The History of Initiation - The Masonic Trowel

216 COROLLARY.
ous truth, which, at the appointed time, should uproot
their system, and triumphantly found the true plan of
human salvation on its ruins.
It will be seen that every system of mystery practised
throughout the world has been applied to religion and
the worship of the deity. 1 How diversified soever in
1 I subjoin, without comment, the following observations of the
learned and intelligent Faber, on the machinery of tbe Apocalypse,
which he thinks was borrowed from that of the mysteries. In this
Book, " we find the pure Church described as a woman clothed with
the sun, and standing upon the crescent of the moon ; while a corrupted
Church is exhibited to us, both under the image of a female
floating upon the surface of many waters, and under that of a harlot
using a monstrous beast as her vehicle. The former of these women,
when about to bring forth her first-born, is attacked by a monstrous
serpent, which spouts out, against her offspring, a deluge of water;
but the earth opens its mouth, and receives thie mighty inundation
into the centrical abyss. The latter of them, under the mystic name
of the false prophet, together with her bestial supporter, is said to bo,
at length, plunged alive into an infernal
lake, burning with fire and
brimstone. I cannot but think it sufficiently clear, that the whole of
this machinery is palpably diluvian and I believe it to have been
;
derived from that received imagery of the Patriarchal Church, which
by a corrupted channel was admitted into Paganism. It is impossible
not to perceive that the woman standing upon the crescent is the very
figure of the Samian Juno, or of the Egyptian Isis, who were represented
in a precisely similar manner with reference to the lunar boat;
that the attack upon the woman and her offspring, by the deluging
serpent, which is frustrated by the Earth's absorption of the waters,
is perfectly analogous to the attack of the diluvian serpent Python or
Typhon upon Latona and Horus, which is similarly frustrated by the
destruction of that monster; and that the false Church, bearing the
name of Mystery, floating on the mighty waters, or riding on a
terrific beast, and ultimately plunged into the infernal lake, exhibits
the very same aspect as the Great Mother of Paganism sailing over
the ocean, riding on her usual vehicle, the lion, venerated with certain
appropriate Mysteries, and during the celebration of those -Mysteries,
plunged into the waters of a sacred lake, deemed the lake of Hades.
I take it, that in the representation of the pure Church, an ancient
patriarchal scheme of symbolical machinery, derived most plainly from
the events of the Deluge, and borrowed with the usual perverse misapplication
by the contrivers of Paganism, has been reclaimed to its
proper use ; while, in the representation of the false Church, which,
under a new name, revived the old Gentile demonolatry, the very
imagery and language of the Gentile hierophants has, with singular
propriety, been studiously adopted. (Rev. xii., xvii., 1-5, xix., 20.) I
need scarcely remark that I am speaking solely of the apocalyptic
machinery ; of this, the origin will still be the same, however we may
interpret the prophecies which are built upon it. The whole machinery
of the Apocalypse, from beginning to end, seems to me, very plainly, to
have been borrowed from the machinery of the ancient Mysteries : and