LEGENDA

LODGE OF PERFECTION

SOUTHERN JURISDICTION, U. S. A.

CHARLESTON.
1888.
LEGEND A, I.

Jicnipa of firam.

2067090
 LEGEND A.
I.

THE ^ENIGMA OF HIRAM.

THE Divine Symbols and hieroglyphs that constitute what
has in all time been called the KOSMOS, the WORLD, the UNI-

VERSE, or the CREATION, which is represented by the Lodge,

have in all ages been misinterpreted. They are the manifesta-

tion of the Deity, the formulated expression and utterance of

His THOUGHT, the unfolding and succession of the manifold in
being from the Divine unity of Idea. It is of necessity that
the Symbol should always be capable of being misunderstood,
and, therefore, Omnipotence intended that they should be so ;

and these misinterpretations are the philosophies and the re-

ligions that have succeeded each other like shadows upon the
water.
The Universe is an enigma, of which the Sphynx is the
symbol. The whole Egyptian land was a great Book, and
the teachings of this Book were repeated, translated in

pictures, sculptures, architecture, in all the cities and in all

the temples. The Desert itself had its eternal teachings,

and its Word of Stone sat squarely upon the base of the

Pyramids, before which the colossal Sphynx has meditated

during so many ages, slowly burying itself in the sand. Its

head, mutilated by Time, is still visible above its tomb, as if

to disappear it
only waited for a human voice to come and
explain to the New World the problem of the Pyramids.

Superstitions, ithas been said, are religious forms that sur-

vive lost ideas. All once had, as their reason of being, a truth
no longer known, or a truth transfigured. Their very name,
6 LEGENDA, I.

from the Latin superstes, signifies that which sunives.

They are the material relics of Ancient
Knowledge or
Opinions. Once the meaning of the Sphynx, of the Assyrian
human-headed bulls and lions, of the cherubim, of the oxen
under the brazen laver, of the mystic-winged and many-eyed
creatures of Ezekiel, was known, at least to the Sages. Who
now possesses the key to that meaning ?
Nor is it only the Symbols of that first revelation which we
term Creation, that are misinterpreted. The Oracles, also,
have always spoken in enigmas, and whoso has not divined
their meaning has, in attempting it, died. The sacred Books
of the Hebrews are also Oracles a succession of symbols and
allegories which those who read them literally the least
understand. Who can interpret the Prophecies and the
?
Apocalypse
MASONKY also has its ancient Symbols, inherited from the

Mysteries uud the Kabaluh, and intended to veil and conceal

the truth from all except the Adepts. Like the religions,

also, Masonry gives false interpretations of its Symbols, to

mislead those who would not value the highest philosophical
truth, and the Profane to whom these interpretations may be
divulged.
The Statue of Truth is
always veiled. Nature reluctantly
yields up to us her secrets, so that as yet we know them only
in part, and imperfectly. Science is a progressive revelation,
and the revelation by the written word is continuous ;
its true

meaning, which is the revealing, being slowly evolved during

the march of the centuries.

Unfortunately, the Sages die, leaving no successors, and

the true interpretation of the Symbols that they used dies
with them ;
but the false interpretations to which they re-

sorted survive. The Symbol itself is taken for the thing or

the truth symbolized. The symbolic ceremony is deemed
to possess the energy of salvation ;
and to neglect a sacrifice
 LEGENDA, I. 7

or a Rite, or for an)* except the Priest to dare to use it, is re-

garded and punished as sacrilege: while dull mediocrity

invents tame and common interpretations, that make the

ceremony which once was solemn to be trivial, and the Symbol

itself to be worthless.
But when an interpretation is in part true, and in part
intentionally false or obscure, symbolism performs its own
accustomed office, requiring the Initiate to separate the True
from the Untrue by his own study and reflection, or to re-
main among the mass of those to whom the highest Truth is
of the least value.
Such an interpretation is that which follows. It is given

by an Adept, and, therefore, propounds the truth enigmatic-

ally, that which it plainly expresses being of less value than
that which it conceals or only hints at.

"Anarchy alone natters the prejudices of the multitude.

Absolute truths are not needed for the masses ;
for otherwise

progress would be arrested, and life would cease in humanity

The ebb and flow of contrary ideas, the shock of opinions,
the passions that rule the intellect, determined always by the
dreams of the moment, are necessary to the intellectual

growth of the peoples."

" Few
men, in any age," to use the energetic language of
the Oracle, "have heard the Light speak." The Light, indeed,
in the visible world, alternates with the Shadow ; they mingle
with each other, also, and the line between them is not to be

defined. So also it is with Truth and Error ;

for Error is the

shadow of the Light. Errors, also, in science and philosophy,

often lead to the discovery of the truth ;
and the intellect is

more profitably exercised in detecting them, and so for itself

extracting the gold from the ore, than in digesting the truths
which those who so discovered them teach.
Let the Initiate, then, winnow the Error from the Truth in
the following interpretation of a Masonic legend.
8 LEGENDA, I.

"The Grand Kabalistic Association, known in Ei.rope

under the name of MASONRY, appeared all at once in the
world at the period when the Protest against the Church
came to break the Christian unity. The historians of the
Order do not know how to explain the origin of it. Some
ascribeit to a free association of Masons, formed at the time

of the building of the cathedral of Strasburg: others give

it Cromwell for founder, without troubling themselves to

inquire whether the rites of the English Masonry of the time

of Cromwell were not organized against that chief of the
Puritan anarchy ;
and others are ignorant enough to attribute

to the Jesuits, if not the foundation, at least the continuation

and direction of this society, long secret and always mys-

terious. Rejecting this last opinion, which refutes itself, we
may reconcile the others, by saying that the Brethren-masons

(freres-mapons) borrowed from the builders of the Cathedral

of Strasburg their name and the emblems of their art ;
and
that they were publicly organized for the first time in Eng-
land, under favor of its radical institutions, and in despite of

the despotism of Cromwell.

" We may add, that they have had the Templars for models,
the Roses-croix for fathers, and the Johannites for ancestors.
Their dogma is that of Zoroaster and Hermes ;
their rule is

progressive initiation ;
their principle, equality, regulated by
the hierarchy and universal fraternity :
they are the continuers
of the school of Alexandria, heirs of all the ancient initiations ;

they are the depositaries of the secrets of the Apocalypse

and the Sohar ; the object of their worship is Truth, repre-
sented by the Light
; they tolerate all creeds, and profess but
one and the same philosophy they search for Truth alone,
;

teach only Eeality, and desire to lead all intelligences pro-

gressively to Reason.
" The the rebuilding of the
allegorical object of Masonry is

Temple of Solomon : its real object is the reconstitution of

 LEGENDA, L 9

social unity, by the alliance of Keason and Faith; and the re-
establishment of the Hierachy, in accordance with knowledge
and virtue; with initiation and tests by means of degrees.
"Nothing is finer, we see, nothing grander than these
ideas; but unfortunately the doctrines of unity and of sub-
mission to the hierarchy have not been preserved in the uni-
versal Masonry. There soon sprung up a dissident Ma-
sonry, opposed to the orthodox, and the greatest calamities
of the French Revolution were the consequences of this
schism.
"The Freemasons have their sacred legend ;
that of HIRAM
completed by that of CYRUS and ZOROBABEL.
"This is the legend of Hiram :

"When Solomon caused the Temple to be builded, he in-

trusted his plans to an architect named HIRAM or HARAM.

"This Architect, to establish order in the work, divided
the laborers according to their skill and experience ; and as

their number was very great, in order to be able io recognize

them, whether to employ them according to their capacity, or

to remunerate them according to their work, he gave to each

class, to the Apprentices, Fellows, and Masters, particular pass-
words and signs.
" Three Fellow-crafts who desired to usurp the rank of Mas-

ter, without being entitled by their deserts, lay in wait at

to it

the three principal gates of t'.ie Temple, and when Hiram

was about to go forth, one of them demanded of him the
Masters' word, menacing him with his Rule.
" Hiram to him
'
2 did not so receive the word that
replied :

you demand of me."

" The
enraged Fellow-craft struck Hiram with his Rule of
iron, and inflicted on him the first wound.
" Hiram fled to another and there found the second
gate,
Fellow-craft : the same demand was made and the same reply

given, and this time Hiram was struck with a square, or, as

others say, with a lever.

10 LEGENDA, I.

"At the third gate was the third assassin, who finished the
Master with a blow of a mallet.
" The three Fellow-crafts afterward hid the body under a

pile of rubbish, and planted onthis improvised grave a branch

of Acacia, and then fled, like Cain after the murder of Abel.
" Meanwhile
Solomon, his Architect not returning, sent
nine Masters to seek him. The branch of acacia led them to
find the body; they drew it from the rubbish, and as it had
remained there for some days, they
upon raising it, cried,
Macli-benacli ! which means, ( the flesh parts from the bones.'
"The last duties were performed to Hiram, and twenty-
seven Masters were then sent by Solomon to search for the
murderers.
"The first was surprised in a cave a lamp burned near
;

him, a rivulet ran at his feet, and a poniard was near him for
his defence. The Master who entered the cavern recognized
the assassin, seizedand stabbed him, saying
the poniard,
*
NEKUM !
'
a word that means '
Vengeance? His head was carried
to Solomon, who was angered on seeing it, and said to him

who had killed the assassin :

'
Wretch! did you not know that
I had reserved to myself the right to punish 9 Then all the
Masters prostrated themselves, and begged for pardon for him.
whom his zeal had carried too far.
" The second murderer was
betrayed by a man who had
given him refuge. He was hidden in a grotto among the
rocks, near a burning bush, over which glowed a rainbow,
and a dog watched near him. The Masters eluded the vigi-
lance of the dog, seized the criminal, bound him, and led him
to Jerusalem, where he was put to death.
"The third assassin was killed by a lion, which it was
necessary to conquer in order to gain possession of the body.
But other versions say that the assassin defended himself
against the Masters with an axe, until they succeeded in dis-
arming him, when they took him to Solomon, who ordered
him executed, to expiate his crime.
 LEGENDA, L 11

" Such is the first

legend. See now the explanation of it.
" SOLOMON is the
personification of Knowledge and the

Supreme Wisdom.
"The Temple is the realization and figure of the Holy Em-
pire, the reign of Truth and Reason on the earth.

"Hiram is Man attaining Empire by means of Knowledge

and Sagacity.
" He
governs by Justice and Order, rewarding every one
according to his works.
"
Every degree of the Order has a Word which expresses its
meaning.
"There is for Hiram only one Word, but this is pronounced
in three different manners.

"In one manner for the Apprentices, pronounced by whom

it signifies Nature, and is explained by Toil.
" In another manner for the Fellow-crafts; and with them
it means Thought, explaining itself by Study.
"In another manner for the Masters; and in their mouth
it signifies Truth, a word that is explained bv Wisdom.
" This Word is that used to designate God, whose true name
is ineffable and incommunicable.
" So there are three degrees in the Hierarchy, as there are

three gates to the Temple.

" There are three principal rays in the Light ;

"There are three Forces in nature.

"These Forces are figuredby the RULE, which unites ;

the

LEVER, that raises; and the MALLET, that consolidates.

"The rebellion of the brutal instincts against the Hie-
rarchical aristocracy of wisdom, arms itself in succes-
sion with these three forces, which it turns aside from the

harmony.
" There are three
typical rebels :

" The rebel

against Nature ;

" The rebel against Knowledge ;

"The rebel against Truth.

12 LEGENDA, L

" These were

figured in the Hell of the ancients, by the
three heads of Cerberus.
"
They are figured in the Bible by Korah, Dathan, and
Abiron.
" In the Masonic are designated by names that
legend they
vary according to the Rites.
" The first is called YUBELA and ROMVEL. He strikes the

Grand Master with the Rule.

" It is the
history of the first man put to death, in the name
of the Law, by human passions.

"The second is called YUBELO or HOBHEN. He strikes

Hiram with the Lever or the Square.

" So the
popular Lever or the Square of a senseless Equal-
ity becomes the instrument of Tyranny in the hands of the
multitude, and wounds yet more severely than the Rule the
Royalty of Wisdom and Virtue.
"The third is called YUBELUM, Abairam, AJchirop, Gibs,
or Gravelot. He slays Hiram with the Mallet.
"As the brutal instincts do, when they attempt to create
Order in the name of Violence, and Fear by crushing Intel-
ligence."
" The branch of ACACIA ou the of Hiram is like the
grave
Cross upon our altars.
" It is the
Sign of knowledge surviving knowledge, the
green branch that announces another spring.*'
[The acacia, or, as it is to be read, akdkia, in the Greek
anaKia, from am}, a point, is that genus of trees to which
belong that which yields the gum arabic, the mezquite, and
the locust. It is the satah or satam wood of the Hebrew
writings, HC2^ DE2&* satah, satam, used in the
construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple, and there-
fore a Symbol of Holiness and Divine Truth. In the Greek,
ocHctHoS and anemia mean freedom from evil, ^""jp, Holy,
Holiness, the TEMPLE, or HOLY HOUSE. It is, therefore, not
the Symbol of Immortality alone, but of that life of innocence
 LEGENDA, I. 13

and purity for which the Faithful hope when they shall have

been raised up to a new and spiritual existence.]

''When men have so troubled the order of nature, as the
slayers of Hiram did, Providence intervenes to re-establish it ;

as Solomon, symbol of the Infinite and Creative Wisdom, did

to avenge the death of Hiram.
" He who assassinated with the Kule dies by the poniard.
"He who struck with the Lever or the Square will die
under the axe of the law. This is the eternal sentence of the

Regicides.
"He who completed the murder with the Mallet, falls a
victim to the Force which he abused, and is
strangled by the
Lion.
" The Assassin
by the Rule is denounced by the very Lump
that gave him light, and the Spring at which he drinks.
" That is to he is to the lex talionis.
say, subjected
"The Assassin by the Square will be surprised when his

vigilance is at fault, like a dog asleep, and he will be be-

trayed by his accomplices ;

for Anarchy is the Mother of
Treason.
" The Lion that devours the Assassin by the Mallet, is one
of the forms of the Sphinx of (Edipus.
"And whosoever shall have conquered the Lion, will de-

serve to succeed to the dignity of Hiram.

" The of Hiram, putrefied, shows that forms change,
body
but the spirit remains.
" The stream which flowed near the first murderer, refers
to the deluge which punished unnatural crimes.
"The Burning Bush and Rainbow, which cause the second
Assassin to be discovered, represent Light and Life de-

nouncing violences against Thought.

"In fine, the Lion vanquished represents the triumph of
Spirit over Matter, and the definitive submission of Force to
Reason.
" Since the of the toil of the Spirit to build the
beginning
14 LEGENDA, I.

Temple of Unity, Hiram has been killed many times, and

always raised again to life.
"He is ADONIS killed by the wild boar, OSIRIS assassinated
by Tuphon.
"He is PYTHAGORAS proscribed, ORPHEUS torn by the Bac-

chantes, HERMES, HORUS, MITHRAS, GAMA, ATYS, BALDER,

MOSES abandoned in the caves of Mount Nebo, JESUS put to
death by Judas, Caiaphas and Pilate.
" The true Masons, then, are those who persist in striving
to build the Temple according to the plan of Hiram.
"Such is the grand and principal legend of Masonry. The
rest are not less fine nor less profound, but we do not think it

right that we should divulge their mysteries though we have ;

received initiation of God and our labors alone, we regard the

secrets of High Masonry as our own. Having by our efforts

attained a scientific degree which imposes silence on us, we

hold ourselves more firmly bound by our convictions than by
our oath. Science is a Nobility which obliges ; and we will
not be unworthy of the princely crown of the Eose Crosses.
We, too, believe in the resurrection of Hiram.
"The Eites of Masonry are devoted to transmitting the

remembrance of the legends of initiation, and preserving it

among the Brethren.

"We shall, perhaps, be asked how, if Masonry is so sublime

and so holy, it could have been proscribed and so often con-

demned by the Church ?

"We have replied to this question in speaking of the

schisms and profanations of Masonry.

" the Gnosis and the false Gnostics have
Masonry is ;

caused the true to be condemned.

"What compels them to secrecy, is not fear of the Light :

light is what they wish, seek for, and adore.

" fear the profaners that is to say, the false interpre-
They
ters, the calumniators, the skeptics with their stupid laugh,

the enemies of every creed and all morality.

 LEGENDA, I. 15

"In our time, moreover, a great number of men who believe

themselves Free Masons, are ignorant of the meaning of their
Kites, and have lost the key of their Mysteries.
"They do not even any longer comprehend their symbolic

pictures, and as little understand the hieroglyph ical signs with

which the hangings of their Lodges are decorated.
" These
pictures and signs are the pages of the book of the
absolute and universal knowledge.

"They can be read by the aid of the Kabalistic clues, and

hide nothing from the Initiate who possesses the keys of inter-

pretation of Solomon.
"Masonry has not only been profaned, but it has even
served as a veil and pretext for the plottings of anarchy, by
the secret influence of the avengers of Jacques de Molai, and
the continucrs of the schismatic work of the Temple.
"Instead of avenging the death of Hiram, his Assassins
have been avenged.
"The Anarchists have retaken the Rule, the Square, and
the Mallet, and written on them, LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRA-
'

TERNITY.'
" That is to say, Liberty for the covetous to plunder,
Equality for the basest, and Fraternity to destroy.
"These are the men whom the Church has always con-
demned, and always will condemn."
These interpretations are ingenious, but not correct.

In the Hebrew, Q*)n> Khrm, meant 'devoted, consecrated,'

devoted to the sacrifice as a victim. *~}]ft means 'white, an
aperture, a window.' The name of the Artificer is, in Kings,

Khirra; and in Chronicles, Khurm. Whether the second syl-

lable is am, iim or dm, is uncertain.

Also, if], khi, means 'life, living, alive;' fcOrP^rp^

Aloha-Khia, 'the Living God.' And QfcO ram, meant 'was,
or shall, be raised, elevated.'
The English Masonry was Christian (which means Trinita-

rian) from the beginning, and in it Hiram was the representa-

16 LEGENDA, I.

live of Christ. In the Scottish Masonry he represented

Jacques do Molui, and Charles I. of England. But in it he
became afterwards the representative of civil and religious lib-
erty. Khur or kur, in Persian, means 'the Sun, Light :' and
Hiram or Huram (Kliurom, um or dm), personifies moral,

political and religious Truth. He is the Apostle of Truth,

the Tribune of the People, the Reformer, the Defender of
Free Thought.
Christ, preaching the equality of men before God, and
making of those who followed him a Brotherhood, denouncing
oppressors and hypocrites, scourging the money-changers out
of the Temple, selecting his disciples among the poor of the

Earth, became the type, in Free Masonry, of the Man of the

People, endeavouring to enfranchise and elevate them.
To know whom his assassins personify, ask by what agen-
ciessuch men have always disappeared from the earth.
ROYALTY fears the PATRIOT, and, as fear is always cruel,
sends him 1o the scaffold. The PRIESTHOOD convicts the dar-

ing INQUIRER and philosophical THINKER, of Heresy or Con-

tumacy, and professing to abhor the shedding of blood, deliv-
ers him to the secular arm to be murdered. The PEOPLE, slave

of both the Crown and the Tiara, as a mob, or embodied as

soldiery, executes with brutal violence the savage will of both.

At the Station of the Junior Warden, Hiram is stricken with
the RULE, or twenty-four inch GAUGE, on the throat. At the
Station of the Senior Warden, with the angle of the SQUARE,
over the heart : and at the Station of the Master, with the SET-

TING-MAUL, on the. forehead.

In the THROAT are the organs of speech : the HEART was
for ages spoken of as the seat of the affections, and is so yet;

and the FOREHEAD is the Seat of the Intellect.

What is meant by the three implements?Evidently they
are symbolical. Men
intending to extort a Secret, or take life
if refused, would not arm themselves with rules and small

squares. Webb and Cross, and the babblers of their school,

 LEGENDA, I. 17

who have never rightly interpreted a single Symbol, have not

attempted to interpret these. Their business has been to more

completely obscure the meaning of all the Symbols, by leading

thinkers and thoughtless alike away from the truth, by trivial
and worthless interpretations, whereby the Symbols have lost

all value.

The clue to the meaning of the first of the three Symbols,

the RULE, is, that in the Greek, a RULE, whether an implement,
or a rule of conduct, or law, is HUVGOV, canon; and the Law

of the Church of Rome, derived from various sources, has

always been called "The Canon Law."
The RULE, therefore, canon, is an apt Symbol of the Church ;

and, in connection with the putting to death of Jesus of Xaza-

reth, of the Jewish Church, represented by Annas and Caia-
phas, the High Priests, Avho most urgently demanded and

urged the People to demand the crucifixion of Christ, before

Pilate and Herod, even inciting them, when Pilate desired

to release him, to demand the release instead, of the thit-f,

Barabbas.
The Jewish Priesthood at Jerusalem desired to silence Christ,

being exasperated by denunciations of their hypocrisy

his

and vices and therefore the Junior Warden, with the RULE,
:

Symbol of the Pontifical and Sacerdotal Power, smote Hiram

on the throat, where the organs of speech are.

Augustus Caesar became the absolute Tyrant of Rome, not by

usurping power, but by uniting in his own person all the
great offices of the State, and so investing himself with all the

powers of Government. Possessed of all Civil and Judicial

Power, he also became possessor of all Religious Power, by be-
coming Poutifex Maxirnus ; and all this accumulation of pow-
ers his Successors inherited.

The
rigid, unbending Square of Steel, its two arms uniting
to form the unyielding unity of the right angle, is an apt Sym-
bol of the Imperial Power of Rome, union of all Civil and all

Religious Power, a hard, harsh, unrelenting, merciless Des-

2
18 LEGENDA, I.

pofism, its laws the edicts of an arbitrary will, and, whether

just or unjust, executed without ruth or pity.
Wherefore, and because every Despotism, jealous, suspicious,
and cruel, because suspicion and jealousy are cowardly, and

always cruel, crushes without mercy or remorse the affections

of the heart, upon mere suspicion sends the husband or father
to Siberia, or to hard labour in mines, or to a dungeon for life,

consigns to exile, imprisonment, or death, even the nearest

blood-relations of the Tyrant, lest they should have partizans,
and the disaffected should gather around them, and imperil
the Tyrant's tenure of the throne, the Senior Warden smites
Hiram with the Angle of the Square over the heart, the Seat of
the Affections.
The Maul or Mallet, like the Club, a brutal weapon which

crushes and defaces the image of God in Humanity, is a fit

Symbol of the mob, blind and unreasoning, beating down and
crushing with brute force whatever resists its mad rage, or has
excited its insane suspicions. Utterly without reasoning, and
hating cultivation and enlightenment, it looks upon the men
of thought, the Statesmen and Scholars, and Thinkers, as its

enemies, and like Jack Cade, considers knowledge a crime.

Wherefore, at the Station of the Master, Hiram is stricken with
the Setting-Maul upon the forehead, Seat of the Intellect, and
falls stunned and crushed at the feet of the third Assassin.

Reason and Intellect have, in all ages, been found powerless,

as they still are, to oppose a Military Despotism or organized
Anarchy, in which alike the base and the brutal govern, and tho
good and the wise serve. The Revolutionary Tribunal, the

Star Chamber, the Military Commission, Tribunals that sit

sworn condemn, and girded with bayonets, are the embodi-

to

ments of this brute Force, and strike with its Club of Steel at
the brain of Constitutional Freedom. It is the people that

clamors for the blood of the Patriot; and the Soldiery is but
the mob, organized and directed by a single will an instru-

ment, wielded like the Mace, blind and unreasoning as fate. In

 LEGENDA, I. 19

the hand of Cyril it smites Hypatia, the Virgin enamored of

the old philosophy : in that of Marat it tears asunder the white

limbs of the Princess Lamballe, and offers the last indignities

to her palpitating flesh. It howls after Rienzi as he treads the

road that leads to the scaffold: it digs up the bones of Crom-

well at the will of an English Monarch, who becomes a pen-
sioner of the Throne of France. It followed Christ with exe-
crations as he staggered under the crushing Aveight of the

Cross: it lauded Jeffries when he murdered under the forms of

English justice: it slaughtered the Grand Pensionary De Witt:

it yelled for the blood of Vergniaud, and would, if he had been
unsuccessful, have hounded Washington to the scaffold as a

Traitor. It betrays and abandons its chiefs, and does not, like

Iscariot, repent, but obtains absolution for its own sins by as-

senting to the sacrifice of those whom it forced into rebellion

against the Throne, or the voluntary union of States. There

is always a scape-goat devoted to Azaze), a sacrifice to expiate

the sins of the multitude ;

and God permits the people to be

base, in order to demonstrate the legitimacy of the despotisms

of the Caesars, the Cromwells, and the Xapoleons.
The Crown itself is but a symbol, and Royalty is but the
most common type of tyranny. The Kings of the mob are des-
pots also, and free States, like Athens or Sparta, subjugating
other free States, and animated by a vindictive revenge, strike
with the Rule at the throat, their anger and hatred taking the
form of law, and prohibiting the discussion of human or con-
stitutional rights. When, among Republics, Force decides

erroneously, as it always does, it becomes a crime, sometimes

called Treason, to be the advocate and defender of the Truth,
or even to re-state the facts of History.
The Mitre and Tiara also are but symbols, and the Pontifi-
cate but the most usual mode
in which spiritual despotism

manifests Everywhere, and in every age, the Priest

itself.

covets temporal power ; and in Republics, the pulpit becomes

the Tribune, and the dogmas and cruel angers of the Mountain
20 LEGENDA, I.

of Jacobinism become a part of the religion of Christ. The

Sanctuary goes back to the days of Moses and Joshua for its
precedents, and the Creed persecuted yesterday becomes the
persecutor of to-day. In all ages, the Priesthood, hater equally
of what it styles Heresy, and of true Liberty, makes
Thought
and Opinions crimes. That murderously cruel Agency, the
" The '*
Inquisition, was sanctified by being called Holy Office;
as wars of religious persecution have been baptized by the
Church as " Holy Wars."
" He who assassinated
by the Rule, dies by the poniard.
. . . He who struck with the Lever or the Square will die
under the axe of the Law. This is the eternal Sentence of the

Regicides."
Caesar falls, pierced by the dagger of Brutus. The Tyrant
is deemed the enemy of the human race, and the Neros, Caligu-
las, Domitians, and Robespierres, like the Tarquins and the

Appii, are wild beasts whom it seems lawful to slay by any

means whatsoever. The victims of the Autocrat of the Tatars
and Cossacks in Poland, and the countless Exiles sent to die in

Siberia, are at last avenged by the Nihilist bomb that slays an

Emperor of Russia. But the truer Regicides than those who
so assassinate, or those who try and condemn the false and
faithless, or feeble King, the Charles or the Louis, are those
who assassinate the Kings of Thought, the Royalty of the In-
tellect. Justice is slow, but it at length overtakes the persecut-

ing Church, arraigns it before the great Tribunal of the Na-

tions, and smites it with the axe of Justice, wherever it

may
have been enthroned, and under whatsoever name it may have
usurped the prerogative of God. The blood of the Huguenot,
the Covenanter, and the Quaker, the Sicilian Vespers, and the
Eve of St. Bartholomew are always avenged at last by the jus-

tice of Omnipotence.
Tyranny is dethroned by the Intellect of which it consti-

tutes itself the patron, and by the burghers and the commons
to whom it grants privileges, that they may be bribed to sus-
 LEGENDA, L 21

tain it with moneys, and aid it in crushing the Nobles that en-

danger the power of the Crown and the enemies of the Church
:

its Luthers and Wesleys always spring from its own loins.
Its own children turn upon it and rend it. It was the Monk

ofEinsliehen that wounded the Romish Church unto death;

and the Church of England has been, like Protestantism in
Germany and Xew England, the nursing-mother of her dead-

liest foes.

But what if there should be other and profounder meanings

than these, dangerous if known to the multitude, and only

darkly hinted at by the Adepts ?

What if KnuR-Chr, Symbol of the LIGHT and
representative
of the Sex, and himself typified at his summer and winter
solstices by Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evan-

gelist, were also the Symbol of that Divine and Perfect TRUTH
that dazzles the eyes of all except the Eagles and the Hawks,
which in ancient Egypt were sacred to ATUM, AMUX-RA, and
MEXDES, the great Gods !

This Divine and perfect TRUTH, known only to the Iliero-

phants and the Sages, and of which Herodotus, Hermes, and

Plutarch speak in enigmas and by obscure hints, has often died
and risen again from the dead. Wounded unto death by that
literal interpretation of the holy writings that has been so
narrow and short-sighted creeds, it lived again and
fruitful of

became immortal for the Initiates, when the Christ raised it,
as he did Lazarus, its personification, from the tomb. The
Rulejmdi the Square are apt symbols of the rectangularity and
stiff precision of that interpretation which makes a figurative

Oriental book to have been written, as it were, in Geneva, or

by an unimaginative Puritan or Presbyterian.

" The Letter killetli The Rule
; hit the Spirit vivifies."

and Square of a stunted and pedantic verbal interpretation

wounded this Divine Truth unto the death ; and at last Or-

thodoxy always resorts to the Mace or Mallet of Force, with

which the Priests slaughtered the sacrificial victim at the
22 LEGENDA, I.

bloody altar which Israel borrowed from the worshippers of

Baal and of Moloch, and whose horns dripping witli gore re-
vealed its origin. Thus read, the sacred oracles of all nations,

intelligible to the Sages, are fruitful of idolatries among the

vulgar. All the mythologies are but allegories accepted as the

recitals of facts ;
the Truth hidden under the veil cf the Sym-
bol remaining invisible within the Holy of Holies, where the
Visible Presence dwells for the true Initiate between the
cherubim.
LEGEXDA. II.

31 enigma of (be Sphpx

 THE

ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX.

IT is in its antique Symbols and their occult meaning

that the true secrets of Freemasonry consist. These must
reveal its real nature and true purposes ;
and in these, also,
consists its superiority over all other Associations.

ISTot all its Symbols are ancient. Some were adopted from
the English and Scottish Craft of Stone-Masonry, when those
who created the order, somewhat before the beginning of the
eighteenth century, assumed the name of Free-Masons, by

which, in the old English statutes, those who worked in free

stone, as contradistinguished from those who worked in

rough stone, were known.* And some of the Symbols now
* The Statute of Labourer? [25 EDW. III.. Slat. 1] had this provision : Item qe carpen-
ters, masons, teglers, et auters coverours (or overours) des mesons, ne preignent le jour pur
lour otereygne forsqe en manere come Us soloient ; cest assaver mestre carpenter Hi d.
et an/re ii d. mestre mason de franche piere iv. d. et aittre mason Hi d. et leur serraniz

teguler Hi d. et son garceon i d. ob., d-c. ; the translation whereof in the Statutes
i d. ob. ;
" Also that
at Large i?, Carpenter?, Masons, Tilers, and other workmen of Houses, shall
not take by the day for their work, but in manner as they were wont that is to say, a
;

Master Carpenter three-pence, and another two-pence a Master Freemason four-pence,

;

and other Masons three-pence, and their servants one penny half-penny Tylers three-
;

pence, and their knaves one penny half-penny, &c.

The Statute 34 Ei>w. III., Chap, ix , entitled "The Statute of Labourers confirmed,
altered and enforced," provided that " the Carpenters and Masons take from henceforth
wages by the day, and not by the week nor in other manner and that the Chief Masters
;

of Carpenters and Masons [les chiefs mestres des Carpenters et Maceons] take four-pence
by the day and that all alliances and covines of Masons and Carpenters, and congre-
;

gations, chapters, ordinances, and oaths betwixt them made or to be made, shall be
from henceforth void and wholly annulled go that every Mason and Carpenter, of
;

what condition soever he be, shall be compelled by his master to whom he serveth, to
do every work that to him pertaineth to do, either of free <tone or of rough stone, [ou dt
fraunche pere ou de grosse pere] And also every Carpenter in his degree. 11
.

And in the Statute 2 & 3 EDW.VI., Chap, xv., entitled " An act touching Victuallers
26 THE .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX.

used in the Blue Lodges of the United States are of still

more recent manufacture ; as, for example, Time combing
out the ringlets of the Virgin's hair, and the two parallel
lineswith the Holy Bible resting upon them.

Freemasonry has been many different things, at different

periods, and in the hands of different persons. It is not one
and the same thing everywhere now. In some countries it is

now a political association, its degrees having for its Initiates

no philosophical signification whatever. In the United

States, the Blue Degrees teach morality only, refuse to inter-

meddle with questions political or religious, and require only

a belief in God, and, faintly, in the immortality of the soul ;

except so far as they declare the Holy Bible to be the rule

and guide of man's conduct, and the inspired Word of God ;

which, if it were not evaded in practice, by the admission of

Hebrews, would make the Masonry of the United States a
strictly Christian Association. In the earlier part of the

eighteenth century, Freemasonry was, for many of its Initiates,

the teaching of the Hermetic philosophy. There are, we are
told, six different Kadoshes, that which belongs to the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Kite being the veritable philosophical
Kadosh and so there have been, and still are, several Free-
:

masonries, of which this Rite is the only true philosophical one.

It has been objected to us, that in our lectures we under-
value that which "
is absurdly called Symbolic Masonry," as
if any Masonry could be not symbolic.
It is quite true that w e should not value
r
it, if we saw noth-

ing in the Symbols of the Blue Lodge beyond the imbecile

and Handicraftsmen," we find " the Craft, mystery or occupation of Victuallers" spoken
" that no
of. and provision person or person* shall at any time after the first clay of April
next coming, interrupt, deny, let, or obstruct any Free Mason, Bough Mai-on, Carpenter,
Bricklayer, &c., to work in any of the paid crafts."
&
And in the Statute 3 4 EDW. VI., Chap, xx., repealing a certain branch of the act last
before mentioned, and reciting it, we find " the Artificers and Craftsmen of the arts,
" the
crafts, and mysteries aforesaid" spoken of, and Free-men, being artificers of the
crafts, arts, swdmysteriet aforesaid."
 THE .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 27

pretences of interpretation of them contained in the ordinary

sterile instruction which we owe to Webb and his predeces-

sors. These misinterpretations are not so much guesses at the

true meaning, as merely arbitrary and unwarranted expla-

nations, invented with but a moderate degree of ingenuity,

and no more authoritative or genuine than any others that
an ingenious fancy might invent to-day. To pretend that

they have been transmitted to us from antiquity is a mere

fable. By the same process, an Egyptian hieroglyph might
be made to mean anything.
.
To these pretended interpretations it is
owing, and to those
blind guides who look no further into Masonry, that intelligent
men iind so little to attract and interest them in Masonic

Symbolism, and that much which is found in the degrees seems

trivial and sometimes absurd.

Freemasonry must once have had other and very different

purposes, and other and vastly more interesting and impor-
tant objects, than those for which, in the United States and

England, at least, it now exists. All of its symbols, that are

not merely modern inventions, have a concealed meaning,
which never appeared in the Liturgies or Rituals, these con
taining only hints cautiously given, and ideas easily misunder-
stood (and so intended to be) by all but the Adepts.
The legends of the different degrees, that of the third in-

cluded, and those which purport to give historical accounts of

the progress and transmission of Masonry during the Middle

Age, and up to the year 1700, are told as if they contained

statements of tacts. So were the parables of Jesus of

Kazareth, spoken by him to his disciples, and which they

found hard to understand. "We have not felt at liberty to

discard them. But these legends are neither historical nor

traditional ;
and in that respect it is true to say that Masonry
has no real traditions, but only inventions. There is not the
28 THE ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX.

slightest evidence that the legend of the third degree is true.

It is not historical, and it has not come to us by tradition.

It is allegorical ;
and its signification is revealed
by the name
of the Hero of the legend in its resemblance to HERMES.
The accounts given of the connection of the Masons with the
rebuilding of the Second Temple are simply allegorical, having
a meaning which you may hereafter come to know: and the
recitals of the career of the Perfect Elect have no foundation
iu fact. They are but allegorical and legendary. We pre-
serve them, but we do not give you or the world solemn as-

surances of their truth, or gravely pretend that they are his-

torical or genuine traditions.
If the Initiate is
permitted for a little while to think so, it
is because he may not prove worthy to receive the Light ;
and that, if he should prove treacherous or unworthy, he
should be able only to babble to the Profane of legends and

fables, signifying to them nothing, and with as little apparent

meaning or value as the seeming jargon of the Alchemists.

In times when it is unpopular or dangerous to teach the
truth, Wisdom sometimes wisely wears the mask of Folly,
and many of the grotesque fables of the old mythologies and
of the myths that came afterward to be regarded as history,
had a like origin.

But when it is
gravely and persistently attempted to trans-
form mere follies and pretended traditions into historical

facts, to deny or doubt which is to be heretical or sceptical,

and these pretended facts of history are imposed upon a
whole Order and upon the world, and excite the derision and
contempt of men of learning, it is time to endeavor, from
the mass of historical falsehoods, to extricate the simple truth.
If the fabulous and the false were ever useful to Masonry, they
have ceased to be so now, and it is able to stand alone without

their support.
 THE ENIGMA OF THE SPHINX. 29

That the Freemasonry of the present day dates more, at the

most, than a few years back of the year 1700, is as utterly un-
sustained by evidence or tradition entitled to respect as the

pretences that it is in any way or degree the successor of or

connected with the Dionysian architects or the German
workers in stone, or the English or Scottish Freemasons of
the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, or as the
fables of the holding of a Grand Lodge at York, by the son of
Athelstanc, or of the existence of a Grand Lodge in that place
before the year 1780, or of Encampments of Masonic Tem-

plars anywhere in England from time immemorial.

There is no evidence that there was any revival of Free-
masonry in England in 1717, or that the Lodges and Socie-
tiesof operative Stone Masons then became bodies having no
connection whatever with the operative " Art, Craft, and Mys-

tery." There was, on the contrary, then or not long before,

the institution of a new Association, for purposes carefully con-

cealed, and which, for a concealed reason, assumed the name

of Freemasonry.
"We think that the concealed reason for assuming that name
was, that the Hebrew word Amim means both a Mason and

faithful or loyal; and that the new associates called themselves

Masons, because of this double meaning of the Hebrew word,

and because the were anciently called The Faithful
Initiates ;

and we also think that the new Association was first estab-
lished in Scotland, by adherents of the House of Stuart,
I. by Hiram, and meant by the word
represented Charles
Mason, one faithful and loyal to that House.
There are concealed meanings, also, beyond any question,
in words and phrases where, as yet, such meanings are

unsuspected; as there were in the name of the Master and

Architect, in the two grips that fail and the one that suc-

ceeds, in the names of the assassins, in the Symbolic Tern-

30 THE .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYXX.

pie, its erection, its destruction, and its

rebuilding, and in the

Triads of the Lodge and ceremonial. Such meanings have

already been found in questions and answers aid phrases
which had seemed meaningless or absurd, as in the " chalk,
charcoal, and clay," and the clothing of " blue and gold"
of the Master. The real meaning of the substitute for the
Master's word is concealed with singular ingenuity; and in
this and other cases, ignorance has, by its interpolations,

superadded a second veil, more impenetrable than the first.

We do not mean that there are these concealed meanings in
all the degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Kite.
Some of them, like other and more modern degrees, never
had any particular meaning or significance or purpose. The
inventors of degrees were not always adepts.
It is not Blue Masonry itself that we undervalue. Nor do
we undervalue symbols and legends. We contemn only
its

the untrue explanations of them. They are themselves full of

interest to us, and are worthy to be the subjects of incessant

study. It may be that we 0iv?;'-estimate them. For we think

thatmany of the Symbols had their origin in the infancy
and at the source of civilization, that their interpretations
were for many centuries transmitted from one to another of

the adepts, and that many have been lost in the long passage.
Of other portions of the Symbolism, not more than two
centuries old, there were also, we think, concealed interpreta-

tions, indicating the political and religious doctrines and

purposes of those who used the degrees, invented the DOW
Symbols, and appropriated the old. If this is to undervalue
the three degrees, words have lost their meaning.
It seems to us that Masonic students, seeking to learn
the real meaning of the Symbols of the Blue Lodge, have
adopted wrong methods, sought in the wrong direction for the
keys of interpretation, looked over and beyond that which
 THE ENIGMA OF THE SPHYXX. 31

lay at their feet and close to them all around, into a distant
darkness, lighted only by the delusive gleams of ignes fatui.
We do not speak of the babblers who have merely followed
the old track, repeated the old commonplaces, and incubated
only on the mysterious texts ;
but of the few real students
who have endeavored by real scholarship to interpret the
obscure oracles and elucidate the symbols of the Lodge.
These have overlooked the obvious truth that the symbols
of antiquity were not used to reveal, but to conceal, like the

hieroglyphs, the idols, and the sacred language of the Brah-

mins : that each is an enigma to be solved, and not a lesson to
be read ;
a hieroglyph to be deciphered, and not the letter
of a vulgar alphabet, familiar to all. The symbols of the wise
have in become the idols of the vulfjar. "What! is
all ages

this the Builder?" seems to us as far from being a true inter-

pretation, as "marrow in the bone/' That which is so

rendered, and the necessity of the presence of three, can be

made to reveal, we think, a wholly different meaning.
We do not believe that the meaning of the Blue Degrees or
their symbols, or of any other of the degrees, is to be learned
by explorations among the rubbish of Egyptian antiquity.

Some of the symbols are to be found there, and, older

1

still, in

the religious mysteries of other countries ;

but the explanations
were never written, any to read who chose. Like the oracles
for

of the Gods, they were always covered with a veil, spoken

of in enigmatical language, and false interpretations of them

publicly given, to mislead those to whom it was not deemed

wise to intrust them. This was done in all the mysteries, to
the end that it might be known, after a time, who among the

many had the intelligence, the zeal, and the eagerness for

knowledge, that could enable them to divine or entitle them

to receive, in a higher circle, the true explanations, know the

mysterious secrets, and become possessed of the Holy doctrine.

32 THE ^ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX.

We think that these secret meanings are always concealed

in one manner and upon one plan, the same as those by which
the Alchemists and Hermetic philosophers and Kabalists
concealed their meaning under the double veil of their jargon
and its pretended interpretation, the true signification being
only hinted at and perhaps never openly disclosed. We think
that there is less that is
really trivial in the ceremonial of the
Blue Degrees than appears upon its face and that almost ;

everything has an occult significance, much of which is per-

haps so completely lost, that it may never be discovered.
We doubt if we yet know the meaning of some of the simplest

things: and we are sure that very little is

correctly explained
in the Blue Lodge, even the preparation of the Candidate,

and the relative positions of the Compasses and the Square in

the different degrees.

We know that the mysteries of Mithra were practised in

Rome even after Christianity became the State religion

of the Empire. There is no reason to doubt that the succes-
sion of Initiates was continued until the times of the latest

Crusades, in Syria and Asia Minor. It is known that the

Ismaelites had secret ceremonies of some kind, and they still

survive among the Druses. Such institutions, in such a

country, do not die out. The testimony given when Philip

and Clement crushed the order of the Temple, proved at least
the fact that the Knights had brought from the East some

ceremony of secret initiation that the Pope hated, and per-

haps the King feared. The knowledge of the rites and
symbols of these initiations, even if confined to a few, was

not likely to be wholly lost among the successors of the

Templars, who would, on the contrary, cling the more firmly

to it because they were persecuted. The Roman de la Rose
is symbolical, and so in the highest degree is the Divina Corn-

media of Dante. The Rosicrucians and the Alchemists, all

 THE ENIGMA OF THE SPHINX. 33

of whom were anti-papal, and the Hermeticists, had some

knowledge of the ancient Initiations. Of this there is evi-

dence enough. Naturally we should not expect to find it

openly avowed.
Maier says " Like the and Egyptians, the
:
Pythagoreans
Rosicrucians exact vows of silence and secrecy. Ignorant
men have treated the whole as a fiction but this has arisen
;

from the five years' probation to which they subject even well

qualified servitors, before they are admitted to the higher

mysteries ;
and within this period they are to learn how to

govern their own tongues."

Michael Maier wrote a work especially dedicated to " that
Order which has hitherto lain concealed, but is now made
known by the report of the Fraternity, and their admirable
and probable confession ;" and he is said to have transplanted
the Rosicrucianism of Andrea from Germany into England.

At all events, we know that early in the seventeenth cen-

tury, many of the learned heads in England were occupied

with theosophy, kabalism, and alchemy. Chief among these
was Dr. Robert Fludd, who began to write in 1616, and died
in 1637. He wrote t}iQ jSummwn JSonum, published in 1629,
and an Apology for the Rosicrucians, published in 1617.
He was intimate with Maier, while the latter was in England,
and as the books published in Germany, relating to alchemy
or other occult knowledge, were sent to England and speedily

translated, he could easily have become acquainted with the

three works of Andrea.
About 1633 the name of Rosicrucians was dropped in Eng-
" We
land, and that of Sophoi, Sages or Adepts, adopted.
transmute," said Fludd, "the dead stones into living philo-
sophical stones." Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, was one of

who, as is well known, was received into a Lodge of

this sect,

Operative Masons. He, with William Lilly, Drs. Wharton

3
 34 THE .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX.

and Hewson, and others, established a Society which had some

meetings Warrington, about 1646, before it was finally-
at

settled in London. Their purpose was to construct, in the

literal sense of the word, the House of Solomon on the Island
of Bensalem, in secret, and they clothed their purpose in

symbols. Nicolai of Berlin says that they first erected the

pillars of Hermes, from whose holy sentences lamblichus

answered all the doubts of Porphyry. Then they advanced,
by a ladder of seven steps, to a chequered pavement, and
were shown the symbols of the Creation or the work of five
" to cover their secret and
days. And, Nicolai says, mysterious
meetings, they got admitted, in London, into the Masons'
Company, and held their meetings at the Masons' Hall, in
Masons' Alley, Basinghall-street, and as freemen of London
could take the name of Freemasons."
There would of course be no history or record of the origin of
thenew Initiation. There is none of the origin of the mysteries
or of any Ancient Order. Their first beginnings are always
secret, and not intrusted to the treachery of written records.

Order became suddenly

It is certain that the Association or

and bound, a different thing from that which it was

at a

before, ceasing at once to be operative, and multiplying its

members with great rapidity among all classes of men. It is
especially nonsensical to derive Masonry in its present form
from the Steinmetzen and Operative Masons, while admitting
that neither of these ever practised anything like the Master's

Degree, in which, it
may be said, Blue Masonry wholly con-
sists. We know that the Degree had no existence until the
year 1723, perhaps a year or two later. It would naturally

be confined to a few, at first, and kept a profound secret.

Made in this way, probably by Desaguliers and his as-
sociates, it is in one sense modern, much more so .than the
Croix ;
but in another it is of an unknown antiquity;
 .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 35

for ithad the symbols and the symbolic ceremony, ii its chief
features, that were first used by the Hierophants in India, and
afterward carried into Assyria, Egypt, Phoenicia, Persia, and
Greece and it has condensed, as it were, into these symbols,
;

all the great and mysterious truths of the old Theosophy and

Philosophy. It is, indeed, to those who can read its symbols

aright, philosophy embodied in and taught by Symbols.
Surely this is not to undervalue the Masonry of the Blue

Lodges, in all the Degrees of which the Ancient Symbols are

found intermingled with modern ones, adopted and adapted
to mislead all but the Sages and the Adepts. Thus viewed,
Freemasonry is the heritage given to us by the remotest Past ;
the greatest, the oldest, the most venerable of all human
institutions. Its so-called traditions are but Symbols and

Enigmas that speak an intelligible language to the Adept,

who knows that they are neither the recital of facts verified

by history, nor actual occurrences whose memory is preserved

by tradition.

The Apprentice is bound to secrecy and silence alone, and

his manhood and courage are tested by the faint images of

the old Initiations. The Fellow-craft is amused by the

rudimentary instruction known to school-boys. Yet each is
surrounded by the old and eloquent Symbols of the Orient,
which the Ancient Isis holds out to them, while no word is-
sues from her silent, stony lips. The sands of the desert cover
all but the head of the mysterious Sphynx, and that, impassive
as the pyramids themselves, utters no oracles. The Master
Mason sees in the ceremonies Symbols still more significant,

and which the profoundest truths are hidden b At for ex-

in ;

planations he hears but an idle babble of words, and, u lie knew

aught of the truth, would begin to understand the allegorical
punishment of Tantalus. He became a Master, that he might
obtain the Master's WOKD, and with it travel into foreign
36 ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX.

countries and earn a Master's wages. But he is misled try

a Substitute that lias for him no
meaning, although it indeed
contains his reward if he but knew it. So far from finding
his Masonry universal, he cannot demand assistance in danger
anywhere except in his own country, and wherever the Eng-
lish language is spoken. He cannot gain admittance into a

Lodge in Denmark, Norway, or Sweden, and hardly in Can-

ada, if the law of the Order is enforced there. Yerily he has

not the Master's WOKD, by which to travel into foreign
countries and earn the wages of a Master.
We have heard, even to nausea, the assertion a thousand
times repeated, that the Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted
Rite are no higher than the Blue Degrees, and that they are
no part of genuine Masonry. They are higher, nevertheless,
because they are not conferred indiscriminately on all, nor
intended to be popular; and because they illustrate and
explain the Symbols of the Blue Lodge. And they are
Masonic, if by Masonry we mean initiation into the mysteries.

If we do not mean that, all Masonry is contained in the

Apprentice's Degree.
If the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the Masonry of

Heredom, the Rose Croix and the Holy House, commends

itself to, and satisfies those who obtain its Degrees, that is

enough. It is not its mission to teach others ;

and still less,

to publish in books, with a view to money-making, those

things which ought to be taught in the sanctuaries only. We

need not lament if others are satisfied with the instruction of
the Blue Lodge; and if we advance slowly, we at least do not
have to complain, year after year, until the world wearies of
it, that the doors
of our sanctuaries swing too smoothly on
their hinges, and that our initiates are multiplied with dan-

gerous rapidity, through over-eagerness for numbers and for

the fees for receptions.
 ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 37

Masonry claims to be an advance toward the Light. That

Light is Truth. How far does Symbolic or Blue Masonry

advance toward it?

None of the Truths of physical science are taught in either

of the Blue Degrees. The letter G hangs in the east, and the
Candidate is told that it is the initial of the word Geometry ;

and the names of the seven liberal arts and sciences as known
to the ancients are repeated to him, with the names of the
five Orders of Architecture. His whole Geometrical instruc-

tion consists in looking at the diagram of the forty-seventh

Problem of Euclid, and receiving no explanation of it.

Other Truth than that of the physical sciences is Moral,

Intellectual, Political, or Religious.
Blue Masonry utters a few of the commonest dicta of moral
Truth,known and familiar to all men in all ages. It does no
more. It limits itself to so much as is useful to bind together
in a kind of Brotherhood the mass of a numerous Order. In
the lesser mysteries no more was ever required. Its foui

Cardinal Virtues are Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, and

Justice. An Initiate of a secret Order must be prudent and
cautious to reveal nothing to the Profane, to conceal the fact
that he belongs to the Order, or perhaps that there is such an
one. He must have fortitude to foil all attempts by force or

torture to compel him to divulge these secrets and also to ;

be able to do efficiently what the Order may require of him.

He must be temperate, for the drunken man divulges all

and becomes incapable to perform any duty well and

secrets ;

ae must be just to his fellows, and not wrong one of them of

me value of anything, or there can be no unity or harmony.
There must\)& harmony amongthe workmen, because harmony
s essential to the success of every Secret Association. The
tenets of the Order are said to be Brotherly Love, Relief, and
Truth. These are common to every Association. Used every-
38 ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX.

where, the n,' me of Brother amounts to little

anywhere, since
the time of Jacob and Esau.
Thus the morality of Masonry in these Degrees suffices for
its purpose, and aims at no more. The Brethren are to meet
on the level, to act, walk, and work by the plumb, and to part
on the square. They are punctiliously to obey the law of

just dealing and honest uprightness. Without these, there

could be no bond of union to insure the success of the objects
of the Order. What that object is, they are never told. It
was not meant that they should knoiv it.

We hear nothing of generosity, of self-sacrifice, of toleration.

Hiram is not the Apostle of these. He leads no crusade
against Error, Bigotry, Intolerance, Abuses, and Villainies.

He is simply the type of the Initiate who dies rather than

divulge the Secret Word of the Association. The Apprentice

is bound to Secrecy only: the Fellow-craft, to obey his
Superiors, and to run to and fro when they command, and
not to wrong a fellow or cheat a Lodge. The Master is to
keep a Master's Secret*; to aid and assist a comrade; to

respect the virtue of his relatives ;

not to speak ill of him,
not to strike or wound him, except in self-defence. In
all this we see, not a great system of morals, but only enforce-
ment of the mutual offices of service and duty, of the members
of a Secret Association to which itwas dangerous to be-
long, and whose object was not known to the mass of initi-

ates.

Compare all the moral teachings of the Blue Degrees with,

we will not say the Sermon on the Mount, but the Proverbs of
Solomon, the teachings of Socrates, Confucius, Zarathustra,
Seneca, or Mahomet; and one page of either will convince

any intelligent man that the Masonry of the Level, Plumb,

and Square is not a system of Morals, not even the handbook
or primer of such a system. The Zendavesta, the Chinese
 THE ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 39

Books, and even the Koran, are, in their moral teachings, to

Blue Masonry, like an oration of Cicero or an essay of Plato to
the first utterances of a child.
Of political truth, nothing whatever taught in the Blue
is

Masonry of the English Eite. Nothing is heard in it of

free government, the rights of the people, the rights of man,
or of free thought, free conscience, and free speech. On the

contrary, the Mason was to be submissive to the laws of Par-

liament, the supreme Legislature, which had changed the
succession to the Throne, and to support the House of Hanover
against the House of Stuart, not engaging in plots or con-

spiracies against the State. There

nothing in the Ritual
is

to oft'end
Pope or King,
Inquisitor or Jesuit. All the

Symbols that had originally and still have in the Scottish

Rite, a political meaning, have been assiduously misinter-

preted, until they teach no political Truth whatever.

The Masonry of the Higher Degrees teaches the great truths
of Intellectual Science ;
but as to all these, even as to the
rudiments and first principles, Blue Masonry is absolutely dumb.
Its drama seems intended to teach the resurrection of the

body ;
but it teaches nothing more. As the truths of politics,
the great principles of human freedom, free government, free
thought, and free conscience could not safely be proclaimed
to the mass of Initiates as the cause to which by their associ-
ation and by the oaths that insured secrecy and co-operation,
they were to be devoted, so it was unnecessary, for the pur-
pose of such union and co-operation, to teach the philosophical
truth.

Of this,and of religious Truth, all that is taught is included

in a single question and answer " In whom do you put your
:

trust?" "In God." It was necessary that a Candidate

should profess his belief in a Deity, since otherwise his oath
would have no more binding force than a simple promise.
40 .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX.

For the purposes of the Order, no more was necessary.

Wherefore he is taught nothing as to the nature of the Deity
or of himself, nor is any inquiry made in
regard to his notions
of either. That he believes in some sort of God who will
punish perjury, is enough: and even if his God be but a
monstrous image of himself, a mere hideous or grotesque idol
of the imagination, Blue Masonry asks no more and teaches
him nothing.
If, when the lesser mysteries were communicated to all men
indiscriminately,any number of men who knew them only,
had continually and confidently magnified these mysteries,

proclaimed that they taught and revealed wonderful things, a

complete system of morals and all known truth ;
and insisted

were no other and higher mysteries if by these

that tlvere ;

bold and impudent assertions they had come to be looked

upon Hierophants by the mass of Initiates, and inventing

as

silly Symbols over which they stumbled,

interpretations of the
had led their flocks far away from the truth and made them
in love with the babblings of folly, the true Adepts would but

have smiled to see the multitude misled, and have permitted

their blind guides to strut to the end in their tinselled glories.

For all this would no more have added value to the lesser

mysteries, or have diminished the value of the greater ones,

than the imprisonment of Galileo caused the sun to revolve
round the stationary earth. Every man of high intelligence,
Initiate of the Lesser Mysteries, but ignorant of the Greater,
would have known that the former were but preparatory,
still

and that there must be some place in which their symbols

were explained and their real purposes made known.
How can the intelligent Mason fail to see that the Blue

Degrees are but preparatory, intended to enlist, and band and

bind together the rank and file of the Masonic army, for pur-

poses undisclosed to them ? that they are the lesser mysteries,

 .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 41

in which the Symbols are used to conceal the truth ? They

do see and feel and know this and hence the resort to higher
;

degrees which, known nowhere else in the world, teach noth-

ing at all, and have no object or purpose.
The books of Bro. Oliver and others like him. are wholly
made up of that which Blue Masonry does not teach and it :

is a singular absurdity that a Rite should be valued and

lauded, not for what it does teach and disclose, but for what
the Initiate can only learn from books as open to be read by
the Profane as by himself. And it is a greater absurdity, if
that is possible, that nearly the whole of the immense mass
that has thus been written has little or no real connection with
Blue Masonry, and might with quite as much propriety have
been written upon any other text.
Of course nothing is to be done with those who accept
literally the legend of Hi ram and of the building and re-

building the Temple. In the Mysteries, those who misunder-

stood the Symbols and allegories were left to remain in the

complacency of their ignorance.

The existence of the Scottish Freemasonry, before 171 7,
was not publicly known for its purposes were, by the laws
;

of England and Scotland, treasonable. It was carried to

France by the adherents of the Pretender, and there used for

the same purpose, to unite the adherents of the House of

Stuart, and enable them to act in concert with those who,

during the reign of Anne and George I., were plotting to

restore the Stuart dynasty. There, also, it was connected
with the higher degrees, already existing, or from time to
time invented, in France. That the English Freemasonry,
established at the moment of the death of Anne, was the

creation of the adherents of the House of Hanover, is suf-

ficiently evident from the pledge of its Masters, that they

would obey the will of the Supreme Legislature, that is, of
42" ENIGMA- OF THE SPHYNX.

*iie
English Parliament which had changed the succession tc
the crown for this promise was never exacted by the Scottish
;

Freemasonry. And it also offers the only rational expla-

nation of the rapid increase of the new association and of
the existence of fifty or more Lodges in London in a few years.
The Symbols of Antiquity and a Ceremonial resembling
that of the Mysteries, were perhaps used, at first, to conceal
the true purposes of the Organization ;
and the certain de-
struction that would be caused by betrayal, while the aim of
the Order was to overthrow the Government, accounts for the

penalties of the obligations.

"When there was no longer hope of the restoration of the
which had become a part of the
Stuarts, the higher Degrees,

system of Scottish Freemasonry, were carried to England by

the adherents of Laurence Dermott, of whose politics we
know nothing ; and with the annihilation of that hope the
purposes of that Freemasonry changed. Becoming connected
with some, and giving birth to others, of the higher Degrees,
the system became philosophical and of course
anti-papal,
because Eome was the enemy of both Science and Philosophy.
The English Masonry stood still.
Suspicious of the higher
Degrees, it refused to
recognize them as Masonic, or to form
any connection with them, or with the Royal Arch of Dermott,
framed from the Eoyal Arch of Enoch. Itchanged its
lectures and formulas, again and again but ;
it never had any
especial object, after the struggle of the adherents of the
Stuarts had ended. The
Scottish Freemasonry, on the con-

trary, engaged long controversy with Eoyal and Pon-

in its

tifical Despotism, and became the

apostle of Free Thought,
Free Speech, and Free Conscience.
We do not demand your assent to these conclusions. We
state them here, to lead you to reflect and study, that you
may decide for yourself. All that we positively assert is, that
 THE .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 43

so far from containing in themselves all Freemasonry, the

Bine Degrees, especially in England and the United States,

only conceal the Light from the Initiates, were at the begin-
ning only a means of organization, and are now only prelim-
inary and rndimcntal. The Degree of Perfection is so called
because it completes and perfects the Third Degree.

THE END.