things; and He and
Binah conjoin, and she shines within Him. When they thus conjoin, she
conceives, and the out-flow is Truth.

Yōd impregnates the letter He and begets a son; and she, thus pregnant,
brings forth. The Principle called Father [the Male or Generative
Principle] is comprehended in Yōd, which itself flows downward from the
energy of the Absolute Holy One.

Yōd is the beginning and the end of all things that are. The stream that
flows forth is the Universe of things, which always _becomes_, having no
cessation. And this _becoming_ world is created by Yōd: for Yōd includes
two letters. All things are included in Yōd; wherefore it is called the
Father of all.

All Categories whatever go forth from Hakemah; and in it are contained
all things, unmanifested; and the aggregate of all things, or the Unity
_in_ which the many _are_, and _out_ of which all flow, is the Sacred
Name IHUH.

In the view of the Kabalists, all individuals are _contained_ in
species, and all species in genera, and all particulars in a Universal,
which is an idea, abstracted from all consideration of individuals; not
an _aggregate_ of individuals; but, as it were, an _Ens_, Entity or
Being, ideal or intellectual, but none the less real; prior to _any_
individual, _containing_ them all, and out of which they are all in
succession evolved.

If this discontents you, reflect that, supposing the theory correct,
that _all_ was originally in the Deity, and that the Universe has
proceeded forth from Him, and not been _created_ by Him out of nothing,
the _idea_ of the Universe, existing in the Deity before its out-flow,
must have been as real as the Deity Himself. The whole Human race, or
Humanity, for example, then existed in the Deity, not distinguished into
individuals, but as a Unit, out of which the Manifold was to flow.

Everything _actual_ must also first have been _possible_, before having
actual existence; and this possibility or potentiality was to the
Kabalists a real Ens. Before the evolvement of the Universe, it had to
exist _potentially_, the whole of it, with all its individuals, included
in a single Unity. This was the Idea or Plan of the Universe; and this
had to be _formed_. It had to emanate from the Infinite Deity, and be
_of_ Himself, though not His Very Self.

Geburah, Severity, the Sephirah opposite to and conjoined sexually with
Gedulah, to produce Tephareth, Harmony and Beauty, is also called in the
Kabalah "_Judgment_," in which term are included the ideas of
_limitation_ and _conditioning_, which often seems, indeed, to be its
principal sense; while Benignity is as often styled _Infinite_. Thus it
is obscurely taught that in everything that is, not only the _Finite_
but also the _Infinite_ is present; and that the rigor of the stern law
of limitation, by which everything below or beside the Infinite Absolute
is limited, bounded, and conditioned, is tempered and modified by the
_grace_, which so relaxes it that the Infinite, Unlimited,
Unconditioned, is also everywhere present; and that it is thus the
Spiritual and Material Natures are _in equilibrio_, Good everywhere
counterbalancing Evil, Light everywhere in equilibrium with Darkness:
from which again results the Universal Harmony of things. In the vacant
space effected for creation, there at last remained a faint vestige or
trace of Ainsophic Light, of the Light of the Substance of the Infinite.
Man is thus both human and divine: and the _apparent_ antagonisms in his
Nature are a real equilibrium, _if he wills it shall be so_; from which
results the Harmony, not only of Life and Action, but of Virtue and
Perfection.

To understand the Kabalistic idea of the Sephiroth, it must be borne in
mind that they were assigned, not only to the world of Emanation,
Aziluth, but also to each of the other worlds, Briah, Jezirah, and
Asiah. They were not only attributes of the Unmanifested Deity, not only
Himself in limitation, but His actual manifestations, or His qualities
made apparent as modes; and they were also qualities of the Universal
Nature--Spiritual, Mental, and Material, produced and made existent by
the outflow of Himself.

In the view of the Kabalah, God and the Universe were One, and in the
One General, as the type or source, were included and involved, and from
it have been evolved and issued forth, the manifold and all particulars.
Where, indeed, does individuality begin? Is it the Hidden Source and
Spring alone that is the individual, the Unit, or is it the flowing
fountain that fills the ocean, or the ocean itself, or its waves, or the
drops, or the vaporous particles, that are the individuals? The Sea and
the River--these are each One; but the drops of each are many. The tree
is one; but its leaves are a multitude: they drop with the frosts, and
fall upon his roots; but the tree still continues to grow, and new
leaves come again in the Spring. Is the Human Race not the Tree, and are
not individual men the leaves? How else explain the force of will and
sympathy, and the dependence of one man at every instant of his life on
others, except by the oneness of the race? The links that bind all
created things together are the links of a single Unity, and the whole
Universe is One, developing itself into the manifold.

Obtuse commentators have said that the Kabalah assigns sexual
characteristics to the very Deity. There is no warrant for such an
assertion, anywhere in the Sohar or in any commentary upon it. On the
contrary, the whole doctrine of the Kabalah is based on the fundamental
proposition, that the Very Deity is Infinite, everywhere extended,
without limitation or determination, and therefore without any
conformation whatever. In order to commence the process of creation, it
was necessary for Him, first of all, to effect a vacant space within
Himself. To this end the Deity, whose Nature is approximately expressed
by describing Him as Light filling all space, formless, limitless,
contracts Himself on all sides from a point within Himself, and thus
effects a quasi-vacant space, in which only a vestige of His Light
remains; and into this circular or spherical space He immits His
Emanations, portions of His Light or Nature; and to some of these,
sexual characteristics are symbolically assigned.

The Infinite first limits Himself by flowing forth in the shape of
_Will_, of determination to act. This _Will_ of the Deity, or the Deity
_as_ will, is _Kether_, or the _Crown_, the first Sephirah. In it are
_included_ all other Emanations. This is a philosophical necessity. The
Infinite does not _first_ will, and _then_, as a sequence to, or
consequence of, that determination, _subsequently_ perform. To will and
to act must be, with Him, not only simultaneous, but in reality _the
same_ ... Nor does He, by His Omniscience, _learn_ that a particular
action will be wise, and then, in consequence of being so convinced,
first _determine_ to do the act, and _then_ do it. His Wisdom and His
Will, also, act simultaneously; and, with Him, to decide that it was
wise to create, _was_ to create. Thus His will contains in itself all
the Sephiroth. This will, determining Him to the exercise of
intellection, to thought, to frame the Idea of the Universe, caused the
Power in Him to excite the intellectual Faculty to exercise, and _was_
that Power. Its SELF, which had flowed forth from Ainsoph as Will, now
flows forth as the Generative Power to beget intellectual action in the
Intellectual Faculty, or Intelligence, Binah. The _Act_ itself, the
Thought, the Intellection, producing the Idea, is _Daath_; and as the
text of the _Siphra de Zeniutha_ says, The Power and Faculty, the
Generative and Productive, the Active and Passive, the Will and
Capacity, which unite to produce that Act of reflection or Thought or
Intellection, are _always_ in conjunction. As is elsewhere said in the
Kabalah, both of them are _contained_ and essentially _involved_ in the
result. And the Will, _as_ Wisdom or Intellectual Power, and the
Capacity or Faculty, are really the Father and Mother of all that is;
for to the creation of _anything_, it was absolutely necessary that The
Infinite should form for Himself and _in_ Himself, an idea of what HE
willed to produce or create: and, as there is no Time with Him, to _will
was_ to _create_, to _plan_ was to _will_ and to _create_; and in the
Idea, the Universe in potence, the universal succession or things was
included. Thenceforward all was merely evolution and development.

Netsach and Hōd, the Seventh and Eighth Sephiroth, are usually called in
the Kabalah, Victory and Glory. Netsach is the perfect _Success_, which,
with the Deity, to Whom the Future is present, _attends_, and to His
creatures is to _result_, from the plan of Equilibrium everywhere
adopted by Him. It is the reconciliation of Light and Darkness, Good and
Evil, Free-will and Necessity, God's omnipotence and Man's liberty; and
the harmonious issue and result of all, without which the Universe would
be a failure. It is the inherent Perfection of the Deity, manifested in
His Idea of the Universe, and in all the departments or worlds,
spiritual, mental, or material, of that Universe; but it is that
Perfection regarded as the successful _result_, which it both causes or
produces and _is_; the _perfection_ of the plan _being_ its _success_.
It is the prevailing of Wisdom over Accident; and it, in turn, both
produces and _is_ the Glory and Laudation of the Great Infinite
Contriver, whose plan is thus Successful and Victorious.

From these two, which are one,--from the excellence and perfection of
the Divine Nature and Wisdom, considered as Success and Glory, as the
opposites of Failure and Mortification, results what the Kabalah,
styling it Yesod, Foundation or Basis, characterizes as the Generative
member of the Symbolical human figure by which the ten Sephiroth are
represented, and from this flows Malakoth, Empire, Dominion, or Rule.
Yesod is the Stability and Permanence, which would, in ordinary
language, be said to _result_ from the perfection of the Idea or
Intellectual Universal, out of which all particulars are evolved; from
the _success_ of that scheme, and the consequent _Glory_ or
Self-Satisfaction of the Deity; but which Stability and Permanence that
Perfection, Success, and Glory really Is; since the Deity, infinitely
Wise, and to Whom the Past, Present, and Future were and always will be
one Now, and all space one HERE, had not to await the operation and
evolution of His plan, as men do the result of an experiment, in order
to see if it would succeed, and so to determine whether it should stand,
and be stable and permanent, or fall and be temporary. Its _Perfection_
was its _Success_; His _Glory_, its _permanence_ and _stability_: and
the Attributes of Permanence and Stability belong, like the others, to
the Universe, material, mental, spiritual, and real, _because_ and _as_
they belong to the Infinite Himself.

This Stability and Permanence causes continuance and generates
succession. It _is_ Perpetuity, and continuity without solution; and by
this continuous succession, whereby out of Death comes new Life, out of
dissolution and resolution comes reconstruction, Necessity and Fatality
result as a consequence: that is to say, the absolute control and
dominion (Malakoth) of The Infinite Deity over all that He produces, and
over chance and accident; and the absolute non-existence in the
Universe, in Time and in Space, of any other powers or influences than
those which, proceeding from Him, are and cannot _not_ be perfectly
submissive to His will. This _results_, humanly speaking; but in
reality, the Perfection of the plan, which is its _success_, His
_glory_, and its _stability_, IS also His Absolute Autocracy, and the
utter absence of Chance, Accident, or Antagonism. And, as the Infinite
Wisdom or Absolute Reason rules in the Divine Nature itself, so also it
does in its Emanations, and in the worlds or systems of Spirit, Soul,
and Matter; in each of which there is as little Chance or Accident or
Unreasoning Fate, as in the Divine Nature unmanifested.

This is the Kabalistic theory as to each of the four worlds;--1st, of
the Divine Nature, or Divinity itself, quantitatively limited and
determined, but not manifested into Entities, which is the world of
_Emanation_; 2d, of the first Entities, that is, of Spirits and Angels,
which is the world of _Creation_; 3d, of the first _forms_; souls, or
psychical natures, which is the world of _Formation_ or _Fashioning_;
and, 4th, of Matter and Bodies, which is the world of _Fabrication_, or,
as it were, of manufacture. In each of these the Deity is _present, as,
in_, and _through_ the Ten Sephiroth. First of these, in each, is
Kether, the Crown, ring, or circlet, the HEAD. Next, _in_ that Head, as
the two Hemispheres of the Brain, are Hakemah and Binah, and their
result and progeny, Daath. These three are found also in the Spiritual
world, and are universals in the psychical and material world, producing
the lower Sephiroth. Then follow, in perfect Equilibrium, Law and
Equity, Justice and Mercy, the Divine Infinite Nature and the Human
Finite Nature, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, Benignity and
Severity, the Male and the Female again, as Hakerrah and Binah are,
mutually tempering each other, and by their intimate union producing the
other Sephiroth.

The whole Universe, and all the succession of entities and events were
present to The Infinite, before any act of creation; and His Benignity
and Leniency, tempering and qualifying the law of rigorous Justice and
inflexible Retribution, enabled Him to create: because, but for it, and
if He could not but have administered the strict and stern law of
justice, that would have compelled Him to destroy, immediately after its
inception, the Universe He purposed to create, and so would have
_prevented_ its creation. This Leniency, therefore, was, as it were, the
very essence and quintessence of the Permanence and Stability of the
plan of Creation, and part of the Very Nature of the Deity. The Kabalah,
therefore, designates it as _Light_ and _Whiteness_, by which the Very
Substance of Deity is symbolized. With this agree Paul's ideas as to Law
and Grace; for Paul had studied the Kabalah at the feet of Gamaliel the
Rabbi.

With this Benignity, the Autocracy of the dominion and control of the
Deity is imbued and interpenetrated. The former, _poured_, as it were,
into the latter, is an integral and essential _part_ of it, and causes
it to give birth to the succession and continuance of the Universe. For
Malakoth, in the Kabalah, is _female_, and the matrix or womb out of
which all creation is born.

¤_The Sephiroth may be arranged as on page 770._

The Kabalah is the primitive tradition, and its entirety rests on the
single dogma of Magism, "the visible is for us the proportional measure
of the invisible." The Ancients, observing that equilibrium is in
physics the universal law, and that it results from the apparent
opposition of two forces, concluded from the physical to the
metaphysical equilibrium, and thought that in God, that is to say, in
the first living and active cause, two properties necessary to each
other, should be recognized; stability and movement, necessity and
liberty, order dictated by reason and the self-rule of Supreme Will,
Justice, and Love, and consequently Severity and Grace, Mercy or
Benignity.

The idea of equilibrium among all the impersonations; of the male on one
side, and the female on the other, with the Supreme Will, which _is_
also the Absolute Reason, above each two, holding the balance, is,
according to the Kabalah, the foundation of all religions and all
sciences, the primary and immutable idea of things. The Sephiroth are a
triple triangle and a circle, the idea of the Ternary explained by the
balance and multiplied by itself in the

                           ¤ כתר: Kether: Crown
                                      Will.
                            /\
                           /  \
                          /    \
                         /      \
  Binah: ¤ חכמח ¤       /        \    כינח: Hakemah:
 Passive capacity      <──────────> Active Potency
of being impregnated    \        /  of begetting intellection
   and producing         \      /
   intellection.          \    /
                           \  /
                            \/ ¤ דעת: Daath: Intellection.
                            /\
                           /  \
                          /    \
                         /      \
                        /        \ ¤ גדולה Gedulah: Benignity
  Geburah: ¤ גבורה     <──────────>  or     or      or
  Severity or rigid     \        / ¤ הםד  Khased:   Mercy.
    Justice              \      /
                          \    /
                           \  /
                            \/ תפארה: Tĕphareth: Beauty:
                            /\         the Universal Harmony.
                           /  \
                          /    \
                         /      \
                        <────────>
       Hod: ¤ נצה ¤      \      /  הוד: Netsach: Victory
           Glory          \    /            or Success.
                           \  /
                            \/
                             | ¤ יםוב Yesūd: Foundation:
                             | _i.e._, Stability and
                             |     Permanency of things.
                             |
                             |
                             ¤  מלכות: Malakoth: Dominion:
      Supremacy and absolute control of the Divine Will in all things,
domain of the Ideal; then the realization of this Idea in forms.

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of
Unity are already two.

The human unity is made complete by the right and left. The primitive
man was of both sexes.

The Divinity, one in its essence, has two essential conditions as
fundamental bases of its existence--Necessity and Liberty.

The laws of the Supreme Reason necessitate and regulate liberty in God,
Who is necessarily reasonable and wise.

Knowledge supposes the binary. An object known is indispensable to the
being that knows.

The binary is the generator of Society and the law. It is also the
number of the _gnosis_, a word adopted in lieu of _Science_, and
expressing only the idea of cognizance by intuition. It is Unity,
multiplying itself by itself to create; and therefore it is that the
Sacred Symbols make Eve issue from the very chest of Adam.

Adam is the human Tetragram, which is summed up in the mysterious Yōd of
the Kabalah, image of the Kabalistic Phallus. Add to this Yōd [י], the
ternary name of Eve, and you form the name of Jehova, the _Divine_
Tetragram, the transcendent Kabalistic and magical word:

יהוה

Thus it is that Unity, complete in the fecundity of the Ternary, forms,
with it, the Quaternary, which is the key of all numbers, movements, and
forms.

The Square, turning upon itself, produces the circle equal to itself,
and the circular movement of four equal angles turning around one point,
is the quadrature of the circle.

The Binary serves as a measure for Unity; and the relation of equality
between the Above and the Below, forms with them the Ternary.

To us, Creation is Mechanism: to the Ancients it was Generation. The
world-producing egg figures in all cosmogonies; and modern science has
discovered that all animal production is oviparous. From this idea of
generation came the reverence everywhere paid the image of generative
power, which formed the Stauros of the Gnostics, and the philosophical
Cross of the Masons.

_Aleph_ is the man; _Beth_ is the woman. _One_ is the Principle; _two_
is the Word. A. is the Active; B. is the Passive. Unity is Boaz, and the
Binary is Jachin.

The two columns, Boaz and Jachin, explain in the Kabalah all the
mysteries of natural, political, and religious antagonism.

Woman is man's creation; and universal creation is the female of the
First Principle. When the Principle of Existence made Himself Creator,
He produced by emanation an ideal Yōd; and to make room for it in the
plenitude of the uncreated Light, He had to hollow out a pit of shadow,
equal to the dimension determined by His creative desire; and attributed
by Him to the ideal Yōd of radiating Light.

The nature of the Active Principle is to diffuse: of the Passive
Principle, to collect and make fruitful.

Creation is the habitation of the Creator-Word. To create, the
Generative Power and Productive Capacity must unite, the Binary become
Unity again by the conjunction. The WORD is the First-BEGOTTEN, not the
first _created_ Son of God.

SANCTA SANCTIS, we repeat again; the Holy things to the Holy, and to him
who is so, the mysteries of the Kabalah will be holy. Seek and ye shall
find, say the Scriptures: knock and it shall be opened unto you. If you
desire to find and to gain admission to the Sanctuary, we have said
enough to show you the way. If you do not, it is useless for us to say
more, as it has been useless to say so much.

The Hermetic philosophers also drew their doctrines from the Kabalah;
and more particularly from the Treatise _Beth Alohim_ or _Domus Dei_,
known as the _Pneumatica Kabalistica_, of Rabbi Abraham Cohen Irira, and
the Treatise _De Revolutionibus Animarum_ of Rabbi Jitz-chak Lorja.

This philosophy was concealed by the Alchemists under their Symbols, and
in the jargon of a rude Chemistry,--a jargon incomprehensible and absurd
except to the Initiates; but the key to which is within your reach; and
the philosophy, it may be, worth studying. The labors of the human
intellect are always interesting and instructive.

To be always rich, always young, and never to die: such has been in all
times the dream of the Alchemists.

To change into gold, lead, mercury, and all the other metals; to possess
the universal medicine and elixir of life; such is the problem to be
resolved, in order to accomplish this desire and realize this dream.

Like all the Mysteries of Magism, the Secrets of "the Great Work" have a
threefold signification; they are religious, philosophical, and natural.

The philosophal gold, in religion, is the Absolute and Supreme Reason:
in philosophy, it is the Truth; in visible nature, the Sun; in the
subterranean and mineral world, the most perfect and pure gold.

It is for this that the pursuit of the Great Work is called the Search
for the Absolute; and the work itself, the work of the Sun.

All the masters of the Science admit that it is impossible to attain the
material results, unless there are found in the two higher Degrees all
the analogies of the universal medicine and of the philosophal stone.

Then, they say, the work is simple, easy, and inexpensive; otherwise, it
consumes fruitlessly the fortune and lives of the seekers.

The universal medicine for the Soul is the Supreme Reason and Absolute
Justice; for the mind, mathematical and practical Truth; for the body,
the Quintessence, a combination of light and gold.

The prima materia of the Great Work, in the Superior World, is
enthusiasm and activity; in the intermediate world, intelligence and
industry; in the lower world, labor: and, in Science, it is the Sulphur,
Mercury, and Salt, which by turns volatilized and fixed, compose the
AZOTH of the Sages.

The Sulphur corresponds with the elementary form of the Fire; Mercury
with the Air and Water; and Salt with the Earth.

The Great Work is, above all things, the creation of man by himself;
that is to say, the full and entire conquest which he effects of his
faculties and his future. It is, above all, the perfect emancipation of
his will, which assures him the universal empire of Azoth, and the
domain of magnetism, that is, complete power over the universal Magical
agent.

This Magical agent, which the Ancient Hermetic philosophers disguised
under the name of "_Prima Materia_," determines the forms of the
modifiable Substance; and the Alchemists said that by means of it they
could attain the transmutation of metals and the universal medicine.

There are two Hermetic operations, one spiritual, the other material,
dependent the one on the other.

The whole Hermetic Science is contained in the dogma of Hermes, engraven
originally, it is said, on a tablet of emerald. Its sentences that
relate to operating the Great Work are as follows:

"Thou shalt separate the earth from the fire, the subtile from the
gross, gently, with much industry.

"It ascends from earth to Heaven, and again descends to earth, and
receives the force of things above and below.

"Thou shalt by this means possess the glory of the whole world, and
therefore all obscurity shall flee away from thee.

"This is the potent force of all force, for it will overcome everything
subtile, and penetrate everything solid.

"So the world was created."

All the Masters in Alchemy who have written of the Great Work, have
employed symbolic and figurative expressions; being constrained to do
so, as well to repel the profane from a work that would be dangerous for
them, as to be well understood by Adepts, in revealing to them the whole
world of analogies governed by the single and sovereign dogma of Hermes.

So, in their language, gold and silver are the King and Queen, or the
Sun and Moon; Sulphur, the flying Eagle; Mercury, the Man-woman, winged,
bearded, mounted on a cube, and crowned with flames; Matter or Salt, the
winged Dragon; the Metals in ebullition, Lions of different colors; and,
finally, the entire work has for its symbols the Pelican and the Phœnix.

The Hermetic Art is, therefore, at the same time a religion, a
philosophy, and a natural science. As a religion, it is that of the
Ancient Magi and the Initiates of all ages; as a philosophy, we may find
its principles in the school of Alexandria and the theories of
Pythagoras; as a science, we must inquire for its processes of
Paracelsus, Nicholas Flamel, and Raymond Lulle.

The Science is a real one only for those who admit and understand the
philosophy and the religion; and its process will succeed only for the
Adept who has attained the sovereignty of will, and so become the King
of the elementary world: for the grand agent of the operation of the
Sun, is that force described in the Symbol of Hermes, of the table of
emerald; it is the universal magical power; the spiritual, fiery, motive
power; it is the Od, according to the Hebrews, and the Astral light,
according to others.

Therein is the secret fire, living and philosophical, of which all the
Hermetic philosophers speak with the most mysterious reserve: the
Universal Seed, the secret whereof they kept, and which they represented
only under the figure of the Caduceus of Hermes.

This is the grand Hermetic arcanum. What the Adepts call dead matter are
bodies as found in nature; living matters are substances assimilated and
magnetized by the science and will of the operator.

So that the Great Work is more than a chemical operation; it is a real
creation of the human word initiated into the power of the Word of God.

The creation of gold in the Great Work is effected by transmutation and
multiplication.

Raymond Lulle says, that to make gold, one must have gold and mercury;
and to make silver, silver and mercury. And he adds: "I mean by mercury,
that mineral spirit so fine and pure that it gilds even the seed of
gold, and silvers that of silver." He meant by this, either electricity,
or Od, the astral light.

The Salt and Sulphur serve in the work only to prepare the mercury, and
it is to the mercury especially that we must assimilate, and, as it
were, incorporate with it, the magnetic agent. Paracelsus, Lulle, and
Flamel alone seem to have perfectly known this mystery.

The Great Work of Hermes is, therefore, an operation essentially
magical, and the highest of all, for it supposes the Absolute in Science
and in Will. There is light in gold, gold in light, and light in all
things.

The disciples of Hermes, before promising their adepts the elixir of
long life or the powder of projection, advised them to seek for the
Philosophal _Stone_.

The Ancients adored the _Sun_, under the form of a black Stone, called
Elagabalus, or Heliogabalus. The faithful are promised, in the
Apocalypse, a white Stone.

This Stone, says the Masters in Alchemy, is the true _Salt_ of the
philosophers, which enters as one-third into the composition of Azoth.
But Azoth is, as we know, the name of the grand Hermetic Agent, and the
true philosophical Agent: wherefore they represent their Salt under the
form of a cubical Stone.

The Philosophal Stone is the foundation of the Absolute philosophy, the
Supreme and unalterable Reason. Before thinking of the Metallic work,
we must be firmly fixed on the Absolute principles of Wisdom; we must be
in possession of this Reason, which is the touchstone of Truth. A man
who is the slave of prejudices will never become the King of Nature and
the Master of transmutations. The Philosophal Stone, therefore, is
necessary above all things. How shall it be found? Hermes tells us, in
his "Table of Emerald," we must separate the subtile from the fixed,
with great care and extreme attention. So we ought to separate our
certainties from our beliefs, and make perfectly distinct the respective
domains of science and faith; and to comprehend that we do not know the
things we believe, nor believe anything that we come to know; and that
thus the essence of the things of Faith are the unknown and indefinite,
while it is precisely the contrary with the things of Science. Whence we
shall conclude, that Science rests on reason and experience, and Faith
has for its bases sentiment and reason.

The Sun and Moon of the Alchemists concur in perfecting and giving
stability to the Philosophal Stone. They correspond to the two columns
of the Temple, Jachin and Boaz. The Sun is the hieroglyphical sign of
Truth, because it is the source of Light; and the rough Stone is the
symbol of Stability. Hence the Mediæval Alchemists indicated the
Philosophal Stone as the first means of making the philosophical gold,
that is to say, of transforming all the vital powers figured by the six
metals into Sun, that is, into Truth and Light; which is the first and
indispensable operation of the Great Work, which leads to the secondary
adaptation, and enables the creators of the spiritual and living gold,
the possessors of the true philosophical Salt, Mercury, and Sulphur, to
discover, by the analogies of Nature, the natural and palpable gold.

To find the Philosophal Stone, is to have discovered the Absolute, as
all the Masters say. But the Absolute is that which admits of no errors,
is the Fixed from the Volatile, is the Law of the Imagination, is the
very necessity of Being, is the immutable Law of Reason and Truth. The
Absolute is that which IS.

To find the Absolute in the Infinite, in the Indefinite, and in the
Finite, this is the Magnum Opus, the Great Work of the Sages, which
Hermes called the Work of the Sun.

To find the immovable bases of true religious Faith, of Philosophical
Truth, and of Metallic transmutation, this is the secret of Hermes in
its entirety, the Philosophal Stone.

This stone is one and manifold; it is decomposed by Analysis, and
re-compounded by Synthesis. In Analysis, it is a powder, the powder of
projection of the Alchemists; before Analysis, and in Synthesis, it is a
stone.

The Philosophal Stone, say the Masters, must not be exposed to the
atmosphere, nor to the gaze of the Profane; but it must be kept
concealed and carefully preserved in the most secret place of the
laboratory, and the possessor must always carry on his person the key of
the place where it is kept.

He who possesses the Grand Arcanum is a genuine King, and more than a
king, for he is inaccessible to all fear and all empty hopes. In all
maladies of soul and body, a single particle from the precious stone, a
single grain of the divine powder, is more than sufficient to cure him.
"Let him hear, who hath ears to hear!" the Master said.

The Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury are but the accessorial elements and
passive instruments of the Great Work. All depends, as we have said, on
the internal Magnet of Paracelsus. The entire work consists in
_projection_: and the projection is perfectly accomplished by the
effective and realizable understanding of a single word.

There is but a single important operation in the work; this consists in
_Sublimation,_ which is nothing else, according to Geber than the
elevation of dry matter, by means of fire, with adhesion to its proper
vessel.

He who desires to attain to the understanding of the Grand Word and the
possession of the Great Secret, ought carefully to read the Hermetic
philosophers, and will undoubtedly attain initiation, as others have
done; but he must take, for the key of their allegories, the single
dogma of Hermes, contained in his table of Emerald, and follow, to class
his acquisitions of knowledge and direct the operation, the order
indicated in the Kabalistic alphabet of the Tarot.

Raymond Lulle has said that, to make gold, we must first have gold.
Nothing is made out of nothing; we do not absolutely _create_ wealth; we
increase and multiply it. Let aspirants to science well understand,
then, that neither the juggler's tricks nor miracles are to be asked of
the adept. The Hermetic science, like all the _real_ sciences, is
mathematically demonstrable. Its results, even material, are as rigorous
as that of a correct equation.

The Hermetic Gold is not only a true dogma, a light without Shadow, a
Truth without alloy of falsehood; it is also a material gold, real,
pure, the most precious that can be found in the mines of the earth.

But the living gold, the living sulphur, or the true fire of the
philosophers, is to be sought for in the house of Mercury. This fire is
fed by the air: to express its attractive and expansive power, no better
comparison can be used than that of the lightning, which is at first
only a dry and earthly exhalation, united to the moist vapor, but which,
by self-exhalation, takes a fiery nature, acts on the humidity inherent
in it, which it attracts to itself and transmutes in its nature; after
which it precipitates itself rapidly toward the earth, whither it is
attracted by a fixed nature like unto its own.

These words, in form enigmatic, but clear at bottom, distinctly express
what the philosophers mean by their Mercury, fecundated by Sulphur, and
which becomes the Master and regenerator of the Salt. It is the AZOTH,
the universal magnetic force, the grand magical agent, the Astral light,
the light of life, fecundated by the mental force, the intellectual
energy, which they compare to sulphur, on account of its affinities with
the Divine fire.

As to the Salt, it is Absolute Matter. Whatever is matter contains salt;
and all salt [nitre] may be converted into pure gold by the combined
action of Sulphur and Mercury, which sometimes act so rapidly, that the
transmutation may be effected in an instant, in an hour, without fatigue
to the operator, and almost without expense. At other times, and
according to the more refractory temper of the atmospheric _media,_ the
operation requires several days, several months, and sometimes even
several years.

Two primary laws exist in nature, two essential laws, which produce, by
counterbalancing each other, the universal equilibrium of things. These
are fixedness and movement, analogous, in philosophy, to Truth and
Fiction, and, in Absolute Conception, to Necessity and Liberty, which
are the very essence of Deity. The Hermetic philosophers gave the name
_fixed_ to everything ponderable, to everything that tends by its
natural to central repose and immobility; they term _volatile_
everything that more naturally and more readily obeys the law of
movement; and they form their stone by analysis, that is to say, by the
volatilization of the Fixed, and then by synthesis, that is, by fixing
the volatile, which they effect by applying to the fixed, which they
call their salt, the sulphurated Mercury, or the light of life, directed
and made omnipotent by a Sovereign Will. Thus they master entire Nature,
and their stone is found wherever there is salt, which is the reason for
saying that no substance is foreign to the Great Work, and that even the
most despicable and apparently vile matters may be changed into gold,
which is true in this sense, that they all contain the original
salt-principle, represented in our emblems by the cubical stone.

To know how to extract from all matter the pure salt concealed in it, is
to have the Secret of the Stone. Wherefore this is a Saline stone, which
the Od or universal astral light decomposes or re-compounds: it is
single and manifold; for it may be dissolved like ordinary salt, and
incorporated with other substances. Obtained by analysis, we might term
it _the Universal Sublimate:_ found by way of synthesis, it is the true
_panacea_ of the ancients, for it cures all maladies of soul and body,
and has been styled, _par-excellence_, the medicine of all nature. When
one, by absolute initiation, comes to control the forces of the
universal agent, he always has this stone at his disposal, for its
extraction is then a simple and easy operation, very distinct from the
metallic projection or realization. This stone, when in a state of
sublimation, must not be exposed to contact with the atmospheric air,
which might partially dissolve it and deprive it of its virtue; nor
could its emanations be inhaled without danger. The Sage prefers to
preserve it in its natural envelopes, assured as he is of extracting it
by a single effort of his will, and a single application of the
Universal Agent to the envelopes, which the Kabalists call _cortices_,
the shells, bark, or integuments.

Hieroglyphically to express this law of prudence, they gave their
Mercury, personified in Egypt as Hermanubis, a dog's head; and to their
Sulphur, represented by the Baphomet of the Temple, that goat's head
which brought into such disrepute the occult Mediæval associations.

Let us listen for a few moments to the Alchemists themselves, and
endeavor to learn the hidden meaning of their mysterious words.

The RITUAL of the Degree of Scottish Elder MASTER, and Knight of Saint
Andrew, being the fourth Degree of Ramsay, it is said upon the
title-page, or of the Reformed or Rectified Rite of Dresden, has these
passages:

"O how great and glorious is the _presence_ of the Almighty God which
gloriously _shines_ from between the Cherubim!

"How adorable and astonishing are the _rays_ of that glorious _Light_,
that sends forth its bright and brilliant beams from the Holy Ark of
Alliance and Covenant!

"Let us with the deepest veneration and devotion adore the great Source
of Life, that Glorious Spirit Who is the Most Merciful and Beneficent
Ruler of the Universe and of all the creatures it contains!

"The secret knowledge of the Grand Scottish Master relates to the
combination and transmutation of different substances; whereof that you
may obtain a clear idea and proper understanding, you are to know that
all matter and all material substances are composed of combinations of
three several substances, extracted from the four elements, which three
substances in combination are, _Salt, Sulphur_, and _Spirit_. The first
of these produces _Solidity_, the second _Softness_, and the third the
_Spiritual_, vaporous particles. These three compound substances work
potently together; and therein consists the true process for the
transmutation of metals.

"To these three substances allude the three golden basins, in the first
of which was engraved the letter M. in the second, the letter G. and
in the third nothing. The first, M. is the initial letter of the Hebrew
word _Malakh_, which signifies _Salt_; and the second, G. of the Hebrew
word _Geparaith_, which signifies _Sulphur_; and as there is no word in
Hebrew to express the vaporous and intangible _Spirit_, there is no
letter in the third basin.

"With these three principal substances you may effect the transmutation
of metals, which must be done by means of the five points or rules of
the Scottish Mastership.

"The first Master's point shows us the Brazen Sea, wherein must always
be rain-water; and out of this rain-water the Scottish Masters extract
the first substance, which is Salt; which salt must afterward undergo a
_seven-fold_ manipulation and purification, before it will be properly
prepared. This seven-fold purification is symbolized by the Seven Steps
of Solomon's Temple, which symbol is furnished us by the first point or
rule of the Scottish Masters.

"After preparing the first substance, you are to extract the second,
Sulphur, out of the purest gold, to which must then be added the
purified or celestial Salt. They are to be mixed as the Art directs, and
then placed in a vessel in the form of a SHIP, in which it is to remain,
as the Ark of Noah was afloat, one hundred and fifty days, being brought
to the first damp, warm degree of fire, that it may putrefy and produce
the mineral fermentation. This is the second point or rule of the
Scottish Masters."

If you reflect, my Brother, that it was impossible for any one to
imagine that either common salt or nitre could be extracted from
rain-water, or sulphur from pure gold, you will no doubt suspect that
some secret meaning was concealed in these words.

The Kabalah considers the immaterial part of man as threefold,
consisting of NEPHESCH, RUACH, and NESCHAMAH, _Psyche, Spiritus_, and
_Mens_, or _Soul, Spirit_, and _Intellect_. There are Seven Holy
Palaces, Seven Heavens and Seven Thrones; and Souls are purified by
ascending through Seven Spheres. A _Ship_, in Hebrew, is _Ani_; and the
same word means _I, Me_, or _Myself_.

The RITUAL continues:

"Multiplying the substance thus obtained, is the third operation, which
is done by adding to them the animate, volatile _Spirit_; which is done
by means of the water of the Celestial Salt, as well as by the Salt,
which must daily be added to it very carefully, and strictly observing
to put neither too much nor too little; inasmuch as, if you add too
much, you will destroy that growing and multiplying substance; and if
too little, it will be self-consumed and destroyed, and shrink away, not
having sufficient substantiality for its preservation. This third point
or rule of the Scottish Masters gives us the emblem of the building of
the Tower of Babel, used by our Scottish Masters, because by
irregularity and want of due proportion and harmony that work was
stopped; and the workmen could proceed no further.

"Next comes the fourth operation, represented by the Cubical Stone,
whose faces and angles are all equal. As soon as the work is brought to
the necessary point of multiplication, it is to be submitted to the
third Degree of Fire, wherein it will receive the due proportion of the
strength and substance of the metallic particles of the Cubical Stone;
and this is the fourth point or rule of the Scottish Masters.

"Finally, we come to the fifth and last operation, indicated to us by
the Flaming Star. After the work has become a duly-proportioned
substance, it is to be subjected to the fourth and strongest Degree of
fire, wherein it must remain three times twenty-seven hours; until it is
thoroughly glowing, by which means it becomes a bright and shining
tincture, wherewith the lighter metals may be changed, by the use of one
part to a thousand of the metal. Wherefore this Flaming Star shows us
the fifth and last point of the Scottish Masters.

"You should pass practically through the five points or rules of the
Master, and by the use of one part to a thousand, transmute and ennoble
metals. You may then in reality say that your age is a thousand years."

In the oration of the Degree, the following hints are given as to its
true meaning:

"The three divisions of the Temple, the Outer Court, Sanctuary, and Holy
of Holies, signify the three Principles of our Holy Order, which direct
to the knowledge of morality, and teach those most practical virtues
that ought to be practised by mankind. Therefore the Seven Steps which
lead up to the Outer Court of the Temple, are the emblem of the
Seven-fold Light which we need to possess, before we can arrive at the
height of knowledge, in which consist the ultimate limits of our order.

"In the Brazen Sea we are symbolically to purify ourselves from all
pollutions, all faults and wrongful actions, as well those committed
through error of judgment and mistaken opinion, as those intentionally
done; inasmuch as they equally prevent us from arriving at the knowledge
of True Wisdom. We must thoroughly cleanse and purify our hearts to
their inmost recesses, before we can of right contemplate that _Flaming
Star_, which is the emblem of the Divine and Glorious Shekinah, or
presence of God; before we may dare approach the Throne of Supreme
Wisdom."

In the Degree of The True Mason [_Le Vrai Maçon_], styled in the
title-page of its Ritual the 23d Degree of Masonry, or the 12th of the
5th class, the Tracing-board displays a luminous Triangle, with a great
Yōd in the centre.

"The Triangle," says the Ritual, "represents one God in three Persons;
and the great Yōd is the initial letter of the last word.

"The Dark Circle represents the Chaos, which in the beginning God
created.

"The Cross within the Circle, the Light by means whereof He developed
the Chaos.

"The Square, the four Elements into which it was resolved.

"The Triangle, again, the three _Principles_ [Salt, Sulphur, and
Mercury], which the intermingling of the elements produced.

"God _creates_; Nature _produces_; Art _multiplies_. God created Chaos;
Nature produced it; God, Nature, and Art, have perfected it.

"The Altar of Perfumes indicates the _Fire_ that is to be applied to
Nature. The two _towers_ are the two furnaces, moist and dry, in which
it is to be worked. The bowl is the mould of oak that is to inclose the
philosophal egg.

"The two figures surmounted by a Cross are the two vases, Nature and
Art, in which is to be consummated the double marriage of the white
woman with the red Servitor, from which marriage will spring a most
Potent King.

"Chaos means universal matter, formless, but susceptible of all forms.
Form is the Light inclosed in the seeds of all species; and its home is
in the Universal Spirit.

"To work on universal matter, use the internal and external fire: the
four elements result, the _Principia Principiorum_ and _Inmediata_;
Fire, Air, Water, Earth. There are four qualities of these elements--the
warm and dry, the cold and moist. Two appertain to each element: The dry
and cold, to the Earth; the cold and moist, to Water; the moist and
warm, to the Air; and the warm and dry, to Fire: whereby the Fire
connects with the Earth; all the elements, as Hermes said, moving in
circles.

"From the mixture of the four Elements and of their four qualities,
result the three Principles,--Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt. These are the
philosophical, not the vulgar.

"The philosophical Mercury is a _Water_ and SPIRIT, which dissolves and
sublimates the Sun; the philosophical _Sulphur_, a _fire_ and a Soul,
which mollifies and colors it; the philosophical Salt, an _Earth_ and a
BODY, which coagulates and fixes it; and the whole is done in the bosom
of the _Air_.

"From these three Principles result the four Elements duplicated, or the
Grand Elements, _Mercury, Sulphur, Salt_, and _Glass_; two of which are
volatile,--the Water [Mercury] and the Air [Sulphur], which is oil; for
all substances liquid in their nature avoid fire, which takes from the
one [water] and burns the other [oil]; but the other two are dry and
solid, to wit, the Salt, wherein Fire is contained, and the pure
_Earth_, which is the Glass; on both of which the Fire has no other
action than to melt and refine them, unless one makes use of the liquid
alkali; for, just as each element consists of two qualities, so these
great duplicated Elements partake, each of two of the simple elements,
or, more properly speaking, of all the four, according to the greater or
less degree of each,--the Mercury partaking more of the Water, to which
it is assigned; the Oil or Sulphur, more of the Air; the Salt, of the
Fire; and the Glass, of the Earth; which is found, pure and clear, in
the centre of all the elementary composites, and is the last to
disengage itself from the others.

"The four Elements and three Principles reside in all the Compounds,
Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral; but more potently in some than in
others.

"The Fire gives them Movement; the Air, Sensation; the Water, Nutriment;
and the Earth, Subsistence.

"The four duplicated Elements engender THE STONE, if one is careful
enough to supply them with the proper quantity of fire, and to combine
them according to their natural weight. Ten parts of Air make one of
Water; ten of Water, one of Earth; and ten of Earth, one of Fire; the
whole by the Active Symbol of the one, and the Passive Symbol of the
other, whereby the conversion of the Elements is effected."

The Allusion of the Ritual, here, is obviously to the four Worlds of the
Kabalah. The ten Sephiroth of the world Briah proceed from Malakoth, the
last of the ten Emanations of the world Aziluth; the ten Sephiroth of
the world Yezirah, from Malakoth of Briah; and the ten of the world
Asian, from Malakoth of Yezirah. The Pass-word of the Degree is given as
_Metralon_, which is a corruption of METATRON, the Cherub, who and
Sandalphon are in the Kabalah the Chief of the Angels. The Active and
Passive Symbols are the Male and Female.

The Ritual continues:

"It is thereby evident that, in the Great Work, we must employ ten parts
of philosophical Mercury to one of Sun or Moon.

"This is attained by _Solution_ and _Coagulation_. These words mean that
we must dissolve the body and coagulate the spirit; which operations are
effected by the moist and dry bath.

"Of colors, _black_ is the Earth; _white_, the Water; _blue_, the Air;
and _red_, the Fire; wherein also are involved very great secrets and
mysteries.

"The apparatus employed in 'The Great Work' consists of the Moist bath,
the Dry bath, the Vases of Nature and Art, the bowl of oak, _lutum
sapientiœ_, the Seal of Hermes, the tube, the physical lamp, and the
iron rod.

"The work is perfected in seventeen philosophical months, according to
the mixture of ingredients. The benefits reaped from it are of two
kinds--one affecting the soul, and the other the body. _The former
consist in knowing God, Nature, and ourself_; and those to the body are
wealth and health.

"The Initiate traverses Heaven and Earth. Heaven is the World manifest
to the Intelligence, subdivided into Paradise and Hell; Earth is the
World manifest to the Senses, also subdivided into the Celestial and
that of the Elements.

"There are Sciences specially connected with each of these. _The one is
ordinary and common; the other, mystic and secret_. The World cognizable
by the Intellect has the Hermetic Theology and the Kabalah; the
Celestial Astrology; and that of the Elements, Chemistry, which by its
decompositions and separations, effected by fire, reveals all the most
hidden secrets of Nature, in the three kinds of Compound Substances.
This last science is styled 'Hermetic,' or 'The operating of the Great
Work.'"

The Ritual of the Degree of Kabalistic and Hermetic Rose, has these
passages:

"The true Philosophy, known and practised by Solomon, is the basis on
which Masonry is founded.

"Our Ancient Masons have concealed from us the most important point of
this Divine Art, under hieroglyphical characters, which are but enigmas
and parables, to all the Senseless, the Wicked, and the Ambitious.

"He will be supremely fortunate, who shall, by arduous labor, discover
this sacred place of deposite, wherein all naked the sublime Truth is
hidden; for he may be assured that he has found the True Light, the True
Felicity, the True Heavenly Good. Then may it truly be said that he is
one of the True Elect; for it _is the only real and most Sublime Science
of all those to which a mortal can aspire_: his days will be prolonged,
and his soul freed of all vices and corruption; into which" (it is
added, to mislead, as if from fear too much would be disclosed), "_the
human race is often led by indigence_."

As the symbolism of the Hall and the language of the ritual mutually
explain each other, it should be noted here, that in this Degree the
columns of the hall, 12 in number, are white variegated with black and
red. The hangings are black, and over that crimson.

Over the throne is a great Eagle, in gold, on a black ground. In the
centre of the Canopy the Blazing Star in gold, with the letter Yōd in
its centre. On the right and left of the throne are the Sun in gold and
the Moon in silver. The throne is ascended to by _three_ Steps. The hall
and ante-room are each lighted by _ten_ lights, and a single one at the
entrance. The colors, black, white, and crimson appear in the clothing;
and the Key and Balance are among the symbols.

The duty of the Second Grand Prior, says the Ritual, is "to see if the
Chapter is hermetically sealed; whether the materials are ready, and the
elements; whether the Black gives place to the White, and the White to
the Red."

"Be laborious," it says, "like the Star, and procure the light of the
Sages, and hide yourself from the Stupid Profane and the Ambitious, and
be like the Owl, which sees only by night, and hides itself from
treacherous curiosity."

"The Sun, on entering each of his houses, should be received there by
the four elements, which you must be careful to invite to accompany you,
that they may aid you in your undertaking; for without them the House
would be melancholy: wherefore you will give him to feast upon the four
elements.

"When he shall have visited his twelve houses, and seen you attentive
there to receive him, you will become one of his chiefest favorites, and
he will allow you to share all his gifts. Matter will then no longer
have power over you; you will, so to say, be no longer a dweller on the
earth; but after certain periods you will give back to it a body which
is its own, to take in its stead one altogether Spiritual. Matter is
then deemed to be dead to the world.

"Therefore it must be re-vivified, and made to be born again from its
ashes, which you will effect by virtue of the vegetation of the Tree of
Life, represented to us by the branch of acacia. Whoever shall learn to
comprehend and execute this great work, will know great things, say the
Sages of the work; but whenever you depart from the centre of the Square
and the Compass you will no longer be able to work with success.

"Another Jewel is necessary for you, and in certain undertakings cannot
be dispensed with. It is what is termed the Kabalistic pantacle ... This
carries with it the power of commanding the spirits of the elements. It
is necessary for you to know how to use it, and that you will learn by
perseverance if you are a lover of the science of our predecessors the
Sages.

"A great Black Eagle, the King of Birds. He alone it is that can fire
the Sun, material in its nature, that has no form, and yet by its form
develops color. The black is a complete harbinger of the work: it
changes color and assumes a natural form, out whereof will emerge a
brilliant Sun.

"The birth of the Sun is always announced by its Star, represented by
the Blazing Star, which you will know by its fiery color; and it is
followed in its course by the silvery lustre of the Moon.

"A rough Ashlar is the shapeless stone which is to be prepared in order
to commence the philosophical work; and to be developed, in order to
change its form from triangular to cubic, after the separation from it
of its Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury, by the aid of the Square, Level,
Plumb, and Balance, and all the other Masonic implements _which we use
symbolically_.

"Here me put them to philosophical use, to constitute a
well-proportioned edifice, through which you are to make pass the crude
material, analogous to a candidate commencing his initiation into our
Mysteries. When we build we must observe all the rules and proportions;
for otherwise the Spirit of Life cannot lodge therein. So you will build
the great tower, in which is to burn the fire of the Sages, or, in other
words, the fire of Heaven; as also the Sea of the Sages, in which the
Sun and Moon are to bathe. That is the basin of Purification, in which
will be the water of Celestial Grace, water that doth not soil the
hands, but purifies all leprous bodies.

"Let us labor to instruct our Brother, to the end that by his toils he
may succeed in discovering the principle of life contained in the
profundity of matter, and known by the name of _Alkahest_.

"The most potent of the names of Deity is ADONAI. Its power is to put
the Universe in movement; and the Knights who shall be fortunate enough
to possess it, with weight and measure, shall have at their disposition
all the potences that inhabit it, the Elements, and the cognizance of
all the virtues and sciences that man is capable of knowing. By its
power they would succeed in discovering the primary metal of the Sun,
which holds within itself the Principle of the germ, and wherewith we
can put in alliance and six other metals, each of which contains the
principles and primitive seed of the grand philosophical work.

"The six other metals are Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, and
Luna; vulgarly known as Lead, Tin, Iron, Copper, Quicksilver, and
Silver. Gold is not included; because it is not in its nature a metal.
It is all Spirit and incorruptible; wherefore it is the emblem of the
Sun, which presides over the Light.

"The vivifying Spirit, called Alkahest, has in itself the generative
virtue of producing the triangular Cubical Stone, and contains in itself
all the virtues to render men happy in this world and in that to come.
To arrive at the composition of that Alkahest, we begin by laboring at
the science of the union of the four Elements which are to be educed
from the three Kingdoms of Nature, Mineral, Vegetable, and Animal; the
rule, measure, weight, and equipoise whereof have each their key. We
then employ in one work the animals, vegetables, and minerals, each in
his season, which make the space of the Houses of the Sun, where they
have all the virtues required.

"Something from each of the three Kingdoms of Nature is assigned to each
Celestial House, to the end that everything may be done in accordance
with sound philosophical rules; and that everything may be thoroughly
purified in its proper time and place in order to be presented at the
wedding-table of the Spouse and the six virgins who hold the mystic
shovel, without a common fire, but with an elementary fire, that comes
primarily by _attraction_, and by digestion in the philosophical bed
lighted by the four elements.

"At the banquet of the Spouses, the viands, being thoroughly, purified,
are served in Salt, Sulphur, Spirit, and Oil; a sufficient quantity
thereof is taken every month, and therewith is compounded, by means of
the Balance of Solomon, the Alkahest, to serve the Spouses, when they
are laid on the nuptial bed, there to engender their embryo, producing
for the human race immense treasures, that will last as long as the
world endures.

"Few are capable of engaging in this great work. Only the true
Free-Masons may of right aspire to it; and even of them, very few are
worthy to attain it, because most of them are ignorant of the Clavicules
and their contents, and of the Pantacle of Solomon, which teaches how to
labor at the great work.

"The weight raised by Solomon with his balance was 1, 2, 3, 4, 5; which
contains 25 times unity, 2 multiplied by 2; 3 multiplied by 3; 4
multiplied by 4; 5 multiplied by 5, and once 9; these numbers thus
involving the squares of 5 and 2, the cube of 2, the square of the
square of 2, and the square of 3."

Thus far the Ritual, in the numbers mentioned by it, is an allusion to
the 47th problem of Euclid, a symbol of Blue Masonry, entirely out of
place there, and its meaning unknown. The base of the right-angled
triangle being 3, and the perpendicular 4, the hypothenuse is 5, by the
rule that the sum of the squares of the two former equals the square of
the latter,--3X3 being 9; and 4X4, 16; and 9+16 being 25, the square of
5. The triangle contains in its sides the numbers 1, 2, and 3. The
Perpendicular is the Male; the Base, the Female; the Hypothenuse, the
product of the two.

[Illustration:]

To fix the volatile, in the Hermetic language, means to materialize the
spirit; to volatilize the fixed is to spiritualize matter. To separate
the subtile from the gross, in the first operation, which is wholly
internal, is to free our soul from all prejudice and all vice. This is
effected by the use of the philosophical SALT, that is to say, of
WISDOM; of MERCURY, that is to say, of personal aptitude and labor; and
of SULPHUR, which represents the vital energy, and the ardor of the
will. Thus we succeed in changing into spiritual gold such things even
as are of least value, and even the foul things of the earth.

It is in this sense we are to understand the parables of the Hermetic
philosophers and the prophets of Alchemy; but in their works, as in the
Great Work, we must skillfully separate the subtile from the gross, the
mystic from the positive, allegory from theory. If you would read them
with pleasure and understandingly, you must first understand them
allegorically in their entirety and then descend from allegories to
realities by way of the correspondences or analogies indicated in the
single dogma:

"What is above is like what is below; and what is below is like what is
above."

The treatise "_Minerva Mundi_," attributed to Hermes Trismegistus,
contains, under the most poetical and profound allegories, the dogma of
the self-creation of beings, or of the law of creation that results from
the accord of two forces, these which the Alchemists called the Fixed
and the Volatile, and which are, in the Absolute, Necessity and Liberty.

When the Masters in Alchemy say that it needs but little time and
expense to accomplish the works of Science, when they affirm, above all,
that but a single vessel is necessary, when they speak of the Great and
Single furnace, which all can use, which is within the reach of all the
world, and which men possess without knowing it, they allude to the
philosophical and moral Alchemy. In fact, a strong and determined will
can, in a little while, attain complete independence; and we all possess
that chemical instrument, the great and single athanor or furnace, which
serves to separate the subtile from the gross, and the fixed from the
volatile. This instrument, complete as the world, and accurate as the
mathematics themselves, is designated by the Sages under the emblem of
the Pentagram or Star with five points, the absolute sign of human
intelligence.

The end and perfection of the Great Work is expressed, in alchemy, by a
triangle surmounted by a cross: and the letter Tau, ת, the last of the
Sacred alphabet, has the same meaning.

The "elementary fire," that comes primarily by attraction, is evidently
Electricity or the Electric Force, primarily developed as magnetism, and
in which is perhaps the secret of life or the vital force.

Paracelsus, the great Reformer in medicine, discovered magnetism long
before Mesmer, and pushed to its last consequences this luminous
discovery, or rather this initiation into the magic of the ancients, who
understood the grand magical agent better than we do, and did not regard
the Astral Light, Azoth, the universal magnetism of the Sages, as an
animal and particular fluid, emanating only from certain special beings.

The four Elements, the four symbolic animals, and the re-duplicated
Principles correspond with each other, and are thus arranged by the
Hermetic Masons:

[Illustration]

The Air and Earth represent the _Male_ Principle; and the Fire and Water
belong to the _Female_ Principle.

To these four forms correspond the four following philosophical ideas.

Spirit: Matter: Movement: Repose.

Alchemy reduces these four things to three:

The Absolute: the Fixed: the Volatile.

Reason: Necessity; Liberty: are the synonyms of these three words.

As all the great Mysteries of God and the Universe are thus hidden in
the Ternary, it everywhere appears in Masonry and in the Hermetic
Philosophy under its mask of Alchemy. It even appears where Masons do
not suspect it; to teach the doctrine of the equilibrium of Contraries,
and the resultant Harmony.

The double triangle of Solomon is explained by Saint John in a
remarkable manner: There are, he says, three witnesses in Heaven,--the
Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and three witnesses on
earth,--the breath, water, and blood. He thus agrees with the Masters of
the Hermetic Philosophy, who give to their Sulphur the name of Ether, to
their Mercury the name of philosophical water, to their Salt that of
blood of the dragon, or menstruum of the earth. The blood, or Salt,
corresponds by opposition with the Father; the Azothic, or Mercurial
water, with the Word, or Logos; and the breath, with the Holy Spirit.
But the things of High Symbolism can be well understood only by the true
children of Science.

Alchemy has its Symbolic Triad of Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury,--man
consisting, according to the Hermetic philosophers, of Body, Soul, and
Spirit. The Dove, the Raven, and the Phœnix are striking Symbols of Good
and Evil, Light and Darkness, and the Beauty resulting from the
equilibrium of the two.

If you would understand the true secrets of Alchemy, you must study the
works of the Masters with patience and assiduity. Every word is often an
enigma; and to him who reads in haste, the whole will seem absurd. Even
when they seem to teach that the Great Work is the purification of the
Soul, and so to deal only with morals, they most conceal their meaning,
and deceive all but the Initiates.

Yōd [[Hebrew] or י] is termed in the Kabalah the _opifex_, _workman_ of
the Deity. It is, says the _Porta Cœlorum_, single and primal, like
_one_, which is the first among numbers; and like a _point_, the first
before all bodies. Moved lengthwise, it produces a _line_, which is Vau,
and this moved sidewise produces a _superficies_, which is Daleth. Thus
Vau [ו] becomes Daleth [ד]; for movement tends from right to left; and
all communication is from above to below. The _plenitude_ of Yōd, that
is, the _name_ of this letter, spelled, is יוד, Y-O-D. Vau [which
represents 6] and Daleth [4] are 10; like Yōd, their principle.

Yōd, says the _Siphra de Zeniutha_, is the Symbol of Wisdom and of the
Father.

The Principle called Father, says the _Idra Suta_, is comprehended in
Yōd, which flows downward from the Holy influence, wherefore Yōd is the
most occult of all the letters; for he is the beginning and end of all
things. The Supernal Wisdom is Yōd; and all things are included in Yōd,
who is therefore called Father of Fathers, or the Generator of the
Universal. The Principle of all things is called the House of all
things: wherefore Yōd is the beginning and end of all things; as it is
written: "_Thou hast made all things in Wisdom_." For The All is termed
Wisdom; and in it The All is contained; and the summary of all things is
the Holy Name.

Yōd, says the _Siphra de Zeniutha_, signifying the Father, approaches
the letter He, which is the Mother; and by the combination of these two
is denoted that luminous influence wherewith Binah is imbued by the
Supernal Wisdom.

In the name [Hebrew: יהו], says the same, are included the Father,
Mother, and Microprosopos, their issue. He, impregnated by Vau, produced
Microprosopos, or Seir Anpin.

Wisdom, Hakemah, is the Principle of all things: it is the Father of
Fathers, and in it are the beginning and end of all things.
Microprosopos, the second Universal, is the issue of Wisdom, the Father,
and Binah, the Mother, and is composed of the six Numerations, Geburah,
Gedulah, and Tephareth, Netsach, Hod, and Yesod; is represented under
the form of a man, and said to have at first occupied the place
afterward filled by the world Briah [of Creation], but afterward to have
been raised to the Aziluthic sphere, and received Wisdom, Intelligence,
and Cognition [Daath] from the Supernal Wisdom and Intellectuality.

Vau, in the tri-literal word, denotes these six members of
Microprosopos. For this latter is formed after the fashion of
Macroprosopos, but without Kether, the will, which remains in the first
prototype or Universal; though invested with a portion of the Divine
Intellectual Power and Capacity. The first Universal does not use the
first person, and is called in the third person, [Hebrew: הוא,] HUA, HE:
but the second Universal speaks in the first person, using the word
[Hebrew: אני,] ANI, I.

The IDRA RABBA, or Synodus Magna, one of the books of the Sohar, says:

The Eldest of the Eldest [the Absolute Deity] is in Microprosopos. All
things are one: all was, all is, all will be: there neither will be, nor
is, nor has been, mutation.

But He conformed Himself, by the formings, into a form that contains all
forms, in a form which comprehends all genera. This form is in the
likeness of His form; and is not that form but its analogue: wherefore
the human form is the form of all above and below, which are included in
it: and because it embraces all above and below. The Most Holy so took
form, and so Microprosopos was configured. All things are equally one,
in each of the two Universals; but in the second His ways are divided,
and judgment is on our side, and on the side that looks toward us, also,
they differ.

These Secrets are made known only to the reapers in the Holy Field.

The Most Holy Ancient is not called ATHAH, Thou, but HUA, He: but in
Microprosopos, where is the beginning of things, He has the name ATHAH,
and also AB, Father. From Him is the beginning, and He is called Thou,
and is the Father of Fathers. He issues from the Non-Ens; and therefore
is beyond cognition.

Wisdom is the Principle of the Universe, and from it thirty-two ways
diverge: and in them the law is contained, in twenty-two letters and ten
words. Wisdom is the Father of Fathers, and in this Wisdom is found the
Beginning and the End: wherefore there is a wisdom in each Universal,
one above, the other below.

The _Commentary_ of _Rabbi Chajun Vital_, on the _Siphra de Zeniutha_,
says: At the beginning of emanation, Microprosopos issued from the
Father, and was intermingled with the Mother, under the mysteries of the
letter [Hebrew: ה]; [He], resolved in [Hebrew: דו] that is, Daleth and
Vau; by which Vau is denoted Microprosopos: because Vau is six, and he
is constituted of the six parts that follow Hakemah and Binah. And,
according to this conception, the Father is called Father of Fathers,
because from Him these Fathers proceed, Benignity, Severity, and Beauty.
Microprosopos was then like the letter Vau in the letter He, because He
had no head; but when He was now born, three brains were constituted for
Him, by the flow of Divine Light from above.

And as the world of restitution [after the vessels of the Sephiroth
below Binah had been broken, that from the fragments evil might be
created] is instituted after the fashion of the Balance, so also is it
formed throughout in the human form. But Malakoth, Regnum, is a complete
and separate person, behind Microprosopos, and in conjunction with him,
and the two are called man.

The first world [of Inanity] could not continue and did not subsist,
because it had no human conformation nor the system of the Balance, the
Sephiroth being points, one below the other. The first Adam
[Microprosopos, as distinguished from Macroprosopos, the first _Occult_
Adam] was the beginning, wherein the ten Numerations proceeded forth
from potence into act.

Microprosopos is the second garment or interposed medium, with respect
to the Elder Most Holy, who is the name Tetragrammaton; and he is called
Alohim; because the former is Absolute Commiseration; while in
Macroprosopos his lights have the nature of Severities, with respect to
the elder Universal; though they are Commiseration, with respect to the
lights of Malakoth and the three lower worlds.

All the conformations of Macroprosopos come from the first Adam; who, to
interpose a second covering, caused a single spark to issue from the
sphere of Severity, of whose five letters is generated the name Alohim.
With this issued from the brain a most subtle air, which takes its place
on the right hand, while the spark of fire is on the left. Thus the
white and red do not intermix, that is, the Air and Fire, which are
Mercy and Judgment.

Microprosopos is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, his
Severities being the Evil.

REGNUM, to which is given the name of Word of The Lord, superinvests
Heaven, as the six members of the Degree Tephareth are called, and these
become and are constituted by that superior vestiture. For every
conformation and constitution is effected by means of veiling, because
occultation here is the same as manifestation, the excess of light being
veiled, so that, diminished in intensity and degree, it may be received
by those below. Those six members conceived of as contained in Binah,
are said to be in the World of Creation; as in Tephareth, in that of
Formation; and as in Malakoth, in that of Fabrication.

Before the institution of equilibrium, face was not toward face:
Microprosopos and his wife issuing forth back to back, and yet cohering.
So above; before the prior Adam was conformed into male and female, and
the state of equilibrium established, the Father and Mother were not
face to face. For the Father denotes the most perfect Love; and the
Mother the most perfect Rigor. And the seven supernal sons who proceeded
from her, from Binah, who brought forth seven, were all most perfect
rigors, having no connection with a root in the Most Holy Ancient; that
is, they were all _dead_, destroyed, shattered; but they were placed in
equilibrium, in the equipoise of the Occult Wisdom, when it was
conformed into male and female, Rigor and Love, and they were then
restored, and there was given them a root above.

The Father is Love and Mercy, and with a pure and subtle Aur or
Benignity impregnates the Mother, who is Rigor and Severity of
Judgments; and the product is the brain of Microprosopos.

It was determined, says the _Introduction_ to the Book _Sohar_, by the
Deity, to create Good and Evil in the world, according to what is said
in Isaiah, "_who makes the Light and creates the Evil_." But the Evil
was at first occult, and could not be generated and brought forth,
except by the sinning of the First Adam. Wherefore He determined that
the numerations first emanated, from Benignity downward, should be
destroyed and shattered by the excessive influx of His Light; His
intention being to create of them the worlds of Evils. But the first
three were to remain and subsist, that among the fragments should be
neither Will, Intellectual, Power, nor the Capacity of Intellection of
the Divinity. The last seven numerations were _points_, like the first
three, each subsisting independently, unsustained by companionship;
which was the cause of their dying and being shattered.

There was then no Love between them, but only a two-fold Fear; Wisdom,
for example, fearing lest it should ascend again to its Source in
Kether; and also lest it should descend into Binah. Hence there was no
union between any two, except Hakemah and Binah, and this imperfect,
with averted faces. This is the meaning of the saying, that the world
was created by Judgment, which is fear. And so that world could not
subsist, and the Seven Kings were dethroned, until the attribute of
Compassion was adjoined to it, and then restoration took place. Thence
came Love and Union, and six of the parts were united into one person;
for Love is the attribute of Compassion or Mercy.

Binah produced the Seven Kings, not successively, but all together. The
Seventh is Regnum, called a stone, the corner-stone, because on it are
builded the palaces of the three lower worlds.

The first six were shattered into fragments; but Regnum was crushed into
a formless mass, lest the malignant demons created from the fragments of
the others should receive bodies from it, since from it came bodies and
vitality [Nephesch].

From the fragments of the vessels came all Evils; judgments, turbid
waters, impurities, the Serpent, and Adam Belial [Baal]. But their
internal light re-ascended to Binah, and then flowed down again into the
worlds Briah and Yezirah, there to form vestiges of the Seven
Numerations. The Sparks of the great Influence of the shattered vases
descending into the four spiritual elements, Fire, Air, Water, and
Earth, and thence into the inanimate, vegetable, living, and speaking
kingdoms, became Souls.

Selecting the suitable from the unsuitable lights, and separating the
good from the evil, the Deity first restored the universality of the
Seven Kings of the World Aziluth, and afterward the three other Worlds.

And though in them were, both good and evil, still this evil did not
develop itself in act, since the Severities remained, though mitigated;
some portion of them being necessary to prevent the fragments of the
integuments from ascending. These were also left, because connection of
two is necessary to generation. And this necessity for the existence of
Severity is the mystery of the pleasure and warmth of the generative
appetite; and thence Love between husband and wife.

If the Deity, says the _Introduction_, had not created worlds and then
destroyed them, there could have been no evil in the world, but all
things must have been good. There would have been neither reward nor
punishment in the world. There would have been no merit in
righteousness, for the Good is known by the evil, nor would there have
been fruitfulness or multiplication in the world. If all carnal
concupiscence were enchained for three days in the mouth of the great
abyss, the egg of one of the days would be wanting to the sick man. In
time to come it will be called Laban [Hebrew: לבן--_white_], because it
will be whitened of its impurity, and will return to the realm Israel,
and they will pray the Lord to give them the appetite of carnal
concupiscence, for the begetting of children.

The intention of God was, when He created the world, that His creatures
should recognize His existence. Therefore He created evils, to afflict
them withal when they should sin, and Light and Blessing to reward the
just. And therefore man necessarily has free-will and election, since
Good and Evil are in the World.

And these kings died, says the _Commentary_, because the condition of
equilibrium did not yet exist, nor was Adam Kadmon formed male and
female. They were not in contact with what was alive: nor had any root
in Adam Kadmon; nor was Wisdom which outflowed from Him, their root, nor
did they connect with it. For all these were pure mercies and most
simple Love; but those were rigorous judgments. Whence face looked not
toward face; nor the Father toward the Mother, because from her
proceeded judgments. Nor Macroprosopos toward Microprosopos. And Regnum,
the last numeration, was empty and inane. It has nothing of itself; and,
as it were, was nothing, receiving nothing from them. Its need was, to
receive Love from the Male; for it is mere rigor and judgment; and the
Love and Rigor must temper each other, to produce creation, and its
multitudes above and below. For it was made to be inhabited; and when
rigorous judgments rule in it, it is inane because its processes cannot
be carried on.

Wherefore the Balance must needs be instituted, that there might be a
root above, so that judgments might be restored and tempered, and live
and not again die. And Seven Conformations descend; and all things
become in equilibrium, and the needle of the Balance is the root above.

In the world Yezirah, says the _Pneumatica Kabalistica_, [Hebrew: י]
denotes Kether; [Hebrew: יה], Hakemah and Binah; and [Hebrew: יהו],
Gedulah, Geburah, and Tephareth; and thus Vau is Beauty and Harmony. The
_Man_ is Hakemah; the _Eagle_, Binah; the _Lion_, Gedulah; and the _Ox_,
Geburah. And the mysterious circle is thus formed by the Sohar and all
the Kabalists: Michael and the face of the Lion are on the South, and
the right hand, with the letter [Hebrew: י], Yod, and Water; Gabriel and
the face of the Ox, on the North, and left hand, with the first [Hebrew:
ה] of the Tetragrammaton and Fire; Uriel and the face of the Eagle, on
the East and forward, with [ו] and Air; and Raphael and the face of the
Man, on the West, and backward with the last [Hebrew: ה], and Earth. In
the same order, the four letters represent the four worlds.

Rabbi Schimeon Ben Jochai says that the four animals of the Mysterious
Chariot, whose wheels are Netsach and Hōd, are Gedulah, whose face is
the Lion's; Geburah, with that of the Ox; Tephareth, with that of the
Eagle; and Malakoth, with that of the Man.

The Seven lower Sephiroth, says the _Æsch Mezareph_, will represent
Seven Metals; Gedulah and Geburah, Silver and Gold; Tephareth, Iron;
Netsach and Hod, Tin and Copper; Yesod, Lead; and Malakoth will be the
metallic Woman and Morn of the Sages, the field wherein are to be sowed
the Seeds of the Secret Minerals, to wit, the Water of Gold; but in
these such mysteries are concealed as no tongue can utter.

The word [Hebrew: אמש], Amas, is composed of the initials of the three
Hebrew words that signify Air, Water, and Fire; by which, say the
Kabalists, are denoted Benignity, Judicial Rigor, and Mercy or
Compassion mediating between them.

Malakoth, says the _Apparatus_, is called _Haikal_, Temple or Palace,
because it is the Palace of the Degree Tephareth, which is concealed and
contained in it, and Haikal denotes the place in which all things are
contained.

For the better understanding of the Kabalah, remember that Kether, or
the Crown, is treated of as a person, composed of the ten Numerations,
and as such termed Arik Anpin, or Macroprosopos:

That Hakemah is a person, and termed _Abba_, or _Father_:

That Binah is a person, and termed _Mother, Imma_:

That Tephareth, including all the Nurnerations from Khased or Gedulah to
Yesod, is a person, called Seir Anpin, or Microprosopos. These
Numerations are six in number, and are represented by the interlaced
triangle, or the Seal of Solomon.

And Malakoth is a person, and called the wife of Microprosopos. Vau
represents the Beauty or Harmony, consisting of the six parts which
constitute Seir Anpin.

The wife, Malakoth, is said to be _behind_ the husband, Seir, and to
have no other cognition of him. And this is thus explained: That every
cognizable object is to be known in two ways: _à priori_, which is when
it is known by means of its cause, or of itself; or, _à posteriori_ when
it is known by its effects. The most nearly perfect mode of cognition
is, when the intellect knows the thing itself, in itself, and through
itself. But if it knows the thing by its similitude or idea, or species
separate from it, or by its effects and operations, the cognition is
much feebler and more imperfect. And it is thus only that Regnum, the
wife of Seir, knows her husband, until face is turned to face, when they
unite, and she has the more nearly perfect knowledge. For then the
Deity, as limited and manifested in Seir and the Universe are one.

Vau is Tephareth, considered as the Unity in which are the six members,
of which itself is one. Tephareth, Beauty, is the column which supports
the world, symbolized by the column of the junior Warden in the Blue
Lodges. The world was first created by judgment: and as it could not so
subsist, Mercy was conjoined with Judgment, and the Divine Mercies
sustain the Universe.

God, says the _Idra Suta_, formed all things in the form of male and
female, since otherwise the continuance of things was impossible. The
All-embracing Wisdom, issuing and shining from the Most Holy Ancient,
shines not otherwise than as male and female. Wisdom as the Father,
Intelligence the Mother, are in equilibrium as male and female, and they
are conjoined, and one shines in the other. Then they generate, and are
expanded in the Truth. Then the two are the Perfection of all things,
when they are coupled; and when the Son is in them, the summary of all
things is in one.

These things are intrusted only to the Holy Superiors, who have entered
and gone out and known the ways of the Most Holy God, so as not to err
in them, to the right hand or to the left. For these things are hidden;
and the lofty Holinesses shine in them, as light flows from the splendor
of a lamp.

These things are committed only to those who have entered and not
withdrawn; for he who has not done so had better never have been born.

All things are comprehended in the letters Vau and He; and all are one
system; and these are the letters, [Hebrew: תבונה], Tabunah,
Intelligence.

[Illustration: of letter 'X']



XXIX.

GRAND SCOTTISH KNIGHT OF ST. ANDREW.


A miraculous tradition, something like that connected with the _labarum_
of Constantine, hallows the Ancient Cross of St. Andrew. Hungus, who in
the ninth century reigned over the Picts in Scotland, is said to have
seen in a vision, on the night before a battle, the Apostle Saint
Andrew, who promised him the victory; and for an assured token thereof,
he told him that there should appear over the Pictish host, in the air,
such a fashioned cross as he had suffered upon. Hungus, awakened,
looking up at the sky, saw the promised cross, as did all of both
armies; and Hungus and the Picts, after rendering thanks to the Apostle
for their victory, and making their offerings with humble devotion,
vowed that from thenceforth, as well they as their posterity, in time of
war, would wear a cross of St. Andrew for their badge and cognizance.

John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, says that this cross appeared to Achaius,
King of the Scots, and Hungus, King of the Picts, the night before the
battle was fought betwixt them and Athelstane, King of England, as they
were on their knees at prayer.

Every cross of Knighthood is a symbol of the nine qualities of a Knight
of St. Andrew of Scotland; for every order of chivalry required of its
votaries the same virtues and the same excellencies.

Humility, Patience, and Self-denial are the three essential qualities of
a Knight of St. Andrew of Scotland. The Cross, sanctified by the blood
of the holy ones who have died upon it; the Cross, which Jesus of
Nazareth bore, fainting, along the streets of Jerusalem and up to
Calvary, upon which He cried, "Not My will, O Father! but Thine be
done," is an unmistakable and eloquent symbol of these three virtues. He
suffered upon it, because He consorted with and taught the poor and
lowly, and found His disciples among the fishermen of Galilee and the
despised publicans. His life was one of Humility, Patience, and
Self-denial.

The Hospitallers and Templars took upon themselves vows of obedience,
poverty, and chastity. The Lamb, which became the device of the Seal of
the Order of the Poor Fellow Soldiery of the Temple of Solomon, conveyed
the same lessons of humility and self-denial as the original device of
two Knights riding a single horse. The Grand Commander warned every
candidate not to be induced to enter the Order by a vain hope of
enjoying earthly pomp and splendor. He told him that he would have to
endure many things, sorely against his inclinations; and that he would
be compelled to give up his own will, and submit entirely to that of his
superiors.

The religious Houses of the Hospitallers, despoiled by Henry the
Eighth's worthy daughter, Elizabeth, because they would not take the
oath to maintain her supremacy, had been Alms-houses, and Dispensaries,
and Foundling-asyla, relieving the State of many orphan and outcast
children, and ministering to their necessities, God's ravens in the
wilderness, bread and flesh in the morning, bread and flesh in the
evening. They had been Inns to the wayfaring man, who heard from afar
the sound of the Vesper-bell, inviting him to repose and devotion at
once, and who might sing his matins with the Morning Star, and go on his
way rejoicing. And the Knights were no less distinguished by bravery in
battle, than by tenderness and zeal in their ministrations to the sick
and dying.

The Knights of St. Andrew vowed to defend all orphans, maidens, and
widows of good family, and wherever they heard of murderers, robbers, or
masterful thieves who oppressed the people, to bring them to the laws,
to the best of their power.

"If fortune fail you," so ran the vows of Rouge-Croix, "in divers lands
or countries wherever you go or ride that you find any gentleman of name
and arms, which hath lost goods, in worship and Knighthood, in the
King's service, or in any other place of worship, and is fallen into
poverty, you shall aid, and support, and succor him, in that you may;
and he ask of you your goods to his sustenance, you shall give him part
of such goods as God hath sent you to your power, and as you may bear."

Thus CHARITY and GENEROSITY are even _more_ essential qualities of a
true and gentle Knight, and have been so in all ages; and so also hath
CLEMENCY. It is a mark of a noble nature to spare the conquered. Valor
is then best tempered, when it can turn out a stern fortitude into the
mild strains of pity, which never shines more brightly than when she is
clad in steel. A martial man, compassionate, shall conquer both in peace
and war; and by a twofold way, get victory with honor. The most famed
men in the world have had in them both courage and compassion. An enemy
reconciled hath a greater value than the long train of captives of a
Roman triumph.

VIRTUE, TRUTH, and HONOR are the three MOST essential qualities of a
Knight of St. Andrew. "Ye shall love God above all things, and be
steadfast in the Faith," it was said to the Knights, in their charge,
"and ye shall be true unto your Sovereign Lord, and true to your word
and promise. Also, ye shall sit in no place where that any judgment
should be given wrongfully against any body, to your knowledge."

The law hath not power to strike the virtuous, nor can fortune subvert
the wise. Virtue and Wisdom, only, perfect and defend man. Virtue's
garment is a sanctuary so sacred, that even Princes dare not strike the
man that is thus robed. It is the livery of the King of Heaven. It
protects us when we are unarmed; and is an armor that we cannot lose,
unless we be false to ourselves. It is the tenure by which we hold of
Heaven, without which we are but outlaws, that cannot claim protection.
Nor is there wisdom without virtue, but only a cunning way of procuring
our own undoing.

                  Peace is nigh
    Where Wisdom's voice has found a listening heart.
    Amid the howl of more than winter storms,
    The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours,
    Already on the wing.

Sir Launcelot thought no chivalry equal to that of Virtue. This word
means not continence only, but chiefly manliness, and so includes what
in the old English was called _souffrance_, that patient endurance which
is like the emerald, ever green and flowering; and also that other
virtue, _droicture_, uprightness, a virtue so strong and so puissant,
that by means of it all earthly things almost attain to be unchangeable.
Even our swords are formed to remind us of the Cross, and you and any
other of us may live to show how much men bear and do not die; for this
world is a place of sorrow and tears, of great evils and a constant
calamity, and if we would win true honor in it, we must permit no virtue
of a Knight to become unfamiliar to us, as men's friends, coldly
entreated and not greatly valued, become mere ordinary acquaintances.

We must not view with impatience or anger those who injure us; for it is
very inconsistent with philosophy, and particularly with the Divine
Wisdom that should govern every Prince Adept, to betray any great
concern about the evils which the world, which the vulgar, whether in
robes or tatters, can inflict upon the brave. The favor of God and the
love of our Brethren rest upon a basis which the strength of malice
cannot overthrow; and with these and a generous temper and noble
equanimity, we have everything. To be consistent with our professions as
Masons, to retain the dignity of our nature, the consciousness of our
own honor, the spirit of the high chivalry that is our boast, we must
disdain the evils that are only material and bodily, and therefore can
be no bigger than a blow or a cozenage, than a wound or a dream.

Look to the ancient days, Sir E..., for excellent examples of VIRTUE,
TRUTH, and HONOR, and imitate with a noble emulation the Ancient
Knights, the first Hospitallers and Templars, and Bayard, and Sydney,
and Saint Louis; in the words of Pliny to his friend Maximus, Revere the
ancient glory, and that old age which in man is venerable, in cities
sacred. Honor antiquity and great deeds, and detract nothing from the
dignity and liberty of any one. If those who now pretend to be the great
and mighty, the learned and wise of the world, shall agree in condemning
the memory of the heroic Knights of former ages, and in charging with
folly us who think that they should be held in eternal remembrance, and
that we should defend them from an evil hearing, do you remember that if
these who now claim to rule and teach the world should condemn or scorn
your poor tribute of fidelity, still it is for you to bear therewith
modestly, and yet not to be ashamed, since a day will come when these
who now scorn those who were of infinitely higher and finer natures than
they are, will be pronounced to have lived poor and pitiful lives, and
the world will make haste to forget them.

But neither must you believe that, even in this very different age, of
commerce and trade, of the vast riches of many, and the poverty of
thousands, of thriving towns and tenement houses swarming with paupers,
of churches with rented pews, and theatres, opera-houses, custom-houses,
and banks, of steam and telegraph, of shops and commercial palaces, of
manufactories and trades-unions, the Gold-room and the Stock Exchange,
of newspapers, elections, Congresses, and Legislatures, of the frightful
struggle for wealth and the constant wrangle for place and power, of the
worship paid to the children of mammon, and covetousness of official
station, there are no men of the antique stamp for you to revere, no
heroic and knightly souls, that preserve their nobleness and equanimity
in the chaos of conflicting passions, of ambition and baseness that
welters around them.

It is quite true that Government tends always to become a conspiracy
against liberty; or, where votes give place, to fall habitually into
such hands that little which is noble or chivalric is found among those
who rule and lead the people. It is true that men, in this present age,
become distinguished for other things, and may have name and fame, and
flatterers and lacqueys, and the oblation of flattery, who would, in a
knightly age, have been despised for the want in them of all true
gentility and courage; and that such men are as likely as any to be
voted for by the multitude, who rarely love or discern or receive truth;
who run after fortune, hating what is oppressed, and ready to worship
the prosperous; who love accusation and hate apologies; and who are
always glad to hear and ready to believe evil of those who care not for
their favor and seek not their applause.

But no country can ever be wholly without men of the old heroic strain
and stamp, whose word no man will dare to doubt, whose virtue shines
resplendent in all calamities and reverses and amid all temptations, and
whose honor scintillates and glitters as purely and perfectly as the
diamond--men who are not wholly the slaves of the material occupations
and pleasures of life, wholly engrossed in trade, in the breeding of
cattle, in the framing and enforcing of revenue regulations, in the
chicanery of the law, the objects of political envy, in the base trade
of the lower literature, or in the heartless, hollow vanities of an
eternal dissipation. Every generation, in every country, will bequeath
to those who succeed it splendid examples and great images of the dead,
to be admired and imitated; there were such among the Romans, under the
basest Emperors; such in England when the Long Parliament ruled; such in
France during its Saturnalia of irreligion and murder, and some such
have made the annals of America illustrious.

When things tend to that state and condition in which, in any country
under the sun, the management of its affairs and the customs of its
people shall require men to entertain a disbelief in the virtue and
honor of those who make and those who are charged to execute the laws;
when there shall be everywhere a spirit of suspicion and scorn of all
who hold or seek office, or have amassed wealth; when falsehood shall no
longer dishonor a man, and oaths give no assurance of true testimony,
and one man hardly expect another to keep faith with him, or to utter
his real sentiments, or to be true to any party or to any cause when
another approaches him with a bribe; when no one shall expect what he
says to be printed without additions, perversions, and
misrepresentations; when public misfortunes shall be turned to private
profit, the press pander to licentiousness, the pulpit ring with
political harangues, long prayers to God, eloquently delivered to
admiring auditors, be written out for publication, like poems and
political speeches; when the uprightness of judges shall be doubted, and
the honesty of legislators be a standing jest; then men may come to
doubt whether the old days were not better than the new, the Monastery
than the Opera Bouffe, the little chapel than the drinking-saloon, the
Convents than the buildings as large as they, without their antiquity,
without their beauty, without their holiness, true Acherusian Temples,
where the passer-by hears from within the never-ceasing din and clang
and clashing of machinery, and where, when the bell rings, it is to call
wretches to their work and not to their prayers; where, says an animated
writer, they keep up a perennial laudation of the Devil, before furnaces
which are never suffered to cool.

It has been well said, that whatever withdraws us from the power of our
senses, whatever makes the Past, the Distant, or the Future, predominate
over the Present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings. The
modern rivals of the German Spa, with their flaunting pretences and
cheap finery, their follies and frivolities, their chronicles of dances
and inelegant feasts, and their bulletins of women's names and dresses,
are poor substitutes for the Monastery and Church which our ancestors
would have built in the deep sequestered valleys, shut up between rugged
mountains and forests of sombre pine; and a man of meditative temper,
learned, and of poetic feeling, would be glad if he could exchange the
showy hotel, amid the roar and tumult of the city, or the pretentious
tavern of the country-town, for one old humble Monastery by the wayside,
where he could refresh himself and his horse without having to fear
either pride, impertinence, or knavery, or to pay for pomp, glitter, and
gaudy ornamentation; then where he could make his orisons in a church
which resounded with divine harmony, and there were no pews for wealth
to isolate itself within; where he could behold the poor happy and
edified and strengthened with the thoughts of Heaven; where he could
then converse with learned and holy and gentle men, and before he took
his departure could exalt and calm his spirits by hearing the evening
song.

Even Free-Masonry has so multiplied its members that its obligations are
less regarded than the simple promises which men make to one another
upon the streets and in the markets. It clamors for public notice and
courts notoriety by scores of injudicious journals; it wrangles in
these, or, incorporated by law, carries its controversies into the
Courts. Its elections are, in some Orients, conducted with all the heat
and eagerness, the office-seeking and management of political struggles
for place. And an empty pomp, with semi-military dress and drill, of
peaceful citizens, glittering with painted banners, plumes, and jewels,
gaudy and ostentatious, commends to the public favor and female
admiration an Order that challenges comparison with the noble Knights,
the heroic soldiery encased in steel and mail, stern despisers of danger
and death, who made themselves immortal memories, and won Jerusalem from
the infidels and fought at Acre and Ascalon, and were the bulwark of
Christendom against the Saracenic legions that swarmed after the green
banner of the Prophet Mohammed.

If you, Sir E..., would be respectable as a Knight, and not a mere
tinselled pretender and Knight of straw, you must practise, and be
diligent and ardent in the practice of, the virtues you have professed
in this Degree. How can a Mason vow to be tolerant, and straightway
denounce another for his political opinions? How vow to be zealous and
constant in the service of the Order, and be as useless to it as if he
were dead and buried? What does the symbolism of the Compass and Square
profit him, if his sensual appetites and baser passions are not governed
by, but domineer over his moral sense and reason, the animal over the
divine, the earthly over the spiritual, both points of the compass
_remaining_ below the Square? What a hideous mockery to call one
"Brother," whom he maligns to the Profane, lends money unto at usury,
defrauds in trade, or plunders at law by chicanery?

VIRTUE, TRUTH, HONOR!--possessing these and never proving false to your
vows, you will be worthy to call yourself a Knight, to whom Sir John
Chandos might, if living, give his hand, and whom St. Louis and
Falkland, Tancred and Baldassar Castiglione would recognise as worthy of
their friendship.

Chivalry, a noble Spaniard said, is a religious Order, and there are
Knights in the fraternity of Saints in Heaven. Therefore do you here,
and for all time to come, lay aside all uncharitable and repining
feeling; be proof henceforward against the suggestions of undisciplined
passion and inhuman zeal; learn to hate the vices and not the vicious;
be content with the discharge of the duties which your Masonic and
Knightly professions require; be governed by the old principles of honor
and chivalry, and reverence with constancy that Truth which is as sacred
and immutable as God Himself. And above all, remember always, that
jealousy is not our life, nor disputation our end, nor disunion our
health, nor revenge our happiness; but loving-kindness is all these,
greater than Hope, greater than Faith, which can remove mountains,
properly the only thing which God requires of us, and in the possession
of which lies the fulfillment of all our duties.

[_By Ill. Bro. Rev. W.W. Lord_, 32°.]

We are constrained to confess it to be true, that men, in this Age of
Iron, worship gods of wood and iron and brass, the work of their own
hands. The Steam-Engine is the pre-eminent god of the nineteenth
century, whose idolaters are everywhere, and those, who wield its
tremendous power securely account themselves gods, everywhere in the
civilized world.

Others confess it everywhere, and we must confess here, how reluctantly
soever, that the age which we represent is narrowed and not enlarged by
its discoveries, and has lost a larger world than it has gained. If we
cannot go as far as the satirist who says that our self-adored century

    --its broad clown's back turns broadly on the glory of the stars,

we can go with him when he adds,

We are gods by our own reckoning, and may as well shut up our temples
And wield on amidst the incense-steam, the thunder of our cars:
For we throw out acclamations of self-thanking, self-admiring,
With, at every step, "Run faster, O the wondrous, wondrous age!"
Little heeding if our souls are wrought as nobly as our iron,
Or if angels will commend us at the goal of pilgrimage.

Deceived by their increased but still very imperfect knowledge and
limited mastery of the brute forces of nature, men imagine that they
have discovered the secrets of Divine Wisdom, and do not hesitate, in
their own thoughts, to put human prudence in the place of the Divine.
Destruction was denounced by the Prophets against Tyre and Sidon,
Babylon, and Damascus, and Jerusalem, as a consequence of the sins of
their people; but if fire now consumes or earthquake shatters or the
tornado crushes a great city, those are scoffed at as fanatics and
sneered at for indulging in cant, or rebuked for Pharisaic
uncharitableness, who venture to believe and say that there are divine
retributions and God's judgment in the ruin wrought by His mighty
agencies.

Science, wandering in error, struggles to remove God's Providence to a
distance from us and the material Universe, and to substitute for its
supervision and care and constant overseeing, what it calls
Forces--Forces of Nature--Forces of Matter. It will not see that the
Forces of Nature are the varied actions of God. Hence it becomes
antagonistic to all Religion, and to all the old Faith that has from the
beginning illuminated human souls and constituted their consciousness of
their own dignity, their divine origin, and their immortality; that
Faith which is the _Light_ by which the human soul is enabled, as it
were, to see itself.

It is not one religion only, but the basis of all religions, the _Truth_
that is in all religions, even the religious creed of Masonry, that is
in danger. For all religions have owed all of life that they have had,
and their very being, to the foundation on which they were reared; the
proposition, deemed undeniable and an axiom, that the Providence of God
rules directly in all the affairs and changes of material things. The
Science of the age has its hands upon the pillars of the Temple, and
rocks it to its foundation. As yet its destructive efforts have but torn
from the ancient structure the worm-eaten fret-work of superstition, and
shaken down some incoherent additions--owl-inhabited turrets of
ignorance, and massive props that supported nothing. The structure
itself will be overthrown, when, in the vivid language of a living
writer, "Human reason leaps into the throne of God and waves her torch
over the ruins of the Universe."

Science deals only with phenomena, and is but charlatanism when it
babbles about the powers or causes that produce these, or what the
things are, in essence, of which it gives us merely the names. It no
more knows what Light or Sound or Perfume _is_, than the Aryan
cattle-herders did, when they counted the Dawn and Fire, Flame and Light
and Heat as gods. And that Atheistic Science is not even half-science,
which ascribes the Universe and its powers and forces to a system of
natural laws or to an inherent energy of Nature, or to causes unknown,
existing and operating independently of a Divine and Supra-natural
power.

That theory would be greatly fortified, if science were always capable
of protecting life and property, and, with anything like the _certainty_
of which it boasts, securing human interests even against the
destructive agencies that man himself develops in his endeavors to
subserve them. Fire, the fourth element, as the old philosophers deemed
it, is his most useful and abject servant. Why cannot man prevent his
ever breaking that ancient indenture, old as Prometheus, old as Adam?
Why can he not be certain that at any moment his terrible subject may
not break forth and tower up into his master, tyrant, destroyer? It is
because it also is a power of nature; which, in ultimate trial of
forces, is always superior to man. It is also because, in a different
sense from that in which it is the servant of man, it is the servant of
Him Who makes His ministers a flame of fire, and Who is over nature, as
nature is over man.

There are powers of nature which man does not even attempt to check or
control. Naples does nothing against Vesuvius. Valparaiso only trembles
with the trembling earth before the coming earthquake. The sixty
thousand people who went down alive into the grave when Lisbon buried
her population under both earth and sea had no knowledge of the causes,
and no possible control over the power, that effected their
destruction.

But here the servant, and, in a sense, the creature of man, the drudge
of kitchen and factory, the humble slave of the lamp, engaged in his
most servile employment, appearing as a little point of flame, or
perhaps a feeble spark, suddenly snaps his brittle chain, breaks from
his prison, and leaps with destructive fury, as if from the very bosom
of Hell, upon the doomed dwellings of fifty thousand human beings, each
of whom, but a moment before, conceived himself his master. And those
daring fire-brigades, with their water-artillery, his conquerors, it
seemed, upon so many midnight fields, stand paralyzed in the presence of
their conqueror.

In other matters relative to human safety and interests we have observed
how confident science becomes upon the strength of some slight success
in the war of man with nature, and how much inclined to put itself in
the place of Providence, which, by the very force of the term, is the
only absolute science. Near the beginning of this century, for instance,
medical and sanitary science had made, in the course of a few years,
great and wonderful progress. The great plague which wasted Europe in
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and reappeared in the
seventeenth, had been identified with a disease which yields to
enlightened treatment, and its ancient virulence was attributed to
ignorance of hygiene, and the filthy habits of a former age. Another
fatal and disfiguring scourge had to a great extent been checked by the
discovery of vaccination. From Sangrado to Sydenham, from Paracelsus to
Jenner, the healing art had indeed taken a long stride. The Faculty
might be excused had it then said, "Man is mortal, disease will be often
fatal; but there shall be no more unresisted and unnecessary slaughter
by infectious disease, no more general carnage, no more carnivals of
terror and high festivals of death."

The conceited boast would hardly have died upon the lip, when, from the
mysterious depths of remotest India a spectre stalked forth, or rather a
monster crept, more fearful than human eye had ever yet beheld. And not
with surer instinct does the tiger of the jungles, where this terrible
pestilence was born, catch the scent of blood upon the air, than did
this invisible Destroyer, this fearful agent of Almighty Power, this
tremendous Consequence of some Sufficient Cause, scent the tainted
atmosphere of Europe and turn Westward his devastating march. The
millions of dead left in his path through Asia proved nothing. They were
unarmed, ignorant, defenceless, unaided by science, undefended by art.
The cholera was to them inscrutable and irresistible as Azrael, the
Angel of Death.

But it came to Europe and swept the halls of science as it had swept the
Indian village and the Persian khan. It leaped as noiselessly and
descended as destructively upon the population of many a high-towered,
wide-paved, purified, and disinfected city of the West as upon the
Pariahs of Tanjore and the filthy streets of Stamboul. In Vienna, Paris,
London, the scenes of the great plague were re-enacted.

    The sick man started in his bed,
      The watcher leaped upon the floor,
    At the cry, Bring out your dead,
      The cart is at the door!

Was _this_ the judgment of Almighty God? He would be bold who should say
that it was; he would be bolder who should say it was not. To Paris, at
least, that European Babylon, how often have the further words of the
prophet to the daughter of the Chaldæans, the lady of kingdoms, been
fulfilled? "Thy wisdom and thy knowledge have perverted thee, and thou
hast said in thy heart I am and none else beside me. Therefore shall
evil come upon thee; thou shalt not know whence it riseth; and mischief
shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off; desolation
shall come upon thee suddenly."

And as to London--it looked like judgment, if it be true that the
Asiatic cholera had its origin in English avarice and cruelty, as they
suppose who trace it to the tax which Warren Hastings, when
Governor-General of India, imposed on salt, thus cutting off its use
from millions of the vegetable-eating races of the East: just as that
disease whose spectral shadow lies always upon America's threshold,
originated in the avarice and cruelty of the slave-trade, translating
the African coast fever to the congenial climate of the West Indies and
Southern America--the yellow fever of the former, and the _vomito negro_
of the latter.

But we should be slow to make inferences from our petty human logic to
the ethics of the Almighty. Whatever the cruelty of the slave-trade, or
the severity of slavery on the continents or islands of America, we
should still, in regard to its supposed consequences, be wiser, perhaps,
to say with that great and simple Casuist Who gave the world the
Christian religion: "Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above
all the Galileans because they suffered such things? or those eighteen
upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and slew them, think ye that they
were sinners above all the men that dwelt in Jerusalem?"

Retribution bars retaliation, even in words. A city shattered, burned,
destroyed, desolate, a land wasted, humiliated, made a desert and a
wilderness, or wearing the thorny crown of humiliation and subjugation,
is invested with the sacred prerogatives and immunities of the dead. The
base human revenge of exultation at its fall and ruin should shrink back
abashed in the presence of the infinite Divine chastisement.
"Forgiveness is wiser than revenge," our Freemasonry teaches us, "and it
is better to love than to hate." Let him who sees in great calamities
the hand of God, be silent, and fear His judgments.

Men are great or small in stature as it pleases God. But their nature is
great or small as it pleases themselves. Men are not born, some with
great souls and some with little souls. One by taking thought cannot add
to his stature, but he can enlarge his soul. By an act of the will he
can make himself a moral giant, or dwarf himself to a pigmy.

There are two natures in man, the higher and the lower, the great and
the mean, the noble and the ignoble; and he can and must, by his own
voluntary act, identify himself with the one or with the other.
Freemasonry is continual effort to exalt the nobler nature over the
ignoble, the spiritual over the material, the divine in man over the
human. In this great effort and purpose the chivalric Degrees concur and
co-operate with those that teach the magnificent lessons of morality and
philosophy. Magnanimity, mercy, clemency, a forgiving temper, are
virtues indispensable to the character of a perfect Knight. When the low
and evil principle in our nature says, "Do not give; reserve your
beneficence for impoverished friends, or at least unobjectionable
strangers, Do not bestow it on successful enemies,--friends only in
virtue, of our misfortunes," the diviner principle whose voice spake by
the despised Galilean says, "Do good to them that hate you, for if ye
love them (only) who love you, what reward have you? Do not publicans
and sinners the same"--that is, the tax-gathers and wicked oppressors,
armed Romans and renegade Jews, whom ye count your enemies?

[Illustration: two banners]



XXX.

KNIGHT KADOSH.


We often profit more by our enemies than by our friends. _"We support
ourselves only on that which resists,"_ and owe our success to
opposition. The best friends of Masonry in America were the Anti-Masons
of 1826, and at the same time they were its worst enemies. Men are but
the automata of Providence, and it uses the demagogue, the fanatic, and
the knave, a common trinity in Republics, as its tools and instruments
to effect that of which they do not dream, and which they imagine
themselves commissioned to prevent.

The Anti-Masons, traitors and perjurers some, and some mere political
knaves, purified Masonry by persecution, and so proved to be its
benefactors; for that which is persecuted, grows. To them its present
popularity is due, the cheapening of its Degrees, the invasion of its
Lodges, that are no longer Sanctuaries, by the multitude; its pomp and
pageantry and overdone display.

An hundred years ago it had become known that the [Hebrew: קדש] were the
Templars under a veil, and therefore the Degree was proscribed, and,
ceasing to be worked, became a mere brief and formal ceremony, under
another name. Now, from the tomb in which after his murders he rotted,
Clement the Fifth howls against the successors of his victims, in the
Allocution of Pio Nono against the Free-Masons. The ghosts of the dead
Templars haunt the Vatican and disturb the slumbers of the paralyzed
Papacy, which, dreading the dead, shrieks out its excommunications and
impotent anathemas against the living. It is a declaration of war, and
was needed to arouse apathy and inertness to action.

An enemy of the Templars shall tell us the secret of this Papal
hostility against an Order that has existed for centuries in despite of
its anathemas, and has its Sanctuaries and Asyla even in Rome.

It will be easy, as we read, to separate the false from the true, the
audacious conjectures from the simple facts.

"A power that ruled without antagonism and without concurrence, and
consequently without control, proved fatal to the Sacerdotal Royalties;
while the Republics, on the other hand, had perished by the conflict of
liberties and franchises, which, in the absence of all duty
hierarchically sanctioned and enforced, had soon become mere tyrannies,
rivals one of the other. To find a stable medium between these two
abysses, the idea of the Christian Hierophants was to create a society
devoted to abnegation by solemn vows, protected by severe regulations;
which should be recruited by initiation, and which, sole depositary of
the great religious and social secrets, should make Kings and Pontiffs,
without exposing it to the corruptions of Power. In that was the secret
of that kingdom of Jesus Christ, which, without being of this world,
would govern all its grandeurs.

"This idea presided at the foundation of the great religious orders, so
often at war with the secular authorities, ecclesiastical or civil. Its
realization was also the dream of the dissident sects of Gnostics or
Illuminati who pretended to connect their faith with the primitive
tradition of the Christianity of Saint John. It at length became a
menace for the Church and Society, when a rich and dissolute Order,
initiated in the mysterious doctrines of the Kabalah, seemed disposed to
turn against legitimate authority the conservative principle of
Hierarchy, and threatened the entire world with an immense revolution.

"The Templars, whose history is so imperfectly known, were those
terrible conspirators. In 1118, nine Knights Crusaders in the East,
among whom were Geoffroi de Saint-Omer and Hugues de Payens, consecrated
themselves to religion, and took an oath between the hands of the
Patriarch of Constantinople, a See always secretly or openly hostile to
that of Rome from the time of Photius. The avowed object of the Templars
was to protect the Christians who came to visit the Holy Places: their
secret object was the re-building of the Temple of Solomon on the model
prophesied by Ezekiel.

"This re-building, formally predicted by the Judaïzing Mystics of the
earlier ages, had become the secret dream of the Patriarchs of the
Orient. The Temple of Solomon, re-built and consecrated to the Catholic
worship would become, in effect, the Metropolis of the Universe; the
East would prevail over the West, and the Patriarchs of Constantinople
would possess themselves of the Papal power.

"The Templars, or _Poor Fellow-Soldiery of the Holy House of the Temple_
intended to be re-built, took as their models, in the Bible, the
Warrior-Masons of Zorobabel, who worked, holding the sword in one hand
and the trowel in the other. Therefore it was that the Sword and the
Trowel were the insignia of the Templars, who subsequently, as will be
seen, concealed themselves under the name of _Brethren Masons_. [This
name, _Frères Maçons_ in the French, adopted by way of secret reference
to the Builders of the Second Temple, was corrupted in English into
_Free_-Masons, as _Pythagore de Crotone_ was into Peter _Gower_ of
_Groton_ in England. _Khairūm_ or _Khūr-ūm_, (a name mis-rendered into
_Hiram_) from an artificer in brass and other metals, became the Chief
Builder of the _Haikal Kadosh_, the Holy House, of the Temple, the Ίερος
Δομος; and the words _Bonai_ and _Banaim_ yet appear in the Masonic
Degrees, meaning Builder and Builders.]

"The trowel of the Templars is quadruple, and the triangular plates of
it are arranged in the form of a cross, making the Kabalistic pantacle
known by the name of the Cross of the East. The Knight of the East, and
the Knight of the East and West, have in their titles secret allusions
to the Templars of whom they were at first the successors.

"The secret thought of Hugues de Payens, in founding his Order, was not
exactly to serve the ambition of the Patriarchs of Constantinople. There
existed at that period in the East a Sect of Johannite Christians, who
claimed to be the only true Initiates into the real mysteries of the
religion of the Saviour. They pretended to know the real history of
YESUS the ANOINTED, and, adopting in part the Jewish traditions and the
tales of the Talmud, they held that the facts recounted in the Evangels
are but allegories, the key of which Saint John gives, in saying that
the world might be filled with the books that could be written upon the
words and deeds of Jesus Christ; words which, they thought, would be
only a ridiculous exaggeration, if he were not speaking of an allegory
and a legend, that might be varied and prolonged to infinity.

"The Johannites ascribed to Saint John the foundation of their Secret
Church, and the Grand Pontiffs of the Sect assumed the title of
_Christos_, _Anointed_, or _Consecrated_, and claimed to have succeeded
one another from Saint John by an uninterrupted succession of pontifical
powers. He who, at the period of the foundation of the Order of the
Temple, claimed these imaginary prerogatives, was named THEOCLET; he
knew HUGUES DE PAYENS, he initiated him into the Mysteries and hopes of
his pretended church, he seduced him by the notions of Sovereign
Priesthood and Supreme royalty, and finally designated him as his
successor.

"Thus the Order of Knights of the Temple was at its very origin devoted
to the cause of opposition to the tiara of Rome and the crowns of Kings,
and the Apostolate of Kabalistic Gnosticism was vested in its chiefs.
For Saint John himself was the Father of the Gnostics, and the current
translation of his polemic against the heretical of his Sect and the
pagans who denied that Christ was the Word, is throughout a
misrepresentation, or misunderstanding at least, of the whole Spirit of
that Evangel.

"The tendencies and tenets of the Order were enveloped in profound
mystery, and it externally professed the most perfect orthodoxy. The
Chiefs alone knew the aim of the Order: the Subalterns followed them
without distrust.

"To acquire influence and wealth, then to intrigue, and at need to
fight, to establish the Johannite or Gnostic and Kabalistic dogma, were
the object and means proposed to the initiated Brethren. The Papacy and
the rival monarchies, they said to them, are sold and bought in these
days, become corrupt, and to-morrow, perhaps, will destroy each other.
All that will become the heritage of the Temple: the World will soon
come to us for its Sovereigns and Pontiffs. We shall constitute the
equilibrium of the Universe, and be rulers over the Masters of the
World.

"The Templars, like all other Secret Orders and Associations, had two
doctrines, one concealed and reserved for the Masters, which was
Johannism; the other public, which was the _Roman Catholic_. Thus they
deceived the adversaries whom they sought to supplant. Hence
Free-Masonry, vulgarly imagined to have begun with the Dionysian
Architects or the German Stone-workers, adopted Saint John the
Evangelist as one of its patrons, associating with him, in order not to
arouse the suspicions of Rome, Saint John the Baptist, and thus covertly
proclaiming itself the child of the Kabalah and Essenism together."

For the Johannism of the Adepts was the Kabalah of the earlier Gnostics,
degenerating afterward into those heretical forms which Gnosticism
developed, so that even Manes had his followers among them. Many adopted
his doctrines of the two Principles, the recollection of which is
perpetuated by the handle of the dagger and the tesselated pavement or
floor of the Lodge, stupidly called "_the Indented Tessel_," and
represented by great hanging tassels, when it really means a
_tesserated_ floor (from the Latin _tessera_) of white and black
lozenges, with a necessarily _denticulated_ or _indented_ border or
edging. And wherever, in the higher Degrees, the two colors white and
black, are in juxtaposition, the two Principles of Zoroaster and Manes
are alluded to. With others the doctrine became a mystic Pantheism,
descended from that of the Brahmins, and even pushed to an idolatry of
Nature and hatred of every revealed dogma.

[To all this the absurd reading of the established Church, taking
literally the figurative, allegorical, and mythical language of a
collection of Oriental books of different ages, directly and inevitably
led. The same result long after followed the folly of regarding the
Hebrew books as if they had been written by the unimaginative, hard,
practical intellect of the England of James the First and the bigoted
stolidity of Scottish Presbyterianism.]

"The better to succeed and win partisans, the Templars sympathized with
regrets for dethroned creeds and encouraged the hopes of new worships,
promising to all liberty of conscience and a new orthodoxy that should
be the synthesis of all the persecuted creeds."

It is absurd to suppose that men of intellect adored a monstrous idol
called Baphomet, or recognized Mahomet as an inspired prophet. Their
symbolism, invented ages before, to conceal what it was dangerous to
avow, was of course misunderstood by those who were not adepts, and to
their enemies seemed to be pantheistic. The calf of gold, made by Aaron
for the Israelites, was but one of the oxen under the laver of bronze,
and the Karobim on the Propitiatory, misunderstood. The symbols of the
wise always become the idols of the ignorant multitude. What the Chiefs
of the Order really believed and taught, is indicated to the Adepts by
the hints contained in the high Degrees of Free-Masonry, and by the
symbols which only the Adepts understand.

[The Blue Degrees are but the outer court or portico of the Temple. Part
of the symbols are displayed there to the Initiate, but he is
intentionally misled by false interpretations. It is not intended that
he shall understand them; but it is intended that he shall imagine he
understands them. Their true explication is reserved for the Adepts, the
Princes of Masonry. The whole body of the Royal and Sacerdotal Art was
hidden so carefully, centuries since, in the High Degrees, as that it is
even yet impossible to solve many of the enigmas which they contain. It
is well enough for the mass of those called Masons, to imagine that all
is contained in the Blue Degrees; and whose attempts to undeceive them
will labor in vain, and without any true reward violate his obligations
as an Adept. Masonry is the veritable Sphinx, buried to the head in the
sands heaped round it by the ages.]

"The seeds of decay were sown in the Order of the Temple at its origin.
Hypocrisy is a mortal disease. It had conceived a great work which it
was incapable of executing, because it knew neither humility nor
personal abnegation, because Rome was then invincible, and because the
later Chiefs of the Order did not comprehend its mission. Moreover, the
Templars were in general uneducated, and capable only of wielding the
sword, with no qualifications for governing, and at need enchaining,
that queen of the world called Opinion." [The doctrines of the Chiefs
would, if expounded to the masses, have seemed to them the babblings of
folly. The symbols of the wise are the idols of the vulgar, or else as
meaningless as the hieroglyphics of Egypt to the nomadic Arabs. There
must always be a common-place interpretation for the mass of Initiates,
of the symbols that are eloquent to the Adepts.]

"Hugues de Payens himself had not that keen and far-sighted intellect
nor that grandeur of purpose which afterward distinguished the military
founder of another soldiery that became formidable to kings. The
Templars were unintelligent and therefore unsuccessful Jesuits.

"Their watchword was, to become wealthy, in order to buy the world. They
became so, and in 1312 they possessed in Europe alone more than nine
thousand seignories. Riches were the shoal on which they were wrecked.
They became insolent, and unwisely showed their contempt for the
religious and social institutions which they aimed to overthrow. Their
ambition was fatal to them. Their projects were divined and prevented.
[Rome, more intolerant of heresy than of vice and crime, came to fear
the Order, and fear is always cruel. It has always deemed philosophical
truth the most dangerous of heresies, and has never been at a loss for a
false accusation, by means of which to crush free thought.] Pope Clement
V. and King Philip le Bel gave the signal to Europe, and the Templars,
taken as it were in an immense net, were arrested, disarmed, and cast
into prison. Never was a _Coup d'État_ accomplished with a more
formidable concert of action. The whole world was struck with stupor,
and eagerly waited for the strange revelations of a process that was to
echo through so many ages.

"It was impossible to unfold to the people the conspiracy of the
Templars against the Thrones and the Tiara. It was impossible to expose
to them the doctrines of the Chiefs of the Order. [This would have been
to initiate the multitude into the secrets of the Masters, and to have
uplifted the veil of Isis. Recourse was therefore had to the charge of
magic, and denouncers and false witnesses were easily found. When the
temporal and spiritual tyrannies unite to crush a victim they never want
for serviceable instruments.] The Templars were gravely accused of
spitting upon Christ and denying God at their receptions, of gross
obscenities, conversations with female devils, and the worship of a
monstrous idol.

"The end of the drama is well known, and how Jacques de Molai and his
fellows perished in the flames. But before his execution, the Chief of
the doomed Order organized and instituted what afterward came to be
called the Occult, Hermetic, or Scottish Masonry. In the gloom of his
prison, the Grand Master created four Metropolitan Lodges, at Naples for
the East, at Edinburg for the West, at Stockholm for the North, and at
Paris for the South." [The initials of his name, J.'. B.'. M.'. found in
the same order in the first three Degrees, are but one of the many
internal and cogent proofs that such was the origin of modern
Free-Masonry. The legend of Osiris was revived and adopted, to symbolize
the destruction of the Order, and the resurrection of Khūrūm, slain in
the body of the Temple, of KHŪRŪM ABAI, the Master, as the martyr of
fidelity to obligation, of Truth and Conscience, prophesied the
restoration to life of the buried association.]

"The Pope and the King soon after perished in a strange and sudden
manner. Squin de Florian, the chief denouncer of the Order, died
assassinated. In breaking the sword of the Templars, they made of it a
poniard; and their proscribed trowels thenceforward built only tombs."

[The Order disappeared at once. Its estates and wealth were confiscated,
and it seemed to have ceased to exist. Nevertheless it lived, under
other names and governed by unknown Chiefs, revealing itself only to
those, who, in passing through a series of Degrees, had proven
themselves worthy to be entrusted with the dangerous Secret. The modern
Orders that style themselves Templars have assumed a name to which they
have not the shadow of a title.]

"The Successors of the Ancient Adepts Rose-Croix, abandoning by degrees
the austere and hierarchial Science of their Ancestors in initiation,
became a Mystic Sect, united with many of the Templars, the dogmas of
the two intermingling, and believed themselves to be the sole
depositaries of the secrets of the Gospel of St. John, seeing in its
recitals an allegorical series of rites proper to complete the
initiation.

"The Initiates, in fact, thought in the eighteenth century that their
time had arrived, some to found a new Hierarchy, others to overturn all
authority, and to press down all the summits of the Social Order under
the level of Equality."

The mystical meanings of the Rose as a Symbol are to be looked for in
the Kabalistic Commentaries on the Canticles.

The Rose was for the Initiates the living and blooming symbol of the
revelation of the harmonies of being. It was the emblem of beauty, life,
love, and pleasure. Flamel, or the Book of the Jew Abraham, made it the
hieroglyphical sign of the accomplishment of the great Work. Such is the
key of the Roman de la Rose. The Conquest of the Rose was the problem
propounded to Science by Initiation, while Religion was laboring to
prepare and establish the universal triumph, exclusive and definitive,
of the Cross.

To unite the Rose to the Cross, was the problem proposed by the High
Initiation; and in fact the Occult philosophy being the Universal
Synthesis, ought to explain all the phenomena of Being. Religion,
considered solely as a physiological fact, is the revelation and
satisfaction of a necessity of souls. Its existence is a scientific
fact; to deny it, would be to deny humanity itself.

The Rose-Croix Adepts respected the dominant, hierarchical, and revealed
religion. Consequently they could no more be the enemies of the Papacy
than of legitimate Monarchy; and if they conspired against the Popes and
Kings, it was because they considered them personally as apostates from
duty and supreme favorers of anarchy.

What, in fact, is a despot, spiritual or temporal, but a crowned
anarchist?

One of the magnificent pantacles that express the esoteric and
unutterable part of Science, is a Rose of Light, in the centre of which
a human form extends its arms in the form of a cross.

Commentaries and studies have been multiplied upon the _Divine Comedy_,
the work of DANTE, and yet no one, so far as we know, has pointed out
its especial character. The work of the great Ghibellin is a declaration
of war against the Papacy, by bold revelations of the Mysteries. The
Epic of Dante is Johannite and Gnostic, an audacious application, like
that of the Apocalypse, of the figures and numbers of the Kabalah to the
Christian dogmas, and a secret negation of every thing absolute in these
dogmas. His Journey through the supernatural worlds is accomplished like
the initiation into the Mysteries of Eleusis and Thebes. He escapes from
that gulf of Hell over the gate of which the sentence of despair was
written, _by reversing the positions of his head and feet_, that is to
say, _by accepting the direct opposite of the Catholic dogma:_ and then
he reascends to the light, by using the Devil himself as a monstrous
ladder. Faust ascends to Heaven, by stepping on the head of the
vanquished Mephistopheles. Hell is impassable for those only who know
not how to turn back from it. We free ourselves from its bondage by
audacity.

His Hell is but a negative Purgatory. His Heaven is composed of a series
of Kabalistic circles, divided by a cross, like the Pantacle of Ezekiel.
In the centre of this cross blooms a rose, and we see the symbol of the
Adepts of the Rose-Croix for the first time publicly expounded and
almost categorically explained.

For the first time, because Guillaume de Lorris, who died in 1260, five
years before the birth of Alighieri, had not completed his _Roman de la
Rose_, which was continued by Chopinel, a half century afterward. One is
astonished to discover that the Roman de la Rose and the Divina Commedia
are two opposite forms of one and the same work, initiation into
independence of spirit, a satire on all contemporary institutions, and
the allegorical formula of the great Secrets of the Society of the
Roses-Croix.

The important manifestations of Occultism coincide with the period of
the fall of the Templars; since Jean de Meung or Chopinel, contemporary
of the old age of Dante, flourished during the best years of his life at
the Court of Philippe le Bel. The Roman de la Rose is the Epic of old
France. It is a profound book, under the form of levity, a revelation as
learned as that of Apuleius, of the Mysteries of Occultism. The Rose of
Flamel, that of Jean de Meung, and that of Dante, grew on the same stem.

Swedenborg's system was nothing else than the Kabalah, minus the
principle of the Hierarchy. It is the Temple, without the keystone and
the foundation.

Cagliostro was the Agent of the Templars, and therefore wrote to the
Free-Masons of London that the time had come to begin the work of
re-building the Temple of the Eternal. He had introduced into Masonry a
new Rite called the _Egyptian_, and endeavored to resuscitate the
mysterious worship of Isis. The three letters L. P. D. on his seal, were
the initials of the words _"Lilia pedibus destrue;" tread under foot the
Lilies_ [of France], and a Masonic medal of the sixteenth or seventeenth
century has upon it a sword cutting off the stalk of a lily, and the
words "_talem dabit ultio messem_," such harvest revenge will give.

A Lodge inaugurated under the auspices of Rousseau, the fanatic of
Geneva, became the centre of the revolutionary movement in France, and a
Prince of the blood-royal went thither to swear the destruction of the
successors of Philippe le Bel on the tomb of Jacques de Molai. The
registers of the Order of Templars attest that the Regent, the Duc d'
Orleans, was Grand Master of that formidable Secret Society, and that
his successors were the Duc de Maine, the Prince of Bourbon-Condé, and
the Duc de Cossé-Brissac.

The Templars compromitted the King; they saved him from the rage of the
People, to exasperate that rage and bring on the catastrophe prepared
for centuries; it was a scaffold that the vengeance of the Templars
demanded. The secret movers of the French Revolution had sworn to
overturn the Throne and the Altar upon the Tomb of Jacques de Molai.
When Louis XVI. was executed, half the work was done; and thenceforward
the Army of the Temple was to direct all its efforts against the Pope.

Jacques de Molai and his companions were perhaps martyrs, but their
avengers dishonored their memory. Royalty was regenerated on the
scaffold of Louis XVI., the Church triumphed in the captivity of Pius
VI., carried a prisoner to Valence, and dying of fatigue and sorrow, but
the successors of the Ancient Knights of the Temple perished,
overwhelmed in their fatal victory.



MORALS AND DOGMA.

CONSISTORY.

[Illustration]



XXXI.

GRAND INSPECTOR INQUISITOR COMMANDER.

[Inspector Inquisitor.]


To hear patiently, to weigh deliberately and dispassionately, and to
decide impartially;--these are the chief duties of a Judge. After the
lessons you have received, I need not further enlarge upon them. You
will be ever eloquently reminded of them by the furniture upon our
Altar, and the decorations of the Tribunal.

The Holy Bible will remind you of your obligation; and that as you judge
here below, so you will be yourself judged hereafter, by One who has not
to submit, like an earthly judge, to the sad necessity of inferring the
motives, intentions, and purposes of men [of which all crime essentially
consists] from the uncertain and often unsafe testimony of their acts
and words; as men in thick darkness grope their way, with hands
outstretched before them: but before Whom every thought, feeling,
impulse, and intention of every soul that now is, or ever was, or ever
will be on earth, is, and ever will be through the whole infinite
duration of eternity, present and visible.

The Square and Compass, the Plumb and Level, are well known to you as a
Mason. Upon you as a Judge, they peculiarly inculcate uprightness,
impartiality, careful consideration of facts and circumstances, accuracy
in judgment, and uniformity in decision. As a Judge, too, you are to
bring up square work and square work only. Like a temple erected by the
plumb, you are to lean neither to one side nor the other. Like a
building well squared and levelled, you are to be firm and steadfast in
your convictions of right and justice. Like the circle swept with the
compasses, you are to be true. In the scales of justice you are to weigh
the facts and the law alone, nor place in either scale personal
friendship or personal dislike, neither fear nor favor: and when
reformation is no longer to be hoped for, you are to smite relentlessly
with the sword of justice.

The peculiar and principal symbol of this Degree is the Tetractys of
Pythagoras, suspended in the East, where ordinarily the sacred word or
letter glitters, like it, representing the Deity. Its nine external
points form the triangle, the chief symbol in Masonry, with many of the
meanings of which you are familiar.

To us, its three sides represent the three principal attributes of the
Deity, which created, and now, as ever, support, uphold, and guide the
Universe in its eternal movement; the three supports of the Masonic
Temple, itself an emblem of the Universe:--Wisdom, or the Infinite
Divine Intelligence; Strength, or Power, the Infinite Divine Will; and
Beauty, or the Infinite Divine Harmony, the Eternal Law, by virtue of
which the infinite myriads of suns and worlds flash ever onward in their
ceaseless revolutions, without clash or conflict, in the Infinite of
space, and change and movement are the law of all created existences.

To us, as Masonic Judges, the triangle figures forth the Pyramids,
which, planted firmly as the everlasting hills, and accurately adjusted
to the four cardinal points, defiant of all assaults of men and time,
teach us to stand firm and unshaken as they, when our feet are planted
upon the solid truth.

It includes a multitude of geometrical figures, all having a deep
significance to Masons. The triple triangle is peculiarly sacred, having
ever been among all nations a symbol of the Deity. Prolonging all the
external lines of the Hexagon, which also it includes, we have six
smaller triangles, whose bases cut each other in the central point of
the Tetractys, itself always the symbol of the generative power of the
Universe, the Sun, Brahma, Osiris, Apollo, Bel, and the Deity Himself.
Thus, too, we form twelve still smaller triangles, three times three of
which compose the Tetractys itself.

I refrain from enumerating all the figures that you may trace within it:
but one may not be passed unnoticed. The Hexagon itself faintly images
to us a cube, not visible at the first glance, and therefore the fit
emblem of that faith in things invisible, most essential to salvation.
The first perfect solid, and reminding you of the cubical stone that
sweated blood, and of that deposited by Enoch, it teaches justice,
accuracy, and consistency.

The infinite divisibility of the triangle teaches the infinity of the
Universe, of time, of space, and of the Deity, as do the lines that,
diverging from the common centre, ever increase their distance from each
other as they are infinitely prolonged. As they may be infinite in
number, so are the attributes of Deity infinite; and as they emanate
from one centre and are projected into space, so the whole Universe has
emanated from God.

Remember also, my Brother, that you have other duties to perform than
those of a judge. You are to inquire into and scrutinize carefully the
work of the subordinate Bodies in Masonry. You are to see that
recipients of the higher Degrees are not unnecessarily multiplied; that
improper persons are carefully excluded from membership, and that in
their life and conversation Masons bear testimony to the excellence of
our doctrines and the incalculable value of the institution itself. You
are to inquire also into your own heart and conduct, and keep careful
watch over yourself, that you go not astray. If you harbor ill-will and
jealousy, if you are hospitable to intolerance and bigotry, and churlish
to gentleness and kind affections, opening wide your heart to one and
closing its portals to the other, it is time for you to set in order
your own temple, or else you wear in vain the name and insignia of a
Mason, while yet uninvested with the Masonic nature.

Everywhere in the world there is a natural law, that is, a constant mode
of action, which seems to belong to the nature of things, to the
constitution of the Universe. This fact is universal. In different
departments we call this mode of action by different names, as the law
of Matter, the law of Mind, the law of Morals, and the like. We mean by
this, a certain mode of action which belongs to the material, mental, or
moral forces, the mode in which commonly they are found to act, and in
which it is their ideal to act always. The ideal laws of matter we know
only from the fact that they are always obeyed. To us the actual
_obedience_ is the only evidence of the ideal rule; for in respect to
the conduct of the material world, the _ideal_ and the _actual_ are the
same.

The laws of matter we learn only by observation and experience. Before
experience of the fact, no man could foretell that a body, falling
toward the earth, would descend sixteen feet the first second, twice
that the next, four times the third, and sixteen times the fourth. No
mode of action in our consciousness anticipates this rule of action in
the outer world. The same is true of all the laws of matter. The ideal
law is known because it is a fact. The law is imperative. It must be
obeyed without hesitation. Laws of crystallization, laws of proportion
in chemical combination,--neither in these nor in any other law of
Nature is there any margin left for oscillation of disobedience. Only
the primal will of God works in the material world, and no secondary
finite will.

There are no exceptions to the great general law of Attraction, which
binds atom to atom in the body of a rotifier visible only by aid of a
microscope, orb to orb, system to system; gives unity to the world of
things, and rounds these worlds of systems to a Universe. At first there
seem to be exceptions to this law, as in growth and decomposition, in
the repulsions of electricity; but at length all these are found to be
special cases of the one great law of attraction acting in various
modes.

The variety of effect of this law at first surprises the senses; but in
the end the unity of cause astonishes the cultivated mind. Looked at in
reference to this globe, an earthquake is no more than a chink that
opens in a garden-walk of a dry day in Summer. A sponge is porous,
having small spaces between the solid parts: the solar system is only
_more_ porous, having larger room between the several orbs: the Universe
yet more so, with spaces between the systems, as small, compared with
_infinite_ space, as those between the atoms that compose the bulk of
the smallest invisible animalcule, of which millions swim in a drop of
salt-water. The same attraction holds together the animalcule, the
sponge, the system, and the Universe. Every particle of matter in that
Universe is related to each and all the other particles; and attraction
is their common bond.

In the spiritual world, the world of human consciousness, there is also
a law, an ideal mode of action for the spiritual forces of man. The law
of Justice is as universal an one as the law of Attraction; though we
are very far from being able to reconcile all the phenomena of Nature
with it. The lark has the same right, in our view, to live, to sing, to
dart at pleasure through the ambient atmosphere, as the hawk has to ply
his strong wings in the Summer sunshine: and yet the hawk pounces on and
devours the harmless lark, as _it_ devours the worm, and as the worm
devours the animalcule; and, so far as we know, there is nowhere, in any
future state of animal existence, any compensation for this apparent
injustice. Among the bees, one rules, while the others obey--some work,
while others are idle. With the small ants, the soldiers feed on the
proceeds of the workmen's labor. The lion lies in wait for and devours
the antelope that has apparently as good a right to life as he. Among
men, some govern and others serve, capital commands and labor obeys, and
one race, superior in intellect, avails itself of the strong muscles of
another that is inferior; and yet, for all this, no one impeaches the
justice of God.

No doubt all these varied phenomena are consistent with one great law of
justice; and the only difficulty is that we do not, and no doubt we
cannot, understand that law. It is very easy for some dreaming and
visionary theorist to say that it is most evidently unjust for the lion
to devour the deer, and for the eagle to tear and eat the wren; but the
trouble is, that we know of no other way, according to the frame, the
constitution, and the organs which God has given them, in which the lion
and the eagle could manage to live at all. Our little measure of justice
is not God's measure. His justice does not require us to relieve the
hard-working millions of all labor, to emancipate the serf or slave,
unfitted to be free, from all control.

No doubt, underneath all the little bubbles, which are the lives, the
wishes, the wills, and the plans of the two thousand millions or more of
human beings on this earth (for bubbles they are, judging by the space
and time they occupy in this great and age-out-lasting sea of
human-kind),--no doubt, underneath them all resides one and the same
eternal force, which they shape into this or the other special form; and
over all the same paternal Providence presides, keeping eternal watch
over the little and the great, and producing variety of effect from
Unity of Force.

It is entirely true to say that justice is the constitution or
fundamental law of the moral Universe, the law of right, a rule of
conduct for man (as it is for every other living creature), in all his
moral relations. No doubt all human affairs (like all other affairs),
must be subject to that as the law paramount; and what is _right_ agrees
therewith and stands, while what is _wrong_ conflicts with it and falls.
The difficulty is that we ever erect _our_ notions of what is right and
just into the _law_ of justice, and insist that God shall adopt that as
His law; instead of striving to learn by observation and reflection what
His law _is_, and then believing that law to be consistent with _His_
infinite justice, whether it corresponds with _our_ limited notion of
justice, or does not so correspond. We are too wise in our own conceit,
and ever strive to enact our own little notions into the Universal Laws
of God.

It might be difficult for man to prove, even to his own satisfaction,
how it is right or just for him to subjugate the horse and ox to his
service, giving them in return only their daily food, which God has
spread out for them on all the green meadows and savannas of the world:
or how it is just that we should slay and eat the harmless deer that
only crops the green herbage, the buds, and the young leaves, and drinks
the free-running water that God made common to all; or the gentle dove,
the innocent kid, the many other living things that so confidently trust
to our protection;--quite as difficult, perhaps, as to prove it just for
one man's intellect or even his wealth to make another's strong arms his
servants, for daily wages or for a bare subsistence.

To find out this universal law of justice is one thing--to undertake to
measure off something with our own little tape-line, and call _that_
God's law of justice, is another. The great general plan and system, and
the great general laws enacted by God, continually produce what to our
limited notions is wrong and injustice, which hitherto men have been
able to explain to their own satisfaction only by the hypothesis of
another existence in which all inequalities and injustices in this life
will be remedied and compensated for. To our ideas of justice, it is
very unjust that the child is made miserable for life by deformity or
organic disease, in consequence of the vices of its father; and yet that
is part of the universal law. The ancients said that the child was
_punished_ for the sins of its father. _We_ say that this its deformity
or disease is the _consequence_ of its father's vices; but so far as
concerns the question of justice or injustice, that is merely the change
of a word.

It is very easy to lay down a broad, general principle, embodying our
own idea of what is absolute justice, and to insist that everything
shall conform to that: to say, "all human affairs must be subject to
that as the law paramount; what is right agrees therewith and stands,
what is wrong conflicts and falls. Private cohesions of self-love, of
friendship, or of patriotism, must all be subordinate to this universal
gravitation toward the eternal right." The difficulty is that this
Universe of necessities God-created, of sequences of cause and effect,
and of life evolved from death, this interminable succession and
aggregate of cruelties, will not conform to any such absolute principle
or arbitrary theory, no matter in what sounding words and glittering
phrases it may be embodied.

Impracticable rules in morals are always injurious; for as all men fall
short of compliance with them, they turn real virtues into imaginary
offences against a forged law. Justice as between man and man and as
between man and the animals below him, is that which, under and
according to the God-created relations existing between them, and the
whole aggregate of circumstances surrounding them, is fit and right and
proper to be done, with a view to the general as well as to the
individual interest. It is not a theoretical principle by which the very
relations that God has created and imposed on us are to be tried, and
approved or condemned.

God has made this great system of the Universe, and enacted general laws
for its government. Those laws environ everything that lives with a
mighty network of necessity. He chose to create the tiger with such
organs that he cannot crop the grass, but must eat other flesh or
starve. He has made man carnivorous also; and some of the smallest birds
are as much so as the tiger. In every step we take, in every breath we
draw, is involved the destruction of a multitude of animate existences,
each, no matter how minute, as much a living creature as ourself. He has
made necessary among mankind a division of labor, intellectual and
moral. He has made necessary the varied relations of society and
dependence, of obedience and control.

What is thus made necessary cannot be unjust; for if it be, then God the
great Lawgiver is Himself unjust. The evil to be avoided is, the
legalization of injustice and wrong under the _false_ plea of necessity.
Out of all the relations of life grow duties,--as naturally grow and as
undeniably, as the leaves grow upon the trees. If we have the right,
created by God's law of necessity, to slay the lamb that we may eat and
live, we have no right to torture it in doing so, because that is in no
wise necessary. We have the right to live, if we fairly can, by the
legitimate exercise of our intellect, and hire or buy the labor of the
strong arms of others, to till our grounds, to dig in our mines, to toil
in our manufactories; but we have no right to overwork or underpay them.

It is not only true that we may learn the moral law of justice, the law
of right, by experience and observation; but that God has given us a
moral faculty, our conscience, which is able to perceive this law
directly and immediately, by intuitive perception of it; and it is true
that man has in his nature a rule of conduct higher than what he has
ever yet come up to,--an ideal of nature that shames his actual of
history: because man has ever been prone to make necessity, his own
necessity, the necessities of society, a plea for injustice. But this
notion must not be pushed too far--for if we substitute this ideality
for actuality, then it is equally true that we have within us an ideal
rule of right and wrong, to which God Himself in His government of the
world has never come, and against which He (we say it reverentially)
every day offends. We detest the tiger and the wolf for the rapacity and
love of blood which are their nature; we revolt against the law by which
the crooked limbs and diseased organism of the child are the fruits of
the father's vices; we even think that a God Omnipotent and Omniscient
ought to have permitted no pain, no poverty, no servitude; our ideal of
justice is more lofty than the actualities of God. It is well, as all
else is well. He has given us that moral sense for wise and beneficent
purposes. We accept it as a significant proof of the inherent loftiness
of human nature, that it can entertain an ideal so exalted; and should
strive to attain it, as far as we can do so consistently with the
relations which He has created, and the circumstances which surround us
and hold us captive.

If we faithfully use this faculty of conscience; if, applying it to the
existing relations and circumstances, we develop it and all its kindred
powers, and so deduce the duties that out of these relations and those
circumstances, and limited and qualified by them, arise and become
obligatory upon us, then we learn justice, the law of right, the divine
rule of conduct for human life. But if we undertake to define and settle
"the mode of action that belongs to the infinitely perfect nature of
God," and so set up any ideal rule, beyond all human reach, we soon come
to judge and condemn His work and the relations which it has pleased Him
in His infinite wisdom to create.

A sense of justice belongs to human nature, and is a part of it. Men
find a deep, permanent, and instinctive delight in justice, not only in
the outward effects, but in the inward cause, and by their nature love
this law of right, this reasonable rule of conduct, this justice, with a
deep and abiding love. Justice is the object of the conscience, and fits
it as light fits the eye and truth the mind.

Justice keeps just relations between men. It holds the balance between
nation and nation, between a man and his family, tribe, nation, and
race, so that his _absolute_ rights and theirs do not interfere, nor
their _ultimate_ interests ever clash, nor the eternal interests of the
one prove antagonistic to those of all or of any other one. This we must
believe, if we believe that God is just. We must do justice to all, and
demand it of all; it is a universal human debt, a universal human claim.
But we may err greatly in defining what that justice is. The _temporary_
interests, and what to human view are the rights, of men, do often
interfere and clash. The life-interests of the individual often conflict
with the permanent interests and welfare of society; and what may seem
to be the natural rights of one class or race, with those of another.

It is not true to say that "one man, however little, must not be
sacrificed to another, however great, to a majority, or to all men."
That is not only a fallacy, but a most dangerous one. Often one man and
many men must be sacrificed, in the ordinary sense of the term, to the
interest of the many. It is a comfortable fallacy to the selfish; for if
they cannot, by the law of justice, be sacrificed for the common good,
then their country has no right to demand of them _self_-sacrifice; and
he is a fool who lays down his life, or sacrifices his estate, or even
his luxuries, to insure the safety or prosperity of his country.
According to that doctrine, Curtius was a fool, and Leonidas an idiot;
and to die for one's country is no longer beautiful and glorious, but a
mere absurdity. Then it is no longer to be asked that the common soldier
shall receive in his bosom the sword or bayonet-thrust which otherwise
would let out the life of the great commander on whose fate hang the
liberties of his country, and the welfare of millions yet unborn.

On the contrary, it is certain that necessity rules in all the affairs
of men, and that the interest and even the life of one man must often be
sacrificed to the interest and welfare of his country. Some must ever
lead the forlorn hope: the missionary must go among savages, bearing his
life in his hand; the physician must expose himself to pestilence for
the sake of others; the sailor, in the frail boat upon the wide ocean,
escaped from the foundering or burning ship, must step calmly into the
hungry waters, if the lives of the passengers can be saved only by the
sacrifice of his own; the pilot must stand firm at the wheel, and let
the flames scorch away his own life to insure the common safety of those
whom the doomed vessel bears.

The mass of men are always looking for what is just. All the vast
machinery which makes up a State, a world of States, is, on the part of
the people, an attempt to organize, not that ideal justice which finds
fault with God's ordinances, but that practical justice which may be
attained in the actual organization of the world. The minute and
wide-extending civil machinery which makes up the law and the courts,
with all their officers and implements, on the part of mankind, is
chiefly an effort to reduce to practice the theory of right.
Constitutions are made to establish justice; the decisions of courts are
reported to help us judge more wisely in time to come. The nation aims
to get together the most nearly just men in the State, that they may
incorporate into statutes their aggregate sense of what is right. The
people wish law to be embodied justice, administered without passion.
Even in the wildest ages there has been a wild popular justice, but
always mixed with passion and administered in hate; for justice takes a
rude form with rude men, and becomes less mixed with hate and passion in
more civilized communities. Every progressive State revises its statutes
and revolutionizes its constitution from time to time, seeking to come
closer to the utmost possible practical justice and right; and
sometimes, following theorists and dreamers in their adoration for the
ideal, by erecting into law positive principles of theoretical right,
works practical injustice, and then has to retrace its steps.

In literature men always look for practical justice, and desire that
virtue should have its own reward, and vice its appropriate punishment.
They are ever on the side of justice and humanity; and the majority of
them have an ideal justice, better than the things about them, juster
than the law: for the law is ever imperfect, not attaining even to the
utmost _practicable_ degree of perfection; and no man is as just as his
own idea of possible and practicable justice. His passions and his
necessities ever cause him to sink below his own ideal. The ideal
justice which men ever look up to and strive to rise toward, is true;
but it will not be realized in this world. Yet we must approach as near
to it as practicable, as we should do toward that ideal democracy that
"now floats before the eyes of earnest and religious men,--fairer than
the Republic of Plato, or More's Utopia, or the Golden Age of fabled
memory," only taking care that we do not, in striving to reach and
ascend to the impossible ideal, neglect to seize upon and hold fast to
the possible actual. To aim at the best, but be content with the best
possible, is the only true wisdom. To insist on the absolute right, and
throw out of the calculation the important and all-controlling element
of necessity, is the folly of a mere dreamer.

In a world inhabited by men with bodies, and necessarily with bodily
wants and animal passions, the time will never come when there will be
no want, no oppression, nor servitude, no fear of man, no fear of God,
but only Love. That can never be while there are inferior intellect,
indulgence in low vice, improvidence, indolence, awful visitations of
pestilence and war and famine, earthquake and volcano, that must of
necessity cause men to want, and serve, and suffer, and fear.

But still the ploughshare of justice is ever drawn through and through
the field of the world, uprooting the savage plants. Ever we see a
continual and progressive triumph of the right. The injustice of England
lost her America, the fairest jewel of her crown. The injustice of
Napoleon bore him to the ground more than the snows of Russia did, and
exiled him to a barren rock, there to pine away and die, his life a
warning to bid mankind be just.

We intuitively understand what justice is, better than we can depict it.
What it is in a given case depends so much on circumstances, that
definitions of it are wholly deceitful. Often it would be unjust to
society to do what would, in the absence of that consideration, be
pronounced just to the individual. General propositions of man's right
to this or that are ever fallacious: and not infrequently it would be
most unjust to the individual himself to do for him what the theorist,
as a general proposition, would say was right and his due.

We should ever do unto others what, under the same circumstances, we
_ought_ to wish, and should have _the right_ to wish they should do unto
us. There are many cases, cases constantly occurring, where one man must
take care of himself, in preference to another, as where two struggle
for the possession of a plank that will save one, but cannot uphold
both; or where, assailed, he can save his own life only by slaying his
adversary. So one must prefer the safety of his country to the lives of
her enemies; and sometimes, to insure it, to those of her own innocent
citizens. The retreating general may cut away a bridge behind him, to
delay pursuit and save the main body of his army, though he thereby
surrenders a detachment, a battalion, or even a corps of his own force
to certain destruction.

These are not departures from justice; though, like other instances
where the injury or death of the individual is the safety of the many,
where the interest of one individual, class, or race is postponed to
that of the public, or of the superior race, they may infringe some
dreamer's ideal rule of justice. But every departure from real,
practical justice is no doubt attended with loss to the unjust man,
though the loss is not reported to the public. Injustice, public or
private, like every other sin and wrong, is inevitably followed by its
consequences. The selfish, the grasping, the inhuman, the fraudulently
unjust, the ungenerous employer, and the cruel master, are detested by
the great popular heart; while the kind master, the liberal employer,
the generous, the humane, and the just have the good opinion of all men,
and even envy is a tribute to their virtues. Men honor all who stand up
for truth and right, and never shrink. The world builds monuments to its
patriots. Four great statesmen, organizers of the right, embalmed in
stone, look down upon the lawgivers of France as they pass to their hall
of legislation, silent orators to tell how nations love the just. How we
revere the marble lineaments of those just judges, Jay and Marshall,
that look so calmly toward the living Bench of the Supreme Court of the
United States! What a monument Washington has built in the heart of
America and all the world, not because he dreamed of an impracticable
ideal justice, but by his constant effort to be practically just!

But necessity alone, and the greatest good of the greatest number, can
legitimately interfere with the dominion of absolute and ideal justice.
Government should not foster the strong at the expense of the weak, nor
protect the capitalist and tax the laborer. The powerful should not seek
a monopoly of development and enjoyment; not prudence only and the
expedient for to-day should be appealed to by statesmen, but conscience
and the right: justice should not be forgotten in looking at interest,
nor political morality neglected for political economy: we should not
have national housekeeping instead of national organization on the basis
of right.

We may well differ as to the abstract right of many things; for every
such question has many sides, and few men look at all of them, many only
at one. But we all readily recognize cruelty, unfairness, inhumanity,
partiality, over-reaching, hard-dealing, by their ugly and familiar
lineaments, and in order to know and to hate and despise _them_, we do
not need to sit as a Court of Errors and Appeals to revise and reverse
God's Providences.

There are certainly great evils of civilization at this day, and many
questions of humanity long adjourned and put off. The hideous aspect of
pauperism, the debasement and vice in our cities, tell us by their
eloquent silence or in inarticulate mutterings, that the rich and the
powerful and the intellectual do not do their duty by the poor, the
feeble, and the ignorant; and every wretched woman who lives, Heaven
scarce knows how, by making shirts at sixpence each, attests the
injustice and inhumanity of man. There are cruelties to slaves, and
worse cruelties to animals, each disgraceful to their perpetrators, and
equally unwarranted by the lawful relation of control and dependence
which it has pleased God to create.

A sentence is written against all that is unjust, written by God in the
nature of man and in the nature of the Universe, because it is in the
nature of the Infinite God. Fidelity to your faculties, trust in their
convictions, that is justice to yourself; a life in obedience thereto,
that is justice toward men. No wrong is really successful. The gain of
injustice is a loss, its pleasure suffering. Iniquity often seems to
prosper, but its success is its defeat and shame. After a long while,
the day of reckoning ever comes, to nation as to individual. The knave
deceives himself. The miser, starving his brother's body, starves also
his own soul, and at death shall creep out of his great estate of
injustice, poor and naked and miserable. Whoso escapes a duty avoids a
gain. Outward judgment often fails, inward justice never. Let a man try
to love the wrong and to do the wrong, it is eating stones and not
bread, the swift feet of justice are upon him, following with woolen
tread, and her iron hands are round his neck. No man can escape from
this, any more than from himself. Justice is the angel of God that flies
from East to West; and where she stoops her broad wings, it is to bring
the counsel of God, and feed mankind with angel's bread.

We cannot understand the moral Universe. The arc is a long one, and our
eyes reach but a little way; we cannot calculate the curve and complete
the figure by the experience of sight; but we can divine it by
conscience, and we surely know that it bends toward justice. Justice
will not fail, though wickedness appears strong, and has on its side the
armies and thrones of power, the riches and the glory of the world, and
though poor men crouch down in despair. Justice will not fail and perish
out from the world of men, nor will what is really wrong and contrary to
God's real law of justice continually endure. The Power, the Wisdom, and
the Justice of God are on the side of every just thought, and it cannot
fail, any more than God Himself can perish.

In human affairs, the justice of God must work by human means. Men are
the instruments of God's principles; our morality is the instrument of
His justice, which, incomprehensible to us, seems to our short vision
often to work injustice, but will at some time still the oppressor's
brutal laugh. Justice is the rule of conduct written in the nature of
mankind. We may, in our daily life, in house or field or shop, in the
office or in the court, help to prepare the way for the commonwealth of
justice which is slowly, but, we would fain hope, surely approaching.
All the justice we mature will bless us here and hereafter, and at our
death we shall leave it added to the common store of human-kind. And
every Mason who, content to do that which is possible and practicable,
does and enforces justice, may help deepen the channel of human morality
in which God's justice runs; and so the wrecks of evil that now check
and obstruct the stream may the sooner be swept out and borne away by
the resistless tide of Omnipotent Right. Let us, my Brother, in this, as
in all else, endeavor always to perform the duties of a good Mason and a
good man.

[Illustration]



XXXII.

SUBLIME PRINCE OF THE ROYAL SECRET.

[Master of Royal Secret.]


The Occult Science of the Ancient Magi was concealed under the shadows
of the Ancient Mysteries: it was imperfectly revealed or rather
disfigured by the Gnostics: it is guessed at under the obscurities that
cover the pretended crimes of the Templars; and it is found enveloped in
enigmas that seem impenetrable, in the Rites of the Highest Masonry.

Magism was the Science of Abraham and Orpheus, of Confucius and
Zoroaster. It was the dogmas of this Science that were engraven on the
tables of stone by Hanoch and Trismegistus. Moses purified and
re-_veiled_ them, for that is the meaning of the word _reveal_. He
covered them with a new veil, when he made of the Holy Kabalah the
exclusive heritage of the people of Israel, and the inviolable Secret
of its priests. The Mysteries of Thebes and Eleusis preserved among the
nations some symbols of it, already altered, and the mysterious key
whereof was lost among the instruments of an ever-growing superstition.
Jerusalem, the murderess of her prophets, and so often prostituted to
the false gods of the Syrians and Babylonians, had at length in its turn
lost the Holy Word, when a Prophet announced to the Magi by the
consecrated Star of Initiation, came to rend asunder the worn veil of
the old Temple, in order to give the Church a new tissue of legends and
symbols, that still and ever conceals from the Profane, and ever
preserves to the Elect the same truths.

It was the remembrance of this scientific and religious Absolute, of
this doctrine that is summed up in a word, of this Word, in fine,
alternately lost and found again, that was transmitted to the Elect of
all the Ancient Initiations: it was this same remembrance, preserved, or
perhaps profaned in the celebrated Order of the Templars, that became
for all the secret associations, of the Rose-Croix, of the Illuminati,
and of the Hermetic Freemasons, the reason of their strange rites, of
their signs more or less conventional, and, above all, of their mutual
devotedness and of their power.

The Gnostics caused the Gnosis to be proscribed by the Christians, and
the official Sanctuary was closed against the high initiation. Thus the
Hierarchy of Knowledge was compromitted by the violences of usurping
ignorance, and the disorders of the Sanctuary are reproduced in the
State; for always, willingly or unwillingly, the King is sustained by
the Priest, and it is from the eternal Sanctuary of the Divine
instruction that the Powers of the Earth, to insure themselves
durability, must receive their consecration and their force.

The Hermetic Science of the early Christian ages, cultivated also by
Geber, Alfarabius, and others of the Arabs, studied by the Chiefs of the
Templars, and embodied in certain symbols of the higher Degrees of
Freemasonry, may be accurately defined as the Kabalah in active
realization, or the Magic of Works. It has three analogous Degrees,
religious, philosophical, and physical realization.

Its religious realization is the durable foundation of the true Empire
and the true Priesthood that rule in the realm of human intellect: its
philosophical realization is the establishment of an absolute Doctrine,
known in all times as the "HOLY DOCTRINE," and of which PLUTARCH, in
the Treatise "_de Iside et Osiride_," speaks at large but mysteriously;
and of a Hierarchical instruction to secure the uninterrupted succession
of Adepts among the Initiates: its physical realization is the discovery
and application, in the Microcosm, or Little World, of the creative law
that incessantly peoples the great Universe.

Measure a corner of the Creation, and multiply that space in
proportional progression, and the entire Infinite will multiply its
circles filled with universes, which will pass in proportional segments
between the ideal and elongating branches of your Compass. Now suppose
that from any point whatever of the Infinite above you a hand holds
another Compass or a Square, the lines of the Celestial triangle will
necessarily meet those of the Compass of Science, to form the Mysterious
Star of Solomon.

All hypotheses scientifically probable are the last gleams of the
twilight of knowledge, or its last shadows. Faith begins where Reason
sinks exhausted. Beyond the human Reason is the Divine Reason, to our
feebleness the great Absurdity, the Infinite Absurd, which confounds us
and which we believe. For the Master, the Compass of Faith is _above_
the Square of Reason; but _both_ rest upon the Holy Scriptures and
combine to form the Blazing Star of Truth.

All eyes do not see alike. Even the visible creation is not, for all who
look upon it, of one form and one color. Our brain is a book printed
within and without, and the two writings are, with all men, more or less
confused.

The primary tradition of the single revelation has been preserved under
the name of the "Kabalah," by the Priesthood of Israel. The Kabalistic
doctrine, which was also the dogma of the Magi and of Hermes, is
contained in the Sepher Yetsairah, the Sohar, and the Talmud. According
to that doctrine, the Absolute is the Being, in which The Word Is, the
Word that is the utterance and expression of being and life.

Magic is that which it is; it is by itself, like the mathematics; for it
is the exact and absolute science of Nature and its laws.

Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi: and the Christian religion,
which has imposed silence on the lying oracles, and put an end to the
prestiges of the false Gods, itself reveres those Magi who came from the
East, guided by a Star, to adore the Saviour of the world in His
cradle.

Tradition also gives these Magi the title of "Kings;" because initiation
into Magism constitutes a genuine royalty; and because the grand art of
the Magi is styled by all the Adepts, "_The Royal Art_," or the _Holy
Realm_ or _Empire, Sanctum Regnum_.

The Star which guided them is that same Blazing Star, the image whereof
we find in all initiations. To the Alchemists it is the sign of the
Quintessence; to the Magists, the Grand Arcanum; to the Kabalists, the
Sacred Pentagram. The study of this Pentagram could not but lead the
Magi to the knowledge of the New Name which was about to raise itself
above all names, and cause all creatures capable of adoration to bend
the knee.

Magic unites in one and the same science, whatsoever Philosophy can
possess that is most certain, and Religion of the Infallible and the
Eternal. It perfectly and incontestably reconciles these two terms that
at first blush seem so opposed to each other; faith and reason, science
and creed, authority and liberty.

It supplies the human mind with an instrument of philosophical and
religious certainty, exact as the mathematics, and accounting for the
infallibility of the mathematics themselves.

Thus there is an Absolute, in the matters of the Intelligence and of
Faith. The Supreme Reason has not left the gleams of the human
understanding to vacillate at hazard. There is an incontestable verity,
there is an infallible method of knowing this verity, and by the
knowledge of it, those who accept it as a rule may give their will a
sovereign power that will make them the masters of all inferior things
and of all errant spirits; that is to say, will make them the Arbiters
and Kings of the World.

Science has its nights and its dawns, because it gives the intellectual
world a life which has its regulated movements and its progressive
phases. It is with Truths, as with the luminous rays: nothing of what is
concealed is lost; but also, nothing of what is discovered is absolutely
new. God has been pleased to give to Science, which is the reflection of
His Glory, the Seal of His Eternity.

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious
symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of
Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge. The Priests of
Egypt knew, better than we do, the laws of movement and of life. They
knew how to temper or, intensify action by reaction; and readily foresaw
the realization of these effects, the causes of which they had
determined. The Columns of Seth, Enoch, Solomon, and Hercules have
symbolized in the Magian traditions this universal law of the
Equilibrium; and the Science of the Equilibrium or balancing of Forces
had led the Initiates to that of the universal gravitation around the
centres of Life, Heat, and Light.

Thales and Pythagoras learned in the Sanctuaries of Egypt that the Earth
revolved around the Sun; but they did not attempt to make this generally
known, because to do so it would have been necessary to reveal one of
the great Secrets of the Temple, that double law of attraction and
radiation or of sympathy and antipathy, of fixedness and movement, which
is the principle of Creation, and the perpetual cause of life. This
Truth was ridiculed by the Christian Lactantius, as it was long after
sought to be proven a falsehood by persecution, by Papal Rome.

So the philosophers reasoned, while the Priests, without replying to
them or even smiling at their errors, wrote, in those Hieroglyphics that
created all dogmas and all poetry, the Secrets of the Truth.

When Truth comes into the world, the Star of Knowledge advises the Magi
of it, and they hasten to adore the Infant who creates the Future. It is
by means of the Intelligence of the Hierarchy and the practice of
obedience, that one obtains Initiation. If the Rulers have the Divine
Right to govern, the true Initiate will cheerfully obey.

The orthodox traditions were carried from Chaldea by Abraham. They
reigned in Egypt in the time of Joseph, together with the knowledge of
the True God. Moses carried Orthodoxy out of Egypt, and in the Secret
Traditions of the Kabalah we find a Theology entire, perfect, unique,
like that which in Christianity is most grand and best explained by the
Fathers and the Doctors, the whole with a consistency and a
harmoniousness which it is not as yet given to the world to comprehend.
The Sohar, which is the Key of the Holy Books, opens also all the depths
and lights, all the obscurities of the Ancient Mythologies and of the
Sciences originally concealed in the Sanctuaries. It is true that the
Secret of this Key must be known, to enable one to make use of it, and
that for even the most penetrating intellects, not initiated in this
Secret, the Sohar is absolutely incomprehensible and almost illegible.

The Secret of the Occult Sciences is that of Nature itself, the Secret
of the generation of the Angels and Worlds, that of the Omnipotence of
God.

"_Ye shall be like the Elohim, knowing good and evil_," had the Serpent
of Genesis said, and the Tree of Knowledge became the Tree of Death.

For six thousand years the Martyrs of Knowledge toil and die at the foot
of this tree, that it may again become the Tree of Life.

The Absolute sought for unsuccessfully by the insensate and found by the
Sages, is the TRUTH, the REALITY, and the REASON of the universal
equilibrium!

Equilibrium is the Harmony that results from the analogy of Contraries.

Until now, Humanity has been endeavoring to stand on one foot; sometimes
on one, sometimes on the other.

Civilizations have risen and perished, either by the anarchical insanity
of Despotism, or by the despotic anarchy of Revolt.

To organize Anarchy, is the problem which the revolutionists have and
will eternally have to resolve. It is the rock of Sisyphus that will
always fall back upon them. To exist a single instant, they are and
always will be by fatality reduced to improvise a despotism without
other reason of existence than necessity, and which, consequently, is
violent and blind as Necessity. We escape from the harmonious monarchy
of Reason, only to fall under the irregular dictatorship of Folly.

Sometimes superstitious enthusiasms, sometimes the miserable
calculations of the materialist instinct have led astray the nations,
and God at last urges the world on toward believing Reason and
reasonable Beliefs.

We have had prophets enough without philosophy, and philosophers without
religion; the blind believers and the skeptics resemble each other, and
are as far the one as the other from the eternal salvation.

In the chaos of universal doubt and of the conflicts of Reason and
Faith, the great men and Seers have been but infirm and morbid artists,
seeking the beau-ideal at the risk and peril of their reason and life.

Living only in the hope to be crowned, they are the first to do what
Pythagoras in so touching a manner prohibits in his admirable Symbols;
they rend crowns, and tread them under foot.

Light is the equilibrium of Shadow and Lucidity.

Movement is the equilibrium of Inertia and Activity.

Authority is the equilibrium of Liberty and Power.

Wisdom is equilibrium in the Thoughts, which are the scintillations and
rays of the Intellect.

Virtue is equilibrium in the Affections: Beauty is harmonious proportion
in Forms.

The beautiful lives are the accurate ones, and the magnificences of
Nature are an algebra of graces and splendors.

Everything just is beautiful; everything beautiful ought to be just.

       *       *       *       *       *

There is, in fact, no Nothing, no void Emptiness, in the Universe. From
the upper or outer surface of our atmosphere to that of the Sun, and to
those of the Planets and remote Stars, in different directions, Science
has for hundreds of centuries imagined that there was simple, void,
empty Space. Comparing finite knowledge with the Infinite, the
Philosophers know little more than the apes! In all that "void" space
are the Infinite Forces of God, acting in an infinite variety of
directions, back and forth, and never for an instant inactive. In all of
it, active through the whole of its Infinity, is the Light that is the
Visible Manifestation of God. The earth and every other planet and
sphere that is not a Centre of Light, carries its cone of shadow with it
as it flies and flashes round in its orbit; but the darkness has no
_home_ in the Universe. To illuminate the sphere on one side, is to
project a cone of darkness on the other; and Error also is the Shadow of
the Truth with which God illuminates the Soul.

In all that "Void," also, is the Mysterious and ever Active Electricity,
and Heat, and the Omnipresent Ether. At the will of God the Invisible
becomes Visible. Two invisible gases, combined by the action of a Force
of God, and compressed, become and remain the water that fills the great
basins of the seas, flows in the rivers and rivulets, leaps forth from
the rocks or springs, drops upon the earth in rains, or whitens it with
snows, and bridges the Danubes with ice, or gathers in vast reservoirs
in the earth's bosom. God manifested fills all the extension that we
foolishly call Empty Space and the Void.

And everywhere in the Universe, what we call Life and Movement results
from a continual conflict of Forces or Impulses. Whenever that active
antagonism ceases, the immobility and inertia, which are Death, result.

If, says the Kabalah, the Justice of God, which is Severity or the
Female, alone reigned, creation of imperfect beings such as man would
from the beginning have been impossible, because Sin being congenital
with Humanity, the Infinite Justice, measuring the Sin by the Infinity
of the God offended against, must have annihilated Humanity at the
instant of its creation; and not only Humanity but the Angels, since
these also, like all created by God and less than perfect, are sinful.
Nothing imperfect would have been possible. If, on the other hand, the
Mercy or Benignity of God, the Male, were in no wise counteracted, Sin
would go unpunished, and the Universe fall into a chaos of corruption.

Let God but repeal a single principle or law of chemical attraction or
sympathy, and the antagonistic forces equilibrated in matter, released
from constraint, would instantaneously expand all that we term matter
into impalpable and invisible gases, such as water or steam is, when,
confined in a cylinder and subjected to an immense degree of that
mysterious force of the Deity which we call "heat," it is by its
expansion released.

Incessantly the great currents and rivers of air flow and rush and roll
from the equator to the frozen polar regions, and back from these to the
torrid equatorial realms. Necessarily incident to these great, immense,
equilibrated and beneficent movements, caused by the antagonism of
equatorial heat and polar cold, are the typhoons, tornadoes, and
cyclones that result from conflicts between the rushing currents. These
and the benign trade-winds result from the same great law. God is
omnipotent; but effects without causes are impossible, and these effects
cannot but sometimes be evil. The fire would not warm, if it could not
also burn, the human flesh. The most virulent poisons are the most
sovereign remedies, when given in due proportion. The Evil is the shadow
of the Good, and inseparable from it.

The Divine Wisdom limits by equipoise the Omnipotence of the Divine Will
or Power, and the result is Beauty or Harmony. The arch rests not on a
single column, but springs from one on either side. So is it also with
the Divine Justice and Mercy, and with the Human Reason and Human Faith.

That purely scholastic Theology, issue of the Categories of Aristotle
and of the Sentences of Peter Lombard, that logic of the syllogism which
argues instead of reasoning, and finds a response to every thing by
subtilizing on terms, wholly ignored the Kabalastic dogma and wandered
off into the drear vacuity of darkness. It was less a philosophy or a
wisdom than a philosophical automaton, replying by means of springs, and
uncoiling its theses like a wheeled movement. It was not the human verb
but the monotonous cry of a machine, the inanimate speech of an Androïd.
It was the fatal precision of mechanism, instead of a free application
of rational necessities. ST. THOMAS AQUINAS crushed with a single blow
all this scaffolding of words built one upon the other, by proclaiming
the eternal Empire of Reason, in that magnificent sentence, "_A thing is
not just because_ GOD _wills it; but_ GOD _wills it because it is
just_." The proximate consequence of this proposition, arguing from the
greater to the less, was this: "_A thing is not true because_ ARISTOTLE
_has said it; but_ ARISTOTLE _could not reasonably say it unless it was
true. Seek then, first of all, the_ TRUTH _and_ JUSTICE, _and the
Science of_ ARISTOTLE _will be given you in addition_."

It is the fine dream of the greatest of the Poets, that Hell, become
useless, is to be closed at length, by the aggrandizement of Heaven;
that the problem of Evil is to receive its final solution, and Good
alone, necessary and triumphant, is to reign in Eternity. So the Persian
dogma taught that AHRIMAN and his subordinate ministers of Evil were at
last, by means of a Redeemer and Mediator, to be reconciled with Deity,
and all Evil to end. But unfortunately, the philosopher forgets all the
laws of equilibrium, and seeks to absorb the Light in a splendor without
shadow, and movement in an absolute repose that would be the cessation
of life. So long as there shall be a visible light, there will be a
shadow proportional to this Light, and whatever is illuminated will cast
its cone of shadow. Repose will never be happiness, if it is not
balanced by an analogous and contrary movement. This is the immutable
law of Nature, the Eternal Will of the JUSTICE which is GOD.

The same reason necessitates Evil and Sorrow in Humanity, which renders
indispensable the bitterness of the waters of the seas. Here also,
Harmony can result only from the analogy of contraries, and what is
above exists by reason of what is below. It is the depth that determines
the height; and if the valleys are filled up, the mountains disappear:
so, if the shadows are effaced, the Light is annulled, which is only
visible by the graduated contrast of gloom and splendor, and universal
obscurity will be produced by an immense dazzling. Even the colors in
the Light only exist by the presence of the shadow: it is the threefold
alliance of the day and night, the luminous image of the dogma, the
Light made Shadow, as the Saviour is the Logos made man: and all this
reposes on the same law, the primary law of creation, the single and
absolute law of Nature, that of the distinction and harmonious
ponderation of the contrary forces in the universal equipoise.

The two great columns of the Temple that symbolizes the Universe are
Necessity, or the omnipotent Will of God, which nothing can disobey, and
Liberty, or the free-will of His creatures. Apparently and to our human
reason antagonistic, the same Reason is not incapable of comprehending
how they can be in equipoise. The Infinite Power and Wisdom could so
plan the Universe and the Infinite Succession of things as to leave man
free to act, and, foreseeing what each would at every instant think and
do, to make of the free-will and free-action of each an instrument to
aid in effecting its general purpose. For even a man, foreseeing that
another will do a certain act, and in nowise controlling or even
influencing him may use that action as an instrument to effect his own
purposes.

The Infinite Wisdom of God foresees what each will do, and uses it as an
instrument, by the exertion of His Infinite Power, which yet does not
control the Human action so as to annihilate its freedom. The result is
Harmony, the third column that upholds the Lodge. The same Harmony
results from the equipoise of Necessity and Liberty. The will of God is
not for an instant defeated nor thwarted, and this is the Divine
Victory; and yet He does not tempt nor constrain men to do Evil, and
thus His Infinite Glory is unimpaired. The result is Stability,
Cohesion, and Permanence in the Universe, and undivided Dominion and
Autocracy in the Deity. And these, Victory, Glory, Stability, and
Dominion, are the last four Sephiroth of the Kabalah.

I AM, God said to Moses, that which Is, Was and Shall forever Be. But
the Very God, in His unmanifested Essence, conceived of as not yet
having created and as Alone, has no Name. Such was the doctrine of all
the ancient Sages, and it is so expressly declared in the Kabalah.
[Hebrew: יהוה] is the Name of the Deity manifested in a single act, that
of Creation, and containing within Himself, in idea and actuality, the
whole Universe, to be invested with form and be materially developed
during the eternal succession of ages. As God never WAS NOT, so He never
THOUGHT not, and the Universe has no more had a beginning than the
Divine Thought of which it is the utterance,--no more than the Deity
Himself. The duration of the Universe is but a point halfway upon the
infinite line of eternity; and God was not inert and uncreative during
the eternity that stretches behind that point. The Archetype of the
Universe did never not exist in the Divine Mind. The Word was in the
BEGINNING with God, and WAS God. And the Ineffable NAME is that, not of
the Very Essence but of the Absolute, manifested as Being or Existence.
For Existence or Being, said the Philosophers, is limitation; and the
Very Deity is not limited nor defined, but is all that _may possibly
be_, besides all that is, was, and shall be.

Reversing the letters of the Ineffable Name, and dividing it, it becomes
bi-sexual, as the word [Hebrew: יה], _Yud-He_ or JAH is, and discloses
the meaning of much of the obscure language of the Kabalah, and is The
Highest of which the Columns Jachin and Boaz are the symbol. "In the
image of Deity," we are told, "God created the Man; Male and Female
created He _them_:" and the writer, symbolizing the Divine by the Human,
then tells us that the woman, at first contained in the man, was taken
from his side. So Minerva, Goddess of Wisdom, was born, a woman and in
armor, of the brain of Jove; Isis was the sister before she was the wife
of Osiris, and within BRAHM, the Source of all, the Very God, without
sex or name, was developed MAYA, the Mother of all that is. The WORD is
the First and Only-begotten of the Father; and the awe with which the
Highest Mysteries were regarded has imposed silence in respect to the
Nature of the Holy Spirit. The Word is Light, and the Life of Humanity.

It is for the Adepts to understand the meaning of the Symbols.

Return now, with us, to the Degrees of the Blue Masonry, and for your
last lesson, receive the explanation of one of their Symbols.

You see upon the altar of those Degrees the SQUARE and the COMPASS, and
you remember how they lay upon the altar in each Degree.

The SQUARE is an instrument adapted for plane surfaces only, and
therefore appropriate to Geometry, or measurement of the Earth, which
appears to be, and was by the Ancients supposed to be, a plane. The
COMPASS is an instrument that has relation to spheres and spherical
surfaces, and is adapted to spherical trigonometry, or that branch of
mathematics which deals with the Heavens and the orbits of the planetary
bodies.

The SQUARE, therefore, is a natural and appropriate Symbol of this Earth
and the things that belong to it, are of it, or concern it. The Compass
is an equally natural and appropriate Symbol of the Heavens, and of all
celestial things and celestial natures.

You see at the beginning of this reading, an old Hermetic Symbol, copied
from the "MATERIA PRIMA" of Valentinus, printed at Franckfurt, in 1613,
with a treatise entitled "AZOTH." Upon it you see a Triangle upon a
Square, both of these contained in a circle; and above this, standing
upon a dragon, a human body, with two arms only, but two heads, one male
and the other female. By the side of the male head is the Sun, and by
that of the female head, the Moon, the crescent within the circle of the
full moon. And the hand on the _male_ side holds a _Compass_, and that
on the _female_ side, a _Square_.

The Heavens and the Earth were personified as Deities, even among the
Aryan Ancestors of the European nations of the Hindus, Zends, Bactrians,
and Persians; and the Rig Veda Sanhita contains hymns addressed to them
as gods. They were deified also among the Phœnicians; and among the
Greeks OURANOS and GEA, Heaven and Earth, were sung as the most ancient
of the Deities, by Hesiod.

It is the great, fertile, beautiful MOTHER, Earth, that produces, with
limitless profusion of beneficence, everything that ministers to the
needs, to the comfort, and to the luxury of man. From her teeming and
inexhaustible bosom come, the fruits, the grain, the flowers, in their
season. From it comes all that feeds the animals which serve man as
laborers and for food. She, in the fair Springtime, is green with
abundant grass, and the trees spring from her soil, and from her teeming
vitality take their wealth of green leaves. In her womb are found the
useful and valuable minerals; hers are the seas the swarm with life;
hers the rivers that furnish food and irrigation, and the mountains that
send down the streams which swell into these rivers; hers the forests
that feed the sacred fires for the sacrifices, and blaze upon the
domestic hearths. The EARTH, therefore, the great PRODUCER, was always
represented as a _female_, as the MOTHER,--Great, Bounteous, Beneficent
Mother Earth.

On the other hand, it is the light and heat of the Sun in the Heavens,
and the rains that seem to come from them, that in the Springtime make
fruitful this bountifully-producing Earth, that restore life and warmth
to her veins, chilled by Winter, set running free her streams, and
_beget_, as it were, that greenness and that abundance of which she is
so prolific. As the procreative and generative agents, the Heavens and
the Sun have always been regarded as _male_; as the generators that
fructify the Earth and cause it to produce.

The Hermaphroditic figure is the Symbol of the double nature anciently
assigned to the Deity, as Generator and Producer, as BRAHM and MAYA
among the Aryans, Osiris and Isis among the Egyptians. As the Sun was
male, so the Moon was female; and Isis was both the sister and the wife
of Osiris. The Compass, therefore, is the Hermetic Symbol of the
Creative Deity, and the Square of the productive Earth or Universe.

From the Heavens come the spiritual and immortal portion of man; from
the Earth his material and mortal portion. The Hebrew Genesis says that
YEHOUAH formed man of the dust of the Earth, and breathed into his
nostrils the breath of life. Through the seven planetary spheres,
represented by the Mystic Ladder of the Mithriac Initiations, and it by
that which Jacob saw in his dream (not with _three_, but with _seven_
steps), the Souls, emanating from the Deity, descended, to be united to
their human bodies; and through those seven spheres they must re-ascend,
to return to their origin and home in the bosom of the Deity.

The COMPASS, therefore, as the Symbol of the _Heavens_, represents the
spiritual, intellectual, and moral portion of this double nature of
Humanity; and the SQUARE, as the Symbol of the _Earth_, its material,
sensual, and baser portion.

"Truth and Intelligence," said one of the Ancient Indian Sects of
Philosophers, "are the Eternal attributes of God, not of the individual
Soul, which is susceptible both of knowledge and ignorance, of pleasure
and pain; therefore God and the individual Soul are distinct:" and this
expression of the ancient Nyaya Philosophers, in regard to Truth, has
been handed down to us through the long succession of ages, in the
lessons of Freemasonry, wherein we read, that "Truth is a Divine
Attribute, and the foundation of every virtue."

"While embodied in matter," they said, "the Soul is in a state of
imprisonment, and is under the influence of evil passions; but having,
by intense study, arrived at the knowledge of the elements and
principles of Nature, it attains unto the place of THE ETERNAL; in which
state of happiness, its individuality does not cease."

The vitality which animates the mortal frame, the Breath of Life of the
Hebrew Genesis, the Hindu Philosophers in general held, perishes with
it; but the Soul is divine, an emanation of the Spirit of God, but not a
_portion_ of that Spirit. For they compared it to the heat and light
sent forth from the Sun, or to a _ray_ of that light, which neither
lessens nor divides its own essence.

However created, or invested with separate existence, the Soul, which is
but the creature of the Deity, cannot know the mode of its creation, nor
comprehend its own individuality. It cannot even comprehend how the
being which it and the body constitute, can feel pain, or see, or hear.
It has pleased the Universal Creator to set bounds to the scope of our
human and finite reason, beyond which it cannot reach; and if we are
capable of comprehending the mode and manner of the creation or
generation of the Universe of things, He has been pleased to conceal it
from us by an impenetrable veil, while the words used to express the act
have no other definite meaning than that He caused that Universe to
commence to exist.

It is enough for us to know, what Masonry teaches, that we are not all
mortal; that the Soul or Spirit, the intellectual and reasoning portion
of ourself, is our Very Self, is not subject to decay and dissolution,
but is simple and immaterial, survives the death of the body, and is
_capable_ of immortality; that it is also capable of improvement and
advancement, of increase of knowledge of the things that are divine, of
becoming wiser and better, and more and more worthy of immortality; and
that to become so, and to help to improve and benefit others and all our
race, is the noblest ambition and highest glory that we can entertain
and attain unto, in this momentary and imperfect life.

In every human being the Divine and the Human are intermingled. In every
one there are the Reason and the Moral sense, the passions that prompt
to evil, and the sensual appetites. "If ye live after the flesh, ye
shall die," said Paul, writing to the Christians at Rome, "but if ye
through the spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. For
as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." "The
flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh," he
said, writing to the Christians of Galatia, "and these are contrary the
one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." "That
which I do, I do not willingly do," he wrote to the Romans, "for what I
wish to do, that I do not do, but that which I hate I do. It is no more
I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me. To will, is present with me;
but how to perform that which is good, I find not. For, I do not do the
good that I desire to do; and the evil that I do not wish to do, that I
do. I find then a _law_, that when I desire to do good, evil is present
with me; for I delight in the law of God after the inward man, but I see
another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and
bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members ...
So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh
the law of sin."

Life is a battle, and to fight that battle heroically and well is the
great purpose of every man's existence, who is worthy and fit to live at
all. To stem the strong currents of adversity, to advance in despite of
all obstacles, to snatch victory from the jealous grasp of fortune, to
become a chief and a leader among men, to rise to rank and power by
eloquence, courage, perseverance, study, energy, activity, discouraged
by no reverses, impatient of no delays, deterred by no hazards; to win
wealth, to subjugate men by our intellect, the very elements by our
audacity, to succeed, to prosper, to thrive;--thus it is, according to
the general understanding, that one fights well the battle of life. Even
to succeed in business by that boldness which halts for no risks, that
audacity which stakes all upon hazardous chances; by the shrewdness of
the close dealer, the boldness of the unscrupulous operator, even by
the knaveries of the stock-board and the gold-room; to crawl up into
place by disreputable means or the votes of brutal ignorance,--these
also are deemed to be among the great successes of life.

But that which is the greatest battle, and in which the truest honor and
most real success are to be won, is that which our intellect and reason
and moral sense, our spiritual natures, fight against our sensual
appetites and evil passions, our earthly and material or animal nature.
Therein only are the true glories of heroism to be won, there only the
successes that entitle us to triumphs.

In every human life that battle is fought; and those who win elsewhere,
often suffer ignominious defeat and disastrous rout, and discomfiture
and shameful downfall in this encounter.

You have heard more than one definition of Freemasonry. The truest and
the most significant you have yet to hear. It is taught to the entered
Apprentice, the Fellow-Craft, and the Master, and it is taught in every
Degree through which you have advanced to this. It is a definition of
what Freemasonry is, of what its purposes and its very essence and
spirit are; and it has for every one of us the force and sanctity of a
divine law, and imposes on every one of us a solemn obligation.

_It is symbolized and taught, to the Apprentice as well as to you, by
the_ COMPASS _and the_ SQUARE; upon which, as well as upon the Book of
your Religion and the Book of the law of the Scottish Freemasonry, you
have taken so many obligations. As a Knight, you have been taught it by
the Swords, the symbols of HONOR and DUTY, on which you have taken your
vows: it was taught you by the BALANCE, the symbol of all Equilibrium,
and by the CROSS, the symbol of devotedness and self-sacrifice; but all
that these teach and contain is taught and contained, for Entered
Apprentice, Knight, and Prince alike, by the Compass and the Square.

For the Apprentice, the points of the Compass are beneath the Square.
For the Fellow-Craft, one is above and one beneath. For the Master, both
are dominant, and have rule, control, and empire over the symbol of the
earthly and the material.

FREEMASONRY _is the subjugation of the Human that is in man by the
Divine; the Conquest of the Appetites and Passions by the Moral Sense
and the Reason; a continual effort, struggle, and warfare of the
Spiritual against the Material and Sensual._ That victory, when it has
been achieved and secured, and the conqueror may rest upon his shield
and wear the well-earned laurels, is the true HOLY EMPIRE.

To achieve it, the Mason must first attain a solid conviction, founded
upon reason, that he hath within him a spiritual nature, a soul that is
not to die when the body is dissolved, but is to continue to exist and
to advance toward perfection through all the ages of eternity, and to
see more and more clearly, as it draws nearer unto God, the Light of the
Divine Presence. This the Philosophy of the Ancient and Accepted Rite
teaches him; and it encourages him to persevere by helping him to
believe that his free will is entirely consistent with God's Omnipotence
and Omniscience; that He is not only infinite in power, and of infinite
wisdom, but of infinite mercy, and an infinitely tender pity and love
for the frail and imperfect creatures that He has made.

Every Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, from the first
to the thirty-second, teaches by its ceremonial as well as by its
instruction, that the noblest purpose of life and the highest duty of a
man are to strive incessantly and vigorously to win the mastery of
everything, of that which in him is spiritual and divine, over that
which is material and sensual; so that in him also, as in the Universe
which God governs, Harmony and Beauty may be the result of a just
equilibrium.

You have been taught this in those Degrees, conferred in the Lodge of
Perfection, which inculcate particularly the practical morality of
Freemasonry. To be true, under whatever temptation to be false; to be
honest in all your dealings, even if great losses should be the
consequence; to be charitable, when selfishness would prompt you to
close your hand, and deprivation of luxury or comfort must follow the
charitable act; to judge justly and impartially, even in your own case,
when baser impulses prompt you to do an injustice in order that you may
be benefited or justified; to be tolerant, when passion prompts to
intolerance and persecution; to do that which is right, when the wrong
seems to promise larger profit; and to wrong no man of anything that is
his, however easy it may seem so to enrich yourself;--in all these
things and others which you promised in those Degrees, your spiritual
nature is taught and encouraged to assert its rightful dominion over
your appetites and passions.

The philosophical Degrees have taught you the value of knowledge, the
excellence of truth, the superiority of intellectual labor, the dignity
and value of your soul, the worth of great and noble thoughts; and thus
endeavored to assist you to rise above the level of the animal appetites
and passions, the pursuits of greed and the miserable struggles of
ambition, and to find purer pleasure and nobler prizes and rewards in
the acquisition of knowledge, the enlargement of the intellect, the
interpretation of the sacred writing of God upon the great pages of the
Book of Nature.

And the Chivalric Degrees have led you on the same path, by showing you
the excellence of generosity, clemency, forgiveness of injuries,
magnanimity, contempt of danger, and the paramount obligations of Duty
and Honor. They have taught you to overcome the fear of death, to devote
yourself to the great cause of civil and religious Liberty, to be the
Soldier of all that is just, right, and true; in the midst of pestilence
to deserve your title of Knight Commander of the Temple, and neither
there nor elsewhere to desert your post and flee dastard-like from the
foe. In all this, you assert the superiority and right to dominion of
that in you which is spiritual and divine. No base fear of danger or
death, no sordid ambitions or pitiful greeds or base considerations can
tempt a true Scottish Knight to dishonor, and so make his intellect, his
reason, his soul, the bond-slave of his appetites, of his passions, of
that which is material and animal, selfish and brutish in his nature.

It is not possible to create a true and genuine Brotherhood upon any
theory of the baseness of human nature: nor by a community of belief in
abstract propositions as to the nature of the Deity, the number of His
persons, or other theorems of religious faith: nor by the establishment
of a system of association simply for mutual relief, and by which, in
consideration of certain payments regularly made, each becomes entitled
to a certain stipend in case of sickness, to attention then, and to the
ceremonies of burial after death.

There can be no genuine Brotherhood without mutual regard, good opinion
and esteem, mutual charity, and mutual allowance for faults and
failings. It is those only who learn habitually to think better of each
other, to look habitually for the good that is in each other, and
expect, allow for, and overlook, the evil, who can be Brethren one of
the other, in any true sense of the word. Those who gloat over the
failings of one another, who think each other to be naturally base and
low, of a nature in which the Evil predominates and excellence is not to
be looked for, cannot be even friends, and much less Brethren.

No one can have a right to think meanly of his race, unless he also
thinks meanly of himself. If, from a single fault or error, he judges of
the character of another, and takes the single act as evidence of the
whole nature of the man and of the whole course of his life, he ought to
consent to be judged by the same rule, and to admit it to be right that
others should thus uncharitably condemn himself. But such judgments will
become impossible when he incessantly reminds himself that in every man
who lives there is an immortal Soul endeavoring to do that which is
right and just; a Ray, however small, and almost inappreciable, from the
Great Source of Light and Intelligence, which ever struggles upward amid
all the impediments of sense and the obstructions of the passions; and
that in every man this ray continually wages war against his evil
passions and his unruly appetites, or, if it has succumbed, is never
wholly extinguished and annihilated. For he will then see that it is not
victory, but the struggle that deserves honor; since in this as in all
else no man can always command success. Amid a cloud of errors, of
failure, and shortcomings, he will look for the struggling Soul, for
that which is good in every one amid the evil, and, believing that each
is better than from his acts and omissions he seems to be, and that God
cares for him still, and pities him and loves him, he will feel that
even the erring sinner is still his brother, still entitled to his
sympathy, and bound to him by the indissoluble ties of fellowship.

If there be nothing of the divine in man, what is he, after all, but a
more intelligent animal? He hath no fault nor vice which some beast hath
not; and therefore in his vices he is but a beast of a higher order; and
he hath hardly any moral excellence, perhaps none, which some animal
hath not in as great a degree,--even the more excellent of these, such
as generosity, fidelity, and magnanimity.

Bardesan, the Syrian Christian, in his Book of the Laws of Countries,
says, of men, that "in the things belonging to their bodies, they
maintain their nature like animals, and in the things which belong to
their minds, they do that which they wish, as being free and with power,
and as the likeness of God"; and Meliton, Bishop of Sardis, in his
Oration to Antoninus Cæsar, says, "Let Him, the ever-living God, be
always present in thy mind; for thy mind itself is His likeness, for it,
too, is invisible and impalpable, and without form.... As He exists
forever, so thou also, when thou shalt have put off this which is
visible and corruptible, shalt stand before Him forever, living and
endowed with knowledge."

As a matter far above our comprehension, and in the Hebrew Genesis the
words that are used to express the origin of things are of uncertain
meaning, and with equal propriety may be translated by the word
"generated," "produced," "made," or "created," we need not dispute nor
debate whether the Soul or Spirit of man be a ray that has emanated or
flowed forth from the Supreme Intelligence, or whether the Infinite
Power hath called each into existence from nothing, by a mere exertion
of Its will, and endowed it with immortality, and with intelligence like
unto the Divine Intelligence: for, in either case it may be said that in
man the Divine is united to the Human. Of this union the equilateral
Triangle inscribed within the Square is a Symbol.

We see the Soul, Plato said, as men see the statue of Glaucus, recovered
from the sea wherein it had lain many years--which viewing, it was not
easy, if possible, to discern what was its original nature, its limbs
having been partly broken and partly worn and by defacement changed, by
the action of the waves, and shells, weeds, and pebbles adhering to it,
so that it more resembled some strange monster than that which it was
when it left its Divine Source. Even so, he said, we see the Soul,
deformed by innumerable things that have done it harm, have mutilated
and defaced it. But the Mason who hath the ROYAL SECRET can also with
him argue, from beholding its love of wisdom, its tendency toward
association with what is divine and immortal, its larger aspirations,
its struggles, though they may have ended in defeat, with the
impediments and enthralments of the senses and the passions, that when
it shall have been rescued from the material environments that now prove
too strong for it, and be freed from the deforming and disfiguring
accretions that here adhere to it, it will again be seen in its true
nature, and by degrees ascend by the mystic ladder of the Spheres, to
its first home and place of origin.

The ROYAL SECRET, of which you are Prince, if you are a true Adept, if
knowledge seems to you advisable, and Philosophy is, for you, radiant
with a divine beauty, is that which the Sohar terms _The Mystery of
the_ BALANCE. It is the Secret of the UNIVERSAL EQUILIBRIUM:--

--Of that Equilibrium in the Deity, between the Infinite Divine WISDOM
and the Infinite Divine POWER, from which result the Stability of the
Universe, the unchangeableness of the Divine Law, and the Principles of
Truth, Justice, and Right which are a part of it; and the Supreme
Obligation of the Divine Law upon all men, as superior to all other law,
and forming a part of all the laws of men and nations.

--Of that Equilibrium also, between the Infinite Divine JUSTICE and the
Infinite Divine MERCY, the result of which is the Infinite Divine
EQUITY, and the Moral Harmony or Beauty of the Universe. By it the
endurance of created and imperfect natures in the presence of a Perfect
Deity is made possible; and for Him, also, as for us, to love is better
than to hate, and Forgiveness is wiser than Revenge or Punishment.

--Of that Equilibrium between NECESSITY and LIBERTY, between the action
of the DIVINE Omnipotence and the Free-will of man, by which vices and
base actions, and ungenerous thoughts and words are crimes and wrongs,
justly punished by the law of cause and consequence, though nothing in
the Universe can happen or be done contrary to the will of God; and
without which co-existence of Liberty and Necessity, of Free-will in the
creature and Omnipotence in the Creator, there could be no religion, nor
any law of right and wrong, or merit and demerit, nor any justice in
human punishments or penal laws.

--Of that Equilibrium between Good and Evil, and Light and Darkness in
the world, which assures us that all is the work of the Infinite Wisdom
and of an Infinite Love; and that there is no rebellious demon of Evil,
or Principle of Darkness co-existent and in eternal controversy with
God, or the Principle of Light and of Good: by attaining to the
knowledge of which equilibrium we can, through Faith, see that the
existence of Evil, Sin, Suffering, and Sorrow in the world, is
consistent with the Infinite Goodness as well as with the Infinite
Wisdom of the Almighty.

Sympathy and Antipathy, Attraction and Repulsion, each a Force of
nature, are contraries, in the souls of men and in the Universe of
spheres and worlds; and from the action and opposition of each against
the other, result Harmony, and that movement which is the Life of the
Universe and the Soul alike. They are not antagonists of each other.
The force that repels a Planet from the Sun is no more an _evil_ force,
than that which attracts the Planet toward the central Luminary; for
each is created and exerted by the Deity, and the result is the
harmonious movement of the obedient Planets in their elliptic orbits,
and the mathematical accuracy and unvarying regularity of their
movements.

--Of that Equilibrium between Authority and Individual Action which
constitutes Free Government, by settling on immutable foundations
Liberty with Obedience to Law, Equality with Subjection to Authority,
and Fraternity with Subordination to the Wisest and the Best: and of
that Equilibrium between the _Active_ Energy of the Will of the Present,
expressed by the Vote of the People, and the Passive Stability and
Permanence of the Will of the Past, expressed in constitutions of
government, written or unwritten, and in the laws and customs, gray with
age and sanctified by time, as precedents and authority; which is
represented by the arch resting on the two columns, Jachin and Boaz,
that stand at the portals of the Temple builded by Wisdom, on one of
which Masonry sets the celestial Globe, symbol of the spiritual part of
our composite nature, and on the other the terrestrial Globe, symbol of
the material part.

--And, finally, of that Equilibrium, possible in ourselves, and which
Masonry incessantly labors to accomplish in its Initiates, and demands
of its Adepts and Princes (else unworthy of their titles), between the
Spiritual and Divine and the Material and Human in man; between the
Intellect, Reason, and Moral Sense on one side, and the Appetites and
Passions on the other, from which result the Harmony and Beauty of a
well-regulated life.

Which possible Equilibrium proves to us that our Appetites and Senses
also are Forces given unto us by God, for purposes of good, and not the
fruits of the malignancy of a Devil, to be detested, mortified, and, if
possible, rendered inert and dead: that they are given us to be the
means by which we shall be strengthened and incited to great and good
deeds, and are to be wisely used, and not abused; to be controlled and
kept within due bounds by the Reason and the Moral Sense; to be made
useful instruments and servants, and not permitted to become the
managers and masters, using our intellect and reason as base instruments
for their gratification.

And this Equilibrium teaches us, above all, to reverence ourselves as
immortal souls, and to have respect and charity for others, who are even
such as we are, partakers with us of the Divine Nature, lighted by a ray
of the Divine Intelligence, struggling, like us, toward the light;
capable, like us, of progress upward toward perfection, and deserving to
be loved and pitied, but never to be hated nor despised; to be aided and
encouraged in this life-struggle, and not to be abandoned nor left to
wander in the darkness alone, still less to be trampled upon in our own
efforts to ascend.

From the mutual action and re-action of each of these pairs of opposites
and contraries results that which with them forms the Triangle, to all
the Ancient Sages the expressive symbol of the Deity; as from Osiris and
Isis, Har-oeri, the Master of Light and Life, and the Creative Word. At
the angles of one stand, symbolically, the three columns that support
the Lodge, itself a symbol of the Universe, Wisdom, Power, and Harmony
or Beauty. One of these symbols, found on the Tracing-Board of the
Apprentice's Degree, teaches this last lesson of Freemasonry. It is the
right-angled Triangle, representing man, as a union of the spiritual and
material, of the divine and human. The base, measured by the number 3,
the number of the Triangle, represents the Deity and the Divine; the
perpendicular, measured by the number 4, the number of the Square,
represents the Earth, the Material, and the Human; and the hypothenuse,
measured by 5, represents that nature which is produced by the union of
the Divine and Human, the Soul and the Body; the squares, 9 and 16, of
the base and perpendicular, added together, producing 25, the square
root whereof is 5, the measure of the hypothenuse.

And as in each Triangle of Perfection, one is three and three are one,
so man is one, though of a double nature; and he attains the purposes of
his being only when the two natures that are in him are in just
equilibrium; and his life is a success only when it too is a harmony,
and beautiful, like the great Harmonies of God and the Universe.

Such, my Brother, is the TRUE WORD of a Master Mason; such the true
ROYAL SECRET, which makes possible, and shall at length make real, the
HOLY EMPIRE of true Masonic Brotherhood.

GLORIA DEI EST CELARE VERBUM. AMEN.



DIGEST--INDEX
OF
"MORALS AND DOGMA,"

OF

ALBERT PIKE 33°

BY

T.W. HUGO, G.C.C.H.



Published by

The Supreme Council, 33°

A. & A.S.R. for the

Southern Jurisdiction, U. S. A.

       *       *       *       *       *

WASHINGTON. D.C.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1909, by

T.W. HUGO,

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.


L.H. JENKINS, INC.
RICHMOND, VIRGINIA



PREFACE.


The following Digest of the contents of Brother Albert Pike's monumental
work, "Morals and Dogma," the text book of the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite for the southern jurisdiction, issued by the Supreme
Council, grew out of the desire of the writer to have an index of the
contents for his own personal use as the presiding officer, for twenty
years, of each of the Scottish Rite Bodies in Duluth, Minnesota, and it
can be imagined that in that time, dating from the first organization,
many questions have been propounded which could only be properly
answered by reference to that epitome of Scottish Rite Free Masonry; the
book referred to.

From the very nature of "Morals and Dogma," different subjects are hard
to find; the book is very naturally divided under the headings of
Degrees; there are no sub-headings; and as most of the important
subjects are touched on, to a greater or lesser extent, in all the
Degrees it meant a perusal of the entire book if all the information on
any of those subjects was desired.

The writer started to compile an Index (in the ordinary acceptation of
the term), giving the pages where such and such words would be found,
but he had not progressed very far before it became evident that was
only half a solution of the problem; so many references were found that
it would have been necessary to spend a great length of time looking up
the several pages to see if that particular reference was to what the
searcher was after; the procedure was entirely changed and it was
decided, although it would consume very much more time, and entail more
arduous labor, to digest the contents and then Index that, so that when
a person wanted to find out what, for instance, the Egyptians understood
by "The Universe," it was not necessary to look in "Morals and Dogma,"
at all the pages on which "Universe" was mentioned but by following down
the column, under the heading "Universe," come to "Universe of the
Egyptians a living, animated being like man, page 665-l;" if that is not
enough in detail turn to page 665, and in the lower third of the page
will be found the paragraph of which the line just quoted is the boiled
down meaning; most of the time it will not be necessary to consult the
"Morals and Dogma" at all.

When the Digest (so called for want of a better name) was completed, a
meeting of the Duluth Brethren was called to secure the assistance of
some of them in making a few copies on the typewriter, but they decided
that each of them wanted a copy and the only thing to do was to print;
hence the book.

In the opinion of the writer no one who has not carefully studied
"Morals and Dogma," or the several subjects of which it is the epitome,
is or can be a Master of the Royal Secret in the true meaning of the
term, no matter how many patents he may have, nor how completely they
are countersigned by distinguished Masons of the Thirty-third Degree,
and it is for those who do not wish to sail along under false colors and
assume titles of which they know not the meaning that this volume is
prepared, believing it will assist them to acquire an interest in the
subject which they otherwise would be much slower in gaining, if not
deterred altogether by the apparent difficulty in following up the
several subjects.

Honored with the personal friendship and confidence of the author of
"Morals and Dogma," receiving the highest honors at his hands and
cherishing a lively recollection of his many splendid qualities of mind
and heart, the writer can conceive of no higher ambition than that of
shewing by deeds that he has appreciated the privileges of that
friendship and has absorbed some of the inspiration which personal
intercourse with Brother Pike made possible therefore.

     This volume is dedicated in grateful memory of the Prince Adept,
     Albert Pike, 33°, Mystic, Poet, Scholar, who through his researches
     and his study of the Symbolism of Free Masonry has raised that
     Institution far above the commonplace and enthroned it on the lofty
     plane of a sublime system of Philosophy, embracing the accumulated
     Wisdom of the ages fitted to make men wiser, happier, better.

No attempts have been made to standardize the spelling of some words,
nor make any changes in phraseology; for instance, "Cabala," "Kabalah,"
"Kabala," are different spellings of the one word; "Deity" and "God" are
used indiscriminately, etc., etc.; this volume is a Digest of "Morals
and Dogma" as it is, and nothing else.

T.W. HUGO.

Duluth, Minn., October 1st, 1909.



EXPLANATION.


In explanation of the characters used in the Index; the letters "u,"
"m," "l" after a number signifies that the subject mentioned will be
found on the page represented by the number and in the upper, middle, or
lower thirds of that page, respectively; thus "Unity of God taught in
the Kabalah, 625-l," means that on the lower third of page 625 will be
found the paragraph of which the notation in question is a shortened
statement.

Where no final letter is given it means that the notation refers to the
entire page, as "Universe, questions concerning the creation or self
existence of, 648," means that all of page 648 refers to that notation
just quoted.

Where a dash (--) appears at the end of the words, it means that for the
completion of the sentence reference must be made to the page whose
number follows; for instance, "Universe must have been co-existent with
Deity because--, 684-u," means that the reader must consult page 684-u,
and complete the sentence, as it is of such a nature that it could not
be boiled down very well and preserve the true sense.

Where a dash (--) appears between two numbers of pages it means that
both of those pages and the intervening ones refer to the subject matter
of the notation opposite those numbers.



DIGEST OF "MORALS AND DOGMA"



A

Aaron made an image of a false god while Moses received the Law, 206-m.
Aaron restored the worship of Apis when he made the golden calf, 369-m.
Aaron's golden calf was one of the oxen under the laver of bronze, 818-l.
Ab, Father, as well as Athah, the name of the Ancient in Microprosopos,
  794-u.
Aba and Imma, Father and Mother, 757-u.
Abacus, the Table of Pythagoras, concluded by the number ten, 638-m.
Ablutions, baths, baptisms before initiation, explanation of, 431-m.
Above exists by reason of what is below, 848-u.
Abraham carried the orthodox traditions from Chaldea, 843-l.
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Jehovah the peculiar God of, 206-l.
Abraham; Magism was the science of, 839-l.
Abraxas, the plentitude of the Divine Emanations, a Gnostic idea, 554.
Absolute conceived by reference to some substantial things, 702-u.
"Absolute" defined is but a collection of negations, 651-l.
Absolute Deity is in Microprosopos, 793-l.
Absolute discovered by the science of numbers, 626-u.
Absolute existence embodied in the Ineffable Name, 700-m.
Absolute existence is Ihuh-Alhim, 701-m.
Absolute existence, the essence of the creative forces of Deity, 701-m.
Absolute in matters of Intelligence and Faith, 842-m.
Absolute is the Being in which the Word Is, according to the Kabalah,
  841-l.
Absolute is the fixed from the volatile; is that which is, 776-l.
Absolute is the immutable Law of Reason and Truth, 776-l.
Absolute is the Truth, Reality, Reason, of the universal equilibrium,
  844-u.
Absolute manifested as Being or Existence forms the Ineffable Name,
  849-m.
Absolute necessarily implies absolute Unity, 702-l.
"Absolute" no longer explains the problem of Good and Evil, 682-u.
Absolute sought in the Infinite, Indefinite; the Finite is the "Great
  Work", 776-l.
Absolute summed up in the Word alternately lost and found, 840-m.
Absolute summed up in the Word transmitted in Initiations, 840-m.
Absolute, the Fixed, the Volatile, are synonymous with Reason,
  Necessity, Liberty, 791-l.
Absolute, the Principle or First Cause of all Things, 626-u.
Absolute; the pursuit of the "Great Work" is the Search for the, 773-u.
Absolute, the very necessity of Being; That which Is; Reason, 736-l.
Absolute Truth, Beauty, Good, emanates from God, 702-l.
Absurd, Infinite, which confounds and which we believe is the Divine
  Reason, 841-m.
Abury, all the cycles reproduced at the Druidic Temple at, 235-l.
Abyss; God, according to Valentinus, was an unfathomable, 559-l.
Abyss, the Gnostics represented God as an unfathomable, 555-u.
Abyssinians changed the Hindu Trinity to Creator, Matter, Thought, 550-l.
Acacia, a sacred tree of the Arabs, the idol Al-Uzza, 82-m.
Acacia branch represents the Tree of Life to the Hermetic Rose Croix,
  786-l.
Acacia is an emblem of resurrection and immortality, 642-u.
Acacia, made into the "crown of thorns", 82-m.
Acacia, origin of the idea of the sprig of, 376-l.
Acacia, the thorny tamarisk, grew around Osiris, 82-m.
Acacia, type of immortality, 82-m.
Achaius, King of the Scots, saw the St. Andrew's Cross the night before
  a battle, 801-l.
Achilles fights with Scamander, 499-m.
Acmon's death lamented by the Scythians, 594-l.
Acorn planted before the Norman conquest grows into importance, 317-l.
Achronically; when Stars rise or set in opposition to the Sun, 471-m.
Acts, unknown secret, 131-l.
Action an essential part of Masonry; work required, 152-l.
Action greater than writing, 350-u.
Actions, importance of small, 173-m.
Actions, in ordinary spheres are opportunities for the noblest, 350-m.
Actions, more apparent than real, are the criticised rewards of Good or
  Evil, 705-l.
Action and opposition of contrary forces bring Harmony, 859-l.
Active and Passive; Great First Cause divided into the, 653-l.
Active and Passive Principles gave birth to the Universal Soul idea,
  664-m.
Active and Passive Principles, Light and Darkness symbols of, 404-l.
Active and Passive Principles symbolized by generative parts, 401-l.
Active and Passive principles symbolized by Jachin and Boaz, 860-m.
Active and Passive Symbols; the Male and Female, 784-m.
Active energy of the Will of the Present expressed by vote of People,
  860-u.
Active life has spiritual ends, 243-m.
Active Principle diffuses; Passive, collects and makes fruitful by
  nature, 772-u.
Active principle represented by Light, 305-l.
Active principle resides in the mind, external to matter, 657-l.
Adam belonged to both the Empire of Light and that of Darkness, 567-u.
Adam conformed into male and female and a state of equilibrium
  established, 795-l.
Adam forbidden to eat of the fruit so he would not know--, 567-u.
Adam is the human Tetragram, summed up in the Yod, 771-m.
Adam Kadmon assisted by the living Spirit, Jesus Christ, 566-m.
Adam Kadmon commenced the contest with the powers of evil, 566-m.
Adam Kadmon, containing all the Causates of the First Cause, is a
  Macrocosm, 760-m.
Adam Kadmon created after the Vestiges of the Lights had been removed by
  God, 751-u.
Adam Kadmon emanated from Absolute Unit and so is himself a unit, 760-l.
Adam Kadmon fashioned into Male and Female when equilibrium was
  introduced, 763-u.
Adam Kadmon flows downward into his own nature and so is duality, 760-l.
Adam Kadmon had in him Nephesek, Ruach, Neschamah, Neschamah
  Leneschamah, 757-u.
Adam Kadmon is designated in the third person, Hua, He, 763-u.
Adam Kadmon is the Idea of the Universe unevolved in the manifested
  Deity, 758-m.
Adam Kadmon made up as to limbs by the nine Sephiroth, 757-l.
Adam Kadmon, Primitive Man, made by the Demiourgos, 562-l.
Adam Kadmon returns to the Unity and to the Highest and so is ternary
  and quaternary, 760-u.
Adam Kadmon, the First Born, the Primitive Man, 267-m.
Adam Kadmon, the Idea of the Universe, assigned a human form, 757-l.
Adam Kadmon, the Logos, man-type, primitive man, 251-m.
Adam Kadmon, the Primal Man, emitted into the evacuated Space, 746-u.
Adam Kadmon was not formed male and female when the Kings died, 797-l.
Adam, the first, was Microprosopos; Macroprosopos first Occult Adam,
  795-u.
Adept, the 28th Degree, Knight of the Sun or Prince, 581.
Adepts bound to Ancient Mysteries, 50-u.
Adityas, or Solar Attributes, a Vedic Sun God, 602-l.
Adityas, the distinct powers of Surya, each with a name, 587-m.
Adonai, applied to Deity, represents, 208-m.
Adonai, meaning of; substituted for True Name, 201-l.
Adonai, Son, Kabalah ascribes redemption to, 104-m.
Adonai, the most potent of the names of Deity; moves the Universe, 787-l.
Adonai, one of the seven Reflections of the Ophites, 563-m.
Adonai of the Phoenicians is a personification of the Sun, 594-u.
Adonai or Adon, the Phoenician name for the Sun God, 587-u.
Adoniram, Joabert, Satolkin, the three Masters, represent, 210-u.
Adonis and Apollo of the Greeks are personifications of the Sun, 594-u.
Adonis and Proserpine in wanderings represent--, 404-m.
Adonis or Thammuz, death and resurrection in Mysteries, 406-m.
Adonis, symbol of the Sun, 77-m.
Adonis, the Sun, as adored by the Phoenician Byblos, 587-l.
Adonis wounded in private parts by boar; emblem of, 412-l.
Adon signifies Lord and Master, 591-l.
Adoration of Deity requires something tangible to exalt the mind, 617-l.
Advancement in the Rite, depends on, 136-m.
Advancement in the Rite, those entitled to, 136-m.
Adversity, blessings and advantages of, 145-m.
Aeschylus accused of representing the Mysteries on the stage, 384-l.
Aeschylus and others declare life is not a scene of repose, 691-u.
Aesop and others declare the object of suffering is beneficial, 691-u.
Aesch Mezareph says the seven lower Sephiroth represent seven metals,
  798-l.
Affliction, a loneliness in, 189-m.
Affliction, words go but little way into the depths of, 189-m.
Agathodaemon, or Kneph, represented by Osiris, 587-l.
Age we represent is not enlarged by our discoveries, 808-l.
Ages of the Sun represented by the four ages of man, 465-u.
Ages passed before reason was preferred to imagination, 674-m.
Agla, Hieroglyphics of, indicate the Triple Secret of the Great Work,
  104-l.
Agni lives on the fire of the sacrifice, on the hearth, of the sky,
  602-m.
Agni, the Mediator between God and man, 602-m.
Agricultural phenomena connected with Egyptian religion, 588-u.
Agricultural, primitive people of Orient were wholly, 445-m.
Ahih Ashr Ahih, I am what I am, the meaning of the name assumed by
  Deity, 697-l.
Ahriman and ministers of Evil to be reconciled to Deity and Evil end,
  847-l.
Ahriman called "the old serpent, Prince of Darkness," etc., by Persians,
  498-m.
Ahriman concurred with Ormuzd in the creation of Man, 258-u.
Ahriman condemned to dwell in darkness 12,000 years, 257-l.
Ahriman considered older than Ormuzd by some Parsee sects, 613-u.
Ahriman destroyed the pure principle of Man, 258-u.
Ahriman not a malevolent being in the early ages of the world, 613-u.
Ahriman origin of all evils, represented Darkness, 443-l.
Ahriman produces Deos and Deities to equal those of Ormuzd, 662-l.
Ahriman, second born of the Primitive Light, ambitious, 257-m.
Ahriman, the Persian demon of Evil, of the nature of darkness, 661-m.
Ahriman the evil principle of the religion of Zoroaster, 449-u.
Ahriman to be triumphant during three latter periods, 258-m.
Ahriman to rule the world till the end of time, 623-l.
Ahriman's worship considered as the cause of the Fall of man, 613-u.
Ahura Mazda, by the power of the Word, made the Heaven and Earth, 613-l.
Ahura Mazda claims to have created the Universe and man, 612-u.
Ahura Mazda, Indra, Ormuzd is the bright firmament, 601-l.
Ahura Mazda is called the First Born of all things, very light of--,
  613-l.
Ahura Mazda represented the primal light, 612-u.
Ahura Mazda, Supreme, whose Soul is the Excellent Word, 613-m.
Ainsoph and His garmenting were alone before the world of the vacant
  space, 750-u.
Ainsoph called Light because it is impossible to express it by any other
  word, 740-m.
Ainsoph is the title of the Cause of Causes, its meaning being
  "endless", 747-u.
Ainsoph, King of the Sephiroth Theology; Being Supreme and Absolute,
  99-m.
Ainsoph of the Kabalah corresponds to the Word, 271-l.
Ainsoph sometimes applied to the first emanation, Kether, the Crown,
  747-u.
Aions of the Gnostics correspond to the 28 Izeds, 257-u.
Aions of the Gnostics corresponded to the Ferouers of Zoroaster, 256-u.
Air and Fire, white and red, Mercy and Judgment do not intermix, 795-m.
Air gives the elements and principles of compound sensation, 784-m.
Air, one of the symbols of spiritual regeneration in the Mysteries,
  357-l.
Air used as a test to represent the possible purification of the soul,
  397-u.
Air, Water, Fire, denote Benignity, Judicial Rigor; Mercy as mediator,
  799-u.
Al, a name of Deity, represents, 208-m.
Al, Al Schadai, Alohayim, Adonai, long known names of Deity, 697-l.
Al Shadai, applied to Deity, represents, 208-m.
Al, Soul of the Universe, one of the names of Deity on the Delta, 532-u.
Al, the first Phoenician Nature God, the Principle of Light, 727-u.
Alchemical Azot corresponds to the Hebrew Tetragram, 732-m.
Alchemical jargon created to deceive the vulgar herd, 731-u.
Alchemical or Hermetic philosophical doctrine, 772-792.
Alchemical philosophy receives some explanation in the Kabala, 741-u.
Alchemical teachings conceal their meaning in many cases, 792-m.
Alchemists claimed the Magical Agent determined the form of the
  modifiable Substance, 773-l.
Alchemists dream of being always young, rich, never die, 772-l.
Alchemists resorted to Masonry and invented Degrees, 731-u.
Alchemists, salt, sulphur, mercury, great symbols of the, 57-l.
Alchemists writing of the Great Work use symbolic and figurative
  expressions, 774-m.
Alchemy reduces the four ideas to the Absolute; the Fixed; the Volatile,
  791-l.
Alchemy, the mask of the Hermetic Philosophy, 791-l.
Aldebaran, the leader, preceded the Sun in the sign of the Bull, 451-u.
Aleph is the Man; Beth, the Woman; One the Principle; Two, the Word,
  771-l.
Alfader over the Scandinavian Deities, Thor and Odin, 598-u.
Alfadir, the Icelandic name for God, but he has twelve names in Asgard,
  619-u.
Alfarabius, an Arab, cultivated the Hermetic science, 840-l.
Alexander of Macedon said, "Nothing is nobler than work.", 40-l.
Alexander, result of wars of, 247-m.
Alexander, results of work of Faust and Luther exceeded that of, 43-u.
Alexandria, teachings of the Jewish-Greek school of, 250-m.
Alexandrian school brought Magic and Christianity almost together, 731-l.
Alexandrian School, Doctrine taught in, 170-u.
Alcibiades accused of the crime of divulging secrets of the Mysteries,
  384-l.
Alhim assigned to the modeling of the Universe in Genesis, 568-m.
Alhim, the aggregate unity of manifested Creative Forces of Deity, 701-m.
Alhim were subordinate Deities among the Phoenicians, 568-m.
Alkahest's composition described, 788-m.
Alkahest has the generative virtue of producing the Triangular Cubical
  Stone, 787-m.
Alkahest is the principle of life in the profundity of matter, 787-l.
"All" is termed Wisdom, and in it The All is contained, 793-u.
All things summed in One when the Son is in Wisdom and Intelligence,
  800-u.
All was, is, will be; there neither will be, is, nor has been, mutation,
  793-l.
Allegories breed errors by being literally accepted, 205-m.
Allegories of Masonry become lessons of wisdom when understood, 597-m.
Allegories of Scriptures contain profound truths, 250-l.
Allegories of the Hermeticists explained by their single dogma, 777-l.
Allegories, Truth hidden under a succession of, 246-l.
Allegorical analogies represented metaphysical ideas of the Mysteries,
  385-u.
Allegorical expression chosen by philosophers to express theological
  ideas, 678-u.
Allegory and symbol efficacious instruments of instruction, 355-m.
Allegory invites research and rewards the inquirer, 355-l.
Allegory of the loss of the True Word represents, 205-l.
Allegory, the simplest facts of the Old Testament are an, 266-u.
Allegory used by the Sages to conceal the operations of Nature, 659-m.
Alohayim, with Tsabaoth, symbolism of, 104-m.
Alohim, a name for Microprosopos, 795-u.
Alohim, applied to Deity, represents, 208-m.
Alohim; the five letters of the name of the spark from Severity give the
  name, 795-m.
Alpha and Omega are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet,
  701-u.
Alpha and Omega, Zoroaster's definition of Deity, 273-m.
Alps, the great altar of Europe; Autumn a long All Saint's Day, 713-l.
Altar in the East has an astronomical reference, 483-m.
Altar of Perfumes indicates the Fire that is to be applied to Nature,
  783-u.
Alternatives between which the human mind has vacillated, 694-l.
Alva-butcheries in Netherlands, 49-l.
Amas composed of the initials of the words that signify Air, Water,
  Fire, 799-u.
Ambition, highest object of human, 74-l.
Ambrose and Augustine, Saints, division of their day, 115-u.
Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan, speaks of the Christian Mysteries, 545-l.
Ambrose, the Saint, held the Stars have souls, 672-u.
Ameth, duties of a Prince, 176-u.
Amida became the Redeemer; will judge and sentence men, 616-u.
Amida, or Omith, the name of the Japanese Supreme Being, 616-u.
Ammon, the Sun, as adored in Phrygia, Atys, Libya, 587-l.
Ammonius concealed Science under Christian disguises, 732-l.
Ammomus Saccos and Plato brought Christianity and Magic close together,
  731-l.
Amos accuses the Hebrews of the worship of false gods, 206-m.
Amshaspands are six of the Zodiacal signs under the banner of Light,
  663-u.
Amshaspands correspond to the Aor, Zohar, Zayo, of the Kabalah, 740-l.
Amshaspands, names of the, 257-u.
Amshaspands of the Persians, Light, Fire, Splendor, 740-l.
Amshaspands, or Genii, six created by Ormuzd after his own image, 256-l.
Amshaspands recognized in the Kabalah by Light, Splendor, Brightness,
  740-l.
Amschaspands of the Zend Avesta compared with the seven Rishis, 602-u.
Amschaspands presided over special departments of nature, 612-u.
Amun, a concealed God, the Supreme Being of the Egyptians, 281-l.
Amun, Athom, Phtha, Osiris, of the Egyptians, are personifications of
  the Sun, 594-u.
Amun created nothing, but everything emanated from him, 254-u.
Amun or Amun Kneph, the Spirit or Breath of Nature, 614-m.
Amun-Re, the Libyan Jupiter, represented intelligent forces of Nature,
  584-l.
Amun-Re, the same, with Kneph from whose mouth issued the egg, 585-u.
Amun styled "who sheds light on hidden things", 253-l.
Amun, symbol of the Sun, 77-m.
Amun, the creation by the Thought issuing as the Word caused by, 254-u.
Amun, the Ram lying on the book in the 17th Degree, the symbol of, 254-u.
Amun, the Supreme God, at first that of Lower Egypt, 253-l.
Amun was the Nature God worshipped at Memphis, Lower Egypt, 584-l.
Amun's name pronounceable only by the Egyptian Priests, 621-l.
Analogy gives the Sage the forces of Nature; it is the science of Good
  and Evil, 737-l.
Anarchy given no countenance by Masonry, 153-l.
Anaxagoras admitted the existence of ultimate elementary particles,
  676-l.
Anaxagoras expounded the higher Greek religious ideas, 617-m.
Anaxagoras gives an account of the origin of things, 495-m.
Anaxagoras includes in Mind moral principles as well as life and motion,
  677-l.
Anaxagoras' "Intelligence" principle possessed the defects of
  "Necessity", 677-l.
Anaxagoras' Theism subversive of Mythology and outward religion, 679-u.
Anchises, in the Aenid, taught Aeneas the doctrine of Universal Soul,
  666-m.
Ancient Hidden One contains no female; His totality is male; Hua, He,
  763-u.
Ancient Knightly virtues and deeds to be revered, 804-l.
Ancient, Most Holy, called Hua, He; not Athah, Thou, 794-u.
Ancient, Most Holy, Hidden of the Hidden, is the Supreme Crown, 762-l.
Ancient of Days, Atik Yomin, constituted by the seven Sephiroth, 727-m.
Ancient of Days is the internal part, or Soul, of Macroprosopos, 758-u.
Ancient of days, title given to the Creator in the Kabalah, 266-l.
Ancient opinions concerning earth and heaven, 442--.
Ancient poetic and philosophic solution of the great problems, 653-m.
Ancient religion based on the pure and simple veneration of Nature,
  610-l.
Ancient religious effusions of the Veda, 602-m.
Ancient thought reproduced in the speculations of today, 697-u.
Ancients believed the planet's motive force was an intelligent one,
  671-m.
Andocides accused of the crime of divulging secrets of the Mysteries,
  384-l.
Andrew's Cross; Hungus, in the ninth century, saw in the sky St, 801-m.
Angels, called Reflections, proceeded from Ialdabaoth, 563-m.
Angels commissioned to aid man to exercise his liberty, 252-u.
Angels, fallen stars are, in Hebrew Mythology, fallen, 510-l.
Angels of Evil fell, as men did; to be restored, then reign of evil
  ends, 686-u.
Angels of the Jews corresponded to the Ferouers of Zoroaster, 256-u.
Angelic Army composed of Heavenly Host, 509-l.
Anger not responsible for God's dispensations of suffering, 718-u.
Anger, results of, 123-l.
Animal and spiritual natures of mankind, 857-l.
Animal Kingdom symbolized by Mach, studied by the Master Mason, 632-u.
Annals, under the Caesars there is the Author of the, 48-u.
Anointing, a symbol of dedication to the True and Good, 538-l.
Anointing, Intelligence the source of the oil of, 267-l.
Antareya A'ran'ya, one of the Vedas, gives an account of creation, 609-u.
Anthropopathism of Jewish Scriptures opposed by Alexandrians, 285-u.
Antiquity of the doctrine that gave living souls to the heavens, etc,
  669-m.
Antagonisms of man's nature may be in equilibrium, if he will it so,
  765-u.
Anti-Masons caused the cheapening of Masonry; its pomp, its display,
  814-m.
Anti-Masons of 1826, in America, the best friends and worst enemies of
  Masonry, 814-m.
Anti-Masons purified Masonry by persecution, 814-m.
Antipathy and Sympathy, inaction and opposition result in Harmony, 859-l.
Anubis in the shape of a dog aided Isis in her search and represents--,
  376-l.
Aoom, the symbol of the Lord of all things, 621-m.
Aor Mupala, Wonderful or Hidden Light undisplayed, the Will of Deity,
  740-l.
Aor of the Deity manifested in flame issuing out of the invisible fire,
  740-l.
Aor Pasot, "Most simple light"; Ayen Soph, Infinite before Emanation,
  745-l.
Aor Penai-Al, Light of the countenance of God, 748-u.
Apartment, Fourth, 18th Degree, represents freedom from Evil, 289-u.
Apartment, Fourth, 18th Degree, typifies the rule of Masonry, 289-m.
Apartment, Second, 18th Degree, represents reign of Evil, 288-m.
Apartment, Second, 18th Degree, represents various scenes, 288-l.
Apartment, Third, 18th Degree, represents materialized consequences,
  289-u.
Apartment, Third, 18th Degree, represents the consequences of sin, 288-l.
Apartments in Mysteries passed by degrees, 432-l.
Apathy and faithlessness great obstacles to Masonic success, 237-m.
Aphanison or the disappearance was the nailing of Osiris in the chest,
  377-u.
Aphanison represented disappearance of the Sun at Winter Solstice, 377-u.
Aphanison, the disappearance of Osiris, Bootes, Adonis, 484-u.
Aphrodite, the Principle of Unity and Universal Harmony, 683-m.
Apis, Aaron made an image of the Egyptian god, 206-m.
Apis reproduced by Aaron in the desert as the Golden Calf, 448-u.
Apocalypse, a Kabalistic book, sealed by seven seals, 727-l.
Apocalypse, a Kabalistic summary of the occult figures, divides--, 321-u.
Apocalypse, a wonderful epic explained by numbers as the Key, 728-u.
Apocalypse as obscure as the Sohar; appeals to the Initiate, 321-m.
Apocalypse, cabalistic clavicule not explained by Christians, 731-u.
Apocalypse completes the Science of Abraham and Solomon, 321-l.
Apocalypse, derivation of the four creatures of the, 461-l.
Apocalypse's doctrine, the pure Kabala, lost by the Parisees, 727-l.
Apocalypse embodies Occultism; not written for the many, 321-m.
Apocalypse paints the struggle between Good and Evil, 272-l.
Apocalyptic pictures are pantacles with numbers as the Key, 727-l.
Apocalypse shows Kabalistic meaning of the Temple, 235-m.
Apocalypse, the Apotheosis of that Sublime Faith which--, 321-u.
Apollo and Dionusos, Nature and Art, from one common source, 585-l.
Apollo, at Delphi the tomb held the body of, 407-m.
Apollo fights with Python, the scaly snake, 499-m.
Apollo, symbol of the Sun, 77-m.
Apollo triumphs over Python on March 25th, 407-m.
Appollonius of Tyana says God must be expressed by the spirit, 282-l.
Apollos of Alexandria, reference to the baptism of John, 262-u.
Apostles, early Christians deemed incomplete the writings of the, 248-u.
Apostles of Christ, secret meaning of the number of the, 233-m.
Apostolic Constitutions speak of the Christian Mysteries, 543-l.
Apparatus states that Malakoth is called Haikal, 799-u.
Apparatus used in the Great Work, 785-u.
Appetites and Senses are Forces given us for Good, 860-l.
Apprentice Degree, declaration that Masonry is worship in the, 219-u.
Apprentice, 1st Degree, 1-m.
Apprentice, meaning of preparation, tests, purifications in Degree of,
  253-u.
Apprentice studies the mineral Kingdom symbolized by Tub, 632-u.
Apprentices' Compass has both points under the Square, 854-l.
Apprentice's Grip, Morality, fails to raise the candidate, 640-l.
Apron of white sheepskin, origin of, 407-l.
Apulesius represents Lucius initiated into the Mysteries, 387-390.
Apulius describes an effigy of the Supreme Deity, 412-l.
Aquarius, the first of the four royal signs, characterizes Reuben, 461-u.
Arab wisdom not slighted by the Mediaeval Church, 625-l
Arabian traditions much in common with those of the Hebrews, 616-l.
Arabians never possessed a finely wrought system of Polytheism, 616-l.
Arabians taught the primeval faith of one God by Mahomet, 616-l.
Aramtic forms of the personal pronouns, He-She, 700-u.
Arabs embraced many Kabalists, 625-l.
Arabs, such as Geber and Alfarabius, cultivated the Hermetic science,
  840-l.
Aramtic forms of the personal pronouns, He-She, 700-u.
Araor, the Chaldean Supreme Deity, Father of Light, 742-l.
Areanum; to the Magists the Blazing Star symbolized the Grand, 842-u.
Arch rests on a column on either side, 846-l.
Archangels numbered seven, 233-m.
Archelaus, Bishop of Mesopotamia, speaks of early Christian secrecy,
  544-l.
Archetype of the Universe did never not exist in the Divine Mind, 849-m.
Archetype of things united with the Infinite by the Divine Ray, 267-u.
Archimagus, the Sun, the noblest agent of Divine power, 612-m.
Architect of the Universe; Chinese Emperor erected a Temple to the,
  615-l.
"Architects" among names of Gnostic initiates into their Mysteries,
  543-m.
Architects, or Masons of the 12th to the 14th Degrees; duties of the,
  332-u.
Architects, symbolism in 12th Degree of the Chief of the, 202-l.
Architectonica, Symbola, found on ancient edifices, 235-m.
Architecture, symbolism of the five orders of, 202-u.
Argonautic expedition; Orpheus received Mysteries of Samothrace on,
  427-u.
Argument not equally convincing to different men, 166-m.
Arian theory of Creation of the Human race, 565-u.
Arik Aupin, one of the appellations of Adam Kadmon, Macroprosopos, 758-u.
Arik Aupin or Macroprosopos; Seir Aupin or Microprosopos, 799-m.
Aristobulus, a Jew, of the school of Alexandria, 250-m.
Aristobulus, declaration concerning Jewish Scriptures, 250-l.
Aristotle accused of impiety for a breach of laws of worship of Ceres,
  384-l.
Aristotle held that each Star was a portion of the Universal Soul, 671-m.
Aristotle, opinion of, concerning the Mysteries, 379-m.
Aristotle, sayings of, regarding the nature of God, 283-m.
Aristotle showed how religion may be founded on an intellectual basis,
  710-l.
Aristotle seemingly leaned towards an Intelligent Personal God, 679-l.
Aristides claimed the Initiation brought consolation and hope, 379-l.
Aristotle's Act was first, the Universe has existed forever, 679-l.
Aristotle's doctrine implies an eternal mover wholly in act, 679-u.
Aristotle's system tends to prove that Nature makes toward final good,
  681-m.
Arithmomancy, a species of Divination of the Pythagoreans, 633-u.
Arius declared the Saviour of a nature analogous to God and Man, 565-u.
Arius declared the Saviour was really created, 564-l.
Arius, the Word made by God according to, 279-l.
Ark; image of organs of generation contained in Isaac, 412-l.
Ark or chest containing genitals of youngest Cabiri in Mysteries, 427-m.
Arkaleus or Hercules, the Scythian, Etruscan, name for the Sun God,
  587-u.
Artemis Proserpina, the saviour who leads spirits to Heaven, 395-u.
Artemis represents the principle of the destruction of the seed, 395-u.
Artificer, the Demiurge, was the Governor of the world and the, 557-m.
Artist or author merely portrays what man should be or do, 349-l.
Aryan emigration from the slopes of the Himalayas, 714-u.
Ashlar, perfect, connected with the double cube of Perfection, 503-m.
Ashlar, perfect, typifies the State, 5-m.
Ashlar, rough, changed in form from triangular to cubic, 787-m.
Ashlar, rough, to be prepared for the work, is a shapeless stone, 787-m.
Ashlar, rough, typifies People rude and unorganized, 5-m.
Asp, dedicated to Isis, worn on her head and on others', 501-m.
Ass, Christians accused of worshipping an; origin of, 103-u.
Assassins, fate of, foreshadows that of the enemies of liberty, 148-m.
Assassins, Hindu Word formed by the three final syllables of names of,
  82-m.
Assassins, names of Good and Evil Deities contain the names of the, 82-m.
Assassins of Khurum, names and relations to Stars, 488-l.
Assassins of Khurum, symbols of foes of liberty, 148-m.
Assistance of the humble worker in life's progress, 158-m.
Astarte had a Temple built to her at Tyre by Hiram, 410-l.
Astral light is the grand agent of the Hermetic operations of the Sun,
  774-l.
Astrology fixed the place of exaltation of the planets, 463-l.
Astrology practiced among all nations; mother of sciences, 463-u.
Astaphal, one of the seven Reflections of the Ophites, 563-m.
Astronomy of Pythagoras was Astrology, 626-m.
Astronomy studied by the Druids, computations made by nights, 619-u.
Astronomy the most important of Sciences to the ancients, 597-u.
Assyrian name for the Sun God was Bel, 587-u.
Athanasius admonishes not to take sacred writ literally, 266-m.
Athah, Thou, was not applied to the Most Holy Ancient, but Hua, He,
  794-u.
Athelstane, King of England, saw the St. Andrew's Cross while praying,
  801-l.
Atheist may be applied to a man having a higher conception, 643-l.
Atheism and Pantheism, reduced to simplest terms, seem the same, 672-u.
Atheism at bottom to say the Universe is God, 707-l.
Atheism impossible with a belief in the Reason of God, 737-l.
Atheism is formal which denies God in terms, but not in reality, 643-l.
Atheism, or all is nature and there is no other God, 672-u.
Atheism, really, is the denial of the actuality of any ideas of God,
  644-m.
Atheist's belief or unbelief to be real, 644-647.
Atheists' Creed would make a Pandemonium of this world, 646-l.
Atheistic conception would not content man, 647.
Atheistic theory stated, does not satisfy human longing, 646-u.
Athom, Amun, Phtha, Osiris of the Egyptians, are personifications of the
  Sun, 594-u.
Athom-Re was superior to all Nature Gods, was symbolized by Light, 584-l.
Athom, the Being that was, is and is to come, the Great God, 584-l.
Athom, the Supreme God of the Egyptians, above Amun, 597-l.
Athom, the Supreme God of Upper Egypt, same as Om and Brehm, 584-l.
Atik Yomin, the Ancient of Days of the Kabala, 727-m.
Atika Kadischa, the name for the three heads of Adam Kadmon in the
  Sohar, 758-u.
Atomic school made variety proceed from combinations of atoms, 676-m.
Attributes do not exist without substance, 572-l.
Attributes, God only revealed by his, 267-l.
Attributes of Deity personified, 271-m.
Attributes of Deity symbolized in order to give an idea of God, 513-l.
Attributes of God are man's virtues, 704-u.
Attributes of God are the Adjectives of One Great Substantive, 574-l.
Attributes of God presents the whole Divine Essence under one aspect,
  555-m.
Attributes of God presents the whole Divine Essence of one aspect, 555-m.
Attributes of One God become separate divinities, 672-l.
Attributes of the Soul, or God, are not God or the Soul, 573-u.
Attributes, the title of God may be applied to each, 555-m.
Atys and his priests mutilated, symbol of, 412-l.
Atys, mutilated, dies and is restored to life in Mysteries, 422-l.
Atys, the Sun God of Phrygia in Mysteries of Cybele, 407-u.
Auditors, the first of the degrees of the Christian Mysteries, 541-l.
Auditors were novices being prepared to receive Christian Dogma, 541-l.
Augustin held that every visible thing was superintended by Angelic
  power, 671-l.
Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, speaks of the sublime mysteries of
  Christianity, 546-u.
Augustine, St., on the Christian religion before Christ, 262-m.
Augustine, the Saint, defines the faith given to Novices, 547-l.
Auir Kadmon, the Primal Space, effected by retraction, 749-l.
A.U.M., the three-lettered name of Deity among the Hindus, 632-l.
Aum, if pronounced, would make the earth tremble and Angels quake, 620-m.
Aum, meaning of the Hindu sacred word, 82-m.
Aum of the Hindoos, whose name was unpronounceable, 584-l.
Aum only pronounced by its letters; meaning of the word, 620-m.
Aum, represented by mystic character, 82-m.
Aum represented the three Powers combined in the Deity of Hindus, 620-m.
Aum, the Indian Sacred Name of the One Deity; manifested as, 205-u.
Aupin, Arik, or Macroprosopos; Aupin Seir, or Microprosopos, 799-m.
Aur, Light, the name of the light of the Vestige of Ainsoph, 750-m.
"Aur," the Substance out of which Light flows; the fire relative to
  heat, 740-m.
Aurelius, Marcus, taught that the heavens and spheres were part of the
  Universal Soul, 669-m.
Authority is the equilibrium of Liberty and Power, 845-u.
Autumnal Equinox a period of general mourning because of--, 588-l.
Autumnal Equinox brought harvest and falling leaves, 444-l.
Autumnal Equinox, reason for celebrating Mysteries at the, 404-l.
Autumnal Equinox, reasons for celebrating Mysteries at the, 491-m.
Ayen Soph, Infinite before any emanation, a Kabalistie term for Deity,
  745-l.
Azes, Genii from the marriage of Heaven and Earth, 658-m.
Aziluth; Deity first restored the universality of the seven Kings of the
  World, 797-u.
Aziluth, emanation or the system of emanants, from Atsil, 746-l.
Aziluth means specifically the first system of the four worlds or
  systems, 746-l.
Aziluth, the Divine World of the Sephiroth Theology, 99-m.
Aziluth, the world within the Deity, 552-u.
Azoth composed of Sulphur, Mercury, Salt, 773-l.
Azoth, fecundated by intellectual energy, Master of Absolute Matter,
  778-m.
Azoth, the Astral Light, magnetism understood by the ancients, 791-u.
Azoth, the universal magnetic force, the light of life, the magical
  agent, 778-m.
Azot, of the Alchemists, corresponds to the Hebrew Tetragram, 732-m.
"Azoth," a treatise in the Materia Prima of Valentinus, 1613, 850-m.

B

B is the passive, A the active; Unity is Boaz; the Binary is Jachin,
  772-u.
Baal or Bal signifies Lord and Master, 591-u.
Babylon, a great, live serpent worshipped by the people of, 500-u.
Babylon, images of serpents at Temple of Bel in, 499-l.
Bacchus led by a Lamb, or Ram, to Springs, etc, 466-m.
Bacon gave philosophy a definite aim and method, 710-l.
Bactria, the doctrines of Zoroaster came originally from, 258-l.
Bad Principle represented by the number five, 630-u.
Babylonish God, Bal, the Power of heat, life, generation, 590-l.
Babys, a power set up as an adversary of Osiris, 588-u.
Bagha, the Felicitous, a Vedic Sun God, 602-l.
Bainah and Hakemah, Intelligence, Wisdom, the second Sephiroth, 552-u.
Bainah, Mother, the passive capacity from which the Intelligence flows,
  552-m.
Bakchic initiation, emblems of generation principal symbol at the, 421-m.
Bakchic initiation, raw flesh ate by the initiate at a, 421-u.
Bakchos, at initiation, sufferings, death, resurrection, represented,
  421-u.
Bakchos' cup between Cancer and Leo, a symbol, 438-m.
Bakehos, or Bacchus, the Sun, adored in Thrace as Saba Zeus, 410-l.
Bakchos, slain by Titans, went to Hell; restored to life, 406-l.
Bal, one of the Gods of Syria, Assyria, Chaldea, etc, 590-l.
Bal or Bala, applied to Deity, represents, 208-m.
Bal, seated on a Bull, with the Sun for symbol, was the Power of Life,
  590-l.
Bal, the Supreme Deity of the Moabites, Amonites, Carthagenians, 591-u.
Balance and the human form the pattern of the world of restitution,
  794-l.
Balance, equilibrium the mystery of the, 305-u.
Balance, everything in the Universe proceeds by the mystery of the,
  305-u.
Balance, explanation of the Soul losing its felicity by means of the, 490-l.
Balance had Gedulah on one side, Geburah on the other, Tepharet over, 757-m.
Balance had Hakemah on one side, Binah on the other, Kether over, 757-m.
Balance has the Sephiroth arranged around it, 762-l.
Balance held by Absolute Reason, above the male and female on each side,
  is the primary idea of things, 769-l.
Balance instituted that judgments might be restored and not die, 798-m.
Balance, symbol of all Equilibrium, taught the definition of Masonry,
  854-m.
Balance, the symbol of the male and female person, 757-m.
Balance, the symbol of the person into whose form the Sephiroth were
changed, 757-m.
Balance; the root above is represented by the needle of the, 798-m.
Balance; the Royal Secret is what the Sohar calls the Mystery of the,
  858-l.
Balance used to explain the Ternary, 769-l.
Balder killed by Lok, Evil Principle, in the Mysteries of the Druids,
  430-m.
Balder, torn to pieces by Hother, lamented by the Scandinavians, 595-u.
Balder's body placed in a boat by Lok and set adrift on the water, 430-m.
Ballot for membership, objection sufficient to exclude, 121-m.
Banners of Royal Arch Degree represent Constellations, 409-l.
Baphomet adored as an idol by the Templars is an absurdity, 818-l.
Baphomet of the Temple, representing Sulphur, or a goat's head, 779-l.
Baphomet, the hieroglyphic figure representing the universal agent,
  734-m.
Baptist, religious systems approximating in the time of John the, 247-m,
Baptism, a symbol of purification, 538-l.
Baptism among the Gnostics refers to the Name Hidden, 561-l.
Baptism as a sacred rite applied for by Christ, 262-u.
Baptism, Christos united to the Eon Jesus by, 560-m.
Baptism is a preparatory symbol preceding death, 392-l.
Baptism of John the original rite, 263-u.
Baptism, one of the important Gnostic ceremonies, 542-l.
Bardesanes doctrines explained, 553-m.
Bardesanes, the Syrian Christians embraced the doctrines of, 553-m.
Bardesanes, the Syrian Christian, quoting from his "Book of the Laws",
  857-l.
Barruel, Abbe, Memoirs for the History of Jacobinism, 49-l.
Base habit to defame a worthy man, 337-m.
Basilidean ceremonies were varied and somewhat fantastic, 543-u.
Basilideans, a Christian sect, practiced Mysteries, 542-m.
Basilideans celebrated Jan. 10, date of Christ's baptism in the Jordan,
  543-u.
Basilideans gave talismans to every candidate, 542-m.
Basilides, conception of God by, 271-u.
Basilides doctrines embraced 365 emanations, 554-u.
Basilides, personified attributes of God in the theory of, 271-m.
Basilides, the Christian Gnostic, taught the seven emanation idea, 553-l.
Basilik, the royal ensign of the Pharaohs, 413-u.
Basil, Bishop of Caesarea, speaks of the secrecy of the early Christian
  Mysteries, 545-m.
Base of a right angle triangle represents Deity and the Divine, 861-m.
Base of the right angle triangle is Female, 789-m.
Bases of true religious faith, of philosophical truth, metallic
  transmutation, 776-l.
Basic ideas at the foundation of the great Religious Orders, 815-m.
Basis of true Brotherhood; its duties and obligations, 856-l--857-m.
Battery of 8th Degree, allusion to, 137-u.
Bathing seven times in the sea, symbolism of, 431-l.
Battle between our spiritual and material natures the greatest, 854-u.
Battle of life; greatest glory won in the conflict between our own
  natures in the, 854-u.
Beacon on the mountain top represented the Persian divinity, 592-m.
Beauty and Harmony represented by Vau, 799-m.
Beauty is harmonious proportions in forms, 845-u.
Beauty of natural phenomena, 244-l.
Beauty, or the Divine Harmony, the Eternal Law, a side of the Masonic
  triangle, 826-m.
Beauty or Harmony produced by the equilibrium of Justice and Mercy,
  859-m.
Beauty or Harmony the result of the Divine Will limited by the Divine
  Wisdom, 846-l.
Beauty represented by the Junior Warden of a Lodge, 7-l.
Beauty represented in the Kabalah by green and yellow, 267-l.
Beauty results from the equilibrium of Good and Evil, 782-m.
Beauty, Severity, Benignity are Fathers proceeding from the Father
  of Fathers, 794-l.
Beauty, the column which supports the world; that of Junior Warden,
  800-u.
Beautiful, in the Absolute, emanates from God, 702-l.
Beautiful lives are the accurate ones, 845-u.
Beautiful should be just; everything just is beautiful, 845-u.
Beautiful things refer themselves to Absolute Beauty, 702-m.
Beethos and His Thought made Wisdom fruitful by Divine Light, 563-u.
Beethos Profundity, Source of Light and Adam-Kadmon, 562-l.
Beginning of things was a single God who created matter, 609-l.
Beginning, the Word is, was, will be in the, 323-l.
Being and Existence, modes of, balance each other, 98-u.
Being, Existence, is by itself; reason of Being is Being itself, 97-l.
Being from whom emanates the True, Beautiful, Good, is triple and one,
  702-l.
Being; how the mind may receive intuition of the Absolute, 285-u.
Being is Being the first Principle, 322-u.
Being, Philosophy of, 98-m.
Being: Vedanta and Nyaya philosophers acknowledge a Supreme, 607-u.
Being's phenomena ought to be explained by Occult Philosophy, 822-u.
Bel of the Chaldeans is a personification of the Sun, 594-u.
Bel, symbol of the Sun, 77-m.
Bel, the Assyrian and Chaldean name for the Sun God, 587-u.
Bela, one of the Celtic deities upon the ancient monuments, 591-u.
Belief concerning spiritual and material existence, 232-u.
Belief, essential, of a Perfect Elu, 233-u
Belief in a future existence from a desire to remedy injustices of this,
  830-l.
Belief in Deity and Immortality a natural feeling, 517-u.
Belief in Divinity in danger because of misinterpretation, 652-m.
Belief in God's benevolence, wisdom, justice, a part of Masonic Creed,
  531-u.
Belief in Nature as all sufficient not real Atheism, 644-u.
Belief in the Father of All, Masonry wisely requires a; why, 166-l.
Belief of a Mason regarding pain and suffering, 228--229-u.
Belief of Masonry, 220-l.
Belief of the Patriarchs did not exclude symbolic representations, 512-m.
Belief, result of rejection of moral and religious, 197-m.
Belief without understanding applied to the Word of a Master, 697-m.
Beliefs of the Templar Chiefs indicated by hints and symbols of
  Masonic degrees, 819-u.
Beliefs must be separated from our certainties, 776-u.
Bellerophon fights with the Chimera, 499-m.
Belin or Belinus: Gauls worshipped the Sun under the name of, 591-u.
Benares temple represents Surya drawn by a horse with twelve heads,
  587-u.
Benedict, the Fourteenth Pope, renewed Bull of Clement the Twelfth, 50-m.
Benefits of the Great Work to the Soul and to the Body, 785-u.
Benefactor must look for apathy in those he benefits, 317-u.
Benefactors enjoy reward hereafter, 172-u.
Benefactors, to do all, be hindred, have others reap reward the lot of,
  238-u.
Beneficent operations are slow; those destructive are rapid, 317-m.
Benignity or Mercy of God, the Male, 846-u.
Benignity poured into the Autocracy of Deity determines the continuance
  of the Universe, 769-m
Benignity tempering Justice enabled Deity to create, 769-u
Berne, Masons in 1743 proscribed by the council of, 50-m
Beth Alohim states that before God formed a conception he was alone,
  752-u.
Beth is the woman; Aleph, the man; One the Principle; two the Word,
  771-l.
Bible added to a point within a circle, vapid interpretation of the,
  105-m.
Bible, doctrines of, clothed in language fitting the understanding of
  the rude, 224-l.
Bible expresses incompletely the religious science of the Hebrews, 744-l.
Bible, Holy, one of Great Lights; part of the furniture of the Lodge,
  11-m.
Bible speaks of Deity as Light; also the Isabeans and Kabalists, 739-l.
Binah and Hakemah denoted by He, Yod, 798-m.
Binah and Hakemah, the two lobes of the brain of Adam Kadmon, 758-m.
Binah, by Hakemah's energy and the second Yod, projected the
  seven Sephiroth, 756-l.
Binah conjoins with Hakemah and shines within Him, 763-l.
Binah, female, placed itself on the left side of Hakemah, 756-l.
Binah, illuminated within Hakemah by a second Yod, issued forth, 756-m.
Binah in conjunction with Hakemah conceives and the outflow is Truth,
  763-l.
Binah, In formatio, existent in the Corona of the World of Emanation,
  758-u.
Binah is a person and termed Mother, Imma, 799-m.
Binah is imbued by Wisdom with a luminous influence, 793-u.
Binah is the lower apex of the three Yods composing the Yod, 763-m.
Binah is the productive intellectual capacity which is to produce
  the Thought, Daath, 758-m.
Binah, Kabalistic meaning of, 202-l.
Binah produced the seven Kings all together, 796-l.
Binah represents or is, the Eagle, 798-m.
Binah, the Mother, Hakemah, the Father, in equilibrium as male
  and female, 763-m.
Binah, the Mother, quantitatively equal to Hakemah, 763-u.
Binah, Understanding, sends all things into the worlds of--, 753.
Binah's seven sons were perfect rigors not connected with a root
  in the Holy, 795-l.
Binah's sons placed in equilibrium when Wisdom was conformed
  Male and Female, 796-u.
Binary, a measure of Unity, 771-l.
Binary become Unity by conjunction of Generative Power and
  Productive Capacity, 772-m.
Binary is Jachin; Unity is Boaz, 772-u.
Binary is Unity multiplying itself by itself to create, 771-m.
Binary manifests Unity; Unity itself and the idea of Unity are two,
  771-u.
Binary number stands for everything false, double, 630-m.
Binary number, two, expresses the contraries in nature, 630-m.
Binary, the generator of Society and law, the number of the Gnosis,
  771-m.
Birth of Mithras celebrated on Dec. 25th, 406-l.
Black Eagle, the King of Birds, can fire the Sun, 787-u.
Black of the nature of the Evil Principle, or Darkness, 662-m.
Blazing Star a symbol of Sirius, 486-l.
Blazing Star an emblem of Prudence, Omniscience, All Seeing Eye, 506-u.
Blazing Star an emblem of the Sun to our ancient English brethren, 506-u.
Blazing Star (an Ornament of a Lodge), symbolism of the, 15.
Blazing Star announces the birth of the Sun, 787-u.
Blazing Star, emblem of the Divine Truth, 136-m.
Blazing Star of Truth formed by Faith above Reason resting on Revelation,
  841-m.
Blazing Star or an image thereof found in every initiation, 842-u.
Blazing Star, or Horus, offspring of Sun and Moon, 14-u.
Blazing Star the sign of the Grand Arcanum to the Magists, 842-u.
Blazing Star the sign of the Quintessence to the Alchemists, 842-u.
Blazing Star the sign of the Sacred Pentagram to the Kabalists, 842-u.
Blessing, notwithstanding its evils, life is a, 142-l.
Blessings of trials, pain, sorrow, will be understood, 240-l.
Blindness, misery, bondage, symbolized by the condition of candidate,
  639-u.
Blows symbolize Christ's betrayal, refusal of protection, condemnation,
  641-l.
Blucher, guided by peasant boy, saves Wellington from rout, 42-m.
Blue Masonry, mistaken explanation of symbol of the weeping virgin in,
  379-u.
Boaz and Jachin explain the mysteries of natural antagonisms, 772-u.
Boaz and Jachin, parallel lines, point in circle, represent Solstices,
  506-u.
Boaz and Jachin, symbols of the bi-sexuality of the Ineffable Name,
  849-m.
Boaz has set on it the terrestrial globe, a symbol of our material part,
  860-m.
Boaz is Unity; the Binary is Jachin, 772-u.
Boaz, name of the column at the left of the entrance; meaning of, 9-l.
Boaz, one column of the Temple of Wisdom, represents the Passive, 860-m.
Boaz, referred to symbolically, 202-l.
Boaz represents Glory, one of the Sephiroth of the Kabalah, 267-l.
Boaz, the eighth Sephiroth, is Splendor or Perfection of the Deity,
  736-l.
Bodies animated by a portion of God's own being, 609-l.
Bodies return to the elements--a perpetual Genesis, 540-u.
Body: Doketes believed that Christ took upon Himself only the
  appearance of a, 564-m.
Body, Soul and Spirit the Hermetic Triad, 792-m.
Body's universal medicine is the Quintessence, a combination of
  light and gold, 773-m.
Bohemian "Thot" corresponds to the Hebrew Tetragram, 732-m.
Bolingbroke, Lord, activity and usefulness in retirement, 39-l.
Bootes is the great Star, Arcturus, 454-m.
Bootes plays a leading part in Landseer's Osirian legend, 483-487.
Bona Dea, the name of the Mysteries of Rome, 625-u.
Border around the columns of the lodge, symbolism of the, 209-m.
Borsippa, seven stages of the pyramid of, 233-m.
Borsippa: the pyramid of Bel at Babylon contained seven spheres of,
  729-u.
Bounds set to the scope of our human reason by Deity, 852-m.
Boundehesch, an ancient sacred writing concerning Zoroastrianism 612-u.
Bourbon dynasty runs out with Bomba, 49-u.
Brahm, Source of all, Very God, without sex or name, 849-l.
Brahma, as incarnate Intelligence, communicated knowledge to man, 604-u.
Brahma, having created the Universe, was absorbed in the Supreme Spirit,
  608-l.
Brahma of the Hindus, a personification of the Sun, 594-u.
Brahma shared the corruption of an inferior nature, 603-l.
Brahma, the creating agent of the Veda, interwoven with the Universe,
  603-l.
Brahma, the creating power of the Hindu Trinity, 550-m.
Brahma, the divine male, produced from that which is, 608-l.
Brahmins expressed the Active and Passive idea, by a statue, of
  both sexes, 656-u.
Brahmins' Trinity the oldest, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, 550-m.
Brain of Microprosopos produced by Love impregnating Rigor, 796-u.
Bramah, symbol of Sun, 77-m.
Bramah, Vishnu, Seeva, manifestations of the One Deity, 205-u.
Brazen Sea, a symbol of purification before we can contemplate the
  Flaming Star, 782-m.
Brazen sea, description and symbolism, 410-l.
Brazen Serpent, Nakhustan, a token of healing power, 497-u.
Breath of Life, vitality, perishes with the mortal frame, 852-m.
Brehm, similar to Athom and Aum, was the Supreme God, 584-l.
Brehm, the Hindu Supreme God, above Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, 597-l.
Briah, the World of Creation of the Sephiroth Theology, 99-m.
Brihim or Brehm given no emblem or visible sign, 605-u.
"Brother" a mockery when we malign one another, or defraud them, 808-u.
"Brother," characteristics necessary to be a true, 122-l.
Brother discovered by the Mason in the flame and smoke of battle, 57-m.
Brother, erring, to be spoken kindly to, 134-u.
Brother, praise a; refrain from disparagement, 120-l.
Brotherhood of man a tendency of Kabalistic philosophy, 625-l.
Brotherhood of Masonry made possible by the Royal Secret, 861-l.
Brotherhood possible only among those who have mutual regard and--,
  856-l.
Buddha comprehended the essence of the Trimurti, 82-u.
Buddha, meaning of the names of, 82-u.
Buddha or Fo religion introduced idolatry into China, 615-l.
Buddha represented to have been crucified, 505-l.
Buddha, the first Masonic legislator, doctrines of, 277-l.
Buddha, the Gymnosophists came from the religion of, 278-u.
Buddha to raise all men up to the perfect state, 623-m.
Buddhist Crosses and ruins in Ireland and Scotland, 505-l.
Buddhist idea was matter subjugating the intelligence, 258-l.
Buddhist Trinity of Buddha, Dharma, Sanga, signifies--, 551-m.
Buddhists hold that Sakya of the Hindus constituted a Trinity, 551-m.
Buddhists supposed to have reached Ireland, 278-u.
Buddhism, an innovation on an older religion, 602-u.
Buddhistic doctrines exterminated by Brahmaism, 278-u.
Building is slow; destruction swift--example, 320-m.
Bull and afterwards the Ram regarded as the regenerator of Nature, 465-l.
Bull carried into Spain and Gaul by the Cimbrians, 451-m.
Bull held sacred by Hindus, Japanese, Egyptians, because--, 448-u.
Bull; in the ceremonies, covered with black crape, was a golden, 479-l.
Bull of Pope Clement against Masons, title and penalties, 50-m.
Bull of Mithras dies from sting of Scorpion in Autumn, 466-l.
Bull, opening the new year, breaks with his horn the egg out of
  which the world is born, 448-u.
Bull, or Taurus, religious reverence for Zodiacal Bull, 450-l.
Bull, the symbol of Apis, 254-l.
Bull; the symbols of the Sun and Moon appear on the head, neck,
  back of the, 451-l.
Bulls, symbolism of, 404-410.
Burning bush of the Scriptures, 286-u.
Burdens of Government borne by those who reap the benefits, 176-u.
Burials, eulogies at, 187-m.
Burke, members of Commons left when he rose to speak, 37-l.
Buthos and His Thought made Wisdom fruitful by Divine Light, 563-u.

C

Cabala, composition of immaterial man, according to the, 57-l.
Cabala, Tetractys composed of letters of the name of Deity in the, 60-l.
Cabalistic clavicules, Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, have occult
  explanations, 731-u.
Cabalists expressed Heaven, the Tetractys, the name of God, by number
  ten, 505-u.
Cabalists expressed the perfect number ten by a Tau cross, 505-u.
Cabiric, Divinities worshipped at Samothrace, names of, 426-l.
Cabiri, in Samothrace were celebrated the Mysteries of, 407-u.
Cabiri, the seven sons of Tsadok, the Supreme God of Phoenicia, 728-m.
Cable-tow of man's natural and sinful will, 639-u.
Caduceus borne by Hermes, Mercury, Cybele, Ogmius the Celt, 502-l.
Caduceus of Hermes represents the Universal Seed, kept a secret, 775-u.
Caduceus originally symbolized the equator and equinoctial Colure, 503-u.
Caduceus was a winged wand entwined by two serpents, 502-l.
Caesar, Julius, reigns because the ablest, 49-u.
Caesars follow period of convulsion, 30-l.
Caesars, no insurrection, but the exile of Syene under the, 48-u.
Cagliostro introduced the Egyptian Rite of Masonry, 823-m.
Cagliostro was the agent of the Templars and wrote to London Masons,
  823-m.
Cagliostro's seal had three letters on it, L.P.D., 823-m.
Caiaphas, as bishop, to be opposed by Masonry, 20-l.
Cain slew Abel and peopled the earth with the impious, 599-m.
Calamity, in Providence is sought the solution of, 189-m.
Calendars regulated by rising, setting, conjunction of the Fixed Stars,
  464-u.
Calf, Aaron reproduced the Bull, Apis, in the Golden, 448-u.
Caligula, horrors of despotism under, 47-l, 27-u.
Caligula made his horse a Consul, 49-m.
Call of honor or virtue responded to by the basest and lowest, 201-u.
Cama or Sita, slain by Iswara, put in the waters in a chest, 428-u.
Cancer and Capricorn, the Gates of the Sun were the tropical points of,
  437-l.
Cancer includes the stars Aselli, little asses, device of Issachar,
  461-l.
Cancer, the Crab, named because Sun began to retreat southward, 440-u.
Candelabrum, golden, ID Temple; seven lamps, 10-m.
Candidate first brought to the door in a condition of blindness, 639-u.
Candidate for baptism among Gnostics repeats formula, 561-l.
Candidate in India listened to an apostrophe to the God of Nature, 361-l.
Candidate in India, neither barefoot nor shod, made three circuits,
  362-u.
Candidate in India, required to make a vow, was sprinkled with water,
  362-u.
Candidate in Indian Mysteries clothed in a linen garment, 361-l.
Candidate in Indian Mysteries received name, cross, level and Word,
  428-m.
Candidate in Indian Mysteries sanctified by the sign of the cross, 361-l.
Candidate in Indian Mysteries slain and raised, 428-u.
Candidate in Indian Mysteries takes three steps at right angles, 428-u.
Candidate in Mysteries after initiation became free, 421-l.
Candidate in Mysteries confined in dark cell three days and nights,
  421-m.
Candidate in Mysteries died, raised, witnessed search and discovery,
  421-m.
Candidate, nothing inconsistent to feelings of a gentleman required of,
  328-u.
Candidate obliged to wait for years between the lesser and greater
  Mysteries, 385-l.
Candidates for Initiation were required to undergo severe trials, 385-m.
Candlestick represented twelve signs through which seven planets run,
  409-m.
Candlestick with seven branches, meaning and symbolism, 410-m.
Capability for better things than we know, 192-u.
Capacity to possess adequate ideas of Deity limited by our faculties,
  674-u.
Capella announces the commencement of annual revolution of Sun, 464-m.
Capella, Martianus, in his hymn to the Sun, gives many names, 587-l.
Capella never sets to the Egyptians, 456-m.
Capet dynasty dwindles out, 49-u.
Capricorn represented by the tail of a fish, Son of Neptune, device
  of Zebulon, 461-l.
Caracalla, horrors of despotism under, 47-l, 27-u.
Caracallas succeed the Julius Caesars, 49-u.
Carpocrates enunciated a doctrine of existence, 562-u.
Cashmere people worshipped serpents, 500-l.
Catacombs under Rome supposed to have been of Etruscan origin, 542-u.
Catechumens Mass, the first of the two of the Christian Mysteries, 541-l.
Catechumens, the second degree of the Christian Mysteries, 541-l.
Catechumens were baptized and were instructed in some of the Dogma,
  541-l.
Catholic Church sacraments found in Mysteries of Mithras, 541-l.
Catholic Temples, meaning of the serpent surrounding the Terrestrial
  Globe in, 376-m.
Cause contains in itself what is essential in the effect, 703-u.
Cause, inconceivability of a Great First, 570-l.
Cause of All divided into the Active and Passive, 653-l.
Cause of all given a name and personified, 674-m.
Cause of all is the Universe, an intelligent Being, 667-l.
Cause of all that exists is a Ray of Light from Deity, 267-u.
Cause of all things and the Causes which flow from Him compared, 760-u.
Cause of the Universe recognized in Modern Degrees, 625-m.
Cause, the Universal First, divided into the Active and Passive
  Causes, 401-m.
Causes of all created things were two--Active and Passive, 657.
Causes of nature, the elements as Passive principles, 655-m.
Causes of nature, the heavenly bodies as Active principles, 655-m.
Causes of nature were assigned sexes, 655-m.
Causes, the Active and the Passive, were two great Divinities, 401-m.
Cave and the most ancient Temples symbolize the Universe, 234-l.
Cave used in Mysteries for the reception of candidates, 413-m.
Cebes, allegorical picture of, 101-m.
Ceiling of lodge, symbolism of starred, 209-m.
Celebration of Greek Mysteries continued nine days, 433-m.
Celsus objected to the concealed doctrines of the Christians, 544-m.
Censure upon men's acts often undeserved, 335-m.
Censure of a man often falls heaviest on his family, 336-u.
Center of the circumference signifies the Universal Spirit, 629-m.
Center of the Square and Compass governs successful work, 786-l.
Centers of Life, Heat, Light, points around which gravitation acts,
  843-u.
Centralization, free states tend to, 51-l.
Ceremonies of initiation into the Mysteries of Mithra, 425.
Ceremonies of Masonry have more than one meaning, 148-l.
Ceremonies of the Mysteries conducted in caverns dimly lighted, 383-l.
Ceres, at Autumnal Equinox was celebrated the Mysteries of, 491-m.
Ceres isolated by Jupiter, 494-u.
Ceres the name of the religious Mysteries of Greece, 625-u.
Chaermon not warranted in stating that Egyptians were Epicureans, 665-m.
Chain of life from the Hidden Deity, 555-m.
Chaldea; Abraham carried the orthodox traditions from, 843-l.
Chaldean name for the Sun God was Bel, 587-u.
Chaldean Triad, Bel, Orosmades, Ahriman, 549-u.
Chaldean Universals part of the perfect Generative Power, 742-m.
Chaldeans considered Light divine and thought it a god, 582-u.
Chalk, charcoal and a vessel of clay materials for the work of a Master,
  548-m.
Chance and Necessity giving way to Law permits man to be morally free,
  695-m.
Chance, coupled with Free Will, or Necessity coupled with Law, 694-l.
Chance, God, Intelligence, undistinguishable by Menander, 694-m.
Chance is Law unacknowledged, 691-m.
Chance or accident absent in the plan of the Universe, 768-m.
Chandos, Sir John, might give his hand to a true Knight, 808-u.
Changes in nations and the earth proceed slowly and continuously, 90-m.
Chang-ti, the name of the Hindu God, Sakya, given by the Chinese, 551-m.
Chang-ti is the Universal Principle of Existence, 616-m.
Chang-ti, or Xam-ti, the Chinese Sovereign Lord of the World, 616-u.
Chang-ti represented by the firmament, Sun, Moon, Earth, 616-m.
Chang-ti, the Supreme Lord or Being of the old Chinese creed, 615-u.
Chaos means universal matter, formless, but susceptible of forms, 783-m.
Chaos, moved by Sophia-Aohamoth, who produced the Demiourgos, 563-m.
Chaos perfected by God, nature, art, 783-u.
Chaos represented by a dark circle, 782-l.
Character, moral and mental, is the habit of our minds, 216-u.
Characteristic of a Mason, sympathy is the great distinguishing, 176-m.
Characteristics, prototype found in lower animals of man's moral, 76-u.
Chariot whose wheels are Netsach and Hod, is described, 798-l.
Charlemagne reigns because the ablest, 49-u.
Charity, a great moral Force, makes united effort possible, 91-m.
Charity, channel through which God passes his mercy, 147-l.
Charity, Clemency, Generosity, essential qualities of a Knight, 803-u.
Charity for others like ourselves lighted by a ray of Divine
  Intelligence, 861-u.
Charity in its broadest sense an obligation, seventh Truth of Masonry,
  536-u.
Charity known, described, practiced by antiquity, 704-l.
Charity, opposed to luxury, represented by Venus, 727-l.
Charity presupposes Justice, 705-u.
Charity, the supreme virtue of man, must be possessed by God, 704-m.
Charity towards the faults of men a part of the Masonic Creed, 531-u.
Charity's first feature is goodness; its loftiest one is heroism, 705-u.
Charles the Sixth, the lunatic, follows the Charlemagnes, 49-u.
Chastisements by God are for our profit, 718-u.
Chemistry analyses the constituents, but can not explain life, 526-527.
Cherub-Metatron one of the Chiefs of the Angels in the Kabalah, 784-l.
Cherub, or Bull, at the Edenic gate is a Sphinx; symbolism of the, 728-u.
Cherubim represents the two hemispheres, etc., symbolism, 409-l.
Cherubim set by Solomon represented the Celestial Bull, 448-u.
Chest or Ark, the body of Osiris placed by Typhon in a, 377-l.
Chief of the Tabernacle, first one of the degrees of the Mysteries,
  moral lesson of, 370-u.
Chief of the Tabernacle, 23d Degree, 352-u.
Children of tender years received into the Mysteries of Samothrace,
  427-m.
China, the Dragon was the stamp and symbol of royalty in, 500-l.
Chinese based their philosophy on one and two lines, 630-l.
Chinese built Temples to Heaven and Earth, genii, dragon, etc, 459-l.
Chinese contribution to Gnosticism; saying of Lao-Tseu, 259-u.
Chinese, controlled by reason, did not become idolaters until after
  Confucius, 615-l.
Chinese creed declares Chang-ti is the principle of everything that
  exists, 615-u.
Chinese Emperor sacrificed a Lamb in the palace of four buildings, 462-m
Chinese Ethics twenty-four centuries ago, 169-l.
Chinese Fo-Hi contains the True name of Deity, 702-u.
Chinese had no false gods, but observed a pure worship of God, 615-l.
Chinese have a Temple called the "Palace of the Horned Bull", 450-m.
Chinese invented writing within four generations after the flood, 601-u.
Chinese Mysteries came from India, similar rites, 429-m.
Chinese palace whose four gates looked towards the four corners, 462-m.
Chinese preserved the primitive revelation longer than other nations,
  600-l.
Chinese Sabeans represented the Supreme Deity as composed of three,
  551-l.
Chinese sacred book says the Great Principle produced Yn and Yang, 630-l.
Chinese symbolized the world by a ring between two serpents, 496-l.
Chinese Trinity, Chang-ti, Tien, Tao; explanation of creation, 551-l.
Chinese, under their third emperor, erected a Temple to the Great
  Architect of the Universe, 615-l.
Chinese were not idolaters until within two centuries of Christ, 615-l.
Chivalric degrees co-operate with those that teach lessons of morality,
  813-l.
Chivalric degrees represented by--, 202-u.
Chivalric Degrees urge the victory of the spiritual over the material,
  856-m.
Chivalric principles, as in former days the world needs the exercise of,
  578-m.
Chivalry, a Spaniard said, is a religious Order, and there are Knights
  in Heaven, 808-m.
Chochmah, Kabalistic meaning of, 202-l.
Chopinel, or Jean de Meung, flourished at the court of Philip Le Bel,
  823-u.
Chrishna assumes human form, still is Divine, 603-m.
Chrishna declares the soul never was non-existent, 518-u.
Chrishna-Govinda, the Divine Shepherd, Messenger of Peace, 603-m.
Chrishna manifest from age to age as vice prevails over virtue, 603-m.
Christ a manifestation of Divinity; Divinity under another form, 568-u.
Christ an object of gratitude and veneration to all, 308-l.
Christ and the Holy Spirit produced by Intelligence, 560-u.
Christ applied for baptism as a sacred rite, 262-u.
Christ baptized in the river Jordan on Jany. 10th, 543-u.
Christ, condition of the world at the coming of, 308-l.
Christ, doings and acts of, 309-l.
Christ, great similarity between doctrines of the Essenes and those of,
  260-l.
Christ is the expounder of the new Law of Love, 309-m.
Christ, John, Paul, spoke in enigmatical language, 249-u.
Christ, Masonry enforces the sublime lessons of, 221-m.
Christ not unfortunate by being nailed to the cross, 316-l.
Christ of the Apocalypse likened to Ormuzd, 273-m.
Christ proclaims a new Gospel, a new God's Word, 309-u.
Christ saluted first by the three Magi; meaning of the act, 731-m.
Christ sealed the Gospel of Love with His life, 310-m.
Christ taught a lofty morality, simple truths--no abstruse theology,
  540-m.
Christ taught by symbols and parables, 372-m.
Christ teaches Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 309-u.
Christ teaches the old Primitive Truth uttered once again, 309-u.
Christ, the Gnostic Eon, never really clothed with a human body, 559-l.
Christ, the life of Chrishna similar to that of, 277-m.
Christ the Word, Only Begotten, the Life, the Light, 559-m.
Christ was not crucified according to the Basilideans, 554-u.
Christ was "The Light that lighteth every man that cometh into
  the World", 748-l.
Christ's advent announced by a Star in the East, 511-m.
Christ's birthplace resounded with acclamations of the Hosts, 511-l.
Christ's commandment to love one another, 310-u.
Christ's for inhabitants would relieve the world of the ills of life,
  719-m.
Christ's name less sonorous to some Gnostics than Orpheus, 732-u.
Christ's nativity celebrated on the day Mithras or Osiris were found,
  511-m.
Christ's religious teachings the same as that of the Patriarchs, 541-m.
Christ's teachings bequeathed to man included in our Masonry, 310-m.
Christ's teachings in the light of the Rose Croix Degree, 308-m.
Christ's teachings nobler and purer than those of any other moralist,
  719-720-l.
Christ's unselfish acts should be our emulation and example, 720.
Christian antiquity did not decide whether the stars were animated
  beings, 671-l.
Christian Basilideans practiced Mysteries of Egyptian origin, 542-u.
Christian Fathers quote Orphic hymn teaching Unity of God, 415-u.
Christian Initiates divided into Auditors, Catechumens, Faithful, 541-l.
Christian interpretation of the Blue Degrees, 639-u.
Christian Lodge must have Christian Bible, 11-m.
Christian Mysteries conferred three degrees on Initiates, 541-l.
Christian philosophers held that each star contains a part of the
  Universal Soul, 671-m.
Christian Trinity, origin of the, 552-m.
Chrishna's life and doings similar to that of Christ, 277-m.
Christianity and Philosophy mingled under the spirit of toleration,
  247-l.
Christianity at the bottom was love, 730-l.
Christianity begins from the burning of the false gods by the people
  themselves, 40-u.
Christianity crushed out the occult philosophy, 730-l.
Christianity did not discover the love of God, 704-l.
Christianity in its early days taught in Mysteries, 541-m.
Christianity led astray by substitution of faith for science, 732-u.
Christianity reveres the Magi who came to adore the Saviour, 841-l.
Christianity teaches Fraternity but not political equality, 23-m.
Christians called Atheists and put to death as such, 643-l.
Christians, contentions among early, 263-m.
Christians do not explain Ezekiel or the Apocalypse, 731-u.
Christians have made the Solstices feast days of St. John, 595-m.
Christians held their Mysteries in the Catacombs, 542-u.
Christians, in Masonic degrees appear some of the teachings of the
  early, 369-l.
Christians; Jewish traditions, Talmud and pretended history claimed
  by the Johannite, 816-l.
Christians of Syria embraced the doctrines of Bardesanes, 553-m.
Christians, peculiarities and characteristics of the early, 540-l.
Christians, teachings of the early, 369-l.
Christians, the primitive truths of the Egyptians were taught by early,
  369-l.
Christians, the simple and sublime teachings of Christ were practiced
  by the early, 540-l.
Christians took refuge in the Catacombs when persecuted, 542-u.
Christians worship Christ more for his Humanity than for his Divinity,
  743-m.
Christos and Wisdom ascended to Heaven before Jesus was crucified, 563-l.
Christos, the title assumed by the Johannite Pontiffs, 817-u.
Christos united to the Eon Jesus by baptism, 560-m.
Christos with Sophia-Achamoth redeemed the world, 560-m.
Church and Throne mutually sustain each other, 33-u.
Church of Rome, pretensions and doings of the, 74-m.
Church received new set of symbols to conceal from the profane
  the Truth, 840-u.
Churches not needed but for expressing religious homage, 211-l.
Chrysippus, a subtile Stoic, moved the world by the Universal Soul,
  670-u.
Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, speaks of secrecy of Mysteries,
  546-m.
Cicero claimed that Initiation made life agreeable and death hopeful,
  379-l.
Cicero declares Pythagoras thought God is the Universal Soul, 667-u.
Cicero held that we expiate below the crimes committed in a prior
  life, 399-m.
Cicero states that the Soul must exercise itself in the practice of
  virtue, 521-u.
Cicero writes and argues for the intelligence of the Universe, 670-m.
Ciceronian period referred to, 48-m.
Ciceros in a period of convulsion, 30-l.
Cimbrians carried brazen bull with them into Spain and Gaul, 450-m.
Circle a symbol in the Druidical mysteries, 367-m.
Circle and Serpents found in Persia, China, Java, Athens, Mexico, 496-m.
Circle between two parallel lines connecting them a symbol of--, 548-m.
Circle between two serpents a symbol of the World with the Chinese,
  496-l.
Circle enclosing a point between parallel lines, a Kabalistic figure,
  105-m.
Circle enclosing a point between two parallel lines; Bible added, 105-m.
Circle enclosing a point, parallel lines, columns, represent the
  Solstices 506-u.
Circle enclosing a point, two parallel lines and single Tau gives
  Triple Tau, 503-m.
Circle equal to the Square which turns on itself, 771-l.
Circle formed of Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, different faces
  and letters, 798-m.
Circle or ring, supported by two serpents; explanation of, 429-m.
Circle representing the Universe bounded by two parallel lines, 252-l.
Circle, the Sohar and the Kabalists form the mysterious, 798-m.
Circle the special symbol of the first Sephiroth, 267-l.
Circles of the Kabalah divided by a rose cross compose Dante's
  Heaven, 822-l.
Circles, ten, under the mystery of the ten Sephiroth, 754-m.
Circuits, explanation of the meaning of the three, 427-l.
Circuits in 8th Degree allude to points of fellowship, 137-u.
Circular form of the Temple at Thrace, image of the Sun in the
  Sanctuary, 410-l.
Circular movement of four equal angles around one point; the
  quadrature of the circle, 771-l.
Circumstances, men bring different results from same, 192-l.
Citizenship, Masonry tends to create a new, 220-m.
City a scene of moral action, 243-l.
Civilization's evils long tolerated, 837-m.
Civilizations have risen and perished by despotism or anarchy, 844-m.
Civilization of Ethiopia preceded that of Egypt; had a theocratic
  government, 362-m.
Civilizations, Masonry prospers on the decay of ancient, 315-m.
Clarian Oracle declared that Iao is the Great God Supreme, 621-u.
Claudius, Caracalla, Commodus, Caesar, 3-u.
Clavicules of Solomon are lost for Christians, 731-m.
Clemens and Philo hold views on symbolism of Cherubim, 409-l.
Clemens descants on light and baptism, 521-l-522-u.
Clemens of Alexandria in his Stromata speaks of the Mysteries, 544-u.
Clemens of Alexandria refers to the seven lamps of the candelabrum, 10-m.
Clemens of Alexandria says of the Mysteries, "Here ends all
  instruction", 373-u.
Clemens refers to the early church and Mysteries, 543.
Clemens refers to the emblems and symbols of the Temple, 408-l.
Clement the Fifth howls at the Templars through later excommunications,
  814-l.
Clement, 12th Pope, issued a Bull against Masonry in 1738, 50-m.
Cleanthes, a disciple of Zeno, regarded the Universe as the Great Cause,
  670-u.
Co-existence of the principle of generation in another and in itself,
  654-m.
Cognition, a priori and a posteriori explained by Malakoth behind
  Seir Aupin, 799-l.
Coins, medals and seals contained the Zodiac and signs, 462-l.
Cold, like absence of motion, characteristic of death, 664-l.
Colors, analogy in the moral and intellectual world of the, 322-m.
Colors and symbolism of the furniture and vestments of the Temple, 409.
Colors in the Light only exist by the presence of the shadow, 848-u.
Colors of rainbow, three principal, seven by mixture, 57-l.
Column, broken, 17-u.
Column in form of a cross with circle over it measured the waters
  of the Nile, 503-m.
Column of the Junior Warden symbolizes Tephareth, 800-u.
Columns at entrance to the Temple, explanation of the meaning of, 305-m.
Columns at entrance to the Temple, material, names, meaning, 304-l.
Columns at entrance to the Temple of Solomon were symbolic, 304-l.
Columns, Boaz and Jachin, explain all the mysteries of antagonism, 772-u.
Columns, Jachin and Boaz, are symbols of the bi-sexuality of the
  name, 849-m.
Columns, Jachin and Boaz, at the entrance to the Temple, 202-l.
Columns, Jachin and Boaz, represent angels of fire and water, 270-l.
Columns, Jachin and Boaz, represent two of the Sephiroth, 267-l.
Columns, Jachin and Boaz, symbolize the equilibrium of Nature, 548-m.
Columns, Jachin and Boaz, symbols of faith and trust, 641-m.
Columns, meaning of Strength and Wisdom, our two, 252-l.
Columns of Seth, Enoch, Solomon, Hercules, symbolize the law of
  Equilibrium, 843-u.
Columns of 17th Degree represent Spirits of Fire, 270-l.
Columns of the Temple at Tyre consecrated to the winds and fire, 410-l.
Columns of the Temple, Jachin and Boaz, Sun and Moon, 776-m.
Columns of the Temple that symbolize the Universe, 848-m.
Columns, or lights of a Lodge, indicate angles of a right angle
  triangle, 861-m.
Columns that support the Lodge are Wisdom, Power, Harmony or
  Beauty, 861-m.
Columns that support the Lodge stand at the three angles of a
  triangle, 61-m.
Columns, two, customarily surmounted by globes, 9-m.
Columns, two, imitations of those at Temple of Malkarth, 9-m.
Columns, two, in the porch of the Temple, 8-l.
Columns, two, size, description, names, 8-l.
Commentary of the Rabbi Chajun Vital, the Siphra de Zeniutha, 794-m.
Commentary states that the Kings died because equilibrium did not
  yet exist, 797-l.
Commodus, horrors of despotism under, 47-l, 27-u.
Common people, must learn thoughts of, 44-u.
Communion with Deity the great desire of man, 652-653.
"Companion" originated from Mithraic Mysteries, 425-l.
Compass a symbol of the Heavens and celestial things, 850-m.
Compass, an instrument adapted to spherical trigonometry, 850-u.
Compass and Square rest on the Scriptures and form the Star of
  Truth, 841-m.
Compass and Square teaches all that is contained in other symbols, 854-l.
Compass, deals with spherical trigonometry, 11-l.
Compass, emblem of what concerns the heavens and the soul, 11-l.
Compass held in the hand on the female side of the Hermetic figure,
  850-m.
Compass is the Hermetic symbol of the Creative Deity, 851-m.
Compass of Faith is above the Square of Reason, 841-m.
Compass of Science in connection with the Celestial Triangle forms
  Solomon's Star, 841-u.
Compass points beneath the Square for the Apprentice, 854-l.
Compass points for the Fellow Craft, one above, one below, 854-l.
Compass points, for the Master, both dominant, 854-l.
Compass, points of, under Square; symbolism of, 12-u.
Compass represents the spiritual, intellectual, moral nature of the
  double Humanity, 851-l.
Compass surmounted by a crown signifies--, 291-m.
Compensation for seeing injustices hard to reconcile, 829-u.
Composite order of architecture is emblematic of--, 202-u.
Compounds have movement, sensation, nutriment, subsistence, 784-m.
Comprehension of the consistency and harmoniousness of the Kabalah,
  843-l.
Compression of the removed Primal Light into Points, 748-l.
Compressions in their relation to Creation, 748-l.
Concealed doctrine, common to all, found in the ancient dogmas, 729-l.
Conception of the base of philosophy long in development, 674-m.
Conception of Deity corresponds to man's moral and intellectual
  attainments, 650-m.
Conception of God arrived at by a study of our own souls, 703-l.
Conception of God impossible except as He manifests Himself, 752-m.
Conception of infinity impossible; or of immateriality, 570.
Conception of ourselves as a limited Being leads to God as a limitless
  one, 703-l.
Conception precedes the entering of the Soul into the embryo, 755-l.
Conceptions of God are idolatrous in so far as they are imperfect, 516-l.
Condorcet, through the ages will ring the words of, 43-u.
Conflagration of the funeral of Hercules the setting of the Sun in
  glory, 592-m.
Conflict between Good and Evil, 660-664.
Conflict between Good and Evil continual in Soul of Man, 474-l.
Conflict between the Divine Principles and the natural, 556-l.
Confidence gives the loftiest character to business, 141-l.
Conformation and constitution effected by means of veiling, 795-l.
Conformations, seven, descend and all things become in equilibrium,
  798-m.
Confucius, best doctrines Chinese were fitted to receive were those of,
  38-u.
Confucius defines Chang-ti and the Teen, 616-m.
Confucius drew his doctrines from the Mysteries, 373-u.
Confucius forbade making images or representations of the Deity, 616-u.
Confucius, Magism was the science of, 839-l.
Confucius, Masonry reiterates the maxims of, 221-m.
Confucius, maxims of, 169-l.
Confucius possessed true Knowledge of Deity, 207-l.
Confucianism did not include idolatry, 615-l.
Confused figure is Zero, the emblem of chaos, 629-l.
Conjunction of the Generative Power and Productive Capacity
  necessary for Creation, 772-m.
Conjunction of heaven and earth engender all beings, 655-l.
Conjunction of male and female when Hakemah and Binah were
  side by side, 757-u.
Conjunction of the Will and capacity to produce the Act of Thought,
  766-l.
Conscience, a moral faculty, which enables us to perceive the moral
  law of justice, 832-u.
Conscience, a rule of conduct higher than what we have ever attained,
  832-u.
Conscience faithfully used and developed enables us to learn justice,
  832-l.
Conscience the voice of Deity, 226-u.
Consciousness of a thinking soul other than our body a proof of the
  soul's own existence, 673-m.
Consciousness of God the highest evidence of His existence and
  our existence, 709-l.
Consciousness of many things in us, 189-l.
Consciousness of mystery beneath the commonplace, 190-m.
Consciousness of self a gift like instinct, 673-l.
Consciousness of self coexistent with our existence, 673-l.
Consciousness of the individual reveals itself alone, 222-m.
Consciousness the only real proof of the verity of certain things, 301-l.
Constantinople See hostile to that of Rome from the time of Photius,
  815-l.
Constantine's Cross, 292-u.
Constellations and divisions of Zodiac Stars, 409.
Constellations, Capella, Pleiades and others celebrated, 466-u.
Constellations figured on Mithraic monument at Rome, 507-l.
Constitution, what kind of, will guarantee liberty, 211-m.
Constitutions of government express the Passive Stability of the
  Will of the Past. 860-u.
Constraint sensed when independence is confined by other natures, 695-m.
Contented spirit a remedy for all the evils in the world, 144-m.
Contentedness of Mason must not be mere contented selfishness, 147-m.
Contest between good and evil concentrated in the breast of man, 563-m.
Contest between Good and Evil typified by the course of the Sun, 594-m.
Contraction of Deity within Himself effects a quasi-vacant space, 766-u.
Contraction of God at the emanation process termed Tsemsum, 746-u.
Contractions in relation to Creation, 748-750.
Contraries in combination causes the harmony of the Universe, 660-l.
Contraries in equilibrium and resultant Harmony taught by the
  Ternary, 792-U.
Contraries in nature represented by the Binary number, 630-m.
Contraries, philosophical meaning of the doctrine of, 305-m.
Contraries, the second principle of the Kabalah deals with, 305-u.
Contraries, the solution of the most difficult problems given by the
  analogy of, 306-u.
Contrary forces in the universal equipoise, 818-u.
Coral insects, formation of Continents by the slow work of the, 318-l.
Corinthian order of architecture is emblematic of--, 202-u.
Cornerstone, a name of the seventh King produced by Binah, 796-l.
Corona, Crown, contained in potence the ten numerations, 754-l.
Corona, Kether, "The Head whereof is no cognition," applied to
  Adam Kadmon, 758-u.
Corpses of Egyptians duly embalmed were called "Osiris", 588-m.
Correct ideas of Deity only obtained by inspiration or philosophy, 674-u.
Cortices, the envelopes of the Philosophers' Stone, 779-m.
Corruption, degeneracy, falseness of public and private life, 806-m.
Cosma, the Monk, held that every star was under the guidance of
  an Angel, 671-l.
Cosmic force: God felt and known when we reverence the mighty, 707-m.
Cosmically, when a star rises or sets simultaneously with the Sun, 471-m.
Cosmogonic chants of the Ancients testify to the ideas of the origin
  of the world, 655-u.
Cosmogonies of ancient nations preserved by different writers, 655-u.
Country, beauty and glory of, enhanced by--, 156-l.
Country, honor of a true Mason identified with that of his, 156-m.
Country, human speech must be free in a free, 56-m.
Country in its dotage when the--, 56-m.
Country populous and wealthy, great problems of, 178-179.
Country's safety to be preferred to the lives of her enemies, 836-u.
Course of circuits in Lodge, chariots in games, from East to West, 464-m.
Covenant, the Triple Triangle, the symbol of the Triple, 533-u.
Covenants, explanation of the Three, 532.
Cradle of Gnosticism in Syria or Palestine, 249-m.
Created things born of Malakoth, designated in the Kabalah as
  female, 769-m.
Creation a result of the animation of matter by Divine Life, 556-m.
Creation according to the Emech Hammelech, 747-748-750.
Creation according to the Sohar and other Kabalistic works, 748.
Creation according to Zoroaster, 611-l.
Creation as detailed in the Vedas, 609-l.
Creation begins with the Divine Man, and ends with the Material Man,
  760-m.
Creation, categorical questions concerning, 648.
Creation claimed by Ormuzd, or Ahura Mazda, 612-u.
Creation conceived and willed by God's Thought, 575-u.
Creation directly out of the Divine Essence through the Demiurge, 557-m.
Creation, forms of, change, but the Universe is eternal, 303-u.
Creation implies the conjunction of Generative Power and Productive
  capacity, 772-m.
Creation, inscrutable; mysteries of, 215-m.
Creation is Mechanism to us; to the Ancients it was Generation, 771-l.
Creation is the habitation of the Creator-Word, 772-m.
Creation not by God directly, 269-l.
Creation not only accomplished, but preserved, 575-m.
Creation not the instant production of things, 607-m.
Creation of a material Universe by an immaterial Deity through
  agents, 568-u.
Creation of Man concurred in by Ormuzd and Ahriman, 258-u.
Creation of man impossible if God's justice alone had reigned, 846-u.
Creation of Male and Female, 749-l.
Creation of Power to protect the Realm of Light from Satan's Eons, 566-u.
Creation of the Universe ascribed to the Word, by St. John, 568-m.
Creation of the world by Judgment explained to mean by fear, 796-l.
Creation of Universe assigned to Ihuh-Alhim by a fragment of Genesis,
  568-m.
Creation of the World by Ormuzd and Ahriman concurrently, 258-u.
Creation of Worlds according to the Kabalah, 286-l.
Creation, process of, 251.
Creation, real idea of the Ancient Nations concerning, 575-u.
Creation, reason advanced to account for the, 683-l.
Creation required the Infinite to form in Himself an idea of what
  He willed, 766-l.
Creation represented as a marriage in Veda, 602-l.
Creation represented by a triangle because it is the first perfect
  figure, 631-l.
Creation symbolized by the Tetragrammaton expressed triangularly, 698-l.
Creation that results from the accord of two forces, 790-m.
Creation, the first Entities of Spirits and Angels, the world of, 768-l.
Creation the result of the accord of Necessity and Liberty, 790-m.
Creation the result of the accord of the Fixed and the Volatile, 790-m.
Creation, theories concerning, 270-u.
Creation through the agency of an intermediary, 269-l.
Creation, universal, is the female of the First Principle, 772-u.
Creation's act gave Deity a name, 849-u.
Creation's first step was providing a vacant space within Deity, 766-u.
Creation's idea was followed by development and evolution, 767-u.
Creation's mode concealed by an impenetrable veil, 852-m.
Creation's primary law, the equipoise of contrary forces, 848-u.
Creation's principle, the double law of attraction and radiation,
  or of--, 843-u.
Creation's process sought to be explained in the Kabala, 758-m.
Creation's World embraces the six members contained in Binah, 795-l.
Creative Agency of Heaven developed most fully at the Vernal
  Equinox, 473-u.
Creative Agency revealed as the ten emanations or attributes, 267-m.
Creative Deity symbolized by the Compass, 851-m.
Creative energy of the Soul of the World exercised through the
  medium of the Sun, 473-m.
Creative Power through Thought produced the Universe with its Word,
  254-m.
Creative principle the meaning of the personal pronoun "He", 699-u.
Creative process according to Menou, the Hindu law given, 608.
Creative process according to the Sohar; section of the letter Yod,
  750-751.
Creative process according to the Vedas, 609-u.
Creative space illuminated by the Light of Wisdom, 762-u.
Creative Thoughts of God, Worlds and Man the result of the, 582-l.
Creator becomes so through utterance of God's Thought by the Word, 575-u.
Creator degraded by sects which lower him to the level of humanity,
  624-m.
Creator hollowed out a pit of shadow, 772-u.
Creator in triple, according to Aurelius; explanation, 550-u.
Creator made room for Yod in the plentitude of uncreated Light, 772-u.
Creator possesses all the essential attributes of the creature, 703-u.
Creator produced by emanation an ideal Yod, 772-u.
Creator, the Principle of Existence Himself, 772-u.
Creator, the Word is the, 251.
Creator-Word habits Creation, 772-m.
Creature possesses no essential attribute not possessed by Creator,
  703-u.
Creature worshipped instead of the Creator, 508-l.
Creed, no Sage believed the popular, 302-m.
Creed of Masonry a simple and sublime one, a universal religion, 718-l.
Creed of Masonry, Belief, Hope, Charity, 531-u.
Creed, religious, political, masonic, little influence on conduct, 35-l.
Creed, Sages in Chaldea, Egypt, India, China, had esoteric, 302-m.
Creeds express an idea calculated to explain the Mysteries of Being, 650-m.
Crescent and Disc symbols of the Sun and Moon in conjunction, 452-u.
Crete, Dionusos appears as Iasius or even Zeus in, 585-m.
Crete, Jupiter Ammon, the Sun in Arius, had an initiation at, 407-l.
Crimes of men, in judgment God may consider the temptations, 134-l.
Cromwell reigns because the ablest, 49-u.
Cromwells follow period of convulsion, 30-l.
Cross a symbol of Humility, patience, Self-denial, 801-l.
Cross appropriated to Thoth or Mercury in its simple form, 503-u.
Cross associated with the serpent on ancient monuments, 502.
Cross assumed an improved form, the arms became wings, etc, 503-u.
Cross, Druids built Temples in the shape of a, 367-m.
Cross formed of a column with a circle over it measured the Nile, 503-m.
Cross has an astronomical origin, 483-m.
Cross having a rose in its center dividing circles representing Heaven,
  822-l.
Cross, in building the Temples of India they imitated the shape of a,
  361-l.
Cross in the shape of the capital letter T called the Tau cross, 503-m.
Cross in various forms, 502-505.
Cross, initiate in Druidical Mysteries marked with a, 430-l.
Cross like Teutonic or Maltese represented the Tropics and Colures, 502-l.
Cross marked on forehead of initiate into Indian Mysteries, 428-m.
Cross of Light, a celestial voice was heard over the, 567-m.
Cross of Light appeared in place of Jesus crucified, 567-m.
"Cross of Light is called the Word, Christ," etc., spoken by a celestial
  voice, 567-m.
Cross of St. Andrew seen by several kings the night before a battle
  was fought, 801-l.
Cross of St. Andrew seen in the sky before battle by Hungus, 801-m.
Cross of St. Andrew worn by the Picts in war time for their badge, 801-m.
Cross of the East the Kabalistic pantacle adopted by the Templars, 816-m.
Cross of the philosophers an image of generative power, for Masons, 771-l.
Cross surmounted by a circle and crescent an emblem of Deity, 503-u.
Cross surmounting a triangle symbolizes the end of the Great Work, 790-l.
Cross surmounting two vases, nature and art, 783-u.
Cross, symbol of devotedness and self sacrifice, taught Masonry--, 854-m.
Cross, symbolism of the, 290-l.
Cross, symbolism of the, 291-l.
Cross symbolized the active and passive power of production, 503-u.
Cross united to the Rose the problem proposed by High Initiation, 821-l.
Cross, various forms and meaning of the, 292-u.
Cross venerated thousands of years before Christ, 504-m.
Cross with a serpent on it was an Egyptian Standard, 502-m.
Cross within the circle represents the light antecedent to Chaos, 782-l.
Crown called the Cause of Causes, the Ancient of the Ancients, 755-u.
Crown, Kether, involves the idea of circularity and is endless, 753-u.
Crown, Kether, termed Arik Aupin, Macroprosopos, 799-m.
Crown, Male and Female, within the occult Wisdom, is fashioned
  the Supreme, 762-l.
Crown of Kings opposed by the Templars at their origin, 817-m.
Crucifixion of the Light Principle enfranchised all souls, 567-m.
Crux Ansata, a Tau cross with a circle over it, means life-giving, 290-u.
Crux Ansata found at Khorsabad and the Assyrian monuments, 503-m.
Crux Ansata the form of tether pins for young animals, 502-m.
Crux Ansata the peculiar emblem of Osiris, 504-l.
Crux Ansata the symbol of Royalty to the Shepherd Kings, 502-l.
Crux Ansata was a Cross with a coiled serpent above it, 502-m.
Cube a symbol of faith in things invisible essential to salvation, 827-u.
Cube, faces and lines include the sacred numbers, 5-l.
Cube of agate supporting triangular plate of gold teaches--, 209-u.
Cube of Perfection connected with Taus within two circles, 503-m.
Cube on a plane surface delineated, 5-m.
Cube represents the form of the philosophal stone, 732-u.
Cube, symbol of the Force of the People, expressed as a Law of the
  State, 5-l.
Cube, symbol of perfection, 5-l.
Cube, the emblem of Odin, 431-u.
Cube, the first perfect solid, teaches justice, accuracy, consistency,
  827-u.
Cube, theological and physical, represented by the number six, 627-l.
Cubical Stone a symbol of the Grand Scottish Master's Degree, 781-l.
Cubical stone represents the Hermetic symbol of their Salt, 775-l.
Cubical stone that sweated blood, 827-u.
Cup, or waters of forgetfulness; symbolism of the, 438-m.
Cup used in the Mysteries represents the Constellation Crater, 506-l.
Curetes encircled Zagreus in the Constellation Serpent, 585-l.
Curiosity of ths candidate excited by suspense and obstacles, 385-m.
Cybele, Atys represented the Sun God in the Phrygian Mysteries of, 407-u.
Cybele with the Phrygian Sun God goes to the Hyperboreans, 592-u.
Cybele worshipped in Syria under the name of Rhea, 423-u.
Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem, speaks of the secrecy of the Christians,
  545-u.
Cyril of Alexandria speaks of the secrecy of the Mysteries, 546-l.

D

Daath is the Act, the Thought, the Intellection producing the idea, 766-l.
Daath, the Intellect flowing from Hakemah and Binah, 552-m.
Daath, the result of the conjunction of Hakemah and Binah, 757-l.
Daath, the Word of Plato and the Gnostics, 552-m.
Dagger, with hilt black and white, an emblem of light and darkness, 506-m.
Dagon or Oannes, the Sea God, the Leviathan overcome by Jehovah, 498-l.
Damascus, Bishop exhibited a Testament at the battle of, 53-m.
Dan has for device a Scorpion changed to an Eagle or Vulture, 461-m.
Dante Alighieri, the Ghibellin, born in 1265, 822-l.
Dante applied figures and numbers of the Kabalah to Christian Dogma, 822-m.
Dante, Divine Comedy of, sketched in Plato's time, 101-m.
Dante publicly expounded the symbol of the Rose Croix Adepts, 822-l.
Dante reascends to light by using the Devil as a ladder, 822-m.
Dante's Divine Comedy is a declaration of war against the Papacy, 822-m.
Dante's journey resembles initiation into the Mysteries of Eleusis, 822-m.
Dante's work boldly reveals the mysteries; is Johannite Gnostic, 822-m.
Darkness a source of fear and dread to the ancients, 443-m.
Darkness an enemy, a dread, to the ancients, 595-m.
Darkness, Sun driven further to the south by the Powers of, 445-u.
Darkness and Light features of the Mysteries of Eleusis, 403-u.
Darkness and Light prominent features of the Mysteries of Isis, 404-u.
Darkness comes from the gross matter which composes the passive cause,
  659-l.
Darkness considered older than light by some Parsee sects, 613-u.
Darkness has no home in the Universe, 845-m.
Darkness hides the Universe and reduces all nature to nothingness, 660-u.
Darkness on one side consequent on illumination on the other, 845-m.
Darkness synonymous with Evil, 660-m.
Darkness the embodiment of the Evil principle, 595-m.
Daun, as Arun, the charioteer, precedes Surya, 587-u.
Deacons in early Christian Mysteries kept the door, 543-l.
Dead govern, the Living obey, 315-u.
Death, but one question, "Has he lived well," after, 184-u.
Death caused by the inertia or immobility of Forces on Impulses, 846-u.
Death completes the transformation necessary for soul's reabsorption,
  686-u.
Death, for the Egyptians, but renovation and union, 588.
Death is the Great Teacher, 183-l.
Death is the true initiation; sleep the introductory mystery, 392-m.
Death, like absence of motion, distinctively characteristic of cold, 664-l.
Death, mysteries of, to be sought in Life itself, 101-u.
Death, no evil, but that which life has made, 184-u.
Death of deities not inconsistent with their Immortality, 590-m.
Death of seed to give birth to the new plant a symbol in all religions,
   395-u.
Death, the grand mystery of existence, the secret of the Mysteries, 586-l.
Death, the great mystery of existence, precedes the second birth, 393-m.
Death, the shadow of God: whose shadow is immortality, 741-l.
Decalogue, Masonic, 17-l.
Decan, a God or Genius, assigned to each, 470-m.
Decay of Templars due to their ambition, lack of education, haughtiness,
  819-m.
December the 25th, the date of the Great Feast of Mithras, 587-m.
December 25th celebrated at Tsur and Rome, 78-l.
Decorations of the degrees dispensed with if thought expensive, 329-u.
Deeds are nobler and greater than words, 341-m.
Deeds, great results from humble, 230.
Definitions of Deity, 651-l.
Definition of Freemasonry, its purposes, its essence, its spirit, 854-m.
Degeneration of Nations by opulence and luxury, 348-l.
Degradation of popular notions of Deity of later growth, 689-l.
Degeneration of the families of wealth, 347-l.
Degree, a step toward Perfection is each Masonic, 136-l.
Degree, Apprentice, the 1st, 1-m.
Degree, Fellowcraft, the 2nd, 22-u.
Degree, Master, the 3rd, 62-u.
Degree of contribution not so important as the purpose, 231-u.
Degree of Perfection, doctrines taught in the, 432-l.
Degree, the development of a particular Duty in each Masonic, 136-l.
Degree which is closed against any religious faith is not Masonic, 290-m.
Degrees, Allegories from old religions, mysteries used in revision of,
  328-m.
Degrees; excellency of the virtues of Honor and Duty taught by
  the Chivalric, 856-u.
Degrees, 4th to 14th, the ineffable degrees, 202-u.
Degrees have three essential features, 625-m.
Degrees of Hermeticism are three, religious, philosophical, physical, 840-l.
Degrees, in the Indian Mysteries were several, 428-l.
Degrees, in the Mithraic Mysteries were several, 425-l.
Degrees invented by Alchemists within Masonry, 731-u.
Degrees misunderstood, corrupted and disfigured, 106-m.
Degrees, 19th to 32nd, philosophical, 202-u.
Degrees of Blue Lodge given a Christian interpretation, 639-u.
Degrees of Lodge Perfection teach the practical morality of Masonry, 855-l.
Degrees of Masonry contain hints and symbols of real beliefs of
  Templar Chiefs, 819-u.
Degrees of Perfection urge the subjugation of the appetites by the
  spiritual nature, 855-l.
Degrees of Pythagoras contain heiratic intelligence, 97-m.
Degrees of the Blue Lodge but the outer court of the Temple, 819-u.
Degrees of the Christian Mysteries three in number, 541-l.
Degrees of the Druidical Mysteries were three in number, 367-l.
Degrees of the Gnostics, Material, Intellectual, Spiritual, 542-l.
Degrees of the Sacrament referred to by St. Dionysius, 543-l.
Degrees of the Scottish Rite teach the necessity of the mastery of
  the spiritual in man over the material, 855-m.
Degrees, only those qualified to discuss philosophy should receive
  the, 332-l.
Degrees, primitive masonry represented by the first three, 202-u..
Degrees, 17th and 18th, New Law, 202-u.
Degrees, symbolic, contain some Platonic ideas, 250-u.
Degrees teach more than morals, 148-u.
Degrees, the 15th and 16th, Second Temple, 202-u.
Degrees; the value of knowledge, the excellence of truth taught by
  the philosophers, 855-l.
Deification of a mental principle instead of a physical one, 652-u.
Deification of Fortune through error continued by the worship of
  abstractions, 694-u.
Deified, Heroditus speaks of the reason why animals were, 380-m.
Deioces, a palace in Ecbatana having seven differently colored walls, 729-u.
Deities enclosed in the egg are the forty-eight constellations, 663-l.
Deities, names of Good and Evil, contained in names of Assassins, 82-m.
Deities of India and Persia mostly symbols of celestial light, 601-l.
Deities of Ormuzd placed in an egg broken by Deities of Ahriman, 662-l.
Deities, prominent, of the Mysteries represented the Sun and Moon, 377-u.
Deities, prominent, of the Mysteries were Male and Female, 377-u.
Deities, to explain the existence of Good and Evil the Persians
  assumed two, 300-m.
Deity, a symbol or representative hieroglyphic was the name of, 208-u.
Deity abstractly expressed is but a symbol of an object unknown, 513-m.
Deity, according to Aristotle and Plato, in relation to Good, 681-m.
Deity acts by general laws for general purposes, 688-l.
Deity acts by universal laws and constant modes of operation, 688-m.
Deity, after creating the idea, might be called by the name of
  Tetragrammaton, 746-u.
Deity, among the fundamental teachings of Gnosticism were emanations
  from, 248-l.
Deity as manifested in Seir and the Universe are one when Regnum
  turns to her husband, 799-l.
Deity as incomprehensible as ever, notwithstanding advances, 697-u.
Deity at first looked up to with unquestioning reverence, 690-u.
Deity, before He created any Ideal, was alone, without form, 745-l.
Deity beyond human intellect, without name, form, limitation, 552-u.
Deity causing good; demon causing evil, 661-u.
Deity changed Himself into the form of Love in the work of Creation, 683-l.
Deity; chief object of Masonry is the perpetuation of the character
  and attributes of, 137-u.
Deity comprehended in Himself all that is, 700-m.
Deity comprehended the generative Spirit and productive matter, 700-m.
Deity conformed himself into a form that contains all forms, 793-l.
Deity, Conscience the voice of, 226-u.
Deity considered as a Principle pervading all nature by the Confucians,
  616-u.
Deity contained within Himself the whole Universe to be developed, 849-u.
Deity contains all that moves, lives, exists or has being, 700-m.
Deity contains the incorruptible and unwearying force of necessity, 658-m.
Deity contracted Himself on all sides from a point within Himself, 766-u.
Deity created Nature, 700-m.
Deity defined by the Hindu Vedas, 279-m.
Deity defined today no clearer than in the definition of the ancients,
  513-m.
Deity dethroned and changed into a Dev to account for moral evil, 690-m.
Deity developed Himself in order to create in ten Saphiroth, 552-u.
Deity did not create the Universe directly, but through agents, 568-m.
Deity divided into two classes to account for moral evil, 690-m.
Deity emits His emanations into the quasi-vacant space of contraction,
  766-u.
Deity enacts moral laws because they are Revelations and decisions
  of the Divine, 737-m.
Deity, everywhere in the old faiths is the idea of a Supreme, 512-u.
Deity first recognized in the heavenly bodies and the elements, 652-u.
Deity first restored the universality of the seven Kings of the World,
  Aziluth, then the others, 797-u.
Deity forbidden to be represented by Idea, figure or letters He or Yod,
  745-l.
Deity forbidden to be represented by the early Scandinavians, 618-m.
Deity formed all things in the form of male and female, 800-u.
Deity in his revelations adopted the use of material images, 372-m.
Deity, in Isiac Mysteries was carried an effigy of the Supreme, 412-l.
Deity in its entirety actuates the planet and the rotifer, 671-m.
Deity incapable of being defined or expressed, 513-m.
Deity; instances of the envy, jealousy and malignity of, 688-u.
Deity invested with human attributes, 515-u.
Deity is all in all; the cause and effect, 701-u.
Deity is imbued with Benignity, 769-m.
Deity is Infinite, without limitation, without conformation, 765-l.
Deity is the Absolute Existence and the Male and Female Principle, 700-m.
Deity is the impulse and the result; the beginning, the ending, 701-u.
Deity long known as Al Schadai, Alohayim, Adonai, etc, 697-l.
Deity long known as Nature, a man personified, with human passions, 697-l.
Deity made after man's own image, 652-u.
Deity, manifestations of the Supreme, 13.
Deity, Masonry teaches the nature and existence of one Supreme, 221-m.
Deity most perfectly manifests Himself by His Rays, the Sephiroth, 748-m.
Deity, Mysteries taught true ideas of, 208-m.
Deity neither moved nor unmoved, limited nor unlimited, 676-u.
Deity never could not have existed, 700-m.
Deity never Thought not nor never was not, 849-u.
Deity not an object of perception but--, 222-m.
Deity not the author of vice, sin and suffering, but his ministers, 416-u.
Deity not only infinite in power and wisdom, but in mercy and pity, 855-u.
Deity not the cause of evil; there must be another cause, 660-m.
Deity of Aristotle the perfection of man's intellectual activity in the
  Universe, 681-m.
Deity of Chaldeans, Father of Light, was termed Araor, 742-l.
Deity of each star a portion of the Universal Deity; Soul of Nature, 671-m.
Deity of Nature reflects the changeful character of the seasons, 689-l.
Deity of our Northern ancestors was triune, 13-l.
Deity of Plato, a Being proportioned to human sympathies; Father, 682-l.
Deity of Plato could not be more than the Wise and the Good, 681-m.
Deity of Plato creates, superintends, rejoices, 681-m.
Deity of Plato, the Author of Good only; the Good itself, 682-u.
Deity of the Universe likened to the Ocean by the Egyptians, 665-m.
Deity often expressed by the personal pronoun "He", 698-l.
Deity only apprehended by negative notions, says Philo, 651-m.
Deity originally contained All, 764-m.
Deity; Ormuzd, in the body, resembled light; in the soul, truth, 662-m.
Deity present in each of four worlds as in and through the Sephiroth,
  768-l.
Deity produces nine lights which shine forth from His outforming, 762-u.
Deity, questions in reference to, 648.
Deity supposed to possess the feelings of envy and jealousy, 688-u.
Deity, Supreme, above all Gods, author of everything, 13-l.
Deity, Supreme, was the same to the intellectual of all nations, 208-u.
Deity symbolized by the hieroglyphical senary, 634-l.
Deity symbolized by the One, or Unity, 625-m.
Deity symbolized by the triangle in all ages, 861-u.
Deity symbolized by the Urn, 519-l.
Deity, tangible and personal, only one comprehended generally, 700-l.
Deity, the first three Universals, or Worlds, are wholly within the, 759-u.
Deity, "The Good," because Evil is excluded from his attributes, 681-l.
Deity the incorporeal light in which live causes of created natures, 521-m.
Deity, the Light of the Divine Presence, seen more clearly by the soul,
  855-m.
Deity, the One, Sacred Name of the Indian, 205-u.
Deity, the Universe, having perpetuity of movement and life, Supreme
  Cause 667-l.
Deity, through the Sophiroth, is extended to the production of all, 759-m.
Deity, Trinity of; creates, preserves, destroys, 57-l.
Deity uses the Sephiroth as a workman uses his tools, 759-m.
Deity was and is all that was, that is and that shall be, 700-m.
Deity, when separated ideally into the loving and beloved, 684-u.
Deity with the Kabalists has no name, but terms are applied, 745-l.
Deity worshipped in lonely forests by the early Scandinavians, 618-m.
Deity's attributes personified that man could commune with God, 652-l.
Deity's bosom the origin and home of human souls, 851-l.
Deity's essence, Necessity and Liberty, counterbalanced, produce
  equilibrium, 778-l.
Deity's first utterance was a syllable of four letters; each became
  a being, 560-m.
Deity's first utterance was Logos, or Plenitude of Eons, 560-l.
Deity's habitation above the Moon, according to Lucanus, 654-m.
Deity's intellectual nature affected by the question of Evil, 684-m.
Deity's intention was that His creatures should recognize his existence,
  797-l.
Deity's manifested creative powers united are the Alhim, 701-m.
Deity's name consists of four letters among many nations, 633-l.
Deity's name consists of three letters among many nations, 632-l.
Deity's names according to Diodorus, Philo, Clemens, Clarian, etc, 700-l.
Deity's nature expressed by describing Him as Light filling all space,
  766-u.
Deity's nature included in the meaning of the True Word of a Mason, 697-m.
Deity's oldest notions were rather indefinite than repulsive, 689-l.
Deity's Omnipotence and Beneficence and the existence of Evil
  contradictory, 686-l.
Deity's proximity more remote as man's conception became exalted, 652-m.
Deity's self-imposed limitations the safeguards of human freedom, 689-m.
Deity's Thought outwardly manifested in the Universe which so became,
  700-m.
Deity's union with his creatures expressed by the Hebrew letter "He",
  698-l.
Deity's Unity and Supremacy and the separate existence of Evil, 681-l.
Deity's wisdom and beneficence reconciled with the existence of Evil,
  686-u.
Delaulnaye on the symbolism of the Sun and the Moon, 13-l.
Delphi and Delos awaited the return of Apollo from the north, 592-m.
Delphi, a triple-headed serpent of gold was the tripod at, 496-u.
Delta, the initial of the Latin or French word for God, 631-l.
Delta, signification of the three Greek letters on the, 531-l.
Delta, signification of the three sides of the, 531-m.
Deluge, the number Seven in connection with a, 233-m.
Demagog the predecessor of the Despot, 48-m.
Demerit, the natural right which others have to punish us, 723-l.
Demetrius received the Lesser and Greater Mysteries at the same time,
  432-l.
Demiourgos and his mother contest in man, 563.
Demiourgos of the Gnostics corresponds to The Word, 271-l.
Demiourgos, or laldaboth, of the Ophites, produced an angel, 563-m.
Demiourgos, the Agent of Material Creation, produced by Chaos, 563-m.
Demiurge, the Artificer and Governor of the World, 557-l.
Demiurge, the framer of this lower world, 557-l.
Demiurge regarded as hostile to God by some Gnostics, 558-m.
Demiurgic energy most fully developed at the Vernal Equinox, 473-u.
Demiurgic ideas of some Gnostics not of the Mosaic religion, 558-m.
Demiurgical Intelligence descends into matter and returns, 415-m.
Democracy and Despotism favorable to the prevalence of falsehood
  and deceit, 66-u.
Demons, or Eons of Satan, involved in war, arrived at Realm of Light,
  566-u.
Demons of the Greeks correspond to the Ferouers of Zoroaster, 256-u.
Demosthenes, methods of, 174-m.
Denmark, serpent, boy and signs on sacrificial vessels of, 501-l.
Denary, the number ten, the measure of everything, 638-m.
Depths determined by height; valleys filled, mountains disappear, 848-u.
Design of organized beings graven in the Intelligence of the Universe,
  665-u.
Desirable number is eight, because of the Elus and Sages, 628-l.
Desires should be measured by fortune and conditions, 146-m.
Despot, spiritual or temporal, is a crowned anarchist, 822-u.
Despots, aids to thinkers, 48-u.
Despots will be cherished at home if people do not--, 177-l.
Despotism, horrors of, 27-u-m.
Despotism, progress of free people towards, 32-m.
Destiny, a name by which the theological problem was cast back, 689-l.
Destiny of Man, to attain the Truth and serve others, 109-u.
Deus, the four-lettered name of the Latin Deity, 633-l.
Deva, God, is derived from the root, "div," to shine, 601-l.
Devas, the elemental Powers, progeny of Indra, 602-m.
Development symbolized by the use of the Mallet and Chisel, 30-l.
Devil not a person but a Force misdirected, 102-l.
Devil, or evil force, personified by--, 102-l.
Devil, Personification of Atheism or Idolatry, 102-l.
Devil used as a ladder by Dante to reascend to light, 822-m.
Device of Masonry is--, 220-m.
Devotion to duty and acts of heroism distinguished the Knight, 580-l.
Devs and Archdevs opposed to the good spirits of Ormuzd, 257-l.
Devs are six of the Zodiacal signs under the banner of darkness, 663-u.
Diagoras accused of divulging the Secret of the Mysteries, 384-l.
Dialectic and Ethic harmoniously blended evolve perfect discipline, 35-u.
Diana the Mistress in the Constellation Sagittarius, 461-l.
Diodonis gives lao as the name given by Moses to Deity, 700-l.
Diodorus held that each star was a part of the Universal Soul, 671-m.
Diodorus Siculus states the Egyptians recognized two great Divinities,
  458-m.
Diodorus speaks of the columns near the tombs of Osiris and Isis, 378-m.
Dionusos and Apollo, representing Nature and Art, from one common
  source, 585-l.
Dionusos, born of a mortal mother, a son of God, 585-u.
Dionusos, Creator, guardian, liberator, Saviour of the Soul, 519.
Dionusos esteemed as Healer, Saviour, Author of Life and Immortality,
  586-u.
Dionusos, identical with lacchus, presiding genius of the Mysteries,
  585-u.
Dionusos in his second birth a type of spiritual regeneration, 519-l.
Dionusos is the totality of the Universal Soul, 393-m.
Dionusos, or Bacchus, Author of Light and Life and Truth, 13-l.
Dionusos-Orpheus descended to the Shades to secure the perpetuity
  of Nature, 394-u.
Dionusos, Orpheus said to have founded the Mysteries of, 357-u.
Dionusos, personification of the senuous world, guide of the soul, 518-l.
Dionusos, symbols of the second birth of man were the death and
  passion of, 393-l.
Dionusos, the earth is rent asunder at the death of, 393-l.
Dionusos, the God of Nature, one with heroes of other Mysteries, 357-u.
Dionusos the leader of the Muses, the God of Nature and of Art, 585-l.
Dionusos, the Liberator, like Osiris, frees the soul and--, 393-u.
Dionusos, the "Liberator," the Totality of the "Universal Soul"; he
  dies and rises, 586.
Dionusos, the Nature God of the Greeks, as Amun was to the Egyptians,
  585-u.
Dionusos the personification of the Sun in Taurus, 585-u.
Dionusos the same as the dismembered Zagreus, 585-l.
Dionusos, the spiritual regeneration of man typified by the second
  birth of, 357-m.
Dionusos, the Sun, suggested the spiritual mediator, 519-u.
Dionusos torn in pieces by the Titans represented the Soul mixed
  with matter, 561-l.
Dionusos was Creator, guardian, liberator, saviour of the soul, 357-m.
Dionysius, or author of his books, concealed science under the disguise
  of Christianity, 732-l.
Dionysius, the Areopagite; Dogma of Hermes found in writings of, 731-l.
Dionysius, the Areopagite, the first Bishop of Athens, 543-l.
Dionysius, the Younger, written to by Pluto, on the First Principle, 99-u.
Dioscuri patrons of sailors and navigation, 427-u.
Dioscuri sailed with Jason for the golden fleeced Ram, the Sun, 466-l.
Dioscuri, the Tunis Castor and Pollux, deities of Samothrace, 426-l.
Directors of the Work or Masons of the 9th to 11th degrees; duties
  of the, 331-l.
Disagree in matters of opinion and both be sane and honest, 166-u.
Disc and Crescent denote Taurus; used as our Orators' sign, 452-u.
Disc and Crescent on the head of the Bull represents--, 452-m.
Disc and Crescent on Ram instead of Bull represent the Sun in Aries, 452-l.
Disc and Crescent symbols of the Sun and Moon in conjunction, 452-u.
Disciples first called Christians at Antioch, 262-l.
Disciples of Christ, secret meaning to the number of the, 233-m.
Discipline of the Secret compared to the Heathen Mysteries, 544-u.
Discipline of the Secret was the concealment of certain tenets, 543-m.
Discords, wrong, evil, suffering, are--, 577-u.
Discovery of the sacred place in which Truth is hidden reveals the
  True Light, 785-l.
Discovery of Truth the most Sublime Science to which a mortal
  can aspire, 785-l.
Divine and human relations received dramatic form in ancient views, 372-n.
Divine and human united symbolized by an equilateral triangle, 858-m.
Divine and the Human intermingled in every human being, 853-u.
Divine attributes contrasted with human littleness, 651-m.
Divine Dynasty which governed the early world, 508-m.
Divine Essence symbolized by Light or Fire, 742-l.
Divine in man makes him more than an intelligent animal, 857-l.
Divine Intellect as an Idea, the Universe invested with form after
  being in the, 323-m.
Divine Intellect evolved all Souls and intellects of men, 582-m.
Divine law an analogical inference from human law, 694-m.
Divine Life animates dead matter, creation begins, 556-m.
Divine Life by evolution approaches dead matter, 556-m.
Divine mingles with human in all affairs, 12-u.
Divine Nature, a theme on which man is not entitled to dogmatize, 222-m.
Divine Nature, Power and Justice the same, Wisdom and Mercy the
  same in the, 552-m.
Divine not encroached on by dead matter, 556-u.
Divine Original; the consummation of Plato's science is the contemplation
  of the, 692-l.
Divine perfection nearest approached by Man, 610-u.
Divine Power, or Word, unfolded the Intellect, 582-m.
"Divine right to govern" vested in the ablest, wisest, best, 203-l.
Divine Soul, acting as a cause, produced intelligence, 669-l.
Divine symbolized by the Human in the creation of woman, 849-l.
Divine Tetragram, Jehova, formed by adding Yod to the ternary
  name of Eve. 771-m.
Divine Triangle, Fatality, Will and Power; the magical ternary. 738-u.
Divine Will enacts the moral laws. 737-m.
Divine Will or Power limited by the Divine Wisdom; the result,
  Beauty, Harmony. 846-l.
Divine will struggles with the natural will in the souls of men, 599-m.
Divine Word allied with Universal Reason in the Kabalah, 744-l.
Divinity ascribed to Heavenly bodies by Phoenicians and Egyptians, 456-l.
Divinity ascribed to the stars by the logic of Cicero, 670-l.
Divinity belonged to the soul of nature, 670-u.
Divinity designated by the Chinese by the name of the Divine
  Reason, 616-u..
Divinity held to be invisible by Druids, hence could not worship
  idols, 618-u.
Divinity, numbers expressed the utterances of, 209-u.
Divinity severed from the Universe by the Spiritualists, 667-m.
Divinity, the "Great Whole," was male and female, 658-u.
Division of the Heavens by seven, planets and twelve signs, 460-m.
Doctrine enveloped with symbols by Pythagoras, 97-m.
Doctrine of Lucanus one of the most ancient and widely accepted, 654-l.
Doctrine of Masonry in reference to religious Truths, 576-l.
Doctrine of the Decans regarded as important, secret, august, 470-l.
Doctrine secret and superior to that of the Gospels, 542-l.
Doctrine; through all the ancient dogmas is found a common concealed,
  729-l.
Doctrine, to unite man with the World and Deity the object of the, 415-m.
Doctrines of Druids taught--, 168-m.
Doctrines of Odin, 168-m.
Doctrines of the degrees of the Indian Mysteries, 428-l.
Doctrines of the Greeks, 250-u.
Doctrines of the Templars misunderstood by the mass of them, 819-m.
Doctrines of Zoroaster taught--, 167-l.
Doctrines, to but few did intellectual Hebrews teach the esoteric, 207-l.
Dog leads nine Elus to the cavern; significance and origin, 489-l.
Dog Star, Sirius, 490-u.
Dog supposed to have aided Isis in her search for Osiris represents, 376-l.
Dog's head given to Mercury to express prudence, 779-l.
Dogma, a belief in the existence of God, the basis of its, 220-m.
Dogma of Orpheus, Moses and the Theologians, 443-l.
Dogma of widespread application was the division of the First Cause
  into the Active and Passive, 653-l.
Dogmas of ancient religions and mysterious societies have a doctrine
  in common, 729-l.
Dogmas of the Hindus, 604-m.
Dogmatism of man on subjects beyond his comprehension, 651-u.
Doketes held that Christ only took the appearance of a body, 564-m.
Dominion of the spiritual nature over the material urged in the
  Degrees, 855.
Dominion, one of the last four Sephiroth of the Kabalah, 848-l
Domitian, horrors of despotism under, 27-u.
Domitian, reference to the reign of, 47-l, 3-u.
Domitian, "that most savage monster", 49-m.
Doric order of architecture represents the ineffable degrees, 202-u.
Double nature of man, though he is one, 861-l.
Doubt and question must accompany man's onward progress, 712-l.
Doubt, who shall decide in honest, 166-u.
Dove, Raven, Phoenix, are symbols of Light, Darkness and Beauty, 792-m.
Draco made the astronomical cincture of the Universe, 498-m.
Draco or Jefferies as Judge to be opposed by Masonry, 20-l.
Dragon finally absorbed by and united with the Principle of Good, 499-l.
Dragon foe struck down by Mithras, 612-l.
Dragon the image of Ahriman, 257-l.
Dragon, winged, a symbol of Matter or Salt, 774-m.
Dragons and Serpents, something divine in the nature of, 494-l.
Dragons figure in other than astronomical legends, 499-m.
Drama of Hiram and the Mysteries teach the victory of Good over
  Evil, 435-l.
Dream phenomena are mysteries little understood, 733-l.
Dreams are realities while they last, 166-u.
Dresden Reformed or Rectified Rite, that of Ramsay, 779-l.
Druidic Temples and Chapters, 235-l.
Druidic Temples recording the meteoric cycles, 236-u.
Druidical ceremonies came from India; originally Buddhists, 367-u.
Druidical Hu contains the True name of Deity, 702-u.
Druidical initiate called thrice born when ceremony completed, 430-m.
Druidical Mysteries conform to those of other nations, 367.
Druidical Mysteries explained the primitive truths, 430-l.
Druidical Mysteries, initiate placed in a tomb in the, 430-l.
Druidical Mysteries, Initiations performed at midnight in the, 367-l.
Druidical Mysteries, periods of the festivals of the, 367-l.
Druidical Mysteries resembled those of the Orient; description of, 429-m.
Druidical religion's idea and doctrines, 618-u.
Druidical rites refer to astronomical phenomena, 502-u.
Druidical sacred Triad inscribed on a cruciform tree, 504-u.
Druidical subterranean grotto at New Grange in Ireland, 504-m.
Druidical Temple in the Island of Lewis, Scotland, 504-m.
Druids admitted immortality, judgment, man's responsibility, 618-u.
Druids asserted the Unity of the God-head and invoked One Power, 618-u.
Druids considered the cross a sacred symbol, 504-u.
Druids cut a tree in the shape of a Tau cross and inscribed it, 504-u.
Druids did not worship idols, holding Divinity to be invisible, 618-u.
Druids' doctrines taught--, 168-m.
Druids exercised considerable secular as well as religious power, 618-l.
Druids expressed Deity by the symbol O.I.W, 618-u.
Druids expressed the name of Deity by the letters O.I.W, 622-u.
Druids, first, children of the Magi; initiation from Egypt and Chaldea,
  103-l.
Druids had sacred regard for the odd numbers, 618-m.
Druids had some idea of redemption and a Redeemer, 618-u.
Druids held the doctrine of transmigration, 618-u.
Druids imparted secrets without the use of audible language, 372-m.
Druids of Britain similar to the Magi of the Persians, 617-l.
Druids studied astronomy and practiced the Masonic virtue, Truth, 619-u.
Druids, uniformity between the Persian Magi and the, 367-u.
Druids, worship of; their dogma and symbolism, 103-l.
Druids worshipped Hu and Ceridwen, male and female, 618-u.
Duad, a figure of the cube, 5-l.
Duad, the origin of contrasts, the imperfect condition, 630-u.
Duad, the symbol of diversity, inequality, division, vicissitudes, 630-u.
Duad was female and represented matter capable of form, 631-u.
Dual Sovereignty of the Universe acknowledged by philosophers, 660-m.
Dualism, belief in two adverse principles or, 272-275.
Dualism of Good and Evil adverse to the doctrine of Unity, 687-u.
Dualism of mind and matter the result of the idea of an independent
  mind, 677-l.
Du Barry governing in the name of Louis the 15th, 49-m.
Duties grow out of all the relations of life, naturally, undeniably,
  832-u.
Duties of a Mason are--, 219-l.
Duties of a Master of the Symbolic Lodge, 325-333.
Duties of life more than life, 151-l.
Duties of life still remain to be done and errors combated, 163-l.
Duties of Mason not confined to Masons alone, 176-185.
Duties of 9th Degree, 159-u.
Duties of a Prince of Jerusalem the same as of old in substance, 241-m.
Duties of the Knight Royal Axe, 351-u.
Duty escaped is a gain avoided, 837-l.
Duty, even if there be no reward, a Mason's obligation, 119-m.
Duty forbids us to be idle, 343-m.
Duty of a Knight Commander of the Temple, 578-580.
Duty of a Mason in reference to our activities, 342-m.
Duty of a Mason, not the result or the reward to be considered, 239-u.
Duty of a Mason when he hears of a fallen man, 335-l.
Duty of a Mason with his superiors, his equals, his inferiors, 336-m.
Duty of Masonry, eternal, persistent, 18-21.
Duty, not Heaven or bliss, to be toiled for, 229-l.
Duty practiced because it is right and just, is good, 722-l.
Duty recognized by morality and religion, 717-m.
Duty supposes a rule both intelligible and certain, 695-m.
Duty to press forward in the search for Truth, 223-u.
Duty written on the volume of Masonic life, 350-l.
Dying Nature Gods in every country, 590-u.
Dynasties speedily decay and run out, 49-u.

E

Eagle flying, a Hermetic symbol of Sulphur, 774-m.
Eagle or Vulture sometimes substituted for the Scorpion, 448-m.
Eagle or Vulture substituted for Serpent on account of its malign
  influence, 461-m.
Eagle, the symbol of Egyptian God, Mendes, 291-m.
Eagle, the symbol of Mendes, 254-l.
Earth and heaven composed of the two Causes, the Active and Passive,
  656-u.
Earth and Heavens personified as Deities even among the Aryans, 850-l.
Earth, by its union with Ouranos, engenders Gods, the power of light,
  660-u.
Earth caused by the Sun to beget and be prolific; to fructify, 851-u.
Earth considered by the Phrygians as the mother of all things, 658-l.
Earth gives the elements and principles of Compounds subsistence, 784-m.
Earth, opinion of the ancients regarding the shape of the, 442-l.
Earth, or Rhea, the Mother of the effects of which Heaven is the
  father. 657.
Earth regarded as one of the two first Divinities, Heaven the other,
  401-m.
Earth rent asunder at the death of Dionusos, 393-l.
Earth revolving around the Sun known to Thales and Pythagoras, 343-u.
Earth symbolized by the figure three, 632-m.
Earth the center of the Universe to the ancients, 593-l.
Earth to the Initiate is the World manifest to the senses, 785-u.
Earth, by its union with Tartarus, engenders Typhon, the power of
  darkness, 659-l.
Earth, the matrix of the world; of beings engendered by the heavens,
  668-l.
Earth, the Mother, impregnated by Heaven, becomes fruitful, 656-l.
Earth, the Producer, the Mother, a female; Mother Earth, 851-u.
Earth the Soul's place of exile; not its home, 520-m.
Earth, the wife of heaven, a part of the ancient mythologies, 658-m.
Earthly nature subjugated by the spiritual symbolized by the Master's
  Compass, 854-l.
East, faith of people of the West connected with the faith of the, 247-l.
Eastern nations early substituted Nature worship for the primitive
  faith, 600-l.
East, the place of Light, because the name of Deity is displayed, 287-m.
East, the seat of Mithras in the sacred cave, 413-m.
East would prevail over the West if the Templars rebuilt the Temple,
  816-u.
Ecbatana, seven different colors in the enclosures of, 233-m.
Ecbatana, the site of the palace of Deioces with seven circular walls,
  729-u.
Eclipses of the Sun and Moon caused by a dragon, 498-501-u.
Ecliptic, the path of the Sun through the Constellations, 447-u.
Edda of Icelanders in a dialog defines God, 619-u.
Edenic river divided into four streams, 58-u.
Edifice of good proportions built by philosophical use of Masonic tools,
  787-l.
Educated mind appreciates the superiority of law, 696-m.
Education and enlightenment opposed to--, 160-l.
Education may quicken the intellect, but leave the heart hollow, 39-l.
Education one of the chief missions of Masonry, 153-u.
Edward the Second, election of officers in statutes of, 34-u.
Egean Islands, Dionusos was Butes, Dardanus, Imbros in the, 585-m.
Egg a symbol of the Greeks, Coresians, Egyptians, Japanese, Magi, etc,
  472-m.
Egg and a serpent a common symbol, 496-l.
Egg at feet of Bacchus gives up Love, who, with Night, organized Chaos,
  663-l.
Egg borrowed from the Egyptians and carried to Greece, 655-l.
Egg divided between the good and evil Constellations and Angels, 472-l.
Egg, Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, symbolized by the, 402-l.
Egg issued from the mouth of the Egyptian God, Kneph, 472-m.
Egg made use of as a symbol by disciples of Zoroaster and Mithra, 403-u.
Egg of generation symbolized by the figure nine, 636-l.
Egg of philosophy enclosed in a mould of oak, 783-u.
Egg, Phanes, the luminous God, issues from the Sacred, 404-m.
Egg, Phtha, image of the Supreme Intelligence in the World, comes from
  an, 254-m.
Egg producing worlds figures in all cosmogonies, 771-l.
Egg represented the concavity of the celestial sphere enclosing all
  things, 663-l.
Egg represented the world and its spherical envelope; symbolism, 400.
Egg, symbol of the Universe, issues from the mouth of Kneph, 254-m.
Egg symbolizes the double power, the active and the passive, 655-l.
Egg symbolizes the two Unities, the Soul and the Intelligence, 415-u.
Egg: various references to the sacred, 663-l.
Egypt, judgment on the dead in, 187-m.
Egypt; orthodoxy carried by Moses out of, 843-l.
Egypt; orthodox traditions reigned in the time of Joseph in, 843-l.
Egyptian conception of Deity and the creation of things, 281-m.
Egyptian entombed considered as on his way to a reunion with his Deity,
  653-u.
Egyptian god, Apis, made by Aaron, 206-m.
Egyptian God, Kneph, the egg issued from the mouth of the, 472-m.
Egyptian Gods, Horus, Isis, Osiris, Amun, subordinate to Athom, 597-l.
Egyptian great Divinities, the Sun and the Moon, Osiris, Isis, 458-m.
Egyptian idolatry abhorred by Persians, who sought to extirpate it, 610-m.
Egyptian method of dealing with the day short each year, 467-m.
Egyptian Mysteries, summary of the legend of the, 375-380.
Egyptian Mysteries, teachings of, 369-m.
Egyptian new year fixed by the Dog Star or Sothiac Period, 467-m.
Egyptian or Oriental elements not incorporated by Philo, 253-u.
Egyptian Priests knew how to temper action by action, 842-l
Egyptian sanctuaries taught that the earth revolved around the Sun, 843-u.
Egyptian Supreme Being; all other gods manifestations of the, 281-m.
Egyptian priests studied abstract sciences, cultivated the fine arts,
  362-l.
Egyptian Temples decorated at portals with circle and serpents, 496-m.
Egyptian Tetractys borrowed by Pythagoras and the Hebrews, 88-m.
Egyptian Triad, Osiris, Isis, Horus, principles of the, 87-m.
Egyptians a religious people; their views of the Universe, 665-m.
Egyptians adored the Sun as an infant at the Winter Solstice, 465-u.
Egyptians deemed the name Isis sacred and incommunicable, 620-u.
Egyptians, God conceived the Universe before he created it, according
  to the, 369-m.
Egyptians had but three seasons, 549-u.
Egyptians held the soul immortal and Osiris was to judge the world 623-l.
Egyptians paint a fish to express hatred, 456-m.
Egyptians place intellect and reason first as self existent, 614-u.
Egyptians recognized more than one Triad, 548-l.
Egyptians recognized as gods the stars of the Zodiac, 458-l.
Egyptians regarded the Universe as a great Deity composed of a.
  number of Gods, 459-u.
Egyptians, seed vessel of the lotus a sacred symbol to the, 9-u.
Egyptians taught reverence for One Supreme God 1,500 years before
  Moses, 364-l.
Egyptians the tutors of the Greeks in religious dogma, 617-u.
Egyptians worshipped fire, the river Nile and other elements, 459-u.
Eight stars of the Gnostic ogdoade represent the angles of the cube,
  635-l.
Eight symbolizes perfection, 635-l.
Eight, the first cube, and represents friendship, justice, 635-l.
Eight, the first cube, that of two, 60-l.
Eight, the octary, composed of the sacred numbers, three and five, 635-l.
Eighteenth Degree, Prince (Knight) Rose Croix, 276-u.
Eighteenth Degree replaces the three old pillars with others, 287-l.
Eighteenth Degree teaches three things--, 287-l.
Eighth day of Greek Mysteries, the feast of Aesculapius, 434-m.
Eighth Degree: Intendant of the Building, 136-u.
Eighth Degree, teaching of the, 137-u.
Eleatic philosophers treated conceptions as entities, 675-l.
Elect (Elu) of the Nine, 9th Degree, lessons and purposes, 149-u.
Elect; when the searcher discovers the place in which Truth is
  hidden he is a True, 785-l.
Elements and essences a natural and true symbol of Divine Power, 611-u.
Elements, animals, principles of the Hermetic Masons described, 791-m.
Elements, four, and Principles, three, reside in all compounds, 784-u.
Elements, four, engender the Stone in proper combination and weight,
  784-m.
Elements, when first created, were in confusion, but God brought order,
  609-l.
Elephanta, Initiations consummated in the Temple of, 361-u.
Eleusiniae, the Greater, celebrated in the month of seed time, 394-m.
Eleusiniae, the Greater, ceremonies of initiation into the, 394-m.
Eleusinian Mysteries in honor of Ceres celebrated at Athens, 352-m.
Eleusinian Mysteries of two kinds, the great and the small, 352-m.
Eleusinian Mysteries, officers, description, symbolism, 411-412.
Eleusinian Mysteries preserved some symbols of Magism, 840-u.
Eleusinian Mysteries presided over by an officer called King, 354-l.
Eleusinian Mysteries, the lesser, a preparation for the greater, 352-l.
Eleusis, description of the ceremonies of initiation, 403-m.
Eleusis, representation of Sun, Moon and Mercury, in the Temple of, 13-l.
Eleusis, Temple of, regarded as the common sanctuary, 379-m.
Eleusis, Universe represented by the Temple of, 13-l.
Eleventh Degree, Sublime Elu of the Twelve, duties of, 176-u.
Elizabeth and Cromwell protectors of Protestants, 70-u.
Elohim not only winged messengers of God, but the Starry Host, 509-m.
Elohim, the Hebrew name for the universal forces governing the world,
  727-u.
Eloi, one of the seven Reflections of the Ophites, 563-m.
Eloquence a Force, 91-u.
Eloquence the faculty of making other hearts respond, 201-u.
Elu of the Fifteen should lead in enlightening, 171-l.
Elu, Perfect, 14th Degree, 218-u.
Elu, Perfect; when a Mason is entitled to be called a, 228-l.
Elus, or Elect, the name of the Initiates of highest class of Gnostics,
  542-l.
Elxaites adopted the seven spirits of the Gnostics and named them--,
  564-m.
Elysium depicted in Eleusinian Mysteries, 403-l.
Emanation, at the beginning, gave forth from the Father Microprosopos,
  794-l.
Emanation; Divinity limited, but not manifested into entities;
  world of, 768-l.
Emanation doctrine fundamental among Gnostics, 248-l.
Emanation is a more imperfect, diminished mode than His Perfection, 760-u.
Emanation of a ray of light the cause and principle of everything, 286-l.
Emanation, the Thought of the Supreme Deity the first, 562-l.
Emanation theory of the Kabalahists takes the form of Sephiroth, 552-u.
Emanations are all included in the First Sephiroth; Deity as Will, 766-u.
Emanations are portions of God's Light or nature, 766-u.
Emanations designate God as manifested, but not the Supreme, 271-m.
Emanations from the Universal Intelligence filled the Universe, 669-m.
Emanations, Gnostic expression for the 365, 271-m.
Emanations, God reveals Himself only by His, 267-u.
Emanations, names of ten, 267-m.
Emanations, names of the Basilidean or Gnostic, 554.
Emanations not beings, but sources of life, types of creation, 267-u.
Emanations of Deity are his manifested Creative Forces, 701-m.
Emanations of Deity symbolized by lights, 202-l.
Emanations of the Empire of Light make the Deity manifest, 565-l.
Emanations of the Kabalah or Sephiroth, 267-m.
Emanations of the powers that make up Divinity in Zodiacal existence,
  669-u.
Emanations or Sephiroth are attributes of God, 267-m.
Emanations produced from Kether by the descent of Yod, 756-u.
Emanations, sexual characteristics are symbolically assigned to some,
  766-u.
Emanations, ten in number, three of one class, seven of another, 233-m.
Emanations, theory of the Basilidean or Gnostic, 554.
Emblems a part of the language of Masonry, 241-l.
Emblems and names of Deity met in all Degrees, 137-u.
Emblems are veils that cover the Truth; are often misunderstood, 331-m.
Embryo receives the Soul immediately after conception, 755-l.
Emerald tablet of Hermes describes the grand agent, the force, 774-m.
Empedocles asserted the moving force to be Mind, 676-l.
Empire of Light, a chain of emanations making manifest the Deity, 565-l.
Empire of Light alone is eternal and true, 565-l.
Employed and employer, teachings of Scottish Rite in regard to, 330-m.
Endeavor, Human, likened to the effects of evaporation, 320-u.
Endeavor, success and happiness come from thorough--, 195-u.
Enemies often bring us more profit than our friends, 814-m.
Energy, Wisdom is the Intellectual Generative, 305-m.
Enigmas of Masonry hide the dogmas of Magism, 839-l.
Enigmas of the Sphynx, 8-l.
Enigmatical language used in speaking of the secrets of Nature, 659-m.
Ennead, an aggregate of nine things or persons, 636-l.
Ens, of the Kabalists, was possibility of potentiality before existence,
  764-m.
Envy of Deity instanced in the healing skill of Aesculapius, 688-u.
Enoch, age, and meaning of the name of, 210-m.
Enoch deposited a cubical stone, teaching justice, accuracy,
  consistency, 827-u.
Enoch engraved on stone the dogmas of the science of Magism, 839-l.
Enoch invented books and writings; was the same as Hermes, 363-m.
Enoch, Manetho from certain pillars in Egypt extracted the history of,
  363-l.
Enoch, near Thebes in a winding apartment underground were found
  the pillars of, 363-l.
Enoch, symbolism of the columns of, 210-m.
Enoch, Thoth, or the first Mercury, or Hermes, made inscriptions on
  the pillars of, 363-l.
Eon Christ Jesus never really clothed with a human body, 559-l.
Eon, Intelligence, commencement, first revelation of Divinity, the
  first, 560-u.
Eon Jesus, born of a virgin, united to Christos, with Sophia, redeemed
  the world, 560-m.
Eons, or Demons of Satan, sought to conquer the Realms of Light, 566-u.
Eons struggling to be united with God were restored to happiness, 560-m.
Eons, Truth and Grace were the Gnostic, 559-l.
Ephraim compared to an Ox, his device the Celestial Bull, 461-m.
Epicureans' wisdom and advantage--, 694-m.
Epicurus prefers the fables of tradition to the necessity of physicists,
  694-m.
Epopt becomes a Seer after initiation, 522-u.
Equality of all men in the eye of God proclaimed by Christ, 309-u.
Equality of the relation between Above and Below forms the ternary,
  771-l.
Equality, the concession which each makes to all, 43-l.
Equality with subjection to Authority a foundation of Free Government,
  860-u.
Equator, the path between the equinoxes, 447-u.
Equilateral triangle enters into the composition of the Pyramids, 460-u.
Equilateral triangle, formation of the onmific letter in the center
  of the, 14-u.
Equilateral triangle formed by stars, 487-m.
Equilateral triangle inscribed within a Square a symbol of the Divine
  and Human, 858-m.
Equilateral triangle of the Pyramid symbolizes fire, 460-u.
Equilibrium, a universal law, symbolized by columns, 843-u.
Equilibrium adopted by Deity will be attended with perfect success,
  767-u.
Equilibrium, between Authority and individual Action, 860-u.
Equilibrium between Divine Omnipotence and Free Will, 859-m.
Equilibrium between Good and Evil, Light and Darkness, 859-m.
Equilibrium between Necessity and Liberty, 859-m.
Equilibrium between our Passions and Moral Sense gives a well
  regulated life, 860-l.
Equilibrium did not exist when the seven Kings died, 797-l.
Equilibrium exists between Evil and Good in the Spiritual World, 782-l.
Equilibrium, in Deity, of apparently opposing properties, 769-l.
Equilibrium in ourselves between the Spiritual and Human in man, 860-l.
Equilibrium in the Deity between Infinite Justice and Infinite Mercy,
  859-u.
Equilibrium in the Deity between Infinite Wisdom and Infinite Power,
  859-u.
Equilibrium is in physics the universal law, 769-l.
Equilibrium is the Harmony that results from the analogy of contraries,
  844-u.
Equilibrium led the Initiates to the law of gravitation, 843-u.
Equilibrium necessary for absolute liberty, 736-l.
Equilibrium of contraries and resultant harmony taught by the ternary,
  792-u.
Equilibrium of contraries produces Light, Wisdom, Virtue, 845-u.
Equilibrium of infinite wisdom and force, Harmony the result of the, 8-u.
Equilibrium of Jachin and Boaz brings eternal permanence and stability,
  736-l.
Equilibrium of Law and Equity; Divine Infinite Nature and the
  Human Finite, 768-l.
Equilibrium of Light and Darkness brings resultant Beauty, 792-m.
Equilibrium of Mercy and Justice produce the Harmony of the Universe,
  552-m.
Equilibrium of opposites exemplified in the Kabalist Trinity, 552-m.
Equilibrium of Power and Wisdom produce Harmony, as the Son, the Word,
  552-m.
Equilibrium of spiritual and material to produce Harmony and Beauty,
  855-m.
Equilibrium of the apparent antagonism in man's nature, 765-u.
Equilibrium of the Balance referred to in the Siphra de Zeniuta, 762-m.
Equilibrium of the Sephiroth or Divine Emanations, 305-u.
Equilibrium of the seventh and eighth Sephiroth brings Success and
  Dominion, 736-l.
Equilibrium of the Spiritual and Material natures, Good and Evil, 764-l.
Equilibrium of things produced by the counterbalancing of fixedness
  and movement, 778-l.
Equilibrium of Wisdom and Intelligence, as male and female, 800-u.
Equilibrium preceded the turning of face to face by the Father and
  Mother, 795-l.
Equilibrium produced by the contrasts of the universal forces, 727-u.
Equilibrium restored upon the descent of the seven Conformations, 788-m.
Equilibrium results from the apparent opposition of two forces, 769-l.
Equilibrium; the balancing of Forces, or the science of, 843-u.
Equilibrium, the mystery of "the Balance" in the Sohar, 305-u.
Equilibrium, the supreme law of a Force which, if controlled, is
  infinite power, 734-u.
Equilibrium which explains the Mysteries of Nature symbolized by--,
  548-m.
Equilibrium, with the Supreme Will holding the balance is the
  foundation of religion and science, 769-l.
Equilibrium's laws forgotten in the plans for the end of Evil, 847-l.
Equinox, season for celebrating the Mysteries of the Autumnal, 404-l.
Equinoxes, reference to the struggle between Light and Darkness
  in the, 404-l.
Equinoxes, tables giving entrances of the Sun at the, 450-u.
Equinoxes, the ancient initiations connected with the, 404-l.
Equinoxes the gates through which souls passed to and fro, 413-l.
Equinoxes, 25,856 years constitutes a revolution of the, 449-l.
Equipoise; distinction and harmonious ponderation of contrary
  forces in the universal, 848-u.
Equipoise, exemplification three times of the universal law of, 322-l.
Equipoise of Necessity and Liberty can not be understood by Reason,
  848-l.
Equity and Justice characteristics of a Prince of Jerusalem, 241-m.
Equity the result of the equilibrium of Infinite Justice and Mercy,
  859-u.
Erring brother to be spoken kindly to, 134-u.
Erring, wisdom taught by the consequences of, 181-u.
Error is the Shadow of Truth with which God illumines the Soul, 845-m.
Errors and prejudices, Truth to be substituted in public opinion for,
  218-m.
Errors have seemed to be truths at times in public opinion, 218-l.
Eslik Khan the final judge in the doctrine of Lhamaism, 624-u.
Esoteric and exoteric doctrines, a distinction purely Masonic, 250-u.
Esoteric and exoteric doctrine, difference between, 248-u.
Esoteric meaning of the Ineffable Name, 697-l.
Esoteric meaning of the generation and production ideas, 701-l.
Essence of God includes Wisdom, Justice, Truth, Mercy and--, 582-m.
Essence: the Truth, Beauty, the Good, but one, 702-l.
Essenes adopted the doctrines of John the Baptist, 262-u.
Essenes, abstinence and maceration practiced by the, 260-u.
Essenes, belief and practices of the, 265-u.
Essenes believed in the esoteric as well as the exoteric meanings, 265-l.
Essenes believed in the resurrection of the soul alone, 265-m.
Essenes connected by the Tetractys with Pythagoreans, 264-l.
Essenes, Forms, ceremonies, Orders and principles of the, 263-l.
Essenes, in their devotions, turned towards the rising Sun, 264-l.
Essenes, mysticism and allegories found in the writings of the, 265-l.
Essenes not mentioned by Christ; doctrines nearly similar, 260-m.
Essenes observed the festivals of the Solstices, 265-l.
Essenes, Persian and Pythagorean opinions intermingled by the, 259-l.
Essenes required the tests of several degrees before admittance, 386-u.
Essenes resided in Palestine in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, 260-u.
Essenes spoken of by Josephus, Eusebius and Pliny as an ancient sect,
  264-m.
Essenes, tenets of Confucius and Zoroaster resembled those of the, 264-l.
Essenes, the Eclectic Sect of Philosophers, esteemed Plato, 265-m.
Essenes, the faith of John, so nearly Christianity was that of the, 263-m.
Essenes, the 17th Degree, particularly concerned with the, 259-l.
Essenes were distinguished by simplicity and moral practices, 259-l.
Essenes, Zend Avesta prescribes observances similar to those of the,
  260-u.
Essenes, Zoroastrian principles prevailed in the moral practices of
  the, 260-u.
Essential laws of fixedness and movement, counterbalanced, produce
  equilibrium, 778-l.
Establishment, for the Christian Mason, represented by Boaz. 641-m.
Eternal Laws which preserve the Universe the expression of God's
  Thought, 577-u.
Eternal life represented by a Tan cross with a circle over it. 505-u.
Eternal Mover, wholly in act, implied by Aristotle, 679-u.
Eternity enthroned amid Heaven's starry heights, 190-l.
Eternity, openings in the curtains of Time give glimpses of, 199-m.
Eternity symbolized by a serpent with its tail in its mouth, 496-m.
Ether, Electricity, Heat, fill and permeate the Universe, 845-l.
Ether extends everywhere, called the Soul of the World, 748-m.
Ethics of Confucius and the Chinese, 169-l.
Ethiopians changed Hindu Trinity to Creative Power, Goodness, Wisdom,
  550-l.
Etruscan gate at Volterra has three heads on it, upon keystone and
  over side pillars, 551-m.
Etruscan name for the Sun God was Arkaleus or Hercules, 587-u.
Etruscans, a race from the Rhaetian Alps, acknowledged one God, 551-u.
Etruscans had images for the One God's attributes, 551-u.
Eucharist and other Holy Sacraments kept in secrecy, 541-l.
Euclid's forty-seventh, proposition in diagram and described, 789-m.
Euphrates, a stream of the Edenic river, 58-u.
Euresis, or the finding, was the recovery of the body of Osiris by Isis,
  377-u.
Euripides concludes that men act wrongly through neglect, 690-l.
Eusebius asserts that God is not separate from the Universe, 667-m.
Eusebius gives names of principal officers of Eleusis, 411-m.
Eusebius' statements concerning Therapeutae and Gospels, 265-m.
"Eva," the generic Oriental name of the Serpent, 494-u.
Evangelic symbols depict the Magi guided by a Star and bearing gift,
  730-l.
Evaporation, mighty effects of the slow, invisible process of, 319-m.
Eve, created by Ialdaboth, had children, evil angels, 563-m.
Eve, created by the Demons, seduced Adam and bound him to matter, 567-u.
Eve issues from the chest of Adam, 771-m.
Eve signifies a serpent and life circulating through all Nature, 376-m.
Eve's ternary name, added to Yod, gives Jehovah, Divine Tetragram, 771-m.
Even numbers traced backwards ended in nothing, 618-l.
Evidence of the Templar origin of modern Free Masonry, 820-l.
Evil, a Principle of Evil assumed to account for the existence of, 277-u.
Evil affects Deity's intellectual nature and man's moral responsibility,
  684-m.
Evil, all in the world is not, 214-u.
Evil and Darkness synonymous because Darkness despoils man of
  enjoyments, 660-m.
Evil and Good, as independent existences, explained by theories, 682.
Evil and Good, categorical questions concerning, 648.
Evil and Good, coexisting, not explained, but staved off by theories,
  687-u.
Evil and prosperity; light and darkness caused by Jehovah, 687-m.
Evil and Sorrow necessary in Humanity, 847-l.
Evil at first occult and could not be brought forth till Adam sinned,
  796-m.
Evil created by Deity, according to the Sohar and Isaiah, 796-m.
Evil created from the fragments of the broken vessels of the Sephiroth,
  794-l.
Evil coexistent with the wisdom, goodness, omnipotence of Deity, 684-m.
Evil demon in eternal controversy with God does not exist, 859-l.
Evil did not include the three numerations first emanated, 796-m.
Evil Force, or Devil, personified by--, 102-l.
Evil Genii and Signs were the Balance, Scorpion, Serpent, Dragon, 664-u.
Evil; God does not tempt or constrain men to do, 848-l.
Evil implied by the contemplation of the Good, 681-l.
Evil is temporary and for beneficent purposes, 274-u.
Evil is the shadow of the Good, and inseparable from it, 846-l.
Evil; laws of equilibrium forgotten in the dreams of the end of, 847-l.
Evil, matter at feud with the spirit from Deity is the Genius of, 281-l.
Evil must have preceded man's moral development, 680-m.
Evil, overthrow of, by a Redeemer taught in the 18th Degree, 287-l.
Evil, Persians imagined two Principles to explain the existence of
  Good and, 300-m.
Evil personified by error continued by the worship of abstractions, 694-u.
Evil principle a necessary existence, a Hindu dogma, 604-m.
Evil principle itself becomes Good, according to the Chaldeans, 549-u.
Evil principle formed from the darkness, 595-m.
Evil principle the motive power of brute matter, 474-l.
Evil principle to be overcome by a Redeemer or Mediator, 277-m.
Evil principle triumphant represented by Second Apartment, 288-m.
Evil principle urges men towards--, 221-m.
Evil results from idol worship, 691-m.
Evil sought to be explained by the Hebrew "Fall" of man, 685-m.
Evil spirits at war with the Pure Intelligences, 286-l.
Evil spirits seduced Man and caused his Fall, 286-l.
Evil symbolized by Winter and Typhon, 447-l.
Evil, the serpent held to be the symbol of malevolence and all, 497-u.
Evil to end and Good reign in eternity but a poet's dream, 847-l.
Evil will be overthrown by an emanation from God, 274-u.
Evil will disappear when Odin kills the great snake, 593-u.
Evil with an independent existence creates a dilemma, 681-l.
Evil would not have been if Deity had not created worlds and then
  destroyed them, 797-m.
Evil, wrong, suffering, but temporary discords in a great Harmony, 577-u.
Evils came from the fragments of the vessels, the Kings from Binah,
  797-u.
Evils created by Deity to afflict men when they sin; blessing to
  reward the just, 797-l.
Evils foreseen by God are provided for and consistent with his love,
  716-u.
Evils occur because God wills them to afford occasion for resignation,
  717-u.
Evils to be warred against now as in former days, 578-m.
Evil's worlds created from the shattered numerations from Benignity,
  796-m.
Evolution and development followed the Idea of Creation in Deity, 767-u.
Examples are the most lasting lectures, 181-l.
Exceptions to the rule that virtue is rewarded and vice punished, 705-l.
Excommunication of Church of Rome, 74-m.
"Exhalation," definition of term in astrology, 463-l.
"Exhalation" of planets made the occasion of a feast, 463-l.
Existence of God known through the Power communicated to man
  by the Word, 598-u.
Existence, the Gnostics distinguished three orders of, 560-l.
Existence, the Supreme Being the only Real, 266-l.
Existence without a beginning, self-existence, inconceivable, 570-m.
Existence without consciousness is an abstract being, 706-m.
Existences and Superior Intelligence the basis of doctrines, 553-u.
Exultation at deserved fall shrinks abashed at God's chastisement, 813-u.
Ezekiel directs a Tau cross placed on the people of Jerusalem who--,
  503-l.
Ezekiel, symbolism of the number four in the vision of, 58-u.
Ezekiel's prophecy not explained by Christians, 731-u.
Ezekiel's visions are mysterious expressions, 321-l.

F

Fabrication, matter and bodies, as it were of manufacture, the world
  of, 768-l.
Fabrications, World, embraces the six members contained in Malakoth,
  795-l.
Faith, a great moral Force, is the only true Wisdom, 91-m.
Faith, a necessity, 28-l.
Faith and Reason, domain of each, 28-m.
Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted, 841-m.
Faith, blind, sets Reason at defiance and leads to--, 304-m.
Faith enables us to see that Evil is consistent with Infinite Goodness
  and Mercy, 859-l.
Faith has for its bases sentiment and reason, 776-u.
Faith, Hope, Charity, replace the three pillars of the old Temple, 287-u.
Faith, Hope, Charity, the old pillars under new names, 288-u.
Faith, man only responsible for the uprightness of his, 166-u.
Faith must have a foundation in Reason or consciousness, 301-m.
Faith necessary for guidance of man, 197-u.
Faith reared on the foundations of God's justice and the law of merit,
  706-u.
Faith, the converse of arrogant confidence, represented by the Sun,
  727-l.
Faith, the Light by which the human soul is enabled to see itself, 809-l.
Faith will stumble and sentiment mislead unless knowledge directs, 710-l.
Faithful held meetings in private places at night to avoid persecution,
  543-m.
Faithful instructed in the grand mysteries of Christianity, 541-l.
Faithful only were admitted to the Christian Mysteries, 544-u.
Faithful, the second Mass of the Christian Mysteries called that of the,
  541-l.
Faithful, the third degree of the Christian mysteries, 541-l.
Faithfulness to family, friends, country, 112-m.
Faithfulness to Masonic vows and pledges, 112-u.
Faiths, excellent moral precepts in all, 167-l.
Fall of Man, cause and remedy for the, 281-m.
Fall of Man, Jewish origin of the, 376-m.
"Fall" of Man necessary to account for the imperfections of work of
  a Perfect Being, 685-l.
Fall of Man, process of redemption, 287-u.
Fall of Man symbolizes a universal allegory of science, 100-l.
Fall of Man, symbolism and meaning of the, 305-l.
"Fall" of Man, the Hebrew mode of explaining the great moral mystery,
  685-m.
Fallacy of general propositions of man's right to this or that, 835-l.
Falsehood a part of campaigns and controversies, 337-m.
Falsehood and Dishonesty, vices of the age, 578-l.
Falsehood is crime in words; Injustice the essence of, 100-l.
Falsehood sowed by the Press, 579-u.
Fan, purification of air and water symbolized by vase and winnowing,
  412-m.
Fasting an indication of moral purity, 520-l.
Fatality is the linking together of effects and causes in a given order,
  738-u.
"Father," a name for Deity even amongst the rudest nations, 683-u.
Father and Mother were face to face after the state of equilibrium
  was established, 795-l.
Father as Wisdom, the Mother as Intelligence, are in equilibrium, 800-u.
Father, Hakemah, denoting perfect Love, did not look Binah in the face,
  763-u.
Father is Love and Mercy who impregnates the Mother with Benignity,
  796-u.
Father of All, the world unanimous in the belief of one King and, 512-u.
Father Principle (the Male or Generative) comprehended in Yod, 763-l.
Father, the Spirit, active principle or generating power, 87-m.
Fathers Benignity, Severity, Beauty, proceed from the Father of Fathers,
  794-l.
Father's First and Only begotten is the Word, 849-l.
Faust ascends to Heaven by stepping on the head of Mephistopheles, 822-l.
Faust, John, influence of printing, the invention of, 314-u.
Faust with his types worked great results, 43-u.
Favors must not be forgotten, 123-u.
Fear is always cruel, and Rome feared the heresy of the Templars, 820-m.
Fear of Wisdom that it would ascend to Kether or descend into Binah,
  796-m.
Feast Day of Mithras, according to the Roman Calendar, Dec. 25th, 587-m.
Feasts established in honor of each planet at "exhaltation", 463-m.
Feasts fixed by risings, settings, conjunction of the fixed stars, 464-u.
Feasts marked the annual crises, the solstices and equinoxes, 714-u.
Feasts of Passover, Neuroz, of Fire and Light, when Sun was in Aries,
  463-l.
Fellow-Craft compass has one point above and one below the Square, 854-l.
Fellow-Craft Degree, the 2nd, 22-u.
Fellow-Craft, Reason, Love, Faith, must guide the studies of a, 28-m.
Fellow-Craft studies the vegetable kingdom, symbolized by Schib, 632-u.
Fellow-Craft taught not to become wise in his own conceit, 38-l.
Fellow-Craft's grip, Philosophy, fails to raise the candidate, 640-l.
Fellow-Crafts in search of assassins, number, reference to Stars, 489.
Fellow-Crafts in search of the body represent the twelve Apostles, 641-l.
Fellowship, points of, first among the ordinances of Masonry, 137-u.
Fellowship symbolized by the five-pointed star or Pentangle, 634-m.
Female and male coupled are the Perfection of all things, 800-u.
Female characteristics given to Malakoth, in the Kabalah, 769-m.
Female is He, is left; male is Yod, is right; Vav is male and female,
  763-m.
Female principle in Alchemy represented by Fire and Water, 791-l.
Female represented by the base of a right angle triangle, 789-m.
Female side of Hermetic figure has a Moon; a hand holding a Square,
  850-m.
Ferouer, a pre-existing soul, the Idea of Plato, 256-l.
Ferouers, the third order of spirits, Thoughts of Ormuzd, 257-m.
Festival of the Winter Solstice, the Yuletide, became our Christmas,
  368-u.
Festivals of the Druidical and Gothic Mysteries, 367-368.
Fidelity of man, everything that exists around us centers upon the,
  199-m.
Fidelity to obligation a leading lesson in the 15th Degree, 237-u.
Fifteenth Degree an allegory based on historical truth, 237-u.
Fifth day of Greek Mysteries, procession of torches, 433-l.
Fifth Degree, Perfect Master, 114-u.
Figurative and allegorical language in Oriental books, 818-m.
Figurative language used by the ancients to describe secrets of nature,
  659-m.
Finite beings impressed by illusions according to Hindu dogma, 604-l.
Finite man desires to see and talk to Infinity, 530-m.
Finite minds comprehend only by division, 702-l.
Finite minds conceive Truth, Beauty and Good as three essences, 702-l.
Finite minds, God can not infuse infinite conceptions into, 222-u.
Finite, no correct idea of the Infinite can be formed by the, 222-u.
Fire and heat have an analogy with life, 664-l.
Fire and light according to the old Persian idea, 611-m.
Fire and light represent attributes of Divinity in Hebrew writings,
  611-u.
Fire animates the stars and circulates in nature and includes all souls,
  399-l.
Fire gives the elements and principles of compound movement, 784-m.
Fire invoked as "Son of Ormuzd", 612-m.
Fire, its splendor, light, their relative effects and relations, 741-u.
Fire of the Hermetics, secret, living, philosophical, spoken of
  reservedly, 775-u.
Fire of the Sun the principle of organization and life of things, 644-l.
Fire, one of the symbols of spiritual regeneration in the Mysteries,
  357-l.
Fire, Ptha, the principal agent of the creative and productive, 254-m.
Fire, sacred, representing the soul returned to its origin when--, 385-u.
Fire, soul of the world and universal principle likened to the
  celestial, 417-m.
Fire the Primal Ether, according to the Chaldean Oracles, 742-m.
Fire used as a test to represent the possible purification of the soul,
  397-u.
Fire would not warm if it could not also burn human flesh, 846-l.
First Begotten Son of God was the Word, not the first created, 772-m.
First Born, the Creative Agent emanated from Male and Female Force,
  267-m.
First Born, the Primitive Man, Adam Kadmon, Light of Lights, 267-m.
First Cause a necessity; the Intelligent Soul of the Universe, 574-m.
First Causes which flow from the First Cause are resulting and finite.
  in mode, 760-u.
First day of Greek Mysteries the initiates assemble; time, 433-m.
First Degree, Apprentice, 1-m.
First principles of all existences are unity and duality, 630-l.
First Principle, Plato on the nature of, 99-u.
Fish: early Christian mark shaped like a, 547-l.
Fish painted on monuments to express hatred by Egyptians, 456-m.
Five a mysterious number, compounded of Binary and Ternary, 633-l.
Five circuits in 8th Degree allude to points of fellowship, 137-u.
Five expressed by five-pointed or blazing star, 58-m.
Fire expresses the state of imperfection we see on earth, 633-l.
Five is the Duad added to the Triad; symbolism of numbers, 58-m.
Five, measures the hypothenuse, obtained from the three and four, 861-m.
Five offers the image of the Bad principle, bringing trouble, 633-l.
Five points, or rules, observed by the Scottish Masters, 782-u.
Five primitive powers, elements, recognised by Indians and Chinese,
  469-l.
Five, the emblem of marriage; Juno's hieroglyph was five, 634-u.
Five, the number of the Fellow-Craft Degree, from the Hyades, 487-u.
Fixed, applied to everything that tends to central repose and
  immobility, 778-l.
Flamel made the Rose the sign of accomplishment of the Great Work, 821-l.
Flamel, Nicholas, treats of Hermetic Science, 774-l.
Flamel, the Book of the Jew, Abraham, 821-l.
Flaming Star, a symbol of the Ramsay Degree of Grand Scottish
  Master, 782-u.
Flaming Star the emblem of the Shekinah or presence of God, 782-l.
Flood, the number seven in connection with accounts of the, 233-m.
Fo, the Chinese name for the Hindu God, Sakya, 551-m.
Fo, the Indian Buddha, the Great Deity himself, 429-m.
Follies of the Alchemists to save them from persecution, 733-u.
Folly to repine because we are not angels, 696-m.
Fomalhaut near Pisces, malignant influence of Sign, 456-m.
Force and strength subordinate to mildness and goodness, 681-l.
Force described in the Hermetic tablets of emerald is the grand
  agent of the operations, 774-l.
Force, harmony of the world maintained by the Soul of Nature; Divine,
  668-m.
Force, Harmony, Wisdom, the Great Attributes of the Essence of Deity,
  531-m.
Force, if possessed, enables man to revolutionize the world, 734-u.
Force, Intellect, must regulate the people's blind, 1-m.
Force of God exerted on two invisible gases forms water, 845-l.
Force of the people must be limited, restrained, 4-l.
Force of the people symbolized by the gavel, 5-u.
Force, stronger than rage, represented by Mars, 727-l.
Force, unregulated or ill-regulated, a menace, 1-m.
Force which animates all emanates from the Heavenly eternal fire, 666-l.
Force, the Executing and Creating Power, 531-m.
Force which repels a Planet from the Sun no more evil than the other,
  860-u.
Forces analogous and contrary the one to the other produce equilibrium,
  727-u.
Forces at man's disposal, his Working Tools, 88-92.
Forces: Faith, Hope, Charity, the greatest moral, 91-m.
Forces, First Born, emanated from generative and conceptive, 267-m.
Forces in action and opposition result in Harmony and movement, 859-l.
Forces mechanical and materiality of agents of Divinity explain
  nothing, 729-m.
Forces of Divinity, Light, Spirit and Life, Primitive, 267-m.
Forces of nature man's slaves or masters, 734-u.
Forces of the Universe the forces of God, 707-m.
Forces opposing one another in action are not necessarily antagonistic,
  860-u.
Forces or Impulses in continual conflict cause Life and Movement, 846-u.
Forces, or "Working Tools"; importance of appreciating the value of, 91-l.
Forces, the centrifugal and centripetal, 671-m.
Forces, the science of the equilibrium or the balancing of, 843-u.
Forgiveness is wiser than Revenge or punishment, 859-u.
Forgiveness more noble than revenge, 76-u.
Form into which Deity conformed himself the likeness of His form, 794-u.
Form is the Light inclosed in the seeds of all species, 783-m.
Form of the human is the form of all above and below and includes it,
  794-u.
Formation, the first forms, souls or physical natures, is the world of,
  768-l.
Formations, World, embraces the six members contained in Tephareth, 795-l.
Formless Deity present in all forms an idea of the Hindu philosophy,
  673-m.
Formula of baptism among the Gnostics, 561-l.
Fortune deified by error continued by the worship of abstraction, 694-u.
Fortunate number is seven; leads to the perfect number, 628-l.
Forty days of mourning for Osiris, then the Vernal Equinox, 486-u.
Forty-seventh Proposition, explanation and numbers of, 87-u.
Forty-seventh Proposition of the first book of Euclid in diagram, 789-m.
Forty-seventh Proposition stated, 86-l.
Foundation of all religions and sciences, the primary and immutable
  idea of things is--, 769-l.
Four a divine number, the number of letters in the name of Deity, 633-l.
Four devices of the Degree; hear, see, silence, enjoyment, 629-l.
Four expressed by the square; symbolism of the number, 58-u.
Four horses of different colors drew the chariot of the Sun at the
  games, 464-m.
Four, in the Kabalah, expresses the law of natural phenomena, 732-u.
Four letters in the Hebrew Ineffable name, 632-l.
Four letters of the Tetragram contain everything, 732-m.
Four represented Nature, 209-u.
Four represents the generative power, an emblem of the Infinite, 632-l.
Four symbolizes a man bearing with himself a Divine principle, 633-m.
Four, the number of the Square, the measure of the perpendicular, 861-m.
Fourteenth Degree, Grand Elect Perfect and Sublime Mason, 218-u.
Fourteenth Degree, Perfect Elu, 218-u.
Fourth day of Greek Mysteries, mystic wreath of flowers in procession,
  433-l.
Fourth Degree, Secret Master, 106-u.
Fraternity, Christ proclaimed a universal, 309-u.
Fraternity fruitful of good works preserved by Masonry, 137-l.
Fraternity, the protection of each by all, 43-l.
Fraternity with subordination to the Wisest and Best a foundation
  of Free Government, 860-u.
Frea, Odin, Thor, the Scandinavian Trinity, 552-u.
Frea, wife of Odin, one of the Northern triune Deity, 13-l.
Free agency and our will are forces, 6-l.
Free agency of man, or is he controlled by necessity, 684-m.
Free agency of man to do evil or choose good, 577-u.
Free government by people themselves a hard problem, 33-m.
Free government can not long endure when--, 203-u.
Free government constituted by equilibrium between Authority and
  Individual Action, 860-u.
Free government grows slowly, 33-m.
Free Government requires foundations of Liberty. Equality, Fraternity,
  860-u.
Free governments promoted by disciplines of war, monarchy, priesthood,
  92-l.
Free popular power only known in hour of adversity, 33-l.
Free, to be, the same thing as to be--, 180-m.
Free will and election a necessity since good and evil are in the world,
  797-l.
Free will and inexorable Law difficult of comprehension, 689-u.
Free Will and Omnipotence in equilibrium gives the Law of right and
  wrong, 859-m.
Free will, categorical questions concerning man's, 649-u.
Free will consistent with God's Omnipotence and Omniscience, 855-u.
Free will coupled with Chance, or Fatalism coupled With Omniscience,
  694-l.
Free will of God can not formulate an effect without a cause, 736-u.
Free will of man influences his life and conversation, 643-u.
Free will the essential attribute of the will itself, 723-m.
Freedom, civil and religious, must go hand in hand, 33-u.
Freedom determined by an agency external to us, 686-m.
Freedom, great need for guides who will not seek to be tyrants, 95-u.
Freedom, human, symbolized by Khurum, the Master, 211-u.
Freedom morally comes when Chance and Necessity give place to law, 695-m.
Freedom of man connected with his freedom of thought, 686-m.
Freedom of man lies in his reason, 94-m.
Freedom sensed when the individual independence develops itself
  according to its own laws, 695-m.
Freemasonry is the subjugation of the Human that is in man by the
  Divine, 854-l.
Freres Macons, Brethren Masons, corrupted into Free Masons, 816-m.
Friends and Home more than offset sufferings and desolations, 141-u.
Friendship and sympathy, a Force, 88-l.
Fruit will come in the due season if we plant the seed, 317-u.
Fruit of "Knowledge of good and evil"; Adam forbidden to eat of the,
  567-u.
Furniture of a Lodge, 11-m.
Future, a scene for speculation, 139-m.
Future, best preparation for, make best use of Present, 139-l.
Future existence in which injustices will be remedied, 830-l.
Future life and rewards and punishments there taught in the
  Mysteries, 392-u.
Future life, doctrine of a, clothed in the pomp of mysterious ceremony,
  385-u.
Future, light let in on the present by the contemplation of the, 232-l.
Future punishments described in the Mysteries to impose the lesson--,
  395-l.
Future punishments in Tartarus depicted, 396-m.
Future punishments were real to the Profane, though allegorical
  to the Initiate, 396-m.
Future reward and punishments a fundamental principle of the
  Hindu religion, 604-m.

G

"G" in the Fellow-Craft Degree represents God and Geometry, 640-m.
"G," represents the Hebrew Jod or Yod, the generative principle, 632-u.
"G" said to signify Geometry, 40-m.
"G," initial letter of the Hebrew word Geparaith, signifying Sulphur,
  780-m.
Gabriel, the face of the Ox, on north and left hand, with He, and Fire,
  798-m.
Gad, as a warrior, has for device the Ram, domicile of Mars, 461-l.
Gain, necessity of shaking off the love of; effects of, 40-u.
Galen states that differing schools of study were equally important,
  711-u.
Gamaliel, the Rabbi, taught Paul the Kabalah, 769-u.
Games of the circus in honor of the Sun, Nature, Planets, Elements,
  461-u.
Garment is an interposed medium, 795-u.
Garment nearest His substance is the vacant space of creative acts,
  748-u.
Gate of Men through which souls descended was called Cancer, 438-u.
Gate of the Gods through which souls reascended was called Capricorn,
  438-u.
Gates at the steps of the ladder, names, material, symbolism, 414-u.
Gates of the Sun, Souls descended from Heaven to earth through the,
  438-u.
Gates through which souls descended and reascended used in Mysteries,
  412-413.
Gautama, the Hindu God, Sakya, so called by the Ceylonese, 551-m.
Gavel, hieroglyphic picture of a Master's, 80-l.
Gea and Ouranos, Grecian Deities of Earth and Heaven, 850-l.
Geburah, in the Kabalah, is called Judgment, which includes limitation,
  764-l.
Geburah, Mother, Severity or Strict Justice, the fifth Sephiroth, 552-m.
Geburah, one of the Sephiroth; Austerity, Rigor or Severity, 753-m.
Geburah represents, or is, the Ox, 798-m.
Geburah, the Sephiroth, conjoined sexually with Gedulah to produce
  Tepareth, 764-l.
Gaber, an Arab, cultivated the Hermetic Science, 840-l.
Gedulah and Geburah, the two arms of Adam Kadmon, 758-u.
Gedulah, Geburah, Tepareth denoted by Yod, He, Vau, 798-m.
Gedulah, one of the Sephiroth; magnificence or Benignity, 753-m.
Gedulah or Khased, Father, Benignity or Mercy, the fourth Sephiroth,
  552-m.
Gedulah represents or is the Lion, 798-m.
Gemini, Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri, the Cabiri, 454-m.
Generation begins with the vegetable kingdom, hence "G" is displayed,
  632-u.
Generation constituted the process of Creation, to the ancients, 771-l.
Generation is the meaning of the letter G, or Jod or Yod, in triangle,
  632-u.
Generation of Angels and Worlds the secret of the Occult Sciences, 844-u.
Generation primarily by the action of the Sun, secondarily by the Moon,
  657.
Generation solely caused by the Sun, Moon and Stars, 469-l.
Generation symbolized by Gemini, the Twins, at remote period, 401-l.
Generation the effect of the union of the Active and Passive, 657.
Generation, the Power of, 305-m.
Generative and Productive are always in conjunction, 766-l.
Generative number, the Unit, and two, 628-m.
Generative organs carried in procession; mutilation of, 412-l.
Generative organs venerated by all ancient people as symbols, 656-m.
Generative Power or Spirit and Matter originally in Deity, 700-m.
Generative power seated in the Sun, 669-u.
Generative power symbolized by the Stauros and the Cross, 771-l.
Generative Power to beget intellectual action in Binah, the Intellectual
  Faculty, 766-m.
Generative principle represented by the letter G, initial of the name
  of Deity, 632-u.
Generous Mason regrets dissensions and disputes, 123-m.
Genesis assigns the formation of the world to the Alhim, 568-m.
Genesis in a second fragment ascribes; creation to Ihuh-Alhim, 568-m.
Genii dispensed the Good and the Evil, six on each side, 416-u.
Genii intermediaries between Gods and men, the Universal Providence,
  416-u.
Genii of Decans had names, characteristics; aid in effects produced,
  470-m.
Genii of the Gnostics, 271-l.
Genii or Angels differed in character; some good, some evil, 416-u.
Genii, six, created by Ormuzd, prototypes of Archangels, 256-l.
Genii the media of communication between man and the Gods, 441-m.
Genii were the Intelligences that reside in the planets, 441-m.
Genii were the powers and faculties of nature, part of the science
  of initiation, 415-l.
Genitals of the Vernal Bull bitten by the Scorpion represents--, 412-l.
Genius gets Power, its lieutenants are Force and Wisdom, 30-m.
Genius, the strenuous application of commonplace faculties, 174-m.
Geometry does not sufficiently express the science of numbers, 34-m.
Germans adored God without daring to name Him, 621-l.
Ghe, the Earth, one of the first divinities, the wife of Ouranos, 658-u.
Gihon, a stream of the Edenic river, 58-u.
Gimli or Vingolf, the Heaven of the Icelanders, 619-m.
Globe, ancients had no idea the earth was a, 442-l.
Globes, celestial and terrestrial, on columns, 17-m.
Gloria Dei est celare verbum. Amen, 861-l.
Glory and ambition in the highest degree is to strive to benefit
  others, 853-u.
Glory: God does not tempt or constrain men to do evil, and that
  is the Infinite, 848-l.
Glory is one of the last four Sephiroth of the Kabalah, 848-l.
Glory of Deity displayed in the Universe as a reflection, 673-m.
Gnosis expresses the idea of cognizance by intuition, 771-m.
Gnosis of Carpocrates consists of one Deity and spirits ruling Earth,
  562-m.
Gnosis proscribed by Christians; Sanctuary closed against initiation,
  840-m.
Gnostic doctrine, rise and explanation of, 248-256.
Gnostic Julian infected with the allegories of Grecian Polytheism, 732-u.
Gnostic Mysteries made known to the heads of the Templars, 817-m.
Gnostic seals and abraxae adopted by Templars, 235-m.
Gnostic sects had Mysteries and an initiation, 542-l.
Gnostic seven Spirits adopted by the Elxaites, 564-m.
Gnostic science rested on a square whose angles were--, 633-u.
Gnostic Simonians had a Priesthood of the Mysteries, 542-m.
Gnostic Stauros an image of generative power, 771-l.
Gnostic theories and ideas of Deity, 554-567.
Gnostic Valentinians imitated the Mysteries of Eleusis, 542-l.
Gnosticism developed into heretical forms, 818-u.
Gnosticism imperfectly revealed the disfigured occult science of
  the Magi, 839-m.
Gnosticism, Jews of Syria and Judea the direct precursors of, 255-m.
Gnostics all agreed on a creation directly out of the Divine Essence,
  557-m.
Gnostics agreed that the Demiurge was the framer of this lower world,
  557-m.
Gnostics all agreed that the Father was not the framer of this lower
  world, 557-m.
Gnostics, analogy between the doctrines of Alexandria and those of the,
  249-m.
Gnostics and Disciples of Christ held the doctrine of the transmigration
  of souls, 399-l.
Gnostics and Philo, the Supreme Being was the Light to the, 280-l.
Gnostics born of the Kabalah, 626-u.
Gnostics connected their faith with the Christianity of St. John, 815-m.
Gnostics, derivation of their leading doctrines and ideas, 248-m.
Gnostics, doctrines of Zoroaster borrowed by the, 258-l.
Gnostics, fundamental doctrines of, 248-m.
Gnostics held the universal agent composed the body of the Holy Spirit,
  734-m.
Gnostics introduced theosophical speculations, 248-m.
Gnostics made Souls ascend and descend through eight Heavens, 441-u.
Gnostics may have received something from the Chinese; saying
  of Lao-Tseu, 259-u.
Gnostics received from Platonists the idea that--, 255-m.
Goat's head given to Sulphur by the Hermeticists, 779-l.
God, a Mason's conception of and belief in, 224-l.
God a mystery, as everything surrounding us is, 574-m.
God, a perfect being, an Abyss, the Primitive Father, always has been,
  559-l.
God a Perfect Cause, everywhere as Perfect Providence, 716-m.
God, a pure spirit, indivisible, omniscient, all powerful, one, 608-u.
God, a Somewhat with Power, Wisdom, Intelligence, 739-m.
God. According to capacities, so vary the conceptions of, 206-l.
God, afflictions and calamities lead the mind to, 189-m.
God, all names are contained in the Kabalistic name for the Idea of,
  98-m.
God an hypothesis imposed by good sense on Human Reason, 738-u.
God, an infinite, eternal Soul or Spirit, 609-m.
God, an undiscoverable Being known only in proportion to the
  understanding, 516-l.
God and Light before creation; the coexistence of, 739-l.
God and the individual Soul are distinct, 852-u.
God and the Universe were one according to the Kabalistic view, 765-m.
God and Truth are inseparable, 713-u.
God as a mind picture may be as much of an idol as a wooden one, 693-m.
God as an actuality imagined to be a most occult light by the
  Kabalists, "Aur", 740-m.
God as an Infinite Being comes to us from our consciousness of--, 703-m.
God, as infinite justice, must respect the rights of man, 704-m.
God, as the world develops it outgrows its ancient idea of, 643-m.
God, attributes and ideas of the nature of, 279-286.
God beyond human comprehension, 605-u.
God called Alfadir in the Edda; is the Creator, 619-m.
God can do whatever he wills, being Omnipotent, 705-m.
God can not be known in His work but in his mode of manifesting Himself,
  267-l.
God can not do impossibilities, 737-m.
God can will nothing but what is good and just, 705-m.
God, categorical questions concerning, 648.
God caused Himself to shine forth; is his own father; is prior to
  substance, 615-u.
God, Chance and Intelligence undistinguishable by Menander, 694-m.
God, conception of, varies with man's mental cultivation and powers,
  223-l.
God confronted, felt, known when we reverence mighty cosmic force, 707-m.
God confounded with the Demiurge by the mass of the Jews, 558-u.
God created man in the image of Deity, Male and Female, 849-l.
God created the ideal world only, Logos the material, 251-l.
God defined in the Icelandic prose Edda, in a dialog, 619-u.
God defined in Sanscrit stanzas, 741-m.
God does not tempt nor constrain men to do evil, 848-l.
God dying, an inference from a literal interpretation of nature-worship,
  588-m.
God, 18th Degree taught the unity of, 287-l.
God embraces tho principles of reality and cognizance, 707-l.
God, existing of Himself, alone, desired to manifest his perfections,
  609-l.
God first created a Being he called the Word, 565-u.
God gives things their existence and their intelligibility, 708-u.
God governs by wise and inexorable laws, 228-u.
God has an infinite tenderness for his creatures, 704-m.
God has created things visible through the Logos, 251-m.
God, Hindu dogma of the existence of one, 604-m.
God, Idea of, grandest, most holy, most useful, 98-u.
God in communion with all material things, 710-u.
God in His manifested essence and as Alone has no name, 849-u.
God, in Latin and French, has for an initial the Delta or Greek
  triangle, 631-l.
God in men, animals, plants, 565-l.
God, in the Masonic creed, is Truth, Beauty, Goodness in Infinity, 706-l.
God incapable of anger, 718-u.
God, incarnate, submits to all conditions of visible existence, 588-m.
God indwelling in matter makes the world a revelation of Him, 710-u.
God is a Father in Heaven, a Monarch, a Human Being to the unlearned,
  743-m.
God is a hypothesis; Absolute Reason is not one, 737-u.
God is a Paternal Being as taught by Masonry, 239-u.
God is Good and what he does is right, 240-u.
God is Good, the belief in a Devil proceeds from a conviction that,
  324-u.
God Is, if a self-existent Force and its Intelligence are admitted,
  100-m.
God is Illimitable Time in the Zend-Avesta, 256-l.
God is inconceivable; to investigate Him is but to perplex ourselves,
  650-u.
God is life itself, eternal and perfect, 681-u.
God is not the Universe, though everywhere present in spirit and truth,
  707-l.
God is Omnipotent, but effects without causes are impossible, 846-m.
God is one, a part of the Masonic old doctrine, 876-l.
God is One, extending through all the Universe; a single substance,
  667-m.
God is our Father and we are brethren, 227-l.
God is silent, consents with Mind and is known to Souls through Mind,
  582-m.
God is the reflected image of man as conceived by man himself, 223-m.
God Is, the studies which convince a man that, 226-l.
God keeps watch over the little and the great, producing variety
  from Unity of Force, 829.
God known only through his attributes, 555-m.
God known to us only by his Attributes, 575-l.
God, laws of, 8-u.
God loves his creatures, 717-l.
God loves us all, so we can look complacently on evils, 715-u.
God made the world and, of necessity, it is good and perfect, 705-m.
God manifested Himself by His Thought; source of His manifestations,
  559-l.
God manifested in Binah characterized himself Intelligent, 753-u.
God manifested in the several Sephiroth displayed their characteristics,
  753-m.
God manifested in Yod called himself Wise; the vessel of Hakemah, 753-u.
God may be called Ihuh after the conception of Creation, 752-u.
God must be free, if man is, possessing infinite liberty, 703-l.
God must be omnipresent in space and time, 709-l.
God, nature of the Supreme; references to Egyptian Gods, 431-u.
God never reveals himself in the sensible world but through the
  Demiurge, 558-u.
God not a logical being to be explained by deductions, 703-m.
God not able to perform some miracles, 736-u.
God not an abstract God, but an intelligent, free person, 707-u.
God not an Abstraction, but a real Being, a moral person, 703-l.
God not inert and uncreative during the eternity behind the Universe,
  849-u.
God not separated from the Universe, attested by Eusebius, 667-m.
God not to be made into any mode or like to the Sons of Men, 752-u.
God not to be represented by any figure or image or letters He or
  Yod, 752-u.
God not yet having created, and as alone, has no name, 848-l.
God, nothing can be imagined more excellent than, 224-u.
God now compared to Light deemed unphilosophical, if not Atheistic,
  739-m.
God of Good and a God of Evil, each independent, eternal, 565-l.
God of Good must in the end overcome the God of Evil, 565-l.
God of many Christians but the old heathen gods, 296-u.
God of the New Platonists was one simple Original Essence, 284-l.
God only Wise, Man's wisdom but a reflection, 251-l.
God penetrates the man and becomes a living spirit within him, 609-m.
God perfect and infinite in his attributes, 574-l.
God preordained suffering and calamity, 228-l.
God, philosophers taught to but few the true knowledge of, 207-l.
God possesses a secondary Intelligence which descends to matter, 415-m.
God possesses Charity, the supreme virtue of man, 704-m.
God possesses infinite intelligence and infinite liberty, 704-u.
God, prayer to, 6-l.
God, prior even to the first God and King, conceived things by his
  intellect 614-l.
God produced all things by His Intellect, Will, Free Determination,
  759-l.
God, Pythagoras' definition of, 285-l.
God regarded as that from which Light flows by the Sabeans,
  Kabalists, 739-l.
God regarded by the Masons as a Moral Governor, as well as an
  Original Creator, 224-l.
God, relations of a Mason to, 227-l.
God, religious requisite of a Mason is a belief in one True, 164-u.
God represented by the Demiurge on the lower stage of existence, 557-l.
God represented by the Gnostics as an unfathomable Abyss, 555-n.
God represented by the hieroglyphic of a horned serpent, 495-u.
God, result of a low conception of, 223-l.
God revealed in the True, the Beautiful, the Good, 708-u.
God reveals Himself by His attributes, 267-l.
God reveals Himself in our convictions, conscience, instinct, 324-u.
God reveals Himself to us by His uttered Word, 324-u.
God said to Moses: "I am that which Is, Was and Shall Be", 848-l.
God, single Tau represent one, 503-l.
God, Spirits of, ascent and descend on the ladder, 10-l.
God sums up in himself perfect Beauty, Truth and Good, 703-u.
God Supreme, from whom all other gods emanate or are by Him
  created, 597-l.
God, Temple of 7-l.
God, that the mass shall lack work and food seems to be a law of,
  179-180.
God the Almighty Father and Source of All, 575-u.
God, the author of everything, the Eternal, the Supreme, the Living,
  581-m.
God, the believing Mason conscious of being a co-operator with, 228-l.
God, the capacity of the mind to receive positive truth limits man's
  view of, 221-l.
God, the Cause, by whatever qualities known, 644.
God, the earliest exertion of thought resulted in the idea of, 511-l.
God, the first emanation, was Light, then Ormuzd, 256-l.
God, the First Supreme, Infinite Unity; All and One flowed forth
  from, 759-l.
God, the formal, efficient and final cause, 680.
God, the highest view we can form is the nearest to a true conception
  of, 223-l.
God, the Holy of Holies, as author of the moral law, 706-l.
God, the individual good of the Mason is considered by, 228-l.
God, the Infinite Parent, revealed by natural human religion, 715-m.
God, the Light principle from which souls emanate and return, 740-l.
God the Living Soul of the Universe, 574-l.
God, the Logos, dwells in, 251-u.
God, the Master Mason's Word is a knowledge of, 209-u.
God the necessary logical condition of a world; its necessitating
  cause, 708-l.
God, the Omnipotent Legislator, the source of the moral law, 701-l.
God the only original Existence, the Absolute, Author of all, 701-l.
God the Principle of Liberty, Justice, Charity, 706-l.
God the Principle of Moral Truth and of personal morality, 703-u.
God. The protest of Masonry against belief in a cruel God is
  Trust in, 196-l.
God, the sole, Self-existing Power, expanded his idea and appeared,
  608-m.
God, the Soul of the Universe and coexistent with it, 709-u.
God, to Ancients, manifested by the Sun, 13-u.
God to be loved under the forms of Truth, Justice, Nobility of Soul,
  707-u.
God too sublime to be known; displayed by Intelligences, 564-u.
God united to Wisdom communicated the germ of Creation, 251-l.
God was alone, formless, before he formed a conception of Creation,
  752-u.
God was the Phos-Nocton, the Light cognizable only by the Intellect,
  740-l.
God willed to produce beings, and from that which is produced
  Brahma, 608-l.
God wills a thing because it is just; it is a necessity for Him to do
  so, 737-u.
God wills a thing because it is just; it is not just because God wills
  it, 847-u.
God: Zoroastrians addressed hymns and prayers to the Supreme, 017-l.
Goddesses holding serpents are figures in Egypt and Assyria, 495-l.
God's actualities seem less lofty than our ideal of justice, 832-m.
Gods and Idols of Gods were symbols of truth to the ancient Sages, 302-l.
God's attention imagined to be continually centered on man, 302-l.
God's attributes are man's virtues, 704-u.
God's attributes are not God, 573-u.
God's attributes known only through their manifestations, 739-u.
Gods, Astronomical details and operations of Nature in histories of,
  375-m.
God's character makes a difference in the conduct of people, 043-u.
Gods composing the Trinities of the Ancient religions, 576-m.
Gods created by personification of Stars and phenomena were worshipped,
  508-m.
God's creations coexisting with Himself, 708-l.
God's Essence includes Wisdom, Justice, Truth, Harmony, Love,
  Eternity, 582-m.
God's existence and nature one of the highest questions, 642-m.
God's existence as comprehensible as the existence of a Soul, 573-l.
God's existence, every thinking creature must be conscious of, 605-u.
God's existence evidenced by our consciousness of the fact, 709-u.
God's existence ploughed deeply into Nature, 647-l.
God's existence taught by Reason, 743-u.
God's goodness seems to be impugned by disorder in the world, 705-m.
God's goodness the foundation of Truth, 142-l.
God's justice and the law of merit and demerit the foundations of
  faith, 706-u.
God's Justice, which is Severity, the Female, 846-u.
God's law consistent with His justice whether it corresponds with our
  notions or not, 830-u.
God's law of justice can not be measured by our standards, 830-l.
God's love governs our acts of charity; His justice governs our
  justice, 707-u.
God's love not inconsistent with the evils of existence, 718-u.
God's love takes care of all to the end, 240-m.
God's love the same as that in man, but in an infinite degree, 705-u.
God's Mercy, or Benignity, alone reigning, sin would go unpunished,
  846-u.
God's mode of action a conception beyond our reach, 832-l.
God's modes of operation are the action of the Universe, 710-u.
God's nature and attributes, 680.
God's nature and attributes in the Zend-Avesta, 258-l.
God's nature, attributes, essence, wholly beyond us, 568-l.
God's nature is not conceivable by the human mind, 743-u.
God's nature, it is impious to assume or explain, 605-u.
Gods of the Veda, their origin and signification, 602-612.
God's Omnipotence the secret of Occult Sciences, 844-n.
Gods, one of the bases of initiation was the providence and
  superintendence of the, 415-l.
God's Perfections produced the intellectual world by development, 559-l.
Gods personified, of secondary rank, falsely credited with Creator's
  work, 624-u.
God's poetry is man; his prose is nature, 715-l.
God's power provided for all the evils of existence, 716-u.
God's relations to a Mason, 227-l.
God's Thought conceiving the Universe and willing its creation, 575-u.
God's thought confronted when we, in our studies, attain a truth, 707-m.
God's Thought manifested and expressed in the Word, 575-l.
God's Thought uttered in His word created the Universe, 577-u.
God's Universe a mystery incomprehensible by man, 530-m.
God's varied actions are the Forces of Nature, 809-m.
Gods were mortal men who deserved to have their souls elevated
  after death, 398-m.
God's will controls every happening in the Universe, 859-m.
God's will has no moral authority except as it is just, 726-u.
God's will learned when we learn the right, 707-m.
God's wisdom foresaw all the evils of existence, 716-u.
God's Wisdom foresees what each will do and uses it as an instrument,
  848-l.
God's Wisdom the mother of Creation, 251-l.
God's Word uttering His Thought becomes the Creator, 575-u.
God's work, in heaven, is done by angels; on earth, by men, 736-u.
Gold assigned to the Sun, 729-u.
Gold is all Spirit and incorruptible; the emblem of the Sun which
  presides over light, 788-u.
Gold of the Hermeticists is a true dogma, light, truth, but also material
  gold, 778-u.
Gold produced from Salt under the combined action of Sulphur and
  Mercury, 778-m.
Gold, to the eyes of the Initiate is Light condensed, 103-u.
Golden Age longed for when man communed with Deity, 653-u.
Golden calf of Aaron was one of the oxen under the bronze laver, 818-l.
Golden Fleece of Aries guarded by a serpent, 498-m.
"Golden Numbers," "golden verse," "golden Ass", 103-u.
Golden Rule should have the words "under the same circumstances"
  added, 836-u.
Good actions not always followed by happiness nor evil ones by
  misery, 705-l.
Good and Evil, belief concerning, 272-u.
Good and Evil, categorical questions concerning, 648.
Good and Evil coexisting, more active question than all others, 684-m.
Good and Evil coexisting, only staved off by inventions of theories,
  687-u.
Good and Evil contests personified by the course of the Sun, 594-m.
Good and evil deities among Chaldeans, Greeks, etc, 661-m.
Good and Evil in the world necessitates Free will and election, 797-m.
Good and evil influences of the planets flowed from the Zodiac, 663-m.
Good and Evil principles by their equilibrium produce harmony, 549-u.
Good and Evil principles, ancient thought regarding, 221-m.
Good and Evil problems not solved by a Redeemer who shall end Evil, 847-l.
Good and Evil reconciled or the Universe would be a failure, 767-m.
Good and Evil, Revelations depict the struggle between, 272-l.
Good and Evil, Stars divided into the, 472-m.
Good and Evil symbolized by the contest between Ialdaboth and
  his mother, 563-m.
Good and Evil, the invisible Intelligences divided into the, 474-l.
Good and Light synonymous because Light multiplied man's enjoyments, 660-m.
Good, belief in a Devil an attempt to explain the existence of Evil
  and, 324-u.
Good can not cause Evil; it must have had another cause, 661-u.
Good counterbalances Evil; Light in equilibrium with Darkness, 764-l.
Good has as an inseparable shadow the Evil, 846-l.
Good implies its opposite, Evil, 681-l.
Good, in the Absolute, an attribute of the Absolute Being, 702-l.
Good, in the Absolute, is Good itself, superior to all particular
  duties, 702-l.
Good is beyond man himself; not so God's Good, 680-l.
Good is known by the evil, 797-m.
Good is not a consequence; it is first or nothing, 722-l.
Good men are tending to the realm of Perfection, 538-u.
Good men of every nation superior to popular deities, 562-l.
Good never separated from the evil; the two must mingle, 660-l.
Good, period of the final triumph of, 258-m.
Good principle divided into Creation, Preservation, Renovation, 604-m.
Good Principle identified with the Sun, 594-u.
Good principle represented by Masonry, 221-m.
Good principle urged men towards--, 221-m.
Good realized in nature, according to Plato, 681-m.
Good resigned for the disinterested and universal, 696-m.
Good, the foundation of obligation, 722-m.
Good, the great speculations of antiquity forecast the victory of, 274-m.
Good, the object of the Absolute Thought is the Absolute, 680-l.
Good, the single principle in which centers all moral principles, 702-m.
Good the ultimate end of Nature, according to Aristotle, 681-m.
Good to reign in eternity and Evil to cease is but a poet's dream, 847-l.
Good will prevail and Evil be overthrown by a Redeemer, 274-m.
Goodness the first feature of Charity, 705-u.
Gospel of John, a passage from an older work begins the, 280-u.
Gospel of John, explanation and objects of the, 280-m.
Gospel of St. John a Polemic against, the Gnostics, 559-m.
Gospel of St. John the basis of rites proper to complete the
  initiation, 821-m.
Gothic Festival of the Winter Solstice, Yuletide, became Christmas, 368-u.
Gothic Mysteries, festivals, initiations, symbols, 368-u.
Gothic Mysteries introduced from the East by Odin, 367-l.
Gothic Mysteries similar to others; description of, 430-m.
Gothic Mysteries taught the destruction of the world and the rising
  of a new one, 431-m.
Govern In ablest, wisest, best is vested the Divine right to, 203-u.
Government by incapables or merely respectables comes to nought, 31-m.
Government, defects in a Democratic form of, 44-m.
Government, Democratic, and Imperial Rome compared, 47-l.
Government, Free, cannot long endure, when--, 203-u.
Government, free, depends on the virtue and intelligence of common
  people, 177-u.
Governmental machinery and laws in the interest of justice, 834-m.
Government, Masonry not hostile to civil, 153-m.
Government tends to become a conspiracy against liberty, 805-m.
Government, those who reap the benefits should bear the burdens of, 176-u.
Gracchi replaced by aroused indignation, 48-u.
Grand Arcanum confers great power on the Adept, 101-m.
Grand Master Architect, 12th Degree, duties of, 189-u.
Grand Pontiff, the 19th Degree, 312-u.
Gravitation around the centers of Life, Heat and Light, 843-u.
Great Lights symbolize the Sun, Moon and Mercury, 486-l.
"Great Work" a creation of the human word initiated into the power
  of the Word of God, 775-u.
"Great Work" assures man of the empire of Azoth and power over
  the Magical Agent, 773-l.
Great Work benefits the Body by bringing health and wealth, 785-u.
Great Work benefits the Soul by causing it to know God, Nature,
  ourself, 785-u.
Great Work comprehended and executed brings great knowledge, 786-l.
"Great Work" depends chiefly on the internal Magnet of Paracelsus, 777-m.
Great Work in perfection expressed by a cross over a triangle in
  alchemy, 790-l.
"Great Work" is the conquest of man over his faculties and future, 773-l.
"Great Work" itself is the work of the Sun, 773-u.
"Great Work" of Hermes is magical and supposes the Absolute in
Science and Will, 775-l.
"Great Work" secrets have a threefold significance, 773-u.
"Great Work" symbolized by the Rose in Flamel's book, 821-l.
Great Work, the purification of the Soul has a hidden meaning, 792-m.
Great Work, the universal agent is the elementary matter of the, 734-m.
Greater Mysteries, five years' probation between the Lesser and the,
  432-l.
Greatest good of greatest number can legitimately affect ideal justice,
  836-l.
Grecian Choruses, the Strophe and Ante-Strophe connected with the
  Stars, 462-m.
Grecian philosopher, saying of Socrates, the, 170-u.
Grecian Temples destroyed by Persians under Xerxes and fire
  chapels erected, 610-m.
Greed, commercial, deadens the nerves of sympathy, 298-l.
Greek history shows the One God and then a worship of Nature, 619-l.
Greek name of Deity consists of three letters, I, A, O, 632-l.
Greek Philosophers expounded the loftier ideas and nobler doctrines,
  617-m.
Greek Philosophy embraced a belief in an Infinite and--, 617-m.
Greek philosophy preceded by the Mystic Theologers, 683-m.
Greeks consecrated the generative organs as symbols of fruitfulness,
  656-m.
Greeks, the scholars of the Egyptians, showed vestiges of an old
  faith, 617-u.
Gregory Nazianzen, Bishop of Constantinople, speaks of the Christian
  Mysteries, 545-m.
Grip, hieroglyphic picture of the Lion's, 80-l.
Grip of the Lion of the House of Judah clasps the human race, 641-u.
Grip of the Lion raised Khurum after that of Aquarius and Cancer
  failed, 461-u.
Grip of a Master raises the candidate, 640-l.
Grip of a Master represented by the figure ten, 638-m.
Gurzsher, the Persian comet, consumes the world, 623-l.
Gymnosophist Priests came from the Euphrates to Ethiopia, 362-m.
Gymnosophists, at the Temple of Amun were celebrated the Mysteries
  of the, 362-m.

H

Habit is a Force, a second nature, 90-l.
Hades, Hercules under the guidance of Minerva descended to, 592-l.
Haikal denotes the place in which all things are contained, 799-u.
Haikal, Temple or Palace; the name of Malakoth, 799-u.
Haikal, the Palace of the degree Tephareth, which is concealed in it,
  799-u.
Hair of the women at the festival of Isis was flowing; the men
  shaven and bald, 387-l.
Hakemah and Binah denoted by Yod, He, 798-m.
Hakemah and Binah imperfectly joined with averted faces, 796-l.
Hakemah and Binah in the Head as the two hemispheres of the brain, 768-l.
Hakemah and Binah, the two lobes of the brain of Adam Kadmon, 757-l.
Hakemah and Binah, whom it impregnates, quantitatively equal, 763-u.
Hakemah and Bainah, Wisdom and Intelligence, the second Sephiroth, 552-u.
Hakemah, Binah and Daath illustrated by comparison with pain, 758-l.
Hakemah communicated potency and increase to Binah, 756-l.
Hakemah is a person and termed Abba, or Father, 799-m.
Hakemah is Father, Binah is Mother, the two in equilibrium as
  male and female. 763-m.
Hakemah is the generative power of producing Thought, yet in
  Deity, 758-m.
Hakemah is the Generator of all things; he and Binah conjoin, 763-l.
Hakemah proceeded from Kether through the energy of Yod, 756-m.
Hakemah represents, or is, the Man, 798-m.
Hakemah Sapientia, existent in the Corona of the World of Emanation,
  758-u.
Hakemah, the Father, the active power or energy of the Deity, 552-m.
Hakemah, Wisdom, Sapientia; wise by means of Binah, 753-u.
Hand open pouring milk from vessel in shape of heart, symbolism, 412-m.
Hand, the left, open and expanded, symbolic meaning of the, 388-u.
Hannibal, results of Faust and Luther's work excelled that of, 43-u.
Hansa (the Sun) dwelling in light; the Truth, 741-m.
Hansavati Rich, a Sanscrit stanza says, "He is Hansa" (the Sun), 741-m.
Happiness and satisfaction greater as ends in view are lofty and
  noble, 349-u.
Happiness, as an effect of the Good, completes and crowns moral
  order, 724-u.
Happiness dependent on the relations of the outer world, 686-m.
Happiness in virtue the object of existence in man, 716-l.
Happiness promoted by thought and purpose being in conformity
  with Divine rule, 713-u.
Happiness will not result from repose unless balanced by a contrary
  movement, 847-l.
Harmonies of Heaven correspond to those of Earth, 101-l.
Harmony and Beauty should be the result of the equilibrium in
  man of the--, 855-m.
Harmony and movement the Life of the Universe and Soul alike, 859-l.
Harmony as represented by the three among the Pythagoreans, 632-m.
Harmony consisting of the six parts of Seir Aupin represented by
  Vau, 799-l.
Harmony finally led up to and it will reign forever, 577-u.
Harmony necessary in Government and natural laws, 306-l.
Harmony of life and action; of virtue and perfection, 765-u.
Harmony of the Universe, 209-l.
Harmony of the Universe, a combination of contraries, 660-m.
Harmony of the Universe belongs to and is a part of it, 665-u.
Harmony of the Universe broken by a single effect without a cause, 735-l.
Harmony of the Universe responds to the unity of God, 707-l.
Harmony of the world maintained by a Divine Force, can Soul
  of Nature, 668-u.
Harmony only from the analogy of contraries. 848-u.
Harmony or Beauty, the eternal law, a side of the Masonic triangle,
  826-m.
Harmony, Power of Deity in equilibrium with his Wisdom, 2-u.
Harmony result of equilibrium of Justice and Mercy of God, 17-u.
Harmony result of equilibrium of the sympathy and opposite action
  of contraries, Wisdom holding the scales, 8-m.
Harmony resulting from equilibrium of Contraries taught by
  Ternary, 792-u.
Harmony resulting from the equilibrium of the Spiritual and Material
  natures, 764-l.
Harmony the result of the equilibrium of contrary forces, 306-u.
Harmony the result of the equipoise of Necessity and Liberty, 848-l.
Harmony, Wisdom, Force, the Great Attributes of the Essence of
  Deity, 531-m.
Harmony which upholds and preserves, 531-m.
Harmony with Wisdom and Power, one Masonic Triad, 8-u.
Har-oeri, the Creative Word, from the action and reaction of Osiris
  and Isis, 861-m.
Har-oeri, Son of Osiris and Isis; throne supported by lions, 79-m.
Har-oeris, the elder Horus, Egyptian Sun God, festival of, 79-u.
Hava Maal, The sublime Book of Odin; maxims from, 168-m.
Hawk the symbol of Ra or Phre, 254-l.
He and Yod represent the female and male principles in equilibrium, 323-m.
He, approached by Yod, becomes imbued with a luminous influence, 793-u.
"He" considered to be the agent of Almighty Power, 698-l.
He of the Tetragrammaton in Adam Kadmon as Neschamah, 757-u.
He, impregnated by Vau, produced Microprosopos, or Seir Aupin, 793-u.
He, impregnated by Yod, begets a son, and thus pregnant brings
  forth, 763-m.
He is Binah and the other He is Malkuth, 758-u.
He, is female and He, is hidden on every side, 763-u.
He is impregnated by Yod and begets a son which she brings forth, 763-l.
He is the wife of Yod, the second He is the wife of Vav, 761-u.
He, the female letter, communicates to Yod her light, 751-m.
"He," the letter expressing the union of Deity with his creatures, 698-l.
He-She, the meaning of the masculine-feminine Hua and Hia, 698-m.
He-She, in Aramtic, Hebrew, Arabic, 700-u.
Head, Kether, the Crown, ring or circlet, first Sephiroth, 768-l.
Heads of Macroprosopos, Adam Kadmon, explained, 758-u.
Health symbolized by the triple triangle, 634-m.
Heathenism had a foundation in Truth, 599-u.
Heaven and Earth, as Divinities, regarded as being male and female,
  401-m.
Heaven and earth composed of the two principles, Active and Passive,
  656-u.
Heaven and earth gifted with a life and soul, 668-l.
Heaven and Earth, regarded as Divinities, were worshipped, 401-m.
Heaven and Earth the first and most ancient divinities, 658-u
Heaven exists in the perception and thought of a glorious mind, 201-l.
Heaven, none for those who desire to go thither alone, 152-u.
Heaven of Dante composed of a series of Kabalistic circles, 822-l.
Heaven rules the condition of the earth by the action of Divine Force,
  668-m.
Heaven the birthplace of the Soul; its home, to which it looks, 520-m.
Heaven to the Initiate is the World manifest to the Intelligences, 785-u.
Heaven will, at last, aggrandize Hell is but a poet's dream, 847-l.
Heavenly bodies act only with the activity of the Soul of the
  Universe, 671-m.
Heavenly Bodies and the ceremonies of initiation closely connected,
  507-l.
Heavenly Bodies worshipped by different peoples, 457-l.
Heavenly Hosts and Stars imprisoned for disobedience, 511-u.
Heavenly Host appears as an organized Angelic Army, 509-l.
Heavenly Hosts include not only emissaries of Jehovah, but Stars, 509-u.
Heavenly Host worshipped by Turks, Scythians, Tartars, Persians, 459-m.
Heavens a living existence from which, through earth, existences
  proceed, 668-m.
Heavens and the Earth personified as Deities even among the Aryans,
  850-l.
Heavens and the Sun as Procreative and Generative agents; male, 851-u.
Heavens divided by seven planets and twelve signs, 460-m.
Heavens, the Father, impregnating the earth with its rains, 656-l.
Hebraic doctrine of God and Light expressed by Milton, 739-l.
Hebraic ideas favorable to physical pleasures, 260-u.
Hebrew belief concerning the pre-existence of souls, 440-u.
Hebrew books written in symbols unintelligible to the Profane, 744-l.
Hebrew camp in the desert arranged from Stars, etc, 460-l.
Hebrew conceptions of God varied, 206-m.
Hebrew form of Tetractys, 88-m.
Hebrew forms of the personal pronouns He-She, 700-u.
Hebrew God, Ihuh, superior to Al or the Alohayim, 598-u.
Hebrew God overcomes monstrous Leviathans, 498-l.
Hebrew Law, maxims from, 169-l.
Hebrew Mythology alludes to a feud among the spiritual powers, 510-l.
Hebrew popular notions of Deity, 207-m.
Hebrew religion imbued with Star worship, 509-511.
Hebrew religion placed the government and all knowledge with Priests,
  625-u.
Hebrew Theism involved in symbolism and image worship, 514-m.
Hebrew Tribes, characteristics of signs of the Zodiac compared with
  those of the, 461.
Hebrew writings use light and fire as emblems of the attributes
  of Divinity, 611-u.
Hebrew word in the East in 12th Degree is Adonai; meaning of, 201-l.
Hebrew word, pronunciation of, not known from its character before--,
  205-m.
Hebrews, belief in the existence of One God not accepted by early, 206-u.
Hebrews borrowed from the Persians some religious doctrines, 610-u.
Hebrews devout worshippers of false gods, 206-m.
Hebrews, esoteric knowledge communicated to but few, 207-l.
Hebrews had their good Deity and the Devil, an angel of Darkness, 661-m.
Hebrews held each nation had its own guardian angel and Star, 510-u.
Hebrews held Nakhustan, brazen serpent, as a token of healing
  power, 497-u.
Hebrews, intellectual, possessed true knowledge of God, 207-m.
Hebrews, Jehovah the national God of the, 206-u.
Hebrews transferred to Satan everything immoral to account for
  moral evil, 690-m.
Hebrews, True nature of God and His name unknown to the, 206-u.
Hel, the place to which the wicked go first, then to Nifthel, 619-m.
Heliacally, Star seems to be touched by the Sun when it rises or sets,
  471-l.
Heliogabalus, reference to the reign of, 471-l--3-u.
Hell, become useless, will be closed by the aggrandizement of Heaven,
  847-l.
Hell is impassable for those only who know not how to turn back, 822-l.
Hell of Dante is but a negative Purgatory, 822-l.
Heptakis, Phoenician God of the seven rays, 58-l.
Heptaktis, God of seven rays, the Supreme God of Phoenecia, Tsadok,
  728-m.
Heracles or Arkaleus, the Etruscan, Scythian, Pelasgian name for
  the Sun God, 587-u.
Heraclitus advocated monotheism, 678-m.
Heraclitus acknowledged the unsatisfactory result of philosophy, 693-l.
Heraclitus believed in a Universal Reason pervading all things, 693-u.
Heraclitus of Pontus held that each Star was a portion of the
  Universal Soul, 671-m.
Hercules, a descendant of Perseus, the luminous child of darkness, 591-m.
Hercules and Juno, antagonism of good and evil typified by the
  contest between, 594-l.
Hercules as a God to the Celts, Teutons, Scythians, Etruscans,
  Lydians, 591-m.
Hercules begets with the Dragon the three ancestors of Scythia, 498-m.
Hercules died, raised from the grave, and is received in heaven, 592-l.
Hercules, Har-acles, worshipped at Tsur, 79-u.
Hercules Ingeniculus, one of the varieties of the declining Sun, 591-l.
Hercules, journey of the Sun the origin of the twelve labors of, 448-u.
Hercules obtained initiation from Triptolemus, 586-u.
Hercules performs his first labor with Nemean lion, 455-m.
Hercules suffered the ills of humanity, according to Maximus Tyrius,
  592-l.
Hercules' Temple at Tyre built 2,300 years before Heroditus, 591-m.
Hercules, the patron of navigators, who spread his altars from coast
  to coast, 591-m.
Hercules well known in Egypt and the East, 591-m.
Here persecuted Dionusos and helped the Titans to kill him, 585-l.
Here, the wanton or irrational power of nature, 682-l.
Hereafter, as we are pure here so we will be just as happy, 216-u.
Heresy of philosophical truth considered the most dangerous by Rome,
  820-u.
Hermaphroditic Being, which comprehends all existence, 653-l.
Hermaphroditic figure a symbol of Deity as Generator and Producer, 851-m.
Hermaphroditic figure emerges from the Orphic egg, symbolizing
  the two causes, 655-l.
Hermaphroditic figure of Valentinus a symbol of the double nature, 851-m.
Hermaphroditic God-World, ancient dogma of philosophy and theology, 653-l.
Hermaphroditistic conceptions from the idea of the Active and
  Passive principles, 655-l.
Hermes' canonical rolls contain transcendental lore, 614-m.
Hermes communicated secrets in alchemy, astrology, magism, 365-u.
Hermes, in writings of Dionysius is found the dogma of, 731-l.
Hermes instituted hieroglyphics, taught the sciences and arts,
  revered One God, 364-l.
Hermes, inventor of letters, winged messenger bearing the Caduceus, 586-l.
Hermes represented in our Bodies by the Orator, 586-l.
Hermes taught men arts, science, and ascended to Heaven, 255-u.
Hermes taught the priests and they studied the Hermetic science, 362-l.
Hermes, the creed of the old Buddhists contained in the dying words of,
  364-l.
Hermes, the Egyptian Hierophant, summarizes the ancient doctrines, 324-m.
Hermes, the first, was the Intelligence or Word of God, 254-l.
Hermes, the Mercury of the Greeks, Thoth of the Egyptians, Taaut
  of the Phoenecians, 586-l.
Hermes, the Sacredotal Art was the name given to the secrets of, 365-u.
Hermes the same as Enoch, 363-m.
Hermes, Thoth, the incarnation or repetition of the first, 255-u.
Hermes Trismegistus, a Greek name for the Egyptian Thoth; doings of, 364.
Hermetic Agent is the magical power, spiritual power, Astral Light, 774-l.
Hermetic and Kabalistic Rose Croix, 785-l.
Hermetic Arcanum, 775-u.
Hermetic Art is a religion, a philosophy, a natural science, 774-l.
Hermetic books discuss the Supreme Being, 614-l.
Hermetic disciples used jargon as a living language, 731-u.
Hermetic dogma engraven on a tablet of Emerald, 774-u.
Hermetic Dogma, "What is above is like what is below," etc, 790-m.
Hermetic fables show, in their interpretation, the principal Gods of
  the ancients, 631-u.
Hermetic operations, spiritual and material, dependent on one another,
  774-u.
Hermetic or Alchemical philosophical doctrine, 772-792.
Hermetic Philosophers drew their doctrines from the Kabalah, 772-l.
Hermetic philosophy concealed by the Alchemists under symbols, 772-l.
Hermetic philosophy given consideration in the Kabalah, 741-u.
Hermetic philosophy, that of the schools of Alexandria and Pythagoras,
  774-l.
Hermetic Philosophy under the mask of Alchemy, 792-l.
Hermetic religion is that of the Magi and the ancient initiates, 774-l.
Hermetic Science applied to the operating of the Great Work, 785-m.
Hermetic Science cultivated by Arabs and studied by Chief Templars,
  840-l.
Hermetic science, like all real science, is mathematically demonstrable,
  777-l.
Hermetic science real only for those who understand its religion and
  philosophy, 774-l.
Hermetic secret is to find the bases of faith, truth, transmutation,
  776-l.
Hermetic Symbol from the "Materia Prima" of Valentinus, 850-m.
Hermetic tablet of Emerald contains the Key to their allegories, 777-l.
Hermetic tablet of emerald explained, 776-u.
Hermetic universal medicine for soul, mind, body, 773-m.
Hermetic work symbolized by the Pelican and Phoenix, 774-m.
Hermeticism is the Kabalah in active realization; the Magic of Works,
  840-l.
Hermetics speak with reserve of secret fire, living and philosophical,
  775-u.
Hero, less noble to describe than be a, 349-l.
Heroditus described Bal's temple at Babylon, 590-l.
Heroditus excuses himself for reticence concerning the Mysteries, 380-m.
Heroditus testifies concerning the doctrines of Zoroaster, 617-l.
Herodotus speaks reservedly of the Mysteries of Isis, 405-m.
Hieroglyphics believed to have been taught the Priests by the deities,
  359-l.
Heroic acts performed by the basest and lowest, 201-u.
Heroism the loftiest feature of Charity, 705-u.
Herta, the German name for the earth; adored by them, 658-m.
Hesiod and others declare all virtue is a struggle, 691-u.
Hesiod sings of Heaven and Earth as Ouranus and Gea, 850-l.
Hexagon images a cube, not visible at the first glance, 827-u.
Hia, the feminine form, sometimes means It, 698-m.
Hiddekel, a stream of the Edenic river, 58-u.
Hildebrand referred to, 31-u.
Hierarchical Order, intelligence, figures, 97-m.
Hierocles defines the great work of initiation, 521-m.
Hierocles, one of the zealous disciples of Pythagoras, 622-l.
Hieroglyphic picture of Lion's grip and Master's gavel, 80-l.
Hieroglyphics, Hermes gave the Key to the, 365-u.
Hieroglyphics in one degree had a different meaning in another, 374-u.
Hieroglyphics, meaning of, so carefully guarded that meaning became
  lost, 374-u.
Hieroglyphics preceded by symbols of Indians, Persians, and Chaldeans,
  372-l.
Hierophant of Eleusis, Motive God of nature, veiled on throne, 411-l.
Hierophants in concealing knowledge multiplied symbols, 321-l.
Hierophants of the Gothic Mysteries ruled over the celebrations, 367-l.
Hierophants sought by every means to impress the candidates, 383-m.
High Places, idolaters sacrificed to foreign gods on, 234-u.
High Priest uttered the Tetragrammaton on the 10th of Tisri, 620-u.
High Priest's vestments and furniture described, symbolism, 409-u.
Hillel, the Pharisee, gives summary of the law of Moses, 170-u.
Hindoo divinities, the attributes of the One God, 672-l.
Hindu creed from extracts from their books, 605-m--606.
Hindu deities, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, subordinate to Brehm, 597-l.
Hindu Kusch, or Paropismus; Iranian races on Eastern and Southern
  slopes of the, 601-l.
Hindu Mythology abounds in images of serpents, 500-m.
Hindu Mythology preserves the legend of the fall of Spirits, 623-l.
Hindu name of Deity consists of three letters, A, U, M, 632-l.
Hindu religious dogmas epitomized, 604-m.
Hindu religion embodied as fundamental principles--, 604-u.
Hindus have veneration for the Lingham, a symbol of everproductive
  nature, 656-u.
Hindus lamented the death of Soura-Parama, slain by Soupra-Muni, 595-u.
Hindus, seed vessels of lotus a sacred symbol to the, 9-u.
Hindus' Trinity became three distinct Deities, 550-m.
Hiram, a type of humanity in its highest phase, 225-m.
Hiram said by Josephus to have built a Temple to Astarte, 410-l.
Hiramic legend represents a murder, restoration, and teaches--, 435-l.
Hiram's murder, burial, etc., symbols of the Redeemer, 640-l.
History not a fortuitous concourse of events, 646-l.
Hoam-ti, third Chinese Emperor, erected a Temple to the Great
  Architect of the Universe, 615-l.
Hobbes says God is inconceivable, 651-u.
Hod and Netsach, the thighs of Adam Kadmon, 758-u.
Hod, one of the Sephiroth; Glory, 753-m.
Hod, with Netsach, is the Perfection of Deity manifested in his Idea
  of the Universe, 767-m.
Holland, Masonry in 1735 prescribed by the states of, 50-m.
"Holy Doctrine," the absolute Doctrine of the Hermetics, 840-l.
Holy Empire, Holy Realm, Sanctum Regnum, names for Magism, 842-u.
Holy Empire is the victory of the spiritual over the human in man, 855-u.
Holy Empire of Masonic Brotherhood made possible by the Royal Secret,
  861-l.
Holy Empire spoken of in the clavicules of Solomon and symbolized, 727-m.
Holy Ghost of the Christians corresponds to the Wisdom of the Kabalah,
  267-l.
Holy House of the Temple, Haikal Kadosh, 816-m.
Holy of Holies formed a cube; symbolic meaning, 209-u.
Holy Spirit composed of the universal agent, 734-m.
Holy Spirit enveloped in silence from the awe of the Mysteries, 849-l.
Holy Spirit, the companion of Christ, produced by the Intelligence,
  560-m.
H, O, M, the three-lettered Persian name of Deity, 632-l.
H, O, M, the framer of a new Persian religion; his name was Ineffable,
  621-l.
Homer makes Zeus resent the accusation that evil comes from the Gods,
  690-l.
Homer's Zeus an array of antitheses, like that of Hesiod, 689-l.
Honor and Duty, a Force; the Polestars of a Mason, 89-l.
Honor given to those who stand up for truth and right, 836-m.
Honor of a Mason's country identified with his own, 156-m.
Hope, a great moral Force, is Strength which ensures success, 91-m.
Hope, enemy of avarice, represented by the Moon, 727-l.
Hope, for the exceptions to the law that attaches happiness to virtue,
  725-l.
Hope for the triumph of Good over evil a part of the Masonic creed,
  531-u.
Hope, no man can struggle and conquer without, 196-l.
Hope of a Mason, that all men shall form one family, 233-u.
Hope of immortality the aim of ancient wisdom, Mysteries, Masonry, 517-m.
Hope of man overcame the terrors of the grave, 653-u.
Hope of success, not hope of reward, our stimulus, 229-l.
Horace and others declare Zeus ordained evil for beneficent purposes,
  691-u.
Horus, buried three days, regenerated, 81-l.
Horus, Master of Life, 13-u.
Horus, one of the Egyptian Triad, was the Son, the Light, 548-l.
Horus, son of Isis, died and was restored to life, 406-m.
Horus, son of Isis, slew Typhon, aided by Isis, 376-u.
Horus, the God of Time, pours ambrosia on the hair of Isis, 379-m.
Horus, the younger, the point in a circle, the hieroglyphic of, 79-u.
Hospitallers and Templars vowed obedience, poverty, chastity, 802-u.
Hospitallers' Houses despoiled by Elizabeth, Queen of England, 802-m.
Hospitallers' Houses were Almshouses, Dispensaries, Inns, 802-m.
House of all things the name for the Principle of all things, 793-u.
House of God may be found everywhere, 241-m.
Houses of the Planets, mythological emblems and fables, 470-u.
Hu, in Druidical mysteries was represented the death of, 429-l.
Hu, the British God, called the Dragon; his car drawn by serpents, 502-u.
Hua and Hia, the personal pronoun He, She, masculine and feminine, 698-m.
Hua, He, the designating personal pronoun of the Most Holy Ancient,
  794-m.
Hua, He, the totality of all things; the totality of the Ancient is
  male, 763-u.
Hua means the Male, Creative Principle or Power, 699-u.
Hua often used by itself to express Deity, "He", 698-l.
Hu-Hi proper for Hua-Hia by omitting the "a", 698-m.
Hu-Hi transposed into Ih-Uh, 698-m.
Hule limits the progression towards Perfection, 555-l.
Hule represented as darkness, a void, shadow, 555-l.
Human action foreseen, but not controlled, 848-l.
Human action not controlled so as to annihilate its freedom, 848-l.
Human and Divine intermingled in every Human being, 853-u.
Human body with male and female heads standing on a dragon, 850-m.
Human Deity an incarnate divinity, 222-l.
Human existence, permanent conditions of; result of, 93-l.
Human form but the analog of the form taken by Deity, 791-u.
Human form is the form of all above and below, 791-u.
Human frailty can not bear to suffer for nought, 199-u.
Human heart beats for beggar and prince alike, 245-u.
Human intellect imposes its own limitations on the Illimitable, 222-l.
Human life is a great and solemn dispensation, 199-m.
Human Light but a reflection of a ray of the Infinite Light, 246-l.
Human mind has no conception of God's nature or modes, 743-u.
Human nature not satisfied with a denial of God, 645-l.
Human nature possesses an inherent loftiness of ideal, 832-l.
Human power, affliction or pain can not be kept out by, 180-l.
Human race one great family, 176-m.
Human Tetragram is Adam; it is Yod of the Kabalah, image of
  Phallus, 771-u.
Human Thought, Speech, Action, combined, irresistible in results, 320-u.
Human understanding does not vacillate at hazard, 842-m.
Human Unity made complete by the right and left; primitive man
  of both sexes, 771-u.
Human wisdom intermediate between ignorance and knowledge, 691-l.
Humanity, a beauty and glory in, 214-l.
Humanity afflicted by prosperity, 307-l.
Humanity, as a Unit, existed in Deity, 764-m.
Humanity aspires to God, believes in God, hopes in God, 708-m.
Humanity, duties of a Mason towards, 176-l.
Humanity exalted the highest conception of human thought, 652-u.
Humanity has had but one religion and one worship, 102-u.
Humanity in its highest phase typified by Hiram, 225-m.
Humanity, in the humblest abodes are worked out the problems of, 245-u.
Humanity, no one above the trials and frailties of, 180-l.
Humanity of Christ, more than his Divinity, which brings him worship,
  743-m.
Humanity, slow is the advance of, 93-m.
Humanity's material, sensual, baser portion represented by the Square,
  851-l.
Humanity's spiritual, intellectual, moral nature represented by the
  Compass, 851-l.
Humility, patience, self-denial, symbolized by the Cross of Christ,
  801-l.
Hungus reigned over the Picts in the ninth century; saw St. Andrew's
  Cross, 801-m.
Hyades are five stars in the form of a V, 435-l.
Hyperborean regions visited by the Sun Gods, 592-m.
Hypocrisy, the homage paid by vice and wrong to virtue and justice, 73-m.
Hypothenuse of a right angle triangle represents the nature produced
  by union, 861-m.
Hypothenuse of the right angle triangle is product of Male and
  Female, 789-m.
Hypothenuse represents that nature which is produced by the union
  of the Divine and Human, 861-m.
Hypotheses scientifically are the last shadows of knowledge, 841-m.

I

I, A, O, the three-lettered Greek name of Deity, 632-l.
I am alpha and omega, the omnipotent, 701-u.
I signified unity, 701-u.
Iahaveh, Father, Kabalah ascribes Creation to, 104-m.
Ialdaboth caused the Jews to hate and crucify Jesus, 563-l.
Ialdaboth made the world and man in his own image, 563-m.
Ialdaboth of the Ophites, the Demiourgos, produced an angel, 563-m.
Ialdaboth's Sons, by Eve, had children, angels like themselves, 563-m.
Iamblichus defines the Egyptian idea of existence, 614-u.
Iamblichus taught that the heavens and spheres were part of the
  Universal Soul, 669-m.
Iao, name of one of the Reflections of the Ophites, 563-m.
Iao, the sacred name of the Supreme Deity, 700-u.
Icelandic Prose Edda, has a dialogue concerning God, 619-m.
Idea of Ancient Art is--, 164-u.
Idea in Deity was the Universe in potence; the sequence was involved,
  767-u.
Idea of infinity and spirituality eludes us, 222-u.
Idea of the Universe existing in Deity as real as Deity himself, 764-m.
Ideal justice which men look up to is true, but is not of this world,
  835-u.
Ideal world, at first, preferred to the real, 674-m.
Ideas of Plato correspond to the Ferouers of Zoroaster, 256-u.
Idleness is perpetual Despair, 342-u.
Idlers and drones not respected by Masonry, 14-u.
Idol made of a mind picture same as one of wood, 693-m.
Idol of black magic is an Absolute Deity outside of Reason, 737-l.
Idol worship the root of all evil, according to the iconoclasts, 691-m.
Idolaters make Atheism possible, 737-l.
Idolatry did not gain much foothold among the Arabians till--, 616-l.
Idolatry forbidden by the early Scandinavians, 618-m.
Idolatry grew out of the confounding of the symbol with the object
  symbolized, 600-u.
Idolatry not practiced by Chinese till after Confucius, 615-l.
Idolon means "image", 693-m.
Idra Rabba, Synodus Magna, a book of the Sohar, says the Deity is
  in Microprosopos, 793-l.
Idra Rabla contains the statement that the left is female; the right,
  male, 763-u.
Idra Suta contains the statements that God coheres with all and
  all with Him, 761-l.
Idra Suta says the continuance of things depended on their being
  male and female, 800-u.
Idra Suta states that the Principle called Father is comprehended
  in Yod, 792-l.
Ignorance is Darkness, 107-m.
Ignorance of the causes of phenomena of daily occurrence, 526-530.
Ignorance of the essence of Magnetism, heat, light, etc, 570-571.
Ignorance self-abandoned to a power tyrannical, 694-l.
I, H, U, H designates the generative and conceptive Forces, 267-u.
I, H, U, H, The First Born, the Creative Agent, emanated from, 267-u.
Ihuh, Abstract Existence above the Alohayim or Al, for the Hebrews,
  598-u.
Ihuh-Alhim is the Absolute Existence, 701-m.
Ihuh-Alhim: the Substance or Very Self, Alohayim, are manifestations,
  568-l.
Ihuh, as applied to Deity, represents--, 208-m.
Ih-Uh obtained from Hu-Hi by transposition, 698-m.
Ihuh, Self-existence, one of the names of Deity on the Delta, 531-l.
Ihuh, the name assumed by Deity in his communication with Moses, 697-l.
Ihuh, the name that includes all things, the name of the world of.
  the garment, 750-u.
Ih-Uh, the Tetragrammaton or Ineffable Name, 698-m.
Ihuh, the Unity in which the many are and out of which all flow, 764-u.
Ills of society would be relieved if the world was peopled with
  Christs, 718-l.
Illuminati; The Absolute became the reason for the rites of the, 840-m.
Illumination carries its cone of shadow, 847-l.
Illusions satisfying the vulgar were coarse forms of--, 653-u.
Illustrious Elect (Elu) of the Fifteen, 10th Degree, 160-l.
Image successful if it conveys the idea vividly and truthfully, 515-m.
Imagery of Orientals a desire to express the Infinite by symbols, 514-l.
Imma and Aba; Mother and Father, 757-u.
Immortality a natural feeling, an adjunct of self-consciousness, 517-u.
Immortality admitted by the Druids; also man's responsibility, 618-u.
Immortality and happiness symbolized by Spring, Summer, 447-l.
Immortality: categorical questions concerning, 649-m.
Immortality concurrent with a belief in an infinite Spirit, 517-u.
Immortality demonstrated by the law of merit and demerit, 706-l.
Immortality exists in the perception and thought of a mind, 201-l.
Immortality; nature full of phenomena used as evidences of, 517-m.
Immortality not impossible if required by absolute justice, 706-l.
Immortality of the Soul taught in the 18th Degree, 287-l.
Immortality of the Soul a fundamental principle of the Hindu religion,
  604-m.
Immortality of the Soul acknowledged by the Vedanta and Myaya
  philosophers, 607-u.
Immortality of the soul based on the necessary foundation of its
  spirituality, 706-l.
Immortality of the Soul taught in the 18th Degree, 287-l.
Immortality of the Soul the second Truth of the Sacred Mysteries, 533-m.
Immortality proven by the tendency of the powers of the soul
  toward the Infinite, etc, 706-l.
Immortality symbolized by a serpent, 496-l.
Immortality symbolized by the sprig of Acacia, 642-u.
Immortality the shadow of God, whose shadow is death, 741-l.
Imperfection not possible if God's Justice alone reigned, 846-u.
Impossibilities can not be done by God, 737-m.
Imposture commonly rules in Republics, 45-l.
Impulse which directs to right conduct the third Truth of Masonry, 533-l.
Incantation developed out of prayer, 685-u.
Incarnations of Vishnu and Buddha represents the journey of the Sun,
  448-u.
Indented tessel, should be tessera, or indented border, 818-m.
India claimed Osiris as one of their great gods, 475-l.
India gave Zoroaster much of the Primitive Truth, 617-l.
India, the Patriarchal religion originally practiced by the people of,
  360-l.
Indian books, maxims from the, 169-m.
Indian Mysteries, ceremonies and description of the, 428.
Indian or Great Plague claimed to have originated from the English
  tax on salt, 812-m.
Indian philosophy gave birth to the Egyptian Mysteries, 372-l.
Indian philosophy spread through Persia and Chaldea to Egypt, 372-l.
Indian Sacred Name of the One Deity manifested as--, 205-u.
Individual comfort and convenience can not be consulted, 696-u.
Individuality an illusion according to the Hindu dogma, 604-l.
Indra, Ormuzd, Ahura-Mazda is the bright firmament, 601-l.
Indra, the God of the glittering firmament, Father of the Devas or
  Powers, 602-m.
Industry never wholly unfruitful, 152-m.
Inertia and immobility of Forces or Impulses cause Death, 846-u.
Ineffable Name, by reversion and division, becomes bi-sexual, 849-m.
Ineffable name embodies the idea of the Absolute Existence, 700-m.
Ineffable name embodies the idea of the Male and Female principle, 700-m.
Ineffable Name given its esoteric or inner meaning, 697-l.
Ineffable Name is not that of the Very Essence, but of the Absolute,
  849-m.
Ineffable Name is that of the Absolute manifested as Existence, 849-m.
Ineffable name of Deity represented by the symbol Y, 429-m.
Ineffable Name of Deity upon the Delta known to the Ameth alone, 531-m.
Ineffable Name of God given to the initiate into the Mithraic
  Mysteries, 425-u.
Ineffable Name or Tetragrammaton is IH-UH, 698-m.
Ineffable name of the manifested Deity, Yod and Ho, two letters of
  the, 323-m.
Ineffable Name, signifying source of all things, has four letters, 632-l.
Infinite, a change in conditions of our being necessary to conceive
  the, 222-U.
Infinite as well as Finite present in everything, 764-l.
Infinite Being must of necessity create and preserve the Finite, 708-l.
Infinite combined the points until letters were formed, 749-u.
Infinite divisibility of the triangle teaches the infinity of Deity,
  827-m.
Infinite first limits Himself by flowing forth in the shape of Will,
  766-u.
Infinite, limitations to man's knowledge of the, 222--.
"Infinite" of Anaximander an ideal chaos, 675-m.
Infinite Power and Wisdom can harmonize Necessity and Liberty, 848-m.
Infinite space and infinite time are two primary ideas, 569-l.
Infinite, the living principle of a living Universe must be, 222-m.
Infinite time and space inconceivable; ends in nothing, 595-u.
Infinite Time, Infinite Space, uncomprehendable to us, 529-l.
Infinite, we are unfolded by the, 190-l.
Infinite was moved within Himself during Creation, 749-u.
Infinity not comprehensible, only indefiniteness, 569-l.
Infinity of God the first Truth of the Sacred Mysteries, 533-m.
Infinity of Space and Time known, but the idea eludes us, 222-u.
Influence and works live after us, 108-u.
Influence of mind over mind; man over man, 31-u.
Influence of the great dead on the present, 312-315.
Influences live and the great Future will obey, 316-m.
Informatio, Binah, "The very Head of Macroprosopos," as applied
  to Adam Kadmon, 758-u.
Iniquity seems to prosper, but its success is its defeat and shame,
  837-l.
Initiate after a year prepared for initiation into the Greater
  Mysteries, 389-l.
Initiate after instruction forbidden to eat animal food or drink wine,
  388-l.
Initiate after ten days was led to the Sanctuary, approached the
  abode of death and--, 389-m.
Initiate after three days participated in a consummation of ceremonies,
  389-m.
Initiate bathed, the Priests implored forgiveness, sprinkled him, 388-l.
Initiate clothed, crowned, and celebrated the next day as his birthday,
  389-m.
Initiate invited to see Christ who will shine with greater glory, etc,
  521-l.
Initiate of Bakchic Mysteries purified his soul of passion, 420-l.
Initiate of Mithraic Mysteries crowned, purified by fire and water,
  425-u.
Initiate of Mithraic Mysteries received on point of sword at left
  breast, 424-l.
Initiate presented with thirteen robes representing the Heavens, etc,
  506-l.
Initiate regarded as the favorite of the Gods, 386-u.
Initiate required to be free from stain, 390-l.
Initiate taught his place in the Universe and dignified him in his
  own eyes, 416-u.
Initiate to the degree of Scottish Master traverses Heaven and Earth,
  785-u.
Initiated, great philosophers and legislators were, 372-l.
Initiates, admonition of Philo, the Greek Jew, to the, 311.
Initiates, after Cambyses, dispersed to Greece and taught enigmatically,
  365-l.
Initiates, apostrophe of Euripides and Aristophanes to the, 357-l.
Initiates clothed in linen robes, 387-l.
Initiates of Bakchic Mysteries followed rules of Pythagoras, 420-m.
Initiates of Bakchic Mysteries practiced contemplation and peace, 420-l.
Initiates of Christian Mysteries received three degrees, 541-l.
Initiates of Druidical Mysteries arranged in threes, fives, sevens,
 429-l.
Initiates of Druidical Mysteries placed in a boat, referring to Osiris,
 430-l.
Initiates of Eleusis believed the Sun blazed with splendor for them,
 386-m.
Initiates of Mysteries invested with cord of three times three; our
  cable tow, 361-u.
Initiates of Mysteries regarded as fortunate men, 353-m.
Initiates of Orpheus were considered as released from evil, 386-m.
Initiates of the Mysteries, ecstatic condition of the, 358-u.
Initiates required to be pure as indicated by fasting, continence, etc,
  520-l.
Initiates supposed to be favored by storms and evils, 386-u.
Initiates taught the nature and objects of the Mysteries and--, 421-l.
Initiates, "Teach me to respect Justice and the Gods" the great
  lesson taught the, 381-m.
Initiates were given few explanations, but left to make inferences,
  355-m.
Initiates wrote mysteriously concerning the Mysteries, 365-l.
Initiate's soul lighted by the blaze of the sacred doctrine, 521-l.
Initiation a serious matter; qualifications for, 388-m.
Initiation, according to Clemens, was a real physiology, 401-u.
Initiation an indication of moral purity; intended to effect the same
  as philosophy, 520-l.
Initiation but introductory to the great change of death, 392-l.
Initiation ceremonies and Heavenly Bodies closely connected, 507-l.
Initiation ceremonies became complicated, pompous, secret, 358-l.
Initiation, ceremonies of the Indian, 361-m.
Initiation changed fellow citizens to brothers closely bound, 386-u.
Initiation compelled the performance of duties and the rules of justice,
  391-m.
Initiation dissipated errors and gave hopes at death, 386-l.
Initiation, effects of, requirements, results, 520-522.
Initiation: Hercules applied to Eumolpos for, 592-l.
Initiation: Hierocles defines the great work of, 521-m.
Initiation in Mysteries represents the death and resurrection of the
  Sun, 408-u.
Initiation into Mysteries at dead of night with appalling ceremonies,
359-l.
Initiation into the Mysteries of Eleusis, 403-m.
Initiation into the Mysteries as necessary as--, 353-m.
Initiation lights up the Soul with rays of Divinity, 522-m.
Initiation probably took place in pyramids, labyrinths, etc, 359-l.
Initiation propounded to science the problem of the Conquest of the
  Rose, 821-l.
Initiation, signs, tokens, degrees, developed from the original, 359-u.
Initiation, Socrates and Aristides state benefits of, 386-l.
Initiation termed Light, 521-l.
Initiation, the Epopt said to be regenerated after the ceremonies of,
  373-l.
Initiation, the first principles of life learned through, 353-l.
Initiation, the increase and decrease of the moon regulated the
  periods of the, 361-m.
Initiation the Knowledge of Deity who was the Light of the Mysteries,
  522-u.
Initiation was a school in which were taught the truths of--, 372-l.
Initiation was, as it were, to suffer death and be born again, 388-m.
Initiation was considered to be a mystical death, 373-l.
Initiations, ancient, objects of the; tended to perfection, 397-l.
Initiations consummated in Temples of Elephanta and Salsette, 361-u.
Initiations into the Mysteries took place generally at night, 383-l.
Initiations, Souls tried in the Sanctuary of, 518-l.
Initiations, the Equinoxes were connected with ancient, 404-l.
Initiations withdrew souls from mortal life and reunited them to the
  Gods, 520-l.
Injunction to Masons, "Judge not," etc, 135-m.
Injustice, loss results from the gain of, 73-u.
Injustice of England lost her America, 835-m.
Injustice, two kinds of, 127-u.
Injustices and inequalities of this life compensated for in a future
  one, 830-l.
Injustices, difficulty in finding compensations for seeming, 829-u.
Inquisition, references to the tortures of the, 49-l.
Inquisitorial duties of a member of the 31st Degree, 827-m.
Inri, various meanings of, 291-m.
Inspector Inquisitor, Grand Inspector, Inquisitor Commander, 825.
Inspector Inquisitor, the 31st Degree, 825.
Inspiration given to every faithful child of God, 226-u.
Inspiration not limited by race, or sect; still exists, 225-l.
Inspiration of one age or creed; Philo and Plato inspired, 321-u.
Inspired minds ordered by God, 225-u.
Instinct of animals compared with the Reason of man, 303-l.
Instinct is inspiration, either the animal itself or God in the animal,
  304-u.
Instincts and life of animals come from the Universal Soul, 666-l.
Instructors, attempt to reach understanding through the eye by early,
  355-m.
Instructors or Masons from the 4th to the 8th Degrees; duties of, 331-m.
Instructors to perfect, explain, expound to the younger Masons, 331-m.
Instrument of the Hermetics to separate the gross from the volatile;
  Intelligence, 790-l.
Intendant of the Building, 8th Degree, lesson of, 136-u.
Intellect ever struggling to pass the bounds of its limitations, 696-l.
Intellect has always sought to explain the nature of Deity, 738-m.
Intellect, only sure mode of perpetuating Freedom is the franchise of,
  31-l.
Intellect placed above and beyond the Universe by the Egyptians, 614-u.
Intellectual force of some persons absorbed by others, 735-u.
Intelligence active as the soul became disengaged from gross matter,
  669-l.
Intelligence and Life communicated to man by Supreme Intelligence, 665-u.
Intelligence and Wisdom conjoined and one shines in the other, 800-u.
Intelligence: categorical questions concerning, 648.
Intelligence complete as the world and accurate as mathematics, 790-l.
Intelligence corresponds to the Holy Ghost of the Christian Faith, 267-l.
Intelligent Deities necessary for worship, 665-m.
Intelligence directing Strength and Force is true meaning of necessity,
 696-m.
Intelligence enveloped in the soul in which it reposed, 669-m.
Intelligence existed wherever the Divine soul acted as a cause, 669-m.
Intelligence filled the Universe, emanations from the Universal, 669-m.
Intelligence, God, Chance, undistinguishable, according to Menander,
  694-m.
Intelligence great as the soul directs the movements of the Universe,
  415-u.
Intelligence impossible without a soul, 669-m.
Intelligence of God perceives where the Good is and his liberty
  accomplishes it, 704-u.
Intelligence of man an emanation from the soul of nature, 670-u.
Intelligence overruling the principle of necessity, 681-l.
Intelligence produced Christ and the Spirit to restore the Eons
  to--,560-m.
Intelligence source of the oil of anointing, 267-l.
Intelligence supreme is necessarily rational, 733-u.
Intelligence, Supreme, type of that manifested in man, 254-m.
Intelligence symbolized by the Pentagram or five-pointed Star, 790-l.
Intelligence, Tabunah, represented by the Hebrew letters, 800-m.
Intelligence, the commencement, revelation cf Divinity, the first Eon,
  560-u.
Intelligence the Supreme Being of Plato, 678-u.
Intelligences emanated from a Primary Intelligence, 249-u.
Intelligences: God displays Himself by, 564-u.
Intelligences: God's Spirit emanating from His bosom the first of
  the, 564-u.
Intelligences, like the Stars, divided into the Good and the Evil, 474-l.
Intelligences: Logos, the Word, Creative Utterances, the second of
  the, 564-u.
Intelligences of the Stars have dominion over all Nature, 474-u.
Intendant of the Building, 8th Degree, lessons of the, 136-u.
Interests, all men have common, 221-u.
Interests conflict and passions clash in a world of action, 696-U.
Interests of the many requiring the sacrifice of others may be just,
  833-l.
Intermediary powers between Gods and men accorded to Genii or
  angels, 416-m.
Intimate Secretary, 6th Degree, special duties of, 119-u.
Intolerance of religious belief, a great evil; effect of--, 166-l.
Inundation of the Nile affected by Aquarius as well as Sirius, 468-m.
Inventions to account for moral evil, 690-m.
Invisible becomes the Visible at the will of God, 845-l.
Invisible God, visible in Eden, Sinai, Burning Bush, no incongruity,
  514-u.
Invisible measured by the visible, 222-u.
Invisible only cognizable through the visible, 267-l.
Invocation to Ormuzd to combat Evil and make men pure and holy, 613-m.
I, O, W, the three-lettered Scandinavian name of Deity, 632-l.
Ionic order of architecture represents degrees of the Second Temple,
  202-u.
Iranian objects of worship those of nature, especially fire and light,
  601-l.
Iranian races seem to have originated nature worship, 601-l.
Ireland and Scotland; Cross on ancient Buddhist ruins of, 505-m.
Ireland, serpents carved on Buddhist crosses in, 496-m.
Ireland, the Buddhists supposed to have erected the round towers of,
  278-u.
Irira, Abraham Cohen, author of Pneumatica Kabalistica, or Beth
  Alohim, 772-l.
Isaiah quoted in reference to the creation of evil by God, 796-m.
Isiac Mysteries required tomb, pillars, and lake, 405-m.
Isiac tablet is charged with serpents, 501-m.
"Iside et Osiride," by Plutarch, speaks mysteriously of the Holy
  Doctrines, 841-u.
Isin Abla, a Mohammedan Mystery teaching the name of God, 621-l.
Isis accompanied on her journey by animals representing Constellations,
  506-m.
Isis addressed by Lucius according to Apuleius, 387-u.
Isis addresses Lucius and promises her favor, 387-m.
Isis aided in her search for Osiris by Anubis in the shape of a dog,
  376-l.
Isis and Osiris gave civilization, laws, etc., to men, 475-l.
Isis appears to Lucius as a beautiful female with graceful ringlets,
  387-u.
Isis, as the Moon, seeks Osiris; her allegorical wanderings, 480-483.
Isis collected all parts of the body of Osiris except generative organs,
  475-l.
Isis compared to Knowledge by Plutarch, 521-l.
Isis, declaration concerning herself on columns at Nysa in Arabia, 378-m.
Isis; description of a procession of the initiates of, 412-u.
Isis, doctrines of the Mysteries judged by the prayer to, 389-l.
Isis extracted the body of Osiris from a column of the palace, 379-u.
Isis found the body of Osiris at Byblos marked by a shrub of tamarisk,
  376-l.
Isis in her search had with her Anubis and Nepthe, sisters of Osiris,
  378-l.
Isis in the procession was attended by women combing her hair, 387-l.
Isis is Nature, the Queen, 279-u.
Isis of Gaul, called Hertha or Wertha, Virgin to bear a child, 104-u.
Isis, sister before she was the wife, of Osiris, 849-l.
Isis: the Egyptians deemed it unlawful to utter the name, 620-u.
Isis the Goddess of Sais, the Feast of Lights in her honor celebrated
  there, 380-u.
Isis, the personification of the Moon, 447-l.
Isis, was engaged as nurse to the child of Queen Astarte, 379-u.
Isis was the daughter of Saturn, the most ancient of Gods, 378-m.
Isis, weeping at a fountain, dressed the hair of the women of the
  court, 378-l.
Israel, allegory of Jacob concerning the twelve Tribes of, 460-l.
Iraelite, by nature a servant to the Stars, relieved by Law, 509-l.
Israelites in Desert worshipped a Star God, according to Amos, 509-l.
Israel's daughters looked to the north for the return of Thammuz, 592-u.
Issachar, compared to an ass, has for a device Cancer, 461-l.
Ivy over East window of old churches is the Hedera Helix of Bakchos,
  483-m.
Izeds, created by Ormuzd, offices of the twenty-eight, 257-u.

J

Jachin and Boaz explain the mysteries of political and religious
  antagonisms, 772-u.
Jachin and Boaz, parallel lines, point in circle, represent Solstices,
  506-u.
Jachin and Boaz symbols of the bi-sexuality of the Ineffable Name, 849-m.
Jachin has set on it the celestial globe symbol of the spiritual part
  of man, 860-m.
Jachin is Binary; Boaz is Unity, 772-u.
Jachin, name of the column on the right of the entrance; meaning of, 9-l.
Jachin, one of the columns of the Temple of Wisdom, represents
  the Active Principle, 860-m.
Jachin referred to symbolically, 202-l.
Jachin represents Victory, one of the Sephiroth, 267-l.
Jachin, the seventh Sephiroth, is unlimited Power, 736-l.
Jacob saw the souls descending a seven-stepped ladder, 851-l.
Jacob's dream, the ladder in, 234-u.
Jainas, a sect in India, say the ancient religion consisted in a belief
  in--, 608-u.
James the Second, silly song helped to unseat, 43-u.
Jargon of a rude chemistry utilized by the Alchemists to conceal
  their philosophy, 772-l.
Jargon of alchemy created to deceive the vulgar herd, 731-u.
Japanese believe in a Supreme Invisible Being not to be represented
  by images or--, 616-u.
Japanese had seven ancient gods and five added, 460-m.
Japanese Mysteries; twenty years probation for highest degree, 429-m.
Japanese Supreme Being styled Amida or Omith, 616-u.
Jay and Marshall revered for their justice as judges, 836-l.
Jealousy of Deity instanced, 688-u.
Jefferies, as Judge, to be opposed by Masonry, 20-l.
Jefferies, reference to trials before, 49-l.
Jehovah, anthropomorphism of, 207-u.
Jehovah at the outset in the character of the Sun, 510-m.
Jehovah conquers the Dragons, 499-m.
Jehovah had a distinct astrological character, 509-l.
Jehovah leads forth the Hosts of Heaven, naming them, 509-l.
Jehovah more powerful than the Gods of other nations, 206-l.
"Jehovah" of the Hebrews expresses abstract existence, 651-l.
Jehovah the Author of all things, prosperity and evil, 687-u.
Jehovah, the direct author of evil, commissions evil spirits, 687-l.
Jehovah, the Divine Tetragram, formed by adding the ternary name
  of Eve to Yod, 771-m.
Jehovah, the name by which all things are redeemed, 561-l.
Jehovah the national God of the Hebrews, 206-l.
Jehovah transfixes the Crooked Serpent, 498-u.
Jehovah's jealousy against the infringement of autocratic laws, 688-u.
Jemsheed, one of the Persian Sun Heroes, cut off by Zohak, 589-m.
Jemsheed sawn asunder by a fish bone, 589-l.
Jericho, Rose of, grows in Arabian desert; propagation of, 96-m.
Jerusalem often prostituted to the gods of Syria and Babylon, 840-u.
Jerusalem, prophesy by Isaiah concerning, 13-m.
Jerusalem, the 16th Degree; emblems of the Prince of, 241-m.
Jesus caused to be born of a Virgin by Ialdaboth, 563-l.
Jesus Christ, the living Spirit, assists Adam Kadmon against the
  Evil Principle, 566-m.
Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Saviour, inscribed on Christian
  Mark, 547-l.
Jesus, born of a virgin, united to Christos, with Sophia redeemed
  the world, 560-m.
Jesus, in person, having disappeared, a cross of Light appeared in
  His place, 567-m.
Jesus received from Wisdom the perfect knowledge, Gnosis, 563-l.
Jesus restored to life and given an etherial body by Christos and
  Wisdom, 563-l.
Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, to whom the Wisdom of God had
  united itself, 564-l.
Jesus takes from Ialdaboth the Souls of Light, 564-u.
Jewel of the Kabalistic pantacle commands the spirits of the elements,
  787-u.
Jewels of the Order, six in number, movable and immovable, 16-u.
Jewish intimate relations with the Oriental doctrines, 255-m.
Jewish Scriptures allegories concealing profound meanings, 250-l.
Jewish Teachers of Alexandria; writings of, 253-u.
Jews borrowed the idea of God in the form of fire from the Persians,
  424-m.
Jews confounded Satan with Ahriman and the Dragon, 258-u.
Jews considered the True Name of God lost and its pronunciation
  a mystery, 621-m.
Jews enunciated the policy of exclusion, but yielded to the Greeks,
  247-l.
Jews familiar with the doctrine of Zoroaster, 256-l.
Jews fixed the New Year in the month Nisan, Vernon Equinox, 466-m.
Jews, great many remained in Babylon, established school, 256-u.
Jews influenced by long residence in Assyria and Persia, 255-m.
Jews lost the Holy Word, the veil of the Temple rent asunder, 840-u.
Jews of Egypt, difference between the Jews of Palestine and the, 260-m.
Jews of Egypt jealous of those of Palestine, 253-u.
Jews of Egypt made doctrines harmonize with the traditions of Greece,
  260-m.
Jews of Palestine imbibed the Oriental doctrines, 260-m.
Jews, reason of Lodges for the exclusion of, 11-m.
Jezirah and Sohar, our knowledge of the Kabalistic doctrines in the
  books of, 266-l.
Jizchak Lorja says all things consist in Binah, 753-l.
Joab strikes Abner under the fifth rib; application, 36-u.
Jod, or Yod, as an initial of Yod, He, is placed in center of a
  triangle, 632-u.
Johannism of the Adepts, the Kabalah of the earlier Gnostics, 818-u.
Johannite Christians claimed to be the only true initiates, 816-l.
Johannite Pontiffs assumed the title Christos, Anointed, Consecrated,
  817-u.
Johannites claimed uninterrupted succession of pontifical powers, 816-u.
John declares concerning the Gnostic doctrines, 559-m.
John gives the key to the allegories of the Evangel, 816-l.
John, Solstices appropriated to the Two Saints, 595-m.
John the Baptist, 261.
John the Baptist adopted by Masonry to avoid the suspicions of Rome,
  818-u.
John the Baptist; parents of; teachings of, 260-l.
John the Baptist preached in the desert near where the Essenes lived,
  201-u.
John the Baptist, religious systems approximating each other in the
  time of, 247-m.
John the Baptist, religious thought at the time of, 259-m.
John the Baptist taught some creed older than Christianity, 261-l.
John's declaration concerning Christ, the Word, 559-m.
Joseph and Mary, parents of Jesus, to whom Wisdom had united itself,
  564-l.
Joseph initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries, 368-m.
Joseph interpreted Pharaoh's dream of the seven ears of corn, 729-u.
Josephus describes the vestments of the High Priest, etc, 409-u.
Journalism, slander and calumny of modern, 334-m.
Journalistic spying is dishonorable, 336-l.
Judah has Leo for a device whose grip after others failed raised Khurum,
  461-u.
Judas Iscariot, "Brother," playing the part of, 36-u.
Judge, a member of the 31st Degree alluded to as a, 825-l.
Judge cautiously and charitably, 132-u.
Judge's duties are to hear patiently, weigh deliberately, decide
  impartially, 825-m.
Judgment hereafter as you judge here below, 825-m.
Judgment of God infallible, because all things and motives are known,
  825-l.
Judgment of God seen in the Indian plague, 812-m.
Judgment of the world by Vishnu, Osiris, Sosiosch, 623.
Judgment on the acts, faults or crimes of others, 130-135.
Judgment proceeded from the Mother towards whom the Father did
  not turn, 793-u.
Judgments too rigorous prevent the process of creation from being
  carried on, 798-u.
Julian an Illuminatus and initiate of the first order, 731-l.
Julian believed in one God and the Trinity; was no Pagan, but a Gnostic,
  731-l.
Julian, Emperor, discovery during the rebuilding of the Temple by, 280-m.
Julian gives reasons why the Mysteries were celebrated in the Autumn,
  491-u.
Julian; why Mysteries were celebrated at the Equinox, opinion of, 404-l.
Junior Warden's column represents Tephareth, Beauty, 800-u.
Juno holds in her right hand the head of a serpent, 499-l.
Jupiter Ammon represents the Sun in Aries, 452-l.
Jupiter, meaning and emblem of, 202-m.
Jupiter represents Justice, 727-l.
Jupiter, the name of the third gate of the ladder, material, brass, 414-u.
Jurors, attitude and duty of, 126-m.
Juror, position to be taken by a Masonic, 155-u.
Just things are beautiful; everything beautiful ought to be just, 845-u.
Just thoughts have on their side Power, Wisdom and Justice of God, 838-m.
Justice a universal human debt, a universal human claim, 833-m.
Justice and equity characteristics of a Prince of Jerusalem, 241-l.
Justice and Love in equilibrium in Deity, 769-l.
Justice and Mercy in equilibrium give Infinite Equity or Harmony, 859-u.
Justice as between man and man is that which it is right to do, 831-m.
Justice as the law paramount; all affairs must be subject to, 830-u.
Justice divorced from sympathy is selfish indifference, 70-71-l.
Justice has a law as universal as that of attraction, 829-u.
Justice, ideal and absolute, may be affected for the greater good
  of the greatest number, 836-l.
Justice indispensable to nations, 72-l.
Justice instinctively understood better than it can be depicted, 835-l.
Justice is the Angel of God flying from East to West, 838-u.
Justice is the constitution or fundamental law of the moral Universe,
  829-l.
Justice is the object of the conscience, 833-u.
Justice keeps just relations between men, 833-u.
Justice, Masonry seeks to enforce the laws of, 127-m.
Justice may require self sacrifice, 833-l.
Justice not a consequence; there is no principle above it, 723-u.
Justice not departed from though an ideal rule of justice may be, 836-m.
Justice of a thing decides whether or not God wills it, 847-u.
Justice of God alone reigning the creation of man would have been
  impossible, 846-u.
Justice of God and the law of merit and demerit the foundations
  of human faith, 706-u.
Justice of God, in human affairs, must work by human hands, 838-m.
Justice of God not to be impeached because we do not understand, 829-m.
Justice of God not to be measured by our standard of justice, 829-m.
Justice, Power and Wisdom of God are on the side of every just thought,
  838-m.
Justice, the opposite of envy, represented by Jupiter, 727-l.
Justice the rule of right, a rule of conduct for man in his moral
  relations, 830-u.
Justice, the well informed Mason is a votary of, 156-u.
Justice; to human nature, and a part of it, belongs a sense of, 833-u.
Justice to oneself is fidelity to our faculties and trust in their
  convictions, 837-l.
Justice toward men is a life in obedience to our faculties and their
  convictions, 837-l.
Justice, uncertainty of human, 131-m.
Justice, which is God, 847-l.
Justice will not fail, though wickedness seems strong, 838-u.
Justin Martyr quotes Pythagoras as declaring "God is One", 667-u
Juvenal held no office, 47-l.
Juvenal under the Caesars, 48-u.


K

Kabala consecrates the alliance of the Universal Reason and Divine Word,
  744-l.
Kabala contains a doctrine logical, simple, absolute, 745-u.
Kabala contains a source of many doctrines, 741-u.
Kabala establishes by the counterpoises of opposite forces the balance
  of being, 744-l.
Kabala furnished the material for the Roman de la Rose, 733-u.
Kabala gives to Masonry secrets and symbols, 744-n.
Kabala struggles hard to understand and explain process of creation,
  758-n.
Kabalah, an entire, perfect, unique Theology in the Secret Traditions
  of the, 843-l.
Kabalah; Creation effected by the omnific letter of the, 14-u.
Kabalah designates Leniency as Light and Whiteness, 769-u.
Kabalah, doctrines of Persians, Gnostics, and in the Zend Avesta,
  similar to the, 266-l.
Kabalah, doctrines of the, 267-269.
Kabalah ignored by the scholastic theology of Aristotle and Lombard,
  847-u.
Kabalah in active realization, the Magic of Works, is Hermeticism, 840-l.
Kabalah is the primitive tradition and rests on a dogma of Magism, 759-l.
Kabalah minus the principle of the Hierarch forms Swedenborgianism,
  823-m.
Kabalah, origin and development of the Holy (See also Cabala), 97-m.
Kabalah, representation of the mysterious pantacles of the, 104-m.
Kabalah states, in reference to the Justice and Mercy or Benignity
  of God--, 846-u.
Kabalah, study of, aided by the Tetractys, 88-m.
Kabalah, symbolism of lights according to the, 202-l.
Kabalah taught the unity of God and embodied a pure philosophy, 625-l.
Kalabah teaches the emanation of all from Infinite Light, 266-l.
Kabalah, the Ancient of Days existed before everything in the, 266-l.
Kabalah, the Hebrew traditional philosophy, 552-u.
Kabalah the heritage of Israel and the secret of its priests, 839-l.
Kabalah the key of the occult sciences and gave birth to the Gnostics,
  626-u.
Kabalah, the primary tradition of the single revelation, 841-l.
Kabalah, the Supreme Being is the "Unknown Father" in the, 266-l.
Kabalah, visions of Ezekiel veiled by enigmatic dogmas of the, 321-l.
Kabalist doctrines known to the Templars, 815-m.
Kabalist is a man who has learned the Sacredotal and Royal Art, 627-u.
Kabalist pantacle, the Cross of the East, made by the plates of the.
  Templar trowel, 816-m.
Kabalistic alphabet in the Tarot indicates the order to be followed,
  777-l
Kabalistic and Hermetic Rose Croix, 785-l.
Kabalistic book of the Apocalypse closed by seven seals, 727-l.
Kabalistic books furnished the doctrines of the Hermetic Philosophers,
  772-l.
Kabalistic Commentaries contain the meaning of the Rose Symbol, 821-l.
Kabalistic doctrine based on Deity without limitation or conformation,
  765-l.
Kabalistic doctrine concealed under its emblems in the Apocalypse, 727-l.
Kabalistic Doctrine contained in the Sepher Yetsairah, Sohar, Talmud,
  841-l.
Kabalistic doctrine, like Masonry, tends toward spiritual perfection,
  625-l
Kabalistic doctrine lost by the Pharisees at the advent of Christ, 727-l.
Kabalistic Doctrine, the dogma of the Magi and Hermes, 841-l.
Kabalistic doctrine the religion of the Sage and Savant, 625-l.
Kabalistic doctrines of emanations, the origin of the Christian Trinity,
  552-u.
Kabalistic doctrines; sources of our knowledge of the, 266-l.
Kabalistic four Worlds alluded to in the four elements of the Ritual,
  784-m.
Kabalistic Gnosticism: in the chiefs of the Templars was vested
  the Apostolate of, 817-m.
Kabalistic idea of the Infinite Deity and His emanations, 552-u.
Kabalistic ideas concerning the Sephiroth, 765-u.
Kabalistic interpretation of the Seven Sephiroth is Atik Yomin, 727-m.
Kabalistic number four furnished the mysteries of the Tetragram
  of the Hebrews, 732-u.
Kabalistic process of creation, 766-769
Kabalistic secrets contained in the ternarys of the Evangelic Symbols,
  730-l.
Kabalistic significance of Yod, type of the human Tetragram, 771-m.
Kabalistic statement in regard to the Infinite Light, 742-u.
Kabalistic "Taro" corresponds to the Hebrew Tetragram, 732-m.
Kabalistic theory of the four worlds, Emanation, Creation, Formation,
  Fabrication, 768-l.
Kabalistic triangle. Necessity, Liberty, Reason, 738-u.
Kabalists consider God as the Intelligent, Animating, Living, Infinite,
  97-l.
Kabalists have chiefly studied the questions of the Nature of Deity
  and the beginning of the Universe, 738-l.
Kabalists' opinion concerning Souls is Platonism and came from the
  Chaldeans, 440-l.
Kabalists regarded Deity as the Primordial Ether-Ocean from which
  light flows, 739-l.
Kabalists wrote the "unspeakable word, Ihuh," translated by Ararita,
  728-u.
Karobim on the Propitiatory was misunderstood, 818-l.
Kether Ailah synonymous with the Supreme Crown; Cause of Causes, 751-l.
Kether, Corona, existent in the Corona of the World of Emanation, 758-u.
Kether, Crown, has no configuration nor can there be any cognizance
  of it, 753-u.
Kether denoted by Yod, according to the Pneumatica Kabalistica, 798-m.
Kether is the Will of Deity, or Deity as Will, 758-m.
Kether, Kabalistic meaning of, 202-l.
Kether, the cranium of Adam Kadmon, 757-l.
Kether, the Crown, is treated of as a person composed of the ten
  numerations, 799-m.
Kether, the Crown, the Divine Will or Potency, the first Sephiroth, 552-u.
Kether, the will, remains in Macroprosopos, the first Universal, 793-l.
Kether was the aggregate of the ten Sephiroth, 755-u.
Kether's sphere opened and thereout proceeded Hakemah, 756-m.
Key of the Holy Books is the Sohar which opens all the depths and
  lights, 843-l.
Key to the pantacles of the Apocalypse are three, four, seven, twelve,
  728-u.
Khairum, or Khur-um, misrendered into Hiram, 816-m.
Khaled, "The sword of God," at the battle of Damascus, exhorts
  soldiers, 53-m.
Khur, correspondence to Egyptian Har, 78-m.
Khur from the Zend word, Huare, the Sun, 602-u.
Khur-om Abi, meaning of, 81-m.
Khur-om, personification of Light and the Sun, Saviour, 79-l.
Khur-om, Phoenician artificer, meaning of the name of, 81-u.
Khur-om, similarity in the Mysteries to the death of the Master, 405-m.
Khurum assailed at the three gates by Capricornus, Aquarius, Pices, 448-u.
Khurum assaulted at the East, West and South Gates, 488-u.
Khurum, improperly called Hiram, is Khur-om, 79-l.
Khur-um, King of Tsur, first performed annual ceremony, 25th Dec, 78-l.
Khurum laid several days in the grave and was raised by the powerful
  attraction of Leo, 488-m.
Khurum legend connected with more ancient ones; variants of them, 435-m.
Khurum, name of Evil God, Bal, found in name of each murderer of, 80-u.
Khurum obtained true ideas of Deity in the Mysteries, 208-m.
Khurum, or Khairum, derivation and meaning of, 78-u.
Khurum raised by the Lion's grip after that of Aquarius and Cancer
  had failed, 461-u.
Khurum represents the Sun killed by the three Winter Signs, 448-u.
Khurum, The Master, received no wages not his due, 114-u.
Khurum, the Master, the symbol of human freedom, 211-u.
Khurum, the Tyrian artist of the columns Jachin and Boaz, 9-m.
Khurum's assassins, origin of names, relation to Stars, 488-u.
Khurum's body searched for by the other nine signs of the Zodiac, 448-u.
Kingdom of Christ, which, though not of this world, would govern
  all its grandeurs, 815-m.
Kings: not successively, but altogether, Binah produced the seven, 796-l.
Kings; shattered into fragments were the first six, 796-l.
Kings of the World are those knowing the incontestable verity, 842-m.
Kings, when they died, had no root in Adam Kadmon, nor was
  Wisdom their root, 798-u.
Kneph or Agathodaemon, the Good Spirit, represented by Osiris, 587-l.
Kneph, the Serpent God of the Egyptians, 495-u.
Knight Commander of the Temple, first Chivalric Degree, 578-u.
Knight Commander of the Temple, the 27th Degree, 578-u.
Knight Kadosh Degree, the 30th, 814.
Knight must be ardent in the practice of the virtues he has professed,
  807-l.
Knight of the Brazen Serpent, the 25th Degree, 435.
Knight of the Brazen Serpent, the 25th Degree, explains symbols, 435-m.
Knight of the East and West, 17th Degree, philosophical, 246-l.
Knight of the East or of the Sword, 15th Degree, lessons of, 237-u.
Knight of the Royal Axe, Prince of Libanus, the 22nd Degree, 340-u.
Knight of the Sun, or Prince Adept, the 28th Degree, 581.
Knight Templarism originated in the East in 1118, 815-l.
Knight worthy of being called so if true to vows and possessing
  Virtue, Truth, Honor, 808-u.
Knighthood's crosses are symbols of the nine qualities of a Knight
  of St. Andrew, 801-l.
Knightly attributes and qualities found in men in those days, 805-u.
Knightly character requires mercy, clemency, a forgiving temper, 813-l.
Knightly plumage, dress, gaudy habiliments incompatible with Order,
  807-m.
Knightly professions and duties, 808-m.
Knightly qualities of Generosity, Clemency, Charity, are more essential,
  803-u.
Knightly qualities of Humility, Patience, Self-denial, essential
  qualities, 801-l.
Knightly qualities of Virtue, Truth, Honor, are most essential
  qualities, 803-m.
Knightly spirit revived by the 27th Degree, 579-m.
Knights Crusaders, nine in number, consecrated themselves Templars,
  815-l.
Knights incited to imitate the old Knights and Bayard, Sydney,
  S. Louis, 804-l.
Knights incited to look to the ancient days for examples of Virtue,
  Truth, Honor, 804-l.
Knights of St. Andrew vowed to defend the innocent and bring
  the oppressors to justice, 802-l.
Knights of the East and of the East and West successors of Templars,
  816-m.
Knights of the East and West so called because--, 275-m.
Knights of the 15th and 16th Degrees, duties of the, 332-u.
Knight's boast to be consistent with our profession as Masons;
  retain our dignity and--, 804-m.
Knowledge alone not sufficient to fit men to be free, 26-m.
Knowledge convertible into power, 25-l.
Knowledge convertible into power and axioms into rules of utility
  and duty, 711-l.
Knowledge imparted to initiates of Mithraic Mysteries, 425-m.
Knowledge: in the Ancient Symbolism may be rediscovered the
  Mysteries of, 842-l.
Knowledge is Light, the development of the soul, 107-l.
Knowledge is profitable, moral, and will be religious, 713-u.
Knowledge of Deity and Soul because we feel their existence, 674-u.
Knowledge of God's existence through the Power communicated to
  man by the Word, 598.
Knowledge of good and evil commenced, 630-m.
Knowledge of Life limited to its developments, 572-m.
Knowledge, Masonic, little use unless it adds to our Wisdom and Charity,
  26-u.
Knowledge of natural things through our senses, 738-l.
Knowledge of the Absolute itself possible only through his
  manifestations, 738-l.
Knowledge of the effects of things, the attributes, possible, 570-571-572.
Knowledge of the essence of things impossible, 570-571-572.
Knowledge of Truth and of the Nature of the Gods the most precious gift,
  521-l.
Knowledge of the value of many things comes when we lose them, 190-u.
Knowledge, the forerunner of liberty and toleration, 171-m.
Kosmos, a word signifying Beauty and Order; Universe, 87-l.
Krishna, called Heri, Shepherd and Saviour, 81-l.
Krishna, Hindu Sun God, 78-u.
Kronos and Ouranos were above Zeus, 597-l.

L

L, P, D on Cagliostro's seal were the initials of "Tread under
  foot the Lilies", 823-m.
Labor a blessing, not a curse, 691-u.
Labor has produced all that is glorious in the world, 346-m.
Labor is a more beneficent ministration than man admits, 344-m.
Labor is Heaven's great ordinance for human improvement, 343-l.
Labor is man's great function, distinction, privilege, 344-l.
Labor is noble and ennobling, not a disgrace nor a misfortune, 242-m.
Labor necessary to develop the energies, 243-u.
Labor not a curse or a doom, but a blessing, 342-l.
Labor, the lessons of the 22d Degree inculcate respect for, 340-u.
Labor, three kinds of, manual, in arms, intellectual, 331-u.
Labor, wide as Earth, has its summit in Heaven, 342-l.
Labor yet to be the King of Earth is the noblest emblem of God, 341-m.
Laborers alone survive in the solitudes of Time, 343-u.
Laboring man, condition of the, 179.
Labors of Hercules depict the varying fortunes of the Solar Power, 591-l.
Labors of Hercules, Peter the Great, Cromwell, Napoleon, 341-l.
Labyrinth built in honor of the Sun, its twelve palaces consecrated
  to--, 459-l.
Lactantius believed soul existed before the body, 440-m.
Lactantius ridiculed the earth's revolution around the Sun, 843-u.
Ladder, Faith, Hope, Charity, the three principal rounds of the, 10-u.
Ladder in Jacob's dream; translation of the word, 234-u.
Ladder, nine rounds, 10-u.
Ladder of seven steps a symbol of the passage of souls through Stars,
  414-u.
Ladder of the Mithraic Initiations, with its seven steps, a symbol, 851-l.
Ladder reached from Heaven to Earth, each step had a gate, 414-u.
Ladder, seven rounds; symbolism, 10-u.
Ladder, symbolism of Mithraic, 233-l.
Ladder, theological, which Jacob saw, 10-u.
Lamaism teaches final judgment before Eslik Khan and punishment, 624-u.
Lamb, and two Knights on one horse taught humility and self-denial, 802-l.
Lamb eaten by Israelites at Vernal Equinox, 466-m.
Lamb or Ram adored when he opened the Equinox, 448-m.
Lamb of Vernal Equinox marks defeat of Serpent, 407-m.
Lamb sacrificed by initiates of Heliopolis and its flesh eaten, 431-l.
Lamb used instead of Ram by Persians, 465-m.
Landseer's theory concerning the legend of Osiris, 483-487.
Language fell into confusion after man's connection with the
  Creator ceased, 600-u.
Language inadequate to express idea of Deity, hence personification,
  672-l.
Language inadequate to express the origination of matter from spirit,
  673-m.
Language not adequate to express our ideas, 569-u.
Latitude and Longitude of Egyptian cities, 442-u.
Laurel wreaths for the Greek and Romans who fought for the
  love of Liberty, 157-m.
Law as applied to the Universe means--, 695-m.
Law displacing Chance and Necessity permits man to be morally free,
  695-m.
Law Eternal by which all the operations of Nature proceed without clash,
  826-m.
Law, fundamental, the keystone of the Temple of Liberty, 211-u.
Law, obedience to, 110--.
Law of attraction and radiation, the principle of Creation and cause
  of Life, 843-u.
Law of Attraction has no exceptions; attraction is the common bond,
  828-m.
Law of God a part of the law of Harmony dictated by Infinite Wisdom,
  240-u.
Law of God relating to our conduct, 240-u.
Law of justice claimed to be our notions of right adopted by God, 830-u.
Law of matter, law of mind, law of morals, the mode in which those
  forces act, 827-l.
Law of matter, learned only by experience, is imperative, 828-u.
Law of natural phenomena expressed in the Kabala by the number four,
  732-u.
Law of natural phenomena furnished the Hebrews with the mysteries
  of the Tetragram, 732-u.
Law or principle of chemical attraction; destruction would follow
  the repeal of the, 846-m.
Law of Retribution, 216-217.
Law of sympathy and harmony inflexible as the law of gravitation, 244-u.
Law of the Divine an analogical inference of human law, 694-m.
Law perceived, but not understood, becomes Necessity, 694-m.
Law superior over capricious interference, 696-m.
Law, that mind gives character to all is one impartial, 192-m.
Law unacknowledged goes under the name of Chance, 694-m.
Law unknown is not obligatory, 695-m.
Laws and Constitution in a free government above incapables, 49-l.
Laws and principles as a spiritual being, 197-m.
Laws governing the Universe by necessity, 831-l.
Laws governing the Universe changed by prayer questionable, 684-l.
Laws of God obligatory on us because they express His infinite
  Wisdom, 8-u.
Laws of God produce wrong and injustice according to our standards, 830-l.
Laws of movement and life known to the priests of Egypt, 842-l.
Laws of nature not known to ancients to be immutable, 447-m.
Law of natural phenomena represented by a cube, 732-u.
Laws of our own nature unchangeable, 239-l.
Laws of Solon, the best his countrymen were capable of receiving, 37-u.
Laws, the Mason should not attempt to change God's inflexible, 338-l.
Laws, the Universe preserved by eternal, 577-u.
Laws which seem harsh may be beneficial if looked on from a
  broader view, 695-l.
Le Verrier, painstaking methods of, 174-m.
Leaders of men, not the acutest thinkers, 55-l.
Legislators should be thinkers, not gabblers, 55-m.
Legend of Hiram Abif but a variant of an universal one, 435-m.
Legend of the Master, Khurom, differently interpreted, 267-m.
Legend of the Mysteries practically the same in all countries, 377-u.
Legends of the Degrees considered as allegories, not taught as truths,
  329-m.
Legislators whose laws we obey now long dead, 313-u.
Leniency designated as Light and Whiteness, the Substance of Deity
  symbolized, 769-u.
Leniency of the Kabalah coincides with Paul's ideas as to Law
  and Grace, 769-u.
Leniency the essence of the Stability of Creation and part of the
  nature of Deity, 769-u.
Leo named because the Lion came to the Nile athirst, 446-m.
Leo the device of Judah by whose grip Khurum was raised, 461-u.
Leo the first sign into which the Sun passed below the Summer
  Solstice, 455-m.
Leo the Third, Kabalistic pantacle contained in the Enchiridion of,
  104-m.
Leslie, John, Bishop of Ross, tells of those who saw St. Andrew's
  Cross, 801-l.
Lesser Mysteries a preparation for the Greater, 432-u.
Lessons learned in the school of life, 182-l.
Letter He, resolved into Daleth and Vau, 794-l.
Letters and names constitute the worlds, 749-m.
Letters fashioned from points by the Infinite at Creation, 749-m.
Letters (the Sephiroth) changed from the spherical form into the
  form of a person, 757-m.
Letters Yod, He, Vav-He, dwelt in the Shekinah, 750-u.
Level inverted marked on the breast of the Indian initiate, 428-m.
Levy and Simeon had for device the two fishes of Pisces, 462-u.
Liberality teaches that possibly a contrary opinion may be true, 160-m.
Liberties of the people guaranteed by--, 211-m.
Liberty a curse to the ignorant and brutal, 26-m.
Liberty and Necessity apparently antagonistic, 848-m.
Liberty and Necessity, the columns of the Universe, symbolized
  by the Temple, 848-m.
Liberty and Necessity, the essence of Deity, counterbalanced,
  produce equilibrium, 778-l.
Liberty, Angels commissioned to aid man to exercise his, 252-m.
Liberty can not exist without perfect equilibrium, 736-l.
Liberty, chief foes of human, 148-m.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, foundations of Free Government, 860-u.
Liberty, imagined, may be the worst of slavery, when--, 177-m.
Liberty of the people must not be entrusted to any one man, 211-u.
Liberty of Thought proclaimed by Christ, 309-u.
Liberty, or the free will of God's creatures, 848-m.
Liberty, the basis of our existence, we assign to God as His nature,
  704-u..
Liberty, the keystone of the Arch of the Temple of, is--, 211-u.
Liberty; the sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called, 43-l.
Liberty, the wise Mason is a votary of, 156-u.
Liberty with obedience to Law an immutable foundation of Free
  Government, 860-u.
Libra named because of the balance of the length of day and night, 446-u.
Life, a social state ordained by God, 197-l.
Life, an imploring call for revelation from visible, 191-l.
Life analogous to fire and heat, 664-l.
Life and Light abiding in the First Born or Creative Agency, 267-m.
Life and Light considered by the Persians as one, 572-m.
Life and Light in the Creator or Demiourgos, 575-u.
Life and movement result from a continual conflict of Forces or
  Impulses, 846-u.
Life, as air and fire, was associated with the material machinery, 675-m.
Life belongs to nature as much as matter does, 664-l.
Life comes from Death; reconstruction out of dissolution, 768-u.
Life given for moral and spiritual training, 182-u.
Life, Heat, Light, centers of gravitation, 843-u.
Life in its relationships is like--, 198-m.
Life is a battle, to fight which well is the purpose of man's existence,
  853-l.
Life is a blessing, 142-l.
Life is a school; comparison to a school, 182-u.
Life is real and full of duties to be performed, 231-m.
Life is the beginning of immortality, 231-m.
Life, Light, Soul, from the inherent Light of the Emanative principle,
  755-l.
Life made worthy and glorious by--, 143-l.
Life, more than life are the duties of, 151-l.
Life of a community depends on--, 197-l.
Life of Humanity is the Word, the Light, 849-l.
Life of the embryo maintained by the activity of the mother's life,
  668-l.
Life of the Universe and Soul alike the result of Harmony and movement,
  859-l.
Life of things from the vital fire that blazes in the Sun, 664-l..
Life perpetually caused by the double law of fixedness and movement,
  843-u.
Life principle familiar to the ancients and Alchemists, 734-l.
Life principle is the universal agent, 734-l.
Life-principle of the world a universal agent, two natures, a double
  current, 734-l.
Life principle penetrates everything; a ray detached from the Sun, 734-l.
Life Principle that moves the world, compared to that which moves Man,
  667-l.
Life proceeding from the hidden Deity, 555-m.
Life represented by a simple Tau; eternal life when circle was added,
  505-u.
Life rises out of the grave; the soul can not be held by the fettering
  flesh, 714-m.
Life rising out of death an important doctrine of the Mysteries, 395-m.
Life, teachings of the dread realities of, 199-l.
Life, the blessings of life proceed often from the trials of, 307-l.
Life, the creation of God, 143-l.
Life well regulated results from the equilibrium between our appetites
  and Moral Sense, 860-l.
Life what we make it by character and adaptation, 193.
Life's length measured by what we have done for others,158-l.
Light, a name applied to Ainsoph, because unable to express it by
  any other, 740-m.
Light a pure emblem of and first emanation from the Etenal God, 617-l.
Light a symbol of Hope to the candidate, 639-m.
Light, Ahriman second born of the Primitive, 257-m.
Light, all things caused by an emanation of a ray of, 286-u.
Light an example of the emanation doctrine of the Gnostics, 248-l.
Light, ancient symbols of, meaning, 77-m.
Light and Darkness a marked feature of the Eleusinian Mysteries, 403-m.
Light and Darkness, a prominent feature in the Mysteries, 402-l.
Light and Darkness are the world's eternal ways, 581-m.
Light and Darkness contesting for possession of the lunar disk, 468-l.
Light and Darkness proceed from the idea of the Active and Passive,
  659-l.
Light and Darkness, the basis of Ancient Theology according to Plutarch,
  402-l.
Light and Fire; references to, 285-l.
Light and Life emanations from Deity, the archetype of light, 572-m.
Light and Whiteness a designation of Leniency, 769-u.
Light as applied to Deity is the Substance from which Light flows, 740-m.
Light became the first Divinity of the ancients, 443-l.
Light coexistent with God; questions concerning, 739-l.
Light comes from the etherial substances that compose the active
  cause, 659-l.
Light defined in the book, Omschim, or Introduction to the Kabala, 740-u.
Light, Fire, Flame, the Aor of the Deity, manifested in flame, out
  of the fire, 740-l.
Light, Pire, Flame, the sons of the Phoenician Kronos, 740-l.
Light, Pire, Flame, the Trinity of the Chaldean oracles, 740-l.
Light, Fire not a pure, 251-u.
Light for which all Masonic journeys are a search, 252-l.
Light forthshone from Deity not severed or diverse from Him, 748-m.
Light from above constituted three brains for Microprosopos when
  the letter He was born, 794-l.
Light from the shattered vessels reascended to Binah then flowed
  down, 797-u.
Light has no characteristics of matter, 744-u.
Light, Human but a reflection of a ray of the Divine Light, 246-l.
Light in excess, being veiled, may be received by those below, 795-l.
Light inclosed in the seeds of species has its home in Universal
  Spirit, 783-m.
Light initiates in Bacchian Mysteries cry Hail new-born, 522-u.
Light is the creative power of Deity, 267-l.
Light is the equilibrium of Shadow and Lucidity, 845-u.
Light is the Father and Mother of all, 267-u.
Light, modern and ancient conception of, 76-l.
Light not Spirit, but the instrument of the Spirit, 98-l.
Light not the body of the Protoplastes, but first physical
  manifestation, 98-l.
Light of Ainsoph inheres in the Vessel as their Life, Light, Soul, 755-l.
Light of Fire the symbol of the Divine Essence, 742-l.
Light of the Countenance of God, the inmost Covering, Aur Penial, 749-m.
Light of the Lodge a symbol of--, 240-l.
Light of the Substance and that of the Garment in the Primal Ether,
  750-m.
Light of the Substance of the Infinite a Kabalistic expression, 743-l.
Light of the Sun at midnight revealed to the Initiate, 389-m.
Light of the Vessels is the Soul of the vessel and is active in them,
  755-m.
Light of the vestige of garment different from that of the Substance,
  750-m.
Light of the vestige of the Garment termed a point, Yod, a point in
 the center of Light, 750-m.
Light (or knowledge) of God's existence came from the Power communicated
  to man by the Word, 598-u.
Light, Ormuzd existed in the beginning in the primitive, 256-l.
Light, perception of, is the Dawn of the Eternal Life, in Being, 100-l.
Light, period of termination of the struggle between Darkness and, 257-l.
Light Principle did its work, but the Evil Principle caused Him to
  be crucified, 567-m.
Light-principle one of the ancient conceptions of Deity, 739-m.
Light Principle put on the appearance of a human body, 567-m.
Light Principle suffered in appearance only, 567-m.
Light Principle took the name of Christ in the Messiah, 567-m.
Light referred to in the Kabalah, 286-u.
Light represented Ormuzd or Ahura Mazda, 612-u.
Light seems an emanation from the Creator unfolding all things, 660-u.
Light Substance in the Deity, 741-l.
Light, symbol of truth and knowledge, 76-m.
Light, symbolism of being brought to, 252-l.
Light synonymous with Good, 660-m.
Light that is the visible manifestation of God active throughout the
  Universe, 845-m.
Light, the cause and principle of all that exists is a Divine Ray of,
  267-u.
Light the creature of the Unseen God who taught the True religion, 582-u.
Light, the final revelation in the Eleusinean Mysteries was, 394-l.
Light, the first divinity worshipped because it made known the
  Universe, 660-u.
Light, the head of the universal organism, called Pooroosha, 673-u.
Light the Life of the Universe, 575-u.
Light, the object of Masonic search, brings us to the Kabala, 741-u.
Light the principle of the real existence of primitive men, 443-m.
Light the reason of being of the Shadow, 307-l.
Light the symbol of most of the Indian and Persian Deities, 601-l.
Light, to the Ancients, was the cause of life; flowed from God, 13-u.
Light towards which all Masons travel, 256-l.
Light, visible, is attended by a shadow proportional to that light,
  847-l.
Light wanted by the candidate wandering in darkness, 361-u.
Light was divine to the Chaldeans and Phoenicians, 582-u.
Light was the life of men, said St. John, 743-l.
Light was the Life of the Universe, the substance of God and the Soul,
  443-l.
Light will return into the Plenitude when redemption is accomplished,
  564-u.
Light worshipped by Sabaeans, 13-u.
Lighting and lights of Temples, meaning and reference, 411-u.
Lights, Great, 11-m.
Lights, Lesser, 12-u.
Lights not seen in the North of a Lodge room because--, 592-u.
Lights represent Sun, Moon and Mercury, 411-u.
Lights, symbols in 12th Degree of the three great, 202-l.
Lights: the initiate became an Epopt when admitted to the see the
  Divine, 521-l.
Lights, the three great, represent in the lodge--, 210-u.
Lily, a Masonic medal had upon it a sword cutting off the stalk of a,
  823-m.
Limitation modified by grace, which relaxes it, 764-l.
Line being but the extension of a point, an emblem of Unity, 487-u.
Line, duality or evil represented by the broken or divided, 487-u.
Line, the first principle of Geometry is the straight line, 487-u.
Lingham revered in Indian Temples; an emblem of the sexes, 656-u.
Lingham, the union of Active and Passive principles, 401-l.
Lion holding key in his mouth represents--, 210-m.
Lion of the House of Judah furnishes the strong grip, 641-u.
Lion, the symbol of Athom-Re, God of Upper Egypt, 254-l.
Lions of different colors a symbol of metals in ebullition, 774-m.
Lips of a King impressed by a Tau cross at initiation, 505-u.
Literal reading of Oriental writings leads into gross errors, 818-m.
Live, not all of life to, 191-l.
Lodge, a symbolic Temple modeled from the Universe, 7-u.
Lodge ceiling, border, brazen sea, symbolism of, 209-m.
Lodge, Christian, must have Christian bible, 11-m.
Lodge, definition of a, 7-m.
Lodge, dimensions of a, 9-l.
Lodge, East of American and English, 15-m.
Lodge, Hebrew letter Yod in triangle in the East of a; symbolism, 15-m.
Lodge, Hebrew, must have Pentateuch, 11-m.
Lodge inaugurated by Rousseau became the revolutionary center, 823-l.
Lodge, Mohammedan, must have Koran, 11-m.
Lodge represents the Universe, 209-l.
Lodge supported by three great columns, 7-l.
Lodge supported by Wisdom, Strength and Beauty, 7-l.
Lodge, symbolism of lights of the, 209-l.
Lodge, symbolism of the triangle in the, 209-l.
Lodges extend to Heaven from practice of having Temples without roofs,
  366-l.
Logic of Cicero proving the divinity of the Stars, 670-l.
Logos, a name for the Wisdom of the Kabalah, 267-l.
Logos dwells in God; is the vehicle by which God acts, 251-u.
Logos may be compared to the speech of man, 251-u.
Logos personified by Simon Magus and Gnostics, 323-m.
Logos produced by the words of the Supreme Deity, 560-m.
Logos, the material world created by the, 251-l.
Logos; the powers and attributes of God act through the, 251-l.
Logos, the word; Mysteries taught incarnation, death, etc., of, 415-u.
Logos, the Word through which God acts upon the Universe, 552-l.
Logos, the World of ideas; Chief of Intelligence; Adam Kadmon, 251-m.
Long Parliament, in periods of convulsion, 30-l.
Lord, Rev. W.W., writes concerning present-day materialism, 808-813.
Lorja, Jitz-chak, author of the Treatise De Revolutionibus Animarum,
  772-l.
Lorris, Guillaume de, did not complete the Roman de Rose, 822-l.
Lost meaning of the name of Deity the True Word of a Mason, 697-m.
Loss of the meaning of the True Word considered loss of the Word itself,
  701-l.
Louis the Fifteenth, condition of society under, 27-m.
Louis the Fifteenth forbade Masonic Lodges in 1737, 50-m.
Love, a mythologic image of the grand secret and the grand agent, 732-m.
Love a power between the human and the divine, 692-m.
Love and Mercy impregnating Rigor and Severity by Benignity, 796-u.
Love and Rigor must temper each other to produce creation, 798-l.
Love at the bottom of Christianity, 730-l.
Love became the universal parent when--, 684-u.
Love carries to the gods the prayers of men and brings down the gifts,
  692-m.
Love, Christ the expounder of the new Law of, 309-m.
Love emerging from the Bacchic egg, with Night, organizes Chaos, 663-l.
Love, interest in the virtue of those we, 198-m.
Love is the attribute of Compassion or Mercy, 796-l.
Love of God according to Plato and Christianity, 704-l.
Love one another the whole law enunciated by Christianity, 705-u.
Love, perfect, denoted by the Father, male, 795-l.
Love received scanty homage before the birth of philosophy, 691-l.
Love scarcely recognized in the old days of ignorance, 692-u.
Love the best pilot, supporter, saviour of all things, 692-u.
Love, the highest and most beneficent of the Gods, according to Plato,
  682-l.
Love, the physician of the Universe, the first born of Nature, 683-u.
Love the solution of the problems of the contradictions of existence,
  683-l.
Loving better than hating, even by Deity Himself, 859-u.
Loving Kindness is greater than Hope or Faith; the only thing God
  requires, 808-m.
Loving kindness of the Father enfolds and blesses everything, 715-l.
Lowly and uninfluential, importance of the work of the; instances, 41-m.
Loyola referred to, 31-u.
Lucanus, Ocellus, after Pythagoras, opened a school in Italy, 653-l.
Lucanus recognized the eternity of the Universe and the Active and
  Passive, 653-l.
Lucifer, the Evil Force or Devil represented by the false, 102-l.
Lucifer, the Lightbearer, Son of the Morning, Spirit of Darkness, 321-u.
Lukewarmness to be anathematized, 138-m.
Lulle defines mercury, meaning either electricity or astral light, 775-m.
Lulle, Raymond, says to make gold must first have gold, 777-l.
Lulle, Raymond, treats on Hermetic Science, 774-l.
Luther referred to, 31-u.
Luther with his sermons worked great results, 43-u.
Luxury, extravagance, ostentation, the peril of nations and men, 348-m.

M

Macrobius in the Sacred Fables explains theory of the Two Principles,
  404-l.
Macrobious taught that the heavens and spheres were part of the
  Universal Soul, 669-m.
Macrocosmos, the universal organism called Pooroosha, 673-u.
Macroprosopos, Arik Aupin, a person composed of ten Numerations, 799-m.
Macroprosopos is called in the third person, Hua, He, 793-l.
Macroprosopos is the Idea of the Universe when yet Deity was unmanifested
  in the Absolute, 758-m.
Macroprosopos, or Adam Kadmon, constituted with three heads, 758-u.
Macroprosopos, the first prototype or Universal, 793-l.
Magdol, the sacred Babylonian tower, description of, 234-m.
Magi advised by Star of Knowledge when Truth comes into the World, 843-m.
Magi came from the East, guided by a Star, to adore the Saviour, 841-l.
Magi, Daniel the Chief of the College of the, 255-l.
Magi guided to Jerusalem by the Star; the Blazing Star, 842-u.
Magi led to a knowledge of the New Name by a study of the Pentagram,
  842-u.
Magi, many ideas of the Jewish sects were obtained from the, 256-u.
Magi: Mysteries concealed the occult science of the, 839-m.
Magi of Babylon were expounders, astronomers, divines, 256-u.
Magi of the Persians similar to the Druids of Britain, 617-l.
Magi received the title of Kings, and Magism is called the "Royal Art",
  842-u.
Magi saluted Christ in his cradle as hierartic ambassadors, 731-m.
Magian dogma the basis of the Kabalah, or primitive tradition, 769-l.
Magian Mysteries have a religious, philosophical and natural
  signification, 773-u.
Magian traditions symbolized the law of the equilibrium by Columns,
  843-u.
Magic: an Absolute Deity independent of Reason is the Idol of Black,
  737-l.
Magic and occult philosophy of the ancients synonymous, 730-l.
Magic at the base was science, 730-l.
Magic, High, in Egypt, Greece and Rome, 98-l.
Magic, High, styled the "Sacredotal" and the "Royal" Art, 98-l.
Magic is that which it is; it is by itself, like the mathematics, 841-l.
Magic is the exact and absolute science of nature and its laws, 841-l.
Magic is the science of the Ancient Magi, 841-l.
Magic, or Magism, reconciles faith and reason, authority and liberty,
  842-m.
Magic reconciles what are seemingly opposed to each other, 842-m.
Magic unites in one science what of Philosophy and Religion is certain,
  842-m.
Magical agent makes possible the transmutation of metals and the
  universal medicine, 773-l.
Magical Agent of the Hermetics disguised under the name of "Prima
  Materia", 773-l.
Magical ternary which, in human things, corresponds with the Divine
  Triangle, 738-u.
Magism known as the Holy Empire, Realm, or Sanctum Regnum, 842-u.
Magism, the science of Abraham, Orpheus, Confucius, Zoroaster, Moses,
  839-l.
Magism under a new veil in the Holy Kabalah, 839-l.
Magnet of Paracelsus the chief dependence of the Great Work, 777-m.
Magnum-Opus, the Great Work of the Sages, to find the Absolute, 776-l.
Mahaatma, the Great Soul; One God; Universal Element; Mind, 673-u.
Mahomet adopted the primeval faith and taught the one God idea, 616-l.
Mahomet not recognized as an inspired prophet by the Templars, 818-l.
Mahomet still governs one-fourth of the human race, 313-l.
Mahomet the Second broke a triple-headed serpent of brass at
  Constantinople, 502-u.
Mahometan, in the Orient, more trustworthy than the Christian, 35-l.
Maia, Nature's loveliness, the germ of passion, source of worlds, 683-l.
Maimonides explains the origin of the worship of Stars, 435-l.
Majestic number is Three, denoting the triple divine essence, 628-m.
Majority of men have an ideal justice, juster than the law, 834-l.
Malakoth gives ten Sephiroth to each of the four Worlds, 784-l.
Malakoth is a person, the wife of Microprosopos, 799-l.
Malakoth is female and the matrix out of which all creation is born,
  769-m.
Malakoth is Perpetuity and Continuity without solution, 768-u.
Malakoth, one of the Sephiroth; Rule, Reign, Royalty, Dominion, Power,
  753-m.
Malakoth, Regnum, a separate person behind and in conjunction
  with Microprosopos, 794-l.
Malakoth represents the field wherein are to be sown the seeds of
  the Secret Minerals, 799-u.
Malakoth represents the metallic woman and Morn of the Sages, 799-u.
Malakoth (says the Apparatus) is called Haikal, Temple or Palace, 799-u.
Malakoth unites with her husband, Microprosopos, when face is
  turned to face, 799-l.
Male agents: Heavens and Sun have been regarded as the, 851-m.
Male and Female; all things are constituted, 763-m.
Male and Female are in equilibrium as Hakemah and Binah, 763-m.
Male and Female are the Active and the Passive symbols, 784-l.
Male and Female created he them, 698-l.
Male and Female created He them; in the image of Deity, 849-l.
Male and Female formed; the anterior and posterior adhering to
  one another, 749-l.
Male and Female Force designated by I.H.U.H.; First Born of--, 267-u.
Male and female God created things that they might continue, 800-u.
Male and Female mutually tempering each other are Benignity and
  Severity, 768-l.
Male and Female principles; most profound idea of the, 700-m.
Male and Female was the form of the Universe, 763-m.
Male and female was the person into the form of which the Circles
  were changed, 757-m.
Male and female were the prominent Deities of the Mysteries, 377-u.
Male and Female, within the occult Wisdom the Supreme Crown is
  fashioned, 762-l.
Male, in the Idra Rabla, is right; female is left, 763-u.
Male is Yod, He is female, Vav is both, 763-m.
Male on one side, female on the other; the Supreme Will holding
  the Balance, 769-l.
Male principle of the Alchemists represented by Air and the Earth, 791-l.
Male represented by the perpendicular of a right angle triangle, 789-m.
Male side of Hermetic figure has a Sun; the hand holding a Compass,
  850-m.
Malkarth, symbol of the Sun, 77-m.
Malkarth, Temple of, in the city of Tyre, 9-m.
Malkuth, the female organ of generation of Adam Kadmon, 758-m.
Man, a free agent, responsible and punishable for his sins, 577-u.
Man, a thing to be thankful for is to be a, 140-m.
Man an effect of the world and eternal like it, 654-l.
Man an intelligent and free being, the fifth Truth of Masonry, 534-l.
Man and the World created in the image of Ialdaboth, 563-m.
Man assumes his rank as a moral agent with consciousness of freedom,
  668-m.
Man attains the purposes of his being when his two natures are in
  equilibrium, 861-l.
Man becomes a part of God when disengaged from his senses, 610-u.
Man becomes immortal in the influences that survive him, 312-m.
Man but an animal until God's immaterial spark penetrated his brain,
  582-l.
Man but an intelligent animal if there he nothing Divine in him, 857-l.
Man by taking thought can enlarge his soul, 813-m.
Man called a "macrocosm" because possessing in miniature the qualities
  of the Universe, 667-l.
Man can bend circumstances to the purposes of his nature, 192-l.
Man can not always find work and food, 179.
Man capable of a higher Love which lifts him beyond himself, 692-m.
Man capable of respect and love for others: justice and charity, 703-u.
Man: categorical questions concerning, 649-u.
Man: characteristics of a generous, 121-l.
Man communing with God, his vision eternity, abode infinity, 245-u.
Man compared to the World or Universe; called a "microcosm", 667-l.
Man created by God, Male and Female created he them, 849-l.
Man created for the sake of man, 120-m.
Man creates God in the heaven of human conceptions, 736-u.
Man created in the image of Alhim, Male and Female, 698-l.
Man created pure and received Truth and Light from God, 582-u.
Man dependent on the heavens and the genii that there inhabit, 474-u.
Man descended from the elemental forces or Titans commemorates--, 393-l.
Man disappointed when he realizes he has fallen, 652-l.
Man disputes with and kills his neighbor in matters of opinion, 530-m.
Man distinguished from animals by the use of Thought, 738-m.
Man, effects of generosity in a, 122-u.
Man, evil thoughts and occasions come to the corrupt, 194-m.
Man formed of the dust of the earth by Yehouah, who breathed the
  breath of life into his nostrils, 851-l.
Man, free and subject to obligation, is a moral person with rights,
  725-m.
Man had the Word in the beginning, and the Word was from God, 581-l.
Man has a noble work to perform in himself, 349-m.
Man has fallen; may be raised by following the directions of Wisdom,
  252-u.
Man has natural empire over all institutions, 23-l.
Man has power to commune with God, 199-m.
Man in the 17th Degree, symbolism of, 256-l.
Man is a moral person, one endowed with reason and liberty, 703-u.
Man is both human and divine, the antagonisms of his nature are--, 765-u.
Man is one, though of a double nature, 861-l.
Man is Free because he can modify nature's laws in regard to himself,
  696-m.
Man is by nature cruel, like the tigers, 49-m.
Man lost a knowledge of God, the Absolute Existence, 583-m.
Man made in the image of God and placed in Asia, cradle of the race,
  598-m.
Man makes Deity in his own image, 652-u.
Man makes God in his own image and thinks God created them in His, 736-u.
Man must be a worker; the Earth and Air his laboratory, 344-l.
Man most dogmatizes on the inconceivable, 222-l.
Man most nearly approaches the Divine perfections, 610-u.
Man not a spiritual, but a composite being, 232-u.
Man not a terrestrial plant; his roots are in Heaven, 520-m.
Man not the central point of the Universe, 711-m.
Man, on earth, performs God's work, 736-u.
Man or the animal dying the Universe withdraws its eternal spirit, 666-u.
Man partakes of the Divine nature as well as elementary nature, 667-l.
Man, relative unimportance of; effect on the Soul, 303-m.
Man requires something tangible to exalt his mind to a due conception
  of Deity, 617-l.
Man sees evidences of design and God in Nature, 647-l.
Man should not be angry at animal characteristics in men, 76-u.
Man struggles to place himself in communion with Deity, 652-653.
Man successively under the influence of the Stars, Sun and Moon, 255-m.
Man, the Divine, is the beginning of all creation, 760-m.
Man, the Divine, is the principle of Direct Light, 760-m.
Man, the Divine, supplies all things to all, 760-m.
Man, the Material, is the end and completion of all creation, 760-m.
Man, the Material, is the principle of reflected light, 760-m.
Man, the Material, receives all things from all, 760-m.
Man, the name for Malakoth, Regnum and Microprosopos jointly, 794-l.
Man, the present condition not the same as that of primitive, 252-u.
Man the result of the Creative Thought of God, 582-l.
Man, the unit of Humanity, is a microcosm, 760-m.
Man, though insignificant, seeks to know God and His methods, 530-m.
Man unites the Divine and the Human, 858-m.
Man venerable or formidable but to a small part of his fellow creatures,
  120-u.
Man-Woman, crowned with flames, on a cube, winged, bearded symbol
  of Mercury, 774-m.
Man, worldly, covetous, sensual, must change before being a good Mason,
  122-m.
Man's desire to do something that will live after him, 312-u.
Man's destruction comes not from the Gods, but from himself, 690-l.
Man's domain is corporeal nature, visible on earth, 736-m.
Man's existence in the infinite being of God, 707-m.
Man's faculties change not the Divine nature, 652-m.
Man's life a success when it is a harmony and beautiful, 861-l.
Man's life should be like the Great Harmony of God and the Universe,
  861-l.
Man's material and mortal portion comes from the earth, 851-l.
Man's moral responsibility affected by the question of Evil 684-m.
Man's morality is the instrument of God's justice, 838-m.
Man's normal condition is progress, 691-l.
Man's soul a part of the intelligent Soul of the Universe, therefore
  intelligent, 670-u.
Man's Soul breathed into him by God is immortal as God's Thoughts are,
  577-u.
Man's soul is immortal, but its mode of existence Masonry does
  not settle, 525-u.
Man's soul is man himself, 668-l.
Man's spiritual and immortal portion comes from the Heavens, 851-l.
Man's supreme object, the Good; his law, Virtue, 725-l.
Man's true unhappiness is that he can not get his destiny fulfilled,
  341-u.
Man's union with Deity the aspiration of the religious sentiment, 652-m.
Man's Very Self is his Soul, which is not subject to decay, 852-l.
Man's virtues are God's attributes, 704-u.
Mandaites recognized 365,000 emanations, 568-u.
Manes claimed to be the Parakletos or Comforter, organ of the Deity,
  565-m.
Manes derived his doctrine from Zoroasterism, Christianity, Gnosticism,
  565-m.
Manes' dominant idea was Pantheism from India and China, 565-m.
Manes, founder of the Manicheans, lived among the Persian Magi, 565-m.
Manes, two Principles symbolized by white and black in juxtaposition,
  818-m.
Manifestation is the same as occultation, 795-l.
Manifestation theory of the Gnostics, 555-l.
Manifestations of God as Father, Son, Holy Ghost, how considered, 270-m.
Manifestations of God fill all so-called empty space and void, 845-l.
Manifestations of God received the germ of His creations, 559-l.
Manifestations of Man and the Church were twelve, 560-u.
Manifestations of the Eons were the Word and Life, 560-u.
Manifestations of the numerations potentially in Kether, 756-u.
Manifestations of the Word and Life were Man and the Church, 560-u.
Manifold and particulars evolved from the One General source, 765-m.
Manilius sings of the invisible and potent Soul of Nature, 668-u.
Mankind flowed into India, China, Persia, Arabia, Phoenicia, 598-m.
Mankind held in pledge by the principle of Evil until ransomed, 567-l.
Mantras' idea asserted and developed in the Upanischadas, 672-l.
Marats in period of convulsion, 30-l.
Marcion, the Gnostic, says concerning the Soul--, 287-m.
Marcosians taught that Deity produced by His words the Logos, 560-m.
Marcus, the disciple of Valentinus, spun the idea of a Word into
  subtile details, 56l-m.
Marius in period of convulsion, 30-l.
Mark, in the shape of a fish, used by early Christians as a pledge
  of friendship, 547-l.
Marriage of heaven and earth sung by Virgil and Columella, 658-l.
Marriage of man and woman an image of the union of Nature with herself,
  656-l.
Marriage represented by the number five, which reproduces itself, 634-u.
Mars gives the Soul valor, enterprise, impetuosity, as it passes
  through--, 439-m.
Mars represents Force, 727-l.
Mars the name of the fifth gate of the ladder; material, copper, 414-m.
Mars: the religious Mysteries of the Gauls were called the School of,
  625-u.
"Marseillaise," value of, to revolutionary France, 92-m.
Martin Luther: anti-papal doctrines written previous to, 95-l.
Mary and Joseph, parents of Jesus, to whom the Word had united itself,
  564-l.
Masaniello's fall referred to, 33-m.
Mason a votary of Liberty and Justice, 156-u.
Mason at first entrance assumes new duties, 176-l.
Mason deceived who thinks there is nothing to be done in Masonry, 185-l.
Mason, definition of, 219-l.
Mason, duties of, 219-l.
Mason, duties of, if he wishes to imitate the Master Khurum, 116-m.
Mason entitled to be called a perfect Elu; when--, 228-l.
Mason, good, does good naturally and because he longs to, 163-m.
Mason has not lived in vain, when--, 155-m.
Mason held by his promises to a purer life, to toleration, charity,
  generosity, 726-l.
Mason, honest business dealings of a, 116-118.
Mason, moral courage of a, fostered and encouraged, 154-u.
Mason must be convinced that he has a soul capable of progressive
  development, 855-u.
Mason not only a moralist and philosopher, but a soldier, 578-u.
Mason of nobler mould reaches a reward through pain and work, 229-m.
Mason, precepts to be followed by, 185-m.
Mason required to kneel only in prayer or to receive Knighthood, 326-l.
Mason should assume the title of a "lover of wisdom", 691-l.
Mason should be--, 113-m.
Mason should be humble and modest before God, 338-u.
Mason should be satisfied there is a real God, infinitely wise, 338-l.
Mason should have no alliance with impractical theorists, 338-m.
Mason should live while he lives and enjoy life, 345-l.
Mason should steer away from vain philosophies, 338-u.
Mason should treat his brother who goes astray with charity, 133-m.
Mason, sympathy is the great distinguishing characteristic of a, 176-m.
Mason, that all men shall form one family is the hope of the, 233-u.
Mason: the only good Mason is--, 162-u.
Mason, the true, 27-l.
Mason, the True, is a Philosopher; his aims as such, 325-u.
Mason, thoughtful, looks on fallen beings and offenses as solemn things,
  132-m.
Mason to look beyond calamity to the end that rises bright, 181-m.
Mason, to sow that others may reap is the true office of a, 317-m.
Masonic belief in--, 220-l.
Masonic beliefs, effects of, 195-l.
Masonic Brotherhood made possible by the Royal Secret, 861-l.
Masonic burial, eulogies at, 187-m.
Masonic citizenship creates a new bond, 220-m.
Masonic Creed, Believe, Hope, be Charitable, 531-u.
Masonic culture, to find sublime devotion a part of, 192-u.
Masonic Degrees cheapened, overdone pomp and display due to Anti-Masons,
  814-m.
Masonic doctrine in religious Truths, 576-l.
Masonic doctrine that God is One; that His Thought--, 576-l.
Masonic duties, first of, 137-u.
Masonic idea of God and his creations and acts, 524-l.
Masonic ideas in some measure analogous to those of Plato and the
  Gnostics, 250-m.
Masonic implements used symbolically, 787-m.
Masonic juror, position to be taken by the, 135-u.
Masonic Knight must devote himself to the worship of Truth, 579-m.
Masonic Light, meaning of, 287-m.
Masonic Lodge should resemble a bee hive, 138-m.
Masonic lodge, teachings inculcated in a, 213-l.
Masonic Lodge, what it can do, 173-m.
Masonic Lodges, ceremonies explained in, 186-m.
Masonic Lodges, great problems and useful instruction in, 186-m.
Masonic lodges should be temples of knowledge, 170-l.
Masonic moral code more extensive than that developed by philosophy,
  726-m.
Masonic morality that of the primitive religions, 541-m.
Masonic obligations a contract with every other brother, 726-m.
Masonic obligations; mature and effect of, 726-m.
Masonic obligations taken upon the Compass, Square, Books, 854-m.
Masonic Order, name of, titles and degrees, not known in the past, 207-l.
Masonic philosophical Cross an image of generative power, 771-l.
Masonic philosophy and morality; the True Word of a Master, 727-u.
Masonic secret manifests itself without speech, 218-l.
Masonic secret partially revealed in Apprentice Degree, 219-u.
Masonic sense, religious tendency in the, 212-l.
Masonic studies, true objects of, 25-u.
Masonic symbolism of the three great lights, 202-u.
Masonic symbols become lessons of wisdom when understood, 597-m.
Masonic teachings concerning a life of action, 243-m.
Masonic Titles, qualified to enlighten should be the wearers of, 186-l.
Masonic Trinity: the Universal Soul; Thought in the Soul; the Word,
  575-l.
Masonic True Word finds a meaning in the ineffable name of Deity, 697-m.
Masonic unbeliefs, effects of, 196-u.
Masonic work along charitable and educational lines, 186-u.
Masonic work yet to be done, 187-l.
Masonry, a Sphinx nearly buried in the sands, 819-m.
Masonry a struggle toward the Light of Virtue, Manliness, Liberty,
  Intelligence, 32-u.
Masonry, a succession of allegories and lessons in morality and
  philosophy, 106-u.
Masonry acknowledges the good and true in all creeds, 718-l.
Masonry adopted St. John, the Evangelist, and John the Baptist, 818-u.
Masonry an imperfect image of the Ancient Mysteries, 624-l.
Masonry and Hermetic philosophy contain the Ternary, 791-l.
Masonry and philosophy have the same object, 325-u.
Masonry and the French Revolution, 24-m.
Masonry apart from all sects and creeds, same everywhere, 153-m.
Masonry approves or disapproves of--, 161.
Masonry assumes the mask of Stone Masonry, 24-m.
Masonry believes Evil will be overcome finally, but does not determine
  how, 525-m.
Masonry believes that ills and suffering are means to purify the heart,
  718-m.
Masonry believes the Truth in every creed, 525-l.
Masonry belongs to no one creed or school, 311-l.
Masonry, Blue, as at present, not traceable earlier than 1700 A.D, 208-u.
Masonry but qualifiedly identical with the Mysteries, 624-l.
Masonry can do much if each Mason does his share, 175-m.
Masonry can not cease laboring for social progress, 188-u.
Masonry, chief object of, 137-u.
Masonry, chief obstacles to the success of, 237-m.
Masonry constantly warring against the evil principle, 221-m.
Masonry: De Molai said to have instituted an occult, Hermetic,
  Scottish, 820-l.
Masonry declines to dogmatize in the details of faith or religion, 576-u.
Masonry, degeneration of; simplicity of former organization, 325-m.
Masonry defined; its purposes, essence, spirit, stated, 854-m.
Masonry denies the right of any man to assume the prerogative of Deity,
  161-u.
Masonry, device of; motto of, 220-l.
Masonry, devotees of all religions accepted by, 226-u.
Masonry does not exist where there is strife and hatred, 124-u.
Masonry does not meddle with the subtleties of philosophy, 525-u.
Masonry, dogma of, 220-l.
Masonry enforces the lessons of Him who died on the Cross, 221-m.
Masonry engaged in a crusade against--, 237-m.
Masonry forced by despotism and superstition to invent symbols, 221-l.
Masonry, forms, as at present not the same as in past ages of, 207-l.
Masonry, foundation and superstructure, 23-m.
Masonry founded on the philosophy known and practiced by Solomon, 785-l.
Masonry gathers the Truths of the old religions and philosophies, 275.
Masonry, Great Apostle of Peace, Harmony, Good Will, Liberty,.
  Equality, Fraternity, 112-l.
Masonry grows through the wreck of empires, 315-l.
Masonry has appropriated the Solstices and Sts. John, 595-m.
Masonry has become a science, 540-m.
Masonry has developed the advantages to be reaped from Mysteries, 540-m.
Masonry has eternal duties, 20-l.
Masonry has helped cast down some idols from their pedestals, 95-l.
Masonry has her mission to perform, 311-l.
Masonry has preserved the Divine Truth given to the first men, 136-m.
Masonry hopes and longs for the elevation of mankind, 154-m.
Masonry in England "purged" from revolutionary ideas, 50-u.
Masonry in France gave as its secret Equality and Liberty, 50-u.
Masonry in heart traceable centuries previous to Solomon, 208-u.
Masonry, in the higher degrees, contains the Hermetic science, in.
  certain symbols, 840-l.
Masonry, inactivity and superficiality of, 150--.
Masonry invites all men of all religions to war against wrong, 311-l.
Masonry is a continual struggle toward the light, 223-u.
Masonry is a Worship in which all civilized men may unite, 526-u.
Masonry is continual effort to exalt the nobler nature over the ignoble,
  813-m.
Masonry is not a religion, 161-m.
Masonry is philanthropic, 221-u.
Masonry is philosophical because--, 221-m.
Masonry is the apotheosis of Work, 340-u.
Masonry is the great Peace Society of the world, 124-m.
Masonry is the subjugation of the Human that is in Man by the Divine,
  854-l.
Masonry is the universal morality suitable to every man, 161-l.
Masonry is work and the laboring man the peer of any, 242-m.
Masonry is Worship; declaration in Apprentice Degree, 219-u.
Masonry, labors of, that excite zeal, 138-m.
Masonry labors to equilibrate in us the Human and the Divine, 860-l.
Masonry labors to improve the social order by--, 219-u.
Masonry leaves each to the practice of his own religion, 226-m.
Masonry leaves to others the inquiry into methods and creeds, 524-525.
Masonry: Man is an intelligent and free being, the fifth Truth of, 534-l.
Masonry marches on towards the day when Evil is overcome, 287-l.
Masonry, morality and virtue the bases of, 185-u.
Masonry, multiplication of Degrees and additional ceremonials in, 326-u.
Masonry must do all in its power to inform and protect the people, 180-m.
Masonry, need for activity in its labors, 93-m.
Masonry neither a political nor a religious sect, 220-l.
Masonry not a cold metaphysical proposition, 331-u
Masonry not for cold souls and narrow minds, 138-m.
Masonry not infallible; should not dictate what others should believe,
  642-m.
Masonry not "speculative," but experimental, 149-m.
Masonry now retains its ancient symbols, 221-l.
Masonry, object of, 220-l.
Masonry: Occult science of the Magi found in the enigmas of the
  high degrees of, 839-m.
Masonry, or Free or Frank-Masonry, 207-l.
Masonry ordained to bestow manhood, science, philosophy, 25-u.
Masonry, orders of architecture representing divisions of, 202-u.
Masonry perpetuates a Truth in imparting the True Word, 642-l.
Masonry philanthropic, philosophical, progressive, 220-l.
Masonry prescribed, dates, and by whom, 50-m.
Masonry properly expounded is the interpretation of nature, philosophy
  and--, 625-m.
Masonry, questions concerning doings in, 185-l.
Masonry recognizes the important position of necessity, 154-u.
Masonry reiterates the maxims of the philosophers, 221-m.
Masonry reiterates the moral precepts of all religions, 718-l.
Masonry rejects no religious belief; is of no one religion, 524.
Masonry, religion and philosophy of, 275.
Masonry represents the Good principle and its prototypes, 221-m.
Masonry requires every man to do something, 173-u.
Masonry requires nothing impracticable, 172-l.
Masonry resorted to by the Alchemists who invented Degrees, 731-u.
Masonry reverences all reformers, but does not define their Divinity,
  525-l.
Masonry reveres the character of the Great Master, 718-721.
Masonry same today as at the birth of the race, 153-m.
Masonry seeks to be the beneficent guide in the Progress towards.
  Freedom, 95-m.
Masonry seeks to ennoble common life, 350-l.
Masonry stands for the nobility of Labor, 343-l.
Masonry, study and reflection necessary for an understanding of, 107-m.
Masonry, successor of the Mysteries, teaches by symbols, 22-l.
Masonry symbolized and taught by the Compass and Square, 854-m.
Masonry, sympathies of, are with a people striving to be free, 154-m.
Masonry sympathises and inculcates respect for labor, 340-u.
Masonry taught by the Balance, the symbol of all Equilibrium, 854-m.
Masonry taught by the Cross, symbol of devotedness and self-sacrifice,
  854-m.
Masonry taught to the Knight by the Swords, symbols of Honor and Duty,
  854-m.
Masonry, traditions and symbols of, antedates Egypt, 311-l.
Masonry, teachings of, eminently practical, 138-l.
Masonry, teachings of; where learned, 316-u.
Masonry teaches Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 23-m.
Masonry teaches that all actions are foreseen by God, 239-m.
Masonry teaches that all Power is delegated for the good of the people,
  155-l.
Masonry teaches that every idler should engage in some labor, 343-l.
Masonry teaches that God is a Paternal Being, 239-u.
Masonry teaches that God is, of necessity, good, 717-l.
Masonry teaches that it is better to love than to hate, 813-u.
Masonry teaches that the Present is our scene of action, 139-m.
Masonry teaches that the pursuits of this life tend to--, 211-l.
Masonry teaches that the soul of man is an emanation, 239-l.
Masonry teaches the old primitive Truths, 161-l.
Masonry teaches the rights, duties and interests of men, 25-u.
Masonry teaches the soul of man is made for virtue, 239-l.
Masonry teaches the wisdom of Plato and Socrates, 221-m.
Masonry teaches Toleration and rebukes abuse of power, 74-l.
Masonry teaches truths written by the finger of God on the heart, 139-u.
Masonry teaches us to appreciate this life and world, 142-u.
Masonry teaches we are not all mortal; that the Spirit is our Very Self,
  852-l.
Masonry: that good men are tending to the realm of Perfection
  is the one great Truth of, 538-u.
Masonry: that the Justice, Wisdom and Mercy of God are infinite
  is the ninth Truth of, 537-u.
Masonry: that the laws of the Universe are those of motion, etc.,
  is the eighth Truth of, 536-m.
Masonry: the absoluteness of moral truth, the fourth Truth of, 534-u.
Masonry the actual Worker, the Toiler, 346-l.
Masonry the child of the Kabalah and Essenism together, 818-u.
Masonry: the history of Philosophy is the history of, 540-m.
Masonry: the impulse which directs to right conduct, third Truth of,
  533-m.
Masonry the interpreter of the true knowledge of God, 209-u.
Masonry the lineal descendant of the higher science of Egypt, 253-l.
Masonry: the necessity of practicing the moral truths, the sixth Truth
  of, 535-m.
Masonry, the practical object of, 218-m.
Masonry, the primitive Christianity organized into, 325-l.
Masonry, the universal character of, 276-l.
Masonry the universal, eternal, immutable religion, 219-m.
Masonry: to be charitable in the broadest sense, the seventh Truth of,
  536-u.
Masonry to exert itself in the cause of humanity, 27-l.
Masonry, to live happily we must embrace the great truths of, 196-m.
Masonry took the place of the school of Pythagoras, 625-u.
Masonry Trusts, Believes, Waits, 526-u.
Masonry under the banner of Charity preserves religious feeling, 138-u.
Masonry, usefulness of, 113-u.
Masonry, what constitutes, 207-l.
Masonry within must be Morality without, 162-l.
Masonry, work and mission, 152-155.
Masonry, work is the duty of 185-l.
Masonry writes on its banners its principles displayed in every country,
  221-l.
Masonry's best friends and worst enemies were the Anti-Masons, 814-m.
Masonry's creed that taught by nature and reason, 718-l.
Masonry's examples and teachings neglected outside the Lodge, 151-m.
Masonry's obligations little regarded; political elections; empty pomp,
  807-m.
Masons accept the views of religion and duty that are--, 226-m.
Masons and Masonry true to their mission bring great results, 175-l.
Mason's belief tends to the highest eminence in virtue, 228-l.
Mason's belief that his individual good is in God's consideration, 228-l.
Mason's belief that pain is ordained for his chastening, 228-m.
Masons' belief that sorrows are the result of the operation of laws,
  228-m.
Masons believe in great minds in all ages speaking by inspiration, 225-u.
Masons believe that God has arranged this world with a plan, 225-m.
Mason's business is to read the book of Nature, 216-u.
Mason's conception and belief in God, 224-l.
Masons form uncharitable opinions of Masons, 186-u.
Masons ignorant of the Clavicles and their contents and the Pantacle
  of Solomon, 789-u.
Masons, in all religions and countries are found good, 162-l.
Masons, knowledge made known to Perfect, 207-l.
Masons may help deepen the channel in which God's justice runs, 838-l.
Masons may lawfully and earnestly desire a fortune when--, 346-u.
Masons-Militant of Zorobabel the model of the Templars, 816-m.
Masons, not tolerant of religious and political opinions of Masons, 186-u.
Masons of old concealed important points of their Art under hieroglyphic
  characters, 785-l.
Masons' relations to God, 227-l.
Mason's rule is to speak of the virtues and be silent as to the vices,
  337-l.
Masons should do what is possible and practicable and enforce justice,
  838-l.
Masons still go to Law, unnecessarily, with Masons, 185-l.
Masons taught square of wisdom, level of humility, plumb of justice, 641-l.
Masons taught to--, 221-u.
Masons venerate in the triangle, the mystery of the Sacred Triad, 631-m.
Masons who comprehend it are ministers of the universal religion, 219-m.
Mason's Word, the true knowledge of God, 209-u.
Masoretic points invented after beginning of our era, 205-m.
Mass of the Catechumens and that of the Faithful parts of Christian
  Mysteries, 541-l.
Mass: the celebration of the Mysteries of Mithras, 541-l.
Master a symbol of the Redeemer when bringing candidate to light, 639-m.
Master, Masonry reveres the character of the Great, 718-721.
Master Mason studies the animal kingdom, symbolized by Maeh, 632-u.
"Master of Life," to the ancients, was the Supreme Deity, 13-u.
Master of Light and Life, Sun and Moon, symbols of, 13-m.
Master of the Lodge and Wardens, duty of, 13-m.
Master of the Lodge substituted for Mercury as one of the Lights, 411-u.
Master of the Royal Secret, Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret,
  32d Degree, 839.
Master of the Symbolic Lodge, 20th Degree, duty of a, 325-333.
Master, place of Light where the name of Deity hangs over the, 287-l.
Master, Third Degree, 62-u.
Master works with Chalk, Charcoal and a vessel of Clay, 548-m.
Master's Compass has both the points above; symbolizing the
  rule of the spiritual, 854-l.
"Materia Prima" of Valentinus contains an Hermetic symbol, 850-m.
Maternal agency, the subjective world, generally a phantasm, 673-m.
Material and Spiritual natures in equilibrium; Light and Darkness, 764-l.
Material existence evolved from the Pythagorean Monad, 675-l.
Material, result of seeking the mere, 12-m.
Material the element of communion between man and God, 714-u.
Materialism and Pantheism avoided by an independent mind, 677-m.
Matter and mind dual from the idea of an independent mind, 677-l.
Matter and Spirit originally were in Deity, 700-m.
Matter: categorical questions concerning, 648.
Matter created by God by a thought; after matter, worlds and man, 609-m.
Matter dead to the world revivified by vegetation of the Tree of
  Life, 786-l.
Matter deemed the female amongst the ancients, 700-m.
Matter existed eternal like the Spiritual Principle, 563-u.
Matter is not eternal; God the only original Existence, 701-l.
Matter makes no encroachment on the Divine Life, 556-u
Matter not coexistent with Deity, 700-m
Matter: one of the two eternal principles is Darkness and Primitive,
  567-l.
Matter opposed to the beneficent force which gives it organization,
  664-u.
Matter possesses virtues, qualities and powers, 414-l.
Matter represented by nine, or three times three; symbolism of nine
  to four, 633-m.
Matter, the Mother, the receptacle and place of generation, one of a
  Triad, 548-l.
Matter the origin of Satan and his demons, 567-l.
Matter, the passive principle, reproductive power, one of the Egyptian
  Triads, 548-l.
Matter, the principle of all the passions, etc, 520-m.
Matter, when operated on by the Word, became the Universe, 607-l.
Maximin, horrors of despotism under, 27-u.
Maxims of ancient philosophers and religions, 167-170.
Maximus Taurinus defines the tessera as a sign and symbol, 548-u.
Maya, Mother of All, sprung from Brahm, the Source of All, 849-l.
Meaning and pronunciation of Ineffable Name lost to all but a few, 700-l.
Meaning of the Active and Passive powers of male and female
  principles, 701-l.
Meaning of the True Word of a Mason involves its proper pronunciation,
  697-m.
Media which manifest the First Cause are the Sephiroth, 761-u.
Mediaeval occult associations brought into disrepute by the symbol
  of Baphomet, 779-l.
Mediator, a name given by the Persians to the Sun, Archimagus, 612-m.
Medical science has made great strides, but plague and pestilence
  destroy yet, 811..
Melampus introduced the veneration of the generative organs from
  Egypt, 656-m.
Meliton, Bishop of Sardis, says that the mind is God's likeness, 857-l.
Men are ever on the side of justice and humanity, 834-l.
Men are the instruments of God's principles, 838-m.
Men, as a mass, are looking for what is just, 834-u.
Men converted from the worship of Ahriman by prophets, 613-u.
Men, different effects of the business of the world on, 194-l.
Men do not perceive the worth of their minds, 200-m.
Men, good in general, but bad in particular, 151-l.
Men, good, prone to pass by fallen brother with lofty step, 133-u.
Men, greatest, not acceptable to the mass of mankind, 37-m.
Men in every country of the old heroic strain and stamp, 805-l.
Men, in literature, look for practical justice, 834-l.
Men often gloat and exult over the faults of neighbors, 133-m.
Men, Temples not built with hands the meeting place of primitive, 277-u.
Men tend to become distinguished for other than heroic, knightly
  deeds, 805-m.
Men, the automata of Providence, used to effect that they do not
  dream of, 814-m.
Men, the great works of man due to individual, 238-u.
Men's difference in faculty of communication, 200-m.
Men's respect for themselves, measure of, 200-m.
Menander speaks of God, Chance, Intelligence, as undistinguishable,
  694-m.
Mendes: the universal agent represented by hermaphroditic goat of, 734-u.
Menou, the Hindu lawgiver, adored the divine light and, 609-m.
Mental principle instead of a physical one deified by man, 652-u.
Mercury fecundated by Sulphur becoming the Master and regenerator
  of Salt, explained, 778-u.
Mercury gives the Soul the faculty of expressing and enunciating, 439-m.
Mercury in philosophy represents personal aptitude and labor, 790-u.
Mercury, one of the great symbols of the Alchemists, 57-u.
Mercury, personified as Hermanubis in Egypt, given a dog's head, 779-l.
Mercury represents Prudence, 727-l.
Mercury, Salt, Sulphur, but accessories of the Great Work, 777-m.
Mercury the constant companion and counsellor of Isis or Virgo, 507-m.
Mercury, the name of the fourth gate of the ladder; material iron, 414-m.
Mercury, with the Hermetics, corresponds with the Air and Water, 773-l.
Mercy conjoined with Judgment and the Divine Mercies sustain
  the Universe, 800-u.
Mercy or Compassion mediating between Benignity and Judicial Rigor, 799-u.
Merit and demerit law absolute, 706-u.
Merit is the natural right which we have to be rewarded, 723-l.
Meru, pyramids and artificial hills were imitations of the mountain, 234-u.
Mesmer's partial guess at the great force known to the ancients, 734-u.
Metals were deemed to be seven in number and assigned to a planet, 728-l.
Metals which contain the principles of the great work are six, 788-u.
Metaphysical ideas of the Mysteries represented by symbols, 385-u.
Metaphysical name of Deity not understood by common people, 700-l.
Metatron, the Cherub, one of the Chiefs of the Kabalistic Angels, 784-l.
Meung, Jean de, completed Lorris' Roman de Rose, 823-u.
Mexican legends probably carried by the Phoenician voyagers, 594-l.
Michael and his Angels fought against the Dragon, 501-u.
Michael, the face of the Lion, on the South and right hand with
  Yod and Water, 798-m.
Microcosm, a little world, a Pythagorean name for man, 667-l.
Microprosopos afterwards raised to the Aziluthic sphere, 793-m.
Microprosopos and Malakoth, Regnum, are jointly called man, 794-l.
Microprosopos composed of the six Numerations, 793-m.
Microprosopos configured in the form of the Most Holy, 794-u.
Microprosopos first occupied the place afterwards filled by the
  world, Briah, 793-m.
Microprosopos formed like Macroprosopos, but without Kether, the
  will, 793-l.
Microprosopos given three brains by Light from above when the
  letter He was born, 794-l.
Microprosopos has for wife Malakoth, who is behind him; explanation,
  799-l.
Microprosopos invested with a portion of the Divine Intellectual Power,
  793-l.
Microprosopos is called Alohim, 795-u.
Microprosopos is second garment with respect to the Elder Most Holy,
  795-u.
Microprosopos issued forth back to back and yet cohering, 795-l.
Microprosopos issued from the Father and was intermingled with the
  Mother, 794-l.
Microprosopos, like the letter Vau in the letter He; without a head,
  794-l.
Microprosopos, or Seir Aupin, produced by conjunction of Vau and He,
  793-u.
Microprosopos represented under the form of man, 793-m.
Microprosopos, the second Universal, speaks in the first person, Ani, I,
  793-l.
Microprosopos was the beginning, the numerations proceeding to act,
  795-u.
Middle ground between Atheism and Pantheism, 672-u.
Midgard Serpent sunk beneath the sea by Odin, 499-u.
Military power, independent of the Rule, an armed tyranny, 3-l.
Milky Way or Galaxy crosses the Zodiac at tropics of Cancer and
  Capricorn, 437-l.
Milky Way, the pathway of souls, passes near the Equinoxes, 413-l.
Milton expresses the Hebraic doctrine concerning Light and God, 739-l.
Mimansa interprets the meaning of the Manthras, 672-l.
Mimansa proclaims "Nothing was but Mind", 672-l.
Mind: all things directed, known, seen by the Supreme External, 677-u.
Mind and matter dual from the idea of an independent mind, 677-l.
Mind early conceived the Unity of Nature and a pervading Spiritual
  Essence, 687-m.
Mind happy in proportion to its fidelity and wisdom, 195-u.
Mind has supreme empire over all things, 677-u.
Mind, in metaphysics, can not advance beyond self-deification, 678-u.
Mind is all which man permanently is, 200-u.
Mind is God's likeness, according to Meliton, 857-l.
Mind may believe and know that which is unexplainable, 569-u.
Mind picture of God, if false, as much an idol as a wooden one, 693-m.
Mind the Macrocosmos, the Universal Organism, Pooroosha, 673-u.
Mind the material as well as the efficient cause, 673-u.
Mind the self conscious power of thought extended to the Universe, 677-u.
Mind the Universal Element; One God; Great Soul; Mahaatma, 673-u.
Mind the web and the weaver of the world, 673-u.
Mind, Virtue, Heaven, Immortality, exist in the thought of a, 201-l.
Mind's misery principally its own fault, 195-u.
Mind's universal medicine is mathematical and practical Truth, 773-m.
Mineral Kingdom symbolized by Tub, studied by the Apprentice, 632-u.
Minerva, a woman in armor, born of the brain of Jove, 849-l.
"Minerva Munde," attributed to Hermes' Trismegistus, 790-m.
Minerva of the Greeks was the Isis of Egypt, 380-m.
Minucius Felix, a lawyer of Rome, defends the secrecy of Christianity,
  547-m.
Miracles are the natural effects of exceptional causes, 735-l.
Miracles effected by the absolute in reason and will, 736-m.
Miracles in the phenomena of the Universe, 526-527.
Miracles of Moses performed in virtue of the name engraved on his rod,
  621-m.
Miracles wrongly regarded as effects without causes, 735-l.
Misery, principle of, not an evil one, 181-u.
Mithraic cave displayed the Zodiacal and other constellations and--,
  413-l.
Mithraic feast day the 25th of December, 587-m.
Mithraic initiations practiced in caves; a ladder erected, 233-l.
Mithraic initiations required the death of a human victim, 424-u.
Mithraic Initiations used a seven-step ladder, 851-l.
Mithraic ladder, Faber's opinion of the, 234-l.
Mithraic Mysteries, 10-m.
Mithraic Mysteries belonged to Persia; description, 424-u.
Mithraic Mysteries connected with the Heavenly Bodies, 507-l.
Mithraic Mysteries flourished in the Roman Empire, 424-u.
Mithraic Mysteries, gates marked at points of the Zodiac, 10-l.
Mithraic Mysteries, ladder in the ceremony of initiation, 11-u.
Mithras a symbol of the Sun, the Archimagus, 612-m.
Mithras, a Tau cross inscribed on the forehead of the initiate of, 505-u.
Mithras adored under different names by different peoples, 587-l.
Mithras bearing a sword, seated on a Bull presides over the Equinoxes,
  413-l.
Mithras by reason of his death and sufferings secured salvation, 406-l.
Mithras: celebration and ceremonies of the Mysteries of, 541-l.
Mithras created and at the end will bring all before God as a sacrifice,
  613-l.
Mithras dispels darkness and conquers death, 613-u.
Mithras, Mystic Egg appears in the Mysteries of, 403-u.
Mithras not only light, but intelligence, 613-u.
Mithras, on 25th December was celebrated the birth of, 406-l.
Mithras, symbol of the Sun, 77-m.
Mithras, the "eye of Ormuzd," strikes down the dragon foe, 612-l.
Mithras, the rock-born hero, heralded the Sun's return in Spring, 592-m.
Mithras, the Sun God, eclipsed Ormuzd himself, 257-m.
Mithras, the Sun God of the Persians, born in a cave at Winter, 587-m.
Mithras, the Sun of Spring and God of Generation, seated on the Bull,
  478-l.
Mitra and Uschas are Medic as well as Zend Deities, 602-u.
Mitra, the Friend, a Vedic Sun God, 602-l.
Mohammed, doctrines of, the best the Arabs were fitted to receive, 38-u.
Mohammedans believe in a secret name of Deity, 621-l.
Molai, de, said to have created four Metropolitan Lodges, 820-l.
Molai, de, said to have organized an occult, Hermetic, Scottish Masonry,
  820-l.
Molai, Jacques de, the last Grand Master of the Templars, burned, 820-l.
Moral rules to be beneficial must be practical, 830-m.
Moloch or Malek, as applied to Deity, represents--, 208-m.
Moloch, significance of passing children, through the fires of, 205-l.
Monad or unit, a figure of the cube, 5-l.
Monad of Pythagoras the source of material existence, 675-l.
Monad was male and represented the creative energy, 631-u.
Monastery, fraternity and equality, but no liberty in a, 23-m.
Monotheism declaims; against the making of gods in human form, 678-m.
Monotheism with Pantheistic tendencies the spirit of the Indian
  Vedas, 672-l.
Monuments built to the world's patriots, 836-m.
Moon a mass of softer light than the Sun, 444-u.
Moon, ancients observed the regularity of the, 444-u.
Moon and Sun emblems of the two Divine sexes, 305-l.
Moon and Sun impress a fecundating force, 469-m.
Moon appeared in Heavens principally visible at night, 443-u.
Moon becomes Isis, the wife of Osiris, 447-l.
Moon believed to have fertilized the Nile by reason of her communication
  with the Sun, 477-l.
Moon communicates the force of generation and growth, 439-m.
Moon considered to have great influence on vegetation and animals, 469-u.
Moon, Egyptians assigned the demiourgic or creative force to the, 469-u.
Moon gave activity to universal vegetation, 476-m.
Moon originally masculine and the Sun feminine, 700-u.
Moon, once in 18 years and a fraction the new Sun coincides with
  the first New, 453-m.
Moon represents Hope, 727-l.
Moon, symbolism of the, 13-u.
Moon, the cone of shadow which produces night ends above the, 468-l.
Moon the name of the sixth gate of the ladder; material, silver, 414-m.
Moon the passive cause relatively with Osiris; the active with earth,
  477-m.
Moon, the passive portion of nature, offered by the female, 656-u.
Moon united with Osiris in the spring and received the principle of
  generation, 469-u.
Moon when Sun and Moon opened the year in Taurus, the Festival
  of the New, 451-u.
Moon with its silvery lustre follows the Sun, 787-u.
Moral, all the relations of life are, 243-l.
Moral and Inexorable, combined, personified separately in Zeus, 689-u.
Moral bonds, result to society of severing, 196-l.
Moral choice would not exist unless its preferences were determined,
  695-m.
Moral convictions of the mind could not deceive if rightly interpreted,
  693-u.
Moral existence included in the words; Duty and Hope, 717-m.
Moral law: categorical questions concerning the, 649-m.
Moral law has God for its first principle, 725-l.
Moral law is the obligatory good, 725-u.
Moral law is universal and necessary, 702-m.
Moral law of necessity has as an author a being composed of justice
  and charity, 702-m.
Moral law springs from God's Wisdom and Essential Justice, 701-l.
Moral laws are the decisions of Absolute Wisdom and Reason, 737-m.
Moral laws are the decisions of Wisdom and the Revelations of the
  Divine, 737-m.
Moral laws are the enactments of the Divine Will, 737-m.
Moral maladies of man and society, treatment of, 218-l.
Moral principles center in a single principle, which is the Good, 702-m.
Moral sense given as for wise and beneficent purposes, 832-l.
Moral truth supposes a Being that conceives and constitutes it, 702-u.
Moral truths necessary to be practiced, the sixth Truth of Masonry,
  535-m.
Moral truths are absolute; the fourth Truth of Masonry, 534-u.
Moral truths as certain as mathematical truths, 721-l.
Moral truths, as soon as perceived, appear to us the rule of our
  conduct, 722-u.
Moral Universe not understandable, 838-u.
Moral will, new faculty in the development of a child, 192-l.
Morality a Force; the magnetic attraction of the heart pointing
  towards Truth and Virtue, 89-m.
Morality, absolute or divine, comprehended by faith rather than
  speculation, 695-l.
Morality as a basis of all religions, 311-l.
Morality influenced by Sentiment which warms and incites to action,
  725-m.
Morality is the recognition of duty, as duty, 717-m.
Morality of all peoples appear in modern Degrees, 625-m.
Morality of Masonry similar to that of every pure creed of antiquity,
  541-m.
Morality, the Apprentice's grip, fails to raise the candidate, 640-l.
Morality touches religion, 725-l.
Mordecai Prime Minister at Babylon, 256-u.
Morning Star, name and emblematic meaning of, 202-m.
Moses an initiate in the mysteries of Egypt, 253-m.
Moses assisted in shaping the destinies of the World, 313-u.
Moses carried Orthodoxy out of Egypt, 843-m.
Moses closely imitated Egyptian Institutions among the Hebrews, 369-m.
Moses, effects of the Egyptian education on, 253-l.
Moses heard God revealed as I Am that which Is, Was, Shall Be, 848-l.
Moses initiated in the Egyptian Mysteries, 368-l.
Moses obtained true ideas of Deity in the Mysteries, 208-m.
Moses purified and re-veiled the dogmas of Magism, 839-l.
Moses received the name of Deity from God, Ihuh, 697-l.
Moses received the Name of God in the wilderness; lost through
  wickedness 621-m.
Moses received the Law while Aaron made false gods, 206-m.
Moses recognized the Active and Passive, the Active residing in the
  Mind 657-l.
Moses sought for the Cause of All outside that All, 667-m.
Moses the adopted son of the daughter of Sesostris-Rameses, 253-m.
Moses, the first dogma of, 443-l.
Mother, Binah, denoting perfect Rigor, averted her face from Hakemah,
  763-u.
Mother is rigor and severity, impregnated by the Father, produces
  the brain of Microprosopos, 796-u.
Mother, Matter, passive principle, conceptive power, 87-m.
Mother-night, name given by Goths to Festival of the Winter Solstice,
  368-u.
Mother: the first emanation of the Eternal Being was a Universal, 602-l
Motives the special jurisdiction of morality, 244-u.
Motto of Masonry is--, 220-l.
Mountain of Meru with three peaks a symbol of the Trimurti, 234-m.
Mountain tops chosen as places for sacrifices, 617-l.
Mourning for Osiris extends over forty days, 486-u.
Movement and Harmony the life of the Universe and Soul alike, 859-l.
Movement in absolute repose would be a cessation of life, 847-l.
Movement is the equilibrium of Inertia and Activity, 845-u.
Multiplying number is eleven because of the possession of two units,
  629-u.
Murderers of Khir-Om symbolizes Pilate, Caiaphas, Judas, 641-l.
Music of the spheres the image of the harmony of creation, 250-u.
"Music of the Spheres," understanding of meaning aided by Tetractys,
  88-m.
Musical notes of the octave correspond to the seven Sephiroth, 727-m.
Mysteries a Sacred Drama, subjects of, 64-m.
Mysteries a series of symbols, 371-l.
Mysteries, aids of gloom, secrecy, mystery taken advantage of in the,
  383-m.
Mysteries, all persons were initiated into the lesser, 359-m.
Mysteries, Aristotle, Socrates and others accused of violations of
  laws of the, 384-l.
Mysteries at first moral and political, but became more religious, 624-l.
Mysteries, beneficent modification in religion due to the, 373-u.
Mysteries carried to every country; non-interference with local beliefs,
  624-m.
Mysteries celebrated at Autumnal Equinox, why, 404-l.
Mysteries celebrated at the Temple of Osiris at Philae, on the Nile,
  360-u.
Mysteries celebrated in the Spring, Vernal Equinox, 419-m.
Mysteries change from religious to moral and political, 354-m.
Mysteries changed by the religious systems of the several countries,
  625-u.
Mysteries civilized savage hordes; was greatest of benefits, 380-l.
Mysteries closed against Nero and Constantine for grave crimes, 397-m.
Mysteries connected with astronomy and physics, 414-l.
Mysteries contained lessons calculated to elevate and improve. 355-l.
Mysteries continued pure for ages, but ultimately became degraded, 358-l.
Mysteries, decline of the Roman Empire attributed to a neglect of
  the, 360-m.
Mysteries degenerated owing to the arrogance of the Priests, 360-m.
Mysteries develop the origin of the Soul, condition, destination, fate,
  418-u.
Mysteries, development and growth of the, 354-m.
Mysteries, Dionusos one with Hermes and heroes of other, 357-u.
Mysteries, distinction between Greater and Lesser, 432-u.
Mysteries, doctrine of One God, theory of death and eternity, etc.,
  taught in the, 359-m.
Mysteries, doctrines and representations of the, 374-m.
Mysteries, doctrines of immortality and retribution taught in the, 392-u.
Mysteries, Egyptian, depicted Osiris, Good, and Typhon, Evil, in
  conflict, 375-m.
Mysteries, esoteric were the teachings of the Greater, 207-l.
Mysteries explain the descent of Intelligence into matter and return,
  415-m.
Mysteries forbidden to bastards, slaves, materialists and--, 390-m.
Mysteries, from the Egyptians the Hebrews received their knowledge
  of the, 375-u.
Mysteries gave Egyptian priests much of their influence, 374-m.
Mysteries' great object was a grand and truly politic one, 382-m.
Mysteries, Grecian, originated by Orpheus, brought from Egypt, 400-m.
Mysteries have same general features and show Egyptian origin, 418.
Mysteries, Heroditus gives reasons for reticence concerning the, 380-m.
Mysteries in many cases derived from the Egyptians, 352-u.
Mysteries in symbolic forms exhibited the One, 357-m.
Mysteries in the lapse of time degenerated and the symbols were
  misunderstood, 382-l.
Mysteries inculcated a great moral truth veiled with fable, 395-l.
Mysteries, instructions in morals and as to future life given in the,
  382-u.
Mysteries kept man from lapsing into barbarism, 373-u.
Mysteries, knowledge of hieroglyphics and other information only
  obtained in the Greater, 359-m.
Mysteries, like Socrates, seek to awaken the ideas already in the
  mind, 356-m.
Mysteries, like the Symbols of Masonry, are eloquent analogies of
  Nature, 356-l.
Mysteries, life to the Greeks would be insupportable if deprived of
  the, 373-m.
Mysteries, male and female were the prominent Deities in the, 377-u.
Mysteries meant to strengthen religion and console men in their
  sorrows, 378-u.
Mysteries, mode of death varied with the nationality of the different,
  375-u.
Mysteries modified after leaving Egypt by the habits of the different
  nations, 624-l.
Mysteries modified by habits of the different nations, 23-u.
Mysteries, morals, sciences, traditions, taught in the, 373-u.
Mysteries, names of the prominent Deities in the different, 377-m.
Mysteries, nature-gods were the Powers revered in the, 354-l.
Mysteries, Nero, after murdering his mother, dared not be present at,
  353-m.
Mysteries, no arrests, no suits brought, no rival displays during the,
  434-m.
Mysteries, object of, 382-l.
Mysteries, objects of, were to lead men to piety and--, 381-l.
Mysteries of Apollo celebrated at Delos, provided with a lake, 405-m.
Mysteries of Bakchos described, 420-421.
Mysteries of Bakchos of Oriental origin; worshipped in India, 419-l.
Mysteries of Ceres and Proserpine celebrated at Autumn, 491-m.
Mysteries of Dionusos proscribed impurity, 381-u.
Mysteries of Dionusos taught the Doctrine of Divine Unity, and--, 585-m.
Mysteries of Eleusis, description, officers, symbolism, 411-412.
Mysteries of Eleusis established at Athens in 1423 B.C., 418-u.
Mysteries of Eleusis exhibited the generative organs as symbols, 656-m.
Mysteries of Eleusis, spread of and opinions concerning the, 352-m.
Mysteries of Eleusis swallowed most of the others, 352-m.
Mysteries of God and the Universe are hidden in the Ternary, 791-l.
Mysteries of Greece established by Pythagoras with three degrees, 366-u.
Mysteries of Greece taught that matter existed from all eternity,
  and--, 400-l.
Mysteries of Isis, processions, description, symbolism, 412.
Mysteries of Isis, similarity to the death of Khur-om, 405-m.
Mysteries of India were divided into four degrees, 361-m.
Mysteries of Ism Abla instruct in the secret name of Deity, 621-l.
Mysteries of Magism have a religious, philosophical and natural
  signification, 773-u.
Mysteries of Mithra, a cave represented the arrangement of the
  World, 413-m.
Mysteries of Mithras, a corpse restored to life a part of the ceremony
  of the, 406-l.
Mysteries of Mithras celebrated in Greece under the name of Bakchos,
  406-l.
Mysteries of Osiris sought by the most eminent men, 363-u.
Mysteries of Samothrace adored heaven and earth as male and female, 659-u.
Mysteries of the Ancients concealed the occult science of the Ancient
  Magi, 839-m.
Mysteries of the Christian Gnostics; their secret doctrine, 542-l.
Mysteries of the Christians, 541-547.
Mysteries of the Divine nature are beyond finite comprehension, 306-u.
Mysteries of the Druids conform to those of other nations, 367-u.
Mysteries of the early Christians divided into two Masses, 541-l.
Mysteries of the Goths carried North from the East by Odin, 367-l.
Mysteries of the Indians celebrated in caves and grottos, 361-u.
Mysteries of the Kabala open to those who seek, 772-m.
Mysteries of the Universe are all around us and common, 526-u.
Mysteries, opinions of Cicero and Aristophanes in respect to the, 353-m.
Mysteries, opinions of Pausanias and Aristotle concerning the, 379-m.
Mysteries, opinions of Plato and Epictetus as to the objects of the,
  353-u.
Mysteries, origin unknown; suppositions concerning, 353-l.
Mysteries originally the beginning of a new life of reason and virtue,
  359-m.
Mysteries, penalties for violations of the laws and usages of the, 374-l.
Mysteries, pain and sorrow as consequences of sin shadowed forth in,
  397-u.
Mysteries, Phallus and Cteis as emblems of generation appear in the,
  401-l.
Mysteries, Plato into philosophy translated the language of the symbols
  of the, 398-m.
Mysteries possessed a language known only to the initiates, 373-l.
Mysteries practiced in all ancient nations; many claim invention, 353-l.
Mysteries practiced in Athens until the 8th century; in Wales to the
  12th century, 360-l.
Mysteries, prescription of those not initiated into the, 359-m.
Mysteries preserved their purity up to the time of Cicero, 374-l.
Mysteries, privileges and advantages of Initiates into the, 352-l.
Mysteries probably originated in India teaching primitive Truths, 360-l.
Mysteries, purposes of the ceremonies of the, 383-m.
Mysteries represented by symbols the invisible forces of the Universe,
  414-l.
Mysteries required purity and elevation of soul in its Initiates, 353-u.
Mysteries revealed by Dante in the Divine Comedy, 822-m.
Mysteries, statements of Cicero, Socrates, Aristides, regarding the,
  379-l.
Mysteries taught a division of the Universal Cause into an Active
  and a Passive, 401-m.
Mysteries taught candidates in Druidical initiations, 429-l.
Mysteries taught concerning the Universe and--, 352-l.
Mysteries taught doctrine of the nature of the soul and its longings
  to return, 436-l.
Mysteries taught how to enfeeble the action of matter on the Soul, 520-l.
Mysteries taught initiates in Indian ceremonies, 428-429.
Mysteries taught the existence of One Great Being, 624-m.
Mysteries taught the incarnation, death, resurrection, etc., of Logos,
  415-u.
Mysteries taught the study of the perfection of the soul, 520-u.
Mysteries taught true ideas in respect to Deity, 208-m.
Mysteries, teachings and essence of the, 354-l.
Mysteries, the first magistrate of Athens superintended the, 380-u.
Mysteries, the Greater of Eleusinia, ceremonies of initiation into the,
  394-m.
Mysteries: the invisibility, oneness, infinity of God, the first Truth
  of the, 533-m.
Mysteries, the legend of the Master's degree a form of that of the, 375-u.
Mysteries, the mythical person uniting the Divine and Human found
  in all, 356-l.
Mysteries: the Soul of Man is immortal, the second Truth of the, 533-m.
Mysteries, the true spirit and secret doctrines were hidden in Greater,
  359-m.
Mysteries, those who came short of their duties as men were excluded
  from the, 391-l.
Mysteries, to inspire men and console them in their misery the object
  of the, 379-l.
Mysteries, to prove his innocence Antony sought Initiation into the,
  353-m.
Mysteries treated of God, Man and Nature; Ancient Theosophy, 357-u.
Mysteries, true knowledge of Deity taught by the Greater, 207-l.
Mysteries used by the Priests to extend their power, 360-u.
Mysteries went from Egypt to Phoenicia, thence elsewhere, 363-m.
Mysteries were a Sacred Drama exhibiting--, 355-m.
Mysteries were funereal in character, celebrating the death, etc., of
  some hero, 375-u.
Mysteries were not closed in the year 364, notwithstanding a law
  to that effect, 360-u.
Mysteries were the private worships of ancient nations, 352-u.
Mysteries, while slight offenses could be expiated, grave crimes were
  mortal sins in the, 397-m.
Mysteries widely disseminated; names of some, 352-u.
Mysterii or books of occultation sum up the Sephiroth, 758-u.
Mysterious number is four; it contains the mysteries of nature, 628-m.
Mystery and secrecy used to attract and impress the people, 384-u.
Mystery, Demetrius Phalereus gives definition of the word, 383-l.
Mystery of the Balance, the equilibrium of opposites, 552-m.
Mystery of the Ineffable Name and arrangement of its letters, 700-l.
Mystery of the phenomena of nature are unexplainable to us, 526-530.
Mystery of the world remains, but sufficiently cleared up to inspire
  confidence, 696-m.
Mythical beings presiding over nature developed into Saints, etc, 653-u.
Mystical religion succeeded mystical philosophy, but in name only, 694-u.
Mythological references to the number seven, 728-l.
Mythologies: Sohar clears up the obscurities of the Ancient, 843-l.

N

Name, all ancient nations held the sanctity of the Sacred, 204-l.
Name, Divine, or Creative Word, 204-l.
Name, in exorcising priests the Jews used the Sacred, 262-l.
Name not applied to the Very God in His unmanifested Essence, 849-u.
Name of Deity a sign and confession of our ignorance, 651-l.
Name of Deity communicated by God to Moses, 697-m.
Name of Deity conceals the True Word of a Mason, 697-m.
Name of Deity contained a meaning which was lost, 697-m.
Name of Deity engraven on the triangular plate on the cube teaches--,
  209-u.
Name of Deity has four letters, three different ones, 761-u.
Name of Deity, Tetractys in the Cabala composed of the letters of the,
  60-l.
Name of God and God alone existed before the world of vacant space,
  750-u.
Name of God forgotten when--, 205-l.
Name of God, in the Kabalah, only expresses the human ideal of his
  divinity, 97-l.
Name of God lost when--, 205-l.
Name of God written in Samaritan characters in Hebrew books, 621-m.
Name of Great God not to be uttered, an article of general belief,
  619-621-l.
Name of Jehovah given credit for the redemption of the souls, 561-l.
Name of the Kabalists' Idea of God contains all others and all things,
  98-m.
"Name of Truth" appears in the formula of pneumatical baptism, 561-l.
Name of Yod, He, Vau, He, applied to Deity as manifested in the
  act of Creation, 849-u.
Name, signification and meaning of the Ineffable, 104-m.
Name: study of the Pentagram led the Magi to a knowledge of the New,
  842-u.
Name, the summary of all things is the Holy, 793-u.
Name, two Hebrew words appended to the Ineffable, 104-m.
Names have a natural potency and sanctity according to origin, 620-m.
Names of Deity met with in all Degrees, 137-u.
Names of Deity on the Delta are Syrian, Phoenician, Hebrew, 531-l.
Names of the Hebrew and Greek Deity express abstract existence, 651-l.
Napoleon reigns because the ablest, 49-u.
Napoleons follow period of convulsion, 30-l.
Napoleon's influence on the destinies of France, 313-m.
Napoleon's injustice exiled him to a rock, a warning to bid men be just,
  835-m.
Napthali, the eloquent and agile, has for device Virgo in the domicile
  of Mercury, 462-u.
National Gods' history describes the Sun's career through the seasons,
  591-m.
Nationalizing of creeds and peoples a tendency of Masonry, 625-l.
Nations, commercialism and territorial aggrandizement of, 69.
Nations, luxury, extravagance, ostentation, the peril of, 348-m.
Nations, sanctity of the Name held by the ancient, 204-l.
Natural Forces in action and opposition result in movement and Harmony,
  859-l.
Natural law, a constant mode of action, seems to belong to the
  nature of things, 827-l.
Natural objects surrounded the initiate in the Mysteries, 414-l.
Natural phenomena and things appeal to men, 714-u.
Natural phenomena depends on a single immutable law, 732-u.
Natural religion reveals to us God as the Infinite parent of all, 714-m.
Nature and discord dwelt below the Moon, according to Lucanus, 654-m.
Nature as free from dogmatism as from tyranny, 355-u.
Nature divided between the Good and Evil principles, 664-u.
Nature enslaved to common notions and notions to words, 693-l.
Nature gives evidences of immortality, found everywhere, 517-m.
Nature God's prose; man his poetry, 715-l.
Nature Gods represented by Amun, worshipped in Egypt, 584-l.
Nature Gods secondary to a higher Deity, incomprehensible, supreme,
  597-l.
Nature in its pure and simple forms the foundation of the Persian
  religion, 610-l.
Nature is all movement, and Thought all repose, 680-l.
Nature itself is the soul of the world which acts through the spheres,
  668-l.
Nature itself the secret of the Occult Sciences, 844-u.
Nature mastered by applying to matter the light of life, 779-u.
Nature not a fortuitous concourse of atoms, 646-l.
Nature not deified in the primitive religion, 610-l.
Nature of Deity and the beginning of the Universe are questions
  Man has always studied, 738-l.
Nature of man is double, though he is one, 861-l.
Nature possessed a soul and intelligence and divinity belonged to
  this soul, 670-u.
Nature reveals a mighty wisdom and points to God, 713-l.
Nature revives as surely as it declines, 592-m.
Nature, the mythologies a leaf in the book of, 216-u.
Nature the Revelation of God; symbolism of, 64-m.
Nature, visible on earth, is man's domain, 736-m.
Nature worship akin to that of a universal Soul, but not instinctive,
  598-u.
Nature worship combining conceptions of a Universal Presence and action,
  602-u.
Nature worship usurped that of God, 600-m-601-m.
Nature's Forces little known; man controlled and governed by them, 733-l.
Nature's great book interpreted in the doctrines of Masonry, 625-m.
Nature's immutable Law, the Eternal Will of the Justice which is God,
  847-l.
Nature's magnificences are an algebra of graces and splendors, 845-u.
Nature's problems unanswered; the problems unsolved, 647-l.
Nature's regularity suggested by common appearances very early, 699-m.
Nature's single and absolute law, the equipoise of contrary forces,
  848-u.
Nature's Soul released at the end for a brighter existence, 614-u.
Naya philosophers declare the individual Soul and God are distinct,
  852-u.
Necessity and Chance giving way to Law permits the moral Freedom of Man,
  695-m.
Necessity and Fatality a consequence of Stability and Permanence, 768-u.
Necessity and Liberty possible for Infinite Power and Wisdom, 848-m.
Necessity and Liberty seemingly antagonistic, 848-m.
Necessity and Liberty, the essence of Deity, counterbalanced, produce
  equilibrium, 778-l.
Necessity and Liberty the two columns of the Universe, 848-m.
Necessity can not be unjust, or the Great lawgiver would be unjust,
  831-l.
Necessity: Deity contains the incorruptible and unwearying force of,
  658-m.
Necessity environs the laws that govern the Universe, 831-l.
Necessity in its true meaning is not arbitrary Power, 696-m.
Necessity in its true meaning is Strength and Force in the service
  of Intelligence, 696-m.
Necessity is Law perceived, but not understood, 691-m.
Necessity neglected in striving for the right is the folly of a dreamer,
  835-u.
Necessity of man, his own necessity, made often a plea for injustice,
  832-u.
Necessity of the physicists more oppressive than fables of tradition,
  691-m.
Necessity, or the omnipotent Will of God, which nothing can disobey,
  818-m.
Necessity rules in all the affairs of men, requiring the sacrifice of
  life, 833-l.
Necessity, the Director of the atoms, external to themselves, 676-m.
Negative notion of God the only way to apprehend him, 651-m.
Nephesch, from the world Asiah, one letter, He, of the Tetragrammaton,
  757-u.
Nephesch, Psyche, the lowest spiritual part of man, Soul, 757-u.
Nero, reference to the reign of, 47-l.
Neschamah, from the world Briah, the other letter He, 757-u.
Nescamah, Leneschamah, from the world Atsiluth, the Yod of the
  Tetragrammaton, 757-u.
Neschamah, the highest spiritual part, anima superior, 757-u.
Netsach and Hod, the thighs of Adam Kadmon, 758-u.
Netsakh, one of the Sephiroth; Victory, 753-m.
Netsach, the seventh Sephiroth, is perfect Success, same as Hod, 767-u.
Neuroz, a Persian Feast, celebrated when the Sun was in Aries, 463-l.
New Heaven and Earth after the burning of the present Universe, 623.
New Year's Day fixed on one of four periods; reason--, 464-468.
Newton, painstaking methods of, 174-m.
Nifthel, which is below in the ninth world, the final place for the
  wicked, 619-m.
Night the time fixed for the celebration of the Mysteries, 383-l.
Nile held to be fertilized from the connection of the Sun and Moon
  in Taurus, 477-l.
Nile overflows in the sign of Leo, 455-m.
Nile, Sirius deemed to cause the rising of the waters of the, 450-m.
Nile, Sirius heralded the inundation of the, 15-u.
Nile, source, inundations, formation of land, 442-m.
Nile waters experienced its earliest movement at the Vernal Equinox
  when--, 477-l.
Nile waters measured by the representation of a cross with a circle
  over it, 503-m.
Nile's annual inundation the cause of the fertility of Egypt, 589-u.
Nine, consecrated to the Spheres and the Muses, 636-m.
Nine considered by the ancients as a bad presage, 636-l.
Nine external points of the Tetractys form the Masonic triangle, 826-m
Nine found in the three Fates, Centimanes, Cyclopes, 728-l.
Nine: singular properties of the number, 637-l.
Nine, square of three, represented by the triple triangle, 60-l.
Nine symbolized the earth under the influence of the Evil principle,
  636-l.
Nine symbolizes the generative egg, 636-l.
Nine, the first square of unequal numbers, the Ennead, 636-l.
Nineteenth Degree, Grand Pontiff, 312-u.
Ninth day of Greek Mysteries, the libation for departed souls, 434-m.
Ninth Degree, Elu of the Nine, purpose and lessons of the, 149-u.
Ninth Degree is devoted to--, 159-u.
Ninth envelope, a term given to matter, 636-u.
Nisan, at the Vernal Equinox, the beginning of the year, 466-m.
Noachite or Prussian Knight, the 21st Degree, lessons of the, 334-u.
Noble actions, in ordinary paths of life are occasions for, 245-m.
Noetius termed the Son of the first Utterance of the Father, light.
  from the Light, 564-m.
North of a Lodge devoid of Lights because--, 592-u.
North Pole: Merak and Dubhe always point to the, 456-m.
North Pole: the Great Bear or Seven Stars, circle around the, 456-m.
North Star represents the point in the circle; symbol of duty and faith,
  202-m.
North the goal and commencement of the Sun's career, 592-u.
North the region of gloom and darkness, 592-u.
Northern Gods more virile than the effeminate Southern ones, 591-u.
Northern nation had a Senate of twelve gods, Odin the chief, 460-m.
Nous of Platonism corresponds to The Word, 271-l.
Nous synonymous with Logos, representing a manifestation, 555-l.
Novary, or triple ternary, celebrated amongst the ancient sages, 636-u.
Number sacred in all theologies is Seven, 727-m.
Numbers an example of the Gnostic emanation doctrine, 249-u.
Numbers an important part of Pythagorean science, 34-l.
Numbers contained in the Primitive Word, 249-u.
Numbers had significance to the Druids in a religious sense, 618-l.
Numbers having reference to Deity especially employed, 208-l.
Numbers held sacred among the Etruscans, Jews, Egyptians, Hindus, 632-m.
Numbers, many philosophies and religions preserve the doctrine of, 235-m.
Numbers, Mysteries connected with the system of, 208-l.
Numbers of Stars possessed peculiar and divine powers, 487-u.
Numbers of the degrees had their origin in the Stars, 487-u.
Numbers of the Pythagoreans, signification and meaning, 626-638.
Numbers regarded as sacred being expressions of--, 209-u.
Numbers represent all grandeur, all proportions, the Absolute, 626-u.
Numbers symbolic, 87-l, 88-m, 618-m.
  One, 5-l, 87-l, 88-m, 789, 861.
  Two, 5-l, 57-l, 87-l, 88, 410, 429, 632-m, 664-m, 789, 860.
  Three, 5-l, 10-u, 57-l, 87-l, 88, 97-l, 209, 233-m, 234-m, 321-u, 322-m.
    361-u, 364-m, 409-m, 410, 429, 431, 448-u, 487-u, 489-m, 548-554,
    631-u, 632, 728-u, 728-l, 780-m, 782-m, 786, 788, 789, 796, 861.
  Four, 57-l, 87-l, 88, 209-u, 322-m, 409-m, 410, 462-m, 560-m, 632-m,
    728-u, 732-m, 783-m, 786, 788, 789, 861.
  Five, 5-l, 87-l, 88, 429, 462-m, 487-u, 782-u, 789, 790, 861.
  Six, 5-l, 87-l, 409-m, 489-u, 611-l, 786-u, 796.
  Seven, 5-l, 10-m, 11-u, 58-l, 87-l, 88-m, 233-m, 234-m, 257-l, 321-u,
    322, 364-l, 409-m, 410, 429, 431, 460-m, 462-m, 474-u, 487-u, 489-m,
    506-l, 563, 602-u, 611-l, 668-u, 727-9, 728-u, 752-l, 780-l, 781-m,
    782-m, 797, 798.
  Eight, 5-l, 60-l, 87-l, 507-l.
  Nine, 5-l, 10-u, 60-l, 87-l, 88-m, 209-u, 429, 448-u, 489-u, 631-u,
    728-l, 789, 861.
  Ten, 60-l, 87-l, 88-m, 233-m, 506-u, 560-m, 632-m, 752-l, 786.
  Eleven, 87-l.
  Twelve, 5-l, 58-l, 60-l, 209-m, 233-m, 235-l, 409-m, 410-m, 448-u, 459-l,
    460-m, 462-u, 462-m, 474-u, 485-u, 489-u, 506-l, 560-m, 566-u, 619-u,
    632-m, 728-u, 786.
  Fourteen, 484-l, 485-m.
  Sixteen, 861.
  Twenty-five, 789, 861.
  Twenty-six, 484-l, 485-m.
  Twenty-seven, 631-u.
  Thirty, 257-u, 462-m, 560-m.
  Thirty-six, 486-u.
  Forty, 486-u.
  Three hundred and sixty, 462-m.
  Three hundred and sixty-five, 354, 613-l.
Numbers: the Pythagoreans held a connection between the gods and, 633-u.
Numbers, the Septenary is the Crown of, 321-l.
Numbers, three, four, seven, twelve, unlock the Apocalypse, 728-u.
Numerations from Khased or Gedulah to Yesod included in Tephareth, 799-m.
Numerations, or six members of Microprosopos, denoted by Vau, 793-l.
Numerations proceed from potence into act with the first Adam, 795-u.
Numerations, six, are Geburah; Gedulah; Tephareth; Netsach; Hod; Yesod,
  793-m.
Numerations, six, represented by interlaced triangle, Seal of Solomon,
  799-m.
Numerations, ten, compose the person termed Arik Aupin, 799-m.
Nyaya and Vedanta philosophy regarding God and the Soul, 607-m.
Nyaya philosophers differ in some matters from the Vedantic, 607-m.

O

O, I, W expressed the Druids' name of Deity, 622-u.
O, I. W, the Druidic symbol of Deity, 618-u.
Oath of Secrecy a requisite to admission to the Christian Mysteries,
  544-u.
Oath of the original nine Templars taken between the hands of
  the Patriarch, 815-l.
Oaths of Pythagoreans sworn on the Tetractys. 633-l.
Obedience to law, 111-m.
Obelisk at the tomb of the buried deity as a symbol of resurrection,
  393-l.
Obelisks and Pyramids erected to the Sun and Fire. 460-u.
Object of the ceremonies of the ancient Mysteries. 407-l.
Object of Masonry is--, 218-m.
Object of Masonry is--, 220-l.
Object, our inspiring thought should not be ourselves, but our, 229-l.
Object symbolized mistaken for the symbol and idolatry followed, 600-u.
Objection sufficient to exclude man from society of Masons, 121-m.
Obligation founded on the Good, 722-m.
Obligation of morals are absolute, 722-u.
Obligation taken on a naked sword and sealed by drinking from a
  skull, 430-l.
Obligation taken on the sacred books of the religion of the candidate,
  11-m.
Obligation the foundation of liberty: involves free will, 723-u.
Obligations and vows to be well considered and kept, 111-l.
Oblong square formed by Stars, 487-m.
Occult manifestations coincide with period of the Fall of the Templars,
  823-u.
Occult Mysteries revealed under the form of levity by the Roman
  de la Rose, 823-u.
Occult number is five, enclosed in the center of the series, 628-m.
Occult philosophy controlled nations, ruled the minds, knows everything,
  730-u.
Occult philosophy reigned in Persia with the Magi, 730-u.
Occult philosophy synonymous with Magic, 730.
Occult philosophy the godmother of religions, the key of obscurities,
  729-l.
Occult philosophy, the Universal Synthesis, ought to explain the
  phenomena of being, 821-l.
Occult science of the Magi found in the Mysteries and doctrines of
  the Templars and Masonry, 839-m.
Occult science of the Magi imperfectly revealed by the Gnostics, 839-m.
Occult sciences explain the cabalistic clavicles, Ezekiel and the
  Apocalypse, 731-u.
Occult sciences explained by the Kabalah, 626-u.
Occupation the same as manifestation, 795-l.
Occultism embodied in Sephar Yezirah, Sohar, Apocalypse, 321-m.
Ocean a symbol of Deity or the Universe for the Egyptians, 665-m.
Ocean as a conception of God, called Binah, Understanding, 752-m.
Octateuch, a book written in the time of the Emperor Justin, 671-l.
Od, according to the Hebrews, the grand agent of Hermetic science, 774-l.
Odd numbers traced backward ended in Unity or Deity, 618-l.
Odin destined to kill the snake when all nature will be destroyed, 593-u.
Odin, Frea, Thor, the Scandinavian Trinity, 552-u.
Odin, maxims from the Hava Maal, the Sublime Book of, 168-m.
Odin sunk the Midgard Serpent beneath the sea, encircling the earth,
  499-u.
Odin, the Almighty Father, one of the Northern Triune Deity, 13-l.
Odin, the Scandinavian name for the Sun God, 587-u.
Odin was the Apollo of the Scandinavians, 593-u.
Office, Mason not over-anxious for, 39-u.
Officers of Isiac Mysteries practically the same as the Eleusinian.
Official mediocrity, development of, 66-75.
Officials of the Mysteries of Eleusis, functions and clothing, 411-412.
Olen: one of the earliest symbols of Grecian religion was the
  Hyperborean, 683-u.
Olive brought by Hercules from the Hyperboreans to Olympia, 592-m.
Om, in India it was forbidden to pronounce the Sacred Name, 205-u.
Om, the Sacred Name of the One Deity, manifested as--, 205-u.
Omega and Alpha are the last and first letters of the Greek alphabet,
  701-u.
Omith, or Amida, the Japanese God, without beginning or ending, 616-u.
Omnific letter of the Kabalah: Creation effected by the, 14-u.
Omnipotence is the most absolute liberty, 736-l.
Omniscience symbolized by the Blazing Star and All Seeing Eye, 506-u.
Omschim, a book giving the arrangements of the Sephiroth, 757-m.
Omschim, the Kabalistic book, meaning "Introduction to the Kabalah", 740-u.
One Absolute Being embodying Truth, Beauty, Good, 702-l.
One Being only, a fundamental principle of the Hindu religion, 604-m.
One designated Harmony, the Good Principle, 630-m.
One Father: the many gods are His Children, says Tyrius, 687-m.
One First Cause of the existence of the Universe, 626-m.
One God the primitive idea, 687-m.
"One in Many," a mystery of the Vedanta philosophy, 673-u.
One is the Principle, Two is the Word, 771-l.
One is three and three are one in each triangle of Perfection, 861-l.
One signifies the living man standing upright, 630-u.
One Supreme God whose name it was unlawful to utter a general belief,
  619-l.
One: though of a double nature, man is, 861-l.
One True God, and a moral and virtuous life the only religious
  requisite, 164-u.
One, with the Chinese, signified unity, harmony, God, 630-l.
Onias, the High Priest, erected the sanctuary at Leontopolis, 253-u.
Ophites, a Gnostic sect, Spirits of the, 271-l.
Ophites: development of the system of the, 552-l-553.
Ophites' system predicated an unknown Supreme Being, 552-l.
Opinion, difficulty in obtaining agreement in matters of mere, 38-m.
Opinions of ancients concerning the earth and heavens, 442.
Opinion, public, rarely right on any point, 218-m.
Opposing principles in nature, by their contrariety, produce good
  and evil, 661-u.
Orai, name of one of the seven Reflections of the Ophites, 563-m.
Oral tradition transmitted by generations of initiates, 259-l.
Orator in our Bodies represents Hermes, 586-l.
Orators of the Bodies, qualifications and duties of, 332-m.
Orders of Chivalry displayed lofty virtues and noble heroism, 579-m.
Organs of generation symbols of the generative and productive powers,
  656-m.
Origin, all men are of the same, 221-u.
Origen declares some names have a natural sanctity and potency, 620-m.
Origen defends the Christian concealed doctrine, 544.
Origen gives information concerning the Mysteries of the Ophites, 542-l.
Origen held that in each Star was an immortal Soul, 671-m.
Origen held that the Gospels were not to be taken literally, 266-m.
Origin of things according to Anaxagoras, 495-m.
Origin of the Truth taught by Deity to the first men, 687-l.
Origination of matter from spirit incapable of expression, 673-m.
Orion killed by the sting of the Scorpion, 454-m.
Ormuzd and Ahriman: antagonism of Good and Evil typified by
  the contest between, 594-l.
Ormuzd and Ahriman each created twenty-four Deities, 662-l.
Ormuzd and Ahriman each gave six emanations, 662-l.
Ormuzd and Ahriman ever at war; Light and Darkness contest, 662-l.
Ormuzd and Ahriman represented by two serpents contending for
  the mundane egg, 500-u.
Ormuzd conceived thoughts before creating things, 257-m.
Ormuzd concurred with Ahriman in the creation of Man, 258-u.
Ormuzd created Spirits, Genii, Izeds, 257-u.
Ormuzd created the World pure by the "Word", 256-l.
Ormuzd eclipsed by Mithras, 257-m.
Ormuzd, final triumph and reign of, 258-m.
Ormuzd, King of Light from Light, the first emanation, 256-l.
Ormuzd, nature and attributes of; the "Word" of Masonry, 256-l.
Ormuzd, or Ahura Mazda, claims to have created all things, 612-u.
Ormuzd or Osiris the beneficent principle personified by the Sun, 479-u.
Ormuzd placed in Man a pure principle from the Supreme Being, 258-u.
Ormuzd represented the primal light, 612-u.
Ormuzd, the Persian God of Good, of the nature of light, 661-m.
Ormuzd, the Persian Light God, to conquer Darkness and--, 466-u.
Ormuzd was Light adored by the Persians, 443-l.
Ornaments of a Lodge, 14-u.
Orpheus founded the Grecian Mysteries bringing them from Egypt, 400-l.
Orpheus in his hymn taught the Unity of God, 415-u.
Orpheus initiated in the Egyptian Theology and Physics; carried the
  fables into Greece, 365.
Orpheus: Magism was the science of, 839-l.
Orpheus received Mysteries of Samothrace while visiting there, 427-u.
Orpheus studied in Egypt and borrowed ideas regarding nature, 655-l.
Orpheus: the first dogma of, 443-l.
Orphic Triads, 549-m.
Orthodox Church accepted the doctrines of the Egyptians and Greeks,
  625-l.
Orthodox traditions carried from Chaldea by Abraham, 843-l.
Orthodoxy carried out of Egypt by Moses, 843-l.
Osirian fable of his history the basis of Egyptian religion, 589-m.
Osirian legend adopted to symbolize the destruction of the Templars,
  820-l.
Osirian legend advanced by Landseer in his Sabean Researches, 483-487.
Osiris as Hades, Serapis, Rhadamanthus, the Monarch of the Dead, 588-u.
Osiris and Isis gave civilization, law, arts, to men, 475-l.
Osiris and Isis:    Har-oeri, Master of Light and Life, from, 861-u.
Osiris and Isis, inscriptions on the columns at Nysa, near the tombs of,
  378-u.
Osiris and Typhon: antagonism of Good and Evil typified by the
  contest between, 594-l.
Osiris' body went ashore sixty miles above Tsur, at Byblos, 80-u.
Osiris, Christians adopted as a sign the staff of, 292-m.
Osiris claimed by India as one of their great gods, 475-l.
Osiris conquers Typhon at the Vernal Equinox, 664-m.
Osiris cut into fourteen pieces according to Plutarch, 484-l--485-m.
Osiris cut into twenty-six pieces, the number of visible stars in
  Bootes, 484-l.
Osiris, declaration of Osiris concerning himself, 378-m.
Osiris died at the Autumnal Equinox and rose in the Spring, 478-u.
Osiris: everything good in nature comes from, 476-m.
Osiris, in figurative style is depicted the annual journey of the Sun
  in the history of, 375-l.
Osiris is the personification of the Sun, 447-l.
Osiris, killed by Typhon, found by Isis in a coffin and buried at
  Philae, 375-l.
Osiris killed by Typhon when the Sun was in the Constellation Scorpion,
  479-m.
Osiris known as Bacchus, Dionusos, Seraphis, 477-m.
Osiris, legend concerning the body of, 80-m.
Osiris married his sister, Isis, and labored with her for the public
  benefit, 377-l.
Osiris mutilated by Typhon and parts thrown into the River Nile, 412-l.
Osiris mutilated by Typhon signified that drouth caused the Nile to
  retire, 477-l.
Osiris: Mysteries of Isis included a statue, tomb and a representation
  of the sufferings of, 405-l.
Osiris, Mysteries of, the model of all subsequent Initiations, 377-m.
Osiris; Night and Day were two Gods adored in the Mysteries of, 404-m.
Osiris put to death by Typhon, restored to life, 405-m.
Osiris, representative of the Sun, becomes Adonai, Dionusos, Bacchus,
  363-m.
Osiris resurrected when the Solstitial Sun brings the inundation, 589-m.
Osiris said to be the inventor of agriculture, 588-u.
Osiris: Seth, Babys, Typhon, powers set up as adversaries of, 588-u.
Osiris slain by Typhon sought by Isis; story of the search, 480-483.
Osiris supposed to be dead or absent fifty days each year, 451-l.
Osiris, symbol of the Sun, 77-m.
Osiris: the conception of a Being purely good developed in, 588-u.
Osiris, the Egyptian name for the Sun God, 587-u.
Osiris the image of generative power, 476-l.
Osiris, the image of the Supreme Being; Source of Good, 281-l.
Osiris, the name of the Sun, gives earthly blessings, 475-m.
Osiris the name of the Sun to his adorers at Memphis, 587-l.
Osiris, the Saviour, perished in the twenty-eighth year of his life,
  589-m.
Osiris, the son of Helios (Phra), an incarnation of the Good Spirit,
  587-l.
Osiris, the Sun, communicated generative principles to the Moon, 476-m.
Osiris to judge the world, according to the Egyptians, 623-l.
Osiris was the eldest son of Saturn, his substance the same nature
  as that which composes light, 378-m.
Ouranos and Gea sung as Deities by Hesiod, 850-l.
Ouranos and Ghi by their union had many children, the later Deities,
  658-u.
Ouranos and Kronos were before Zeus, 597-l.
Ouranos, or Heaven, one of the first divinities, the husband of Ghi,
  658-u.
Oviparous the type of all animal production, 771-l.
Ox a symbol of purification by earth, 412-m.

P

Pagodas of Tanjore and Deogur, construction of the, 234-m.
Pain and suffering a part of the scheme of the Universe, 229-m.
Pain used to illustrate the relation of Hakemah, Binah, Daath, 758-l.
Palestine and the ancient empires are wrecks, but Masonry survives,
  315-l.
Pan represented by the horned form of the Evil Force or Devil, 102-l.
Pangenitor, the Father of all things, a name given to Heaven, 658-m.
Pantacle expressing the esoteric part of Science is a Rose of light,
  822-m.
Pantacle of the Kabalists commands the spirits of the elements, 787-u.
Pantacle of the Kabalists formed by the triangular plates of the Templar
  trowel, 816-m.
Pantacles invented to disguise the meanings of magical science, 732-l.
Pantheism and Atheism reduced to simplest terms seem the same, 672-u.
Pantheism and Materialism avoided by a separate ruling power, 677-m.
Pantheism, or that all is God, and God is all and in all, 672-u.
Pantheism teaches that God is in all and all in God, 565-m.
Pantheism, the dominant idea of the doctrine of Manes, 565-m.
Pantheism under the Ionian revival was materialistic, 675-m.
Pantheistic monotheism marks the spirit of the Indian Vedas, 672-l.
Pantheon an allegory of phenomena and Heavenly Bodies, 508-u.
Papal hostility against the Templars which flourished in spite of it,
  815-u.
Paracelsus advocated strongly the initiation into the magic of the
  ancients, 791-u.
Parcelsus discovered magnetism before Mesmer, 791-u.
Parcelsus treats of Hermetic Science, 774-l.
Parallel lines enclosing a circle a symbol of the equilibrium of nature,
  548-m.
Parallel lines, point in a circle, two columns represent the Solstices,
  506-u.
Parallel lines supporting the circle in our Lodges; origin of, 429-m.
Paranatellons or stars outside of Zodiac, 471-u.
Parakletos, the Comforter, claimed by Manes, 565-m.
Parmenides compared Deity to a sphere, heat, a continuity, an aggregate,
  676-u.
Paropismus or Hindukusch inhabited by Irania races, 601-l.
Parsees' definition of God in their catechism, 620-u.
Pashan, the Nourisher, a Vedic Sun God, 602-l.
Passions clash and interests conflict in a world of action, 696-u.
Passion's germ in Maia, Nature's loveliness, 683-l.
Passive Principle analogous to Darkness or Shadow, 305-l.
Passive Principle, by nature, collects and makes fruitful; the Active
  diffuses, 772-u.
Passive Stability of the Will of the Past expressed in constitutions
  of government, 860-u.
Passover celebrated when the Sun was in Aries, 463-l.
Passover of the Magi, the annual sacrifice of Mithras, 613-l.
Paternalism, in free States there is a tendency towards, 51-53.
Patient, Good Knight and True enjoined to work and be, 320-l.
Patriarch of Constantinople administered the first Templar oath, 815-l.
Patriarchal worship of Deity common to Arabians and Hebrews, 616-l.
Patriarchs, primitive religion as taught by the, 540-l.
Patriarchs taught the true religion by God, 582-u.
Patriotism a Force, 91-u.
Patrons of Masonry are St. John the Evangelist and St. John the Baptist,
  818-u.
Paul of Samosata taught that Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, 564-l.
Paul, St., similarity of the doctrines of Philo to the Epistles of,
  252-m.
Paul's idea of Law and Grace agrees with Kabalistic idea of Leniency,
  769-u.
Paul's opinion on the second coming of Christ, 263-l.
Pauperism and misery in the world, 297-u.
Pausanias claimed that those showing contempt for the Mysteries.
  were punished, 381-l.
Pausanias' opinion concerning the Mysteries, 379-m.
Pavement, description and symbolism of the Mosaic, 14-u.
Payens, Hugh de, one of the founders of the Templars, 816-l.
Peace, campaign of, 177.
Pedestal, symbolism of the luminous, 210-u.
Pelican an emblem of the beneficence of Nature, 291-u.
Pelican and Phoenix symbols of the Great work, 774-m.
Pelasgi, ancient Grecians, settled Samothrace, 407-m.
Pelasgi had a Deity whose name it was not permitted to pronounce, 621-u.
Pelasgian name for the Sun God was Arkaleus or Hercules, 587-u.
Pen and printing press a power against the Demagogue and Tyrant, 47-l.
Pendragon. Uther, serpents referred to in elegy of, 592-u.
Pentagram or Star with five points symbolizes human intelligence, 790-l.
Pentagram: the Blazing Star symbolized, to the Kabalists, the Sacred,
  842-u.
Pentalpha of Pythagoras, the origin cf the five-pointed star, 634-m.
Pentangle of Solomon, the emblem of Fellowship, 634-m.
People in error who think it a wise policy to--, 178-u.
People to be governed for the common weal, a striking feature of
  the will of the, 141-l.
Perfect Elu, essential belief of a, 233-u.
Perfect Master, 5th Degree; virtues belonging to the, 114-u.
Perfect number is ten because it includes Unity and--, 628-l.
Perfection Degrees urge the subjugation of our material nature, 855-l.
Perfection of all things is Wisdom and Intelligence coupled, 800-u.
Perfection of God implies creation, and the preservation of the created,
  708-l.
Perfection of the Soul and knowledge of its origin and destiny
  objects of the Mysteries, 415-l.
Perfection, step by step is advancement made toward, 136-l.
Perfection symbolized by the number eight, 635-l.
Perfections of God produced the intellectual world, 559-l.
Peripatetic School retained a secondary divinity in the eternal Spheres,
  678-m.
Perkoun, Pikollos, Potrimpos, the Trinity of the Pruczi, or Prussians,
  551-l.
Perpendicular of a right angle triangle represents Earth, the Human,
  861-m.
Perpendicular of the right angle triangle is Male, 789-m.
Persecute, for his belief no man has a right to, 166-m.
Persecution, better any error or any opinion than, 161-u.
Persecutions for religion's sake, 164--.
Persecutions warded from the early scientists by alleged folly, 733-u.
Perseus brought down fire consecrated in Persian Temple, taught--, 466-u.
Persian conquests familiarized them with China, Egypt, Judae, 610-u.
Persian deities subordinate to Zeruane-Akherene, 598-u.
Persian ideas of God and Religion resembled that of the Hebrews, 610-u.
Persian legend concerning the end of the World, 623-l.
Persian name for the Sun God was Mithras, 586-l.
Persian name of Deity consists of three letters, H, O, M, 632-l.
Persian philosopher, sayings of Zoroaster, the, 170-u.
Persian religion framed by H, O, M, 621-l.
Persian religion spiritual, fire and sacrifice being emblems, 610-m.
Persian religious ideas and doctrines, 610-613.
Persian Supreme Being is Time without limit, 281-l.
Persian triad, the Lords of Light, of Fire, of Splendor, 549-m.
Persian triad was Bahman, Ardibehest, Shariver, 549-m.
Persians abhorred Egyptian idolatry and sought to extirpate it, 610-m.
Persians among earliest emigrants from Northern India, 204-l.
Persians began the new year when the Constellation Perseus rose, 466-u.
Persians built no temples, but worshipped on hills in stone enclosures,
  424-m.
Persians burned incense to the seven Planets on Pyrea, 459-m.
Persians changed Hindu doctrines to a struggle between the Good
  and the Evil, 550-m.
Persians held that the utterance of Hom created the Word, 205-u.
Persians lamented the death of Zohak, conquered by the Pheridoun, 594-l.
Persians regard the Sun as the Soul of the Universe and adore Fire,
  424-u.
Persians resembled the Hindus in language and poetic legends, 610-u.
Persians under Xerxes destroyed Grecian Temples and erected fire
  chapels, 610-m.
Persians worshipped the Sun as Mithras; also the Moon, etc, 459-m.
Persians worshipped the Heavenly Host, 459-m.
Person, none so debased but they have something of sacredness, 191-m.
Personal Divinity remains a mystery; personification but a symbol, 672-m.
Personal God seemingly leaned to by Aristotle, 679-l.
Personal God suited to human sympathies and free from mystifications,
  672-m.
Personification assumed to supply deficiencies of language, 672-l.
Personification of Absolute Reason determines the Divine Ideal, 738-u.
Personification of the attributes of God, 270-m.
Personification of Deity infinitely inadequate, 672-m.
Personification of Evil through error continued by the worship of
  abstractions, 694-u.
Personification of God's attributes that man might commune with Him,
  652-l.
Personification of Man long recognized as Deity, 697-l.
Personification of Stars into gods brought worship of them, 508-m.
Personification of the attributes of God by the Hindus, 605-u.
Personification of the great Cause, 674-m.
Personification of the operations of nature worshipped, 601-m.
Peruvians: old-world legends of the Sun found among the, 594-l.
Peter, the Hermit, held no office, but accomplished much, 43-m.
Peter, the Hermit, referred to, 31-u.
Phallic symbols, consisting of stone pillars, at Mysteries of Isis, 405-m.
Phallus and Cteis conveyed no idea of indecency, 401-l.
Phallus and Cteis symbolized the Active and Passive Principles of
  the Universe, 401-l.
Phallus and Cteis worn by innocent and virtuous women, 402-m.
Phallus appears on monuments a symbol of life-giving power, 427-m.
Phallus consecrated in the Mysteries of Osiris and Isis in Egypt, 656-m.
Phallus of the Kabalah represented by Yod, type of human Tetragram, 771-m.
Phallus, probable origin of the symbol of the, 402-l.
Phallus, the symbol of the creative and generative Power, 402-u.
Pharaoh's dream, interpreted by Joseph, referred to the number seven,
  729-u.
Pharisaic Jews, doctrines of Zoroaster borrowed by the, 258-l.
Pharisee, Hillel, gives summary of the law of Moses, 170-m.
Pharisees' belief, system, costumes, were all foreign, 259-l.
Pharisees' doctrine similar to that of the Persians, 259-m.
Pharisees lost the doctrine of the Kabalah at the advent of Christ, 727-l.
Pharisees styled themselves Interpreters of the Holy Writings, 259-m.
Pharisees the dominant Jewish system after the captivity, 259-u.
Phenomena connected with the will little understood, 733-m.
Phenomena of nature are unexplained mysteries to us, 526-530.
Phenomena of nature, beauty and sublimity of the, 244-l.
Phenomena of nature but symbols of greater things, 244-l.
Phenomena perpetually folded back on themselves, 42-u.
Phenomena of the physical and astronomical nature explained in Masonry,
  625-m.
Philanthropic, Masonry is, 221-u.
Philip le Bel and Pope Clement the Fifth destroyers of Templarism, 820-m.
Philo, a Jew, one of the chiefs of the School of Alexandria, 250-m.
Philo, Apostle Saint John read the language of, 100-u.
Philo, declarations of, concerning the Hebrew writings, 250-l.
Philo, doctrines of, 252-l.
Philo Judaeus on the symbolism of the seven lamps, 10-m.
Philo of Alexandria borrows his doctrine from Plato, 552-l.
Philo the contemporary of Christ; doctrines similar to Epistles, 252-m.
Philo, the Greek Jew, admonition to Initiates, 311.
Philo, the Greek Jew, initiated in the Mysteries; sayings of, 311.
Philo's conception of the Supreme Being, 251-u.
Philosophal gold, in philosophy, is Truth, 773-u.
Philosophal gold, in religion, is the Absolute and Supreme Reason, 773-u.
Philosophal gold, in visible nature, is the Sun; in the subterranean
  world, pure gold, 773-u.
Philosophal Stone found indicates the discovery of the Absolute, 776-l.
Philosophal Stone must be concealed; the key carried on the person, 777-u.
Philosophal stone symbolized by a cube, 732-u.
Philosopher, work of, 7-m.
Philosophers chose allegory as vehicles for theological ideas, 678-u.
Philosophers, maxims of ancient, 167-170.
Philosophers of Egypt and Phoenicia the authors of
  old cosmogonies, 667-m.
Philosophers of Greece, except the Epicureans favored Platonism, 247-l.
Philosophers, true knowledge of Deity possessed by the ancient, 207-l.
Philosophic sentiment under the name of Love, 691-l.
Philosophical Degrees urge the dominion of our spiritual nature, 856-u.
Philosophical false gods or "idols" are theories and notions.
  indiscriminately formed, 693-u.
Philosophical ideas in Alchemy reduced to the Absolute; the Fixed;
  the Volatile, 791-l.
Philosophical, Masonry is, 221-u.
Philosophical realization of Hermeticism is the establishment of the
  Holy Doctrine, 840-l.
Philosophical truth considered most dangerous of heresies by Rome, 820-m.
Philosophies, the Mason should avoid vain, 388-u.
Philosophy, a journey never arriving at the ideal of truth, 691-l.
Philosophy acknowledged its utter incapacity through Xenophanes,
  Heraclitus, Socrates, 693-l.
Philosophy becomes Religion when--, 20-l.
Philosophy bowed down before a reflection of the Divine in inquirer's
  mind, 693-l.
Philosophy coincides with true religion, 710-m.
Philosophy compared to Initiation by Seneca, 384-l.
Philosophy connected with humanity by religion, 708-m.
Philosophy contains the basis of all religious beliefs, 708-m.
Philosophy, Death is the consummation of all, 393-u.
Philosophy, definition of, 25-u.
Philosophy directed by metaphysics ends in visionary extravagance, 693-m.
Philosophy, end of, 23-l.
Philosophy from Aristotle to Hegel ends with a difficulty, 708-l.
Philosophy given a definite aim and method by Bacon, 710-l.
Philosophy in its purest forms expounded in the doctrines of Masonry,
  625-m.
Philosophy of Lucanus regarding the Grand Whole, 653-l-654.
Philosophy of Plato changed the nature of Deity, 692-u.
Philosophy of St. John, Philo and Plato from the same source, 99-l.
Philosophy of the Hermetics that of the schools of Alexandria and
  the theories of Pythagoras, 774-l.
Philosophy of the Hindus materialistic only in appearance, 673-m.
Philosophy of the Indians gave birth to the Egyptian Mysteries, 372-l.
Philosophy of the Kabala simple, profound, infinite as the Word, 745-m.
Philosophy of the occult crushed by the anathemas of Christianity, 730-l.
Philosophy of the occult godmother of religions; the key of obscurities,
  729-l.
Philosophy of the Rite, Light and Truth sit enthroned on the
  heights of the, 136-l.
Philosophy of the Rite, when prepared to receive its instructions, 136-l.
Philosophy reasserted the Unity which poetry had lost, 675-u.
Philosophy: religion became arrogant and fantastical when separated
  from, 650-m.
Philosophy restored the Divine Activity as an external Intelligence, 675-m.
Philosophy, Templars connected with the Oriental, 235-m.
Philosophy that is certain and religion of the infallible united in
  Magic, 842-m.
Philosophy, the analogy of contraries solves problems of modern, 306-u.
Philosophy, the grip of a Fellowcraft, fails to raise the candidate, 640-l.
Philosophy's object is the divine order of the Universe, 710-m.
Philosophy's task was to fill the chasm separating Deity from man, 652-l.
Phoenecian Cosmogony of interest to Masons, 278-m.
Phoenician creed, principles and doctrines, 268-m.
Phoenician Deity called Heptakis, God of seven rays, 58-l.
Phoenician faith, emanation from the worship of the Stars, 268-m.
Phoenician Mysteries in honor of death and resurrection of Adonis, 406-m.
Phoenician Mysteries passed into Greece, 406-m.
Phoenician name for the Sun God was Adonai or Adon, 587-u.
Phoenician Nature-God, the principle of Light, called Al, 727-u.
Phoenician Trinity was Ulomos, Chusoros and the Egg of the Universe, 549-u.
Phoenicians considered Light divine, and thought it a God, 582-u.
Phoenicians held that Light, Fire, Flame, were the sons of Kronos, 740-l.
Phoenicians probably carried Sun legends to the New World, 594-l.
Phoenicians regarded Sun, Moon and Stars as the cause of generation, 469-l.
Phoenix and Pelican symbols of the Great Work, 774-m.
Phoenix, Dove, Raven, are symbols of Good, Evil and Beauty, 792-m.
Phosphor, or Light Bearer, represents the Evil Force or Devil, 102-l.
Phrygia suffered famine while Sun God was with the Hyperboreans, 592-u.
Physical realization of Hermeticism is the discovery of the creative
  law, 841-u.
Pices, a malignant sign; Syrians abstained from eating fish, 456-m.
Pillars of a Lodge for a Christian symbolize Faith, Hope, Charity, 641-l.
Pillars of temples, mystical; representative of--, 235-l.
Pillars, Triple Tau represents the three Masonic, 503-l.
Pindar and others declare sufferings proceed from a beneficent object,
  691-u.
Pisces the device of Simeon and Levy, 462-u.
Pison, a stream of the Edenic river, 58-u.
Plague from remote India sweeps over Asia and Europe unchecked, 811-812.
Plan of the Universe emanated from Deity, was of Himself, though
  not His Very Self, 764-m.
Planetary motive force a mechanical law, so considered now, 671-m.
Planetary spheres represented by the seven steps of the Mystic Ladder,
  851-l.
Planets distinguished by a cross and solar or lunar symbols, 505-l.
Planets, numbers and motions of the, 233-m.
Planets, seven, 10-m.
Plato, commentator of Timaeus, wrote of the Soul of the World, 667-u.
Plato's Deity the essence of Goodness, "The Good" itself, 682-l.
Plato declares absolute truth is in God; it is God under one of His
  phases, 707-l.
Plato developed beautifully the higher Greek religious ideas, 617-m.
Plato discourses on the disfigurement of the Soul, 858-m.
Plato drew his doctrines from the East and the Mysteries, 398-m.
Plato expresses his idea of the love of God, 704-l.
Plato, greatest of human Revealers, 100-u.
Plato, in part, conceived the progressive mediation between ignorance
  and wisdom, 711-u.
Plato in the Alexandrian School helps bring Christianity and Magic
  together, 731-l.
Plato installed the creations of his own mind among the gods, 678-u.
Plato, Masonry revives the Academy of, 221-m.
Plato on the nature of the First Principle, 99-u.
Plato recognizes Love as the highest and most beneficent of the Gods,
  682-l.
Plato taught the distinction between the initiated and profane, 249-l.
Plato terms unity and duality the first principles of all existence,
  630-l.
Platonic doctrine of Hule recognized by Alexandrian Gnostics, 555-l.
Platonic doctrines favored by philosophers of Greece, 247-l.
Platonic triads, Thought, Matter, Kosmos, 549-l.
Platonism, doctrines of, 249-l.
Platonism, in Gnosticism were found the doctrines of, 249-l.
Platonism, in Symbolic degrees are found the doctrines of, 250-u.
Platonists borrowed the idea from Egypt or Persia that--, 255-m.
Platonists, the Absolute substituted for the Supreme Essence by the
  new, 284-u.
Plato's doctrine concerning the return of the Soul to Heaven, 440-u.
Plato's observation on the origin of the conception of a general
  Cause, 674-m.
Plato's philosophy a mediation of Love, 692-u.
Plato's science consummated in the contemplation of the Divine, 692-l.
Plato's theory concerning Deity, Soul, Force, Good, 681-m.
Pleiades signifies to sail; names of stars, 453-m.
Pleiades were for eight centuries the leading stars of the Sabean year,
  451-l.
Plenitude of Yod, the name of the letter spelled is Yod, Vau, Daleth,
  792-l.
Pleroma, Plenitude, Fullness, a favorite term of the Gnostics, 559-l.
Pleroma, the storehouse of the endless circle of phenomenal change,
  675-l.
Pliny advises his friend Maximus, to revere the ancient glory and
  old age, 804-l.
Pliny's character of Domitian, 47-l.
Plutarch admits the Two Principles as the basis of the Mysteries, 404-m.
Plutarch claims the Mysteries were established to--, 378-u.
Plutarch says "the better and diviner nature consists of three", 549-m.
Plutarch speaks mysteriously of Holy Doctrines in "Iside et Osiride",
  841-u.
Pneumatica Kabalistica, the Beth Alohim or Domus Dei, a Kabalistic
  book, 772-l.
Pneumatica Kabalistica states that in the world Yezirah Yod denotes
  Kether, 798-m.
Poetical personifications of Deity neither wholly moral or purely
  beneficent, 690-u.
Poetry continued a veneration for Sun, Stars, Fire, or Ether, 678-u.
Poetry obscured by symbolism the idea of Divine unity, 674-l.
Poetry personified Deity as man, 693-m.
Poetry's task was to fill the chasm separating man from Deity, 652-l.
Point in a circle parallel lines, two columns, represent the Solstices,
  506-m.
Point in the center of a circle a symbol of a point in the center of
  the Great Light, 748-u.
Point in the center of a circle represents the Light of the Vestige of
  the Garment, Yod, 750-m.
Point in the center of the Great Light is called Auir, Ether, Space,
  750-m.
Point within a circle expresses the union of the two great Causes, 401-l.
Point within a circle a symbol of the Sun, 486-l.
Point within a Circle; symbolism of the, 14-l.
Point within a circle, two parallel lines and single Tau Cross gives
  the Triple Tau, 503-m.
Point within a circle symbolizes the union of the Active and Passive
  Principles, 401-l.
Point within the circle represented by Unity, 629-l.
Point within the circle, symbolism of the, 401-l.
Points of the Scottish Master's Degree relating to the transmutation
  of metals, 780-782.
Poisons are sovereign remedies given in due proportions, 846-l.
Pole star in Egyptian times was Alpha Draconis, not Cynosura, 485-m.
Political degeneration, 66-75.
Political point of view, but a single principle of Liberty, 43-l.
Political science, 51-56.
Political theories, state brutalized by false and slavish, 50-l.
Pompadour reigns in the name of Louis the Fifteenth, 49-m.
Pontiff of the Johannites initiated de Payens into Gnostic Mysteries,
  817-l.
Poor man, school of life teaches lessons to the, 182-l.
Poor men, almost all the noblest things have been achieved by, 347-m.
Pooroosha, the universal organism; Fire, Air, Sun, the chief members,
  673-u.
Pope Clement the Fifth and Philip le Bel the accusers of the Templars,
  820-m.
Populace has two Stepmothers, Ignorance and Misery, 2-l.
Popular heart detests the greedy, the selfish, the cruel, even if
  successful, 838-m.
Porta Coelorum, a book which gives information concerning the Sephiroth,
  759-m.
Porta Coelorum defines Yod as the first among numbers and before
  all bodies, 792-l.
Porphyry says the ancients represented God by images, 283-l.
Porphyry says the soul must flee from sensuality to live with God, 521-m.
Porphyry states Egyptians recognize as Gods the Stars of the Zodiac,
  458-m.
Possibility of the actual not to be neglected for the impossible ideal,
  835-u.
Potentiality of the Universe had to exist before it was evolved, 704-m.
Power begotten by Genius, 30-m.
Power delegated for the good of the people, 155-l.
Power, never satisfied is the thirst for; examples of, 74-m.
Power of God has no bounds, 581-m.
Power, the wise use of the will which makes fatality its servant, 736-m.
Powers of Nature, in the Mysteries were personified the Active and
  Passive, 435-l.
Powers proceeding from Deity are perfectly submissive to His will, 768-u.
Practicability of a moral rule necessary to its being beneficial, 831-m.
Prayer an essential part of our ceremonies, 6-m.
Prayer as a means of changing the laws of the Universe, 684-l.
Prayer is a Force; is sublime, 6-l.
Prayer promotes the magnetic sympathy of spirit with spirit, 685-u.
Prayer seeks some outward beneficial result, 685-u.
Prayer takes the form of incantation as we ascend in antiquity, 684-l.
Prayer, the aspiration of the Soul toward the Infinite Intelligence, 6-m.
Prayers are vain things, according to a learned archbishop, 695-u.
Precession of the Equinoxes, a little over fifty seconds, 449-l.
Precession of the Equinoxes is 30°, or a Sign, in 2,155.6 years, 499-l.
Preparation to receive the lessons of the Mysteries, 431-m.
Present my only care if I am to perish utterly, 714-l.
Present, our scene of action, a part of immortality, 139-m.
Press is a sower of falsehood, 579-u.
Preston, explanations and improvements of, 105-m.
Pride not the heritage of man, 39-u.
Priesthood and Royalty, naturally identical are the interests of, 98-l.
Priesthood, the King of Egypt often exercised the functions of the,
  380-u.
Priests change the altar to a throne where they seek to reign, 360-u.
Priests honest and sincere before the time of Christianity, 102-m.
Priests in the festival of Isis were clothed in white linen and bore--,
  388-u.
Priests invented display of rites and exhibitions, 22-m.
Priests not willing to invest common people with philosophical Truth,
  23-u.
Priests, powers of government and all knowledge in hands of Hebrew,
  625-u.
Prima Materia of the Great Work defined, 773-l.
"Prima Materia," the magical agent of the Hermetic philosophers, 773-l.
Primal Ether extends everywhere, but is not perceptible to the senses,
  750-l.
Primal Ether of the Chaldean Oracles was Fire, 742-m.
Primeval times recognized in modern Degrees, 625-m.
Primitive happy condition remembered and preserved by the poets
  and legends, 599-l.
Primitive Man, Adam Kadmon, perfected by the Supreme God, 562-l.
Primitive man received the pure religion from God, 598-m
Primitive man recognized the Deity under a variety of appearances, 513-l.
Primitive man recognized the invisible God without losing faith, 514-u.
Primitive people feared the non-return of the Sun when--, 447-m.
Primitive people lamented when Sun seemed to be dragged down, 447-m.
Primitive people personified the Moon as Isis, 447-l.
Primitive people personified the Sun as Osiris, 447-l.
Primitive people personified Winter as Typhon, 447-l.
Primitive people rejoiced when the Sun reascended--, 447-m.
Primitive philosophy of the Indians the basis of that of Pythagoras, 372-l.
Primitive religion a veneration, pure and simple, of nature, 610-l.
Primitive religion as taught by Christ and the Patriarchs, 540-l.
Primitive religion not a deification of nature or denial of the sovereignty
  of God, 610-l.
Primitive Religion the glorious images of Divinity, 508-m.
Primitive revelation of God gives place to nature worship among--, 600-m.
Primitive revelation seen through the idolatry of nature worship, 601-m.
Primitive simplicity of revelation overlaid with poetic ornament, 600-m.
Primitive Truth faded from men's Souls as time went on, 583-u.
Primitive Truth falsified and confused during the ages, 599-u.
Primitive Truths passed from the Egyptians to the Jews, preserved
  by the Essenes, 369-l.
Primitive Truth taught Pythagoras by Zoroaster, 617-l.
Prince of Jerusalem, 16th Degree; characteristics of, 241-u.
Prince of Libanus, Knight of the Royal Axe, 22d Degree, 340-u.
Prince of Mercy or Scottish Trinitarian, the 26th Degree, 524.
Prince of the Tabernacle, 24th Degree, 371-u.
Principle called Father is comprehended in Yod, according to the
  Idra Suta, 792-l.
Principle is One; the Word is Two, 772-u.
Principle, man is possessed of an irrational principle origin, 252-u.
Principle of Active and Passive very important in ancient philosophy,
  653-664.
Principle of all things is called the House of all things, 793-u.
Principle of Existence made Himself Creator, 772-u.
Principle of Light manifested himself in Man to deliver the Soul, 567-m.
Principles, adherence to political, 85-l.
Principles and attributes personified, 270.
Principles and laws fixed for man as a spiritual being, 197-m.
Principles, Being is Being; Being is Real; Being is Logic were the
  three, 322-u.
Principles, but One are the Three Absolute, 322-u.
Principles, Father, Son or Word, Holy Spirit, are the three, 322-u.
Principles in Alchemy represented by Air, Earth, Fire, Water, 791-l.
Principles, Mercury, Salt, Sulphur, given a philosophical meaning, 783-l.
Principles of Divinity and of Primitive Matter and Darkness each
  eternal, 567-l.
Principles of generation, Active and Passive, basis of the Mysteries,
  404-m.
Principles of Good and Evil each triumphed for three thousand years,
  663-m.
Principles of Light and Darkness proceed from the Active and Passive,
  659-l.
Principles of Male and Female in highest and most profound sense, 700-m.
Principles of Manes adopted by the Gnostics in some numbers, 818-u.
Principles of the justness of God and the law of merit and demerit
  necessary to faith, 706-u.
Principles of the Universe; organs of generation symbols of
  the Active and Passive, 401-l.
Principles of the Universe, the Active and Passive symbolized by--, 401-l.
Principles, the generative parts of man and woman symbolized the, 401-l.
Principles, three result from the four qualities of the four Elements,
  783-l.
Printing, power and art of, 54-m.
Priscillianists believed in two principles, Divinity and Matter and
  Darkness, 567-l.
Prismatic separation of seven colors correspond to the Sephiroth, 727-m.
Problem of the Hermetics to transmute metals and possess the elixir
  of life, 772-l.
Problems, most important, are social, 180-u.
Problems of populous and wealthy country, 178-179.
Problems solved by the ancient poetic and philosophic mind, 653-m.
Proclus held that each Star contained an immortal Soul and Intelligence,
  671-m.
Proclus states Deity changed himself into the form of Love in the
  work of creation, 683-m.
Production, capacity of, 305-m.
Productive capacity of the Letter He left behind when Yod reascended,
  751-l.
Profane applied to strangers to the early Christians, 544-m.
Progress of man must be accompanied by doubt, 712-l.
Progress the normal condition of man, 691-l.
Projection accomplished by the understanding of a single word, 777-m.
Prometheus chained in his cavern betokened the continuance of Winter,
  592-m.
Pronunciation and meaning of Ineffable Name lost to all but a few, 700-l.
Pronunciation of the name of Deity involves the secret of its meaning,
  697-m.
Prophet of the Jews announced to the Magi by the Star of Initiation,
  840-u.
Proposition, Forty-seventh, 85-l.
Proserpina represents the seed decaying and destroyed, 395-u.
Proserpine and Adonis in wanderings represent--, 404-m.
Proserpine overcome by Pluto in the form of a Serpent, 492-m.
Providence of God enfolds the whole Universe, 715-l.
Providence of God rules directly in all the affairs and changes of
  material things, 809-l.
Providence: several Mysteries taught the administration of the Universe
  by Intermediaries of, 416-l.
Provost and Judge, 7th Degree; lessons inculcated, 126-u.
Pruczi, or Prussians, typified the Trinity by the tri-une God, 551-l.
Prudence symbolized by the Blazing Star, 506-u.
Prudence, the opposite of indolence, represented by Mercury, 727-l.
Prussian Knight or Noachite, the 21st Degree, lessons of the, 334-u.
Psalms of David indicate a loftier knowledge of Deity than the common,
  617-u.
Psyche represented the Soul; her suitor was Dionusos, who awakened her,
  586-l.
Psyche, representing the Soul, had an earthly and an immortal lover,
  519-l.
Public not a vague abstraction, 198-u.
Public Opinion a Force; in free governments omnipotent, 90-l.
Public service only justly entered through door of merit, 47-u.
Punishment and reward are the satisfaction of demerit and merit, 724-u.
Punishment for sins a part of the Masonic Doctrine, 577-u.
Punishment of Vice in this life, 101-u.
Punishment of wrongdoers without anger or revenge, 75-m.
Punishment the occurrence of an effect, 127-m.
Purity of heart security for purity of life, 227-m.
Purity of no religion continues long after it casts off simplicity,
  360-u.
Purity of the Initiate indicated by fasting, continence, initiation,
  520-l.
Purification by air, water and earth; symbols of, 412-m.
Purification preparatory to initiation, 431-l.
Pyramid, no Hebrew word to designate a, 234-u.
Pyramid of Borsippa, near Babylon; seven stages of the, 11-u.
Pyramid, the universal symbol of immortality, 633-u.
Pyramids and Obelisks consecrated to the Sun and Fire, 460-u.
Pyramids built to the four cardinal points, 366-l.
Pyramids, firm and unshaken, figured to Masonic judges by a triangle,
  826-l.
Pyramids of Bal had seven stages of different colors, 234-m.
Pyramids represented metaphysics founded on a knowledge of nature, 321-l.
Pythagoras a pupil of Zoroaster, 424-l.
Pythagoras attached importance to the Science of Numbers, 34-l.
Pythagoras became an Egyptian initiate, 365-m.
Pythagoras borrowed the Tetractys, 88-m.
Pythagoras chose philosopher as a title rather than sage, 626-m.
Pythagoras, conception of God by, 285-u.
Pythagoras declares "God is One," the Soul of all Beings, the Father,
  667-u.
Pythagoras, definitions of, 97-u.
Pythagoras did not ascribe to numbers any special virtue, 626-l.
Pythagoras dwelt twelve years at Babylon studying with the Magi, 662-u.
Pythagoras enveloped doctrine with symbols, 97-m.
Pythagoras established the Grecian Mysteries with three degrees, 366-u.
Pythagoras explained the transmigration of Souls, 622-l.
Pythagoras expounded the higher Greek religious ideas, 617-m.
Pythagoras, Fellowcraft Degree a reproduction of the teachings of, 366-l.
Pythagoras, 47th proposition older than, 86-l.
Pythagoras: Heirocles and Timaeus of Loeri disciples of, 623-u.
Pythagoras' idea regarding numbers, 88-m.
Pythagoras journeyed to learn the secrets of ancient Initiations, 96-l.
Pythagoras learned from a Magus at Babylon the two principles, 662-u.
Pythagoras learned from the Egyptians the idea of the Universal Soul,
  666-m.
Pythagoras learned from Zoroaster, who was taught in India, 617-m.
Pythagoras learned in Egypt that the earth revolved around the Sun,
  843-u.
Pythagoras learned much from the Egyptian priests, 362-l.
Pythagoras made the Universe an intelligent Being, 667-l.
Pythagoras, Masonry reiterates the maxims of, 221-m.
Pythagoras, mysterious Pentalpha of, 58-l.
Pythagoras, mystic numbers of, 233-m.
Pythagoras nor Thales made generally known the revolution of earth,
  843-u.
Pythagoras obtained true knowledge of Deity in the Mysteries, 208-m.
Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, mentioned with Christ, 562-l.
Pythagoras, Plato developed the philosophy of, 366-l.
Pythagoras recognized two principles of all things, in equal proportion,
  662-u.
Pythagoras represented the world by the right angled triangle, 631-m.
Pythagoras taught the esoteric doctrine, 249-m.
Pythagoras taught the transmigration of souls as an allegory, 398-m.
Pythagoras, teachings of, 366-m.
Pythagoras tried by Egyptian Priests before communicating secrets, 385-l.
Pythagore de Crotone corrupted into Peter Gower of Groton in England,
  816-m.
Pythagorean doctrine of numbers preserved by--, 235-m.
Pythagorean ideas as to particular numbers, 626-630.
Pythagorean ideas on Unity, 626-m.
Pythagorean opinions in the creeds of the Essenes and Therapeuts, 259-l.
Pythagorean "Sons of Apollo" took up the service of Dionusos
  when dispersed, 586-u.
Pythagorean symbol of Tetractys revered by the Essenes, 264-l.
Pythagorean triad was Idea, Matter and the Demiourgos, 549-l.
Python the Serpent Deity esteemed oracular, 496-m.

Q

Quadrature of the circle indicates the knowledge of the four vulgar
  elements, 629-m.
Quadrature of the circle produced by movements of four equal angles,
  771-l.
Qualities we call God, not the name of the sum total is the essential,
  644-u.
Quarternary formed by the Ternary acting with Unity, 771-m.
Quarternary, the Key of all numbers, movements, forms, 771-m.
Quaternary a symbol of the Eternal and Creative Principle, 632-l.
Quaternary the first solid figure, the pyramid, a symbol of immortality,
  633-u.
Quaternary the most perfect number and the root of all things, 632-l.
Questions concerning God, the Universe, Man, his destiny, 648-649.
Questions which are presumed to be solved by the "Fall" of man, 685-l.
Questions which have produced all the religions, philosophy, 649-l.
Quintessence, a combination of light and gold, in Alchemical work, 773-m.
Quintessence symbolized to the Alchemists by the Blazing Star, 842-u.
Quintessence: the number five designated the universal, 634-u.
Quintessence, the universal medicine of the Hermetic for the body, 773-m.

R

Rab Banaim, Chief of the Architects in 12th Degree, 202-l.
Rahab means a sea monster; smitten by God, 510-l.
Rainbow, three principal, seven by mixture, are the colors of the, 57-l.
Raising of Khurum a symbol of the spiritual regeneration of man, 519-l.
Raising of Khurum symbolical of the attraction of the constellation Leo,
  488-m.
Ram, device of Gad, characterized by Jacob as a warrior, 461-l.
Rama, one of the impersonations of Vishnu, the Epic Hero, 603-m.
Ramayan defines what the word Aum represents, 620-l.
Ramsay's fourth Degree, Scottish Elder Master Knight of St. Andrew,
  779-l.
Raphael, the face of a Man on the West and backward, with He and Earth,
  798-m.
Raven, Dove, Phoenix, are symbols of Good, Evil and Beauty, 792-m.
Re, the son of Phtha, and his wife, Tiphe, the celestial firmament,
  254-m.
Re, the Sun, whose symbol was the point within the circle, 254-m.
Reabsorbtion of the Soul into the Infinite, 686-u.
Real and unreal relative terms, 673-m.
Reality, what is; reality of dreams while they last, 572-l.
Reason and experience the bases of Science, 776-u.
Reason and sentiment the bases of Faith, 776-u.
Reason and the Moral Sense keep appetites and passions for our benefit,
  860-l.
Reason at fault when it deals with the infinite, 28-m.
Reason, Infinite, the Soul of Nature, immortal, 280-u.
Reason is because it is; reason is by means of itself, 737-l.
Reason is necessity, Law, the direction of every initiative, 737-l.
Reason is powerless before Authority, 315-m.
Reason is the Absolute; it is not an hypothesis; it is essential to
  existence, 737-u.
Reason is where nothing exists; nothing could exist without it, 737-l.
Reason leads us away from Truth under certain conditions--, 301-l.
"Reason leaps into the throne of God and waves her torch over the
  ruins of the Universe", 810-u.
Reason, light of; symbolized by--, 210-u.
Reason must have company of loving kindness in morals or political
  science, 29-l.
Reason: Necessity, Liberty, are synonyms of the Absolute; the
  Fixed; the Volatile, 791-l.
Reason of man compared with the Instinct of animals, 304-u.
Reason of man possesses something of the Absolute by participation
  in the Divine reason, 708-u.
Reason proves the existence and attributes of God, 226-l.
Reason reconciled with Faith in the Kabala, 744-l.
Reason sinking exhausted gives place to Faith, 841-m.
Reason: Socrates believed in a Universal, 693-u.
Reason Supreme and Absolute Justice, the Hermetic universal
  medicine for the soul, 773-m.
Reason, Supreme and unalterable, is the Philosophal Stone of the
  Hermetics, 775-l.
Reason, the designation of the Supreme Being, by Lao-Tseu, 278-l.
Reason: the Divine Reason is beyond the human, 841-m.
Reason: the great Absurdity to our feebleness is the Divine, 841-m.
Reason, unalterable, the touchstone of Truth, 776-u.
Reason's great aim is to generalize, to discover unity in multiplicity,
  673-m.
Reasoning principle comes from God through the Word, 252-u.
Rebuilding of the Temple of the Eternal advocated by Cagliostro
  to Masons, 823-m.
Reconciliation of faith and reason, science and creed by Magic, 842-m.
Reconciliation of Good and Evil through the plan of Equilibrium, 767-u.
Reconciliation of Light and Darkness; Free Will and Necessity and
  the harmonious result of all, 767-m.
Redeemer placed in the region of the Sun and Moon to attract
  the Light or Soul, 566-l.
Redeemer, theory of and necessity for a, 274-m.
Redeemer to end the reign of evil is The Word, 274-m.
Redeemer to overcome the Principle of Evil; names of the, 277-m.
Redemption of mankind through the death of a Mediator believed
  by the Druids, 618-u.
Redemption will be accomplished, and end of the world occur when--,
  564-u.
Reflections inhabited seven different regions and were named--, 563-m.
Reflections: the Angels proceeding from Ialdaboth were called, 563-m.
Reformation, a monk wrote anti-papal doctrines previous to the, 95-l.
Reformation and repentance necessary to obtain forgiveness, 435-m.
Reformers who are impatient generally fail to reclaim the erring, 133-l.
Regeneration, air, fire, water, the symbols of, 357-l.
Regnum has more nearly perfect knowledge when she turns face to face,
  799.
Regnum is given the name of the Word of the Lord and superinvests
  Heaven, 795-m.
Regnum, or Malakoth, the wife of Seir Aupin, Microprosopos, 799-l.
Regnum, the cornerstone, crushed into a formless mass, 796-l.
Regnum, the last Numeration, was empty and inane; needed Love, 798-u.
Regnum, the seventh King, produced by Binah, is called a stone, 796-l.
Reign of Evil ends when Fallen Angels are restored to God, 686-u.
Religion and duty, which are accepted by Masons, 226-m.
Religion and science, when progressive, are identical in aims, 710-m.
Religion, as a physiological fact, is the revelation of a necessity
  of souls, 822-u.
Religion, connected with philosophy was the ancient Oriental, 22-u.
Religion connects philosophy with humanity, 708-m.
Religion, every Masonic lodge a temple of, 213-l.
Religion for the mass of mankind must contain some errors, 224-u.
Religion gives man a Father, a Witness, a Consoler, a Judge, 708-m.
Religion, humanity has but one, 102-u.
Religion in Egypt and the East more or less a mystery, 354-u.
Religion is a recognition of duty in harmony with goodness, 717-m.
Religion labored to establish the universal triumph of the Cross, 821-l.
Religion, Masonry is the universal, eternal, 219-m.
Religion may be founded on an intellectual basis, 710-l.
Religion: men figuratively saw God face to face in the Primitive, 508-m.
Religion natural to man; he turns to God instinctively, 647-l.
Religion not in inaction, but in activity and exertion, 342-m.
Religion of Christianity imposed silence on lying oracles, 841-l.
Religion of Christianity put an end to the prestiges of the false Gods,
  841-l.
Religion of each age suited to its capacity, 105-u.
Religion of Love a Religion of Hate for seventeen centuries, 294-m.
Religion of Moses borrowed from all creeds with which it came in
  contact, 247-m.
Religion of the ancient Orientals was more or less a Mystery, 22-u.
Religion of the Ancient Patriarchs taught by God, 582-u.
Religion of the Hermetics that of the Magi and ancient Initiates, 774-l.
Religion of the infallible and the certainty of Philosophy united in
  Magic, 842-m.
Religion of the Patriarchs as practiced by the early Christians, 540-l.
Religion of toil, Masonry, society, 212-213.
Religion originally an attempt to interpret the unknown by mind, 650-m.
Religion revealed by God to the primitive man, 598-m.
Religion revealed to the patriarchs taught by Masonry, 214-u.
Religion separated from philosophy became arrogant and fantastical, 650-m.
Religion, sole purpose an Ethic, 35-u.
Religion, the crown of Morality, 726-u.
Religion, the truest, would not be comprehended by the ignorant, 224-m.
Religions, a basis of Truth and Morality in all, 311-l.
Religions, ancient, which once ruled the minds of men, 247-u.
Religions and Faiths antagonized by Science, 809-l.
Religions and sciences based on the idea of equilibrium, 769-l.
Religions based on the doctrine of the two Principles, 661-l.
Religion's existence is a scientific fact, 822-u.
Religion's history that of the human mind, 651-m.
Religions, maxims of ancient, 167-170.
Religions, Mysteries arose from the insufficiency of the ancient, 354-u.
Religions of antiquity all based on the worship of the Sun, 593-l.
Religions of the North partook of the manly character of the people,
  591-u.
Religions owe their life to the proposition of the direct Providence
  of God, 809-l.
Religion's task is to fill the chasm separating man from Deity, 652-l.
Religious belief a matter of birth, place and education, 165-m.
Religious belief not acceptable to all men on same evidence, 165-l.
Religious belief, sure foundation for, 226-l.
Religious belief, the deductions of intellect and convictions of the
  heart furnish a foundation for, 226-l.
Religious conceptions concerning the Trinity by the Ancients, 576-m.
Religious convictions as a result of the study of--, 226-l.
Religious doctrine of India and Persia at first a veneration of
  Nature, 610-l.
Religious dramas exhibited to the initiates as initiations, 383-m.
Religious expression is symbolism; objects of religion unseen, 512-l.
Religious Faiths of ancients could not have been believed if they
  knew as we do, 302-u.
Religious feeling evaporated with the stripping away of symbolism, 678-m.
Religious history that of the human mind, 651-m.
Religious ideas may be the same, but their expressions are various, 512-l.
Religious lessons taught to a thoughtful man by nature, 714-m.
Religious metaphysics discussed by Hebrews after Persian captivity, 617-u.
Religious Orders desired to make Kings and Pontiffs, 815-m.
Religious realization of Hermeticism is the foundation of the true
  Empire and--, 840-l.
Religious requisites are--, 164-u.
Religious systems approximating towards each other; when--, 247-m.
Religious teachings conveyed through "exhibition", 355-m.
Religious Truths inculcated by Masonry, 576-l.
Repining because we are not angels in a world of no changes is folly,
  696-m.
Repose unbalanced by an analogous movement will not be happiness, 847-l.
Republic, danger of government by party, 83-u.
Republic, for services to be rendered in the future is one entitled
  to office in a, 81-u.
Republic governed by agitators, 82-l.
Republic, hollow, heartless and shallow politicians in a, 84-l.
Republic, only in consideration of public services is one entitled to
  office in a, 83-l.
Republic saved by principle, "The tools to the workmen", 47-m.
Republic, the world but one; each nation a family, 220-m.
Republic, those competent to serve refuse to enter into struggle, 85-u.
Republic will be immortal, when--, 21-l.
Republics, decay of, 86-m.
Republics of old perished by the conflicts of liberties and franchises,
  815-m.
Republics, rule of Speech and Imposture, 45-l.
Republics, to the unworthy often go offices in, 46-m.
Requisites, religious, are--, 164-u.
Resignation more noble in proportion as it is less passive, 39-m.
Responsibility of Man for his acts a part of the Masonic Doctrine, 577-u.
Results, an aggregate of many exertions produces great, 175-u.
Results commanded by selection, 695-l.
Results, great, if Masonry and Masons are true to their missions, 175-l.
Results of the actions of certain women on their country, 312-l.
Results of universal law may be beneficial, though limitedly
  prejudicial, 695-l.
Results, the product of constant assiduity, 174-m.
Resurrected; after being held by the chains of the grave, Hercules was,
  593-u.
Resurrection, death, passion of Bakchos at Thrace, 411-u.
Resurrection of a God who associates Souls with Him, 408-m.
Resurrection or revival of the Sun Gods continuous, 590-m.
Retirement, morbid selfishness, 39-m.
Retribution bars retaliation, even in words, 813-u.
Retribution, law of, 216-217.
Reuben answers, to Aquarius, his ensign a man, 461-u.
Revelation of God by his attributes, 267-m.
Revelation: Infinite Being worshipped without superstition by
  primitive, 624-m.
Revelation of primitive times forms the basis of all religions
  and Masonry, 625-m.
Revelation of the Creative Agency in the ten emanations or
  Sephiroth, 267-m.
Revelation of the primitive religion made to the Hebrews in fragments,
  616-l.
Revelation of the Primitive Word of Divine Truth to mankind, 598-m.
Revelations and Inspirations in traditions, 321-u.
Revelations, Doctrines of all creeds found in the book of, 272-l.
Revelations: men united astronomy and religion, forgetting the
  Original, 508-l.
Revelations paints the struggle between Good and Evil, 272-l.
Reverence for ourselves as immortal Souls, 861-u.
Reverence for the organs of generation came from the ancient idea, 771-l.
Reversion of letters of a word to form a new name was common, 699-m.
Revision of the thirty degrees by the Supreme Council, So. Jur, 328-m.
Revivification of dead matter from its ashes the great work, 786-l.
Revolutionibus Animarum, of Rabbi Jitz-chak Lorja, a Kabalistic
  book, 772-l.
Revolutions have long roots in the past, 90-u.
Reward and assistance of humble workers in life's progress, 158-m.
Reward comes rarely to those who prepare the way, 230-u.
Reward, for eminent services ingratitude is often the only, 316-m.
Reward for good work rarely obtained in lifetime, 316-m.
Reward of those who assail hoary abuses or vested wrongs, 157-m.
Reward, who entitled in the future to, 172-m.
Rewards and punishment, merit of righteousness follow from the
  presence of evil, 797-m.
Rig Veda Sanhita contains Hymns addressed to the Heavens and
  Earth, 850-l.
Right agrees with justice and stands, 830-u.
Right and left completes human Unity; primitive man of both sexes, 771-u.
Right angle triangle has its angles indicated by the columns, 861-m.
Right angle triangle in diagram and described, 789-m.
Right angle triangle represents man as a union of the spiritual
  and material, 861-m.
Right angled triangle of Pythagoras represented the world, 631-m.
Right angled triangle, the G. Master's square; the 47th problem,
  in the Stars, 487-m.
Right doing better than right thinking, 35-m.
Right has a continual and progressive march of triumph, 835-l.
Right to be done because it is right, 219-l.
Right to dictate what shall be believed belongs to no man or men, 29-m.
"Right to govern" vested in the ablest, wisest, best, 203-l.
Right, under Necessity, to slay; no right to torture, because not
  necessary, 832-u.
Righteous shall dwell in Gimli or Vingolf with God, according to
  the Edda, 619-m.
Rightfulness of many actions difficult to prove from our standpoint,
  830-m.
Rights, inalienable, 24-u.
Rights of man must be respected by God, the essence of justice, 704-m.
Rigor impregnated by Love through Benignity produced the brain
  of Microprosopos, 796-u.
Rigor, perfect, denoted by the Mother, female. 795-l.
Ring given as a symbol of Divine protection and an emblem of
  Perfection. 431-u.
Rings and Globes encircled by serpents common on ancient monuments, 500-m.
Rishis: Patriarchs of the primitive world known as the seven great, 623-l.
Rites and ceremonies of Mysteries invented by the Priests, 354-m.
Robe; candidate in the Indian Mysteries invested in a white, 428-m.
Robes of white are symbols of candor, purity, truth, 539-u.
Robes presented to candidates alluded to the Heavens and starry
  signs, 506-l.
Robes, the initiates were clothed in linen, 387-l.
Robespierres in period of convulsion, 30-l.
Rod of Bakchos cast on the ground becomes a serpent, 422-u.
Rod of Bakchos divided the waters of rivers and he crossed dry, 422-u.
Roman de la Rose and Dante's Commedia are two opposite forms
  of the one work, 823-u.
Roman de la Rose borrowed from the High Kabalah, 733-u.
Roman de la Rose completed by Chopinel, begun by de Lorris, 823-u.
Roman de la Rose expresses the mysterious meaning of Dante's
  poem, 733-u.
Roman de la Rose is the Epic of Old France; a profound book, 823-u.
Roman de la Rose: the accomplishment of the Great Work the
  Key of the, 821-l.
Roman Games represented the course of the Sun, from East to
  West, seven of them, 464-m.
Roman, words of the great, 171-l.
Roman year began at the Vernal Equinox; also that of the Persians, 466-u.
Rome: early Christians fled from persecution to the Catacombs of, 542-u.
Rome more intolerant of heresy than of vice and crime, 820-m.
Root above is represented by the needle of the Balance, 798-m.
Rose anciently sacred to Aurora and the Sun, symbol of Dawn, 291-u.
Rose, as a symbol, explained in Kabalistic Commentaries on the
  Canticles, 821-l.
Rose conquered by Science; the Cross established by Religion, 821-l.
Rose Croix Adepts respected the dominant and revealed religion, 822-u.
Rose Croix Adepts united with Templars and founded a Mystic Sect, 821-m.
Rose Croix associations; the Absolute became the reason for the
  rites of the, 840-m.
Rose Croix Degree, meaning of the symbols of the, 308-u.
Rose Croix Degree not closed to any good man of any faith, 290-u.
Rose Croix Degree, opinion of Christ as propounded in the, 308-m.
Rose Croix Degree symbolizes the triumph of good over evil, 307-l.
Rose Croix Degree teaches belief in no particular creed, 308-m.
Rose Croix Degree teaches that notwithstanding Evil all is right, 307-l.
Rose Croix Degree, the 18th; application of the symbols of the, 276-m.
Rose Croix, lamentations and doubts expressed in the Degree of, 292-299.
Rose Croix, obligations, rules, philosophy of the ancient, 289-m.
Rose Croix, of no importance are differences of opinion regarding
  the Degree of, 290-u.
Rose Croix of the Hermetics and Kabalists, 785-790.
Rose Croix, only those instructed in Symbolic Degrees admitted to
  the Degree of, 290-u.
Rose Croix secrets in allegory in the Roman de la Rose and Divine
  Commedia, 823-u.
Rose Croix symbol first publicly expounded by Dante, 822-l.
Rose Croix, symbolism of the Degree of, 290-292.
Rose Croix, various interpretations, and ceremonies of the degree of,
  289-l.
Rose Cross established by Science and Religion, 821-l.
Rose of Flamel, that of Jean de Meung, that of Dante, grew on
  the same stem, 823-u.
Rose of Jericho, propagation of the, 96-m.
Rose of light in the center of which a human form extends its arm
  in the form of a cross, 822-m.
Rose, the emblem of beauty, life, love, pleasure; the sign of the
  accomplishment of the Great Work, 821-l.
Rose, the living symbol of the revelation of the harmonies of being,
  821-l.
Rose united to the Cross the problem proposed by High Initiation, 821-l.
Rouge-Croix vows demanded giving aid, support, succor, 802-l.
Rough Ashlar prepared by aid of the Square, Level, Plumb, Balance, 787-m.
Rousseau, through the ages will ring the words of, 43-u.
Royal Arch Degree, symbolism of veils, colors, banners of the, 409-l.
Royal Arch figures, Lion, Ox, Man, Eagle; origin of, 461-m.
Royal Arch Masonry, explanation of the figures on the banner of, 448-m.
Royal Arch of Solomon, 13th Degree, allegory or history of, 204-u.
"Royal Art," a name given by the Adapts to Magism, 842-u.
Royal Secret makes possible the Holy Empire of Masonic Brotherhood, 861-l.
Ruach, from the world Yezirah, the Vav of the Tetragrammaton, 757-u.
Ruach, the next higher spiritual part, or Spirit, 757-U.
Rule, Law and Order symbolized by the 24-inch, 5-u.
Ruler of the Universe found by attention to the world of self, 508-l.

S

Sabaoth, one of the seven Reflections of the Ophites, 563-m.
Sabbat, brother of the Serpent, represents the Evil Force or Devil,
  102-l.
Sabean Researches by Landseer suggests an Osirian theory, 483-487.
Sabeans recognized the Sun as the outshining, but not as the type
  of power, 740-l.
Sabeans taught that the heavens and spheres were part of the
  Universal soul, 669-m.
Sabeans, worshippers of Stars, held a great feast at the Vernal
  Equinox, 458-u.
Saduceeism arose from opposition to foreign teachings of the
  Pharisees, 259-l.
Sacrament of three Degrees, purification, initiation, perfection, 543-l.
Sacramental observances commemorate--, 393-l.
Sacraments of the Catholic church found in Mysteries of Mithra, 541-l.
Sacred Name, Hebrews forbidden to pronounce; substitute, 201-m.
Sacred name represented by the triple tau with circle and triangle,
  503-m.
Sacred Name, true pronunciation of the, 204-m.
Sacred number three called the perfect number, 5-l.
Sacred Numbers always appear together in the Heavens, 487-u.
Sacred numbers among the Etruscans, Jews, Egyptians, Hindus, 632-m.
Sacred numbers contained in the nine Sephiroth, 323-m.
Sacred numbers included in the faces and lines of a cube, 5-l.
Sacred traditions flowed through the most ancient nations, 599-l.
Sacred Triad represented by the triple tau with circle and triangle,
  503-m.
Sacrifice of self may be an act of justice, 833-l.
Sacrifice of self not implied by self restraint, 696-m.
Sacrifices accounted for by preponderance of God's sternness over
  mercy, 687-l.
Sacrifices made, skins of victims trampled on, 432-m.
Sage, work of the, 7-m.
Sages, barbarian and Greek, conveyed their meanings in visible
  symbols, 371-m.
Sages of Alexandria had an "unspeakable word" pronounced Ararita, 728-u.
Sagitarius chasing the Wolf, the emblem of Benjamin, the hunter, 461-l.
Saint Bartholomew, Eve of, 49-l.
Saint John, Apostle, read the language of Philo, 100-u.
Saint John said Christ was the Light that was the life of men, 743-l.
Saint John the father of the Gnostics, 817-m.
Saint Thomas declares in reference to the moral laws, 737-m.
Saints and martyrs developed out of previous mythical beings, 653-u.
Sakya of the Hindus called Gautama, Somonkodom, Chy-Kia or Fo, 551-m.
Salam, meaning of word; similarity to Salaa, a rock, 234-u.
Sallust defines and explains the objects of the Mysteries, 415-l.
Sallust, the philosopher, remarks on the relation of the soul to
  the Mysteries, 404-l.
Salsette, Initiations consummated in the three hundred apartments
  of, 361-u.
Salt and Sulphur serve in Hermetic work only to prepare the
  mercury, 775-m.
Salt and water used for purification, 431-l.
Salt expressed by the letter M, the initial letter of the Hebrew
  word, Malakh, 780-m.
Salt of Philosophy is Wisdom, 790-u.
Salt, one of the great symbols of the Alchemists, 57-l.
Salt, Sulphur, Mercury, separated from the rough Ashlar by
  Masonic implements, 787-m.
Salt, Sulphur, Spirit, produce Solidity; Softness, spiritual, vaporous
  particles, 780-u.
Salt represented by the Hermetics under the form of a cubical stone,
  775-l.
Salt represents to Hermeticists Absolute Matter, regenerated by Azoth,
  778-m.
Salt, with the Hermetics, corresponds with the Earth, 773-l.
Salutary number is six, contains the source of our happiness, 628-m.
Samaneans, a Society of Buddhist Prophets, belief of, 277-l.
Samaritan invented the accusation of Christians worshipping an ass,
  103-u.
Samothrace, Mysteries of Cabiri celebrated at, 407-u.
Samothrace settled by ancient Pelasgi, Asiatic Colonists, 426-u.
Samothrace the location of celebrated Mysteries, 426-427.
Sandalphon, one of the Chiefs of the Kabalistic Angels, 784-l.
Sanscrit stanzas in reference to the nature of God, 741-m.
Sapientia, Hakemah, "The Head of that which is non-existent" as
  applied to Kadmon, 758-u.
Satan, by consent, made Adam, his soul of Divine Light, his body
  of matter, 567-u.
Satan confounded by the Jews with Ahriman and the Dragon, 258-u.
Satan created and governs the visible world, 567-l.
Satan means in Hebrew simply "The Adversity", 661-m.
Satan of Gnosticism confounded with Matter, 255-u.
Satan, the Evil God, the Genius of matter alone, 565-l.
Satan, the negation of God; true name of, Yahveh, reversed, 102-l.
Satan the result of the reflection of Ialdaboth on matter, 563-m.
Satan, the son and lord of matter; demons the children of matter, 567-l.
Satan, Yahveh reversed the true name of, 102-l.
Satan's Eons, or Demons, were divided among themselves, 566-u.
Saturn gives the Soul the logical and contemplative faculty as it
  passes through, 439-m.
Saturn represents Temperance, 727-l.
Saturn, the name of the first gate of the ladder; material, lead, 414-m.
Saviour died upon the cross of expiation to redeem man in pledge, 567-l.
Saviour is the Logos made man, 848-u.
Saviour of the Soul represented by Dionusos, 519-u.
Saviour symbolized by the Word of a Master, 642-u.
Saviour, the first of creatures, created by the direct will of God,
  564-l.
Saviour united with his Sister, Wisdom, descended through the
  regions of the seven angels, 563-l.
Saviour with Wisdom entered into Jesus at his baptism, 563-l.
Savitri, the Progenitor, a Vedic Sun God, 602-l.
Scandinavian deities, Thor and Odin, subordinate to Alfader, 598-u.
Scandinavian name for the Sun was Arkaleus or Hercules, 587-u.
Scandinavian three-lettered name of Deity, I, O, W, 632-l.
Scandinavians believed in the Author of everything that existed, 618-m.
Scandinavians lamented the death of Balder torn in pieces, 595-u.
Scandinavians typified the Trinity by Odin, Frea, Thor, 552-u.
Schimeon Ben Jochai, Rabbi, describes the mysterious chariot, 798-l.
School of life, hard lessons in; be faithful in, 184-u.
Science a progressive mediation between ignorance and wisdom with
  happiness as the object, 711-u.
Science and Religion, when progressive, are identical in interests
  and aims, 710-m.
Science at the bottom of Magic, 730-l.
Science became concealed under Christian disguises after Hypatia, 732-l.
Science concealed itself to avoid the aggressions of a blind love, 730-l.
Science consists of--, 25-m.
Science consists of matured inferences from confirmed experience, 711-u.
Science deals only with phenomena and does not know what light
  or sound is, 810-u.
Science has its New Testament and Philosophy its beatitudes, 714-m.
Science is moral as well as intellectual, 711-l.
Science, Masonry the lineal descendant of the higher, 253-l.
Science, Moses, High Priests, Solomon, Prophets, in possession of
  the higher, 253-l.
Science, object of political, 26-l.
Science of Magism engraved on stone by Enoch and Trismegistus, 839-l.
Science of the discovery of Truth the most sublime to which
  mortal can aspire, 785-l.
Science of the Hermetics given by Paracelsus, Flamel, Raymond
  Lulle, 774-l.
Science overcome in Alexandria by the fanaticism of Christians, 732-l.
Science powerless against the forces of nature, 810-812.
Science rests on reason and experience, 776-u.
Science substitutes Forces for God's supervision of the Universe, 809-m.
Science teaches the magnitude of the Universe, 711-m.
Science teaches that man is not the central point of the Universe, 711-m.
Science, the higher, known as the Knowledge of the Word, 253-l.
Science, which is the reflection of God's glory, receives the Seal
  of His Eternity, 842-l.
Sciences: Astrology generally practiced and deemed the mother of, 463-u.
Sciences originally concealed in Sanctuaries opened up by the Sohar,
  843-l.
Scientific footprints discovered in the Symbolism of the Ancients, 842-l.
Sclavono-Vendes typified the Trinity by the three heads of Trigtav, 551-l.
Scorpio named because hot winds were venomous like reptiles, 446-m.
Scorpio, Osiris loses his life and virility under the sign, 478-l.
Scorpio: red Antares, one of the Stars marking Solstitial points, etc,
  456-u.
Scorpio, the reign of Typhon began when the Sun entered, 456-u.
Scorpion bites the Equinoxial Bull on which sits Mithras, 478-l.
Scorpion or Serpent stings the Bull and Orion at Autumnal Equinox, 466-l.
Scorpion represented by a Snake, generally, a Scorpion, a sign
  accursed, 456-u.
Scottish Elder Master and Knight of St. Andrew, the 4th Degree
  of Ramsay, 779-l.
Scottish Knight of St. Andrew, the 29th Degree, 801.
Scottish Rite a teacher of great Truths, 328-l.
Scottish Rite Degrees, meanings of pompous titles, 327-u.
Scottish Rite Degrees were insignificant and merely communicated, 326-m.
Scottish Rite, in any country, under any opinion, are conferred the
  degrees of the, 329-l.
Scottish Rite intended to be a Teacher of Mankind, 332-l.
Scottish Rite philosophy, teachings in reference to the soul and
  Deity, 855-u.
Scottish Rite teaches humanity where domestic slavery exists, 330-u.
Scottish Rite teaches to its initiates in all its degrees--, 329-l.
Scottish Rite teachings concerning the employed and employer, 330-m.
Scottish Rite, the five principal divisions of the, 202-u.
Scottish Rite the Preacher of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 329-l.
Scriptures, first written by God on the Earth and Heavens, 25-l.
Scriptures have an inner and an outer meaning, 266-u.
Scriptures, the Essenes believed in the Esoteric and Exoteric meaning
  of the, 265-l.
Scriptures, the literal meaning for the vulgar only, 250-l.
Scythia: Hercules begets with a Dragon the three ancestors of, 498-m.
Scythian name for the Sun was Arcaleus or Hercules, 587-u.
Scythians lamented the death of Acmon, 594-l.
Scythians made the earth the wife of Jupiter, 658-m.
Seal of the Templars, originally two Knights on a single horse,
  changed to the device of a Lamb, 802-u.
Seals, coins, medals impressed with Zodiac and signs, 462-l.
Second day of Greek Mysteries initiates were purified in the sea, 433-m.
Second day of the second month dedicated to the manes of the dead, 630-m.
Second Degree, Fellow-Craft, 22-u.
Second month in the year dedicated to Pluto, God of Hell, 630-m.
Secrecy enjoined on the Initiates very strict; penalties for violation,
384-u.
Secrecy indispensable in a Mason of whatever Degree, 109-m.
Secrecy of the Christian Mysteries, 544-547.
Secrecy required to be pledged before giving dogmas, 432-m.
Secret Discipline traced to the commencement of the Christian Era, 547-u.
Secret Doctrine superior to that of the Gospels claimed by the
  Gnostics, 542-l.
Secret knowledge of the Grand Scottish Master relates to the
  transmutation of substances, 780-u.
Secret, Masonic, revealed as Degrees are taken, 219-u.
Secret Master, 4th Degree, 106-u.
Secret of Masonry discovered in its symbols and work, 218-.u
Secret of the Grand Arcanum, Royalty of Sages, Crown of Initiate, 101-l.
Secret of the great work sought by the aspirants, 733-u.
Secret of the Occult Sciences is that of Nature itself, 844-u.
Secret of the Sohar necessary to enable one to make use of it, 843-l.
Secret of the Stone is the extraction of salt from all matter, 779-u.
Secret of the Universal Equilibrium is the Royal Secret, 859-u.
Secret Orders and Associations had two doctrines, one concealed, 817-l.
Secret: the Mystery of the Balance is the Royal, 858-l.
Secret traditions of the Kabalah contain a perfect Theology, 843-l.
Secret, Triple, of the Great Work represented by--, 104-l.
Secrets of a brother to be kept if Law warrants, 109-l.
Secrets of Ancient Masons concealed under enigmas and parables, 785-l.
Secrets of Masonry; Religions, Mysteries, Hermeticism, concealed, 104-l.
Secrets of the Kabala contained in the ternarys of the Evangelic
  Symbols, 730-l.
Secrets of the Temple, the revolution of the earth around the Sun
  one of the, 843-u.
Sect, Masonry neither a political nor a religious, 220-l.
Sects, Masonry embraces all parties and sects to form--, 220-l.
Seers living in the hope of being crowned, rend crowns and tread
  on them, 844-l.
Seeva, with Bramah and Vishnu, manifestations of the One Deity, 205-u.
Seir Aupin or Microprosopos, Arik Aupin, or Macroprosopos, 799-m.
Self consciousness leads to consciousness of God, 709-m.
Self-denial, patience, humility, essential qualities of a Knight of St.
  Andrew, 801-l.
Self limitation the first passing of a hidden Deity to manifestation,
  555-m.
Self preservation may, in cases, be the just and right thing to do,
  836-u.
Self restraint does not imply self sacrifice, 696-m.
Selfishness the great stumbling block in the way of doing good, 720.
Senary applied to the physical man; the septenary to his spirit, 634-l.
Seneca compared Philosophy to Initiation, 384-l.
Senses and appetites incite to great deeds, give strength, are useful
  servants, 860-l.
Senses are mysteries to us, 528.
Senses are not the witnesses that bear testimony to the loftiest
  Truths, 569-u.
Sentence written against the unjust in the nature of the Universe, 837-l.
Sentiment, deficiencies and inefficiency of mere, 148-149.
Sentiment warms and inclines to action; truth enlightens and illumines,
  725-m.
Sentiments play an important part in morality, 725-m.
Sephar Yezirah, one of the completest embodiments of Occultism, 321-m.
Sephiroth, according to the Kabalistic idea, 765-u.
Sephiroth are a triple triangle and a circle, 769-l.
Sephiroth are Attributes of God by which He reveals Himself, 267-l.
Sephiroth are Ideas and Rays of the Infinite not separated from It,
  759-m.
Sephiroth are the cause of existence of everything through certain
  media, 759-m.
Sephiroth arranged in three columns according to the book Omschim, 757-m.
Sephiroth changed from the spherical form to the form of a person, 757-m.
Sephiroth described and their modes and actions explained, 761-m.
Sephiroth diagrammatically arranged, 770.
Sephiroth emanate from the First Cause, and are the media which
  manifest It, 761-u.
Sephiroth emanating from Deity were the rays of His Splendor, 742-u.
Sephiroth, explanation of the last nine, 323-m.
Sephiroth figured as constituting a human form, 322-l.
Sephiroth from whose equilibrium results eternal permanency and
  Stability, 736-l.
Sephiroth of the Kabala constituted the Ancient of Days, 727-m.
Sephiroth of the Kabalah, significance and numbers of the, 322-323.
Sephiroth or Emanations, names of the ten, 267-m.
Sephiroth or Emanations of Deity symbolized by lights, 202-l.
Sephiroth or rays the emanations or outflowings of Deity, names, 552-m.
Sephiroth: seven metals represented by the seven lower, 798-l.
Sephiroth so constituted that it was not necessary to frame worlds
  from the first nine of them, 754-u.
Sephiroth, sometimes called the Persons of the Deity, are His Rays,
  748-m.
Sephiroth: Splendor or Perfection of Deity represented by the
  eighth, 736-l.
Sephiroth, ten, proceed from Malakoth of the several worlds, 784-l.
Sephiroth, the means through which Deity is the Single Cause of All,
  759-m.
Sephiroth, Theology of the, 99-m.
Sephiroth: unlimited Power represented by the seventh, 736-l.
Sephiroth: Victory, Glory, Stability, Dominion, are the last four, 848-l.
Sephirothic tables contain a numeration called Daath, cognition, 757-l.
Sephiroths, seven and eight, in equilibrium, cause the ninth and.
  tenth, 736-l.
Septenaries, there is silence in Heaven after each of the, 321-u.
Septenary philosophy of Initiation may be summed up as--, 322-u.
Septenary unites the triangle of Idea to the square of Form, becoming
  the Crown, 321-l.
Septenary universally in repute, 635-u.
Serapis represented with a human head and serpentine tail, 500-m.
Serapis, the name of the Sun to his adorers on the Nile, 587-l.
Serpent an emblem of eternity and immortality, 496-l.
Serpents and Dragons have something divine in their nature, 494-m.
Serpent and the bull used as symbols in Bakchian Mysteries, 420-u.
Serpent, brazen, erected by Moses, a good genius, 278-l.
Serpent called Agathodemon, the good Spirit, 495-u.
Serpent, considered a good genius; symbolism of the, 278-l.
Serpent devouring its own tail a symbol of the Life principle, 734-m.
Serpent engenders the Bull and the Bull the Serpent; explanation,
  493-494-u.
Serpents entwined around and suspended from winged Globe, 492-m.
Serpents fed in Temples and were immortal, 494-m.
Serpents figure in Mysteries and at Feasts, 494-m.
Serpent form assumed by Typhon, Ahriman, Satan, 661-l.
Serpents held by goddesses in Egypt and Assyria, 495-l.
Serpent in connection with astronomical observations, 492-l.
Serpent known to Orientals under generic name of "Eva", 494-u.
Serpent legends and references, general, 492-502.
Serpent represents Typhon; it is also a symbol of winter, 376-m.
Serpent the author of the fate of Souls; Hebrews and Gnostics, 492-m.
Serpent the peculiar symbol of the 25th Degree, 492-m.
Serpent was Oesculapius, God of Healing; Feast of--, 493-m--496.
Serpent with a globe or circle found on all ancients' monuments, 492-l.
Servius states that when beings die life returns to the Universal Soul,
  666-l.
Seth, a power set up as an adversary of Osiris, 588-u.
Seth's descendants preserved the primitive religion, 599-m.
Seven a peculiarly sacred number; symbolism of, 58-l.
Seven Archangels assigned to the government of the Seven Planets, 727-u.
Seven as a symbolic number in the Kabalah, 322.
Seven as composed of three and four in a word of four letters, symbolic
  meaning of, 728-m.
Seven circular walls of the palace of Deioces in Ecbatana, each
  colored, 729-u.
Seven composed of six and unity, 635-u.
Seven composed of three and four; the magical power in full force, 727-m.
Seven concentric spheres the residence of the Universal Soul, 668-u.
Seven connected with the number of the Planets, 635-u.
Seven ears of wheat in Pharaoh's dream interpreted by Joseph, 729-u.
Seven expresses all the elements of the Magical Mystery symbolized
  by the Sphinx, 728-u.
Seven Genii of the Ancient Mythologies, 727-l.
Seven golden candlesticks, symbol in Revelations, 53-l.
Seven great nations prayed three times a day turning toward the
  North Pole, 457-l.
Seven immersions alluded to the seven spheres a soul plunged
  through, 506-l.
Seven jewels on neck and limbs of woman who died during famine, 729-m.
Seven metals, one each assigned to the planets; Gold to the Sun,
  Silver to the Moon, 728-l.
Seven, mysteries, difficulties, trumpets, cups in the Apocalypse, 321-u.
Seven notes in the musical octave corresponded with the Sephiroth, 727-m.
Seven planets designated by the seven vowels of the Greek language, 728-m.
Seven, references to the number, 233-m.
Seven rivers of the Punjaub gave the Veda, 602-m.
Seven seals on the Kabalistic book of the Apocalypse, 727-l.
Seven Secondary Causes governed the World; the universal forces, 727-u.
Seven Sephiroth constituted Atik Yomin and corresponded with the
  seven colors, 727-m.
Seven Sephiroth projected from Binah by the energy of Hakemah, 756-l.
Seven spheres of Borsippa or pyramid of Bel, at Babylon, each
  colored, 729-u.
Seven stages of the Babylonish pyramid represents--, 234-m.
Seven stars, symbol in Revelations, 53-l.
"Seven Stars" the familiar name of the Pleiades, connected with
  Orion, 489-l.
Seven Stars the prison of the disobedient Stars and Heavenly Host, 511-u.
Seven Stars, Ursa Major, Great Bear, circle around the North Pole, 456-m.
Seven steps of Solomon's Temple symbolize the sevenfold purification
of the Masters, 780-l.
Seven steps of the Mithraic ladder, 233-l.
Seven symbolized life for the Egyptians, 635-m.
Seven, the Holy Empire of the clavicules of Solomon, 727-m.
Seven, the number of the Master's Degree, from the Pleiades, 487-u.
Seven, the sacred number in all theogonies and symbols, 727-m.
Seven, the Spirit assisted by the elemental powers, 727-m.
Seven, the Soul served by Nature, 727-m.
Seven vices and seven virtues, 727-l.
Seven virtues symbolized by the then known planets, 727-l.
Seven vowels in the Greek language designated the seven planets, 728-m.
Seven Wonders of the World; seven lines that composed the Pyramids;
  seven gates of Thebes, 322-u.
Sevenfold light symbolized by the seven steps leading to the Outer
  Court of the Temple, 782-m.
Sevenfold manipulation and purification in the transmutation of
  metals, 780-l.
Seven-stepped ladder represents the seven planetary spheres, 851-l.
Seventeenth Degree, doctrines and teachings of the, 274-l.
Seventeenth Degree, Knight of the East and West, first of the
  Philosophical Degrees, 246-l.
Seventh day of Greek Mysteries gymnastic exercises, etc, 434-u.
Seventh letter of the Egyptian alphabet, a serpent standing on its
  tail, 500-m.
Severities of Microprosopos are the Evil, 795-m.
Severity the mystery of pleasure and warmth of generative appetite,
  797-m.
Sex form of primitive man was that of both; "right and left" refers
  to it, 771-u.
Sexes assigned to the causes of nature, 655-m.
Sexual characteristics are not assigned to Deity by the Kabalah, 765-m.
Sexual characteristics symbolically assigned to some of the Emanations,
  766-u.
Sexual: meaning of obscure language of the Kabalah, revealed by
  the Name being bi-, 849-m.
Shadai, Supreme Power, one of the names of Deity on the Delta, 532-u.
Shadow carried with every planet or sphere not a center of Light, 845-m.
Shadow follows from visible light in direct proportion, 847-l.
Shadow of God is immortality: "Whose shadow is death," Sanscrit
  stanza, 741-m.
Shadow, the absence of Divine Light in a soul causes the awful, 300-u.
Shadow which accompanies the light representing Hule, 556-u.
Shadow, without Light there can be no, 307-l.
Shadows effaced the Light is annulled, 848-u.
She and He in Aramtic, Hebrew and Arabic, 700-u.
Shekinah, God in-dwelling, the place where Yod He, Vav-He, dwelt, 750-u.
Shekinah, the garment which by the third retraction was left empty
  of the light, 750-u.
Shepherd Kings had Crux Ansata for a symbol of royalty, 502-l.
Shew Bread, the twelve months represented by the 12 loaves of, 409-m.
Ship, in Hebrew, is Ani; the same word means I, Me or Myself, 781-m.
Ship: in the transmutation of metals a vessel is used having the
  form of a, 781-u.
Sicilian Mysteries known as the Academy of Sciences, 625-u.
Sicilian Vespers referred to, 49-l.
Sign of the 8th Degree expressive of--, 137-m.
Significance of words not known till things are taken away, 190-u.
Signs, symbols, watchwords used by early Christians, 544-m.
Silence regarding the Holy Spirit due to the awe of the Highest
  Mysteries, 849-l.
Silence, otherwise the Thought of God, produced the Spirit, 563-u.
Silenus, "The preceptor of the Soul," a characteristic Bacchic Sage,
  392-l.
Silver assigned to the Moon, 729-u.
Simeon and Levy had for device the two fishes of Pices, 462-u.
Simon Magus advanced the theory of Existences to solve the origin
  of things, 553-u.
Simon Magus, founder of the Gnostics, on the manifestations of God,
  270-m.
Simon Magus taught that the Supreme Being produced three couples
  of--, 552-l.
Simon of Cyrene crucified instead of Christ, 554-u.
Simple life of our ancestors preferable to the showy, loud, of today,
  806-l.
Simplicius held that in each Star there is an immortal Soul, 671-m.
Sin and evil reconciled with the wisdom and beneficence of God, 686-u.
Sin being congenital with Humanity, God's Justice would have
  annihilated man, 846-u.
Siphra de Zeniutha contains reference to the Book of the Abstruse, 762-m.
Siphra de Zeniutha states that Yod is the symbol of Wisdom, 792-l.
Siphra de Zeniutha, the Commentary of Rabbi Chajun Vital, 794-m.
Sipra de Zeniutha states that the Active and Passive are always in
  conjunction, 766-l.
Sirius made sentinel of the heavens by Ormuzd, 662-l.
Sirius or the Dog Star, the friend of Osiris was--, 376-l.
Sirius rose before the Sun previous to the swelling of the Nile, 454-l.
Sirius, the Dog Star, named because it gave warning of the overflow,
  446-m.
Sisyphus, Pausanias claimed that contempt for the Mysteries caused
  the punishment of, 381-l.
Siva, the Destroying or Renovating power of the Hindu Trinity, 550-m.
Six a symbol of the terrestrial globe animated by a divine spirit, 636-l.
Six, an emblem of nature, presenting the six dimensions, 634-l.
Six chief Spirits the progeny of the Supreme God in many theogonys,
  728-l.
Six good and six evil spirits typify the months, 635-u.
Six superior and six inferior signs, references to Stars, 490-m.
Six the first perfect number and a symbol of justice, 634-l.
Sixteenth Degree, Prince of Jerusalem; characteristics of the, 241-u.
Sixth day of Greek Mysteries, procession of lakchos, 434-u.
Sixth Degree, Intimate Secretary (Confidential Secretary), 119-u.
Skull, initiate in Druidical Mysteries seals obligation by drinking
  out of a, 430-l.
Sky a solid, concave arch, along which journeyed the Sun, etc., 443-l.
Slander and calumny of modern journalism, 334.
Slavery, domestic, considered by the Scottish Rite, 330-u.
Snake; a new world will emerge from the waters when Odin kills
  the great, 593-u.
Social problems, most important of all, 180-u.
Social state, God has ordained that life shall be a, 197-l.
Societies and ancient theogonies have a common concealed doctrine, 729-l.
Society a creation of Heaven, 196-l.
Society and social state, teachings of, 183-m.
Society, minuteness of regulation required by refined, 44-l.
Society, religion of, 213-u.
Society, the unobserved and invisible the most beautiful in, 141-m.
Socrates accused of Atheism, 384-l.
Socrates assumed the title of a "lover of truth", 691-l.
Socrates believed in a Universal Reason pervading all things, 693-u.
Socrates claimed that the Initiates had glorious hopes of eternity,
  379-l.
Socrates confessed to the failure of philosophy, 693-l.
Socrates expounded the higher Greek religious ideas, 617-m.
Socrates, Masonry revives the wise teachings of, 221-m.
Socrates prostrated himself before the rising Sun, 678-m.
Socrates, the Grecian philosopher, saying of, 170-u.
Socrates writes: "The initiated will attain the company of the Gods",
  373-m.
Sohar and Jezirah, knowledge of the Kabalistic doctrines in the
  books, 266-l.
Sohar declares the mystery of the "Balance" or Equilibrium, 305-u.
Sohar expresses Ainsoph as Light because unable to express it by
  any other word, 740-m.
Sohar incomprehensible and almost illegible without the Secret Key,
  843-l.
Sohar's Introduction states that Deity determined to create Good
  and Evil, 796-u.
Sohar one of the completest embodiments of Occultism, 321-m.
Sohar, references concerning Creation in the Introduction to the, 748-l.
Sohar says "Everything proceeds according to the Mystery of the
  Balance", 552-m.
Sohar says the Ten Sephiroth have their root with the Substance
  of Him, 754-u.
Sohar terms the Royal Secret the Mystery of the Balance, 858-l.
Sohar, the Key of the Holy Books, opens up the Sciences of the
  Sanctuary, 843-l.
Sol derived from Solus, the One, Only God, 630-m.
Solid number is twelve; the foundation of our happiness, 629-u.
Solomon, Lodge represents the Temple of King, 7-m.
Solomon represented by a Lion, 210-m.
Solomon's clavicules refer to the Holy Empire; symbolized, 727-m.
Solomon's double triangle explained by St. John, 792-u.
Solomon's philosophy the basis on which Masonry is founded, 785-l.
Solomon's Star formed by the meeting of the lines of the Compass
  of Science with those of the triangle, 841-u.
Solomon's Temple a symbol of the ninth and tenth Sephiroth, 736-l.
Solomon's Temple, after the model of Ezekiel, to be rebuilt by the
  Templars, 816-u.
Solomon's Temple, ground floor of, 14-u.
Solomon's Temple rebuilt, the secret dream of Patriarchs of the
  Orient, 816-u.
Solomon's Temple rebuilt would give Constantinople the Romish
  power, 816-u.
Solomon's throne like that of the Egyptian Har-oeri, 79-m.
Solon declares man's destruction comes from himself, 690-l.
Solon quoted, 37-u.
Solstice, Winter, Mother-night, the longest night in the year, festival
  of the, 368-u.
Solstices, Cancer and Capricorn, the Pillars of Hercules, in a Lodge,
  506-u.
Solstices celebrated by all civilized nations, 595-m.
Solstices represented by Jachin, Boaz, parallel lines, point in a
  circle, 506-u.
Solstices: tables giving entrances of the Sun into the Solstices, 450-u.
Solstices, the Essenes observed the festivals of the, 265-l.
Soma of nature's offertory imitated by the Priests from simples, 602-m.
Son, Issue or products; Universe proceeding from the two principles,
  87-m.
Son of Man, Soul of the World, enters into darkness and softens its
  savage nature, 566-m.
Son: the first Utterance of the Father, a perfect Only begotten, 564-m.
Sons of God and the Stars are identified in Job, 509-m.
Sophia-Achamoth an inferior wisdom, produces Ialdaboth, 563-m.
Sophia-Achamoth caused the Spiritual Principle to pass into man, 563-m.
Sophia-Achamoth communicated movements to Chaos, 563-u.
Sophia-Achamoth in contest with Ialdaboth, 563-m.
Sophia-Achamoth the companion of Christos, 560-m.
Sophia or Demiourgos of the Gnostics corresponds to The Word, 271-l.
Sorrow, no tongue utters thoughts that come in, 189-m.
Sorrow, Sin, Evil, Suffering, is consistent with Infinite Goodness and
  Wisdom, 859-l.
Sorrow, the dog of the shepherd who guides the flock of men, 101-m.
Sosiosch, the Persian Redeemer, to annihilate evil and judge the.
  world, 623-l.
Sosiosch, the principal of the Three Prophets, to regenerate the.
  earth, 258-m.
Sothis, the Dog Star, fixed the beginning of the Egyptian New Year,
  467-m.
Souciet, a Chinese book, describes palace; Emperor sacrifices a lamb,
  462-m.
Soul a fragment of the Universal Mind, lapse and reunion, 685-l.
Soul a number containing the quaternary, 633-u.
Soul, a ray of perfect wisdom, the inextinguishable light, 606-l.
Soul, a simple substance struggling to return to the Great Soul, 417-m.
Soul, all, is part of the Universal Soul whose totality is Dionusos,
  393-m.
Soul alone gives value to the things of this world, 201-m.
Soul an emanation from the Supreme Being, but distinguished from
  Him, 607-l.
Soul an external and independent existence, yet omnipresent, 672-u.
Soul, an immaterial spark of God's Infinite Being, 582-l.
Soul and God are distinct, according to the Naya philosophers, 852-u.
Soul ascends to its Infinite Source through seven spheres, 10-m.
Soul attaining unto the place of the Eternal retains its individuality,
  852-l.
Soul, being imperfect, must be purified before rejoining its source,
  622-m.
Soul, by comparison with Fire and Light the ancients explained the
  nature of the, 65-u.
Soul, by study, attains unto the place of the Eternal, 852-u.
Soul can not know its creation nor comprehend its own individuality,
  852-m.
Soul can reascend only after purification and freedom from the
  body, 521-u.
Soul capable of improvements, of becoming wiser and better, 852-l.
Soul capable of seeing more clearly as it draws nearer to Deity, the
  Light, 855-l.
Soul; categorical questions concerning the, 649-u.
Soul claimed to be considered a part of the Divine, 684-l.
Soul compared to Heat and Light, which neither lessens nor divides
  its own essence, 852-m.
Soul considered by Plato as a principle of movement, 681-m.
Soul contains, potentially, that which becomes the body of the child,
  755-l.
Soul descends to matter, by doing and suffering it frees itself and
  reascends, 417-l.
Soul desiring to animate a body, descended and was imprisoned in
  matter, 436-m.
Soul differs essentially from the body, 706-m.
Soul does not lose the sense of the Eternal and Infinite, 190-l.
Soul, doubts and despair torture the human, 292-299.
Soul emancipated by reabsorbtion into the infinite, 686-u.
Soul exiled on earth; birthplace in Heaven, 520-m.
Soul, fired by Love, uniting with Nature and itself engendering new
  productions, 658-l.
Soul forgetful of celestial origin in material fascinations, 518-m.
Soul freed from its debasements will be seen again in its true glory,
  858-l.
Soul freed from the body by deeds and suffering reascends to source,
  439-l.
Soul gives back to each sphere through which it passes in returning--,
  440-u.
Soul had its origin in Heaven, according to the Ancient Philosophers,
  436-m.
Soul, human, is itself God within the mind, 393-m.
Soul illumined by Truth, the shadow of which is Error, 845-m.
Soul in descent receives new material and faculties from each sphere,
  439-m.
Soul in nature, yet not a part of it, but its Cause and Creator, 672-u.
Soul in progress changes from monad to duad; results, 438-m.
Soul in the beginning had a thought to create and the worlds were
  created, 609-u.
Soul incessantly turns its eyes to Heaven and longs to return, 520-m.
Soul inherent in the Universe thought out by the ancients, 672-u.
Soul, interest in speculations concerning the fate of the soul, 232-m.
Soul is capable of remorse, 199-u.
Soul is divine, an emanation of the Spirit of God, but not a portion
  of that Spirit, 852-m.
Soul is of Divine nature; emanation from Deity, 76-l.
Soul is the image of God and existed before the body, 252-l.
Soul is the One emanation from Deity to return to Him, 539-l.
Soul likened to exhalations or vapor, 518-l.
Soul loses its felicity by means of the Balance; regains it by the
  Lamb, 490-m.
Soul, Masonry teaches the existence and immortality of the, 221-m.
Soul must pass through a series of trials and migrations, 518-l.
Soul, no obsequies for the lost, 200-u.
Soul not a mere abstraction, but a reality including in itself life
  and thought, 397-l.
Soul not condemned to eternal banishment because imprisoned in
  the body, 392-l.
Soul of everything that breathes a fraction of the universal soul, 610-u.
Soul or Intelligence pre-existing given by God to the Body, 251-l.
Soul of Macroprosopos, the internal part, is the Ancient of Days, 758-u.
Soul of man an emanation from God's spirit, 239-l.
Soul of man, breathed into him by God, is immortal as God's
  Thoughts are, 577-u.
Soul of man compared to the Soul of the World, 667-l.
Soul of man emanated from God, of the same substance with God, 567-l.
Soul of man immortal, according to the Edda, 619-m.
Soul of Nature everywhere inherent in the Universe, 668-u.
Soul of nature possessed intelligence and to this soul divinity
  belonged, 670-u.
Soul of the Universe does not act equally or in the same manner, 667-l.
Soul of the Universe entered man through a separation of the suture
  of the cranium, 609-m.
Soul of the Universe idea sprung from the two Principles doctrine, 664-m.
Soul of the Universe supposed to be intelligent; source of intelligence,
  669-m.
Soul of the Universe, the Supreme Being is the, 251-u.
Soul of the World exercises its creative energy through the medium
  of the Sun, 473-m.
Soul of the World produced the first man, Adam Kadmon, 566-m.
Soul of the World, the Primal Ether, 748-m.
Soul only existed in the beginning, 609-u.
Soul, opinions concerning pre-existence, descent and return of
  the, 438-441.
Soul, or Spirit, in different degrees contained in Adam Kadmon, 757-u.
Soul, origin, fall of and return to place of its origin taught by
  mysterious  ceremonies, 385-u.
Soul part of the Universal Soul whose totality is Dionusos, 586-m.
Soul parted from its source lapsed from its preeminence, 685-l.
Soul passes through various states till, purified, it rises to God,
  567-l.
Soul pervades and is within the body, 755-l.
Soul plunges through seven spheres to take up its abode in the body,
  506-l.
Soul recollects its source and longs to return, but must do and suffer,
  436-l.
Soul, relations of the march of light and darkness to the, 404-l.
Soul represented by Psyche had an earthly and an immortal lover, 519-l.
Soul, represented by Psyche, of whom Dionusos was the suitor, 586-l.
Soul sent into the embryo, which is to become an infant, at conception,
  755-l.
Soul separated from the Universe the next step in philosophy, 672-u.
Soul, Spirit, Intellect, the immaterial threefold part of man, 781-m.
Soul survives the body and is capable of immortality, 852-l.
Soul that is impure can not reunite with God until purified, 582-u.
Soul the envelope of the intelligence that attached itself to it, 669-m.
Soul: the minds or intellect of all are portions of the Universal, 604-l.
Soul the motionless center from which motion radiates, 681-m.
Soul to advance towards perfection and see Deity more clearly, 855-u.
Soul to attain its prior condition, its individuality must cease, 686-u.
Soul, to disengage itself from the body is the object of the earthly
  life of the, 252-l.
Soul to return to the Supreme Soul the body of the dust, 605-l.
Soul, to satisfy itself of its immortality is a characteristic of a,
  301-u.
Soul vexed itself with spiritual problems, 583-m.
Souls which contemplate the Higher Unity superior to deities and
  religions, 562-l.
Soul, while embodied in matter, is in a state of imprisonment, etc,
  852-u.
Soul will ascend to Heaven whenever purified, 253-u.
Soul will rise from the material through the seven spheres, 858-l.
Soul would reascend when extricated from matter, 520-m.
Souls and nature of men are great or small as it pleases themselves,
  813-m.
Souls are all equal, 565-l.
Souls are the sparks of the Influence of the shattered vases descending
  through the elements and--, 797-u.
Souls at death return to the Universal Soul, 664-m.
Souls at their birth receive an emanation from the Universal Soul, 664-m
Soul's attributes not the Soul, 573-u.
Souls: by fire, water, air was accomplished the purification of; symbolism
  of, 400-u.
Souls change their forms by passing successively into different
  bodies, 610-u.
Soul's disfigurement commented on by Plato, 858-m.
Souls emanate from the Light principle and return to it, 740-l.
Souls emanating from God descended a ladder to their bodies, 851-l.
Soul's emancipation completed by the transformation of death, 686-u.
Soul's existence and nature one of the highest questions, 642-m..
Soul's existence proved by our consciousness of being a thinking
  soul, 674-u.
Souls, fragments or sparks of the Universal Intelligence, 518-m.
Soul's immortality a doctrine considered certain among old nations,
  622--?
Soul's immortality defined by Chrishna as never being non-existent,
  518-u.
Soul's immortality proven, 706-l.
Soul's immortality the essence and consummation of all imagination,
  517-m.
Souls influenced by the Sun, 492-u.
Souls, intelligence, life, emanate from the Universal Soul, 666-m.
Souls know God only through Mind, 582-m.
Soul's life the result of Harmony and movement, 859-l.
Souls, men-accepted literally Pythagoras' allegory of the transmigration
  of, 398-m.
Souls must reascend through the seven planetary spheres to God, 851-l.
Souls of men formed from a substance divine, active, luminous, 398-u.
Soul's origin and home the bosom of Deity, 851-l.
Souls pass into terrestrial frames; process; reascension, 518-m.
Souls passed into animals, plants, other human bodies, the Sun, 399-l.
Soul's perfection necessitated perfection of morals and society, 520-m.
Soul's perfection the object of the Mysteries, 520-m.
Soul's personification as Jupiter, Bakchos, etc., explainable by the--,
  473-m.
Souls pre-existed in eternal fire from whence they emanated, 399-l.
Soul's progress from Heaven to association with an earthly body, 437.
Souls purified by ascending through Seven Spheres, 781-m.
Souls reascend after purification in forms of life, 518-m.
Soul's relations with the rest of nature the chief object of Mysteries,
  400-u.
Souls: Religion is the revelation of a necessity of, 822-u.
Soul's spirituality the necessary foundation of immortality, 706-l.
Soul's striving for Light and Knowledge of itself, 583-u.
Souls, the Supreme Being the Source of the rays which illuminate, 251-u.
Souls, ultimate disposition of, 252-m.
Soul's universal medicine is the Supreme Reason and Absolute
  Justice, 773-m.
Souls, when purified, become a part of the Universal Soul, 623-m.
Soura-Parama slain by Soupra-Muni, lamented by the Hindus, 595-u.
Souras, the particular devotees of Surya, 587-u.
Source of the Spring called Kether, Corona, Crown, 752-l.
Source of worlds in Maia, Nature's loveliness, 683-l.
Sovereign Power to whom belongs the maintenance of the order of
  the Universe, 512-m.
Space formed for Worlds by the recession of the Primal Light, 747-750.
Space in which worlds were created surrounded by an interspace, 748-u.
Space made for the creation of worlds called Aor Penai-Al, 747.
Spain, ambitions and attempts of, 74-m.
Spark of fire, on the left hand, issued from the sphere of Severity,
  795-m.
Sparks of the great Influence of the shattered vases eventually
  became Souls, 797-u.
Special Providences as a result of prayer, 684-l.
Speculations of Philosophers, etc.; object of teaching the, 329-m.
Speculations of today reproduce the ancient thought, 697-u.
Speech enchained is speech terrible, 48-u.
Speech, shallowness of much; abused in Republics, 45-m.
Speusippus taught that the heavens and spheres were part of the
  Universal Soul, 669-m.
Sphere constituted by the productive light of the letter He, called
  Kether Ailah, 751-l.
Sphere constituted within the sphere of Splendor by the light of
  the letter He, 751-l.
Sphere the emblem of Athom-Re, worshipped at Thebes, 584-l.
Sphere used as an expression for Deity by Xenophanes and Parmenides,
  676-u.
Spheres of Borsippa, represented by seven stories of different colors,
  729-u.
Sphinx, armed, represents the Magical Mystery expressed in the
  number seven, 728-u.
Sphinx the symbolic Key to a Knowledge of Nature, 321-l.
Sphinxes, white and black, symbolized the Holy Empire, 727-m.
Sphynx, great enigmas of the, 8-l.
Sphynx was a symbol, 148-l.
Spinoza's Infinity of Infinite Attributes of God, 566-u.
Spirit, as applied to God, synonymous with nothing, 739-m.
Spirit assisted by the elemental powers; Soul served by Nature,
  represented by Seven, 727-m.
Spirit can only be defined by some sublimized species of matter, 513-m.
Spirit, Mother of the Living and Wisdom of God, 563-u.
Spirit of life breathed into Man by God, 572-m.
Spirit, or Generative Power, and Matter originally were in Deity, 700-m.
Spirit personified by the Goddess of Neith, conceived by Power, the
  Divine Intelligence, 254-m.
Spirit represented by the quaternary; symbolism of four to nine, 633-m.
Spirit, the active principle, generative power, one of the Egyptian
  Triad, 548-l.
Spirit: the number five symbolizes the vital essence, the animating,
  634-m.
Spirit the same in kind with the Supreme Spirit, a ray of it, 605-l.
Spirit Universal, the home of the Light inclosed in the seeds of
  species, 783-m.
Spirit within man a spark of God himself, 609-m.
Spirits of Carpocrates originate the different religions, 562-m.
Spirit's relations with the material Universe one of the highest
  questions, 642-m.
Spiritual, affections, hopes, interests of life center in the, 195-m
Spiritual and material natures in equilibrium; Good and Evil, 784-l.
Spiritual beings possess limited divine will power, 684-l.
Spiritual forces of man act according to ideal modes of action, 829-u.
Spiritual instincts infuse into the mind--, 226-l.
Spiritual life touched by every phenomenon, 242-l.
Spiritual meditation or self mortification promotes reabsorbtion, 686-u.
Spiritual nature in conflict with our material where the greatest
  glory is won, 854-u.
Spiritual Principle passed from Demiourgos into Man, 563-m.
Spiritual purity shown through the efficaciousness of the will, 684-l.
Spiritual victory over the earthly nature symbolized by the Master's
  Compass, 854-l.
Spiritual world, the world of human consciousness, has a law, 828-l.
Spiritualist doctrine denied by Pythagoras, 667-m.
Spiritualistic doctrine separated God from the Universe, 667-m.
Spirituality of the person its identity, indivisibility, absolute unity,
  706-m.
Splendor Excelsus in contradistinction to Simple Splendor, 748-u.
Splendor, termed Teheru in the Sohar, is styled The First Matter, 751-u.
Splendor, the eighth Sephiroth, is Boaz, one of columns of the
  Temple, 736-l.
Splendor, the sphere in the centre of the space Malakoth; First'
  Adam, 754-m.
Spring Equinox a period of general joy, 588-l.
Spring Equinox, Mysteries celebrated the triumph of light at the, 405-u.
Spring's return heralded by Mithras, the rock-born hero, 592-m.
Spy, dishonorable is the occupation of a, 336-l.
Square, a Hermetic symbol of the productive Earth or Universe, 851-m.
Square, a symbol of the Earth and the things that belong to it, 850-m.
Square, an instrument adapted for plane surfaces only, 850-u.
Square and Compass; unsuccessful work follows a departure from
  the center of the, 786-l.
Square, being the second perfection, does not represent God, 631-l.
Square, Compass, Plumb, Level, have peculiar meanings to a Judge, 826-u.
Square containing an equilateral triangle a symbol of the Divine and
  Human, 858-m.
Square, definition of; belongs to plane trigonometry, 11-l.
Square held in the hand on the male side of the Hermetic figure, 850-m.
Square is the symbol of the four elements of the triangle, 629-m.
Square, Level, Plumb, Balance used to prepare the rough Ashlar, 787-m.
Square of the Form united to the Triangle of the Idea becomes the
  Crown of Numbers, 321-l.
Square represents the four elements into which Chaos was resolved, 783-u.
Square represents the material, sensual, baser portion of Humanity, 851-l.
Square, symbol of what concerns earth and the body, 11-l.
Square turning upon itself produces the circle equal to itself, 771-m.
St. George of England fights the Dragon, a form of Mithras, 499-m.
St. John assigns the Creation to the Word, and asserts Christ was
  that Word, 568-m.
St. John avers Christ was the Word by which everything was made, 559-m.
St. John explains the double triangle of Solomon, 792-u.
St. Louis, Falkland, Tancred, Castiglione would give their friendship
  to a true Knight, 808-m.
St. Paul discourses concerning the flesh, spirit, good, evil, 853-u.
St. Paul quoted as writing to the Christians at Rome, 853-u.
Stability is the Intellectual Capacity to produce, or female, 305-m.
Stability of the Universe a result of the equilibrium between Wisdom
  and Power, 859-u.
Stability, one of the last four Sephiroth of the Kabalah, 848-l.
Stability symbolized by the rough stone, 776-m.
Standards depicting a serpent borne by Assyrians, Danes, etc, 500-u.
Star guided the Magi from the East to adore the Saviour in his
  cradle, 841-l.
Star, magical adored under name of Remphan, 103-u
Star of five points originated from the Pentalpha of Pythagoras, 634-m.
Star of Knowledge advises the Magi of the birth of Truth, 843-m.
Star of Solomon formed the lines of the Celestial triangle meeting
  those of the Compass, 841-u.
Star worship a middle point between Heathen and Christian, 511-m.
Star worship: certain ordinances of the Christian religion related to,
  511-m.
Star worship looked on with indulgence by Jewish and Christian
  writers, 511-m.
Star worship; Maimonides explains origin of, 435-l.
Star worshippers established feasts for planets at their "exhaltation",
  463-m.
Stars and Sun, magnitude and extent of the, 303-u.
Stars animated by a living principle a part of the universal
  intelligence, 473-l.
Stars are divine as animated beings, by the logic of Cicero, 670-l.
Stars are Gods, active Causes, sharing the universal divinity, 671-u.
Stars considered intelligent beings causing effects on the earth, 473-l.
Stars directed by an intelligence, an emanation of the Universal
  Intelligence, 670-u.
Stars distinguished by terrestrial phenomena with which they seemed
  to be connected, 445-m.
Stars divided into good and bad, beneficent and malevolent, 472-m.
Stars, emblematic meaning of the North and Morning, 202-m.
Stars in the hand disappeared three days during the search for Osiris,
  485-l.
Stars moved of themselves, directed by their own special intelligence,
  671-m.
Stars' movements supposed to be voluntary by the ancients, 597-u.
Stars named by the Ethiopians of Thebes, 446.
Stars observed by primitive people to be more regular than the Sun,
  445-m.
Stars part of the Universal Soul and Intelligence, the opinion of
  many Christian philosophers, 671-m.
Stars possess an immortal Soul and Intelligence, held by many
  philosophers, 671-m.
Stars preceding event mistaken for cause, 450-m.
Stars rise and set cosmically, achronically, heliacally with the Sun,
  471-m.
Stars seen in Taurus at new-born year, 453-u
Stars, signs of the Zodiac, reference to in Royal Arch Degree, 409-l.
Stars, so many animated and intelligent beings, the cause of effects,
  669-l.
State, making and executing laws interests the citizens of a free, 51-m.
State, sovereignty of the Individual in the, 43-l.
State, tendency towards centralization in a Democratic, 51-l.
State, three departments of, 6-u.
States, creation of caste the tendency of free, 51-m.
Stature of men is great or small as it pleases God, 813-m.
Stauros of the Gnostics the image of generative power, 771-l.
Steps of the Master Mason Degree; origin of the, 428-u.
Stoic School retained a secondary divinity in the eternal spheres, 678-m.
Stoics' ascetic fatalism proceeds from a little knowledge, 694-l.
Stoics held that each Star contained an immortal Soul and Intelligence,
  671-m.
Stoics' wisdom a dogged submission to the arbitrary behests of one,
  694-m.
Stone, colored black, adored a white stone promised the Faithful, 775-l.
Stone, in the rough, the symbol of Stability, 776-m.
Stone of philosophy the foundation of Absolute philosophy, the
  Supreme Reason. 775-l.
Stone of the Philosophers explained and analyzed, 779-m.
Stone, say the Alchemists, is the true Salt of the Philosophers, 775-l.
Strabo says the one Supreme Essence embraces us all, 283-u.
Strength and Force in the service of Intelligence the true meaning
  of Necessity, 696-m.
Strength is the Intellectual Energy or Activity, or male, 305-m.
Strength of the Christian Mason represented by the column Jachin, 641-m.
Strength or Force represented by the Senior Warden in a Lodge, 7-l.
Strength or Power, the Infinite Divine Will, a side of the Masonic
  triangle, 826-m.
Struggle between the Divine and the natural will, 599-m.
Stuart dynasty runs out, 49-u.
Sublunary bodies received nourishment and increase from Sun and
  Moon, 475-m.
Sublimation the important operation in the Great Work, 777-m.
Sublime Elect (Elu) of the Twelve, 11th Degree, duties of, 176-u.
Sublime number is nine; religion and nature are exalted by it, 628-l.
Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, Master of the Royal Secret,
  32d Degree, 839.
Sublimity of natural phenomena, 244-l.
Substance known only by its attributes, 572-l.
Substance of the Soul of Man same as that of God, 567-l.
Success attends the plan of Equilibrium adopted everywhere by
  Deity, 767-u.
Success, the accumulation of many small efforts, 174-l.
Suffering a condition of virtue in this world, 716-l.
Suffering appointed by Zeus to be the parent of instruction, 691-u.
Suffering, evil, wrong, are but temporary and discords, 577-u.
Suffering is good because favorable to virtue and moral development,
  717-u.
Suffering is not the worst condition of man on earth, 717-u.
Suffering is the discipline of virtue, 181-m.
Suffering necessary to virtue and morality, 716-l.
Sulla in a period of convulsion, 80-l.
Sulla, reference to the Dictatorship of, 3-m.
Sulphur and Salt prepares the Mercury for assimilation with the
  magnetic agent, 775-m.
Sulphur corresponds, with the Alchemists, with the elementary form
  of the Fire, 773-l.
Sulphur expressed by the letter G, the initial letter of the Hebrew
  word Geparaith, 780-m.
Sulphur, Mercury, Salt, volatilized and fixed, compose the Azoth, 773-l.
Sulphur of philosophy represents the vital energy and ardor of the
  will, 790-u.
Sulphur, one of the great symbols of the Alchemists, 57-l.
Sulphur, resin and the laurel served for purification, 431-l.
Sulphur, the Baphomet of the Temple, given a goat's head, 779-l.
Summary of all the doctrines of the Old World by Hermes, 324-m.
Summer and Winter, in equal proportion, produce Spring and Autumn, 662-m.
Summer: good angels ruled by a King controlled the hemisphere of, 449-u.
Summer Solstice beginning of Egyptian New Year, 467-m.
Summer Solstice brought heat and exhaustion, 444-l.
Summer Solstice marked the rising cf the Nile, 467-u.
Sun a great globe of fire to the ancients, 443-l.
Sun and Moon and Horus form the Equilateral Triangle, 14-u.
Sun and Moon, Blazing Star or Horus the offspring of the, 14-u.
Sun and Moon considered the cause of the generations of earth, 475-m.
Sun and Moon correspond to the columns of the Temple, Jachin
  and Boaz. 776-m.
Sun and Moon emblems of the two Divine sexes, 305-l.
Sun and Moon impress a force by which generation is effected, 469-m.
Sun and Moon in lodge emblems of--, 252-l.
Sun and Moon, King and Queen, symbolized by the Hermetics as
  gold and silver, 774-m.
Sun and Moon of Alchemists give stability to the Philosophal Stone, 776-m.
Sun and Moon, represent the principles of all generation, 13-l.
Sun and Moon the eyes of the Universal organism, 673-u.
Sun and Stars rising and sinking typify the Soul's movement, 518-m.
Sun appeared under the image of the Sign at the commencement
  of the season, 465-u.
Sun, Archimagus, worshipped as Mithras, the Mediator, the Invincible,
  612-m.
Sun at the Vernal Equinox communicates to the earth his warmth, 475-u.
Sun, at Vernal Equinox, enters triumphant into the beneficent Sign, 664-m.
Sun, by his beneficent influences identified with the Principle of Good,
  594-u.
Sun called Heliogabalus and adored under the form of a black stone, 775-l.
Sun called Osiris, husband of Isis, God of Cultivation, 475-u.
Sun called Sura or Surya, the Heavenly, or Khur, 602-u.
Sun, center of the Active principle, offered by the male of the Indian
  Statue, 656-u.
Sun changes his place in the Zodiac at each vernal equinox, 449-m.
Sun dragged down to his death by the scorpion, Archer, He Goat, 447-m.
Sun enters Taurus at the Vernal Equinox 2,455 years B.C., 446-l.
Sun entering his twelve houses should be received by the four elements,
  786-m.
Sun gives the Soul the senses and imagination as it passes through,
  439-m.
Sun God finally victorious over the Serpent, 496-l.
Sun God rides on the winged horse, but the Serpent bites the horse's
  heels, 499-u.
Sun Gods of the Veda, Adityas, Savitri, Pashan, Mitra, 602-l.
Sun Gods were mostly carried off in their strength and beauty, 589-l.
Sun hesitates at Winter Solstice whether to descend or retrace, 445-u.
Sun: in all religions linger traces of the worship of the. 483-m.
Sun in Taurus personified in Dionusos, 585-u.
Sun, in the region of Light is the sphere of the, 76-m.
Sun, Moon and Mercury represented by officers of Mysteries of
  Eleusis, 411-m.
Sun, Moon and Mercury symbolized in the three great lights, 486-l.
Sun now in constellation Pisces when he is in the sign Aries, 449-m.
Sun, observations of the ancients regarding the movement of the, 444-m.
Sun originally feminine and Moon masculine, 700-u.
Sun personified as Brahma, Mithras, Osiris, Bel, Adonai, Apollo, etc,
  594-u.
Sun personified by--, 77-m.
Sun personified in connection with the ancient worships, 583-l.
Sun, Planets and Zodiac represented in the Mithraic cave of initiation,
  424-l.
Sun remained stationary three days, then began to rise, 447-l.
Sun represents Faith, 727-l.
Sun reverenced by the Essenes as a symbol of light and fire, 265-l.
Sun said to die and be born again at the Winter Solstice, 464-l.
Sun said to have been slain at the Winter Solstice, 447-l.
Sun, symbolism of the; manifestation and visible image of God, 13-u.
Sun symbolized by the point within the circle, 486-l.
Sun termed by an inscription on an obelisk as "Apollo," etc, 460-u.
Sun, the festival of May day of Druidical origin and in honor of the,
  367-l.
Sun, the great symbol of the Mysteries, purified Souls, 408.
Sun, the moderator in the celestial harmony; fourth in musical scale,
  410-m.
Sun the name of the seventh gate of the ladder; material, gold, 414-m.
Sun, the source of light, the hieroglyphic sign of Truth, 776-m.
Sun, to the ancients, the all-sufficient Cause of all, Author of all,
  594-u.
Sun typified by Mithras; the Parent of the Universe, the Mediator, 424-m.
Sun variously named by different peoples, 586-l.
Sun, with names beginning with Kur many places are sacred to the, 78-m.
Sun worship not the Primitive religion, 584-u.
Sun, worship of the, 77-m.
Sun worship the basis of all the religions of antiquity, 593-l.
Sun worshipped as the manifestation, but not as the type of dominion,
  740-l.
Sun worshipped by Egyptians under the name of Osiris, 406-u.
Sun worshipped by the Persians; light an emanation from Deity, 572-m.
Sun's course made to typify the contest between Good and Evil, 594-m.
Sun's "exhaltation" was in Aries, hence feasts of the Lamb; reason,
  463-l.
Sun's image changed with the precession of the equinoxes, 465-m.
Sun's journey across the sky, 442-l.
Sun's journey through the twelve Signs gives rise to legends, 448-u.
Sun's journey through the twelve Signs origin of murder of Khurum, 448-u.
Sun's journeys supposed to be voluntary by the ancients, 597-u.
Sun's movements watched anxiously by primitive people, 447.
Sun's path through the constellations called Ecliptic, 447-u.
Sun's primary metal holds within itself the Principle of the germ, 788-u.
Superior Intelligence of eight Eons, a Gnostic modification, 553-u.
Super-naturalists mix free action with the service of petition, 695-u.
Superstitions and fables used as symbols and allegories, 508-l.
Supper of bread a symbol of man's redemption and regeneration, 539-u.
Supper of bread and wine symbolic of Passover or the Lord's Supper, 540-u.
Supper of bread and wine; theory and teachings of the, 539-u.
Supreme Being a center of light, 252-m.
Supreme Being, at the intercession of Wisdom, sent Christ to redeem Man,
  563-l.
Supreme Being discussed in Hermetic books quoted by Iamblichus, 614-l.
Supreme Being, Kabalistic idea of the attributes of the, 266-l.
Supreme Being, Philo's conception of the, 251-u.
Supreme Being, Primitive Light, Archetype of Light, 552-l.
Supreme Being represented by the number three, 209-u.
Supreme Being, the Soul of the Universe, 251-u.
Supreme Being the source of the rays which illuminate Souls, 251-u.
Supreme Being, the Word, Logos, is the image of the, 251-m.
Supreme Being, the Word occupies the place of the, 251-l.
Supreme Being uniting with Wisdom acts upon the Universe through.
  the Word, 552-l.
Supreme Being uniting with Wisdom forms in himself the type of.
  all things, 552-l.
Supreme Council, So. Jur., revised its thirty degrees, 328-m.
Supreme Entity of the New Platonists known only by the Spirit, 284-u.
Supreme God created the Universe through agents or manifestations, 568-m.
Supreme Intelligence of the Universe the source of all Intelligences,
  665-u.
Supreme Lord or Being of the old Chinese creed is Chang-ti, 615-u.
Supreme Ruler of the Universe beyond human comprehension, 605-u.
Sura or Surya, the Heavenly, a name of the Sun, 602-u.
Surya descended upon earth in human form and left a race of renown, 587-m.
Surya is preceded by Arun, the Dawn, and he has twelve powers, 587-u.
Surya styled King of the Stars and Planets, 587-m.
Surya the Hindu name for the Sun, 586-l.
Surya's car drawn by seven green horses, or one horse with twelve heads,
  587-u.
Swedenborgianism explained somewhat through the Kabala, 741-u.
Swedenborg's system is the Kabalah minus the Hierarchy, 823-m.
Swedenborg's system the Temple without Keystone and foundation, 823-m.
Sword; initiate in Druidical Mysteries obligated on a naked, 430-l.
Sword of persecuted Templars, after being broken became a poniard, 820-l.
Sword piercing the heart represents the sting of conscience, 639-m.
Sword, symbol of speech in the Bible, 53-l.
Sword, symbol of war and of the soldier, 57-u.
Sword, symbolism of the, 54-u.
Swords, symbols of Honor and Duty, taught you Masonry as a Knight, 854-m.
Sydyc, or Tsadok, the Supreme God in Phoenicia, was the Heptaktis, 728-m.
Syene, exile of, 48-u.
Symbol a more efficacious instrument of instruction than didactic
  language, 355-m.
Symbol and allegory a method of indirect suggestion, 355-m.
Symbol confounded with the thing symbolized is idolatry, 516-m.
Symbol of a principle confounded with object symbolized, 600-u.
Symbol of an object unknown the most abstract expression for Deity, 513-u.
Symbol of Deity appropriate only in a relative or moral sense, 513-m.
Symbol of the disc and crescent on the Bull and Ram, 452.
Symbol of the Hermetics from a Frankfurt treatise dated 1613, 850-m.
Symbol of the right angle triangle found in the Apprentice Degree, 861-m.
Symbol of the 31st Degree is the Tetractys of Pythagoras, 826-m.
Symbol, pronunciation of the Word a, 205-l.
Symbol: to bring the idea before the mental eye vividly and truthfully
  the task of the, 515-m.
Symbolic and philosophic systems intimately allied, 372-u.
Symbolic character of the Hebrew Bible and writings, 745-u.
Symbolic figures to represent the essence and operations of the Deity,
  625-l.
Symbolic imagery may give ideas as adequate as words, 515-l.
Symbolic imagery of Deity defended by Maximus Tyrius, 515-m.
Symbolic instruction recommended by the uniform usage of antiquity, 372-m.
Symbolic meaning of Pyramids unknown, 148-m.
Symbolic meaning of the left hand with palm opened and expanded, 388-u.
Symbolic meaning of the Rose to be looked for in Kabalistic
  Commentaries, 821-l.
Symbolic reference of air, fire, water, 357-l.
Symbolic Triad of Salt, Sulphur, Mercury, or Body, Soul, Spirit, 792-m.
Symbolism becomes complicated and can not be explained, 514-m.
Symbolism, earliest instruments of education, 62-m.
Symbolism expounded by philosophy, 356-u.
Symbolism is nature's method of instruction, 355-m.
Symbolism, misinterpretation of, 64-u.
Symbolism of ceiling, border, brazen sea in lodge, 209-m.
Symbolism of Masonry, 250-l.
Symbolism of Nature, 64-m.
Symbolism of number Seven with several references, 233-m.
Symbolism of numbers, 626-638.
Symbolism of Solomon's Temple in its stately symmetry, 736-l.
Symbolism of Temples and Mithraic cave, 234-l.
Symbolism of the Alchemists only understood by children of Science, 792-u.
Symbolism of the Ancients bears the footprints of Science, 842-l.
Symbolism of the Apartments of the 18th Degree, 288-u.
Symbolism of the Blue Degrees according to the Christian interpretation,
  639-642.
Symbolism of the Cherubim according to Clemens and Philo, 409-l.
Symbolism of the circle in the Druidical Mysteries, 367-m.
Symbolism of the Clasped Hands, 88-m.
Symbolism of the colors, white and black, in juxtaposition, 818-m.
Symbolism of the columns Jachin and Boaz, 270-l.
Symbolism of the Compass and Square to guide the Knight, 808-u.
Symbolism of the double sex of the Universe and Orphic egg, 655-l.
Symbolism of the egg; borrowed from the Egyptians; found in Japan, 400.
Symbolism of the Fellow-Craft obligation, 639-l.
Symbolism of the figure four, 633-m.
Symbolism of the Hermaphroditic figure, square, compass, Sun, Moon, 851-m.
Symbolism of the Hermetic Rose Croix and the decorations, 786-u.
Symbolism of the luminous pedestal, 210-u.
Symbolism of the ladder of Mithraic initiations, 233-l.
Symbolism of the language of the Hermetics and Alchemists, 774-m.
Symbolism of the Lion, the Hawk, the Eagle, the Bull, 254-l.
Symbolism of the Mountain of Meru, 234-m.
Symbolism of the Mysteries to aid explanation, 434-l.
Symbolism of the number four, 209-u.
Symbolism of the number three, 209.
Symbolism of the number twelve, 209-m.
Symbolism of the Ocean and its sources or springs, 752-m.
Symbolism of the point within the circle in the Mysteries, 401-l.
Symbolism of the "Recovery of the Word", 252-l.
Symbolism of the Rose Croix Degree, 290-292.
Symbolism of the sacred vessels in Solomon's Temple, 409-m.
Symbolism of the Scriptures, 250-l.
Symbolism of the serpent, 278-l.
Symbolism of the serpent, 376-m.
Symbolism of the Sphinx or Bull with a blazing sword at the gate
  of Eden, 728-u.
Symbolism of the Square, Compass, Plumb, Level, for a Judge. 826-u.
Symbolism of the Sun; origin of his mediation, 519-u.
Symbolism of the Templars misunderstood and deemed pantheistical, 818-l.
Symbolism of the tests of water, air and fire, 397-u.
Symbolism of the three divisions of the Temple; sevenfold light;
  Brazen Sea, 782-m.
Symbolism of the tower, the fire, the basin of purification, 787-l.
Symbolism of the triangle, 87--.
Symbolism of the triangle, 826-827.
Symbolism of the two columns and parallel lines, 252-l.
Symbolism of the two columns at the entrance of the Temple, 305-m.
Symbolism of the weeping woman at the broken column and Time, 379-u.
Symbolism of two edged sword in Revelations, 53-l.
Symbolism of washing hands by Initiates of Eleusinian Mysteries, 357-l.
Symbolism of words, example of, in "I hail", 63-m.
Symbolism originated in the efforts of the mind to communicate
  with Nature, 650-m.
Symbolism: religious feeling evaporated with the stripping away of,
  678-m.
Symbolism, results obtained notwithstanding the vagueness of, 22-u.
Symbolism tends to complication, 63-l.
Symbolism: the mistaking of names for the things named a danger in,
  516-u.
Symbols attempted to be explained by words generally lose their
  meaning, 513-u.
Symbols conceal from the Profane and preserve to the Elect the
  Truth, 840-u.
Symbols constituted, chiefly, the first learning, 436-u.
Symbols conveyed in the Mysteries what is now given in books, 354-m.
Symbols derived from Pythagoras, 366-l.
Symbols eloquent to Adepts are meaningless to the mass of Initiates,
  819-m.
Symbols: epithets applied to God either visible or intellectual, 516-m.
Symbols explained according to the capacity of the multitude, 37-l.
Symbols given a broad interpretation, 329-m.
Symbols have wider meaning, 24-m.
Symbols in the Mysteries to represent life rising out of death, 395-m.
Symbols in time mistaken for the thing symbolized, 516-u.
Symbols, medium of conveying knowledge, 22-m.
Symbols, misunderstood, 62-l.
Symbols, more than one interpretation have the ancient, 205-l.
Symbols, motions of stars and the passage of the Soul represented by,
  233-l.
Symbols multiplied by the Hierophants to conceal absolute science, 321-l.
Symbols necessary to express ideas above and beyond the senses, 512-m.
Symbols none the less impressive because known to be symbols, 396-l.
Symbols of a Masonic lodge of astronomical origin, 486-l.
Symbols of ancients wore encircled by imagination, reason, religion,
  593-m.
Symbols of Degrees used to conceal, not reveal, 106-m.
Symbols of Good and Evil, Light and Darkness and resultant Beauty, 792-m.
Symbols of Masonry appear in the Kabalah, 267-l.
Symbols of Masonry are its instructions; lectures an explanation, 356-m.
Symbols of Masonry date beyond the monuments of Egypt, 311-l.
Symbols of Masonry displayed in the outer court of the Temple to
  mislead, 819-u.
Symbols of Masonry have more than one meaning; they conceal the
  Truth, 148-l.
Symbols of Masonry: only to the adepts are known the real meanings
  of the, 819-u.
Symbols of Masonry reveal no new secret to those incapable of
  interpreting them, 356-l.
Symbols of Mysteries not always explained, meanings lost, 423-l.
Symbols of purification, redemption and regeneration, 538-l--539.
Symbols of purity mistaken for the causes, 520-l.
Symbols of religion mistaken for realities, 22-u.
Symbols of 17th Degree refer to the ancient doctrines, 254-l.
Symbols of the Active and Passive, the Male and Female, 784-m.
Symbols of the end and perfection of the Great Work, 790-l.
Symbols of the Kabalah, Apocalypse, Ezekiel's visions, are little.
  understood, 321-l.
Symbols of the old world and its images lost, 731-l.
Symbols of the wise became the idols of the ignorant multitude, 818-l.
Symbols represented the metaphysical ideas of the Mysteries, 385-u.
Symbols, signs, doctrines of ancients should not be disparaged by us,
  522-m.
Symbols the almost universal language of ancient theology, 371.
Symbols the earliest, instruments of education, 512-l.
Symbols: the Incarnate Word adored by three Magi depicted in
  the Evangelic, 730-l.
Symbols transmuted into realities, 674-m.
Symbols used in the Mysteries; ceremonies referred to agriculture
  and astronomy, 382-u.
Symbols with material things made the imagination teach the Intellect,
  397-u.
Sympathy a force analogous to that of electricity, 89-l.
Sympathy for suffering and misery exists, 214-m.
Synesius, Bishop, held the doctrine of the transmigration of souls,
  399-l.
Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, a Kabalist, saying of, 103-m.
Synesius composed hymns fitted for the liturgy of Swedenborg's church,
  731-l.
Synosius concealed Science under a Christian disguise, 732-l.
Syrians abstain from fish out of dread and abhorrence, 456-m.

T

Taaut of the Phoenicians the same as Hermes, 586-l.
Taaut the author of serpent worship among the Phoenicians, 501-u.
Taaut the first to represent the Stars by symbols, 501-u.
Tabernacle and Temple; seven lamps in the great candlestick of the, 59-m.
Tabernacles, Feast of, lasted seven days, 59-l.
Tabernaculum, the Zodiac, the Great Tent, symbolism of the, 409-l.
"Tablet of Emerald," words engraven by Hermes on the, 324-m.
Tabunah, Intelligence represented by the Hebrew letters, 800-m.
Tacitus held no office, 47-l.
Tacitus, writings of, 27-u.
Tages, the Etruscan Tamet or Thoth, the giver of laws, 551-m.
Talismans given to candidates for the Mysteries of the Basilideans, 542-m.
Talmud, personification of the elements in the, 270-l.
Talmudists transpose letters to conceal secret meanings, 699-u.
Tamerlane's conquest less important than the invention of Faust, 314-u.
Tarot contains the Kabalistic alphabet, 777-l.
Taro, of the Kabalists, corresponds to the Hebrew Tetragram, 732-m.
Tartarus, allegorical to the Initiates, the ceremonies depicted horrors
  of, 396-m.
Tartarus, physical tortures of, were but a symbol of the consequences
  of sin, 383-u.
Tartarus, Virgil describes the punishments of the wicked in, 381-m.
Tatian adopted the theory of the Emanation of Eons, 564-u.
Tatius, Achilles, held that each Star is an immortal Soul, 671-m.
Tau cross in various forms and applications, 503-505.
Tau, the last letter of the Sacred Alphabet, signifies the end of the
  Great Work, 790-l.
Taurus and Scorpio figure in history of Osiris, being the two equinoxes,
  478-m.
Taurus opening the new year was the Creative Bull, 448-u.
Taurus or Bull: after Sun advanced to Aries reverence was paid to, 450-m.
Taurus, the Bull, a symbol in the Mithraic case of initiation, 424-l.
Taurus, the Bull, named because it was time to plow, 446-m.
Teacher, Death is the great, 183-l.
Teachings of Gnosticism, 248-l.
Teachings of Masonry are--, 221-u.
Teen is the universal principle and prolific source of all things, 616-m.
Tehiru, Splendor, the First Matter, a Vestige of the Sublime Brilliance,
  751-u.
Temperance, the antipodes of Gluttony, represented by Saturn, 727-l.
Templar ambitions and aims were to be rulers over the Masters of
  the World, 817-l.
Templar Chiefs: hints in the degrees and symbols indicate the real
  beliefs of the, 819-u.
Templar Chiefs studied the Hermetic science, 840-l.
Templar doctrines were two--Johannism for the Masters, and Roman
  Catholics, 817-l.
Templar efforts all directed against the Pope after the execution of
  the King, 824-u.
Templar fall coincided with the period of manifestations of Occultism,
  823-u.
Templar Order professed orthodoxy, but the chiefs only knew the
  aim of the Order, 817-m.
Templar secret object the rebuilding of the Temple on the model of
  Ezekiel, 816-u.
Templar Secret Order had princes as Grand Masters, 823-l.
Templarism lived under other names, governed by unknown chiefs, 821-u.
Templars accused of impiety, obscenity and the worship of Baphomet,
  820-m.
Templars and Hospitallers took vows of obedience, chastity, poverty,
  802-u.
Templars arrested and imprisoned by Clement the Fifth and Philip
  le Bel, 820-m.
Templars, at the origin, were opposed to the tiara of Rome and the
  crown of kings, 817-m.
Templars' avowed object was to protect pilgrims visiting Holy places,
  815-l.
Templars became a menace to Church and Society, 815-l.
Templars concealed themselves under the name of Brethren Masons, 816-m.
Templars, dead long ago, haunt the Vatican and disturb the Papacy, 814-l.
Templars' decay due to inherent weakness, haughty ambition, ignorance,
  819-m.
Templars disappeared at once and their wealth confiscated, 821-u.
Templars' dogma connected with Oriental philosophy by symbols
  used, 235-m.
Templars encouraged new worship, promising liberty of conscience, 818-l.
Templars initiated in the mysterious doctrines of the Kabalah, 815-l.
Templars: occult science of the Magi guessed at under the obscurities
  of the, 839-m.
Templars of modern days have no right to the title, 821-m.
Templars, or Poor Fellow-Soldiery of the Holy House of the Temple, 816-m.
Templars perished in their fatal victory, 824-u.
Templars preserved or profaned the remembrance of the Absolute, 840-m.
Templars saved the French King, to afterwards, ensure the scaffold, 823-l.
Templars succeeded by the Knights of the East and of the East and
  West. 816-m.
Templars the dream of sects of Gnostics or Illuminati, 815-l.
Templars' trowel has triangular plates arranged in the form of a cross,
  816-m.
Templars united with Rose Croix Adepts and formed a Mystic Sect, 821-m.
Templars, when rich, became insolent and overbearing, 820-u.
Temple an abridged image of the world, furniture, symbolism, 410.
Temple built by Wisdom has at its portal Jachin and Boaz, 860-m.
Temple built painfully slowly, destroyed very quickly, 320-m.
Temple gates opened but once a year for ceremonies of initiation, 421-u.
Temple of Jerusalem a symbol, 241-u.
Temple of Mecca an Iona surrounded by 330 stones, 236-u.
Temple of Paestum had fourteen pillars on each side, 235-l.
Temple of Saba Zeus at Thrace, on mount Zelmisso, form, 410-l.
Temple of Solomon a symbolic image of the Universe, resembled--, 208-l.
Temple of Solomon and ornaments referred to the order of the
  World, 408-l.
Temple of Solomon represented World, Sea, Earth, Heaven, 409-m.
Temple of Solomon symbolic of the Universe, 304-l.
Temple of Solomon, symbolism of the, 235-m.
Temple, one object of the early Christians was the building of the
  Symbolic, 369-l.
Temple represented the world in miniature, 234-l.
Temple, spirit of the Divine law at the rebuilding of the, 241-l.
Temple, the whole world one grand; Plato Macrobius, 235-u.
Temples everywhere, 241-u.
Temples have for roofs the starred vault of Heaven, 235-l.
Temples in the shape of a cross built by the Druids, 337-m.
Temples of Chilminar, Baalbeck, Tartary, had forty pillars, 235-l.
Temples of Hindus and Druids built in the form of a cross, 504-m.
Temples, Persians, Celts, Scythians, disliked roofed, 235-u.
Temples, reason for burning the Grecian, 235-u.
Temples surrounded by pillars a representation of--, 235-l.
Temples, the most ancient, were roofless, 235-u.
Temples, thick groves were planted to produce gloom in the, 383-l.
Temptation, evils of yielding, even in slight matters, to, 217.
Temptation, reason for not falling may be freedom from, 130-l.
Ten Commandments, Masonic, 17-l.
Ten, concludes the Abacus or Table of Pythagoras, 638-m.
Ten, in its relation to the Ocean, as a conception of God, 752-l.
Ten includes all the other numbers; represented by--, 60-l.
Ten numerations or Sephiroth contained in each other, 753-l.
Ten represented God, Man, the Universe, 638-m.
Ten the number of Perfection, 60-l.
Ten, the Perfect number, corresponds with the Tetractys, 323-m.
Ten, the perfect number of the Cabalists, denotes Heaven, etc, 505-u.
Ten written as Unity in the center of Zero; a symbol of Deity, 638-m.
Tenth Degree, Illustrious Elect (Elu) of the Fifteen, devoted to--,
  160-l.
Tenth Degree members should lead in enlightening, 171-l.
Tenets of Mason's profession, 21-u.
Tepharet, Harmony and Beauty, produced by Geburah and Gedulah, 764-l.
Tepharet, one of the Sephiroth; Beauty, 753-m.
Tephareth degree concealed and contained in Malakoth, Haikal, 799-m.
Tephareth including numerations from Khased or Gedulah to Yesod,
  is a person, 799-m.
Tephareth is a person called Seir Aupin, or Microprosopos, 799-m.
Tephareth represented by Vau, Beauty, the column which supports
  the world, 799-l.
Territorial extension, injustice of, 73-l.
Ternaries form a part of the Evangelic Symbols, 730-l.
Ternary conceals the great Mysteries of God and the Universe, 791-l.
Ternary explained by the balance and multiplied by itself, 769-l.
Ternary formed by the relation of equality between Above and
  Below, 771-m.
Ternary hidden in Masonry and the Hermetic Philosophy, 791-l.
Ternary is the bringing back of duality to unity, 760-l.
Ternary is the first odd number having in itself the beginning,
  middle, end, 760-l.
Ternary teaches the equilibrium of Contraries and resultant Harmony,
  792-u.
Ternary the first of the unequal numbers, 631-m.
Tertullian states that none were admitted to the Mysteries without
  an oath, 544-u.
Tessel, description and symbolism of the Indented, 14-u.
Tessellated pavement and bicolored handle of the dagger a reminder
  of the two principles, 818-u.
Tessera, a square piece of metal or wood; meanings and application,
  547-m.
Tessera, a symbol to distinguish between the Faithful and Profane, 548-u.
Tessera Hospitalis, a piece of wood cut in two as a pledge of
  friendship, 547-m.
Tessera in the shape of a fish used as a mark by early Christians, 547-l.
Tessera inscribed with a Greek word, the initials signifying--, 547-l.
Tesserated, not tessellated, floor of white and black lozenges,
  denticulated, 818-m.
Testament: human nature is the new, 715-m.
Testament: material nature is the old, 715-m.
Tests of water, air and fire, symbolism of the, 397-u.
Tetractys composed of three times three smaller triangles, 826-l.
Tetractys, Hebrew formation of: cut of, 88-m.
Tetractys leads to study of numbers, Kabalah, True Word, 88-m.
Tetractys of Pythagoras corresponds to the ten Sephiroth, 323-m.
Tetractys of Pythagoras, how composed, 60-l.
Tetractys of Pythagoras represents the ten, 638-m.
Tetractys of round dots revered by the Essenes, 264-l.
Tetractys of the Pythagoreans by which they swore their oaths, 633-l.
Tetractys should be replaced among symbols of Master's Degree, 88-m.
Tetractys, suspended in the East in the 31st Degree, represents
  Deity, 826-m.
Tetractys, symbol borrowed by Pythagoras from Egyptians, 88-m.
Tetractys the symbol of the generative power of the Universe, 826-l.
Tetrad expresses the first mathematical power, 632-l.
Tetragram of the Hebrews is Azot, Thot, Taro; it contains everything,
  732-m.
Tetragram, signification of the four letters of the Sacred, 104-l.
Tetragram the last word of Science and the key of Divine Power, 732-m.
Tetragram understood only by those who know the necessity of
  secrecy, 732-m.
Tetragrammaton expressed triangularly a symbol of Creation, 698-l.
Tetragrammaton forbidden to be pronounced except once each year, 620-u.
Tetragrammaton in Adam Kadmon by its letters, 757-u.
Tetragrammaton of the Hebrews the four-lettered word, 633-l.
Tetragrammaton of three Hebrew letters, one repeated, 323-m.
Tetragrammaton or the Ineffable Name is I, H, U, H, 698-m.
Tetragrammaton sometimes expressed triangularly, 698-l.
Tetragrammaton: the Elder Most Holy is the name, 795-u.
Tetragrammaton's meaning and pronunciation concealed, 700-l.
Thales learned that the Earth revolved around the Sun in Egypt, 843-u.
Thartae, a god with the head of an ass, Christianity said to be the
  reign of, 103-u.
Theater of Scaurus surrounded by 360 columns, 236-u.
Thebes, seven gates of, 233-m.
Theism of Anaxagoras subversive of the religion of outward nature, 679-u.
Theism of the Hebrews involved in symbols and image worship, 514-m.
Theoclet, Johannite Pontiff, initiated de Payens into the Gnostic
  Mysteries, 817-u.
Theodoret, Bishop of Cyropolis, speaks of the secrecy of Christian
  Mysteries, 547-u.
Theodorus gives Iabe as the Samaritan name of Deity, 700-l.
Theologers preceded Greek Philosophy, 683-m.
Theological ideas expressed by allegory by philosophers, 678-u.
Theological system formed on the doctrine of the two principles, 661-l.
Theology, at first an abstract idea, grows into all our relations, 643-m.
Theology based on writings of Aristotle and Lombard purely scholastic,
  847-u.
Theology of the Kabalah like that which is best explained by the
  Fathers, 843-l.
Theology of the Kabalah is consistent and harmonious, 843-l.
Theopmatus held that each Star is a part of the Universal Soul, 671-m.
Theopompus declares the two principles shall alternate in victory, 663-u.
Theoretical principles of right may work practical injustice, 834-l.
Theories advanced to explain the independent existence of Good and Evil,
  682-u.
Theorists, the Mason should have no alliance with impracticable, 338-m.
Theosophy, in Greek traditions were found the mysteries of, 250-u.
Therapeutae were Christians, their writings our Gospels, 265-m.
Therapeuts, Persian and Pythagorean opinions in the creed of the, 259-l.
Therapeuts reside in Egypt in the vicinity of Alexandria, 260-u.
Thibet, Pythagorean doctrine of numbers preserved by monks of, 235-m.
Thibet: the great Chinese dragon ornamented the Temples of, 500-l.
Things and beings, marvelous relations between; instances--, 41-m.
Things material and things of the intellect, 41-l.
Things the progeny of one fire; the Soul a bright fire, is immortal,
  611-m.
Think as the Old Lords of Thought command us, 315-m.
Third day of Greek Mysteries devoted to sacrifices, religious rites,
  etc, 433-l.
Third Degree, Master, 62-u.
Thirteen robes presented to initiates represent Heavens and signs, 506-l.
Thirteenth Degree, legend of; an allegory representing--, 208-l.
Thirteenth Degree, Royal Arch of Solomon; legend and history of, 204-u.
Thirty-second Degree, Master of the Royal Secret, Sublime Prince
  of the Royal Secret, 839.
Thomas, Christian General at the battle of Damascus, 53-m.
Thor and Odin fight with Dragons, 499-m.
Thor, Odin, Frea, the Scandinavian Trinity, 552-u.
Thor, son of Odin and Frea, one of the Northern triune Deity, 13-l.
Thor was the Sun, a counterpart of Osiris and Bel, 368-u.
Thot, of the Bohemians, corresponds to the Hebrew Tetragram, 732-m.
Thoth named by other nations Taaut, Hermes, Trismegistus and
  Adris; doings of, 364.
Thoth of the Egyptians the same as Hermes, 586-l.
Thoth or Phtha, an Egyptian skilled in the Mysteries of India,
  Persia, Ethiopia, 364-u.
Thoth, the Egyptian God of Healing, leans on a stick with coiled
  snake, 501-m.
Thoth the terrestrial repetition of the first Hermes, 255-u.
Thought, a Force, 2-u.
Thought in the Soul: the second in the Masonic Trinity, 575-l.
Thought is a Power; not matter or spirit; lives after a man, 573-m.
Thought is all repose and Nature all movement, 680-l.
Thought is eternal, is an actual existence, a Force and Power, 573-l.
Thought: nothing can compare with the grandeur of a, 201-m.
Thought of God a Power, 573-u.
Thought of God, Being of his Being, manifested in Intelligence, 560-u.
Thought of God, immortal as Himself, uttered itself in the Word, 575-u.
Thought personified by the Goddess Neith, a divinity of Light, 254-u.
Thought the only reality, 676-u.
Thought unlocks all the treasures of the Universe, 201-l.
Thoughts are the scintillations and rays of Intellect, 845-u.
Thoughts of dead legislators govern our present deeds, 315-l.
Thrace, passion, death and resurrection of Bakchos represented at, 411-u.
Three appears in all the ancient Philosophies, 548-m--552.
Three degrees of generation, Birth, Life, Death; beginning, middle, end,
  631-u.
Three essential degrees in Masonry because of the sacred Triad, 631-m.
Three figures constantly in Masonry; instances--, 548-m.
Three in One of a Trinitarian Ecossais, 575-l.
Three lights at the Altar represented the Sun, Moon, Mercury, etc, 548-m.
Three means Father, Son, Spirit; the triangle within the square, 629-l.
Three, or Triad, expressed by a triangle, 57-l.
Three, peculiar to Apprentices, from the three Kings of Orion, 487-u.
Three, Pythagoras on the number, 97-m.
Three represented by the Supreme Being, 209-u.
Three revered by all antiquity and consecrated in the Mysteries, 631-m.
Three, symbolism of the number, 209.
Three symbolizes the Earth; it is a figure of the terrestrial bodies,
  632-m.
Three, the number of the triangle, measures the base, 861-m.
Three times three in a symbolic sense, 827-u.
Three was called perfect harmony by the Pythagoreans, 632-m.
Three worlds of the Philosophy of the Sephiroth, 99-m.
Threefold alliance of day and night; the luminous image of the dogma,
  848-u.
Threes form the triple progression, Past, Present, Future, 631-u.
Throne and Church mutually sustain each other, 33-u.
Throne of France to be overthrown upon the tomb of de Molai, 824-u.
Throne of Solomon, bulls on arms, lions supporting, symbolism, 410-l.
Tiara of Rome opposed by the Templars at their origin, 817-m.
Tiberius as Emperor to be opposed by Masonry, 20-l.
Tiberius, reference to the reign of, 47-l.
Timaeus explains the symbolism of the pyramid, 460-u.
Timacus, of Locria, wrote of the Pythagorean doctrine, Soul of the
  World, 667-u.
Timacus regarded the Universe as an intelligent being, 670-u.
Time; evolution of the ancient division of, 445-m.
Time; seeking a revelation from the busy ant-hill of, 191-u.
Time symbolized by a serpent ring, 497-l.
Time, waste of, 115-m.
Tipharet, the Son, or issue, Beauty or Harmony, the sixth Sephiroth,
  552-m.
Tiphe, wife of Re, clad in blue and gold, the type of Wisdom, 254-l.
Titans tore Dionusos in pieces, assisted by Heri, 585-l.
Toil, a part of the spiritual instrumentality is every implement of,
  243-l.
Toil is worship--the noblest thing beneath the Stars, 342-l.
Toil of brain or hand or heart the only true manhood, 344-u.
Toil, religion of, 212-u.
Toleration a component part of Charity, 166-l.
Toleration enemy of that fanaticism which persecutes for opinion's
  sake, 160-l.
Toleration holds that every other man has the same right of faith
  as ourselves, 160-m.
Toleration, in early Christianity were evidences of the spirit of, 247-l.
Toleration, Masonic creed and view of, 167-m.
Toleration taught as one of the chief duties of a Mason, 166-l.
Tomb a part of the paraphernalia of the Mysteries of Isis at Sais, 405-m.
Tools and implements of Masonry are symbols, 330-l.
Tower, Temple of Bal at Babylon was a, 234-m.
Towers surmounting Pagodas, 234-m.
Towers symbolize the two furnaces for the fire, 783-u.
Tracingboard displays a luminous triangle with a Yod in the center,782-l.
Transcendental philosophy reposed on comparatively shallow bases, 674-l.
Transcendental philosophy, that of a Deity both eminent and
  transcendent, 614-m.
Transmigration of souls a doctrine of the Hindu religion, 604-m.
Transmigration of souls according to Pythagoras and disciples, 622-623.
Transmigration of souls, explanation of the doctrine of the, 398-m--399.
Transmigration of souls held by the Druids, 618-u.
Transmigration of souls involved a noble element of truth, 622-m.
Transmigration of souls taught by Pythagoras as an allegory was accepted
  literally, 398-m.
Transmigration of souls, the early Christians held the doctrine of the,
  399-l.
Transposition of the letters of a word common amongst Talmudists, 698-m.
Transposition used to conceal secret meanings, 699-u.
Tree of Knowledge became the Tree of Death, 844-u.
Tree of Life represented by the branch of Acacia, 786-l.
Tree under which Atys died was a pins and held sacred to him, 423-l.
Triad includes in itself the properties of the first two numbers, 631-m.
Triad of the Druids inscribed on a cruciform tree, 504-u.
Triad of Plato, explanation and symbolism of the, 87-l.
Triad plays an important part in the philosophy of Plato; the image
  of Deity, 631-m.
Triad produced by the union of the Monad and Duad, 631-m.
Triad signifies the world formed by a creative principle out of matter,
  631-m.
Triad venerated by Masons in the symbol of the triangle, 631-m.
Triads, Egyptian deities arranged in, 87-m.
Triads formed of the old Gods, often called a Trinity, 548-549.
Triads of ancient religions, 548-m--552.
Triads of the Egyptians, of Thebes. Philae, the Cataracts, 548 m.
Trials of candidates during Initiations were very severe, 385-m.
Triangle consecrated whose sides are emblems of the three Kingdoms,
  or God, 632-u.
Triangle: Deity symbolized by the double equilateral, 634-l.
Triangle, description and symbolism of Kabalistic, 104-m.
Triangle, Divine, the Trinity, the Triliteral Name, composed of--, 323-m.
Triangle, equilateral, one of the symbols of Chinese Mysteries, 429-m.
Triangle, equilateral, reversed, inscribed in double circle, Kabalistic,
  104-m.
Triangle figures to the Masonic, Judge the Pyramids, firm and unshaken,
  826-l.
Triangle has for its center the Hebrew Jod, the generative principle,
  632-u.
Triangle in connection with the Compass forms the Star of Solomon, 841-u.
Triangle in a Lodge indicates--, 209-l.
Triangle, infinite, above equaling what is below, 34-l.
Triangle, mystic and interlaced, found in India, 292-m.
Triangle of Perfection: One is three and three are one in each, 861-l.
Triangle of Solomon explained by St. John, 792-u.
Triangle of the Greeks the initial of the Latin or French word for God,
   631-l.
Triangle of the Idea united to the Square of the Form becomes the
  Septenary, 321-l.
Triangle represents one God in three persons; the Yod the initial of
  the last word, 782-l.
Triangle represents the eternal because it is the first perfect figure,
  631-l.
Triangle surmounted by a cross symbolizes the perfection of the
  Great Work, 790-l.
Triangle, symbolism of a right-angled, 87--.
Triangle symbolizes action and reaction and the result, 861-u.
Triangle, the chief symbol in Masonry, formed by the points of the
  Tetractys, 826-m.
Triangle, three great words names of the three sides of the Kabalistic,
  104-m.
Triangle to all the Sages the symbol of Deity, 861-u.
Triangle upon a square within a circle part of an Hermetic symbol, 850-m.
Triangle with right angles in a diagram and described, 789-m.
Triangles, Kabalistic and Divine, 738-u.
Triangles represented in the Stars, 487-m.
Triangle's sides offered for the study of the Apprentice, Fellow-Craft,
  Master, 632-u.
Triangle's sides represent Wisdom, Strength, Beauty or Harmony, 826-m.
Triangular plate sunk in cube; teachings of the name of Deity engraved
  on a, 209-u.
Triangulation, measurement by, 34-m.
Triglav, the three-headed God of the Sclavo-Vendes, 551-m.
Triliteral A, U, M gives initiate of the Indian Mysteries, 428-m.
Triliteral Iao was the sacred name of the Supreme Deity, 701-u.
Trimalcion as Legislator to be opposed by Masonry, 20-l.
Trimurti or Brahmin Trinity, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, 550-m.
Trinitarian, Scottish, or Prince of Mercy, the 26th Degree, 524.
Trinities of the Ancient Religions, 576-m.
Trinities of the Kabalists the origin of the Christian Trinity, 552-m.
Trinity, article in all creeds, 57-l.
Trinity believed in by Julian; also one God, 731-l.
Trinity of attributes of Deity, Justice, Wisdom, Mercy, the ninth
  Truth of Masonry, 537-u.
Trinity of attributes of God, Wisdom, Strength, Harmony, 525-u.
Trinity of God's attributes are Perfect and do not conflict, 537-u.
Trinity of God's attributes represented by the Triple Tau, 503-l.
Trinity of Power, Wisdom and Harmony, 209-l.
Trinity of the Chaldean oracles, Light, Fire, Flame, 740-l.
Trinity of the Christians; origin of the, 552-m.
Trinity of the Druids, significance of names of the, 103-l.
Trinity of the Father, the Spirit, the Word, 564-m.
Trinity, philosophical dissertation on the, 99-m.
Trinity represented by the three sides of the Delta, 531-m.
Trinity, the three principles of the, 210-u.
Tripartite division of the Good principle, a dogma of the Hindus, 604-m.
Triple progression of threes has foundation in the three ages of
  nature, 631-u.
Triple progression, three; three times three; three times nine; three
  times twenty-seven, 631-u.
Triple Tau cross in center of a circle and triangle typifies the Sacred
  Name, 503-m.
Triple Tau represents the creating, preserving, destroying powers, 503-m.
Triple Tau represents the three great lights of Masonry, 503-m.
Triple triangle, a Pythagorean emblem of Health, 634-m.
Triple triangle, a symbol of the Triple Covenant and--, 533-m.
Triple triangle among all nations a symbol of Deity, 826-l.
Triple triangle and a circle are the Sephiroth, 769-l.
Triple triangle found in the number of the offspring of Heaven and
  Earth, 728-l.
Tripod of Pythian Priestess embodied a triple-headed serpent, 501-l.
Triptolemus gave initiation to Hercules, 586-u.
Trismegistus engraved on stone the dogmas of the science of
  Magism, 839-l.
Trismegistus, Hermes, supposed to have written "Minerva Mundi", 790-m.
Triune Deity represented by the cord of the initiate, our cable tow,
  361-u.
Triune Deity symbolized by the three officers, lights, jewels, pillars,
  361-u.
Triune God of Chinese alluded to by the symbol Y, 429-m.
Trowel an emblem of the Degrees of Prince of Jerusalem, 242-m.
Trowel and Sword the emblem of the Templars, 816-m.
Trowels of the proscribed Templars built tombs for its persecutors,
  821-u.
Trowel of the Templars is quadruple, making the Kabalist pantacle, 816-m.
True God, only religious requisite is a virtuous life and belief in one,
  164-u.
"True Mason" styled the twenty-third or the twelfth of the fifth
  class, 782-l.
True name of God to be revealed at the coming of the Messiah, 621-m.
True Royal Secret which makes possible the Holy Empire, 861-l.
True, the Beautiful, the Good, are but revelations of one and the
  same Being, 708-u.
True things refer themselves to a Unity which is Absolute Truth, 702-m.
True Word discovered by the aid of the Tetractys, 88-m.
True Word found, without naming, in Hu of the Druids, and Fo-Hi, 702-u.
True Word of a Mason finds a meaning in the Ineffable Name of
  Deity, 697-m.
True Word of a Master Mason, 727-u.
True Word of a Master Mason, 861-l.
True Word said to be lost because its meaning was lost, 701-l.
Truth a divine attribute, the foundation of virtue, 184-l.
Truth and Intelligence are attributes of God, but not of the individual
  Soul, 607-l.
Truth and Intelligence not the eternal attributes of the individual
  Soul, 852-u.
Truth and Intelligence the eternal attributes of God, not of the individual
  Soul, 852-u.
Truth and loyalty needed now as in days of old, 578-m.
Truth and morality were virtues practiced by the Druids, 619-u.
Truth: amelioration and improvement effected by dissemination of, 218-m.
Truth as a basis of all religions, 311-l.
Truth at the foundation of the old Heathenism, 599-u.
Truth, Christ proclaims the old primitive, 309-u.
Truth comes to us tinged and colored with our prejudices, 166-m.
Truth concealed from the Profane preserved to the Elect by symbols, 810-u.
Truth deposited in a sacred place to be searched for, 785-l.
Truth, Divine, given to the first men preserved by Masonry, 136-m.
Truth, Divine, symbolized by the Star blazing in the distance, 136-m.
Truth hidden under symbols and allegories, 246-l.
Truth, incapacity to grasp, prevalent, 77-l.
Truth: Indians taught Zoroaster, who taught Pythagoras Primitive, 617-l.
Truth is a Divine attribute and the foundation of every virtue, 852-u.
Truth is in God and is God under one of His phases, 707-l.
Truth, Justice, Right in principle a result of the equilibrium of
  Wisdom and Power, 859-u.
Truth known concerning the nature of Deity contained in the True
  Word of a Mason. 697-m.
Truth, mathematical and practical, the Hermetic universal medicine
  of the mind, 773-m.
Truth, not acceptable to the mass of mankind is the highest, 37-u.
Truth, not attainable anywhere is perfect, 223-u.
Truth of a less metaphysical and more applicable kind sought after, 682-m.
Truth, our duty to press forward in search of, 223-u.
Truth overlaid with fictions after the Divine Word became obscured, 599-l.
Truth put in practice is the Good, 725-u.
Truth represented by symbols and hidden images, 436-u.
Truth separable into kinds, 148-l.
Truth sometimes reaches us on the borrowed wings of Error, 224-m.
Truth sought in general opinion by Socrates, 693-u.
Truth symbolized by Light, 148-l.
Truth symbolized by the Sun, 776-m.
Truth the object of worship of a Masonic Knight, 579-m.
Truth, the outflowing of the conjunction of Hakemah and Binah, 763-l.
Truth the Sun and Light of the intellectual and visible Universe, 606-u.
Truth to the Philosopher not Truth to the Peasant, 224-m.
Truth which creates the Future heralded by the Star of Knowledge
  at its birth, 843-m.
Truths, Astronomical details and natural operations in the Mysteries
  veil great, 375-m.
Truths fitted to make earth a Paradise revealed to man, 227-u.
Truths have been hated as errors at times by public opinion, 218-l.
Truths hidden by symbols and allegories of old fables and superstitions,
  508-l.
Truths, Masonry teaches all, 148-l.
Truths must be committed to the few to preserve their purity, 624-l.
Truths of Masonry, 533-538.
Truths of Masonry not inculcated, but hinted, 218-u.
Truths of primitive revelation veiled from the knowledge of the
  people, 624-m.
Truths of religion inculcated by Masonry, 576-l.
Truths of the Period as good as men were capable of receiving, 37-u.
Truths: the great fundamental primitive, 609-m.
Truths which are concealed are not lost; those discovered are not
  new, 842-l.
Truths which have been and are the law in every age, 227-m.
Tsaboath, with Alohayim; symbolism of, 104-m.
Tsadoc, Hebrew name for Jupiter, meaning and symbol of, 202-m.
Tsadok, the Supreme God of Phoenicia, the Heptaktis, 728-m.
Tsemsum the term applied to the first contraction, 746-u.
Tsur, Tyre, celebration of the festival of Dec. 25th at, 78-l.
Tuscan order of architecture is emblematic of--, 202-u.
Twelfth Degree; Grand Master Architect; duties of the, 189-u.
Twelfth Degree, teachings of the, 202-l.
Twelve chief Eons were the Genii of the Constellations, called Olamin
  566-u.
Twelve divisions adopted by Plato, Lycurgus, Cecrops, Chun, Romulus,
  462-u.
Twelve fellowcrafts in search of body and assassins; reference to
  Stars, 489.
Twelve Gods recognized by most ancient peoples, 460-m.
Twelve-inch rule and common gavel, 1-m.
Twelve is celebrated in the worship of Nature, 638-l.
Twelve, number of oxen under Brazen Sea; of stones in the breastplate
  of the H.P., 61-u.
Twelve represents the Articles of Faith; twelve Apostles, etc., 628-u.
Twelve signs of the Zodiac related to the Master's legend, 488-u.
Twelve signs of the Zodiac represented in the Labyrinth, 459-l.
Twelve the image of the Zodiac and the Sun, which rules over it, 638-l.
Twelve, the number of lines of equal length that form a cube, 61-u.
Twentieth Degree, Master of the Symbolic Lodge, duty of the, 325-u.
Twenty-eighth Degree, Knight of the Sun, or Prince Adept, 581.
Twenty-fifth Degree, Knight of the Brazen Serpent, teachings, 435-m.
Twenty-first Degree, Noachite or Prussian Knight; lessons of the, 334-u.
Twenty-fourth Degree, Prince of the Tabernacle, 371-u.
Twenty-ninth Degree, Grand Scottish Knight of St. Andrew, 801-u.
Twenty-second Degree, Prince of Libanus, Knight of the Royal Axe, 340-u.
Twenty-seventh Degree, Knight Commander of the Temple, 578-u.
Twenty-sixth Degree, Prince of Mercy or Scottish Trinitarian, 524.
Twenty-third Degree, Chief of the Tabernacle, 352-u.
Two expresses disorder, the Bad principle, 630-m.
Two independent, hostile Gods, according to the Manicheans, 565-l.
Two is the Word; One is the Principle, 772-u.
Two principles, Good and Evil, acknowledged by philosophers, 660-m.
Two principles the basis of the religion of the Magi and of Egypt, 661-l.
Two principles whereof heaven and earth are forms, 655-l.
Two, symbol of Antagonism; Good and Evil; Light and Darkness, 57-l.
Two, with the Chinese, signified disorder, duplicity, 630-l.
Typhon, a power set up as an adversary of Osiris to account for Evil,
  588-u.
Typhon: all stormy passions, etc., that agitate material man come
  from, 476-m.
Typhon, born of the earth, comparable to Python, slain by Apollo, 376-u.
Typhon, brother of Osiris, slew him and cut his body in pieces, 475-l.
Typhon compared to ignorance by Plutarch, 521-l.
Typhon derived from Tupoul, signifying a tree producing apples, 376-m.
Typhon, in morals, signifies Pride, Ignorance, Falsehood, 376-l.
Typhon is the personification of Winter, the desert, the ocean, 447-l.
Typhon put Osiris to death in the Mysteries of Isis at Sais, 405-m.
Typhon, Scorpion, ruled over evil genii of the hemisphere of winter, 449-u.
Typhon signifies serpent, life which circulates through all nature, 376-m.
Typhon signifies the human passions which expel wisdom, 376-m.
Typhon slew Osiris when the Sun was in the sign of Scorpion, at
  the Autumn, 377-l.
Typhon, the brother of Osiris, threw his body into the Nile, 589-m.
Typhon the principle and source of all evil, confounded with Matter, 255-u.
Typhon, the principle of corruption, darkness, evil, 478-u.
Typhon, the principle of Evil or Darkness, from the union of earth
  and Tartarus, 659-l.
Typhon, toward autumn the Woman's heel seems to crush the head of, 376-m.
Tyrannies of Rome, 3-u.
Tyrants use the force of people to enyoke the people, 3-l.
Tyre: description and symbolism of the furniture of the Temple at, 410-m.
Tyre, location of the Temple of Malkarth; old form, Tsur, 9-m.
Tyre, the seat of the celebration of the Phoenician Mysteries, 363-m.
Tyrian coins represented serpents in many attitudes, 501-u.
Tyrius, Maximus, says God did not spare his son, Hercules, 592-l.
Tyrius: Symbolic imagery of Deity defended by Maximus, 515-m.

U

Ultimate nature of things probably never will be known, 712-u.
Unbelief of the many, 296.
Understanding, the Capacity to be impregnated by the Active Energy, 305-m.
Unchanging nature of Deity compared with his perfect Freedom, 689-u.
Uniformity of plan among endless varieties of operation and form, 673-l.
Union of Deity with his creatures expressed by the Hebrew letter "He",
  698-l.
Union of the Universe with itself termed "the Great Secrets of Nature",
  659-u.
Union of True, Beautiful, Good in the Being from whom they emanate, 702-l.
Union with Deity the aspiration of the religious sentiment in man, 652-m.
Unit in number ten signifies God creating matter, the 0, 627-u.
Unit, in the fecundity of the Ternary, forms the Quaternary, the
  Key of all numbers, 771-m.
Unit is the symbol of identity, existence, harmony, point within the
  circle, 629-l.
Unit means a spirit embodied in the virgin earth--nature, 627-m.
Unit means a Word incarnate in the bosom of a virgin, or religion, 627-u.
Unit, or monad, a figure of the cube, 5-l.
Unity a necessary sequence from the conception of the Absolute, 702-l.
Unity and duality termed the first principles of all existence, 630-l.
Unity in which the many are and out of which all flow is Ihuh, 764-u.
Unity itself and the Idea of Unity are two; Unity manifested by
  the Binary, 771-u.
Unity measured by the Binary, 771-l.
Unity of Aristotle's First Mover follows from His immateriality, 679-l.
Unity of Force underneath the lives, wishes, wills of the people of
  the earth, 829-l.
Unity of God taught in the Orphic hymn quoted by Aristobulus, 415-u.
Unity of God taught in the Kabalah, 625-l.
Unity of Nature blended with a dim perception of Spiritual Essence, 687-m.
Unity of the Universe represented by the symbolic egg, 415-u.
Unity: the links that bind all created things together are the links
  of a single, 765-m.
Unity, the pivot, source, center, the august Idea of Pythagoras, 626-u.
Universal agent adored in the rites of the Sabbat or the Temple, 734-m.
Universal agent adored under figure of Baphomet or goat of Mendes, 734-m.
Universal agent is a force which if controlled would be infinite in
  power, 734-m.
Universal agent is the Life, principle, 734-l.
Universal Cause that was termed God; ancient ideas in reference to, 666-u.
Universal forces called the Seven great Archangels, 727-u.
Universal forces which govern the world create equilibrium by their
  contrasts, 727-u.
Universal: His ways are divided and judgment is on our side in
  the second, 794-u.
Universal idea felt rather than understood, 674-m.
Universal is an Idea abstracted from all considerations of individuals,
  764-u.
Universal Laws of God: we strive to enact our notions into the, 830-u.
Universal medicine required for the Soul, Mind, Body, by the Hermetic
  practice, 773-m.
Universal Mover identified with the fluctuations of the Universe, 588-l.
Universal Nature worship a kin to that of the Universal Soul, 593-u.
Universal Principle is Wisdom, the Father of Fathers, 791-m.
Universal Reason believed in by Socrates and Heraclitus, 693-u.
Universal Seed represented under the figure of the Caduceus of Hermes,
  775-u.
Universal Soul a Pythagorean doctrine from the Egyptians, 666-m.
Universal Soul comprised in Dionusos; all soul is a part of the, 586-m.
Universal Soul disseminated throughput the world in active operation,
  474-m.
Universal Soul embraces all, is all, and to it all will return, 604-l.
Universal Soul idea sprung from doctrine of the Active and Passive,
  661-m.
Universal Soul moves the immortal bodies that form the harmonious
  system of the heavens, 668-u.
Universal Soul organizes the Zodiac which gathers the varied.
  emanations, 669-u.
Universal Soul, the first of the Masonic Trinity, 575-l.
Universal Soul the source of all living things, 666-m.
Universal: the first person, Ani, I, is used by the second, 793-l.
Universal: the third person, Hua, He, is used by the first, 793-l.
Universals: all things are equally one in each of the two, 794-u.
Universals have each a wisdom, one above, one below, 794-m.
Universals, or four, Worlds, are Aziluth, Briah, Yetzirah, Asiah, 759-u.
Universals, or four Worlds, defined, 759-u.
Universals, the Unities out of which manifoldness flows, 755-u.
Universe: a combination of contraries the cause of the harmony of the,
  660-l.
Universe a harmony, not a discord, the eighth Truth of Masonry, 536-l.
Universe a point half way upon the infinite line of eternity, 849-u.
Universe always existed in the Divine Mind, 849-m.
Universe an emanation from God to the Fellow-Craft, 640-u.
Universe an immense Being with an inherent activity, 665-u.
Universe and all the succession of events present to the infinite
  before Creation, 769-u.
Universe and God were one, according to the Kabalistic view, 765-m.
Universe and Soul separate, yet omnipresent, in the Universe, 672-u.
Universe and World synonymous terms to the ancients, 302-m.
Universe assigned a double sex by the Egyptians, 655-l.
Universe became so by the manifestation of the Thought of Deity
  outwardly, 700-m.
Universe: Benignity poured into the Autocracy of Deity ensures
  the succession of the, 769-m.
Universe came from the Orphic egg issued from the mouth of Kneph, 585-u.
Universe can not be viewed today from the ancient standpoint, 595-l.
Universe communicated its eternal life to animated beings, 665-l.
Universe composed of the Active, or Divine, and the Passive, or
  changing, 654-m.
Universe conceived by God's Thought and its creation willed, 575-u.
Universe controlled by the Word, God's Thought, 575-m.
Universe created by Deity through the agency of an infinite will, 684-l.
Universe created by God's Thought uttered in His Word, 576-l.
Universe emanating from Deity symbolized by the triangle, 827-m.
Universe: every particle is related to each other particle in the, 828-l.
Universe evolved from the Word, 582-m.
Universe existed in the first divine idea, yet unexpanded, 608-m.
Universe-God adored by the Ancients as Supreme Cause, God of Gods, 666-u.
Universe governed by fixed laws or special Providences, 684-l.
Universe has no more a beginning than Deity himself, 849-u.
Universe has no voids or empty space, 845-m.
Universe having perpetuity of movement and life, the Supreme Cause,
  667-l.
Universe in action is God's mode of operation, 710-u.
Universe in idea and actuality contained in Deity to be developed, 849-u.
Universe in its totality and its parts was filled with intelligences,
  669-l.
Universe in potence followed the Idea of Creation in Deity, 767-u.
Universe in the beginning but one Soul, the All, alone with Time
  and space, 582-m.
Universe intelligent and wise because man, a part of it, is so, 670-m.
Universe is dissolved and renewed in endless succession, 607-l.
Universe is God, atheistic at bottom is the statement that the, 707-l.
Universe is One, developing itself into the manifold, 765-m.
Universe is one Harmony, 737-m.
Universe: Laws and forces of the, 526-m.
Universe made by Ahura Mazda in 365 days, 613-l.
Universe made of fire, water, earth and all-nourishing ether, 611-l.
Universe moves, changes, exists by the Eternal Law of Harmony, 826-m.
Universe must have been coexistent with Deity because--, 684-u.
Universe never began to exist; created by the Word, 575-u.
Universe not an immense machine forced into movement, 664-l.
Universe not only animated, but intelligent, 669-m.
Universe of necessities, sequences of cause and effect, of life evolved
  from death, 831-u.
Universe of the Egyptians a living, animated being, like man, 665-l.
Universe of things is the stream that flows from Deity; His energy
  without cessation, 763-l.
Universe, or God, likened to the Ocean by the Egyptians, 665-m
Universe, or productive Earth, symbolized by the Square, 851-m.
Universe outformed in the form of Male and Female, 763-m.
Universe plunged into chaos by a single effect without a cause, 735-l.
Universe preserved by Eternal Laws, the expression of God's Thought,
  577-u.
Universe proceeded forth from Deity; not created by Him out of nothing,
  764-m.
Universe put in movement by the power of the name of Adonai, 787-l.
Universe: questions concerning the creation or self-existence of the,
  648.
Universe regarded as an intelligent being by some philosophers, 670-u.
Universe supplied the first model of the Temple, 408-l.
Universe sustained by the Divine Mercies, 800-u.
Universe, symbolism indicating the Power, Wisdom, Harmony of the, 209-l.
Universe, symbolized by a cave, displayed in the Mysteries, 417-u.
Universe symbolized by an egg, 254-m.
Universe symbolized by the Temple of Solomon, 208-l.
Universe symbolized by Zoroaster by a serpent, 496-l.
Universe the aggregate of the ideas of all things that exist, 670-m.
Universe the great Bible of God, 715-m.
Universe, the Infinite utterance of one of an infinite number of
  Infinite Thoughts, 100-m.
Universe the result of the creative Thought of God, 582-l.
Universe, the Thought of God pronounced, always was, 303-u.
Universe the utterance of the Divine Thought, 849-u.
Universe, the uttered Word of God, is infinite in extent, 303-u.
Universe to the ancients was a living thing, 596-m.
Universe to us a machine, a great clockwork, 595-l.
Universe vivified by a great Soul diffused everywhere, 414-l.
Universe void of God is an impossible abstraction, 707-l.
Universe was comprehended in Deity before it became, 700-m.
Universe was planned by Deity and was of Himself, though not
  His Very Self, 764-m.
Universe, whether governed by reason or chance, of little account
  if misunderstood, 694-m.
Universe will not conform to any absolute principle or arbitrary
  theory, 831-u.
Universe with Soul inherent, an ancient idea, 672-u.
Universe would be a failure without the reconciliation of Good
  and Evil, 767-m.
Upanischads asserts and develops the doctrine of the Mantras, 672-l.
Uriel, the face of an Eagle, on the East and forward, with Vau
  and Air, 798-m.
Urn, symbolism of the, 519-m.
Uschas and Mitra are Medie as well as Zend Deities, 602-u.
Uschas, the Dawn, leads forth the Gods in the morning, 602-m.
Utopia not possible with men having bodily wants and human passions,
  835-m.
Utterance of the name of the Great God unlawful, 619-l.

V

Vacant space for Worlds formed by the recession of the Primal Light,
  747-750.
Vacant space formed by the contraction of Deity within Himself
  at Creation, 766-u.
Vacant space, the Primal Space, called in the Kabalah Auira
  Kadmah, was square, 750-m.
Valentinians distinguished three orders of existence; described, 560-l.
Valentinians venerated the generative organs, symbols of fruitfulness,
  656-m.
Valentinus defined God as exalted above all possibility of designation,
  555-u.
Valentinus published the Materia Prima containing an Hermetic symbol,
  850-m.
Valentinus, reared a Christian at Alexandria, held God was an Abyss,
  559-l.
Value of little things and humble efforts, 230.
Van Helmont asserts spiritual beings possess limited divine power, 684-l.
Varouna, the "All Encompasser," almost as extensive as Indra, 602-m.
Vase of water in Mysteries to symbolize purification by water, 412-m.
Vau and He comprehend all things; all are one system, 800-m.
Vau, in the triliteral word, denotes the six members of the
  Microprosopos, 793-l.
Vau is Beauty and Harmony, 798-m.
Vau is denoted Microprosopos and is composed of the six parts
  that follow Hakemah and Binah, 794-l.
Vau is Tepharth considered as Unity, in which are the six members;
  itself is one, 799-l.
Vau is Yod moved lengthwise, as communication is from above to below,
  792-l.
Vau moved sideways produces superfices, which is Daleth, 792-l.
Vaults, subterranean, represent--, 208-l.
Vav gave light to Yod by which great energy was conferred on Hakemah,
  756-u.
Vav, in the middle of the three Yods, denotes Hakemah, 763-m
Vav is both male and female, 763-m.
Vav is Tephareth, 758-u.
Vav of the Tetragrammaton in Adam Kadmon as Ruach, 757-u.
Vav with Yod and He completes the Triliteral Name, 323-m.
Veda apostrophized as living beings the physical objects of worship,
  602-m
Veda contains the most ancient religious effusions, 602-m.
Vedanta and Myaya philosophy regarding God and the Soul, 607-u.
Vedanta philosophy maintained the divine unity, 673-u
Vedas detail the creation of the world, 609-l.
Vedas the voice of the universal organism called Pooroosha, 673-u.
Vedic book, Antareya A'ran'ya, gives an account of the creation, 609-u
Vedic Gods, their origin and signification, 602-612.
Vedic spirit a pantheist monotheism, 672-l.
Vegetable Kingdom symbolized by Schib; studied by the Fellow-Craft,
  632-u.
Veil; noises, lightning, thunder preceded the lowering of the, 433-u.
Veil removed revealed the image of the Goddess of the Mysteries, 433-u.
Veils of four colors represented the four elements, 409-m.
Venus inspires the soul with desires while passing through, 439-m.
Venus represents Charity, 727-l.
Venus, the name of the second gate of the ladder; material, tin, 414-u.
Verity: there is a method of knowing the incontestable, 842-m.
Vernal Equinox brought soft winds and warmth, 444-m.
Vernal Equinox most fully develops the creative or demiurge energy,
  473-u.
Vernal Equinox; Principle of Good overcomes that of Evil at the, 664-m.
Vernal Equinox; Sun 4,500 years ago in Gemini at the, 401-l.
Vernal Equinox: the demiourgic action and energy most active at the,
  664-m.
Vernal Equinox: the Israelites marched out of Egyptian bondage at the,
  466-m.
Very Deity is all that may possibly be besides all that is, was, shall
  be, 819-m.
Vessels comparable to the Kings produced by Binah, 797-u.
Vessels contain within themselves the light of the sphere, 755-m.
Vessels of the Sephiroth below Binah broken that evil might be
  created, 791-l.
Vessels somewhat opaque and not so splendid as the light, 755-m.
Vessels were partitions between the greater and lesser Splendor, 755-m.
Vestige of His Light remains in the vacant space formed by Deity's
  contraction, 766-u.
Vestige of the Sublime Brilliance exists in a spherical shape, termed
  splendor, 751-u.
Vestiges of the Light, 747-750.
Vestiges of the seven Numerations formed by the light flowing
  down from Binah, 797-u.
Vestments of the High Priest and furniture described, 409-u.
Vice, condemnation for an undeserved reputation for, 131-l.
Vice generally rewarded with contempt and infamy, 705-l.
Vice only degrades men who are ennobled by virtue, 622-l.
Vice punished in this life, 101-u.
Victory: God's Will is not defeated nor thwarted, and that is the
  Divine, 848-l.
Victory is one of the last four of the Sephiroth of the Kabalah, 848-l.
Victory, one of the Sephiroth, the column Jachin, 267-l.
Victory over the human in man by the Divine the true Holy Empire, 855-u.
Vingolf or Gimli the Heaven of the Icelanders, 619-m.
Virgil enunciated the doctrine of the preexistence of souls in eternal
  fire, 399-l.
Virgil, in the Georgics, states that life returns to the Universal life,
  666-l.
Virgil's verse borrowed from the ceremonies of initiation, 381-m.
Virgin mother idea among ancients, 104-u.
Virgin of the Zodiac bitten in the heel by the Serpent, 497-l.
Virgin: Spica Virginis and Arcturus heralded the coming of the Sun,
  507-u.
Virgin: the march of time, seasons and epochs of the year connected
  with the, 507-u.
Virgo and Bootes at the Autumnal Equinox introduce the serpent, 455-l.
Virgo at the Winter Solstice rose with the Sun in her bosom, 455-l.
Virgo becomes Isis with Horus in her arms, 455-m.
Virgo in the domicile of Mercury, the device of Napthali, 462-u.
Virgo: Mercury was the companion and counsellor of Isis or the, 507-m.
Virgo named because of the Gleaning Virgin at Harvest, 446-m.
Virgo represented by Isis and Ceres at the Vernal Equinox, 506-m.
Virgo takes the name of Isis, or the Moon, and appears in all the
  fables, 507-m.
Virtue and Wisdom, only, defend and perfect man, 803-l.
Virtue as necessary to happiness a fundamental principle of the
  Hindu religion, 604-m.
Virtue assailed gains strength from resisted temptations, 194-l.
Virtue, credit given for an undeserved reputation for, 131-l.
Virtue ennobles men and vice only degrades them, 622-l.
Virtue exists in the perception and thought of a mind, 201-l.
Virtue in man shown in respect and love of others--justice, charity,
  703-u.
Virtue in this world the condition of happiness in another life, 716-l.
Virtue is equilibrium in the Affections, 845-u.
Virtue is the truest liberty; the best example, 181-l.
Virtue means manliness chiefly, and includes patient endurance, 803-l.
Virtue not always rewarded, nor vice punished, in this life, 705-l.
Virtue rewarded in this life, 101-u.
Virtue: Sir Launcelot thought no chivalry equal to that of, 803-l.
Virtue the highest good and aim and purpose of man's life, 226-l.
Virtue the prize of the hard-fought battle or race, 181-m.
Virtue the surest road to happiness, 705-l.
Virtue, the work of genius less noble than that of, 349-l.
Virtue, Truth, Honor, and fidelity to vows prove the true Knight, 808-u.
Virtue, Truth is the foundation of, 184-l.
Virtue, unfortunate, hopes to be rewarded in another life, 717-u.
Virtue without happiness is a contradiction and a disorder, 724-m.
Virtues, by labor will man continually learn the, 342-m.
Virtues of man are God's attributes, 704-u.
Virtues of Masonry, four cardinal, 21-m.
Virtues turned into offenses against a forced, impractical law, 831-m.
Vishnu, the Preserver, manifested by his avatars or impersonations, 603.
Vishnu, the Preserving Power of the Hindu Trinity, 550-m.
Vishnu to judge the world at the last day: new Universe created, 623-m.
Vishnu, with Bramah and Seeva, manifestations of the One Deity, 205-u.
"Visible is for us the proportional measure of the invisible", 769-l.
Visible the measure of the invisible, 222-u.
Vital force of some persons absorbed by others, 735-u.
Vitellius, 3-u.
Vitellius, horrors of despotism under, 27-u.
Void does not exist in the Universe, nor does empty space, 845-m.
Void into which the Sun and Stars went on setting, 595-m.
Volatile applied to everything that more readily obeys the law of
  movement, 778-l.
Voltaire, throughout the ages will ring the words of, 43-u.
Vote of the People expresses the Active Energy of the Will of the
  Present, 860-u.
Vows and obligations to be well considered and kept, 111-l.
Vows of obedience, chastity, poverty, taken by the Hospitallers
  and Templars, 802-u.

W

War, for great principle, noble; for commercial supremacy, despicable,
  70-m.
War, prevalence and effects of, 297-298.
War, results of, 124-l.
Washington adored because of his constant effort to be practically
  just, 836-l.
Water, a test representing the purifying of the soul in the march
  of years, 397-u.
Water and the vessel that produced it the primitive principle of
  things, 495-m.
Water formed by the action of a force of God on two invisible gases,
  845-l.
Water gives the elements and principles of compounds nutriment, 784-m.
Water, the source of all things, one of the symbols of regeneration
  in the Mysteries, 357-l.
Waters and great rivers symbolized by a Dragon, 498-l.
Waters first created by a thought of the Sole, Self Existing Power,
  608-l.
Waters of forgetfulness, Rivers Ameles and Lethe, 439-u.
Wealth, degeneration of the families of, 347-l.
Wealth, evils of thirst for, 68-m.
Wealth, laudable methods of employing, 348-u.
Webb, explanations and improvements of, 105-m.
Wellington, saved by Blucher, defeats Napoleon, 42-m.
Well being, that wealth is to be acquired in a short time is against
  human, 345-m.
West, faith of the people of the East connected with that of the, 247-l.
"What is above is like what is below and what is below is like
  what is above," Hermetic Dogma, 790-m.
White and black in juxtaposition a symbol of the two Principles, 818-m.
White stone promised the faithful in the Apocalypse, 775-l.
White was of the nature of the Good Principle, or light, 662-m.
Wicked, according to the Edda, shall go to Hel and then to Nifthel,
  619-m.
Wicked ultimately pardoned and admitted to endless bliss, 624-u.
Will action independent or outside the body not understood, 733-l.
Will and Capacity which unite to produce the Act of Intellection
  is always in conjunction, 766-l.
Will concentration necessary to success, 733-m.
Will is a Force, 91-u.
Will is the faculty that directs the forces of the Intellect, 738-u.
Will, like Thought, seems spontaneous; both Powers, 574-u.
Will, Man distinguished from the brute by the mastery of his, 192-l.
Will of Deity as Wisdom and the Capacity are Father and Mother
  of all that is, 766-l.
Will of Deity caused the Power in Him to exist, the intellectual
  faculty to exercise, 766-m.
Will of Deity determined Him to frame the idea of the Universe, 766-m.
Will of Deity flows forth as the Generative Power to beget
  intellectual action, 766-m.
Will of Deity is Kether, Crown, in which are included all other
  Emanations, 766-u.
Will of God and his perfect Freedom difficult of comprehension, 689-u.
Will of God is the Soul of all things that are, 755-u.
Will of God not defeated nor thwarted and that is the Divine
  Victory, 848-l.
Will of God only works in the material world, no secondary finite
  will, 828-m.
Will power and influence little understood, 733-m.
Will, strong and determined, can attain complete independence, 790-l.
Will to create was Creation; to plan was to will and create, 766-l.
Wills of others subject ours or are subjected by ours, 735.
Wind the breath of the universal organism called Pooroosha, 673-u.
Winter became emblematic of sin, evil and suffering, 447-l.
Winter: fallen angels ruled by a chief controlled the hemisphere of,
  449-u.
Winter Solstice brought frost and long nights, 445-u.
Winter Solstice, Sun was said to die and be born again at the, 464-l.
Winter's continuance betokened by Prometheus chained in his
  cavern, 592-m.
Wisdom: a serpent extended at length was a symbol of Divine, 496-m.
Wisdom an attainable idea, 693-u.
Wisdom and Intellectual Generative Energy is male, 305-m.
Wisdom and Love, in Infinity, orders and does all that is, 859-u.
Wisdom and Power in equilibrium gives the principles of Truth,
  Justice, Right, 859-u.
Wisdom and Power of Deity are in equilibrium, 7-l.
Wisdom and Understanding are in Equilibrium in the Sohar, 305-m.
Wisdom and Understanding in the Kabalah are male and female, 305-m.
Wisdom and Will of Deity act simultaneously, 766-u.
Wisdom called Nous and Logos, Intellect or the Word, 267-l.
Wisdom communicated to Jesus the perfect Knowledge, Gnosis, 563-l.
Wisdom conjoined with Intelligence generates and are expanded
  in the Truth, 800-u.
Wisdom, Force, Harmony, the Great Attributes of the Essence of
  Deity, 531-m.
Wisdom in aiming at the best and being content with the best
  possible, 835-u.
Wisdom in each Universal, one above, one below, 791-m.
Wisdom in Hebrew writings is the Word of God, 323-l.
Wisdom in Kabalistic books is the creative agent of God, 323-l.
Wisdom, Infinite, rules in the Divine nature and in its Emanations,
 768-m.
Wisdom is equilibrium in the Thoughts, 845-u.
Wisdom is the All, and contains the All, and the summary is the
  Holy Name, 793-u.
Wisdom is the Logos that creates, 323-m.
Wisdom is the principle of all things; in it beginning and end are
  found, 762-m.
Wisdom is the Principle of the Universe and from it thirty ways
  diverge, 794-m.
Wisdom issuing and shining from the Ancient shines as male and
  female, 800-u.
Wisdom, made fruitful by the Divine Light, produced Christos
  and Sophia-Achamoth, 563-u.
Wisdom must be possessed in the Absolute before Hermetic work
  can be thought of, 776-u.
Wisdom, Occult, conformed into male and female, Rigor and Love, 796-u.
Wisdom of God is His Will; His Will includes His Wisdom, 323-m.
Wisdom of God the mother of Creation, 251-l.
Wisdom of man a reflection of that of God, 251-l.
Wisdom of the daughter, or inferior, distinguished from the Superior
  Wisdom, 565-u.
Wisdom of the Divine limits the Divine Will; the result Beauty or
  Harmon, 846-l.
Wisdom of the Stoic and Epicurean contrasted, 694-m.
Wisdom, or the Infinite Divine Intelligence, a side of the Masonic
  triangle, 826-m.
Wisdom, pregnant with all that is, shone under the form of male and
  female, 763-m.
Wisdom represented by the Master of a Lodge, 7-l.
Wisdom, Strength, Harmony represented by the Triple Tau, 503-l.
Wisdom, Supernal, is Yod and all things are included in Yod, 793-u.
Wisdom synonymous with the Word, Son, Einsoph, the Nous, Sophia, 565-u.
Wisdom taught by consequences of erring, 181-u.
Wisdom the first produced and the Mother of all that exists. 553-u.
Wisdom the Mother of Creation, 552-l.
Wisdom, when expanded by flowing forth, is called the "Father of
  Fathers", 762-m.
Wisdom which thought the plan, 531-m.
Wolf chased by Sagittarius the emblem of Benjamin, the hunter, 461-l.
Woman in the constellation at the end of Autumn seems to crush
  the head of the Serpent, 376-m.
Woman is man's creation, 772-u.
Woman's perversity devised to account for moral evil, 690-m.
Word, a symbol is the pronunciation of the, 205-m.
Word, an allegory is made out of the loss of the True, 205-l.
Word and Secret; an understanding of the Hermetic necessary to an
  understanding of the, 777-l.
Word and the Sacred Name synonymous, 204-l.
Word, as Brahma, communicated to man the revelations to himself, 604-u.
Word became flesh, dwelt with us, and in Him were Pleroma, Truth,
  Grace, 559-l.
"Word becomes flesh and dwells among men;" communicates itself
  to men, 575-m.
Word, Christ proclaims a new God's, 309-u.
Word communicated living Power to man, 598-m.
Word created by God to give existence to men; the Ensoph of the
  Kabalah, 565-u.
Word created the Universe which, like Him, never began to exist, 575-u.
Word evolved the Universe, 582-m.
Word, examples of the personification of the, 268-l.
Word, found in the Phoenician creed, 268-m.
Word from the Father, by its power, brought the Light of Existence,
  581-l.
Word given to initiate of Chinese and Japanese Mysteries, 429-u.
Word given to the initiate of the Indian mysteries, 428-m.
Word, God reveals Himself to us by His uttered, 324-u.
Word, Hebrews not permitted to pronounce now the, 204-m.
Word, in verity, of a Master Mason, 861-l.
Word Incarnate adored by three Magi, guided by a star, bearing gifts,
  730-l.
Word is Light and the Life of Humanity, 849-l.
Word is lost when it ceases to be understood, 731-m.
Word is the First and Only begotten of the Father, 849-l.
Word is the First Begotten, not the first created Son of God, 772-m.
Word is Two: Principle is One, 772-u.
Word, Jehovah not the Ineffable, 205-m.
Word, Light and Life are emanations from the Primal Deity, 568-l.
Word, Logos, dwells in God in whom all his powers and attributes
  develop, 552-l.
Word, Logos, through which God acts on the Universe, 552-l.
Word, meaning of superstitious notions concerning the, 205-u.
Word not only Creator, but occupies the place of the Supreme Being,
  251-l.
Word of a Mason found in the meaning of the ineffable Name, 697-m.
Word of a Master Mason, the true knowledge of God, 209-u.
Word of a Master supposed to be lost symbolizes the Christian faith
  after--, 641-l.
Word of God the universal invisible Light, cognizable by the senses,
  742-u.
"Word" of Masonry a symbol of Ormuzd, 256-l.
Word of Plato and the Gnostics: the unuttered word within the
  Deity, 552-m.
Word or Thought expressed the third in the Masonic Trinity, 575-l.
Word, out of original truths misunderstood grew fables of the, 205-u.
Word, representing the Absolute, the reason for strange rites of
  initiation, 840-m.
Word, Sacred, written by Isis, but effaced by Typhon as soon as
  written, 376-l.
Word said to be a personified object of prayer, revealed and manifested,
  613-l.
Word; "symbolism of the Alexandrian" unspeakable, 728-u.
Word, symbolism of the ignorance of the True, 223-m.
Word symbolizes the Saviour himself, 642-u.
Word, synonymous with Son, Wisdom; the Ormuzd of Zoroaster, 565-u.
Word that is the utterance and expression of being and life is that
  of the Absolute, 841-l.
Word, The, appears in ancient sects, 271-l.
"Word," the ever living emanation of the Deity, by virtue of which
  the world exists, 613-u.
Word, the highest conception of Deity we can form is the True, 223-m.
Word, the Image of the Supreme Being, Logos, 251-u.
Word, The, in the Phoenician Cosmogony, 278-m.
"Word," the instrumentality through which the warfare against death
  is carried on, 613-u.
Word, The, is Ormuzd, Ainsoph, Nous, Sophia, or Demiourgos, 271-l.
Word, The, is the reason of belief; the source of Logic: Jesus is
  the Word incarnate, 323-l.
Word, the manifestation and expression of God's Thought, 575-l.
Word, the manifestation and mode of communication of God's
  Thought, 575-u.
Word, the powers and attributes of God act through the, 251-l.
Word the protector of men and their Shepherd, 251-l.
Word, The, spoken of by Philo as being the same with God, 269-u.
Word, the statement of Arius concerning the, 279-l.
Word, the synonym for Wisdom, Intellect, 267-l.
Word, the True, is ineffable because--, 223-m.
Word, the utterance of the thought of God, 552-m.
Word, The, various assertions concerning, 280-281.
Word, triple, of Pythagoras, 97-m.
Word united itself with Jesus, son of Joseph and Mary, 564-l.
Word was in common use and written, 204-m.
Word was in the beginning with God and was God, 849-m.
Word, when lost, 205-l.
Word which was lost found after Christ's ascent from the tomb, 642-u.
Word with man at the beginning and that Word from God, 598-m.
Word worn on the person as an amulet, 204-m.
Words formed by the reversion of letters of former words; examples,
  699-m.
Words inadequate to express conception of Deity, hence personification,
  672-l.
Words nothing but letters and their combinations, 749-m.
Words refer to things and are images of what is material, 569-u.
Work done worthy of Masonry and acceptable to God, 351-u.
Work, from first to last Masonry is, 340-u.
Work is noble; ease for neither God nor man, 340-l.
Work is prayer; is life, 342-u.
Work, not wholly in vain is any good, 230-m.
Work of lowly and uninfluential important; instances--, 41-42.
Work, there is a nobleness and sacredness in, 341-l.
Workman of the Deity is Yod, according to the Kabalah, 792-l.
Workingman, condition of the, 179.
Workingman, the hero of Masonry is a, 340-u.
Works, Doubt, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation shrink away when man, 342-u.
World a great plain to the ancients, 593-l.
World and all its parts in God, the Supreme Cause, 667-m.
World and its modes will ever exist by the eternal qualities of the
  Active and Passive, 654-l
World and its spherical envelope represented by the mystic egg, 400-u.
World and Man made in the image of Ialdaboth in order to--, 563-m.
World cognizable by the Intellect has the Hermetic Theology and
  the Kabalah, 785-m.
World compared to man, 667-l.
World consumed by the comet, Gurzsher, 623-l.
World created by Fear did not subsist until Compassion was adjoined,
  796-l.
World created by Ormurzd in six periods of 500 years each, 258-u.
World created by the Logos (Word), 252-l.
World declined into idolatry and barbarism, 599-l.
World, different views of by different men, 193.
World first created by Judgment, but it could not subsist, 800-u.
World formed by the creative principle out of matter, the Triad, 631-m.
World good enough if men will do the best they know how, 696-m.
World is a whole which has its harmony, for God could make none other,
  707-l.
World judged by Vishnu; consumed by fire; new Universe created, 623-m.
World not merely a material and mechanical machine, 414-l.
World of action produces clashing of passion and conflict of interests,
  696-u.
World of Ideas created by God; material world by His Logos, 251-l.
World of Inanity, the first World, could not continue because it had
  no human conformation, 795-u.
World of matter a revelation of fear to the Northern savages, 713-l.
World of restitution formed throughout in the human form, 794-l.
World of restitution instituted after evil was made possible, 794-l.
World of restitution instituted after the fashion of the Balance, 794-l.
World of the Balance refers to the other World, 762-l.
World of the covering, or garment, is the inmost, nearest his substance,
  749-m.
World of the garment has a name which includes all things: Ihuh, 750-u.
World peopled by Christs would be relieved of the ills of society, 718-l.
World perfect and good because God made it, 705-m.
World-producing egg figures in all cosmogonies, 771-l.
World represented by a blue circle, flames and a serpent with a
  hawk's head, 495-m.
World represented by the number five: earth, water, air, fire, ether,
  634-U.
World, the germ of creation communicated to Wisdom brought forth the,
  251-l.
World, the great and appointed school of industry is the, 344-m.
World, the necessary logical condition of God; His necessitated
  consequence, 708-l.
World; the Sephiroth were points, one below the other in the first,
  795-u.
World, the visible World the image of the invisible, 252-l.
World, unimportance of the Universe and importance of our, 302-m.
World what we make it by character and adaption, 193.
World will end when the Redeemer has attracted to Himself the
  Light or Soul of Matter, 566-l.
World-wonder all around us, 244-m.
World worth living in, 140-m.
World would be a Paradise if all men were true Masons, 530-l.
Worlds could not be framed in the Primal Ether because of--, 750-l.
World's disorder seems to impugn the justice and goodness of God, 705-m.
Worlds, four, represented by Yod, He, Vau; He, 798-m.
Worlds in actuality produced from the Sepiroth Malakoth, 754-u.
World's mystery remains but sufficiently cleared to inspire confidence,
  696-m.
Worlds of the Kabalah are four: Emanation; Creation; Formation;
  Fabrication, 768-m.
Worlds produced by the potentialities of the Sephiroth becoming
  actualities, 755-l.
Worship, a teaching, should be magnificent, not mean, 102-u.
Worship of an abstraction not possible, must have some form, 514-l.
Worship of nature seems to have emanated from Iranian races, 601-l.
Worship of the Active and Passive divisions of the Great First Cause
  widespread, 653-l.
Worship of the Heavenly Bodies by different peoples, 457.
Worship of the things symbolized superseded that of God, 601-m.
Worship of Zoroastrians principally hymns and prayers, 617-l.
Worship, only those initiated were admitted to the private, 352-u.
Worship, the Mysteries constituted the private, 352-u.
Worships, among ancient nations were public and private, 352-u.
Wreaths of laurel as a reward for--, 157-m.
Writing in hieroglyphs revived to hide the true meaning of the doctrine,
  732-l.
Written human speech gives power and permanency to human thought, 54-m.
Wrong conflicts with justice and falls, 830-u.
Wrong done to another an injury to our own Nature, 127-m.
Wrong, evil, suffering but temporary and discords, 577-u.
Wrong in human nature yields to the divine in us, 133-l.
Wrong is surely unsuccessful; the Knave deceives himself, 837-l.
Wrongdoer often does more injury to himself, 134-u.
Wrongdoer who exults in his acts, no benedictions for the, 134-u.
Wrongdoers, without revenge or anger should come the punishment of, 75-m.
Wrongful acts, no remittance of the natural effects of, 127-l.

X

Xenophanes acknowledged the unsatisfactory results of Philosophy, 093-l.
Xenophanes advocated Monotheism, 678-m.
Xenophanes called the universal being spherical, 676-u.
Xenophanes used material imagery to illustrate an indefinite meaning,
  676-u.

Y

Y, alludes to the Triune God and is the ineffable name in Chinese, 429-m.
Yahveh, see Iahaveh, 104-m.
Yazata a personified object of prayer, 613-l.
Year of the Romans commenced at the Winter Solstice, 464-l.
Year's commencement fixed by different nations at one of four periods,
  464-l.
Yesod characterized as the Generative member of the symbolic
  human figure, 767-m.
Yesod is stability and permanence from which flows Malakoth,
  Empire, Rule, 767-m.
Yesod, one of the Sephiroth; Foundation or Basis; by which all
  worlds are upheld, 753-m.
Yesod, the male organ of Adam Kadmon, 758-u.
Yesod, the result of Victory and Glory, Netsach and Hod, in the
  Kabalah, 767-u.
Yesirah, the World of Formation of the Sephiroth Theology, 99-m.
Yod, a smaller receptacle than Crown, but filled from that source, 753-u.
Yod, added to the ternary name of Eve, gives the Kabalistic word
  Jehova, 771-m.
Yod and He represent the Male and Female principles in equilibrium, 323-m.
Yod comprehends the principle called Father (the Male or Generative
  Principle), 763-l.
Yod created the becoming world; for Yod includes two letters, 763-l.
Yod descended into the vacant space to lessen the Light, 754-l.
Yod of the Tetragrammaton as Neschamah Leneschamah in Adam Kadmon, 757-u.
Yod, He, denotes Hakemah and Binah, 789-m.
Yod, He, of the anterior or male, and Vav He, of the posterior or
  female, 750-u.
Yod, He, or Jah, is bi-sexual, 849-m.
Yod, He Vau, denotes Gedulah, Geburah, Tephareth, 798-m.
Yod, He, Vau, He, is the name of Deity manifested in the act of
  Creation, 849-u.
Yod impregnated the letter He, and begets a son, 763-l.
Yod in the triangle is the initial of the last word of the Trinity, 782-l.
Yod, in the Kabalah, is the opifex, workman of the Deity, 792-l.
Yod, in the Kabalah, the Creative energy of God, 16-l.
Yod is Hakemah, 758-u.
Yod is male; in it are three Yods, the upper and lower apex and the
  middle, 763-m.
Yod is primal, like one, first among numbers; like a point, first
  before all bodies, 792-l.
Yod is the beginning and end of all things that are; the Father of all,
  763-l.
Yod is the beginning and end of all things which are contained in Yod,
  793-u.
Yod is the symbol of Wisdom and of the Father, the Principle, 792-l.
Yod lost its brilliancy when it descended from the Shekinah, 751-m.
Yod moved lengthwise produces a line, which is Vau, 792-l.
Yod not as brilliant as the Primal Ether, 751-u.
Yod, on his ascension left behind him the productive light of the
  letter He, 751-l.
Yod placed in a pit of shadow made by the Creator, 772-u.
Yod produced by Emanation by the Creator, 772-u.
Yod, symbol of Unity; symbolism of--, 15-m.
Yod, the Father, approaches He, the Mother, according to the Siphra
  de Zeniutha, 793-u.
Yod, "The Fountain gushing with Wisdom", 753-u.
Yod, the image of the Kabalistic Phallus, represents the human
  Tetragram, 771-m.
Yod uttered by Wisdom creates worlds, first as an Idea, 323-m.
Yod's light increased when the letter He communicated to him her
  light, 751-m.
Yod's middle is Hakemah; Hakemah is Father, 763-m.
Yod's number is ten; Vau is six, Daleth is four, equal to that of Yod,
  792-l.
Yod's plenitude, the name of the letter spelled, is--, 792-l.
Yods sometimes compose the Tetractys of Pythagoras, 60-l.
Yod's upper apex denotes the Supreme Kether; the lower apex Binah, 763-m.
York Rite explanation of Lodge and ladder, 9-l.
York Rite explanation of symbolic meaning of Ashlars, 5-u.
York Rite explanation of symbols, 16-m.
Yn and Yang signify repose and motion amongst Chinese, 630-l.


Z

Z, the initial of Zeus because of its resemblance to the figure seven,
  635-l.
Zagreus dismembered; protected by the dance of the Curetes, 585-l.
Zagreus the same as Dionusos; entrusted with the thunderbolt, 585-l.
Zayo, is the third Sephirah, the intellectual producing capacity, 741-u.
Zebulon dwelt on the sea shore, his device is Capricorn, the tail of
  a fish, 461-l.
Zechariah, visions of; symbolism of numbers, 58-u.
Zend-Avesta, borrowed from and added to the Jewish doctrine, 256-u.
Zend-Avesta, Doctrines and teachings of the, 256-258.
Zend-Avesta, God's nature in the, 256-m.
Zend-Avesta, Kabalists and Gnostics adopted doctrines of the, 282-l.
Zend-Avesta, many doctrines of Revelations found in the, 273-m.
Zend-Avesta, Persian faith and doctrines as taught in the, 282.
Zend-Avesta, the Creator called the Ancient of Days in the, 266-l.
Zend-Avesta, the Word created the World, 282.
Zeruane-Akherene, Unlimited Time, above all of the Persian Gods, 598-u.
Zetesis or search of Osiris or Adonis, that is of Bootes, 484-u.
Zeus, King of the Gods, 13-u.
Zeus of Homer an array of antitheses, 689-l.
Zeus put an end to the Golden Age for beneficent reasons, 691-u.
Zeus, the God of Gods, the Son of Time; the Beginning, the Middle,
  the All, 619-l.
Zodiac and signs on coins, medals, seals, 462-l.
Zodiac assigned to six male and six female Great Gods by Astrologers,
  658-u.
Zodiac crossed by the Sun at two opposite points which change, 437-l.
Zodiac is an existence, organized by the universal soul, 669-u.
Zodiac; Plato in his Republic adopted the divisions of the planets
  and, 462-u.
Zodiac, six signs were male and six female in the, 402-m.
Zodiac the cause of all sublunary effects, 663-m.
Zodiac, the path along which the Sun traveled, 446-l.
Zodiac, veils of the Royal Arch have reference to the signs and stars
  of the, 409.
Zodiacal signs are unchanged, 437-l.
Zodiacal signs; characteristics of Jacob's sons compared with those
  of the, 461.
Zodiacal signs, commencing with Aries, are those of Light, 663-u.
Zodiacal signs, commencing with Libra, are those of Darkness, 663-u.
Zodiacal signs divided in three Decans of ten degrees each, 470-m.
Zodiacal signs represented by the twelve Deities of the Persians, 663-u.
Zohak, conquered by Pheridoun, lamented by the Persians, 594-l.
Zohar, is Nestar, Concealed, the intellectual potency of Deity, 741-u.
Zoroaster; Magism was the science of, 839-l.
Zoroaster asks Ormuzd what to do to combat Evil and make men holy, 613-m.
Zoroaster claimed to have conversed, man to man, with Deity, 424-l.
Zoroaster discourses on the old Fire and Light Idea, 611-m.
Zoroaster drew his doctrines from the Mysteries, 373-m.
Zoroaster, from Bactria came the doctrines of, 258-l.
Zoroaster, Hindu and Buddists elements in the doctrines of, 258-l.
Zoroaster, Masonry reiterates the maxims of, 221-m.
Zoroaster, Pharisees and Jews borrowed the doctrines of, 238-l.
Zoroaster possessed a true knowledge of Deity, 207-l.
Zoroaster received the Primitive Truth from the Indians, 017-m.
Zoroaster speaks of the Sun and Stars, 611-l.
Zoroaster taught the Primitive Truth to Pythagoras, 617-m.
Zoroaster, the Aions, Ideas, Angels, correspond to the Ferouers of, 256-u.
Zoroaster's sayings to the Persians, 170-u.
Zoroaster's disciples used the symbolism of the Mystic Egg, 403-u.
Zoroaster's doctrine more ancient than Kuros, 256-u.
Zoroaster's doctrines carried by Jews into Syria and Palestine, 256-u.
Zoroaster's doctrines taught, 167-l.
Zoroaster's doctrines the best the Persians were fitted to receive, 38-u.
Zoroastrian doctrines suggested the worship of the Supreme God, 617-l.
Zoroastrian oracles give a Triad of Fire, Light and Ether, 549-u.
Zoroastrian Two Principles symbolized by white and black in
  juxta-position, 818-m.
Zoroastrians rejected Temples, Altars, Statues, 617-l.
Zoroastrians religiously exterminate serpents, etc, 497-m.
Zoroastrianism an innovation on an older religion, 602-u.
Zorobabel's Warrior-Masons the model of the Templars, 816-m.





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