The Alchemy Key.pdf - Veritas File System

present position in a Speculative Lodge may be due to the increasing
triumph of the Solar Cult over the old Vegetation Cult.
Students are of the opinion that the Kings of Judah were anointed,
crowned and enthroned between the Pillars, and we know that Adonis in
other Syrian Kingdoms was the Divine King of the city. His robes were
red, like those of the Z. in the R .A., and when the Roman soldiery in
mockery crowned Jesus they robed him in Royal red 31 in a manner similar
to that in which the figure of Adonis lay in state.
The women were certainly not in the secret vault, that is clear,
and therefore the regulation which debarred them from approaching
nearer to the altar than their own court was not exclusively a Jehovistic
command. It is thus quite probable that there were in Judah, just as there
were in other ancient religions, an exoteric and an esoteric Cult. The
ordinary worshippers never got further than the substituted secrets, which
in this case would be an explanation that the ceremony was a magical one
intended to increase the fertility of the soil; the Priests, however, who
entered the Temple itself, learnt there not merely an allegorical
interpretation of the external ceremonies, but, still more important, that
God was one, and one only. This teaching, which as masons well know,
forms the essence of the R .A., is common to many faiths, but in Judea it
seems as if some members of this supreme degree, filled with zeal for the
true God, refused to remain silent. They shouted from the house tops their
great discovery that there was but one God, and, despite persecution, and
probably in many cases death itself, persisted in their teaching.
Nevertheless, there may have been other spiritually minded men
who, while recognising that the old Adonis Cult as it then stood contained
much that was repulsive, perceived that it also contained much that was
good, and therefore set themselves to purge it of certain objectionable
elements. And we shall see in the next chapter, in the writings attributed
to King Solomon, there seems to be the beginning of an attempt to attach
an allegorical meaning to some of the ceremonies. After the Captivity this
school of thought, I suggest, used this Cult as an allegory, and by
dramatic representations taught the great truth that death does not end all,
for beyond the grave of the willing sacrifice lies the resurrection, and only
31
Purple in Biblical and classical times means “Red,” not the violet
colour we now call purple.
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