Section 28

With this understanding of their meaning, let us pro-
ceed to a collation of these legends.

In that blasphemous work, the Toldoih Jeshu, or
Life of Jesus, written, it is supposed, in the thirteenth
or fourteenth century, we find the following account
of this wonderful stone: —

"At that time [the time of Jesus] there was in the
House of the Sanctuary [that is, the temple] a Stone
of Foundation, which is the very stone that our father
Jacob anointed with oil, as it is described in the twenty-
eighth chapter of the Book of Genesis. On that stone
the letters of the tetragrammaton were inscribed, and
whosoever of the Israelites should learn that name would
be able to master the world. To prevent, therefore,
any one from learning these letters, two iron dogs
were placed upon two columns in front of the Sanc-
tuary. If any person, having acquired the knowledge
of these letters, desired to depart from the Sanctuary,
the barking of the dogs, by magical power, inspired

288 Symbolism of Freemasonry

so much fear, that he suddenly forgot what he had
acquired."

This passage is cited by the learned Buxtorf, in his
Lexicon Talmudicum;^ but in another copy of the Tol-
doth Jeshuj Bro. Mackey found a passage which gives
some additional particulars, in the following words: —

"At that time there was in the temple the ineffable
name of God, inscribed upon the Stone of Foundation.
For when King David was digging the foundation for
the temple, he found in the depths of the excavation a
certain stone, on which the name of God was inscribed.
This stone he removed, and deposited it in the Holy
of Holies/'2

The same puerile story of the barking dogs is repeated,
still more at length. It is not pertinent to the present
inquiry, but it may be stated as a mere matter of cu-
rious information, that this scandalous book, which is
throughout a blasphemous defamation of our Savior,
proceeds to say, that He cunningly obtained a knowl-
edge of the tetragrammaton from the Stone of Foun-
dation, and by its mystical influence was enabled to
perform His miracles.

The Masonic legends of the Stone of Foundation,
based on these and other rabbinical reveries, are of the
most extraordinary character, if they are to be viewed
as histories, but readily reconcilable with sound sense,

* See article -on JT^'^niD, where some other curious extracts from
the Talmud and Talmudic writers on the subject of the Stone of
Foundation are given.

2 " Sepher Toldoth Jeshu," p. 6. The abominably scurrilous char-
acter of this work aroused the indigation of the Christians, who,
in the fifteenth century, were not distinguished for a spirit of tol-
erance, and the Jews, becoming alarmed, made every effort to
suppress it. But, in 1681, it was republished by WagenseUus in
his "Tela Ignea Satanae," with a Latin translation.

Stone of Foundation 289

if looked at only in the light of allegories. They pre-
sent an uninterrupted succession of events, in which the
stone of foundation takes a prominent part, from Adam
to Solomon, and from Solomon to Zerubbabel.

Thus the first of these legends, in order of time, re-
lates that the stone of foundation was possessed by
Adam while in the garden of Eden; that he used it as
an altar, and so reverenced it, that, on his expulsion
from Paradise, he carried it with him into the world in
which he and his descendants were afterwards to earn
their bread by the sweat of their brow.

Another legend informs us that from Adam the stone
of foundation descended to Seth. From Seth it passed
by regular succession to Noah, who took it with him
into the ark, and after the subsidence of the deluge,
made on it his first thank-offering. Noah left it on
Mount Ararat, where it was subsequently found by
Abraham, who removed it, and consequently used it as
an altar of sacrifice. His grandson Jacob took it with
him when he fled to his uncle Laban in Mesopotamia,
and used it as a pillow when, in the vicinity of Luz, he
had his celebrated vision.

Here there is a sudden interruption in the legendary
history of the stone, and we have no means of conjec-
turing how it passed from the possession of Jacob into
that of Solomon. Moses, it is true, is said to have
taken it with him out of Egypt at the time of the exo-
dus, and thus it may have finally reached Jerusalem.

Dr. Adam Clarke^ repeats what he very properly calls
"a foolish tradition,'* that the stone on which Jacob
rested his head was afterwards brought to Jerusalem,
thence carried after a long lapse of time to Spain, from
Spain to Ireland, and from Ireland to Scotland, where

^ Commentary on Genesis, xxviii. 18.

290 Symbolism of Freemasonry

it was used as a seat on which the kings of Scotland
sat to be crowned.

Edward I, we know, brought a stone, to which this
legend is attached, from Scotland to Westminster Ab-
bey, where, under the name of Jacob's Pillow, it still
remains, and is always placed under the chair upon
which the British sovereign sits to be crowned, because
there is an old distich which declares that wherever this
stone is found the Scottish kings shall reign.^

But this Scottish tradition would take the stone of
foundation away from all its Masonic connections, and
therefore it is rejected as a Craft legend.

The legends just related are in many respects contra-
dictory and unsatisfactory, and another series, equally
as old, are now very generally adopted by Masonic
scholars, as much better suited to the symbolism by
which all these legends are explained.

This series of legends commences with the patriarch
Enoch who is supposed to have been the first conse-
crator of the Stone of Foundation. The legend of
Enoch is so interesting and important in Masonic sci-
ence as to excuse something more than a brief reference
to the incidents which it details.

The legend in full is as follows: Enoch, under the
inspiration of the Most High, and in obedience to the
instructions which he had received in a vision, built a
temple under ground on Mount Moriah, and dedicated
it to God. His son, Methuselah, constructed the build-
ing, although he was not acquainted with his father's
motives for the erection. This temple consisted of nine
vaults, situated perpendicularly beneath each other, and
communicating by apertures left in each vault.

^ Ni fallit fatum, Scoti quocunque locatum
Invenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem.

Stone of Foundation 291

Enoch then caused a triangular plate of gold to be
made, each side of which was a cubit long; he enriched
it with the most precious stones, and encrusted the
plate upon a stone of agate of the same form. On the
plate he engraved the true name of God, or the tetra-
grammaton, and placing it on a cubical stone, known
thereafter as the ^' Stone of Foundation,'' he deposited
the whole within the lowest arch.

When this subterranean building was completed, he
made a door of stone, and attaching to it a ring of iron,
by which it might be occasionally raised, he placed it
over the opening of the uppermost arch, and so covered
it that the aperture could not be discovered.

Enoch himself was not permitted to enter it but once
a year, and after the days of Enoch, Methuselah, and
Lamech, and the destruction of the world by the del-
uge, all knowledge of the vault or subterranean temple,
and of the stone of foundation, with the sacred and
ineffable name inscribed upon it, was lost for ages to
the world.

At the building of the first temple of Jerusalem, the
stone of foundation again makes its appearance. Ref-
erence has already been made to the Jewish tradition
that David, when digging the foundations of the
temple, found in the excavation which he was making
a certain stone, on which the ineffable name of God
was inscribed, and which stone he is said to have re-
moved and deposited in the Holy of Holies. That
King David laid the foundations of the temple upon
which the superstructure was subsequently erected by
Solomon, is a favorite theory of the legendmongers of
the Talmud.

The Masonic tradition is substantially the same as
the Jewish, but it substitutes Solomon for David, there-

292 Symbolism of Freemasonry

by giving a greater air of probability to the narrative;
and it supposes that the stone thus discovered by
Solomon was the identical one that had been deposited
in his secret vault by Enoch. This stone of foundation,
the tradition states, was subsequently removed by
King Solomon, and, for wise purposes, deposited in a
secret and safer place.

In this the Masonic tradition again agrees with the
Jewish, for we find in the third chapter of the Treatise
on the Templey written by the celebrated Maimonides,
the following narrative:

"There was a stone in the Holy of Holies, on its west
side, on which was placed the ark of the covenant, and
before it the pot of manna and Aaron's rod. But when
Solomon had built the temple, and foresaw that it was,
at some future time, to be destroyed, he constructed a
deep and winding vault under ground, for the purpose
of concealing the ark, wherein Josiah afterwards, as we
learn in the Second Book of Chronicles, xxxv. 3, depos-
ited it, with the pot of manna, the rod of Aaron, and
the oil of anointing."

The talmudical book Yoma gives the same tradi-
tion, and says that "the ark of the covenant was placed
in the centre of the Holy of Holies, upon a stone rising
three fingers' breadth above the floor, to be, as it were,
a pedestal for it." "This stone," says Prideaux,^
"the Rabbins call the * Stone of Foundation,' and give
us a great deal of trash about it."

There is much controversy as to the question of the
existence of any ark in the second temple. Some of
the Jewish writers assert that a new one was made;
others, that the old one was found where it had been
concealed by Solomon; and others again contend that

i"01d and New Testament Connected," vol. i. p. 148.

Stone of Foundation 293

there was no ark at all in the temple of Zerubbabel, but
that its place was supplied by the stone of foundation
on which it had originally rested.

Royal Arch Masons well know how all these tradi-
tions are sought to be reconciled by the Masonic legend,
in which the substitute ark and the stone of foundation
play so important a part.

In the thirteenth degree of the Ancient and Accepted
Rite, the Stone of Foundation is conspicuous as the
resting-place of the sacred delta.

In the Royal Arch and Select Master^s degrees of the
Americanized York Rite, the stone of foundation con-
stitutes the most important part of the ritual. In both
of these it is the receptacle of the ark, on which the in-
effable name is inscribed.

Lee, in his Temple of Solomon, has devoted a chap-
ter to this stone of foundation, and thus recapitulates
the Talmudic and Rabbinical traditions on the sub-
ject:

"Vain and futilous are the feverish dreams of the
ancient Rabbins concerning the foundation stone of the
temple. Some assert that God placed this stone in the
centre of the world, for a future basis and settled con-
sistency for the earth to rest upon. Others held this
stone to be the first matter, out of which all the beautiful
visible beings of the world have been hewn forth and
produced to light. Others relate that this was the very
same stone laid by Jacob for a pillow under his head,
in that night when he dreamed of an angelic vision at
Bethel, and afterwards anointed and consecrated it to
God. Which when Solomon had found (no doubt by
forged revelation, or some tedious search, like another
Rabbi Selemoh), he durst not but lay it sure, as the
principal foundation stone of the temple. Nay, they

294 Symbolism of Freemasonry

say further, he caused to be engraved upon it the
tetragrammaton, or the ineffable name of Jehovah."^

It will be seen that the Masonic traditions on the
subject of the stone of foundation do not differ very
materially from these Rabbinical ones, although they
give a few additional circumstances.

In the Masonic legend, the foundation stone first
makes its appearance, as we have already said, in the
days of Enoch, who placed it in the bowels of Mount
Moriah. There it was subsequently discovered by
King Solomon, who deposited it in a crypt of the first
temple, where it remained concealed until the founda-
tions of the second temple were laid, when it was dis-
covered and removed to the holy of holies. But the
most important point of the legend of the stone of
foundation is its intimate and constant connection with
the tetragrammaton, or ineffable name. It is this
name, inscribed upon it, within the sacred and symbolic
delta, that gives to the stone all its Masonic value and
significance. It is upon this fact, that it was so in-
scribed, that its whole symbolism depends.

Looking at these traditions in anything like the
light of historical narratives, we are compelled to con-
sider them, to use the plain language of Lee, ''but as
so many idle and absurd conceits." We must go be-
hind the legend, viewing it only as an allegory, and
study its symbolism.

The symbolism of the foundation stone of Free-
masonry is therefore the next subject of investigation.

In approaching this, the most abstruse, and one of
the most important, symbols of the Order, we are at
once impressed with its apparent connection with the

* "Temple of Solomon," ch. ix. p. 194. Of the Mysteries laid up in
the Foundation of the Temple.

Stone of Foundation 295

ancient doctrine of stone worship. Some brief con-
sideration of this species of rehgious culture is there-
fore necessary for a proper understanding of the real
symboHsm of the Stone of Foundation.

The worship of stones is a kind of fetichism, which
in the very infancy of religion prevailed, perhaps, more
extensively than any other form of religious culture.
Lord Karnes explains the fact by supposing that stones
erected as monuments of the dead became the place
where posterity paid their veneration to the memory of
the deceased, and that at length the people, losing
sight of the emblematical signification, which was not
readily understood, these monumental stones became
objects of worship.

Others have sought to find the origin of stone-
worship in the stone that was set up and anointed by
Jacob at Bethel, and the tradition of which had ex-
tended into the heathen nations and become cor-
rupted. It is certain that the Phoenicians worshipped
sacred stones under the name of Bcetylia, which word
is evidently derived from the Hebrew Bethel; and this
undoubtedly gives some appearance of plausibility to
the theory.

But a third theory supposes that the worship of
stones was derived from the unskilfulness of the prim-
itive sculptors, who, unable to frame, by their meagre
principles of plastic art, a true image of the God whom
they adored, were content to substitute in its place a
rude or scarcely polished stone.

Hence the Greeks, according to Pausanias, originally
used unhewn stones to represent their deities, thirty of
which that historian says he saw in the city of Pharse.
These stones were of a cubical form, and as the greater
number of them were dedicated to the god Hermes, or

296 Symbolism of Freemasonry

Mercury, they received the generic name of Hermce.
Subsequently, with the improvement of the plastic art,
the head was added.*

One of these consecrated stones was placed before
the door of almost every house in Athens. They were
also placed in front of the temples, in the gymnasia or
schools, in libraries, and at the corners of streets, and
in the roads. When dedicated to the god Terminus
they were used as landmarks, and placed as such upon
the concurrent lines of neighboring possessions.

The Thebans worshipped Bacchus under the form of
a rude, square stone.

Arnobius^ says that Cybele was represented by a
small stone of a black color. Eusebius cites Porphyry
as saying that the ancients represented the deity by a
black stone, because his nature is obscure and inscru-
table. The reader will here be reminded of the black
stone Hadsjar el Aswad, placed in the south-west corner
of the Kaaba at Mecca, which was worshipped by the
ancient Arabians, and is still treated with religious
veneration by the modern Mohammedans. The Mus-
sulman priests, however, say that it was originally
white, and of such surprising splendor that it could be
seen at the distance of four days' journey, but that it
has been blackened by the tears of pilgrims.

The Druids, it is well known, had no other images of
their gods but cubical, or sometimes columnar, stones,
of which Toland gives several instances.

The Chaldeans had a sacred stone, which they held
in great veneration, under the name of Mnizuris, and

*See "Pausanias," lib. iv.

2 The "Disputationes adversus Gentes" of Amobius supplies
us with a fund of information on the symbolism of the classic my-
thology.

Stone of Foundation 297

to which they sacrificed for the purpose of evoking the
Good Demon.

Stone-worship existed among the early American
races. Squier quotes Skinner as asserting that the
Peruvians used to set up rough stones in their fields
and plantations, which were worshipped as protectors
of their crops. And Gama says that in Mexico the
presiding god of the spring was often represented with-
out a human body, and in place thereof a pilaster or
square column, whose pedestal was covered with various
sculptures.