Masonic Words

Article on the Illuminati, from Robert Macoy's Dictionary of Freemasonry c. 19th. c.

ILLUMINATI, or THE ENLIGHTENED. During the second halF of the eighteenth century, among the numerous secret societies which were more or less connected with Freemasonry there was not one that attracted so much attention, received the support of so many distinguished men, and created so rich a literature, as this It was founded in 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, professor of law, at Ingolstadt, a man of great originality and depth of thought, and remarkable for the earnestness of his character. The objects which he sought to effect by this association were the highest and noblest ever entertained by the human mind. He desired to assert the individuality of man as a fundamental principle--and hence was an apostle of civil and religious liberty--to discover the means of advancing human nature to a state of higher perfection-- to bind in one brotherhood men of all countries, ranks, and religions, and to surround the persons of princes with trustworthy counselors. Apostles, styled Areopagites, were sent into various parts of Europe to make converts, and in a short time the Order was flourishing in Germany, Holland, and Milan. Protestants, rather than Catholics, were preferred as members. The degrees were eight in number: 1. Novice; 2. Minerval; 3. Illuminatus Minor; 4. Illuminatus Major; 5. Knight; 6. Priest; 7. Regent; 8. King. Attracted by the liberality of its doctrines, and the grandeur of its objects, large numbers of illustrious Masons, and among them the celebrated author Knigge, became active members of it. In 1784 the society was dissolved by order of the Bavarian government. No association of men was ever more calumniated and misrepresented than the Order of Illuminati. It is common to dismiss them with the remark that they were "a body of men united together for the purpose of destroying society and religion," whereas, they were men of the profoundest religious convictions, and only desired such a reform in politics as would give man a greater degree of freedom, and afford him larger opportunities and facilities for the development of his faculties. It is humiliating to see that some Masonic writers have repeated the infamous calumnies of those high-priests of the lying fraternity, Robison and Baruel, in regard to them. If they were infidels and anarchists, then the whole American people are; for they were only inspired with, and sought to propagate, the ideas which we hold in the highest reverence, and have embodied in our institutions. This name has been borne by other orders, as the religious society of the Alombrados, in Spain, founded in the sixteenth century; the Order of Guerinets, in France, in the seventeenth; and many others before and since.
DURING REFRESHMENT, BY ROE FULKERSON
AMERICAN FREEMASON - December 1909
"MY BROTHER" said the fatherly old man with the twelve- for-a-quarter-white-string-tie, as he came over to Reddy, "I want you to do me a favor. You are better acquainted with our Master than I, and I want you to suggest that he take the lodge to divine service some Sabbath soon. It has been years since we attended in a body." "So it has, so it has," said Reddy "Where would you suggest we go? Now there is Brother Sweeny, who is a Spiritualist, and I don't believe any lodge has been to his church. We can hear lots of "knoching" from live Masons, but I think it would be a change to hear the dead ones rapping, or how about Bro. Levy? We have never been to the Synagogue that I remember of. Then, when you come to think of it, perhaps we had better go with Bro. Pierson to the Christian Science church; we might get "Humpy" Jones' back straightened out, or get 'em to grow a new leg for "Peg Leg" Wilson."
"It seems to me too serious a matter to be facetious about," was the reply, as the Brother with the twelve-for- a-quarter- white-string-tie placed the tips of his fingers in prayerful attitude. "Of course I spoke of the true Christian church. I am an Episcopalian."
"In that case I refuse to carry up the request, for I never could learn when to get up and when to sit down in your church. Why don't you get your parson to use a gavel? I have learned to obey the gavel."
I will have no further conversation with any man who scoffs at the true church." He turned on his heel and started away. Reddy called him back. "I believe I gave you a respectful hearing, didn't I? You say I am facetious. I will get as serious as a sore thumb. I honestly think I would be a chump to make the request of the Master, he a bigger one to grant it, and the Grand Master a still bigger one to grant the dispensation necessary to take this lodge to church service. You speak of the true church. Let me tell you, my brother, that the true church, from a Masonic point of view, does not exist. You were promised when you came into this order that you could worship God in your own way. Sweeny the Spiritualist, Levy the Jew, Pierson the Christian Scientist, or any man of any church has as much right to call his church the true one. The Holy Bible lies on our altar as a symbol, the same as the square and compass that lie on top of it. It symbolizes a belief in God. It contains the creed of the larger portion of Masons in this country, yet there is nothing in our rules that bars a Mohammedan. Masonry is not a religious order, and no member of it can make it such. If we are to accomplish anything in the line of our intention, which is to bring about a brotherhood of man, we must drop this church business. I know of nothing that men will fight over quicker than over church matters. It has been only a few years since we had "holy" wars and sticking swords in each other's bread baskets with prayer, and burning each other at the stake in the name of God. Masonry is too big and too broad for that rot. Our mission is to teach toleration; to teach men to forget these differences. The moment a Grand Master grants a dispensation for a lodge to attend a church service in a body, he has given official recognition to that church and has given the membership an opening to make fools of themselves by making a public display of their piety and to let their light shine out as Christians, when nine out of ten of the lot who attend have not been to church since they were married.
The only purpose Masons can have in mind when they attend church in a body is to try and make an impression on the profane, and show them how durned good they are, and convince them that they are not atheists and scoffers, but good pious men who take a drink only now and then.
Further, my good friend, from your conversation you do not recognize the religion of some of your brethren I have mentioned. You would not be pleased to go to some of the churches I have spoken of. How then do you expect those brethren to go to your church. Have they no prejudices? I tell you that if a black-hided cannibal in the forests of unexplored Africa worships an idol that looks like a Billiken and does it faithfully, and lives up to that religion as best he can, he deserves as much credit as you do and a Iittle more, for he is not trying to consign you and your denomination to eternal damnation for not believing as he does. He thinks it is right to put a bull ring in his nose and dance the hula-hula all night; you think it is the proper caper to say your creed and listen to a boy choir. Each is worshiping his own God after his own fashion. Let it alone I tell you! Let it alone!
The Grand Master who is not hide bound will never grant a dispensation to allow a lodge to go to church services. There is precedent enough for his refusal; at least five Grand Masters in a few years have refused these dispensations, and the boasted "universality of Masonry" is increased with each refusal. A Masonic body may have within it Jew, Christian Pharisee and Mohammedan, and they will, like the lamb and the lion, "lie down together," but you start three of these denominations to the house of worship of the fourth, and you will have broken vows and hearts and heads! Masonry is a common ground where the warring tribes all meet in peace. Keep religion out of the Masonic bodies if you don't want the followers in the footsteps of the meek and lowly Nazarene punching each other in the nose!"
"Oh, Nonsense! This is merely your opinion!"
"My opinion? Grand Master Bell of Illinois in refusing such a dispensation said: "For a Masonic lodge to attend religious service at a church, wearing the clothing and bearing the jewels and paraphernalia of a lodge, is largely a matter of mere parade. The church is not in any sense a Masonic ceremony or service, and it is in no wise necessary that the lodge participate therein. The lodge does nothing. Its members merely sit and listen. It may determine to attend services at some denominational church, and this inevitably leads to a discussion as to what church.' Other Grand Masters have expressed the same ideas in different words. There are true earnest worshipers of God in this lodge, whose ideas would seem to you like sacrilege, and the very fact of starting out as a body to religious service would open up discussions that would make toward hard feelings between the members rather than toward that beatific state of absolute love for each other that we Masons have - not."
"But if, as you say, masonry is not a religious order, why do we have a chaplain and open the lodge with prayer? Why not eliminate the Bible from our altars also?"
"My dear fellow, I have known men to open a jack pot with prayer! In some of the biggest wholesale murders - called battles - the world has ever known, the killing was begun with a supplication to the great white throne that the side praying be allowed to murder more of the other fellows than the other fellows could of them! The Shriners have gone us two better and put some other books on their's and inculcate specifically that "all religions deserve respect as good and worthy e'en though believing none," and whether a man believes in your particular route to heaven or not he may be a believer in God, after all; which is all the fraternity requires and all that should ever be allowed to enter into it. I can easily see why a lodge which was all Baptist, or all Jews should attend services as an immersion or at Yom Kippur, but where the membership is of different faiths you have no more right to ask the members to attend services at a denominational church than you have to ask them to go into a Democratic torch light parade or yell hurrah for a Spanish flag! Don't let that "religion, politics or the allegiance to your country" agreement get out of your mind for a moment. But I am thinking about something else tonight and haven't real time to talk to you about this matter, but if you would like my opinion at length come around to my house some night and I will talk to you about it. Just now I want to listen to the Master lecture the candidates on the Subject of Charity. Say where do you get them funny neck-ties you wear?"
George Helmer FPS PM Norwood #90 GRA H Norwood Chapter #18 RAM

THE SECRET UNANIMOUS BALLOT: BY A. G. PITTS.
AMERICAN FREEMASON - December 1909
ONE of the oldest Masonic laws provides that every candidate shall stand the test of secret ballot, which must be unanimously favorable to elect. It is doubtful if any considerable number of Masons would consent to the modification of this provision, although aware that it has been the means of keeping men out who would have made good members.
Probably no unfavorable ballot was ever announced without causing some one to feel that injustice had been done, but so long as the law stands no Masons should complain at its consequences.
At times it might appear as though the secrecy of the ballot was being employed for the purpose of disturbing the peace and harmony of a lodge, but this should not be claimed unless the evidence be conclusive.
The secret ballot has always been considered the greatest bulwark of Masonry, and numerous safeguards have been thrown about the ballot for the protection of the brother desiring to cast a negative vote. Any attempt to obtain from officers or members information relative to the identity of the members casting a negative ballot should be met with a statement of the law and a friendly admonition to obey it. - Masonic Chronicler.
This is quoted as typical of every utterance ever made in the United States upon this subject. The Chronicler is no more ill-informed upon this subject than the Grand Lodge of New Jersey, which many years ago decreed that the secret ballot was one of the landmarks; or than the Grand Lodge of Indiana, from whose transactions of 1907 we quote: "If there is a well-defined landmark of Masonry it is the unanimity of the ballot; take that away and the great Masonic standard stands on ropes of sand." Commenting upon which the Correspondence Committee of the Grand Lodge of New Zealand remarked:
"This sounds lofty, but the every-day logic of experience has taught as that it is unwise to trust such tremendous power to one man, and our phenomenal success under the alternative system goes to prove that ropes of sand are not such a frail foundation after all."
None of these are any more ignorant than the Correspondence Committee of the Grand Lodge of New Mexico, which in 1908 actually went so far as to express regret at the impossibility of legislating relative to the "one blackball evil" on account of its being a landmark that one blackball must exclude.
Nobody has any pre-eminence of misinformation on this subject. All American writers, authorities and experts have agreed, friends of the regulation and foes alike, that the secrecy and the unanimity of the ballot are two landmarks of Masonry and neither can be touched.
The fact is that both are American innovations.
The secret unanimous ballot may be a good thing or a bad thing. The question has never had any genuine consideration among us by reason of the prevalence of the misinformation referred to. The friends of the regulation have always based themselves upon the assumed antiquity of the rule and the brethren on the other side have always accepted the validity of that argument and its unanswerable quality.
One is irresistibly reminded of the two sailors one of whom bet the other a crown that the latter could not repeat the Lord's prayer. The money was put up and Jack started off confidently, "Now, I lay me down to sleep." "Hold on," said the other, "take the money you _________ educated ________ I didn't believe that you knew it."
It is not the purpose of this article to argue against the rule of a secret unanimous ballot. It is written in the hope of clearing away once for all the mists of ignorance which surround this question. After that has been done and we see the question clearly, perhaps we can hope for some rational arguments for and against.
It is also written, it may as well be frankly confessed, with the idea of still further discrediting the soi-disant Masonic authorities of the United States. What American Lodges and Grand Lodge Officers need more than anything else is a little modesty. They are too fond of displaying their ignorance in the way of setting up their own favorite innovations as "landmarks." They are too prone to measure all Masonry with their own little foot rule.
Masonry should be the broadest of institutions, the most tolerant, the most charitable. It is the reproach of American Masonry that, under the influence of the principle that a Grand Master or a Past Grand Master must be a Masonic expert, American Masonry has become the narrowest, most intolerant and most bigoted of American institutions.
It is our experience that a Masonic student will pass through three phases of opinion upon this question of the infallibility of Grand Masters and Grand Lodges. At first he will believe that they are all experts. As he learns a little he will find that they are not. His second opinion will be that they all ought to be experts. But the more a man learns the more charitable he becomes; and by the time a man has become a Masonic scholar himself he settles into his final opinion which will be this: That it is not necessary that a Grand Master or a Past Grand Master be a Masonic expert at all provided he has a little modesty and is willing to admit that he does not know it all and is willing to be taught.
Now after all this preface the demonstration of our thesis need take but little space. Nearly all of it is contained in a little article by W. J. Hughan, who is a Masonic scholar and is universally admitted to be:
>From the earliest, the regulations of the Premier Grand Lodge of England provided that candidates for initiation or for membership must be subject to the wishes of the members, and, wisely so; besides, the voting should be by ballot, because only by such means can the voting as respects the voters be kept private. When the voting is not unanimous, no one should reveal his vote. This should not be optional for if permitted, or allowed, the revealing how different members voted would lead to the discovery of those who "blackballed" and consequently the secrecy of the ballot would be abrogated.
"The 'Book of Constitutions' of A. D. 1723 thus provided for voting:
"VI. 'But no man can be entered a brother in any particular lodge, or admitted to be a member thereof, without the unanimous consent of all the members of that lodge then present when the candidate is proposed, and their consent is formally asked by the master, and they are to signify their consent or dissent in their own prudent way, either virtually or in form, but with unanimity.
"In the second edition of A. D. 1738 it is stated under date Feb. 19, 1724 (N. S.), that 'it was found inconvenient to insist upon unanimity in several cases, and therefore the Grand Masters have allowed the lodges to admit a member if not above three ballots are against him although some lodges desire no such allowance.' "
"The usage has continued to this date, three blackballs being prohibitive of necessity, but of course lodges can alter the adverse maximum to two, or make it unanious.
"The 'United Grand Lodge of England' A. D. 1901, has for its one hundred and ninetieth rule:
" No person can be made a Mason in or admitted a member of a lodge if, on the ballot, three blackballs appear against him, but the by-laws of a lodge may enact that one or two blackballs shall exclude a candidate."
"Rule 160, 'Constitution and laws of the Grand Lodge of Scotland' (1896) reads: Three blackballs shall exclude a candidate. Lodges in the colonies and in foreign parts may enact that two blackballs shall exclude.' "
"I have given the rules as to the ballot according to the Grand Lodges of England, Ireland and Scotland, by which it will be seen that the custom and law of these Grand Lodges formed in 1717, 1725 (or Earlier) and 1736 respectively, provide that three blackballs must, but a lesser number may, exclude any candidate from initiation. Some lodges require unanimity, in fact many do: but to prevent the disagreeable duty of blackballing, some lodges I am connected with have an unwritten law that the members shall be privately consulted beforehand, and according as the private letters evince unanimity or otherwise, so the candidate is or is not proposed at the next lodge. Of course, if any member still wished, notwithstanding the probability of adverse votes, to propose such a candidate, he could. but few would be so foolish as to court the results that would assuredly follow."
W. J. HUGHAN.
"Now from this it appears that so far from being a landmark a unanimous ballot was never required in England, the original home of modern Masonry, except for a period of a few months in 1723-4, and then it was not required to be secret. No one would object to the requirement of a unanimous ballot now if it might be conducted in "our own prudent way." A prudent way would be perhaps when only one black ball appeared to require the one objector to stand up in lodge and say that he cast it and if he failed to do so to ignore it."
It is easy to understand how the unanimous ballot came to be a fetich among American grand lodges. All of them found themselves upon the constitutions and regulations of 1723. All of them look into that book alone for all their knowledge as to what ancient Masonry was and of the ancient regulations and landmarks of Masonry. Few of them have ever had enough knowledge of Masonry to know that the regulation there printed relative to the unanimous ballot was confessedly an innovation and that it was found so unsatisfactory it, practice that immediately it began to be dispensed with and at the first opportunity it was repealed and has never been in force since."
It will be noticed that Bro. Hughan still believes in a ballot and a secret one. Even this, however, he does not claim to be a landmark. This was not a requirement of the constitutions of 1723. Each lodge, so long as the rule of that constitution remained unchanged, might take the vote in "their own prudent way." Members signify their assent "either virtually or in form," In other words no formality whatever was necessary and we know from other evidence that in those days the commonest way of voting was for the Master to ask whether there was any objection to the candidate and if none appeared to declare him elected.
No greater liberty would be demanded by any one now-a- days than that which has always been the rule in England. For there, during the short period when the vote was required to be unanimous, it was not required to be secret, and since it has been made secret it is no longer required to be unanimous. Those who have had the most experience and who are accordingly the most disgusted with the American innovation of a secret unanimous ballot would perhaps all agree upon this principle. If not secret it may well be required to be unanimous. If not unanimous it is proper to make it secret. But to require it to be at once secret and unanimous is an American un-masonic innovation.
The quotation from New Zealand in the early part of this paper suggests another important fact, Not only has the secret unanimous ballot never been the law of the Grand Lodges of Great Britain but to this day it is not the law of most parts of the British Empire, probably of none except those most contaminated by American influence. This is important as bearing upon the qualifications of those among us that set up to be experts and leaders and teachers. It has been seen that they were all agreed and all wrong upon a question where the truth stares them in the face, where the every day practice of the greater part would refute their theory.
No greater service could be done to the Masons of America than this of teaching them that grand lodges are not infallible, that election to office does not make of an ignoramus a Masonic expert, that when a man undertakes to lay down the law dogmatically, if he is an American and a Mason, it is ten to one that he doesn't know that he is talking about and that if you want to know anything about Masonry the only safe way is to look it up yourself or to know something about the qualifications of your authority.
George Helmer FPS PM Norwood #90 GRA H Norwood Chapter #18 RAM

It began to shape itself to my intellectual vision into something more imposing and majestic, solemnly mysterious and grand. It seemed to me like the Pyramids in their loneliness, in whose yet undiscovered chambers may be hidden, for the enlightenment of coming generations, the sacred books of the Egyptians, so long lost to the world; like the Sphynx half buried in the desert. In its symbolism, which and its spirit of brotherhood are its essence, Freemasonry is more ancient than any of the world's living religions. It has the symbols and doctrines which, older than himself, Zarathrustra inculcated; and it seemed to me a spectacle sublime, yet pitiful the ancient Faith of our ancestors holding out to the world its symbols once so eloquent, and mutely and in vain asking for an interpreter. And so I came at last to see that the true greatness and majesty of Freemasonry consist in its proprietorship of these and its other symbols; and that its symbolism is its soul.
----ALBERT PIKE, Letter to Gould
The Builders, By Joseph Fort Newton
CHAPTER II
The Working Tools
NEVER were truer words than those of Goethe in the last lines of Faust, and they echo one of the oldest instincts of humanity: "All things transitory but as symbols are sent." From the beginning man has divined that the things open to his senses are more than mere facts, having other and hidden meanings. The whole world was close to him as an infinite parable, a mystical and pro- phetic scroll the lexicon of which he set himself to find. Both he and his world were so made as to convey a sense of doubleness, of high truth hinted in humble, nearby things. No smallest thing but had its skyey aspect which, by his winged and quick-sighted fancy, he sought to surprise and grasp. Let us acknowledge that man was born a poet, his mind a chamber of imagery, his world a gallery of art. Despite his utmost efforts, he can in nowise strip his thought of the flowers and fruits that cling to it, withered though they often are. As a fact, he has ever been a citizen of two worlds, using the scenery of the visible to make vivid the realities of the world Unseen. What wonder, then, that trees grew in his fancy, flowers bloomed in his faith, and the victory of spring over winter gave him hope of life after death, while the march of the sun and the great stars invited him to "thoughts that wander through eternity." Symbol was his native tongue, his first form of speech--as, indeed, it is his last --whereby he was able to say what else he could not have uttered. Such is the fact, and even the language in which we state it is "a dictionary of faded metaphors," the fossil poetry of ages ago.
I
That picturesque and variegated maze of the early symbolism of the race we cannot study in detail, tempting as it is. Indeed, so luxuriant was that old picture-language that we may easily miss our way and get lost in the labyrinth, unless we keep to the right path. [Note 1] First of all, throughout this study of prophecy let us keep ever in mind a very simple and obvious fact, albeit not less wonderful because obvious. Socrates made the discovery --perhaps the greatest ever made--that human nature is universal. By his searching questions he found out that when men think round a problem, and think deeply, they disclose a common nature and a common system of truth. So there dawned upon him, from this fact, the truth of the kinship of mankind and the unity of mind. His insight is confirmed many times over, whether we study the earliest gropings of the human mind or set the teachings of the sages side by side. Always we find, after comparison, that the final conclusions of the wisest minds as to the meaning of life and the world are harmonious, if not identical. Here is the clue to the striking resemblances between the faiths and philosophies of widely separated peoples, and it makes them intelligible while adding to their picturesqueness and philosophic interest. By the same token, we begin to understand why the same signs, symbols, and emblems were used by all peoples to express their earliest aspiration and thought. We need not infer that one people learned them from another, or that there existed a mystic, universal order which had them in keeping. They simply betray the unity of the human mind, and show how and why, at the same stage of culture, races far removed from each other came to the same conclusions and used much the same symbols to body forth their thought. Illustrations are innumerable, of which a few may be named as examples of this unity both of idea and of emblem, and also as confirming the insight of the great Greek that, however shallow minds may differ, in the end all seekers after truth follow a common path, comrades in one great quest. An example in point, as ancient as it is eloquent, is the idea of the trinity and its emblem, the triangle. What the human thought of God is depends on what power of the mind or aspect of life man uses as a lens through which to look into the mystery of things. Conceived of as the will of the world, God is one, and we have the monotheism of Moses. Seen through instinct and the kaleidoscope of the senses, God is multiple, and the result is polytheism and its gods without number. For the reason, God is a dualism made up of matter and mind, as in the faith of Zoroaster and many other cults. But when the social life of man becomes the prism of faith, God is a trinity of Father, Mother, Child. Almost as old as human thought, we find the idea of the trinity and its triangle emblem everywhere--Siva, Vishnu, and Brahma in India corresponding to Osiris, Isis, and Horus in Egypt. No doubt this idea underlay the old pyramid emblem, at each corner of which stood one of the gods. No missionary carried this profound truth over the earth. It grew out of a natural and universal human experience, and is explained by the fact of the unity of the human mind and its vision of God through the family. Other emblems take us back into an antiquity so remote that we seem to be walking in the shadow of prehistoric time. Of these, the mysterious Swastika is perhaps the oldest, as it is certainly the most widely distributed over the earth. As much a talisman as a symbol, it has been found on Chaldean bricks, among the ruins of the city of Troy, in Egypt, on vases of ancient Cyprus, on Hittite remains and the pottery of the Etruscans, in the cave temples of India, on Roman altars and Runic monuments in Britain, in Thibet, China, and Korea, in Mexico, Peru, and among the prehistoric burialgrounds of North America. There have been many intrepretations of it. Perhaps the meaning most usually assigned to it is that of the Sanskrit word having in its roots an intimation of the beneficence of life, to be and well. As such, it is a sign indicating "that the maze of life may bewilder, but a path of light runs through it: 'It is well' is the name of the path, and the key to life eternal is in the strange labyrinth for those whom God leadeth." [Note 2] Others hold it to have been an emblem of the Pole Star whose stability in the sky, and the procession of the Ursa Major around it, so impressed the ancient world. Men saw the sun journeying across the heavens every day in a slightly different track, then standing still, as it were, at the solstice, and then returning on its way back. They saw the moon changing not only its orbit, but its size and shape and time of appearing. Only the Pole Star remained fixed and stable, and it became, not unnaturally, a light of assurance and the footstool of the Most High [Note 3] Whatever its meaning, the Swastika shows us the efforts of the early man to read the riddle, of things, and his intuition of a love at the heart of life. Akin to the Swastika, if not an evolution from it, the Cross, made forever holy by the highest heroism of Love. When man climbed up out of the primeval night, with his face to heaven upturned, he had a cross in his hand. Where he got it, why he held it, and what he meant by it, no one can conjecture much less affirm. [Note 4] Itself a paradox, its arms pointing to the four quarters of the earth, it is found in almost every part of the world carved on coins, altars, and tombs, and furnishing a design for temple architecture in Mexico and Peru, in the pagodas of India, not less than in the churches of Christ. Ages before our era, even from the remote time of the cliff-dweller, the Cross seems to have been a symbol of life, though for what reason no one knows. More often it was an emblem of eternal life, especially when inclosed within a Circle which ends not, nor begins--the type of Eternity. Hence the Ank Cross of Crux Ansata of Egypt, scepter of the Lord of the Dead that never die. There is less mystery about the Circle, which was an image of the disk of the Sun and a natural symbol of completeness of eternity. With a point within the center it became, as naturally, the emblem of the Eye of the World--that All-seeing eye of the eternal Watcher of the human scene. Square, triangle, cross, circle--oldest symbols of humanity, all of them eloquent, each of them pointing beyond itself, as symbols always do, while giving form to the invisible truth which they invoke and seek to embody. They are beautiful if we have eyes to see, serving not merely as chance figures of fancy, but as forms of reality as is revealed itself to the mind of man. Sometimes we find them united, the Square within the Circle, and within that the Triangle, and at the center the Cross. Earliest of emblems, they show us hints and foregleams of the highest faith and philosophy, betraying not only the unity of the human mind but its kinship with the Eternal--the fact which lies at the root of every religion, and is the basis of each. Upon this Faith man builded, finding a rock beneath, refusing to think of Death as the gigantic coffin-lid of a dull and mindless universe descending upon him at last.
II
From this brief outlook upon a wide field, we may pass to a more specific and detailed study of the early prophecies of Masonry in the art of the builder. Always the symbolic must follow the actual, if it is to have refer- enee and meaning, and the real is ever the basis of the ideal. By nature an Idealist, and living in a world of radiant mystery, it was inevitable that man should at- tach moral and spiritual meanings to the tools, laws, and materials of building. Even so, in almost every land and in the remotest ages we find great and beautiful truth hovering about the builder and clinging to his tools. [Note 5] Whether there were organized orders of builders in the early times no one can tell, though there may have been. No matter; man mixed thought and worship with his work, and as he cut his altar stones and fitted them together he thought out a faith by which to live. Not unnaturally, in times when the earth was thought to be a Square the Cube had emblematical meanings it could hardly have for us. From earliest ages it was a venerated symbol, and the oblong cube signified immensity of space from the base of earth to the zenith of the heavens. It was a sacred emblem of the Lydian Kubele, known to the Romans in after ages as Ceres or Cybele--hence, as some aver, the derivation of the word "cube." At first rough stones were most sacred, and an altar of hewn stones was forbidden. [Note 6] With the advent of the cut cube, the temple became known as the House of the Hammer--its altar, always in the center, being in the form of a cube and regarded as "an index or emblem of Truth, ever true to itself." [Note 7] Indeed, the cube, as Plutarch points out in his essay On the Cessation of Oracles, "is palpably the proper emblem of rest, on account of the security and firmness of the superficies." He further tells us that the pyramid is an image of the triangular flame ascending from a square altar; and since no one knows, his guess is as good as any. At any rate, Mercury, Apollo, Neptune, and Hercules were worshiped under the form of a square stone, while a large black stone was the emblem of Buddha among the Hindoos, of Manah Theus-Ceres in Arabia, and of Odin in Scandinavia. Everyone knows of the Stone of Memnon in Egypt, which was said to speak at sunrise--as, in truth, all stones spoke to man in the sunrise of time. [Note 8] More eloquent, if possible, was the Pillar uplifted, like the pillars of the gods upholding the heavens. Whatever may have been the origin of pillars, and there is more than one theory, Evans has shown that they were everywhere worshiped as gods. [Note 9] Indeed, the gods themselves were pillars of Light and Power, as in Egypt Horus and Sut were the twin-builders and supporters of heaven; and Bacchus among the Thebans. At the entrance of the temple of Amenta, at the door of the house of Ptah--as, later, in the porch of the temple of Solomon --stood two pillars. Still further back, in the old solar myths, at the gateway of eternity stood two pillars-- Strength and Wisdom. In India, and among the Mayas and Incas, there were three pillars at the portals of the earthly and skyey temple--Wisdom, Strength, and Beauty. When man set up a pillar, he became a fellow-worker with Him whom the old sages of China used to call "the first Builder." Also, pillars were set up to mark the holy places of vision and Divine deliverance, as when Jacob erected a pillar at Bethel, Joshua at Gilgal, and Samuel at Mizpeh and Shen. Always they were symbols of stability, of what the Egyptians described as "the place of establishing forever,"--emblems of the faith "that the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and He hath set the world upon them." [Note 10] Long before our era we find the working tools of the Mason used as emblems of the very truths which they teach today. In the oldest classic of China, The Book of History, dating back to the twentieth century before Christ, we read the instruction: "Ye officers of the Government, apply the compasses." Even if we begin where The Book of History ends, we find many such allusions more than seven hundred years before the Christian era. For example, in the famous canonical work, called The Great Learning, which has been referred to the fifth century B.C., we read, that a man should abstain from doing unto others what he would not they should do to him; "and this," the writer adds, "is called the principle of acting on the square." So also Confucius and his great follower, Mencius. In the writings of Mencius it is taught that men should apply the square and compasses morally to their lives, and the level and the marking line besides, if they would walk in the straight and even paths of wisdom, and keep themselves within the bounds of honor and virtue. [Note 11] In the sixth book of his philosophy we find these words:
A Master Mason, in teaching apprentices, makes use of the compasses and the square. Ye who are engaged in the pursuit of wisdom must also make use of the compass and square. [Note 12]
There are even evidences, in the earliest historic records of China, of the existence of a system of faith expressed in allegoric form, and illustrated by the symbols of building. The secrets of this faith seem to have been orally transmitted, the leaders alone pretending to have full knowledge of them. Oddly enough, it seems to have gathered about a symbolical temple put up in the desert, that the various officers of the faith were distinguished by symbolic jewels, and that at its rites they wore leather aprons. [Note 13] From such records as we have it is not possible to say whether the builders themselves used their tools as emblems, or whether it was the thinkers who first used them to teach moral truths. In any case, they were understood; and the point here is that, thus early, the tools of the builder were teachers of wise and good and beautiful truth. Indeed, we need not go outside the Bible to flnd both the materials and working tools of the Mason so employed: [Note 14]
For every house is builded by some man; but the builder of all things is God . . . whose house we axe. [Note 15] Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a tried stone, precious corner-stone, a sure foundation. [Note 16] The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner. [Note 17] Ye also, as living stones, are built up into a spiritual house. [Note 18] When he established the heavens I was there, when he set the compass upon the face of the deep, when he marked out the foundations of the earth: then was I by him as a master workman. [Note 19] The Lord stood upon a wall made by a plumbllne, with a plumbline in his hand. And the Lord said unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumbline. Then said the Lord, Behold, I will set a plumbline in the midst of my people Israel: I will not again pass by them any more. [Note 20] Ye shall offer the holy oblation foursquare, with the possession of the city. [Note 21] And the city lieth foursquare, and the length is as large as the breadth. [Note 22] Him that overcometh I will make a pillar in the temple of my God; and I will write upon him my new name. [Note 23] For we know that when our earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. [Note 24] If further proof were needed, it has been preserved for us in the imperishable stones of Egypt. [Note 25] The famous obelisk, known as Cleopatra's Needle, now in Central Park, New York, the gift to our nation from Ismail, Khedive of Egypt in 1878, is a mute but eloquent witness of the antiquity of the simple symbols of the Mason. Originally it stood as one of the forest of obelisks surrounding the great temple of the Sun-god at Heliopolis, so long a seat of Egyptian learning and religion, dating back, it is thought, to the fifteenth century before Christ. It was removed to Alexandria and re-erected by a Roman architect and engineer named Pontius, B.C. 22. When it was taken down in 1879 to be brought to America, all the emblems of the builders were found in the foundation. The rough Cube and the polished Cube in pure white limestone, the Square cut in syenite, an iron Trowel, a lead Plummet, the arc of a Circle, the serpent-symbols of Wisdom, a stone Trestle-board, a stone bearing the Master's Mark, and a hieroglyphic word meaning Temple--all so placed and preserved as to show, beyond doubt, that they had high symbolic meaning. Whether they were in the original foundation, or were placed there when the obelisk was removed, no one can tell. Nevertheless, they were there, concrete witnesses of the fact that the builders worked in the light of a mystical faith, of which they were emblems. Much has been written of buildings, their origin, age, and architecture, but of the builders hardly a word-so quickly is the worker forgotten, save as he lives in his work. Though we have no records other than these emblems it is an obvious inference that there were orders of builders even in those early ages, to whom these symbols were sacred; and this inference is the more plausible when we remember the importance of the builder both to religion and the state. What though the builders have fallen into dust, to which all things mortal decline, they still hold out their symbols for us to read, speaking their thoughts in a language easy to understand. Across the piled-up debris of ages they whisper the old familiar truths, and it will be a part of this study to trace those symbols through the centuries, showing that they have always had the same high meanings. They bear witness not only to the unity of the human mind, but to the existence of a common system of truth veiled in allegory and taught in symbols. As such, they are prophecies of Masonry as we know it, whose genius it is to take what is old, simple, and universal, and use it to bring men together and make them friends.
Shore calls to shore That the line is unbroken!
Notes:
1 There are many books in this field, but two may be named: The Lost Language of Symbolism, by Bayley, and the Signs and Symbols of Primordial Man, by Churchward, each in its own way remarkable. The first aspires to be for this field what Frazer's Golden Bough is for religious anthropology, and its dictum is: "Beauty is Truth; Truth Beauty." The thesis of the second is that Masonry is founded upon Egyptian eschatology, which may be true; but unfortunately the book is too polemical. Both books partake of the poetry, if not the confusion, of the subject; but not for a world of dust would one clip their wings of fancy and suggestion. Indeed, their union of scholarship and poetry is unique. When the pains of erudition fail to track a fact to its lair, they do not scruple to use the divining rod; and the result often passes out of the realm of pedestrian chronicle into the world of winged literature.
2 The Word in the Pattern, Mrs. G. F. Watts.
3 The Swastika, Thomas Carr. See essay by the same writer in which he shows that the Swastika is the symbol of the Supreme Architect of the Universe among Operative Masons today (The Lodge of Research, No. 2429, Transactions, 1911-12).
4 Signs and Symbols, Churchward, chap. xvii.
5 Here again the literature is voluminous, but not entirely satisfactory. A most interesting book is Signs and Svmbols of Primordal Man by Churchward, in that it surveys the symbolism of the race always with reference to its Masonic suggestion. Vivid and popular is Symbolss and Legends of Freemasonry, by Finlayson, but he often strains facts in order to stretch them over wide gaps of time. Dr. Mackey's Symbolism of Freemasonry, though written more than sixty years ago, remains a classic of the order. Unfortunately the lectures of Albert Pike on Symbolism are not accessible to the general reader, for they are rich mines of insight and scholarship, albeit betraying his partisanship of the Indo-Aryan race. Many minor books might be named, but we need a work brought up to date and written in the light of recent research. 
6 Exod. 20:25.
7 Antiquities of Cornwall, Borlase.
8 Lost Language of Symbolism, Bayley, chap. xviii; also in the Bible, Deut. 32:18, II Sam. 22:3, 32, Psa. 28:1, Matt. 16:18, I Cor. 10:4.
9 Tree and Pillar Cult, Sir Arthur Evans.
10 I Sam. 2:8, Psa. 75:8, Job 26:7, Rev. 3:12.
11 Freernasonry in China, Giles. Also Gould, His. Masonry, vol. i, chap. i.
12 Chinese Classics, by Legge, i, 219-45.
13 Essay by Chaloner Alabaster, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, vol. ii, 121-24. It is not too much to say that the Transactions of this Lodge of Research are the richest storehouse of Masonic lore in the world.
14 Matt. 16:18, Eph. 2:20-22, I Cor. 2:9-17. Woman is the house and wall of man, without whose bounding and redeeming influence he would be dissipated and lost (Song of Solomon 8:10). So also by the mystics (The Perfect Way).
15 Heb. 3:4.
16 Isa. 28:16.
17 Psa. 118:22, Matt. 21:42.
18 1 Pet. 2:5.
19 Prov. 8:27-30, Revised Version.
20 Amos 7:7, 8.
21 Ezk. 48:20.
22 Rev. 21:16.
23 Rev. 3:12.
24 II Cor. 5:1.
25 Egyptian Obelisks, H. H. Gorringe. The obelisk in Central Park, the expenses for removing which were paid by W. H. Vanderbilt, was examined by the Grand Lodge of New York, and its emblems pronounced to be unmistakably Masonic. This book gives full account of all obelisks brought to Europe from Egypt, their measurements, inscriptions, and transportation.
Article on the letter "G" By Robert Macoy, from "A Dictionary of Freemasonry" c. 19th c. 
G
This letter is deservedly regarded as one of the most sacred of the Masonic emblems. Where it is used, however, as a symbol of Deity, it must be remembered that it is the Saxon representative of the Hebrew Yod and the Greek Tau-the initial letters of the name of the Eternal in those languages. This symbol proves that Freemasonry always prosecuted its labors with reference to the grand ideas of Infinity and Eternity By the letter G--which conveyed to the minds of the brethren, at the same time, the idea of God and that of Geometry--it bound heaven to earth, the divine to the human, and the infinite to the finite. Masons are taught to regard the Universe as the grandest of all symbols, revealing to men, in all ages, the ideas which are eternally revolving in the mind of the Divinity, and which it is their duty to reproduce in their own lives and in the world of art and industry. Thus God and Geometry, the material worlds and the spiritual spheres, were constantly united in the speculations of the ancient Masons. They, consequently, labored earnestly and unweariedly, not only to construct cities, and embellish them with magnificent edifices, but also to build up a temple of great and divine thoughts and of ever-growing virtues for the soul to dwell in. The symbolical letter G-- * * * "That hieroglyphic bright, Which none but craftsmen ever saw,"
and before which every true Mason reverently uncovers, and bows his head--is a perpetual condemnation of profanity, impiety and vice. No brother who has bowed before that emblem can be profane. He will never speak the name of the Grand Master of the Universe but with reverence, respect and love. He will learn, by studying the mystic meaning of the letter G, to model his life after the divine plan; and, thus instructed, he will strive to be like God in the activity and earnestness of his benevolence, and the broadness and efficiency of his charity. "The letter G occupies a prominent position in several of the degrees in the American system; is found in many of the degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish rite; in Adonhiramite Masonry; and, in fact, in every one of the many systems in which the people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centu- ries were so prolific in manufacturing. Wherever we find this recondite symbol in any of the Masonic rites, it has the same significance---a substitute for the Hebraic jod, the initial letter of the Divine name, and a monogram tt;at expressed the Uncreated Being, principle of all things; and, inclosed in a triangle, the unity of God. We recognize the same letter G in the Syriac Gad, the Swedish Gud, the German Gott, and the English God--all names of the Deity, and all derived from the Persian Goda, itself derived from the absolute pronoun signifying himself. The young Fellow- Craft is the representative of a student of the sciences, and to him the letter G* represents the science of Geometry."
*" In my own opinion, the letter G, which is used in the Fellow-Craft's degree, should never have been permitted to intrude into Masonry; it presents an instance of absurd anachronism, which would never have occurred ff the original Hebrew symbol had been retained. But being there now, without the possibility of removal, we have only to remember that it is in fact but the symbol of a symbol."--MACKEY.

WHAT CAME YOU HERE TO DO?
AMERICAN FREEMASON - December 1909
TO the questioning of this title the rubric provideth an answer, and the average "bright Mason" quotes glibly, with never a thought how he has improved himself in Masonry.
The query is pertinent and important, brother mine, beyond any usage of the ritual. For unless there has been improvement - gain of some tangible sort - Masonry has been for you a thing useless; nay, worse than useless, for you have expended money, and perhaps time, more or less, upon something which has returned no shadow of benefit.
Where gain of any kind is promised, and is not received, the fault must lie with one or other party to the transaction. In the present case, supposing you can not count the gain, the alternative may be thus stated: Either you have been deceived; have been wrought upon by false pretenses or preconceived opinions into joining an organization that fails to fulfil the promises made for it: or else you have been so negligent, so indifferent, so lacking in opportunity' or so obtuse, that your initiation was a failure, your membership an absurdity, and the emblem you wear a palpable and continuing lie. Which?
As for the gain, what have you sought? If the improvement desired and expected from Masonry, was in material things, then you have indeed misunderstood the whole purpose and spirit of the institution. Unless. in such case you can begin over again, seeking the right preparation of heart and mind, you are not, and never can be a Mason; and this none the less though you be adorned with insignia like an eastern potentate on dress parade. If you have imagined that membership in a Masonic Lodge, or in the Concordant Orders, or even in the execrescent associations that have attached themselves to Masonry, would increase your business, improve your social status, or give you added facilities wherewith to overreach your fellows in the affairs of life, you have failed in improvement, utterly and miserably. And not only have you deserved such failure, but also the condemnation and contempt of all right-minded men and Masons.
Or have you counted only on the gain that comes from association with good men and true, in Lodge and out? Are you content thus to remain in the Court of the Gentiles, nor desire to pass with the real Initiates into the penetralia of the Temple? Yet, if you will no more, you have in some measure improved yourself in Masonry. It is something to listen at times to a recital of the elementary moralities, lest they be altogether forgotten, It is well, as occasion offers, to join at the banquet table with pleasant fellows and to trade stories with them over the post-prandial cigars. It is heartwarming and benefiting to have part in some quiet deed of loving charity; to assist some unfortunate brother, or to make the roughened pathway easier for the widow and orphans of one who has forever dropped the working tools of life. It may even be that you have gained in the virtues of patience and forbearance by sitting through the tedious windiness of orators, who presume to discourse upon the beauties and significances of an institution of which they are profoundly ignorant.
But if, my brother, you have honestly sought for real light in Masonry, and still remain in darkness; if you have essayed to understand the mysteries, and have found no clue to guide you through the labyrinth; if the working tools once placed in your hands as things of use, has since been to you no more than ornaments or idle toys. then must blame attach to those who pose so pompously as Masters of Craft, and are utterly unfit to "set the brethren at work and give them proper instruction." To the discredit and detriment of Freemasonry it is too often the case that self-assertive ignorance gains preferment, and volubility is esteemed of higher worth than Masonic skill and knowledge. Is it to be wondered at, while Masters and Wardens are rotated into office, or are pushed into place by cliques, without thought of fitness, that the Apprentices and Fellows remain ignorant, become indifferent, and are finally lost for any usefulness to the Fraternity. It is surely time that more be required of Lodge officers than ability to mouth their portions of the ritual; a phonogragh would do that as well, or better. Shame upon him who takes the place and title of Master, and is unable to instruct his brethren in the things that are truly Masonic! If because of the laxity or indifference or ignorance of those who are placed as overseers of the work you have not improved yourself in Masonry, then have you been wounded in the house of your friends, and are to be sympathized with rather than blamed.
Again, you may have made progress, and can show gain in Masonic knowledge to your own benefit and that of the brethren. You have entered the Temple, and have joined with those who look upon the solemnities and mystic rites with understanding eyes. These things are known only to the real Initiate, yet they are no more than the Lesser Mysteries. But, my brother, have you as yet approached the Holy of Holies, and dared to lift the veil of symbolism with which the adytum is shrouded, and looked for yourself upon the secret things which Masonry conceals from all but the elect? Here, again, must one come in humility and receptive mind, acknowledging blindness, yet seeking the light. And here, as before to the neophyte who is duly and truly prepared, there are revealed significances that can not be made matter of speech; mysteries the meaning of which can not be conveyed to outward sense, be the hierophant never so wise, nor the aspirant however receptive and sincere.
You have, my brother, improved in Masonry, if you have lived up to the full measure of opportunity; if you have sought and gained knowledge for its own sake; if you have fulfilled the manifold duties of the Craft with increasing kindliness of heart, and growing love for the brethren - then can you answer to the question, "What came you here to do," with a truth and meaning undreamed of by the glib reciters of catechetical replies.
POTS
George Helmer FPS PM Norwood #90 H Norwood Chapter #18 RAM

Newly-Made Mason - by H.L. Haywood
CHAPTER I
Operative Freemasonry
THE WORD "MASON" was the name of a workman in the building Craft in the Middle Ages. In England that Craft was divided into five or six branches, called by different names, such as tilers, quarrymen, wailers, setters, etc., and each one of these was separately organized with its own officers, rules and regulations; in the large centers of population they were organized as Masons' Companies, each with a building of its own, and working under the borough (municipal) ordinances which governed Companies of all the trades, arts, and professions. These branches and companies were a part of the general gild system in which the whole of Medieval work and trade was organized, and which was governed as a whole by a large body of gild laws; these laws belonged to the Law of the Realm; and since there was also in operation a body of laws enforced by the church, of authority equal to that of the state, and called The Ordinances of Religion, each gild was under a triple government: its own rules and regulations; civil laws; church laws. If some custom, rule, or symbol was preserved by a Craft, and if it continues to be in use, it does not follow that it had its origin in some practice in the work of the gild, but may have been a church practice, or a practice required by the civil law.
Among the five or six branches of the general Craft of builders was one which confined itself to architecture properly so called, which is listed among the fine arts, and the practice of which is a profession. This branch belonged to the gild system in the sense that it came under general gild laws, but in a narrower sense was not a gild but was a fraternity; because after a member of it had finished his work in one place he moved on to another, some times from one country to another. The Craftsmen in this Fraternity were called Freemasons. It was from this particular branch, and not from the building craft in general, that our own Fraternity of Free & Accepted Masons descended. As a convenience, and to distinguish the first half of Masonic history from its later half, we call the workmen in the first period Operative Freemasons, and in the later period Speculative (or Accepted, or nonOperative) Freemasons, but this distinction must not be pushed very far, because as we have learned from the past half century of historical research there is not as much difference between Speculative and Operative as we once believed; in Freemasonry as a fraternity there has been an unbroken continuity from the end of the Dark Ages (about the Tenth Century) to the present time.
In order to make our history yet more intelligible we must carry the distinction between the Freemasons branch of the early building craft and other branches to a farther point. In the Fourteenth Century a number of Freemasons (though not all of them) began to organize permanent Lodges. After that date any given Freemason might or might not belong to one of those Lodges. A further step came when among the two or three hundred Lodges in Britain a few of them in London set up a Grand Lodge in 1717 A.D.; each and every regular Lodge or Grand Lodge now in the world traces its history to that Grand Lodge. The line of our history can therefore be plainly drawn: from the general Craft of Masonry (or building) at the end of the Dark Ages, through the branch of it called Freemasonry, through the permanent Lodges first set up among Freemasons in the Fourteenth Century, through the Grand Lodge set up in 1717 A.D., by a few of those permanent Lodges. We came from Medieval Operative Masonry, but we came from it along that particular path; in each year since the beginning, large areas of the building craft have remained outside the area which that path has traversed.
Architects were called Freemasons rather than Masons partly because they were in a fraternity and free to move about, partly because they worked in free-stone, and partly for a number of other and lesser reasons - the word in itself can tell us little about our history. These Freemasons designed and constructed the cathedrals, churches, chapels, monasteries, nunneries, palaces, guildhalls, borough halls, college buildings, forts, and other structures of a monumental type, for public purposes, which then as now, and everywhere, are architecture properly so called, and which stand far apart, almost in another world, from the simple structures of residences, stores, factories, barns, etc., which any man with normal skill and a few years of experience can learn to design and construct. The Freemasons were in a class apart from other Masons because their buildings were in a class apart from other buildings.
But it was not this superiority of the art of architecture to other building construction which alone gave Freemasons their great preeminence in the Middle Ages. In the long period between the end of the Dark Ages and the Reformation, in which there was a general illiteracy, and the sciences were forbidden, architecture was the only art to reach greatness, and next to the church itself it accomplished more to shape the world of the Middle Ages than any other agency - even now the Middle Ages are often represented or typified by a picture of a cathedral. Freemasons were then what specialists in the pure sciences are now, picked men, of extraordinary native ability and talents; they were given a long and severe training and education in a system of apprenticeship, and they each one had to be equally adept in engineering, geometry, building design, ornamentation, carving, sculpture - they had to be past masters in the use of stone, that grandest and most difficult of all the materials with which men have ever had to work. And since the structures which they designed and constructed were not only for public use but also in their design and ornamentation had to express the spirit and ideas of religion, government, education, and society the Freemasons built at the center of those realms of culture because their work carried them there; for more than two centuries they were the supreme men in Britain and Europe for their intelligence, knowledge, ability, and character. No other society in the world can look back to an ancestry nobler than our own.
Our pride in that ancestry could have been almost as great as it is had the Operative Freemasons done nothing more than to carry on at a normal level of excellence the old Roman architecture, called Romanesque, which they had recovered from the wreckage of the Dark Ages; but it happens that in the Twelfth Century they made a great new discovery of their own which was so epoch-making that in the whole history of the world's architecture only one other discovery (the Greek) can be compared with it. This was their invention of the extraordinary, radically new Gothic Style. It was this style which made the cathedrals possible (1500 of them), and which after it had percolated down to such details as the design of buttons and the shape of written letters of the alphabet gave to Europe that shape, form, and color which in all cultural matters is meant by "Medieval." It called forth a Freemason who was a new kind of man, who mastered arts and sciences not known to others at the time, a man as great in mind as in skill. That particular development within the wide expanse of the building Craft which finally led to our own Fraternity might have occurred if all architects for many generations had not been exclusively trained in the Gothic Style, but probably it would not have done so; therefore 1140 A.D., the date of the first Gothic building, is important in the history of Freemasonry.
The work of using a hammer and chisel on a block of stone was only one among many elements in the Fraternity of Freemasons. A Freemason had his family with him; if he had an apprentice that apprentice was as much a part of his own family as a foster son; the families of the Freemasons at work in the same place were grouped together in a separate quarter, or neighborhood; the Craftsmen at work, their Lodge, and their neighborhood, along with everything belonging to each of them, comprised the Masonic Community; and the rules and regulations, with the responsibilities of the Officers, included their Community and were not restricted to the Lodge only. Apprentices had training, schooling, education. Adult Craftsmen had to give as much of their time to thinking, to study, and to designing as to work with their hands, for without geometry, engineering, and carving they could do nothing. They were an organized Community, therefore there were Officers, meetings and conferences. The Community had its own funds, its own religious observances, its amusements, feasts, sports, its social life, and cared for its own injured, crippled, dead, the widows, and orphans. In the meantime the State and the Church were never far away, and civil laws and religious ordinances entered deeply into the Freemason's daily life to shape it in many ways. Much (and the present writer would say "most") of what we now call Speculative Freemasonry was in the practice of the Fraternity eight centuries ago.
When a bishop decided to build a cathedral he set up a board, usually, with himself at the head of it, which was called an Administration, or a Foundation. This Foundation employed a Master of Masons who was a Freemason of high reputation and after they had agreed with him on the general design of the building and on costs they and he together made a contract. He then sent out word for Craftsmen. When a Craftsman applied he identified himself, was examined, and if satisfactory was "signed on," his family to follow. When a sufficient number were signed up the Master called them together, and they formed themselves into a Lodge, which continued to exist as long as the work was in progress and was dissolved when the work was completed. The first act of the Lodge was to secure housing for its members and their families; its next step was to erect a building for its own use (sometimes two), which also was called the Lodge. This building was the headquarters for daily work, a meeting place, and was also sometimes used as a work room. By "Lodge" was meant a body of men organized for the sole purpose of working together as a unit, therefore when the Master had instructions for this body as a whole he called it into Communication. The Freemasons worked according to a set of rules and regulations of their own, centuries old, among them being a number of Landmarks, and such questions of organization or of work as arose in any given Lodge were settled according to those rules; and since the same rules were in force wherever Freemasons worked, and each Apprentice and Fellow was under oath never to violate them, it was this body of rules which gave its unity and consistency to a Fraternity which had no national organization or national officers, and until the Fourteenth Century did not even have permanent local organizations, and which at the same time preserved its rules and trade secrets in the memory of its members and taught them to Apprentices by word of mouth.
In a period when Freemasons had the use of no books, handbooks, treatises, or blue-prints anything they thought, or learned, or put into practice which appeared to have permanent worth either had to be enacted on the floor of the Lodge, or else had to take an oral form. In order to preserve such things in their purity, and to guard against alteration, these forms necessarily had to be repeated over and over; such forms, thus repeated in exactly the same detail generation after generation, are what historians mean by forms, ceremonies, and symbols. If the word "symbolic" is used as a general name for the whole body of such fixed forms then it is not an exaggeration to say that there was as much of this "Symbolic" Freemasonry in the earliest periods of the Operative Freemasonry as there is now in Speculative Freemasonry; and if we are willing to hazard an over-simplification we also may say that if we grasp the eight or ten centuries of the history of Freemasonry as a whole, the only fundamental difference between Operative Freemasonry in an early century and Speculative Freemasonry now, is that a Speculative Freemason does not use Freemasonry as a means of livelihood, but for another purpose. 
If we take the Twelfth Century as the great formative period of the Fraternity, and if we return to it to see what it was that among the thousands of gilds and fraternities at the time gave to the one Fraternity of Freemasonry the secret of surviving after other gilds had perished, and of developing into a world-wide Fraternity, the facts as given in the paragraph above show us what to look for. Whatever it was that those Freemasons learned which was to be preserved through future centuries they learned in and from their work; and once they learned it they did not put it into the form of abstract ideas, or doctrines, or books (as we do) but incorporated it into their practices and customs; instead of becoming a book, or a lecture, or a creed, it became a ceremony, or rite, or symbol. The Freemasons as men of mind stood far above the theologians, philosophers, and scholars of Britain for more than two centuries, and under "theologians" are included such men as Thomas Aquinas, Abelard, Roger Bacon, etc.; what the theologians thought, they could write down in treatises; what the Freemasons thought, they embodied in their practices, customs, and symbols. The subject of theology the Freemasons left to the theologians; they devoted their own great minds to the great subject of work, and as will be explained in detail in later chapters they were the first men in the world until that time to discover the truth about that subject. We modern Speculative Masons have therefore a double reason for looking back to the fathers and founders of our Fraternity: we give them the veneration which men give everywhere to fathers and founders; and we look up to them, as also do historians of philosophy and of theology, as having been great men of thought whose achievement as thinkers was even more epoch-making than their discovery of the Gothic Style in architecture. If they did not write down in a book the new truths about work which they discovered it does not matter; any trained Mason can read the Ritual as easily as an open book.
The Operative Period of Freemasonry was brought to a close and gave place to the Transition Period by a series of historical events which, by one of the most extraordinary coincidences known in history, occurred within a few years of each other. Henry VIII broke Great Britain's tie with the Pope and prepared the way for the Reformation. The same King also abolished the gild system - which was followed by the Mercantile System, a period in business and finance which present - day theorists in economics find it convenient to forget! The Renaissance broke into final flower, in the form of the printing press, printed books, and changed the mental climate in Britain as much as in Europe generally. The discovery of America by Columbus opened the sluice-gates to the Age of Exploration, a wild and adventurous time in which Europe exploded itself over all the world. Gothic architecture gave way with an almost abrupt suddenness to a new style in architecture which originated in Italy and has since passed under many names, such as Classical, Neo Classical, Italian, Palladian and Wren. The old trade secrets of the Operative Freemasons could be kept secret no longer after Euclid's Geometry was published in print, along with many other lesser, old secrets in the arts and sciences. The center of control in Freemasonry passed from the individual Freemason going here and there in his work, and from his temporary Lodges, into the permanent Lodges which were constituted under authority of manuscript copies of the Old Charges, and from them passed into the new Grand Lodge System after 1717 A.D.
POTS
George Helmer FPS PM Norwood #90 H Norwood Chapter #18 RAM

"The Builders" By Joseph Fort Newton Part 1, Chapter 3, "The Drama of Faith"
And so the Quest goes on. And the Quest, as it may be, ends in attainment--we know not where and when: so long as we can conceive of our separate existence, the quest goes on--an at- tainment continued henceforward. And ever shall the study of the ways which have been followed by those who have passed in front be a help on our own path. It is well, it is of all things beautiful and per- fect, holy and high of all, to be conscious of the path which does in fine lead thither where we seek to go, namely, the goal which is in God. Taking nothing with us which does not belong to ourselves, leaving nothing behind us that is of our real selves, we shall find in the great attain- ment that the companions of our toil are with us. And the place is the Valley of Peace.
--ARTHUR EDWARD WAITE, The Secret Tradition
CHAPTER III
The Drama of Faith
MAN does not live by bread alone; he lives by Faith, Hope, and Love, and the first of these was Faith. Nothing in the human story is more striking than the persistent, passionate, profound protest of man against death. Even in the earliest time we see him daring to stand erect at the gates of the grave, disputing its verdict, refusing to let it have the last word, and making argu- ment in behalf of his soul. For Emerson, as for Addison, that fact alone was proof enough of immortality, as re- vealing a universal intuition of eternal life. Others may not be so easily convinced, but no man who has the heart of a man can fail to be impressed by the ancient, heroic faith of his race. Nowhere has this faith ever been more vivid or vic- torious than among the old Egyptians. [Note 1] In the ancient Book of the Dead-which is, indeed, a Book of Resurrec- tion--occur the words: "The soul to heaven; the body to earth;" and that first faith is our faith today. Of King Unas, who lived in the third millennium, it is written: "Behold, thou has not gone as one dead, but as one liv- ing." Nor has any one in our day set forth this faith with more simple eloquence than the Hymn to Osiris, in the Papyrus of Hunefer. So in the Pyramid Texts the dead are spoken of as Those Who Ascend, the Imperishable Ones who shine as stars, and the gods are invoked to witness the death of the King "Dawning as a Soul." There is deep prophecy, albeit touched with poignant pathos, in these broken exclamations written on the pyramid walls:
Thou diest not! Have ye said that he would die? He diest not; this King Pepi lives forever! Live! Thou shalt not die! He has escaped his day of death! Thou livest, thou livest, raise thee up! Thou diest not, stand up, raise thee up! Thou perishest not eternally! Thou diest not! [Note 2]
Nevertheless, nor poetry nor chant nor solemn ritual could make death other than death; and the Pyramid Texts, while refusing to utter the fatal word, give wistful reminiscences of that blessed age "before death came forth." However high the faith of man, the masterful negation and collapse of the body was a fact, and it was to keep that daring faith alive and aglow that The Mys- teries were instituted. Beginning, it may be, in incanta- tion, they rose to heights of influence and beauty, giving dramatic portrayal of the unconquerable faith of man. Watching the sun rise from the tomb of night, and the spring return in glory after the death of winter, man reasoned from analogy--justifying a faith that held him as truly as he held it--that the race, sinking into the grave, would rise triumphant over death.
I
There were many variations on this theme as the drama of faith evolved, and as it passed from land to land; but the Motif was ever the same, and they all were derived, directly or indirectly, from the old Osirian passion-play in Egypt. Against the background of the ancient Solar religion, Osiris made his advent as Lord of the Nile and fecund Spirit of vegetable life--son of Nut the sky-god- dess and Geb the earth-god; and nothing in the story of the Nile-dwellers is more appealing than his conquest of the hearts of the people against all odds. [Note 3] Howbeit, that history need not detain us here, except to say that by the time his passion had become the drama of na- tional faith, it had been bathed in all the tender hues of human life; though somewhat of its solar radiance still lingered in it. Enough to say that of all the gods, called into being by the hopes and fears of men who dwelt in times of yore on the banks of the Nile, Osiris was the most beloved. Osiris the benign father, Isis his sorrowful and faithful wife, and Horus whose filial piety and hero- ism shine like diamonds in a heap of stones--about this trinity were woven the ideals of Egyptian faith and family life. Hear now the story of the oldest drama of the race, which for more than three thousand years held captive the hearts of men. [Note 4] Osiris was Ruler of Eternity, but by reason of his visible shape seemed nearly akin to man--revealing a divine humanity. His success was chiefly due, however, to the gracious speech of Isis, his sister-wife, whose charm men could neither reckon nor resist. Together they labored for the good of man, teaching him to discern the plants fit for food, themselves pressing the grapes and drinking the first cup of wine. They made known the veins of metal running through the earth, of which man was ignorant, and taught him to make weapons. They initiated man into the intellectual and moral life, taught him ethics and religion, how to read the starry sky, song and dance and the rhythm of music. Above all, they evoked in men a sense of immortality, of a destiny be- yond the tomb. Nevertheless, they had enemies at once stupid and cunning, keen-witted but short-sighted--the dark force of evil which still weaves the fringe of crime on the borders of human life. Side by side with Osiris, lived the impious Set-Typhon, as Evil ever haunts the God. While Osiris was absent, Typhon-whose name means serpent--filled with envy and malice, sought to usurp his throne; but his plot was frustrated by Isis. Whereupon he resolved to kill Osiris. This he did, having invited him to a feast, by persuading him to enter a chest, offering, as if in jest, to present the richly carved chest to any one of his guests who, lying down inside it, found he was of the same size. When Osiris got in and stretched himself out, the conspirators closed the chest, and flung it into the Nile. [Note 5] Thus far, the gods had not known death. They had grown old, with white hair and trembling limbs, but old age had not led to death. As soon as Isis heard of this infernal treachery, she cut her hair, clad herself in a garb of mourning, ran thither and yon, a prey to the most cruel anguish, seek- ing the body. Weeping and distracted, she never tarried, never tired in her sorrowful quest. Meanwhile, the waters carried the chest out to sea, as far as Byblos in Syria, the town of Adonis, where it lodged against a shrub of arica, or tamarisk--like an acacia tree. [Note 6] Owing to the virtue of the body, the shrub, at its touch, shot up into a tree, growing around it, and protecting it, until the king of that country cut the tree which hid the chest in its bosom, and made from it a column for his palace. At last Isis, led by a vision, came to Byblos, made herself known, and asked for the col- umn. Hence the picture of her weeping over a broken column torn from the palace, while Horus, god of Time, stands behind her pouring ambrosia on her hair. She took the body back to Egypt, to the city of Bouto; but Typhon, hunting by moonlight, found the chest, and having recog- nized the body of Osiris, mangled it and scattered it beyond recognition. Isis, embodiment of the old world- sorrow for the dead, continued her pathetic quest, gathering piece by piece the body of her dismembered husband, and giving him decent interment. Such was the life and death of Osiris, but as his career pictured the cycle of nature, it could not of course end here. Horus fought with Typhon, losing an eye in the battle, but finally overthrew him and took him prisoner. There are several versions of his fate, but he seems to have been tried, sentenced, and executed--"cut in three pieces," as the Pyramid Texts relate. Thereupon the faith- ful son went in solemn procession to the grave of his father, opened it, and called upon Osiris to rise: "Stand up! Thou shalt not end, thou shalt not perish!" But death was deaf. Here the Pyramid Texts recite the mortuary ritual, with its hymns and chants; but in vain. At length Osiris awakes, weary and feeble, and by the aid of the strong grip of the lion-god he gains control of his body, and is lifted from death to life. [Note 7] Thereafter, by virtue of his victory over death, Osiris becomes Lord of the Land of Death, his scepter an Ank Cross, his throne a Square.
II
Such, in brief, was the ancient allegory of eternal life, upon which there were many elaborations as the drama unfolded; but always, under whatever variation of local color, of national accent or emphasis, its central theme remained the same. Often perverted and abused, it was everywhere a dramatic expression of the great human aspiration for triumph over death and union with God, and the belief in the ultimate victory of Good over Evil. Not otherwise would this drama have held the hearts of men through long ages, and won the eulogiums of the most enlightened men of antiquity--of Pythagoras, Soc- rates, Plato, Euripides, Plutarch, Pindar, Isocrates, Epic- tetus, and Marcus Aurelius. Writing to his wife after the loss of their little girl, Plutarch commends to her the hope set forth in the mystic rites and symbols of this drama,: as, elsewhere, he testifies that it kept him "as far from superstition as from atheism," and helped him to ap- proach the truth. For deeper minds this drama had a double meaning, teaching not only immortality after death, but the awakening of man upon earth from ani- malism to a life of purity, justice, and honor. How nobly this practical aspect was taught, and with what fineness of spiritual insight, may be seen in Secret Sermon on the Mountain in the Hermetic lore of Greece: [Note 8]
What may I say, my son? I can but tell thee this. When- ever I see within myself the Simple Vision brought to birth out of God's mercy, I have passed through myself into a Body that can never die. Then I am not what I was before. . . . They who are thus born are children of a Divine race. This race, my son, is never taught; but when He willeth it, its memory is restored by God. It is the "Way of Birth in God." . . . Withdraw into thyself and it will come. Will, and it comes to pass.
Isis herself is said to have established the first temple of the Mysteries, the oldest being those practiced at Memphis. Of these there were two orders, the Lesser to which the many were eligible, and which consisted of dialogue and ritual, with certain signs, tokens, grips, passwords; and the Greater, reserved for the few who approved themselves worthy of being entrusted with the highest secrets of science, philosophy, and religion. For these the candidate had to undergo trial, purification, danger, austere asceticism, and, at last, regeneration through dramatic death amid rejoicing. Such as endured the ordeal with valor were then taught, orally and by symbol, the highest wisdom to which man had attained, including geometry, astronomy, the fine arts, the laws of nature, as well as the truths of faith. Awful oaths of secrecy were exacted, and Plutarch describes a man kneeling, his hands bound, a cord round his body, and a knife at his throat--death being the penalty of violating the obligation. Even then, Pythagoras had to wait almost twenty years to learn the hidden wisdom of Egypt, so cautious were they of candidates, especially of foreigners. But he made noble use of it when, later, he founded a secret order of his own at Crotona, in Greece, in which, among other things, he taught geometry, using numbers as symbols of spiritual truth. [Note 9] From Egypt the Mysteries passed with little change to Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome, the names of local gods being substituted for those of Osiris and Isis. The Grecian or Eleusinian Mysteries, established 1800 B.C., repre- sented Demeter and Persephone, and depicted the death of Dionysius with stately ritual which led the neophyte from death into life and immortality. They taught the unity of God, the immutable necessity of morality, and a life after death, investing initiates with signs and pass- words by which they could know each other in the dark as well as in the light. The Mithraic or Persian Mysteries celebrated the eclipse of the Sun-god, using the signs of the zodiac, the processions of the seasons, the death of nature, and the birth of spring. The Adoniac or Syrian cults were similar, Adonis being killed, but revived to point to life through death. In the Cabirie Mysteries on the island of Samothraee, Atys the Sun was killed by his brothers the Seasons, and at the vernal equinox was re- stored to life. So, also, the Druids, as far north as Eng- land, taught of one God the tragedy of winter and sum- mer, and conducted the initiate through the valley of death to life everlasting. [Note 10] Shortly before the Christian era, when faith was fail- ing and the world seemed reeling to its ruin, there was a great revival of the Mystery-religions. Imperial edict was powerless to stay it, much less stop it. From Egypt, from the far East, they came rushing in like a tide, Isis "of the myriad names" vieing with Mithra, the patron saint of the soldier, for the homage of the multitude. If we ask the secret reason for this influx of mysticism, no single answer can be given to the question. What influ- ence the reigning mystery-cults had upon the new, up- rising Christianity is also hard to know, and the issue is still in debate. That they did influence the early Church is evident from the writings of the Fathers, and some go so far as to say that the Mysteries died at last only to live again in the ritual of the Church. St. Paul in his mis- sionary journeys came in contact with the Mysteries, and even makes use of some of their technical terms in his epistles; [Note 11] but he condemned them on the ground that what they sought to teach in drama can be known only by spiritual experience--a sound insight, though surely drama may assist to that experience, else public worship might also come under ban.
III
Toward the end of their power, the Mysteries fell into the mire and became corrupt, as all things human are apt to do: even the Church itself being no exception. But that at their highest and best they were not only lofty and noble, but elevating and refining, there can be no doubt, and that they served a high purpose is equally clear. No one, who has read in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius the initiation of Lucius into the Mysteries of Isis, can doubt that the effect on the votary was profound and purifying. He tells us that the ceremony of initiation "is, as it were, to suffer death," and that he stood in the presence of the gods, "ay, stood near and worshiped." Far hence ye profane, and all who are polluted by sin, was the motto of the Mysteries, and Cicero testifies that what a man learned in the house of the hidden place made him want to live nobly, and gave him happy hopes for the hour of death. Indeed, the Mysteries, as Plato said, [Note 12] were established by men of great genius who, in the early ages, strove to teach purity, to ameliorate the cruelty of the race, to refine its manners and morals, and to restrain society by stronger bonds than those which human laws impose. No mystery any longer attaches to what they taught, but only as to the particular rites, dramas, and symbols used in their teaching. They taught faith in the unity and spir- ituality of God, the sovereign authority of the moral law, heroic purity of soul, austere discipline of character, and the hope of a life beyond the tomb. Thus in ages of dark- ness, of complexity, of conflicting peoples, tongues, and faiths, these great orders toiled in behalf of friendship, bringing men together under a banner of faith, and train- ing them for a nobler moral life. Tender and tolerant of all faiths, they formed an all-embracing moral and spir- itual fellowship which rose above barriers of nation, race, and creed, satisfying the craving of men for unity, while evoking in them a sense of that eternal mysticism out of which all religions were born. Their ceremonies, so far as we know them, were stately dramas of the moral life and the fate of the soul. Mystery and secrecy added im- pressiveness, and fable and enigma disguised in impos- ing spectacle the laws of justice, piety, and the hope of immortality. Masonry stands in this tradition; and if we may not say that it is historically related to the great ancient orders, it is their spiritual descendant, and renders much the same ministry to our age which the Mysteries ren- dered to the olden world. It is, indeed, the same stream of sweetness and light flowing in our day--like the fabled river Alpheus which, gathering the waters of a hundred rills along the hillsides of Arcadia, sank, lost to sight, in a chasm in the earth, only to reappear in the fountain of Arethusa. This at least is true: the Greater Ancient Mysteries were prophetic of Masonry whose drama is an epitome of universal initiation, and whose simple symbols are the depositaries of the noblest wisdom of mankind. As such, it brings men together at the altar of prayer, keeps alive the truths that make us men, seeking, by every resource of art, to make tangible the power of love, the worth of beauty, and the reality of the ideal.
Notes 
1. Of course, faith in immortality was in nowise peculiar to Egypt, but was universal; as vivid in The Upanishads of India as in the Pyramid records. It rests upon the consensus of the insight, experience, and aspiration of the race. But the records of Egypt, like its monuments, are richer than those of other nations, if not older..Moreover, the drama of faith with which we have to do here had its origin in Egypt, whence it spread to Tyre, Athens, and Rome--and, as we shall see, even to England. For brief exposi- tions of Egyptian faith see Egyptian Conceptions of Immortalitey, by G. A. Reisner, and Religion and Thought in Egypt, by J. H. Breasted.
2 Pyramid Texts, 775, 1262, 1453, 1477.
3. For a full account of the evolution of the Osirian theology from the time it emerged from the mists of myth until its con- qeust, see Religion and Thought in Egypt, by Breasted, the latest, if not the most brilliant, book written in the light of the completest translation of the Pyramid Texts (especially lecture v).
4. Much has been written about the Egyptian Mysteries from the days of Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride and the Metamorphoses of Apuleius to the huge volumes of Baron Sainte Croix. For popular readings the Kings and Gods of Egypt, by Moret (chaps. iii-iv), and the delightfully vivid Hermes and Plato, by Schure, could hardly be surpassed. But Plutarch and Apuleius, both initiates, are our best authorities, even if their oath of silence prevents them from telling us what we most want to know.
5. Among the Hindoos, whose Chrisna is the same as the Osiris of Egypt, the gods of summer were beneficent, making the days fruitful. But "the three wretches" who presided over winter, were cut off from the zodiac; and as they were "found missing," they were accused of the death of Chrisna.
6. A literary parallel in the story of AEneas, by Vergil, is most suggestive. Priam, king of Troy, in the beginning of the Trojan war committed his son Polydorus to the care of Polymester, king of Thrace, and sent him a great sum of money. After Troy was taken the Thracian, for the sake of the money, killed the young prince and privately buried him. AEneas, coming into that country, and accidentally plucking up a shnlb that was near him on the side of the hill, discovered the murdered body of Polydorus. Other legends of such accidental discoveries of unknown graves haunted the olden time, and may have been suggested by the story of Isis.
7. The Gods of the Egyptians, by E. A. W. Budge; La Place des Victores, by Austin Fryar, especially the colored plates.
8. Quests New and Old, by G. R. S. Mead.
9 Pythagoras, by Edouard Schure---a fascinating story of that great thinker and teacher. The use of numbers by Pythagoras must not, however, be confounded with the mystical, or rather fantastic, mathematics of the Kabbalists of a later time.
10 For a vivid accouunt of the spread of the Mysteries of Isis and Mithra over the Roman Empire, see Roman Life from Nero to Aurelius, by Dill (bk. iv, chaps. v-vi). Franz Cumont is the great authority on Mithra, and his Mysteries' of Mithra and Oriental Re- ligions trace the origin and influence of that cult with accuracy, in- sight, and charm. W. W. Reade, brother of Charles Reade the novelist, left a study of The Veil of Isis, or Mysteries of the Druids, finding in the vestiges of Druidism "the Emblems of Masonry."
11. Col. 2:8-19. See Mysteries Pagan and Christian, by C. Chee- than; also Monumental Christianity, by Lundy, especially chapter on "The Discipline of the Secret." For a full discussion of the atti- tude of St. Paul, see St. Paul and the Mystery-Religions, by Ken- nedy, a work of fine scholarship. That Christianity had its esoteric is plain-as it was natural from the writings of the Fathers, in- cluding Origen, Cyril, Basil, Gregory, Ambrose, Augustine, and others. Chrysostom often uses the word initiation in respect of Christian teaching, while Tertullian denounces the pagan mysteries as counterfeit imitations by Satan of the Christian secret rites and teachings: "He also baptises those who believe in him, and prom- ises that they shall come forth, cleansed of their sins." Other Christian writers were more tolerant, finding in Christ the answer to the aspiration uttered in the Mysteries; and therein, it may be, they were right.
12. Phaedo.
DURING REFRESHMENT: BY ROE FULKERSON.
The American Freemason - January 1910
"WELL, Reddy, I have lived to be an old man as a member of this Lodge. but I never expected to see the day when we would come to this pass!"
"It's too bad; too bad!" said Reddy, with a solemn mien, "but what is it all about?"
"I was sitting over there in the corner when a brother of this Lodge came up to me, gave me his card and solicited my patronage! I never was more indignant in my life! What is Masonry coming to, anyway. when men use it as a means of furthering their business ends?"
"My dear brother, if you would strive to do a little more 'pointing with pride,' and a little less 'viewing with alarm,' you would be a better Mason. I hope you will never have to depend on the brand of Masonic charity you dispense. You paid no attention to the brother's statement, and you have started up the wrong music-box when you dropped a nickel in my slot on this proposition. It was at my suggestion he gave you the card. If you had looked at the card you would have noticed that he is a house painter and is out of work, and that he has a wife and three children at home who have formed the habit of eating, and lie wants to try and allow them to continue it. He has asked neither this Lodge nor you for charity. He only wants a chance to earn a living, and I knew you owned some houses and thought you might have some work for him. He has done nothing undignified nor unmasonic. On the contrary, it is you who are unmasonic and sadly lacking in that great Masonic virtue, Charity, which assumes its highest form in giving the applicant a chance to do something for himself, just as it assumes its lowest form in alms-giving. He was perfectly right in giving you his card, and you have wronged him in blaming him. I would suggest that your apology take the form of a job; he would appreciate it more if it came in that form. It is also a more practical form of Masonry.
"You may be right and I wrong in this particular instance, but at does not alter the fact that today many men are using Masonry to further their business ends."
"Bosh! Some few little half-dried business men may be doing so, but I doubt it. Fortunately, where the cases come up they defeat their own ends, and business advertising in fraternal orders is without doubt a boomerang. It hinders instead of helps. However, you lose sight of one fact: if Masons lived their Masonry in their every-day lives there would be no danger from the source you suspect. The true and underlying good of Masonry is mutual help. The last analysis is 'help one another,' and there is no way that has ever been figured out by philosopher or sage in which you can so much help a man as to put the coin of the realm in his pocket. You can get up on high moral ground all you please; you can roll out resonant sentences and well-rounded periods about the uplift of mankind, the brotherhood of man, and all that sort of stuff; but the true secret of brotherhood, and the reason brotherhood is used as the symbol of ideal manly relations, is because brothers pull together for the good of each other's bank accounts. I say to you that when you go down town to buy a hat, and do not buy it from a member of the Masonic fraternity, you have not lived up to the principles of your Masonry. There are men in the organization in this city who sell hats; sell just as good hats as can be bought, and at just as low a price as they can be had. When you pass such a man's door and turn your five dollar bill into the till of a profane, you have done Masonry an injury, and I am not so sure you have not violated certain of your obligations - you have at least violated the spirit if not the letter of them. I lay it down as a cut and dried positivity that the man who, all other things being equal, does not spend his money with a member of the fraternity, has no more excuse for wearing the emblems of Masonry than an adult frog has for wearing the tail of a pollywog."
"But, Reddy, it seems to me this is putting Masonry on a very mercenary basis."
We claim to be brothers, do we not? Do you think if you had a brother selling anything, from pork to real estate, in this town that you would be likely to purchase your ham or your house from another? We are living in the right now. This is a financial age; money is almost king! The dollar occupies the throne, and poor sentiment has been banished.
"Regardless of all this, however, I contend that a Mason can use his fraternal connections in a business way, and yet not violate the most rigid rules of the ethics of the Order. Any man's affiliation with a fraternal order will bring him friends provided he devotes his time and his efforts to the various duties of the order. If he does the work that comes to his hands and does it with earnestness and with good nature, the friendship of all the other active men in that organization will come to him and will cling to him as naturally as the armature clings to the magnet. No business man who thinks fails to realize that his friends are a part of his assets. Any man who mixes and mingles with his fellow men on a friendly basis will not fail to make friends, and a man's friends are his customers no matter what he sells. We all have something for sale. The doctor, the dentist, the lawyer, as well as the shop keeper, have something for sale and as one's acquaintance extends his market is increased. Briefly, any business man who increases his list of friends increases his list of patrons. This is legitimate, and more yet, it is right. I do not advocate membership in fraternal orders for business reasons, and believe that any man who goes into them for that purpose gets stung; but I do believe we should spend our money with our Masonic brethren just the same as we do with our blood brethren, which we most certainly would do. I do not believe the man lives who could go into fraternal life for business reasons and not have it found out. But given a man in Masonry who can render me the same service for the same money, and I will go blocks out of my way to patronize him. I am a coarse, unlettered man. I do not understand the subtle beauties of esoteric Masonry like I do the beauty of buying a suit of red flannel underwear from a Mason, nor can I realize the sublime advantage of having a man "in the most friendly manner remind me of my faults," when he might be giving me a job nailing boards on his back fence."
Take this lesson to your heart, my friend, if you can; but what is a sight more important, take it to your pocketbook and go over and get that fellow to paint one of those houses of yours. His kiddies cannot eat a diet of Masonic ethics and thrive to any great extent."
POTS
George Helmer FPS PM Norwood #90 GRA H Norwood #18 RAM

Newly-Made Mason - by H.L. Haywood
CHAPTER III
Transition (From Operative to Speculative Masonry)
FOR HALF of the eight centuries or more of its existence Freemasonry consisted of craftsmen who worked for daily wages in one of the branches of architecture, and since they were workmen giving their full time to building in its literal and material sense they are called Operative, and the centuries in which the Fraternity consisted wholly of them is called the Operative Period. Since the first quarter of the Eighteenth Century the same Fraternity has been composed wholly of non-Operatives; these are called Speculative Masons and the period of between two and three centuries since the Craft passed into their hands is called the Speculative Period. The great and central problem for Masonic historians to solve has been the problem of how the Operative Fraternity was transformed into the Speculative Fraternity.
The almost complete lack of written records left behind by the Operative Masons has made the problem an exceptionally difficult one to solve, yet historical scholars are almost unanimously agreed that the crossing from the Operative Period to the Speculative Period was a slow one, and carried on step by step, without planning, without conscious purpose, and that therefore it lasted over at least more than two centuries; that long stretch of time is called the Transition Period. The whole history of Freemasonry therefore arranges itself under three general heads, or into three large periods, The Operative, The Transitional, and The Speculative.
Masonic historians were agreed on this arrangement as early as the latter half of the Eighteenth Century, but from then until about one half century ago they were not in agreement as to what it was which had occurred in The Transition Period; their disagreement was so wide that a number of them gave up the hope of explaining how Operative Freemasonry could turn itself into something as unlike itself as Speculative Freemasonry; a number of them abandoned the belief that the Speculative Fraternity had ever derived from the Operative Fraternity and began to seek its origin elsewhere. During the past half century, and thanks partly to an increase in the efficiency of Masonic research, and partly to an increasingly successful hunt for written records, Masonic historical scholars have been reaching an agreement on the position that the Operative Fraternity was preserved and perpetuated in all its essentials except for literal building work, and that Speculative Freemasonry consisted of putting that ancient Fraternity, as thus preserved and perpetuated, to a new use; the question of why they did so, and how they did so, is the subject matter of this history of the Transition Period.
If a history includes far more facts than non-historians can carry in their memory or may be expected to possess, and if it involves problems that are too difficult, or complex, or erudite to be intelligible to a non-historian, the writer of that history has no choice except to over-simplify. To omit essential parts, to make a problem appear to be easier than it is, to over-simplify, these are crimes against truth which no honorable historian can tolerate. Yet what would you? Non historians desire or need to read history; what then is an historian to do? Thus far no historian has found a way out of his dilemma except to go ahead and oversimplify and then to make a full and candid confession that he has done so; and after he has thus absolved himself he can address to his non-historian readers that ancient and wise adage that "We must do our best with what we have." It is one of the few instances in which the sly and somewhat lying motto of Caveat emptor becomes pertinent and true.
Such a confession must be made by the author of this book because its subject matter involves not only the well-nigh insoluble problem of the Transition Period but almost every other difficult Masonic problem. The quintessential substance of the book can be stated in a few sentences: Our Fraternity began as a Fraternity of Operative Freemasons at work in Britain and Europe long before, but the particular Fraternity from which ours has descended with no break in continuity began with the Fraternity of those Operative Freemasons who discovered and perpetuated the Gothic style of architecture, and since the first known Gothic building was erected in Paris in 1140 - 1150 A.D., that is our earliest date; the real movement leading to Speculative Freemasonry was the constituting of permanent and chartered Lodges about 1450 A.D.; non Operatives sought membership in those Lodges because they found in them a number of truths not to be found elsewhere; these were truths about the subject of work; and these non-Operatives, once they were in control of the ancient Fraternity, put it to the new use of preserving and teaching those truths to men of any and all crafts, arts, trades, or professions; and our Speculative Fraternity is a continuation of that use. This is an over-simplification; but it is not a falsification. The argument on which it rests is such that if any Mason reads through and thinks through the whole body of our records and our literature he will arrive at the same conclusion.
Non-Operatives were accepted into the permanent, chartered Lodges one at a time. There was never a planned, or concerted movement of them. It is doubtful if any Lodge became wholly Speculative (or "Accepted") before about 1600 A.D. But the explanation of the Transition from an Operative to a Speculative Fraternity does not lie in the increasing number of those accepted, non-Operatives, because the Operative membership could have stopped accepting them any time it wished; rather the secret lies in the new use which these accepted non-Operatives made of Operative Freemasonry; and since the Operative Masons themselves did not close the door on accepted non-Operatives (except in Lodges here and there) it follows that the Operative Masons themselves approved of the new use to which their Fraternity was being put. A number of Lodges refused to have themselves put to that new use; many of them continued to make use of Freemasonry for Operative and for Speculative purposes at the same time; but that is neither here nor there; that which carried Freemasonry through the Transition Period was the fact that finally so many Lodges were wholly devoted to the new use that they were by 1717 A.D. able to erect a Grand Lodge System and were able by means of it to make Freemasonry wholly Speculative. Operative Masonry in the sense of architecture and building activities continued as before, through the Transition and until now; in England these builders organized a Fraternity of their own no fewer than three times, and they have one now; but these societies of practicing (or Operative) Masons lie outside the Speculative Fraternity, have no place in it, and have not had any say about it, and they pass out of the ken of the historian of our own Fraternity at about 1650 A.D.
In his Concise History of Freemasonry published in 1903 A.D., Robert Freke Gould accounted for the Transition on the theory that the practice of accepting non-Operatives of itself, and without help from other facts or practices, led to the setting up of a Fraternity wholly Speculative. As instances of such acceptances he gave a small list of members who left some record of their initiation behind them; his list has been repeated by almost every other historian since. In it were such instances as: Boswell the Laird of Auchinleck was accepted into the Lodge of Edinburgh in 1600 A.D.; the City Company of Masons in London had a division, possibly a side order, called "The Accepcion" at least as early as 1620 A.D.; Elias Ashmole was made a Mason in a wholly Speculative Lodge at Warrington in 1646 A.D.; Dr. Robert Plot referred to Freemasons in a book he published in 1686 A.D.; Randle Holme described himself as a Freemason in a book he published in 1688 A.D. A Lodge at Aberdeen prepared what it called The Lodge Book in 1670 A.D., and proved itself to be part Operative, part Speculative, and to have an outdoor ceremony (which sounds like our Third Degree); there was a Speculative Lodge at York in 1705 A.D.; the Book of Constitutions published in 1738 A.D., referred to Lodges and to Christopher Wren as Grand Master in the period following the London fire, which occurred in 1666 A.D.; etc., etc. So far as the individuals mentioned are concerned they mean nothing because doubtless some non-Operative members had been accepted into Operative Lodges, temporary or permanent, from the first; the principal value of such a catalog of instances lies in its proof that there were Speculative Lodges at least as early as 1646 A.D. The oldest version of the Old Charges mention non-Operatives as having been in the Craft in ancient times, and does so without further comment.
Gould's theory was in substance that at about 1600 A.D. a few non-Operatives were accepted into membership; that while the number was few at first it slowly increased; and that Speculative Freemasonry resulted when the number of Accepted Masons (or Speculatives - the terms are here used interchangeably) overtook the number of Operative members; the problem of the Transition would be thus explained by a theory of simple arithmetical increase; but this is only to state the problem, and does not solve it - why did the number of Accepted Masons increase? William James Hughan had a theory of another kind; namely, that Speculative Freemasonry, of itself, "grew out of," or developed out of, Operative Freemasonry, and therefore his explanation of the Transition means that the Transition represented nothing but the mere passage of time. But this leaves too much unexplained. Why did not Speculative "grow out of" Operative centuries before? It had plenty of time. Why did it grow up out of it in England only, when Operative Freemasonry had been the same on the Continent as there? When the first Lodges either half Speculative or wholly Speculative were formed there was a vast amount of Operative Masonry outside those Lodges; why did not it develop into Speculative Freemasonry? There is an even larger amount of Operative building now, organized in hundreds of unions - is there anywhere in it any trace of Speculative Freemasonry in process of formation? If the whole body of Operative Freemasonry in Britain grew up and grew into Speculative Freemasonry, why is it that the history of our own Fraternity leads invariably back to a (comparatively) few and small permanent Lodges using copies of the Old Charges Neither the idea of growth nor of inevitable development can explain the Transition. Something special was at work, something new arose. Speculative Freemasonry did not come out of Operative Freemasonry in general, but out of that something new and something special. What that was has been already explained; in a few early permanent Lodges their members began to put Freemasonry to a new use, and whether this was done by the Operative members first or the Speculative members first does not matter; they both approved it, and they joined together in doing it.
If an historian had a sufficiently pictorial eye he could lay out the whole two and one-half centuries in the form of a panoramic picture. As this was unrolled from the top it would show, in one chronological portion of the picture after another, the following: There had always been much of what we now call Speculative in the earliest Operative Craft. It was not only the ideas, customs, and usages of the Lodges and the Craftsmen at work that we inherited, but the essentials of the whole Masonic Community. Our own particular Speculative Fraternity came to us through the Lodges which became permanent, and used the Old Charges beginning at about the middle of the Fourteenth Century. Accepted Masons took the same oath to preserve the secrets and not to violate the Landmarks as did Operative members. Their historic mission was not to destroy an old Fraternity in order to put a new one in its place (why go to that trouble?) but to preserve and to perpetuate the old Fraternity and yet at the same time to put it to a new use. The subsequent history of what they did proves that that new use was of very great and very vital importance to the world. There were some hundreds of self-constituted Lodges in England, Scotland, and Ireland before 1717 A.D. some of them wholly Operative, some wholly Speculative, some a mixture of both. When a few of these constituted a Grand Lodge in London in 1717 A.D., it did not disturb the local Lodges already at work. It was not until the new Grand Lodge System proved so extraordinarily effectual over the period about 1750 A.D., that the whole Fraternity became completely Speculative. It would be a mistake to suppose that this Transition was carried through by the Accepted (or non-Operative, or Speculative) members and Lodges only, and as against Operative opposition: Operative Lodges were always able to refuse to accept a non-Operative petitioner, and would have done so had they been in opposition; the Accepted Masons saw more clearly than the Operatives the possible universality and world importance of Freemasonry; nevertheless the Fraternity (speaking on the whole) was brought through the Transition by Operatives and Speculatives combined.
Superficially akin to Gould's theory that the Transition was effected by an adding of members and to Hughan's theory of inevitable growth was the theory, once widely held, that Speculative Freemasonry emerged from Operative because tradition has always had a powerful appeal to Englishmen. The Operative Masons, so the argument runs, kept up a set of customs and usages for many generations; after these customs and usages had ceased to have any value to Operative Masons non-Operatives continued to keep them going because they did not have the heart to see anything so venerable, or so beautiful (like old ivory) because of its age, brought to an end. According to this theory the Transition had consisted of nothing more than the willingness of a large number of non-Operatives to keep alive a set of customs after the men to whom those customs had belonged were no longer willing to continue them. This theory had almost everything wrong with it that could be wrong with a theory. Speculative Freemasonry began long before Operative Masons had ceased to keep up their usages and customs. Speculative Freemasonry has old customs and usages in it but does not consist of them - is not a repetition for the sake of repetition. It is possible to believe that a few Englishmen would rather continue old customs than see them die but the number of Masons in England has never been few. The theory cannot explain why some millions of Americans would be willing to keep up a set of old English customs - in the Revolutionary War Period when our National Fraternity was established, Americans were not enamored of old English customs!
The theory never had in it anything more than guesswork, and of an amateurish kind at that. But it was no more completely a piece of guesswork than was a companion theory which once had a vogue in the United States, and which was that Operative Freemasonry died, came to a dead stop, fell into ruins, and that a number of gentlemen of the clubable type set up in London a new Fraternity for which, for the sake of making it more venerable in appearance, and to give it a cachet of mystery or secrecy, they borrowed the trappings of defunct Freemasonry. If this theory were true historians would drop the Transition Period from the books, because there could have been no Transition; there was a dead end to Operative Freemasonry, there was then a short gap, and then a wholly new society was organized among the ruins. Of the many facts which stand ready to refute this amazing notion one will suffice; it completely ignores the many Speculative Lodges which were at work a century before 1717 A.D., it ignores the Speculative elements which were always in Operative Freemasonry, it ignores the fact that Operatives as much as Speculatives built up the Speculative Fraternity, and it ignores the fact that the new Grand Lodge of 1717 A.D., was not created out of hand, but was an action taken (even during its first two or three years) by at least twenty lodges which were in existence before 1717 A.D.
POTS

George Helmer FPS PM Norwood #90 GRA H Norwood #18 RAM

From Robert Macoy's "Dictionary of Freemasonry," c. 19th c.
MASONIC COLORS. Every grade of Masonry is furnished with its peculiar and emblematic color. An important and mystic meaning has always been applied to colors, and they are used as the distinguishing mark of different nations. The colors best known, and almost universally adapted to Masonry, are seven, viz:
1. BLUE. This is the great color of Masonry. It is the appropriate tincture of the Ancient Craft degrees. It is to the Mason an emblem of universal friendship and benevolence, teaching us that in the mind of a brother those virtues should be as extensive as the blue arch of heaven itself. It is, therefore, the only color, except white, which should be used in a Master Mason's Lodge. Besides the three degrees of Ancient Craft Masonry, this color is also to be found in several other degrees, especially of the Ancient and Accepted rite, where it bears various symbolic significations; all, however, more or less related to its original character, as an emblem of universal friendship and benevolence. This tincture was held in high veneration among all the nations of antiquity. It symbolically expressed heaven, the firmament, truth, constancy, and fidelity. 2. PURPLE, being formed by a due admixture of blue and scarlet, is intended to remind us of the intimate connection and harmony that exists between symbolic Masonry and the Royal Arch degree. In the religous services of the Jews purple is employed on several occasions. It is one of the colors of the curtains of the tabernacle, and is symbolical of the element of water. It is also used in the construction of the ephod and girdle of the High Priest, and the cloths for divine service. Among the Gentile nations of antiquity purple was considered rather as a color of dignity than of veneration, and was deemed an emblem of exalted office. Pliny says it was the color of the vestments worn by the early kings of Rome, and it has ever since. even to the present time, been considered as the becoming insignia of regal or supreme authority. 3. SCARLET, Red, or Crimson, for it is indifferently called by each of these names, is the appropriate color of the Royal Arch degree, and symbolically represents the ardor and zeal which should actuate all who are in possession of that sublime portion of Masonry. Scarlet was used as one of the vails of the tabernacle, and was an emblem of the elements of fire. Scarlet was, among the Jews, a color of dignity, appropriated to the most opulent or honorable. In the middle ages, those Knights who engaged in the wars of the crusades, and especially the Templars, wore a red cross as a symbol of their willingness to undergo martyrdom for the sake of religion. Scarlet is in the higher degrees of Masonry as predominating a color as blue is in the lower. These three colors--BLUE, PURPLE, and SCARLET--were called, in the early English lectures, "the old colors of Masonry," and were said to have been selected "because they are royal, and such as the ancient kings and princes used to wear; and sacred history informs us that the vail of the temple was composed of these colors." 4. WHITE is one of the most ancient as well as most extensively diffused of the symbolic colors. It is to be found in all the ancient mysteries, where it constituted, as it does in Masonry, the investure of the candidate. It always, however, and everywhere has borne the same signification, as the symbol of purity and innocence. White was the color of one of the curtains of the tabernacle, where it was a symbol of the element of earth. Among the ancients the highest reverence was paid to this color. It was, in general, the garment of the Gentile as well as ot the Hebrew priests in the performance of their sacred rites. It is regarded as the emblem of light, religious purity, innocence, virginity, faith, joy, and life. in the judge, it indicates integrity; in the sick man, humility; in the woman, chastity. We see, therefore, the propriety of adopting this color in the Masonic system, as a symbol of purity. This symbolism commences in the York rite, where the lambskin or white apron is presented to the Entered Apprentice as an emblem of purity of life and rectitude of conduct, and terminates in the Ancient and Accepted rite, where the Sovereign Inspectors of the 33d degree are invested with a white scarf as an emblem of that virtuous deportment, above the tongue of all reproach, which should distinguish the possessors of that exalted grade. 6. BLACK. As white is universally the emblem of purity, so black, in the Masonic ritual, is constantly the symbol of grief. This is perfectly consistent with its use in the world, where black has, from remote antiquity, been adopted as a garment of mourning. In Masonry this color is confined to but a few degrees, but everywhere has the same single meaning of sorrow. Black is in the world the symbol of the earth, darkness, mourning, wickedness, negation, death, and was appropriate to the Prince of Darkness. White and black together signify purity of life, and mourning or humiliation. 6. GREEN, as a Masonic color, is confined to a few of the degrees. It is employed as a symbol of the immutable nature of truth and victory. In the evergreen the Master Mason finds the emblem of hope and immortality. In all the ancient mysteries, this idea was carried out, and green symbolized the birth of the world, and the moral creation or resurrection of the initiate. 7. YELLOW. Of all the Masonic colors, yellow appears to be the least important, and the least used. It is a predominating color in a few of the degrees of the Ancient and Accepted rite. It was a significant symbol of the sun, of the goodness of God, of initiation or marriage, faith, or faithfulness. In an improper sense, yellow signifies inconstancy, jealousy, and deceit.
"The Builders" By Joseph Fort Newton Part 1, Chapter 5
This society was called the Dionysian Artificers, as Bacchus was supposed to be the inventor of building theaters; and they performed the Dionysian festivities. From this period, the Science of Astronomy which had given rise to the Dionysian rites, became connected with types taken from the art of building. The Ionian societies... extended their moral views, in conjunction with the art of building, to many useful purposes, and to the practice of acts of benevolence. They had significant words to distinguish their members; and for the same purpose they used emblems taken from the art of building.
--JOSEPH DA COSTA, Dionysian Artificers
We need not then consider it improbable, if in the dark centuries when the Roman empire was dying out, and its glorious temples falling into ruin; when the arts and sciences were falling into disuse or being enslaved; and when no place was safe from persecution and warfare, the guild of the Architects should fly for safety to almost the only free spot in Italy; and here, though they could no longer practice their craft, they preserved the legendary knowledge and precepts which, as history implies, came down to them through Vitruvius from older sources, some say from SoIomon's builders themselves.
--Leader Scott, The Cathedral Builders
CHAPTER V
The Collegia
I
SO far in our study we have found that from earliest time architecture was related to religion; that the working tools of the builder were emblems of moral truth; that there were great secret orders using the Drama of Faith as a rite of initiation; and that a hidden doctrine was kept for those accounted worthy, after trial, to be entrusted with it. Secret societies, born of the nature and need of man, there have been almost since recorded history began;[1] but as yet we have come upon no separate and distinct orders of builders. For aught we know there may have been such in plenty, but we have no intimation, much less a record, of the fact. That is to say, history has a vague story to tell us of the earliest orders of the builders. However, it is more than a mere plausible inference that from the beginning architects were members of secret orders; for, as we have seen, not only the truths of religion and philosophy, but also the facts of science and the laws of art, were held as secrets to be known only to the few. This was so, apparently without exception, among all ancient peoples; so much so, indeed, that we may take it as certain that the builders of old time were initiates. Of necessity, then, the arts of the craft were secrets jealously guarded, and the architects themselves, while they may have employed and trained ordinary workmen, were men of learning and influence. Such glimpses of early architects as we have confirm this inference, as, for example, the noble hymn to the Sun-god written by Suti and Hor, two architects employed by Amenhotep III, of Egypt.[2] Just when the builders began to form orders of their own no one knows, but it was perhaps when the Mystery-cults began to journey abroad into other lands. What we have to keep in mind is that all the arts had their home in the temple, from which, as time passed, they spread out fan-wise along all the paths of culture. Keeping in mind the secrecy of the laws of building, and the sanctity with which all science and art were regarded, we have a key whereby to interpret the legends woven about the building of the temple of Solomon. Few realize how high that temple on Mount Moriah towered in the history of the olden world, and how the story of its building haunted the legends and traditions of the times following. Of these legends there were many, some of them wildly improbable, but the persistence of the tradition, and its consistency withal, despite many variations, in a fact of no small moment. Nor is this tradition to be wondered at, since time has shown that the building of the temple at Jerusalem was an event of world-importance, not only to the Hebrews, but to other nations, more especially the Phoenicians. The histories of both peoples make much of the building of the Hebrew temple, of the friendship of Solomon and Hiram I, of Tyre, and of the harmony between the two peoples; and Phoenician tradition has it that Solomon presented Hiram with a duplicate of the temple, which was erected in Tyre.[3] Clearly, the two nations were drawn closely together, and this fact carried with it a mingling of religious influences and ideas, as was true between the Hebrews and other nations, especially Egypt and Phoenicia, during the reign of Solomon. Now the religion of the Phoenicians at this time, as all agree, was the Egyptian religion in a modified form, Dionysius having taken the role of Osiris in the drama of faith in Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor. Thus we have the Mysteries of Egypt, in which Moses was learned, brought to the very door of the temple of Solomon, and that, too, at a time favorable to their impress. The Hebrews were not architects, and it is plain from the records that the temple--and, indeed, the palaces of Solomon--were designed and erected by Phoenician builders, and for the most part by Phoenician workmen and materials. Josephus adds that the architecture of the temple was of the style called Grecian. So much would seem to be fact, whatever may be said of the legends flowing from it. If, then, the laws of buildin