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.