The Arcana of Freemasonry (1915) - The Masonic Trowel

THE ARCANA OF FREEMASONRY 91
can always be identified by their Iconographic
forms.
The Pyramid is an artificial figure
of the mount
as a means of the ascent to heaven. The Initiate,
placed at the bottom of the well, would see the
tubular shaft of the Great Pyramid represented the
way to heaven as it was imaged in Egyptian
thought. Resting
at the foot he could scan not
merely the starry vast, but could fix his gaze in
death upon the heaven of spirits at the summit of
the mount, the Paradise of Peace, the enclosure
that was finally configurated in the circle of the
seven Pole Stars that crossed the passage pointing
northward, one by one, in the circuit of precession,
or the heaven of eternity. The Pole Star a
Draconis was not the only
one that would cross
within range of that great tube. The Great Pyramid
was founded on the Egyptian astronomy, but
was not built to register the fact that a Draconis
was the fixed point and polar pivot of all the Stellar
motion during some 25,827 years in the vast circle
of precession. The ceilings of the chambers were
sprinkled with stars to resemble the sky by night
(Maspero, "Dawn of Civilization"). Astronomi-
cal tables gave the aspect of the heavens, tenat by
tenat, throughout the year, so that the Initiates
"
had but to lift their eyes " and see in what part
of the firmament the course lay night after night.
Thus he found his future destiny depicted thereon