The History of Initiation - The Masonic Trowel

138 HISTORY OF INITIATION
The Welsh triads contain a hint of this
solitary confinement
in the cromlech when speaking of the initiation of
Arthur, who is there said to have been imprisoned "three
nights in the inclosure of Oeth arid Anoeth, and three
nights with the lady of Pendragon, and three nights in
the prison of Kud, under the flat stone of Echemeint ;
and one youth released him from the three prisons, namely,
20
Goreu, the son of Cystenin, his nephew." The last of
these prisons was evidently the cromlech, in which
it is certain the candidate endured a confinement of
much more extended duration, 21 before he was admitted
to the last and most distinguished privilege of Druidism.
When the sanctuary was prepared for the solemn
business of initiation, the Druids and their attendants,
ceremonially arranged; properly clothed, crowned with
ivy and protected by amulets ; a hymn to the sun was
in a place of light.
It was further symbolical of Noah,' who entered
into the Ark in one year ; remained inclosed a year, and was emanci-
pated from his confinement, or reborn, in the third year.
Much con-
fusion arose in the mythology of the ancient world from this doctrine.
The aspirant, like Noah, is supposed to have lived in the old
world, and was hence esteemed a venerable old man ; but he was
new-born from the mysteries, as Noah was from the Ark, and hence
he was considered but an infant. Noah built the Ark, and it was
consequently represented as his daughter ; but he was united with
the Ark, and they together floated over the all-pervading wave;
hence she was taken for his wife ; and ultimately he was born from
the Ark, which, from this circumstance, sustained the character of
his mother. Again, when he is said to die, the Ark is his coffin ;
when a child, it is his cradle ; and when he is supposed to sleep in
deep repose during the prevalence of the waters, it is his bed. (Vid.
Fab. Pag. Idol., vol. ii., p. 281.) The confusion this would necessarily
create could not be reconciled without having recourse to a
multiplication of deities, and therefore in Greece, as the father of the
female principle or Ark, Noak was termed Saturn; as her husband
he was termed Jupiter, and as her son, Bacchus ; and when the solar
and the arkite superstitions were connected, he became Apollo, and
soon branched off into a number of collateral deities which peopled
their imaginary heaven, and tended to mystify their system of reli-
gion, and place it entirely out of the reach of ordinary comprehension;
and the unravelment of this intricate machinery formed
one grand secret of the Greater Mysteries, in which the hierophaut
reduced all the complicated pantheon of idolatry to one single god.
(Cudworth, Intel. Syst., 1. i., c. 4.) This subject is also handled at
length in Faber's Pagan Idolatry, (b. i., c. 1, s. 10-12.)
20 Welsh Archaeol. Triad. 50. Dav. Druid, p. 404.
21 Welsh Archaeol., vol. i., p. 19.