_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.