The History of Initiation - The Masonic Trowel

EASTERN MYSTERIES. 55
by gradual approaches, into their former system of
worship; and the people, debased by superstition, were
prepared for any novel scheme which might gratify their
pride, or satiate their curiosity. The priests converted
the profound veneration of the worshippers to their
and successive changes tended, in
own aggrandizement ;
the revolution of ages, greatly to deteriorate the primitive
simplicity of their devotion.
The initiations were performed in a cavern; after
which, processions were made round the Tan or altar, 55
and sacrifices offered to the celestial gods. The chief
end of initiation was a fictions immortality, or absorption
56
into the deity and to secure this admirable state of
j
supreme and never changing felicity, amulets57 were as
usual delivered to the newly initiated candidates, accompanied
by the magical words O-MI-TO Fo, 58 which denoted
the omnipotence of the divinity ; and was considered as
a most complete purification, and remission of every sin.
Their morality was limited to five precepts. The first
opened a door to other idolatrous innovations ; and ideal objects of
worship, attended with indecent and unnatural rites (Martin. Sinic.
Hist., p. 149), accumulated so rapidly, that China soon became celebrated
for the practice of every impurity and abomination which
characterized the most degraded nation of the heathen world.
55
Bryant. Anal., vol. i., p. 94.
66
Gros. Chin., vol. ii., c. 5.
57 The most valuable amulet they can possess, is a small idol
enfolded in a sheet of consecrated paper. To his neck and arms are
appended bracelets composed of a hundred small beads and eight
large ones ; and in a conspicuous situation is placed a large bead in
the shape of a gourd. The happy possessor of this trinket, on
important occasions, counted the beads pronouncing the mysterious
words 0-mi-to Fo ! accompanied by many genuflections. The performance
of this ceremony is recorded by marking a red circle round
the neck of the genius ; and, at the death of the devotee, the aggregate
number of these circles, as indisputable testimonials of the
divine favour, or of deliverance from danger, are minutely attested
and sealed by the officiating Bonze. The whole is then deposited in
a small box and buried with the deceased as a passport to heaven,
and a certain deliverance from the dreaded evil of successive trans-
migrations.
** Omito was derived, says Sir W. Jones (Asiat. Ees., vol. ii.,
p. 374), from the Sanscrit Armida, immeasurable; and Fo was only
another name for Buddha ; or, more properly, the same name softened
down by a diversity of language and pronunciation. See Faber's
Pagan Idolatry (vol. ii., p. 342), where the grades are traced by
which the one became transformed into the other.