LEGENDA 
 
 LODGE OF PERFECTION 
 
 SOUTHERN JURISDICTION, U. S. A. 
 
 CHARLESTON. 
 
 1888.
 
 LEGEND A, I. 
 
 Jicnipa of firam. 
 
 2067090
 
 LEGEND A. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE ^ENIGMA OF HIRAM. 
 
 THE Divine Symbols and hieroglyphs that constitute what 
 has in all time been called the KOSMOS, the WORLD, the UNI- 
 VERSE, or the CREATION, which is represented by the Lodge, 
 have in all ages been misinterpreted. They are the manifesta- 
 tion of the Deity, the formulated expression and utterance of 
 His THOUGHT, the unfolding and succession of the manifold in 
 being from the Divine unity of Idea. It is of necessity that 
 the Symbol should always be capable of being misunderstood, 
 and, therefore, Omnipotence intended that they should be so ; 
 and these misinterpretations are the philosophies and the re- 
 ligions that have succeeded each other like shadows upon the 
 water. 
 
 The Universe is an enigma, of which the Sphynx is the 
 symbol. The whole Egyptian land was a great Book, and 
 the teachings of this Book were repeated, translated in 
 pictures, sculptures, architecture, in all the cities and in all 
 the temples. The Desert itself had its eternal teachings, 
 and its Word of Stone sat squarely upon the base of the 
 Pyramids, before which the colossal Sphynx has meditated 
 during so many ages, slowly burying itself in the sand. Its 
 head, mutilated by Time, is still visible above its tomb, as if 
 to disappear it only waited for a human voice to come and 
 explain to the New World the problem of the Pyramids. 
 
 Superstitions, it has been said, are religious forms that sur- 
 vive lost ideas. All once had, as their reason of being, a truth 
 no longer known, or a truth transfigured. Their very name,
 
 6 LEGENDA, I. 
 
 from the Latin superstes, signifies that which sunives. 
 They are the material relics of Ancient Knowledge or 
 Opinions. Once the meaning of the Sphynx, of the Assyrian 
 human-headed bulls and lions, of the cherubim, of the oxen 
 under the brazen laver, of the mystic-winged and many-eyed 
 creatures of Ezekiel, was known, at least to the Sages. Who 
 now possesses the key to that meaning ? 
 
 Nor is it only the Symbols of that first revelation which we 
 term Creation, that are misinterpreted. The Oracles, also, 
 have always spoken in enigmas, and whoso has not divined 
 their meaning has, in attempting it, died. The sacred Books 
 of the Hebrews are also Oracles a succession of symbols and 
 allegories which those who read them literally the least 
 understand. Who can interpret the Prophecies and the 
 Apocalypse ? 
 
 MASONKY also has its ancient Symbols, inherited from the 
 Mysteries uud the Kabaluh, and intended to veil and conceal 
 the truth from all except the Adepts. Like the religions, 
 also, Masonry gives false interpretations of its Symbols, to 
 mislead those who would not value the highest philosophical 
 truth, and the Profane to whom these interpretations may be 
 divulged. 
 
 The Statue of Truth is always veiled. Nature reluctantly 
 yields up to us her secrets, so that as yet we know them only 
 in part, and imperfectly. Science is a progressive revelation, 
 and the revelation by the written word is continuous ; its true 
 meaning, which is the revealing, being slowly evolved during 
 the march of the centuries. 
 
 Unfortunately, the Sages die, leaving no successors, and 
 the true interpretation of the Symbols that they used dies 
 with them ; but the false interpretations to which they re- 
 sorted survive. The Symbol itself is taken for the thing or 
 the truth symbolized. The symbolic ceremony is deemed 
 to possess the energy of salvation ; and to neglect a sacrifice
 
 LEGENDA, I. 7 
 
 or a Rite, or for an)* except the Priest to dare to use it, is re- 
 garded and punished as sacrilege: while dull mediocrity 
 invents tame and common interpretations, that make the 
 ceremony which once was solemn to be trivial, and the Symbol 
 itself to be worthless. 
 
 But when an interpretation is in part true, and in part 
 intentionally false or obscure, symbolism performs its own 
 accustomed office, requiring the Initiate to separate the True 
 from the Untrue by his own study and reflection, or to re- 
 main among the mass of those to whom the highest Truth is 
 of the least value. 
 
 Such an interpretation is that which follows. It is given 
 by an Adept, and, therefore, propounds the truth enigmatic- 
 ally, that which it plainly expresses being of less value than 
 that which it conceals or only hints at. 
 
 "Anarchy alone natters the prejudices of the multitude. 
 Absolute truths are not needed for the masses ; for otherwise 
 progress would be arrested, and life would cease in humanity 
 The ebb and flow of contrary ideas, the shock of opinions, 
 the passions that rule the intellect, determined always by the 
 dreams of the moment, are necessary to the intellectual 
 growth of the peoples." 
 
 " Few men, in any age," to use the energetic language of 
 the Oracle, "have heard the Light speak." The Light, indeed, 
 in the visible world, alternates with the Shadow ; they mingle 
 with each other, also, and the line between them is not to be 
 defined. So also it is with Truth and Error ; for Error is the 
 shadow of the Light. Errors, also, in science and philosophy, 
 often lead to the discovery of the truth ; and the intellect is 
 more profitably exercised in detecting them, and so for itself 
 extracting the gold from the ore, than in digesting the truths 
 which those who so discovered them teach. 
 
 Let the Initiate, then, winnow the Error from the Truth in 
 the following interpretation of a Masonic legend.
 
 8 LEGENDA, I. 
 
 "The Grand Kabalistic Association, known in Ei.rope 
 under the name of MASONRY, appeared all at once in the 
 world at the period when the Protest against the Church 
 came to break the Christian unity. The historians of the 
 Order do not know how to explain the origin of it. Some 
 ascribe it to a free association of Masons, formed at the time 
 of the building of the cathedral of Strasburg: others give 
 it Cromwell for founder, without troubling themselves to 
 inquire whether the rites of the English Masonry of the time 
 of Cromwell were not organized against that chief of the 
 Puritan anarchy ; and others are ignorant enough to attribute 
 to the Jesuits, if not the foundation, at least the continuation 
 and direction of this society, long secret and always mys- 
 terious. Rejecting this last opinion, which refutes itself, we 
 may reconcile the others, by saying that the Brethren-masons 
 (freres-mapons) borrowed from the builders of the Cathedral 
 of Strasburg their name and the emblems of their art ; and 
 that they were publicly organized for the first time in Eng- 
 land, under favor of its radical institutions, and in despite of 
 the despotism of Cromwell. 
 
 " We may add, that they have had the Templars for models, 
 the Roses-croix for fathers, and the Johannites for ancestors. 
 Their dogma is that of Zoroaster and Hermes ; their rule is 
 progressive initiation ; their principle, equality, regulated by 
 the hierarchy and universal fraternity : they are the continuers 
 of the school of Alexandria, heirs of all the ancient initiations ; 
 they are the depositaries of the secrets of the Apocalypse 
 and the Sohar ; the object of their worship is Truth, repre- 
 sented by the Light ; they tolerate all creeds, and profess but 
 one and the same philosophy ; they search for Truth alone, 
 teach only Eeality, and desire to lead all intelligences pro- 
 gressively to Reason. 
 
 " The allegorical object of Masonry is the rebuilding of the 
 Temple of Solomon : its real object is the reconstitution of
 
 LEGENDA, L 9 
 
 social unity, by the alliance of Keason and Faith; and the re- 
 establishment of the Hierachy, in accordance with knowledge 
 and virtue; with initiation and tests by means of degrees. 
 
 "Nothing is finer, we see, nothing grander than these 
 ideas; but unfortunately the doctrines of unity and of sub- 
 mission to the hierarchy have not been preserved in the uni- 
 versal Masonry. There soon sprung up a dissident Ma- 
 sonry, opposed to the orthodox, and the greatest calamities 
 of the French Revolution were the consequences of this 
 schism. 
 
 "The Freemasons have their sacred legend ; that of HIRAM 
 completed by that of CYRUS and ZOROBABEL. 
 
 "This is the legend of Hiram : 
 
 "When Solomon caused the Temple to be builded, he in- 
 trusted his plans to an architect named HIRAM or HARAM. 
 
 "This Architect, to establish order in the work, divided 
 the laborers according to their skill and experience ; and as 
 their number was very great, in order to be able io recognize 
 them, whether to employ them according to their capacity, or 
 to remunerate them according to their work, he gave to each 
 class, to the Apprentices, Fellows, and Masters, particular pass- 
 words and signs. 
 
 " Three Fellow-crafts who desired to usurp the rank of Mas- 
 ter, without being entitled to it by their deserts, lay in wait at 
 the three principal gates of t'.ie Temple, and when Hiram 
 was about to go forth, one of them demanded of him the 
 Masters' word, menacing him with his Rule. 
 
 " Hiram replied to him : ' 2 did not so receive the word that 
 you demand of me." 
 
 " The enraged Fellow-craft struck Hiram with his Rule of 
 iron, and inflicted on him the first wound. 
 
 " Hiram fled to another gate, and there found the second 
 Fellow-craft : the same demand was made and the same reply 
 given, and this time Hiram was struck with a square, or, as 
 others say, with a lever.
 
 10 LEGENDA, I. 
 
 "At the third gate was the third assassin, who finished the 
 Master with a blow of a mallet. 
 
 " The three Fellow-crafts afterward hid the body under a 
 pile of rubbish, and planted on this improvised grave a branch 
 of Acacia, and then fled, like Cain after the murder of Abel. 
 
 " Meanwhile Solomon, his Architect not returning, sent 
 nine Masters to seek him. The branch of acacia led them to 
 find the body; they drew it from the rubbish, and as it had 
 remained there for some days, they cried, upon raising it, 
 Macli-benacli ! which means, ( the flesh parts from the bones.' 
 
 "The last duties were performed to Hiram, and twenty- 
 seven Masters were then sent by Solomon to search for the 
 murderers. 
 
 "The first was surprised in a cave ; a lamp burned near 
 him, a rivulet ran at his feet, and a poniard was near him for 
 his defence. The Master who entered the cavern recognized 
 the assassin, seized the poniard, and stabbed him, saying 
 * NEKUM ! ' a word that means ' Vengeance? His head was carried 
 to Solomon, who was angered on seeing it, and said to him 
 who had killed the assassin : ' Wretch! did you not know that 
 I had reserved to myself the right to punish 9 Then all the 
 Masters prostrated themselves, and begged for pardon for him. 
 whom his zeal had carried too far. 
 
 " The second murderer was betrayed by a man who had 
 given him refuge. He was hidden in a grotto among the 
 rocks, near a burning bush, over which glowed a rainbow, 
 and a dog watched near him. The Masters eluded the vigi- 
 lance of the dog, seized the criminal, bound him, and led him 
 to Jerusalem, where he was put to death. 
 
 "The third assassin was killed by a lion, which it was 
 necessary to conquer in order to gain possession of the body. 
 But other versions say that the assassin defended himself 
 against the Masters with an axe, until they succeeded in dis- 
 arming him, when they took him to Solomon, who ordered 
 him executed, to expiate his crime.
 
 LEGENDA, L 11 
 
 " Such is the first legend. See now the explanation of it. 
 
 " SOLOMON is the personification of Knowledge and the 
 Supreme Wisdom. 
 
 "The Temple is the realization and figure of the Holy Em- 
 pire, the reign of Truth and Reason on the earth. 
 
 "Hiram is Man attaining Empire by means of Knowledge 
 and Sagacity. 
 
 " He governs by Justice and Order, rewarding every one 
 according to his works. 
 
 " Every degree of the Order has a Word which expresses its 
 meaning. 
 
 "There is for Hiram only one Word, but this is pronounced 
 in three different manners. 
 
 "In one manner for the Apprentices, pronounced by whom 
 it signifies Nature, and is explained by Toil. 
 
 " In another manner for the Fellow-crafts; and with them 
 it means Thought, explaining itself by Study. 
 
 "In another manner for the Masters; and in their mouth 
 it signifies Truth, a word that is explained bv Wisdom. 
 
 " This Word is that used to designate God, whose true name 
 is ineffable and incommunicable. 
 
 " So there are three degrees in the Hierarchy, as there are 
 three gates to the Temple. 
 
 " There are three principal rays in the Light ; 
 
 "There are three Forces in nature. 
 
 "These Forces are figured by the RULE, which unites ; the 
 LEVER, that raises; and the MALLET, that consolidates. 
 
 "The rebellion of the brutal instincts against the Hie- 
 rarchical aristocracy of wisdom, arms itself in succes- 
 sion with these three forces, which it turns aside from the 
 harmony. 
 
 " There are three typical rebels : 
 
 " The rebel against Nature ; 
 
 " The rebel against Knowledge ; 
 
 "The rebel against Truth.
 
 12 LEGENDA, L 
 
 " These were figured in the Hell of the ancients, by the 
 three heads of Cerberus. 
 
 " They are figured in the Bible by Korah, Dathan, and 
 Abiron. 
 
 " In the Masonic legend they are designated by names that 
 vary according to the Rites. 
 
 " The first is called YUBELA and ROMVEL. He strikes the 
 Grand Master with the Rule. 
 
 " It is the history of the first man put to death, in the name 
 of the Law, by human passions. 
 
 "The second is called YUBELO or HOBHEN. He strikes 
 Hiram with the Lever or the Square. 
 
 " So the popular Lever or the Square of a senseless Equal- 
 ity becomes the instrument of Tyranny in the hands of the 
 multitude, and wounds yet more severely than the Rule the 
 Royalty of Wisdom and Virtue. 
 
 "The third is called YUBELUM, Abairam, AJchirop, Gibs, 
 or Gravelot. He slays Hiram with the Mallet. 
 
 "As the brutal instincts do, when they attempt to create 
 Order in the name of Violence, and Fear by crushing Intel- 
 ligence." 
 
 " The branch of ACACIA ou the grave of Hiram is like the 
 Cross upon our altars. 
 
 " It is the Sign of knowledge surviving knowledge, the 
 green branch that announces another spring.*' 
 
 [The acacia, or, as it is to be read, akdkia, in the Greek 
 anaKia, from am}, a point, is that genus of trees to which 
 belong that which yields the gum arabic, the mezquite, and 
 the locust. It is the satah or satam wood of the Hebrew 
 writings, HC2^ DE2&* satah, satam, used in the 
 construction of the Tabernacle and the Temple, and there- 
 fore a Symbol of Holiness and Divine Truth. In the Greek, 
 ocHctHoS and anemia mean freedom from evil, ^""jp, Holy, 
 Holiness, the TEMPLE, or HOLY HOUSE. It is, therefore, not 
 the Symbol of Immortality alone, but of that life of innocence
 
 LEGENDA, I. 13 
 
 and purity for which the Faithful hope when they shall have 
 been raised up to a new and spiritual existence.] 
 
 ''When men have so troubled the order of nature, as the 
 slayers of Hiram did, Providence intervenes to re-establish it ; 
 as Solomon, symbol of the Infinite and Creative Wisdom, did 
 to avenge the death of Hiram. 
 
 " He who assassinated with the Kule dies by the poniard. 
 
 "He who struck with the Lever or the Square will die 
 under the axe of the law. This is the eternal sentence of the 
 Regicides. 
 
 "He who completed the murder with the Mallet, falls a 
 victim to the Force which he abused, and is strangled by the 
 Lion. 
 
 " The Assassin by the Rule is denounced by the very Lump 
 that gave him light, and the Spring at which he drinks. 
 
 " That is to say, he is subjected to the lex talionis. 
 
 "The Assassin by the Square will be surprised when his 
 vigilance is at fault, like a dog asleep, and he will be be- 
 trayed by his accomplices ; for Anarchy is the Mother of 
 Treason. 
 
 " The Lion that devours the Assassin by the Mallet, is one 
 of the forms of the Sphinx of (Edipus. 
 
 "And whosoever shall have conquered the Lion, will de- 
 serve to succeed to the dignity of Hiram. 
 
 " The body of Hiram, putrefied, shows that forms change, 
 but the spirit remains. 
 
 " The stream which flowed near the first murderer, refers 
 to the deluge which punished unnatural crimes. 
 
 "The Burning Bush and Rainbow, which cause the second 
 Assassin to be discovered, represent Light and Life de- 
 nouncing violences against Thought. 
 
 "In fine, the Lion vanquished represents the triumph of 
 Spirit over Matter, and the definitive submission of Force to 
 Reason. 
 
 " Since the beginning of the toil of the Spirit to build the
 
 14 LEGENDA, I. 
 
 Temple of Unity, Hiram has been killed many times, and 
 always raised again to life. 
 
 "He is ADONIS killed by the wild boar, OSIRIS assassinated 
 by Tuphon. 
 
 "He is PYTHAGORAS proscribed, ORPHEUS torn by the Bac- 
 chantes, HERMES, HORUS, MITHRAS, GAMA, ATYS, BALDER, 
 MOSES abandoned in the caves of Mount Nebo, JESUS put to 
 death by Judas, Caiaphas and Pilate. 
 
 " The true Masons, then, are those who persist in striving 
 to build the Temple according to the plan of Hiram. 
 
 "Such is the grand and principal legend of Masonry. The 
 rest are not less fine nor less profound, but we do not think it 
 right that we should divulge their mysteries ; though we have 
 received initiation of God and our labors alone, we regard the 
 secrets of High Masonry as our own. Having by our efforts 
 attained a scientific degree which imposes silence on us, we 
 hold ourselves more firmly bound by our convictions than by 
 our oath. Science is a Nobility which obliges ; and we will 
 not be unworthy of the princely crown of the Eose Crosses. 
 We, too, believe in the resurrection of Hiram. 
 
 "The Eites of Masonry are devoted to transmitting the 
 remembrance of the legends of initiation, and preserving it 
 among the Brethren. 
 
 "We shall, perhaps, be asked how, if Masonry is so sublime 
 and so holy, it could have been proscribed and so often con- 
 demned by the Church ? 
 
 "We have replied to this question in speaking of the 
 schisms and profanations of Masonry. 
 
 " Masonry is the Gnosis ; and the false Gnostics have 
 caused the true to be condemned. 
 
 "What compels them to secrecy, is not fear of the Light : 
 light is what they wish, seek for, and adore. 
 
 " They fear the profaners that is to say, the false interpre- 
 ters, the calumniators, the skeptics with their stupid laugh, 
 the enemies of every creed and all morality.
 
 LEGENDA, I. 15 
 
 "In our time, moreover, a great number of men who believe 
 themselves Free Masons, are ignorant of the meaning of their 
 Kites, and have lost the key of their Mysteries. 
 
 "They do not even any longer comprehend their symbolic 
 pictures, and as little understand the hieroglyph ical signs with 
 which the hangings of their Lodges are decorated. 
 
 " These pictures and signs are the pages of the book of the 
 absolute and universal knowledge. 
 
 "They can be read by the aid of the Kabalistic clues, and 
 hide nothing from the Initiate who possesses the keys of inter- 
 pretation of Solomon. 
 
 "Masonry has not only been profaned, but it has even 
 served as a veil and pretext for the plottings of anarchy, by 
 the secret influence of the avengers of Jacques de Molai, and 
 the continucrs of the schismatic work of the Temple. 
 
 "Instead of avenging the death of Hiram, his Assassins 
 have been avenged. 
 
 "The Anarchists have retaken the Rule, the Square, and 
 the Mallet, and written on them, ' LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRA- 
 TERNITY.' 
 
 " That is to say, Liberty for the covetous to plunder, 
 Equality for the basest, and Fraternity to destroy. 
 
 "These are the men whom the Church has always con- 
 demned, and always will condemn." 
 
 These interpretations are ingenious, but not correct. 
 
 In the Hebrew, Q*)n> Khrm, meant 'devoted, consecrated,' 
 devoted to the sacrifice as a victim. *~}]ft means 'white, an 
 aperture, a window.' The name of the Artificer is, in Kings, 
 Khirra; and in Chronicles, Khurm. Whether the second syl- 
 lable is am, iim or dm, is uncertain. 
 
 Also, if], khi, means 'life, living, alive;' fcOrP^rp^ 
 Aloha-Khia, 'the Living God.' And QfcO ram, meant 'was, 
 or shall, be raised, elevated.' 
 
 The English Masonry was Christian (which means Trinita- 
 rian) from the beginning, and in it Hiram was the representa-
 
 16 LEGENDA, I. 
 
 live of Christ. In the Scottish Masonry he represented 
 Jacques do Molui, and Charles I. of England. But in it he 
 became afterwards the representative of civil and religious lib- 
 erty. Khur or kur, in Persian, means 'the Sun, Light :' and 
 Hiram or Huram (Kliurom, um or dm), personifies moral, 
 political and religious Truth. He is the Apostle of Truth, 
 the Tribune of the People, the Reformer, the Defender of 
 Free Thought. 
 
 Christ, preaching the equality of men before God, and 
 making of those who followed him a Brotherhood, denouncing 
 oppressors and hypocrites, scourging the money-changers out 
 of the Temple, selecting his disciples among the poor of the 
 Earth, became the type, in Free Masonry, of the Man of the 
 People, endeavouring to enfranchise and elevate them. 
 
 To know whom his assassins personify, ask by what agen- 
 cies such men have always disappeared from the earth. 
 
 ROYALTY fears the PATRIOT, and, as fear is always cruel, 
 sends him 1o the scaffold. The PRIESTHOOD convicts the dar- 
 ing INQUIRER and philosophical THINKER, of Heresy or Con- 
 tumacy, and professing to abhor the shedding of blood, deliv- 
 ers him to the secular arm to be murdered. The PEOPLE, slave 
 of both the Crown and the Tiara, as a mob, or embodied as 
 soldiery, executes with brutal violence the savage will of both. 
 
 At the Station of the Junior Warden, Hiram is stricken with 
 the RULE, or twenty-four inch GAUGE, on the throat. At the 
 Station of the Senior Warden, with the angle of the SQUARE, 
 over the heart : and at the Station of the Master, with the SET- 
 TING-MAUL, on the. forehead. 
 
 In the THROAT are the organs of speech : the HEART was 
 for ages spoken of as the seat of the affections, and is so yet; 
 and the FOREHEAD is the Seat of the Intellect. 
 
 What is meant by the three implements? Evidently they 
 are symbolical. Men intending to extort a Secret, or take life 
 if refused, would not arm themselves with rules and small 
 squares. Webb and Cross, and the babblers of their school,
 
 LEGENDA, I. 17 
 
 who have never rightly interpreted a single Symbol, have not 
 attempted to interpret these. Their business has been to more 
 completely obscure the meaning of all the Symbols, by leading 
 thinkers and thoughtless alike away from the truth, by trivial 
 and worthless interpretations, whereby the Symbols have lost 
 all value. 
 
 The clue to the meaning of the first of the three Symbols, 
 the RULE, is, that in the Greek, a RULE, whether an implement, 
 or a rule of conduct, or law, is HUVGOV, canon; and the Law 
 of the Church of Rome, derived from various sources, has 
 always been called "The Canon Law." 
 
 The RULE, therefore, canon, is an apt Symbol of the Church ; 
 and, in connection with the putting to death of Jesus of Xaza- 
 reth, of the Jewish Church, represented by Annas and Caia- 
 phas, the High Priests, Avho most urgently demanded and 
 urged the People to demand the crucifixion of Christ, before 
 Pilate and Herod, even inciting them, when Pilate desired 
 to release him, to demand the release instead, of the thit-f, 
 Barabbas. 
 
 The Jewish Priesthood at Jerusalem desired to silence Christ, 
 being exasperated by his denunciations of their hypocrisy 
 and vices : and therefore the Junior Warden, with the RULE, 
 Symbol of the Pontifical and Sacerdotal Power, smote Hiram 
 on the throat, where the organs of speech are. 
 
 Augustus Caesar became the absolute Tyrant of Rome, not by 
 usurping power, but by uniting in his own person all the 
 great offices of the State, and so investing himself with all the 
 powers of Government. Possessed of all Civil and Judicial 
 Power, he also became possessor of all Religious Power, by be- 
 coming Poutifex Maxirnus ; and all this accumulation of pow- 
 ers his Successors inherited. 
 
 The rigid, unbending Square of Steel, its two arms uniting 
 to form the unyielding unity of the right angle, is an apt Sym- 
 bol of the Imperial Power of Rome, union of all Civil and all 
 Religious Power, a hard, harsh, unrelenting, merciless Des- 
 2
 
 18 LEGENDA, I. 
 
 pofism, its laws the edicts of an arbitrary will, and, whether 
 just or unjust, executed without ruth or pity. 
 
 Wherefore, and because every Despotism, jealous, suspicious, 
 and cruel, because suspicion and jealousy are cowardly, and 
 always cruel, crushes without mercy or remorse the affections 
 of the heart, upon mere suspicion sends the husband or father 
 to Siberia, or to hard labour in mines, or to a dungeon for life, 
 consigns to exile, imprisonment, or death, even the nearest 
 blood-relations of the Tyrant, lest they should have partizans, 
 and the disaffected should gather around them, and imperil 
 the Tyrant's tenure of the throne, the Senior Warden smites 
 Hiram with the Angle of the Square over the heart, the Seat of 
 the Affections. 
 
 The Maul or Mallet, like the Club, a brutal weapon which 
 crushes and defaces the image of God in Humanity, is a fit 
 Symbol of the mob, blind and unreasoning, beating down and 
 crushing with brute force whatever resists its mad rage, or has 
 excited its insane suspicions. Utterly without reasoning, and 
 hating cultivation and enlightenment, it looks upon the men 
 of thought, the Statesmen and Scholars, and Thinkers, as its 
 enemies, and like Jack Cade, considers knowledge a crime. 
 Wherefore, at the Station of the Master, Hiram is stricken with 
 the Setting-Maul upon the forehead, Seat of the Intellect, and 
 falls stunned and crushed at the feet of the third Assassin. 
 
 Reason and Intellect have, in all ages, been found powerless, 
 as they still are, to oppose a Military Despotism or organized 
 Anarchy, in which alike the base and the brutal govern, and tho 
 good and the wise serve. The Revolutionary Tribunal, the 
 Star Chamber, the Military Commission, Tribunals that sit 
 sworn to condemn, and girded with bayonets, are the embodi- 
 ments of this brute Force, and strike with its Club of Steel at 
 the brain of Constitutional Freedom. It is the people that 
 clamors for the blood of the Patriot; and the Soldiery is but 
 the mob, organized and directed by a single will an instru- 
 ment, wielded like the Mace, blind and unreasoning as fate. In
 
 LEGENDA, I. 19 
 
 the hand of Cyril it smites Hypatia, the Virgin enamored of 
 the old philosophy : in that of Marat it tears asunder the white 
 limbs of the Princess Lamballe, and offers the last indignities 
 to her palpitating flesh. It howls after Rienzi as he treads the 
 road that leads to the scaffold: it digs up the bones of Crom- 
 well at the will of an English Monarch, who becomes a pen- 
 sioner of the Throne of France. It followed Christ with exe- 
 crations as he staggered under the crushing Aveight of the 
 Cross: it lauded Jeffries when he murdered under the forms of 
 English justice: it slaughtered the Grand Pensionary De Witt: 
 it yelled for the blood of Vergniaud, and would, if he had been 
 unsuccessful, have hounded Washington to the scaffold as a 
 Traitor. It betrays and abandons its chiefs, and does not, like 
 Iscariot, repent, but obtains absolution for its own sins by as- 
 senting to the sacrifice of those whom it forced into rebellion 
 against the Throne, or the voluntary union of States. There 
 is always a scape-goat devoted to Azaze), a sacrifice to expiate 
 the sins of the multitude ; and God permits the people to be 
 base, in order to demonstrate the legitimacy of the despotisms 
 of the Caesars, the Cromwells, and the Xapoleons. 
 
 The Crown itself is but a symbol, and Royalty is but the 
 most common type of tyranny. The Kings of the mob are des- 
 pots also, and free States, like Athens or Sparta, subjugating 
 other free States, and animated by a vindictive revenge, strike 
 with the Rule at the throat, their anger and hatred taking the 
 form of law, and prohibiting the discussion of human or con- 
 stitutional rights. When, among Republics, Force decides 
 erroneously, as it always does, it becomes a crime, sometimes 
 called Treason, to be the advocate and defender of the Truth, 
 or even to re-state the facts of History. 
 
 The Mitre and Tiara also are but symbols, and the Pontifi- 
 cate but the most usual mode in which spiritual despotism 
 manifests itself. Everywhere, and in every age, the Priest 
 covets temporal power ; and in Republics, the pulpit becomes 
 the Tribune, and the dogmas and cruel angers of the Mountain
 
 20 LEGENDA, I. 
 
 of Jacobinism become a part of the religion of Christ. The 
 Sanctuary goes back to the days of Moses and Joshua for its 
 precedents, and the Creed persecuted yesterday becomes the 
 persecutor of to-day. In all ages, the Priesthood, hater equally 
 of what it styles Heresy, and of true Liberty, makes Thought 
 and Opinions crimes. That murderously cruel Agency, the 
 Inquisition, was sanctified by being called " The Holy Office; '* 
 as wars of religious persecution have been baptized by the 
 Church as " Holy Wars." 
 
 " He who assassinated by the Rule, dies by the poniard. 
 . . . He who struck with the Lever or the Square will die 
 under the axe of the Law. This is the eternal Sentence of the 
 Regicides." 
 
 Caesar falls, pierced by the dagger of Brutus. The Tyrant 
 is deemed the enemy of the human race, and the Neros, Caligu- 
 las, Domitians, and Robespierres, like the Tarquins and the 
 Appii, are wild beasts whom it seems lawful to slay by any 
 means whatsoever. The victims of the Autocrat of the Tatars 
 and Cossacks in Poland, and the countless Exiles sent to die in 
 Siberia, are at last avenged by the Nihilist bomb that slays an 
 Emperor of Russia. But the truer Regicides than those who 
 so assassinate, or those who try and condemn the false and 
 faithless, or feeble King, the Charles or the Louis, are those 
 who assassinate the Kings of Thought, the Royalty of the In- 
 tellect. Justice is slow, but it at length overtakes the persecut- 
 ing Church, arraigns it before the great Tribunal of the Na- 
 tions, and smites it with the axe of Justice, wherever it may 
 have been enthroned, and under whatsoever name it may have 
 usurped the prerogative of God. The blood of the Huguenot, 
 the Covenanter, and the Quaker, the Sicilian Vespers, and the 
 Eve of St. Bartholomew are always avenged at last by the jus- 
 tice of Omnipotence. 
 
 Tyranny is dethroned by the Intellect of which it consti- 
 tutes itself the patron, and by the burghers and the commons 
 to whom it grants privileges, that they may be bribed to sus-
 
 LEGENDA, L 21 
 
 tain it with moneys, and aid it in crushing the Nobles that en- 
 danger the power of the Crown : and the enemies of the Church 
 its Luthers and Wesleys always spring from its own loins. 
 Its own children turn upon it and rend it. It was the Monk 
 ofEinsliehen that wounded the Romish Church unto death; 
 and the Church of England has been, like Protestantism in 
 Germany and Xew England, the nursing-mother of her dead- 
 liest foes. 
 
 But what if there should be other and profounder meanings 
 than these, dangerous if known to the multitude, and only 
 darkly hinted at by the Adepts ? 
 
 What if KnuR-Chr, Symbol of the LIGHT and representative 
 of the Sex, and himself typified at his summer and winter 
 solstices by Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evan- 
 gelist, were also the Symbol of that Divine and Perfect TRUTH 
 that dazzles the eyes of all except the Eagles and the Hawks, 
 which in ancient Egypt were sacred to ATUM, AMUX-RA, and 
 MEXDES, the great Gods ! 
 
 This Divine and perfect TRUTH, known only to the Iliero- 
 phants and the Sages, and of which Herodotus, Hermes, and 
 Plutarch speak in enigmas and by obscure hints, has often died 
 and risen again from the dead. Wounded unto death by that 
 literal interpretation of the holy writings that has been so 
 fruitful of narrow and short-sighted creeds, it lived again and 
 became immortal for the Initiates, when the Christ raised it, 
 as he did Lazarus, its personification, from the tomb. The 
 Rulejmdi the Square are apt symbols of the rectangularity and 
 stiff precision of that interpretation which makes a figurative 
 Oriental book to have been written, as it were, in Geneva, or 
 by an unimaginative Puritan or Presbyterian. 
 
 " The Letter killetli ; hit the Spirit vivifies." The Rule 
 and Square of a stunted and pedantic verbal interpretation 
 wounded this Divine Truth unto the death ; and at last Or- 
 thodoxy always resorts to the Mace or Mallet of Force, with 
 which the Priests slaughtered the sacrificial victim at the
 
 22 LEGENDA, I. 
 
 bloody altar which Israel borrowed from the worshippers of 
 Baal and of Moloch, and whose horns dripping witli gore re- 
 vealed its origin. Thus read, the sacred oracles of all nations, 
 intelligible to the Sages, are fruitful of idolatries among the 
 vulgar. All the mythologies are but allegories accepted as the 
 recitals of facts ; the Truth hidden under the veil cf the Sym- 
 bol remaining invisible within the Holy of Holies, where the 
 Visible Presence dwells for the true Initiate between the 
 cherubim.
 
 LEGEXDA. II. 
 
 31 enigma of (be Sphpx
 
 THE 
 
 ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 
 
 IT is in its antique Symbols and their occult meaning 
 that the true secrets of Freemasonry consist. These must 
 reveal its real nature and true purposes ; and in these, also, 
 consists its superiority over all other Associations. 
 
 ISTot all its Symbols are ancient. Some were adopted from 
 the English and Scottish Craft of Stone-Masonry, when those 
 who created the order, somewhat before the beginning of the 
 eighteenth century, assumed the name of Free-Masons, by 
 which, in the old English statutes, those who worked in free 
 stone, as contradistinguished from those who worked in 
 rough stone, were known.* And some of the Symbols now 
 
 * The Statute of Labourer? [25 EDW. III.. Slat. 1] had this provision : Item qe carpen- 
 ters, masons, teglers, et auters coverours (or overours) des mesons, ne preignent le jour pur 
 lour otereygne forsqe en manere come Us soloient ; cest assaver mestre carpenter Hi d. 
 et an/re ii d. mestre mason de franche piere iv. d. et aittre mason Hi d. et leur serraniz 
 i d. ob. ; teguler Hi d. et son garceon i d. ob., d-c. ; the translation whereof in the Statutes 
 at Large i?, " Also that Carpenter?, Masons, Tilers, and other workmen of Houses, shall 
 not take by the day for their work, but in manner as they were wont ; that is to say, a 
 Master Carpenter three-pence, and another two-pence ; a Master Freemason four-pence, 
 and other Masons three-pence, and their servants one penny half-penny ; Tylers three- 
 pence, and their knaves one penny half-penny, &c. 
 
 The Statute 34 Ei>w. III., Chap, ix , entitled "The Statute of Labourers confirmed, 
 altered and enforced," provided that " the Carpenters and Masons take from henceforth 
 wages by the day, and not by the week nor in other manner ; and that the Chief Masters 
 of Carpenters and Masons [les chiefs mestres des Carpenters et Maceons] take four-pence 
 by the day ; and that all alliances and covines of Masons and Carpenters, and congre- 
 gations, chapters, ordinances, and oaths betwixt them made or to be made, shall be 
 from henceforth void and wholly annulled ; go that every Mason and Carpenter, of 
 what condition soever he be, shall be compelled by his master to whom he serveth, to 
 do every work that to him pertaineth to do, either of free <tone or of rough stone, [ou dt 
 fraunche pere ou de grosse pere] . And also every Carpenter in his degree. 11 
 
 And in the Statute 2 & 3 EDW.VI., Chap, xv., entitled " An act touching Victuallers
 
 26 THE .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 
 
 used in the Blue Lodges of the United States are of still 
 more recent manufacture ; as, for example, Time combing 
 out the ringlets of the Virgin's hair, and the two parallel 
 lines with the Holy Bible resting upon them. 
 
 Freemasonry has been many different things, at different 
 periods, and in the hands of different persons. It is not one 
 and the same thing everywhere now. In some countries it is 
 now a political association, its degrees having for its Initiates 
 no philosophical signification whatever. In the United 
 States, the Blue Degrees teach morality only, refuse to inter- 
 meddle with questions political or religious, and require only 
 a belief in God, and, faintly, in the immortality of the soul ; 
 except so far as they declare the Holy Bible to be the rule 
 and guide of man's conduct, and the inspired Word of God ; 
 which, if it were not evaded in practice, by the admission of 
 Hebrews, would make the Masonry of the United States a 
 strictly Christian Association. In the earlier part of the 
 eighteenth century, Freemasonry was, for many of its Initiates, 
 the teaching of the Hermetic philosophy. There are, we are 
 told, six different Kadoshes, that which belongs to the Ancient 
 and Accepted Scottish Kite being the veritable philosophical 
 Kadosh : and so there have been, and still are, several Free- 
 masonries, of which this Rite is the only true philosophical one. 
 
 It has been objected to us, that in our lectures we under- 
 value that which is absurdly called " Symbolic Masonry," as 
 if any Masonry could be not symbolic. 
 
 It is quite true that w r e should not value it, if we saw noth- 
 ing in the Symbols of the Blue Lodge beyond the imbecile 
 
 and Handicraftsmen," we find " the Craft, mystery or occupation of Victuallers" spoken 
 of. and provision " that no person or person* shall at any time after the first clay of April 
 next coming, interrupt, deny, let, or obstruct any Free Mason, Bough Mai-on, Carpenter, 
 Bricklayer, &c., to work in any of the paid crafts." 
 
 And in the Statute 3 & 4 EDW. VI., Chap, xx., repealing a certain branch of the act last 
 before mentioned, and reciting it, we find " the Artificers and Craftsmen of the arts, 
 crafts, and mysteries aforesaid" spoken of, and " the Free-men, being artificers of the 
 crafts, arts, swdmysteriet aforesaid."
 
 THE .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 27 
 
 pretences of interpretation of them contained in the ordinary 
 sterile instruction which we owe to Webb and his predeces- 
 sors. These misinterpretations are not so much guesses at the 
 true meaning, as merely arbitrary and unwarranted expla- 
 nations, invented with but a moderate degree of ingenuity, 
 and no more authoritative or genuine than any others that 
 an ingenious fancy might invent to-day. To pretend that 
 they have been transmitted to us from antiquity is a mere 
 fable. By the same process, an Egyptian hieroglyph might 
 be made to mean anything. 
 
 . To these pretended interpretations it is owing, and to those 
 blind guides who look no further into Masonry, that intelligent 
 men iind so little to attract and interest them in Masonic 
 Symbolism, and that much which is found in the degrees seems 
 trivial and sometimes absurd. 
 
 Freemasonry must once have had other and very different 
 purposes, and other and vastly more interesting and impor- 
 tant objects, than those for which, in the United States and 
 England, at least, it now exists. All of its symbols, that are 
 not merely modern inventions, have a concealed meaning, 
 which never appeared in the Liturgies or Rituals, these con 
 taining only hints cautiously given, and ideas easily misunder- 
 stood (and so intended to be) by all but the Adepts. 
 
 The legends of the different degrees, that of the third in- 
 cluded, and those which purport to give historical accounts of 
 the progress and transmission of Masonry during the Middle 
 Age, and up to the year 1700, are told as if they contained 
 statements of tacts. So were the parables of Jesus of 
 Kazareth, spoken by him to his disciples, and which they 
 found hard to understand. "We have not felt at liberty to 
 discard them. But these legends are neither historical nor 
 traditional ; and in that respect it is true to say that Masonry 
 has no real traditions, but only inventions. There is not the
 
 28 THE ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 
 
 slightest evidence that the legend of the third degree is true. 
 It is not historical, and it has not come to us by tradition. 
 It is allegorical ; and its signification is revealed by the name 
 of the Hero of the legend in its resemblance to HERMES. 
 The accounts given of the connection of the Masons with the 
 rebuilding of the Second Temple are simply allegorical, having 
 a meaning which you may hereafter come to know: and the 
 recitals of the career of the Perfect Elect have no foundation 
 iu fact. They are but allegorical and legendary. We pre- 
 serve them, but we do not give you or the world solemn as- 
 surances of their truth, or gravely pretend that they are his- 
 torical or genuine traditions. 
 
 If the Initiate is permitted for a little while to think so, it 
 is because he may not prove worthy to receive the Light ; 
 and that, if he should prove treacherous or unworthy, he 
 should be able only to babble to the Profane of legends and 
 fables, signifying to them nothing, and with as little apparent 
 meaning or value as the seeming jargon of the Alchemists. 
 In times when it is unpopular or dangerous to teach the 
 truth, Wisdom sometimes wisely wears the mask of Folly, 
 and many of the grotesque fables of the old mythologies and 
 of the myths that came afterward to be regarded as history, 
 had a like origin. 
 
 But when it is gravely and persistently attempted to trans- 
 form mere follies and pretended traditions into historical 
 facts, to deny or doubt which is to be heretical or sceptical, 
 and these pretended facts of history are imposed upon a 
 whole Order and upon the world, and excite the derision and 
 contempt of men of learning, it is time to endeavor, from 
 the mass of historical falsehoods, to extricate the simple truth. 
 If the fabulous and the false were ever useful to Masonry, they 
 have ceased to be so now, and it is able to stand alone without 
 their support.
 
 THE ENIGMA OF THE SPHINX. 29 
 
 That the Freemasonry of the present day dates more, at the 
 most, than a few years back of the year 1700, is as utterly un- 
 sustained by evidence or tradition entitled to respect as the 
 pretences that it is in any way or degree the successor of or 
 connected with the Dionysian architects or the German 
 workers in stone, or the English or Scottish Freemasons of 
 the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, or as the 
 fables of the holding of a Grand Lodge at York, by the son of 
 Athelstanc, or of the existence of a Grand Lodge in that place 
 before the year 1780, or of Encampments of Masonic Tem- 
 plars anywhere in England from time immemorial. 
 
 There is no evidence that there was any revival of Free- 
 masonry in England in 1717, or that the Lodges and Socie- 
 ties of operative Stone Masons then became bodies having no 
 connection whatever with the operative " Art, Craft, and Mys- 
 tery." There was, on the contrary, then or not long before, 
 the institution of a new Association, for purposes carefully con- 
 cealed, and which, for a concealed reason, assumed the name 
 of Freemasonry. 
 
 "We think that the concealed reason for assuming that name 
 was, that the Hebrew word Amim means both a Mason and 
 faithful or loyal; and that the new associates called themselves 
 Masons, because of this double meaning of the Hebrew word, 
 and because the Initiates were anciently called The Faithful ; 
 and we also think that the new Association was first estab- 
 lished in Scotland, by adherents of the House of Stuart, 
 represented Charles I. by Hiram, and meant by the word 
 Mason, one faithful and loyal to that House. 
 
 There are concealed meanings, also, beyond any question, 
 in words and phrases where, as yet, such meanings are 
 unsuspected; as there were in the name of the Master and 
 Architect, in the two grips that fail and the one that suc- 
 ceeds, in the names of the assassins, in the Symbolic Tern-
 
 30 THE .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYXX. 
 
 pie, its erection, its destruction, and its rebuilding, and in the 
 Triads of the Lodge and ceremonial. Such meanings have 
 already been found in questions and answers aid phrases 
 which had seemed meaningless or absurd, as in the " chalk, 
 charcoal, and clay," and the clothing of " blue and gold" 
 of the Master. The real meaning of the substitute for the 
 Master's word is concealed with singular ingenuity; and in 
 this and other cases, ignorance has, by its interpolations, 
 superadded a second veil, more impenetrable than the first. 
 
 We do not mean that there are these concealed meanings in 
 all the degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Kite. 
 Some of them, like other and more modern degrees, never 
 had any particular meaning or significance or purpose. The 
 inventors of degrees were not always adepts. 
 
 It is not Blue Masonry itself that we undervalue. Nor do 
 we undervalue its symbols and legends. We contemn only 
 the untrue explanations of them. They are themselves full of 
 interest to us, and are worthy to be the subjects of incessant 
 study. It may be that we 0iv?;'-estimate them. For we think 
 that many of the Symbols had their origin in the infancy 
 and at the source of civilization, that their interpretations 
 were for many centuries transmitted from one to another of 
 the adepts, and that many have been lost in the long passage. 
 
 Of other portions of the Symbolism, not more than two 
 centuries old, there were also, we think, concealed interpreta- 
 tions, indicating the political and religious doctrines and 
 purposes of those who used the degrees, invented the DOW 
 Symbols, and appropriated the old. If this is to undervalue 
 the three degrees, words have lost their meaning. 
 
 It seems to us that Masonic students, seeking to learn 
 the real meaning of the Symbols of the Blue Lodge, have 
 adopted wrong methods, sought in the wrong direction for the 
 keys of interpretation, looked over and beyond that which
 
 THE ENIGMA OF THE SPHYXX. 31 
 
 lay at their feet and close to them all around, into a distant 
 darkness, lighted only by the delusive gleams of ignes fatui. 
 We do not speak of the babblers who have merely followed 
 the old track, repeated the old commonplaces, and incubated 
 only on the mysterious texts ; but of the few real students 
 who have endeavored by real scholarship to interpret the 
 obscure oracles and elucidate the symbols of the Lodge. 
 
 These have overlooked the obvious truth that the symbols 
 of antiquity were not used to reveal, but to conceal, like the 
 hieroglyphs, the idols, and the sacred language of the Brah- 
 mins : that each is an enigma to be solved, and not a lesson to 
 be read ; a hieroglyph to be deciphered, and not the letter 
 of a vulgar alphabet, familiar to all. The symbols of the wise 
 have in all ages become the idols of the vulfjar. "What! is 
 this the Builder?" seems to us as far from being a true inter- 
 pretation, as "marrow in the bone/' That which is so 
 rendered, and the necessity of the presence of three, can be 
 made to reveal, we think, a wholly different meaning. 
 
 We do not believe that the meaning of the Blue Degrees or 
 their symbols, or of any other of the degrees, is to be learned 
 by explorations among the rubbish of Egyptian antiquity. 
 Some of 1 the symbols are to be found there, and, older still, in 
 the religious mysteries of other countries ; but the explanations 
 were never written, for any to read who chose. Like the oracles 
 of the Gods, they were always covered with a veil, spoken 
 of in enigmatical language, and false interpretations of them 
 publicly given, to mislead those to whom it was not deemed 
 wise to intrust them. This was done in all the mysteries, to 
 the end that it might be known, after a time, who among the 
 many had the intelligence, the zeal, and the eagerness for 
 knowledge, that could enable them to divine or entitle them 
 to receive, in a higher circle, the true explanations, know the 
 mysterious secrets, and become possessed of the Holy doctrine.
 
 32 THE ^ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 
 
 We think that these secret meanings are always concealed 
 in one manner and upon one plan, the same as those by which 
 the Alchemists and Hermetic philosophers and Kabalists 
 concealed their meaning under the double veil of their jargon 
 and its pretended interpretation, the true signification being 
 only hinted at and perhaps never openly disclosed. We think 
 that there is less that is really trivial in the ceremonial of the 
 Blue Degrees than appears upon its face ; and that almost 
 everything has an occult significance, much of which is per- 
 haps so completely lost, that it may never be discovered. 
 We doubt if we yet know the meaning of some of the simplest 
 things: and we are sure that very little is correctly explained 
 in the Blue Lodge, even the preparation of the Candidate, 
 and the relative positions of the Compasses and the Square in 
 the different degrees. 
 
 We know that the mysteries of Mithra were practised in 
 Rome even after Christianity became the State religion 
 of the Empire. There is no reason to doubt that the succes- 
 sion of Initiates was continued until the times of the latest 
 Crusades, in Syria and Asia Minor. It is known that the 
 Ismaelites had secret ceremonies of some kind, and they still 
 survive among the Druses. Such institutions, in such a 
 country, do not die out. The testimony given when Philip 
 and Clement crushed the order of the Temple, proved at least 
 the fact that the Knights had brought from the East some 
 ceremony of secret initiation that the Pope hated, and per- 
 haps the King feared. The knowledge of the rites and 
 symbols of these initiations, even if confined to a few, was 
 not likely to be wholly lost among the successors of the 
 Templars, who would, on the contrary, cling the more firmly 
 to it because they were persecuted. The Roman de la Rose 
 is symbolical, and so in the highest degree is the Divina Corn- 
 media of Dante. The Rosicrucians and the Alchemists, all
 
 THE ENIGMA OF THE SPHINX. 33 
 
 of whom were anti-papal, and the Hermeticists, had some 
 knowledge of the ancient Initiations. Of this there is evi- 
 dence enough. Naturally we should not expect to find it 
 openly avowed. 
 
 Maier says : " Like the Pythagoreans and Egyptians, the 
 Rosicrucians exact vows of silence and secrecy. Ignorant 
 men have treated the whole as a fiction ; but this has arisen 
 from the five years' probation to which they subject even well 
 qualified servitors, before they are admitted to the higher 
 mysteries ; and within this period they are to learn how to 
 govern their own tongues." 
 
 Michael Maier wrote a work especially dedicated to " that 
 Order which has hitherto lain concealed, but is now made 
 known by the report of the Fraternity, and their admirable 
 and probable confession ;" and he is said to have transplanted 
 the Rosicrucianism of Andrea from Germany into England. 
 
 At all events, we know that early in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury, many of the learned heads in England were occupied 
 with theosophy, kabalism, and alchemy. Chief among these 
 was Dr. Robert Fludd, who began to write in 1616, and died 
 in 1637. He wrote t}iQ jSummwn JSonum, published in 1629, 
 and an Apology for the Rosicrucians, published in 1617. 
 He was intimate with Maier, while the latter was in England, 
 and as the books published in Germany, relating to alchemy 
 or other occult knowledge, were sent to England and speedily 
 translated, he could easily have become acquainted with the 
 three works of Andrea. 
 
 About 1633 the name of Rosicrucians was dropped in Eng- 
 land, and that of Sophoi, Sages or Adepts, adopted. " We 
 transmute," said Fludd, "the dead stones into living philo- 
 sophical stones." Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, was one of 
 this sect, who, as is well known, was received into a Lodge of 
 Operative Masons. He, with William Lilly, Drs. Wharton 
 3
 
 34 THE .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 
 
 and Hewson, and others, established a Society which had some 
 meetings at Warrington, about 1646, before it was finally- 
 settled in London. Their purpose was to construct, in the 
 literal sense of the word, the House of Solomon on the Island 
 of Bensalem, in secret, and they clothed their purpose in 
 symbols. Nicolai of Berlin says that they first erected the 
 pillars of Hermes, from whose holy sentences lamblichus 
 answered all the doubts of Porphyry. Then they advanced, 
 by a ladder of seven steps, to a chequered pavement, and 
 were shown the symbols of the Creation or the work of five 
 days. And, Nicolai says, " to cover their secret and mysterious 
 meetings, they got admitted, in London, into the Masons' 
 Company, and held their meetings at the Masons' Hall, in 
 Masons' Alley, Basinghall-street, and as freemen of London 
 could take the name of Freemasons." 
 
 There would of course be no history or record of the origin of 
 the new Initiation. There is none of the origin of the mysteries 
 or of any Ancient Order. Their first beginnings are always 
 secret, and not intrusted to the treachery of written records. 
 
 It is certain that the Association or Order became suddenly 
 and at a bound, a different thing from that which it was 
 before, ceasing at once to be operative, and multiplying its 
 members with great rapidity among all classes of men. It is 
 especially nonsensical to derive Masonry in its present form 
 from the Steinmetzen and Operative Masons, while admitting 
 that neither of these ever practised anything like the Master's 
 Degree, in which, it may be said, Blue Masonry wholly con- 
 sists. We know that the Degree had no existence until the 
 year 1723, perhaps a year or two later. It would naturally 
 be confined to a few, at first, and kept a profound secret. 
 
 Made in this way, probably by Desaguliers and his as- 
 sociates, it is in one sense modern, much more so .than the 
 Croix ; but in another it is of an unknown antiquity;
 
 .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 35 
 
 for it had the symbols and the symbolic ceremony, ii its chief 
 features, that were first used by the Hierophants in India, and 
 afterward carried into Assyria, Egypt, Phoenicia, Persia, and 
 Greece ; and it has condensed, as it were, into these symbols, 
 all the great and mysterious truths of the old Theosophy and 
 Philosophy. It is, indeed, to those who can read its symbols 
 aright, philosophy embodied in and taught by Symbols. 
 
 Surely this is not to undervalue the Masonry of the Blue 
 Lodges, in all the Degrees of which the Ancient Symbols are 
 found intermingled with modern ones, adopted and adapted 
 to mislead all but the Sages and the Adepts. Thus viewed, 
 Freemasonry is the heritage given to us by the remotest Past ; 
 the greatest, the oldest, the most venerable of all human 
 institutions. Its so-called traditions are but Symbols and 
 Enigmas that speak an intelligible language to the Adept, 
 who knows that they are neither the recital of facts verified 
 by history, nor actual occurrences whose memory is preserved 
 by tradition. 
 
 The Apprentice is bound to secrecy and silence alone, and 
 his manhood and courage are tested by the faint images of 
 the old Initiations. The Fellow-craft is amused by the 
 rudimentary instruction known to school-boys. Yet each is 
 surrounded by the old and eloquent Symbols of the Orient, 
 which the Ancient Isis holds out to them, while no word is- 
 sues from her silent, stony lips. The sands of the desert cover 
 all but the head of the mysterious Sphynx, and that, impassive 
 as the pyramids themselves, utters no oracles. The Master 
 Mason sees in the ceremonies Symbols still more significant, 
 and in which the profoundest truths are hidden ; b At for ex- 
 planations he hears but an idle babble of words, and, u lie knew 
 aught of the truth, would begin to understand the allegorical 
 punishment of Tantalus. He became a Master, that he might 
 obtain the Master's WOKD, and with it travel into foreign
 
 36 ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 
 
 countries and earn a Master's wages. But he is misled try 
 a Substitute that lias for him no meaning, although it indeed 
 contains his reward if he but knew it. So far from finding 
 his Masonry universal, he cannot demand assistance in danger 
 anywhere except in his own country, and wherever the Eng- 
 lish language is spoken. He cannot gain admittance into a 
 Lodge in Denmark, Norway, or Sweden, and hardly in Can- 
 ada, if the law of the Order is enforced there. Yerily he has 
 not the Master's WOKD, by which to travel into foreign 
 countries and earn the wages of a Master. 
 
 We have heard, even to nausea, the assertion a thousand 
 times repeated, that the Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted 
 Rite are no higher than the Blue Degrees, and that they are 
 no part of genuine Masonry. They are higher, nevertheless, 
 because they are not conferred indiscriminately on all, nor 
 intended to be popular; and because they illustrate and 
 explain the Symbols of the Blue Lodge. And they are 
 Masonic, if by Masonry we mean initiation into the mysteries. 
 If we do not mean that, all Masonry is contained in the 
 Apprentice's Degree. 
 
 If the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the Masonry of 
 Heredom, the Rose Croix and the Holy House, commends 
 itself to, and satisfies those who obtain its Degrees, that is 
 enough. It is not its mission to teach others ; and still less, 
 to publish in books, with a view to money-making, those 
 things which ought to be taught in the sanctuaries only. We 
 need not lament if others are satisfied with the instruction of 
 the Blue Lodge; and if we advance slowly, we at least do not 
 have to complain, year after year, until the world wearies of 
 it, that the doors of our sanctuaries swing too smoothly on 
 their hinges, and that our initiates are multiplied with dan- 
 gerous rapidity, through over-eagerness for numbers and for 
 the fees for receptions.
 
 ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 37 
 
 Masonry claims to be an advance toward the Light. That 
 Light is Truth. How far does Symbolic or Blue Masonry 
 advance toward it? 
 
 None of the Truths of physical science are taught in either 
 of the Blue Degrees. The letter G hangs in the east, and the 
 Candidate is told that it is the initial of the word Geometry ; 
 and the names of the seven liberal arts and sciences as known 
 to the ancients are repeated to him, with the names of the 
 five Orders of Architecture. His whole Geometrical instruc- 
 tion consists in looking at the diagram of the forty-seventh 
 Problem of Euclid, and receiving no explanation of it. 
 
 Other Truth than that of the physical sciences is Moral, 
 Intellectual, Political, or Religious. 
 
 Blue Masonry utters a few of the commonest dicta of moral 
 Truth, known and familiar to all men in all ages. It does no 
 more. It limits itself to so much as is useful to bind together 
 in a kind of Brotherhood the mass of a numerous Order. In 
 the lesser mysteries no more was ever required. Its foui 
 Cardinal Virtues are Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, and 
 Justice. An Initiate of a secret Order must be prudent and 
 cautious to reveal nothing to the Profane, to conceal the fact 
 that he belongs to the Order, or perhaps that there is such an 
 one. He must have fortitude to foil all attempts by force or 
 torture to compel him to divulge these secrets ; and also to 
 be able to do efficiently what the Order may require of him. 
 He must be temperate, for the drunken man divulges all 
 secrets and becomes incapable to perform any duty well ; and 
 ae must be just to his fellows, and not wrong one of them of 
 me value of anything, or there can be no unity or harmony. 
 There must\)& harmony amongthe workmen, because harmony 
 s essential to the success of every Secret Association. The 
 tenets of the Order are said to be Brotherly Love, Relief, and 
 Truth. These are common to every Association. Used every-
 
 38 ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 
 
 where, the n,' me of Brother amounts to little anywhere, since 
 the time of Jacob and Esau. 
 
 Thus the morality of Masonry in these Degrees suffices for 
 its purpose, and aims at no more. The Brethren are to meet 
 on the level, to act, walk, and work by the plumb, and to part 
 on the square. They are punctiliously to obey the law of 
 just dealing and honest uprightness. Without these, there 
 could be no bond of union to insure the success of the objects 
 of the Order. What that object is, they are never told. It 
 was not meant that they should knoiv it. 
 
 We hear nothing of generosity, of self-sacrifice, of toleration. 
 Hiram is not the Apostle of these. He leads no crusade 
 against Error, Bigotry, Intolerance, Abuses, and Villainies. 
 He is simply the type of the Initiate who dies rather than 
 divulge the Secret Word of the Association. The Apprentice 
 is bound to Secrecy only: the Fellow-craft, to obey his 
 Superiors, and to run to and fro when they command, and 
 not to wrong a fellow or cheat a Lodge. The Master is to 
 keep a Master's Secret*; to aid and assist a comrade; to 
 respect the virtue of his relatives ; not to speak ill of him, 
 not to strike or wound him, except in self-defence. In 
 all this we see, not a great system of morals, but only enforce- 
 ment of the mutual offices of service and duty, of the members 
 of a Secret Association to which it was dangerous to be- 
 long, and whose object was not known to the mass of initi- 
 ates. 
 
 Compare all the moral teachings of the Blue Degrees with, 
 we will not say the Sermon on the Mount, but the Proverbs of 
 Solomon, the teachings of Socrates, Confucius, Zarathustra, 
 Seneca, or Mahomet; and one page of either will convince 
 any intelligent man that the Masonry of the Level, Plumb, 
 and Square is not a system of Morals, not even the handbook 
 or primer of such a system. The Zendavesta, the Chinese
 
 THE ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 39 
 
 Books, and even the Koran, are, in their moral teachings, to 
 Blue Masonry, like an oration of Cicero or an essay of Plato to 
 the first utterances of a child. 
 
 Of political truth, nothing whatever is taught in the Blue 
 Masonry of the English Eite. Nothing is heard in it of 
 free government, the rights of the people, the rights of man, 
 or of free thought, free conscience, and free speech. On the 
 contrary, the Mason was to be submissive to the laws of Par- 
 liament, the supreme Legislature, which had changed the 
 succession to the Throne, and to support the House of Hanover 
 against the House of Stuart, not engaging in plots or con- 
 spiracies against the State. There is nothing in the Ritual 
 to oft'end Pope or King, Inquisitor or Jesuit. All the 
 Symbols that had originally and still have in the Scottish 
 Rite, a political meaning, have been assiduously misinter- 
 preted, until they teach no political Truth whatever. 
 
 The Masonry of the Higher Degrees teaches the great truths 
 of Intellectual Science ; but as to all these, even as to the 
 rudiments and first principles, Blue Masonry is absolutely dumb. 
 Its drama seems intended to teach the resurrection of the 
 body ; but it teaches nothing more. As the truths of politics, 
 the great principles of human freedom, free government, free 
 thought, and free conscience could not safely be proclaimed 
 to the mass of Initiates as the cause to which by their associ- 
 ation and by the oaths that insured secrecy and co-operation, 
 they were to be devoted, so it was unnecessary, for the pur- 
 pose of such union and co-operation, to teach the philosophical 
 truth. 
 
 Of this, and of religious Truth, all that is taught is included 
 in a single question and answer : " In whom do you put your 
 trust?" "In God." It was necessary that a Candidate 
 should profess his belief in a Deity, since otherwise his oath 
 would have no more binding force than a simple promise.
 
 40 .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 
 
 For the purposes of the Order, no more was necessary. 
 Wherefore he is taught nothing as to the nature of the Deity 
 or of himself, nor is any inquiry made in regard to his notions 
 of either. That he believes in some sort of God who will 
 punish perjury, is enough: and even if his God be but a 
 monstrous image of himself, a mere hideous or grotesque idol 
 of the imagination, Blue Masonry asks no more and teaches 
 him nothing. 
 
 If, when the lesser mysteries were communicated to all men 
 indiscriminately, any number of men who knew them only, 
 had continually and confidently magnified these mysteries, 
 proclaimed that they taught and revealed wonderful things, a 
 complete system of morals and all known truth ; and insisted 
 that tlvere were no other and higher mysteries ; if by these 
 bold and impudent assertions they had come to be looked 
 upon as Hierophants by the mass of Initiates, and inventing 
 silly interpretations of the Symbols over which they stumbled, 
 had led their flocks far away from the truth and made them 
 in love with the babblings of folly, the true Adepts would but 
 have smiled to see the multitude misled, and have permitted 
 their blind guides to strut to the end in their tinselled glories. 
 For all this would no more have added value to the lesser 
 mysteries, or have diminished the value of the greater ones, 
 than the imprisonment of Galileo caused the sun to revolve 
 round the stationary earth. Every man of high intelligence, 
 Initiate of the Lesser Mysteries, but ignorant of the Greater, 
 would still have known that the former were but preparatory, 
 and that there must be some place in which their symbols 
 were explained and their real purposes made known. 
 
 How can the intelligent Mason fail to see that the Blue 
 Degrees are but preparatory, intended to enlist, and band and 
 bind together the rank and file of the Masonic army, for pur- 
 poses undisclosed to them ? that they are the lesser mysteries,
 
 .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 41 
 
 in which the Symbols are used to conceal the truth ? They 
 do see and feel and know this ; and hence the resort to higher 
 degrees which, known nowhere else in the world, teach noth- 
 ing at all, and have no object or purpose. 
 
 The books of Bro. Oliver and others like him. are wholly 
 made up of that which Blue Masonry does not teach : and it 
 is a singular absurdity that a Rite should be valued and 
 lauded, not for what it does teach and disclose, but for what 
 the Initiate can only learn from books as open to be read by 
 the Profane as by himself. And it is a greater absurdity, if 
 that is possible, that nearly the whole of the immense mass 
 that has thus been written has little or no real connection with 
 Blue Masonry, and might with quite as much propriety have 
 been written upon any other text. 
 
 Of course nothing is to be done with those who accept 
 literally the legend of Hi ram and of the building and re- 
 building the Temple. In the Mysteries, those who misunder- 
 stood the Symbols and allegories were left to remain in the 
 complacency of their ignorance. 
 
 The existence of the Scottish Freemasonry, before 171 7, 
 was not publicly known ; for its purposes were, by the laws 
 of England and Scotland, treasonable. It was carried to 
 France by the adherents of the Pretender, and there used for 
 the same purpose, to unite the adherents of the House of 
 Stuart, and enable them to act in concert with those who, 
 during the reign of Anne and George I., were plotting to 
 restore the Stuart dynasty. There, also, it was connected 
 with the higher degrees, already existing, or from time to 
 time invented, in France. That the English Freemasonry, 
 established at the moment of the death of Anne, was the 
 creation of the adherents of the House of Hanover, is suf- 
 ficiently evident from the pledge of its Masters, that they 
 would obey the will of the Supreme Legislature, that is, of
 
 42" ENIGMA- OF THE SPHYNX. 
 
 *iie English Parliament which had changed the succession tc 
 the crown ; for this promise was never exacted by the Scottish 
 Freemasonry. And it also offers the only rational expla- 
 nation of the rapid increase of the new association and of 
 the existence of fifty or more Lodges in London in a few years. 
 
 The Symbols of Antiquity and a Ceremonial resembling 
 that of the Mysteries, were perhaps used, at first, to conceal 
 the true purposes of the Organization ; and the certain de- 
 struction that would be caused by betrayal, while the aim of 
 the Order was to overthrow the Government, accounts for the 
 penalties of the obligations. 
 
 "When there was no longer hope of the restoration of the 
 Stuarts, the higher Degrees, which had become a part of the 
 system of Scottish Freemasonry, were carried to England by 
 the adherents of Laurence Dermott, of whose politics we 
 know nothing ; and with the annihilation of that hope the 
 purposes of that Freemasonry changed. Becoming connected 
 with some, and giving birth to others, of the higher Degrees, 
 the system became philosophical and of course anti-papal, 
 because Eome was the enemy of both Science and Philosophy. 
 The English Masonry stood still. Suspicious of the higher 
 Degrees, it refused to recognize them as Masonic, or to form 
 any connection with them, or with the Royal Arch of Dermott, 
 framed from the Eoyal Arch of Enoch. It changed its 
 lectures and formulas, again and again ; but it never had any 
 especial object, after the struggle of the adherents of the 
 Stuarts had ended. The Scottish Freemasonry, on the con- 
 trary, engaged in its long controversy with Eoyal and Pon- 
 tifical Despotism, and became the apostle of Free Thought, 
 Free Speech, and Free Conscience. 
 
 We do not demand your assent to these conclusions. We 
 state them here, to lead you to reflect and study, that you 
 may decide for yourself. All that we positively assert is, that
 
 THE .ENIGMA OF THE SPHYNX. 43 
 
 so far from containing in themselves all Freemasonry, the 
 Bine Degrees, especially in England and the United States, 
 only conceal the Light from the Initiates, were at the begin- 
 ning only a means of organization, and are now only prelim- 
 inary and rndimcntal. The Degree of Perfection is so called 
 because it completes and perfects the Third Degree. 
 
 THE END.