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

An Outline of Symbolism. 249
with the Pythagorean art speech. The devout
Hebrew, in reading the sacred Text, when he came
to the tetrad ihvh, substituted the word Adonai
(Lord), and if the word was written with the points
of Alhim, he called it Elohom. This custom is preserved
in Masonry by giving the candidate a substitute
for the Master's Word. The Hebrew tetrad
"Yod, he, vau, he," is produced by repeating the
"he." The root word is a triad, and the quaternary
is undoubtedly a blind. The Sacred word is
found in the mysteries as a binary, a trinary, and a
quaternary ; as with the Hindoos we have the om,
and the aum^ indicating different methods of pronouncing
the Sacred name. The Pythagorean Tetraktys
is represented by numbers, i, 2, 3, 4=10,
and by points or "Yods" in the form of a triangle;*
this is called the "lesser tetraktys," while
a triangle composed of eight rows in the same form
and containing thirty-six "Yods," or points, is called
the "greater Tetraktys." This corresponds to the
three lesser lights, and three greater lights of the
Blue Lodge, though the monitorial explanations in
the lodge are, to say the least, incomplete. In the
Pythagorean philosophy both the lesser and greater
*See Plates V and VIII.