The Legend of Enoch

Enoch, being inspired by the Most High, and in commemoration of a wonderful vision, build a Temple underground, and dedicated it to the Lord God Jehovah. His son, Methuselah, constructed the building, although he was not acquainted with his father's motives for the erection. The Temple consisted of nine brick vaults, situated perpendicularly beneath each other, and communicating by apertures left in the arch of each vault.

Enoch then cause a triangular plate of gold to be made, each side of which was a cubit long. He enriched it with the most precious jewels and stones, and encrusted the plate upon a stone of agate of the same form. On the plate he engraved, in ineffable characters, the true name of Diety, and, placing it on a cubical pedestal of white marble, he deposited the whole within the deepest arch.

When this subterranean building was completd, he made a door of stone, and attaching to it a ring of iron, by which it might be occasionally raised, he placed it over the opening of the uppermost arch. He then so covered it over that the aperture could not be discovered. Enoch himself was permitted to enter it but once a year; and on the Enoch, Methuselah and Lamech, and the destruction of the world by deluge, all knowledge of this Temple, and of the sacred treasure which it contained, was lost until, in much later times, it was accidentally discovered by another worth of Freemasonry, who, like Enoch, was engaged in the erection of a Temple of the same spot on Mt. Moriah.

The Legend goes on to inform us that after Enoch had completed the subterranean Temple, fearing that the principles of those arts and sciences which he had cultivated with so much assiduity would be lost in that general destruction of which he had received a prophetic vision. Therefore, he erected two pillars -- the one of marble, to withstand the influence of fire, and the other of brass, to resist the action of water. On the pillar of brass he engraved the history of the creation, the principles of the arts and sciences, and the doctrines of Speculative Freemasonry as they were practiced in his times. On the one of marble he inscribed the characters in hieroglyphics.

Enoch, having completed these labors, called his descendants around him on Mount Moriah, and having warned them in the most solemn manner of the consequences of their wickedness, exhorted them to forsake their idolatries and return once more to the worship of the true Supreme Being. Masonic tradition informs us that he then delivered up the government of the Craft to his grandson, Lamech, and disappeared from earth.