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The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

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whole plan. It is potable water fed from underground streams and<br />

required a boat journey with the ferryman Charon.<br />

<strong>The</strong> connection between Homer and the Baian Oracle is strong.<br />

Strabo wrote that Baia took its name from Baius, one of the companions<br />

of Odysseus. 1241 <strong>The</strong> Anead describes Aneas’ visit to the Oracle to<br />

consult his dead father. In the Oracle there is writing identifying the place<br />

as Illium (Troy) with a prayer to Hera and a niche, which contained a<br />

mason’s plumbob.<br />

<strong>The</strong> mistaken idea, that an Egyptian priestly heritage is<br />

impossible, is best summed-up by the French Protestant critic Isaac<br />

Casaubon who disputed the idea of Egyptian priestly heritage in 1614.<br />

Casaubon argued that the Corpus Hermeticum was a derivative concept,<br />

as there were no references to it in other works with compellingly similar<br />

themes, such as Plato, Aristotle and the New Testament. Although his<br />

theory was widely embraced at that time, modern scholarship now regards<br />

Casaubon’s logic as arrogant and faulty. Casaubon’s chief deficiency was<br />

that he lacked positive evidence. He also made two erroneous<br />

assumptions regarding the important theme of Righteousness. Casaubon<br />

maintained such a theme could not be widely shared. He also assumed<br />

that no single chain of succession could preserve the theme of<br />

Righteousness over a long period. Modern scholars are now more<br />

inclined to accept the merit of Sir Flinders Petrie’s argument that an<br />

Egyptian prisca theologia & prisca sapientia may date back at least to the<br />

period between the sixth and second centuries BCE. 1242<br />

<strong>The</strong> conversion of metallic gold to the Philosophers’ Stone<br />

involves putrefaction, corruption, generation and ultimately perfection.<br />

Colors change from black to white, red and finally green. Color change is<br />

important symbolism in the Church, Freemasonry and in much of the<br />

Elizabethan Canon of English literature.<br />

<strong>The</strong>se color changes are particularly important in the higher<br />

degrees of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Chevalier Andrew Michael<br />

Ramsay, Grand Orator of the Grand Lodge of France, foreshadowed the<br />

genesis of Scottish Rite Freemasonry. 1243 In a speech given on Charles<br />

Radclyffe’s appointment as Grand Master in 1737, Ramsay outlined the<br />

rediscovery of Freemasonry by the Knights Templar. His speech<br />

anticipated renewed royal patronage by King Frederick II: 1244<br />

<strong>The</strong> word Freemason must therefore not be taken in a literal<br />

gross and material sense, as if our founders had been simple<br />

workers in stone, or merely curious geniuses who wished to<br />

311

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