The History of Initiation - The Masonic Trowel

LECTUKE VI.
CEREMONIES OF INITIATION INTO THE MYSTERIES OF
BACCHUS.
THE place of initiation was a gloomy cave, 1 or rather
a connected range of caverns, 2 fitted up with machinery
that might display, with full effect, all the terrors of the
process.
its dismal area ;
Streams of water ran through various parts of
which served equally for the purpose of
lustration, and to shadow out the diluvian waters pervading
the material world. The cavern was ritually consecrated
3 and secreted from vulgar observation by being
1 The Nympheum, or place of initiation in Greece, is thus briefly
described by Homer'
"
High at the head a branching olive grows,
And crowns the pointed'clifts with shady boughs,
Beneath a gloomy grotto's cool recess,
Delights the Nereids of the neighbouring seas ;
Where bowls and urns were form'd of living stone,
And massy beams in native marble shone :
On which the labours of the Nymphs were roll'd,
Their webs divine of purple mix'd with gold.
Within the cave the dust' ring bees attend
Their waxen works, or from the roof depend.
Perpetual waters o'er the pavement glide ;
Two marble doors unfold on either side ;
Sacred the south, by which the gods descend;
But mortals enter at the northern end."
POPE, Od., 1. xiii., v. 122.
The gate of entrance for the aspirant was from the north ; but when
purged from his corruptions, he was termed indifferently, new-born,
or immortal, and the sacred south door was from thence accessible to
bis steps.
2 Vid. ut supra, p. 16. Plut. de Isid. et Osir., p. 639. The most
celebrated of- these Greek caverns were the caves of
Eleusis, Athens,
the grotto of Trophonius at Lebadea in Beotia, and the horrid subterraneous
dens of Samothrace.
3 In Egypt and other nations, the place of initiation was a pyramid
erected over a subterraneous cavern. It appears to have been dedicated
to that purpose with an intensity of labour that produced the
solidity which bids defiance to the ravages of time. The Arabians
have a tradition, says Greaves, in his Pyramidographia, that the
Egyptian pyramids were built by Saurid Ibn Salhouk, king of Egypt