Mystic masonry, or, The symbols of freemasonry and the greater ...

220 Mystic Masonry.
teries, has had more to do with concealment than
anything else; and the real reason for concealment
in the mysteries has been herein previously shown
to be on account of the power that attaches to the
real knowledge possessed by the Master. The penalties
imposed for violating the solemn obhgations
voluntarily taken, may, at times, have been literally
executed by the agents of the Lodge in medieval or
pre-Christian times ; but in modern times these awful
penalties have undoubtedly been substituted by "the
excration of all honest men and Masons." In genuine
initiations into the really occult mysteries, the
penalties for unworthiness in any and all directions
consisted in the apostate becoming the victim of the
powers he had himself invoked.
He had created a
Frankenstein which he was no longer able to control,
and it destroyed him. Hence, the warning was
true and necessary, but the real method of its execution
was disguised, except that it was portrayed as
terrible. Too little is known as yet in the West of
genuine occultism, to make further explanation intelligible.
All space, and every plane of nature is
full of Life and Intelligence, and Bulwer's "Demon
of the Threshold" may be neither a joke nor a romance,
as many cases of obscession recorded in the
annals of Medicine and Spiritualism abundantly