MANUAL OF FREEMASONRY - Masonic High Council the Mother ...

xiv
INTRODUCTION
that it should be so ; and hence our sacred and mysterious
writings. But now, we do not think that knowledge should
be kept from the multitude, and hence our infidelity and our
revealings.
It may be well to mention here, that I am in possession of
entire disproofs of the present pretended historical origination
of the Christian religion; and I was in that possession, before
I attempted to seek any other origin. I have long felt the
necessity of tracing another origin, and I now do so, in connecting
it with the ancient Pagan mysteries. On reading the
New Testament, with the Key which I here present, and with
the remembrance that, in relation to history, the book is altogether,
from beginning to ending, a fiction; and on reading
the Old Testament in the same way, there will remain on the
mind something like knowledge gained from its mysterious
matter ; but now, in the course of reading under the commonly
received notions of it, and beyond its moral precepts, there is no
knowledge gained. Such is the case with modern Freemasonry.
I sum up these observations, with the conclusion that the
Key Stone of the Royal Arch of Freemasonry is the ancient
science of the Zodiac, with its moral counter-part of human
culture made mysterious in secret and priestly associations;
which is also the science of all religions that pretend to revelations
; and also of the religion of the Druids, and of all the
Pagans from Hindostan to Rome.
l have omitted all those remarks which, in the Nos. of the
Vol. 12 of “The Republican,” must have been so offensive to
Masons. My great object is here to instruct Masons as well
as others, and not to give them offence. They ask for light.
Here is light. They ask for fellowship. Here is the only basis
of true and general fellowship. I see the evils of sectarianism
among mankind, and I labour hard ; I endure persecution
patiently, for the sole purpose of rooting out those evils. I
have objections for all societies, excepting those divisions of