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DESCENT OF FREE-MASONRY,
Did there want further
i
confirmation, it may
451
be found in the
old Irish legend of Gobhan SAER, collected by Mr. Petries, and
retailed by O'Brien, who observes, that the very name as-
signed to the hero of this tale, " is that of a class, not of an
individual. Gobhan Saer means the sacred Poet, or the Free-
Mason Sage, one of the Gaubhres or Cabiri, and such as
you have seen represented upon the Tuath-de-danaan cross at
Clonmacnoise. To that colony, therefore, must he have be-
longed ;
and therefore the towers, traditionally associated with
his erection, must have been constructed anterior to the Scy-
thian influx."
The supposed wandering of the Cabiri, considered by some
learned men to have been the sons of Shern, for the purpose of
establishing innovating Lodges, and overwhelming the science
of Masonry with an incongruous mass of is
superstition, we
must tell Brother Oliver, much as we respect his talents, learn-
ing, and research, a wild and gratuitous theory, utterly void
of all respectable authority. The Cabiri, unde Abiri, were the
three Powerful Ones, not mortals, but the ancient Triad,
the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer j or Wisdom,
Love, and Power. In Egypt, Nethhe, Isis, and Osiris 5
India, Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva.
The very commencement of Brother Oliver's History of
Initiation asserts, that Free-Masonry is not only of the highest
antiquity, but that it was purely a there can
religious
be no doubt, and consequently it
Order. Of this
must have em-
braced the priesthood -,
it therefore follows, that the Druids,
being the priests of one of the earliest nations on earth, must
have been thoroughly acquainted with the Institution, and
brought it with them, as we have said before, into Britain.
"The first name given to this body was Saer, which has
three :
significations firstly, Free 5 secondly, Mason and -,
in
thirdly,
Son of God. In no language could those several imports be
united but in the original one, viz. IRISH. The Hebrews
express only one branch of it by Aliben ; while the English
join together the other two." (O'Brien.')
And now, be it remembered, that Druidism and its rites
lingered in this island ages after the introduction of Chris-
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