Section 4

^ "The Castes and Creeds of India," Blackwood's Magazine, vol.
Ixxxi. p. 317.

' Banier, "Mythology," lib. iii. ch. iii.

28 Symbolism of Freemasonry

worship is seen to be continually exerting its influences.
Thus among the Greeks, the most refined people that
cultivated hero-worship, Hercules was the sun, and the
mythologic fable of his destroying with his arrows the
many-headed hydra of the Lernaean marshes was but
an allegory to denote the dissipation of paludal or
marsh malaria by the purifying rays of the orb of day.

Among the Egyptians, too, the chief deity, Osiris,
was but another name for the sun, while his arch-enemy
and destroyer, Typhon, was the typification of night,
or darkness. Lastly, among the Hindus, the three
manifestations of their supreme deity, Brahma, Siva,
and Vishnu, were symbols of the rising, meridian, and
setting sun.

This early and very general prevalence of the senti-
ment of sun-worship is worthy of especial attention on
account of the influence that it exercised over the
spurious Freemasonry of antiquity, of which we are
soon to speak, and which is still felt, although modified
and Christianized in our modern system. Many, in-
deed nearly all, of the Masonic symbols of the present
day can only be thoroughly comprehended and properly
appreciated by this reference to sun-worship.

This divine truth, then, of the existence of one Su-
preme God, the Grand Architect of the Universe, sym-
bolized in Freemasonry as the true word, was lost to
the Sabians and to the polytheists who arose after the
dispersion at Babel. With it also disappeared the doc-
trine of a future life. Hence, in one portion of a
Masonic ritual, in allusion to this historic fact, there is
mention of ''the lofty tower of Babel, where language
was confounded and Masonry lost.''

There were, however, some of the builders on tjie
plain of Shinar who preserved these great religious and

Primitive Freemasonry of Antiquity 29

Masonic doctrines of the unity of God and the im-
mortality of the soul in their pristine purity. These
were the patriarchs, in whose venerable line they con-
tinued to be taught. Thus, years after the dispersion
of the nations at Babel, the world presented two great
religious sects, passing onward down the stream of
time, side by side, yet as diverse from each other as
light from darkness, and truth from falsehood.

One of these lines of religious thought and sentiment
was the idolatrous and pagan world. With it all
Masonic doctrine, at least in its purity, was extinct,
although there mingled with it, and at times to some
extent influenced it, an offshoot from the other line, to
which attention will soon be directed.

The second of these lines consisted, as has already
been said, of the patriarchs and priests, who preserved
in all their purity the two great Masonic doctrines of
the unity of God and the immortality of the soul.

This line embraced, then, what, in the language of
recent Masonic writers, has been designated as the
*' Primitive Freemasonry of Antiquity.''

Now, it is by no means intended to advance any such
gratuitous and untenable theory as that proposed by
some imaginative writers, that the Freemasonry of the
patriarchs was in its organization, its ritual, or its
symbolism, like the system which now exists. We
know not, indeed, that it had a ritual, or even a sym-
bolism. We are inclined to think that it was made
up of abstract propositions, derived from antediluvian
traditions. Dr. Oliver thinks it probable that there
were a few symbols among these Primitive and Pure
Freemasons, and he enumerates among them the
serpent, the triangle, and the point within a circle; but
we can find no authority for the supposition, nor do

30 Symbolism of Freemasonry

we think it fair to claim for the Order more than it is
fairly entitled to, nor more than it can be fairly proved
to possess.

When Anderson calls Moses a Grand Master, Joshua
his Deputy, and Aholiab and Bezaleel Grand Wardens,
the expression is to be looked upon simply as a fa^on
de parler, a mode of speech, entirely figurative in its
character, and by no means intended to convey the
idea which is entertained in respect to officers of that
character in the present system. However, it would
undoubtedly have been better that such language should
not have been used.

All that can be claimed for the system of Primitive
Freemasonry, as practised by the patriarchs, is that it
embraced and taught the two great dogmas of Free-
masonry, namely, the unity of God, and the immor-
tality of the soul. It may be, and indeed it is highly
probable, that there was a secret doctrine, and that this
doctrine was not indiscriminately communicated. We
know that Moses, who was necessarily the recipient of
the knowledge of his predecessors, did not publicly
teach the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. But
there was among the Jews an oral or secret law which
was never committed to writing until after the cap-
tivity; and this law, we suppose, may have contained
the recognition of those dogmas of the Primitive Free-
masonry.

Briefly, then, this system of Primitive Freemasonry
— without ritual or symbolism, that has come down to
us, at least — consisting solely of traditionary legends,
teaching only the two great truths already alluded to,
and being wholly speculative in character, without the
slightest infusion of an operative element, was regularly
transmitted through the Jewish line of patriarchs.

Primitive Freemasonry of Antiquity 31

priests, and kings, without alteration, increase, or
diminution, to the time of Solomon, and the building of
the temple at Jerusalem.

Leaving it, therefore, to pursue this even course of
descent, let us refer once more to that other line of re-
ligious history, the one passing through the idolatrous
and polytheistic nations of antiquity, and trace from it
the regular rise and progress of another division of the
Masonic institution, which, by way of distinction, has
been called the *' Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity."

CHAPTER FIVE
Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity

IN the vast but barren desert of polytheism — dark
and dreary as were its gloomy domains — there
were still to be found some few oases of truth.
The philosophers and sages of antiquity had, in the
course of their learned researches, aided by the light of
nature, discovered something of those inestimable
truths in relation to God and a future state which
their patriarchal contemporaries had received as a
revelation made to their common ancestry before the
flood, and which had been retained and proclaimed
after that event by Noah.

They were with these dim but still purifying percep-
tions unwilling to degrade the majesty of the First
Great Cause by sharing his attributes with a Zeus and
a Hera in Greece, a Jupiter and a Juno in Rome, an
Osiris and an Isis in Egypt. They did not believe that
the thinking, feeling, reasoning soul, the guest and
companion of the body, would, at the hour of that
body's death, be consigned with it to total loss.

Therefore, in the earliest ages after the era of the
dispersion, there were some among the heathen who
believed in the unity of God and the immortality of
the soul. But these doctrines they dared not publicly
teach. The minds of the people, grovelling in super-

32

Spurious Freemasonry op Antiquity 33

stition, and devoted, as St. Paul testifies of the
Athenians, to the worship of unknown gods, were not
prepared for the philosophic teachings of a pure
theology.

Indeed, an axiom unhesitatingly enunciated and fre-
quently repeated by their writers, was that ''there are
many truths with which it is useless for the people to
be made acquainted, and many fables which it is not
expedient that they should know to be false.'* ^ Such
is the language of Varro, as preserved by St. Augustine.
Strabo, another of their writers, exclaims, "It is not
possible for a philosopher to conduct a multitude of
women and ignorant people by a method of reasoning)
and thus to invite them to piety, holiness, and faith;
but the philosopher must also make use of superstition,
and not omit the invention of fables and the perform-
ance of wonders. "2

While, therefore, in those early ages of the world, we
find the masses grovelling in the intellectual debase-
ment of a polytheistic and idolatrous religion, with no
support for the present, no hope for the future — living
without the knowledge of a supreme and superintending
Providence, and dying without the expectation of a
blissful immortality — we shall at the same time find

* "Varro de religionibus loquens, evidenter dicit, multa esse vera,
quae vulgo scire non sit utile; multaque, quae tametsi falsa sint,
aliter existimare populum expediat." St. Augustine, "De Civit.
Dei." We must regret, with the learned Valloisin, that the sixteen
books of Varro, on the religious antiquities of the ancients, have
been lost; and the regret is enhanced by the reflection that they
existed until the beginning of the fourteenth century, and disap-
peared only when their preservation for less than two centuries
more would, by the discovery of printing, have secured their per-
petuity.

2 Strabo, "Geog.," lib. i.

34 Symbolism op Freemasonky

ample testimony that these consoHng doctrines were
secretly believed by the philosophers and their disciples.

But though believed, they were not publicly taught.
They were heresies which it would have been impolitic
and dangerous to have broached to the public ear; they
were truths which might have led to a contempt of the
established system and to the overthrow of the popular
superstition. Socrates, the Athenian sage, is an illus-
trious instance of the punishment that was meted out
to the bold innovator who attempted to insult the gods
and to poison the minds of youth with the heresies of a
philosophic religion.

'^They permitted, therefore/' says a learned writer,^
''the multitude to remain plunged as they were in the
depth of a gross and complicated idolatry; but for
those philosophic few who could bear the light of truth
without being confounded by the blaze, they removed
the mysterious veil, and displayed to them the Deity
in the radiant glory of His unity. From the vulgar eye,
however, these doctrines were kept inviolably sacred,
and wrapped in the veil of impenetrable mystery."

The consequence of all this was that no one was
permitted to be invested with the knowledge of these
subhme truths until by a course of severe and arduous
trials, by a long and painful initiation, and by a formal
series of gradual preparations, he had proved himself
worthy and capable of receiving the full light of wisdom.
For this purpose, therefore, those peculiar religious
institutions were organized which the ancients desig-
nated as the Mysteries, and which, from the resem-
blance of their organization, their objects, and their
doctrines, have by Masonic writers been called the
''Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity."

^ Maurice, "Indian Antiquities," vol. ii. p. 297.

Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity 35

Warburton,^ in giving a definition of what these
Mysteries were, says, ''Each of the pagan gods had
(besides the public and open) a secret worship paid
unto him, to which none were admitted but those who
had been selected by preparatory ceremonies, called
initiation. This secret worship was termed the Mys-
teries." We shall now endeavor briefly to trace the
connection between these Mysteries and the institution
of Freemasonry; and to do so, it will be necessary to
enter upon some details of the constitution of those
mystic assemblies.

Almost every country of the ancient world had its
peculiar Mysteries, dedicated to the occult worship of
some especial and favorite god, and to the inculcation
of a secret doctrine, very different from that which was
taught in the public ceremonial of devotion. Thus in
Persia the Mysteries were dedicated to Mithras, or the
Sun; in Egypt, to Isis and Osiris; in Greece, to Demeter;
in Samothracia, to the gods Cabiri, the Mighty Ones;
in Syria, to Dionysus; while in the more northern
nations of Europe, such as Gaul and Britain, the initia-
tions were dedicated to their peculiar deities, and were
celebrated under the general name of the Druidical rites.

But no matter where or how instituted, whether
ostensibly in honor of the effeminate Adonis, the
favorite of Venus, or of the implacable Odin, the Scan-
dinavian god of war and carnage; whether dedicated
to Demeter, the type of the earth, or to Mithras, the
symbol of all that fructifies that earth — the great object
and design of the secret instruction were identical in
all places.

The Mysteries constituted a school of religion in which
the errors and absurdities of polytheism were revealed

^ "Divine Legation," vol. i. b. ii. § iv. p. 193, 10th London edition-

36 Symbolism of Freemasonry

to the initiated. The candidate was taught that the
many deities of the popular theology were but hidden
symbols of the various attributes of the supreme god
— a spirit invisible and indivisible — and that the soul,
as an emanation from his essence, could "never see
corruption,'^ but must, after the death of the body,
be raised to an eternal life.^

That this was the doctrine and the object of the
Mysteries is evident from the concurrent testimony
both of those ancient writers who flourished contem-
poraneously with the practice of them, and of those
modern scholars who have devoted themselves to their
investigation.

Thus Isocrates, speaking of them in his Panegyric^
says, "Those who have been initiated in the Mysteries
of Ceres entertain better hopes both as to the end of
life and the whole of futurity. "^

Epictetus^ declares that everything in these Mysteries
was instituted by the ancients for the instruction and
amendment of life.

And Plato'* says that the design of initiation was to
restore the soul to that state of perfection from which
it had originally fallen.

Thomas Taylor, the celebrated Platonist, who pos-
sessed an unusual acquaintance with the character of
these ancient rites, asserts that they "obscurely inti-
mated, by mystic and splendid visions, the felicity of
the soul, both here and hereafter, when purified from

* "The hidden doctrines of the unity of the Deity and the im-
mortality of the soul were taught originally in all the Mysteries,
even those of Cupid and Bacchus." — Warburton, on Spence's
"Anecdotes," p. 309.

* Isocrates, "Panegyric," p. 59.

8 "Arrian. Dissert.," lib. iii. c. xxi. * "Phfiedo."

Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity 37

the defilements of a material nature, and constantly
elevated to the realities of intellectual vision."^

Cruezer,^ a distinguished German writer, who has
examined the subject of the ancient Mysteries with
great judgment and elaboration, gives a theory on their
nature and design which is well worth consideration.

This theory is that when there had been placed under
the eyes of the initiated symbolical representations of
the creation of the universe, and the origin of things,
the migrations and purifications of the soul, the begin-
ning and progress of civilization and agriculture, there
was drawn from these symbols and these scenes in the
Mysteries an instruction destined only for the more
perfect, or the epopts, to whom were communicated
the doctrines of the existence of a single and eternal
God, and the destination of the universe and of man.

Creuzer here, however, refers rather to the general
object of the instructions, than to the character of the
rites and ceremonies by which they were impressed
upon the mind; for in the Mysteries, as in Freemasonry,
the Hierophant, whom we would now call the Master
of the Lodge, often, as Lobeck observes, delivered a
mystical lecture or discourse on some moral subject.

Faber, notwithstanding the predominance in his mind
of a theory which referred every rite and symbol of
the ancient world to the traditions of Noah, the ark,
and the Deluge, has given a generally correct view of the
systems of ancient religion, describes the initiation into
the Mysteries as a scenic representation of the mythic
descent into Hades, or the grave, and the return from
thence to the light of day.

* "Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries," in the
Pamphleteer, vol. viii. p. 53.

2 "Symbol, und Mythol. der Alt. Volk."

38 Symbolism of Freemasonry

In a few words, then, the object of instruction in all
these Mysteries was the unity of God, and the intention
of the ceremonies of initiation into them was by a
scenic representation of death, and subsequent resto-
ration to life to impress the great truths of the resur-
rection of the dead and the immortality of the soul.^

We need scarcely here advert to the great similarity
in design and conformation which existed between these
ancient rites and the third or Master^s degree of Free-
masonry. Like it they were all funereal in their char-
acter: they began in sorrow and lamentation, they
ended in joy; there was an aphanism, or burial; a
pastos, or grave; an euresis, or discovery of what had
been lost; and a legend, or mythical relation, — all of
which were entirely and profoundly symbolical in their
character.

And hence, looking to this strange identity of design
and form, between the initiations of the ancients and
those of the modern Freemasons, writers have been dis-
posed to designate these Mysteries as the "Spurious
Freemasonry of Antiquity."

* "In these Mysteries, after the people had for a long time be-
wailed the loss of a particular person, he was at last supposed to
be restored to life." — Bryant, "Analysis of Ancient Mythology,"
vol. iii. p. 176.

CHAPTER SIX

Ancient Mysteries

WE now propose, for the purpose of illustrating
these views, and of familiarizing the reader with
the coincidences between Freemasonry and the
ancient Mysteries, so that he may be better enabled
to appreciate the mutual influences of each on the
other as they are hereafter to be developed, to present
a more detailed relation of one or more of these ancient
systems of initiation.