Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

LIGHT
LIGURE 447
process of initiation and the contemplation of
divinity . On this subject a remarkable coincidence
has been pointed out by M . Portal
(Symb. desEgypt, 69), in the Hebrew language .
There the word for "hare" is arnebet, which
seems to be compounded of our "light," and
nabat, "to see " ; so that the word which among
the Egyptians was used to designate an initiation,
among the Hebrews meant to see the
light .
If we proceed to an examination of the other
systems of religion which were practised by
the nations of antiquity, we shall find that
light always constituted a principal object of
adoration, as the primordial source of knowledge
and goodness, and that darkness was
with them synonymous with ignorance and
evil. Dr. Beard (Encyc. Bib . Lit .) attributes
this view of the Divine origin of light among
the Eastern nations, to the fact that "light
in the East has a clearness and brilliancy, is
accompanied by an intensity of heat, and
is followed in its influence by a largeness of
good, of which the inhabitants of less genial
climates have no conception . Light easily
and naturally became, in consequence, with
Orientals, a representative of the highest
human good . All the more joyous emotions
of the mind, all the pleasing sensations of the
frame, all the happy hours of domestic intercourse,
were described under imagery derived
from light . The transition was naturalfrom
earthly to heavenly, from corporeal to
spiritual things ; and so light came to typify
true religion and the felicity which it imparts .
But as light not only came from God, but also
makes man's way clear before him, so it was
employed to signify moral truth, and preeminently
that divine system of truth which is
set forth in the Bible, from its earliest gleamings
onward to the perfect day of the Great
Sun of Righteousness ."
As light was thus adored as the source of
goodness, darkness, which is the negation of
light, was abhorred as the cause of evil, and
hence arose that doctrine which prevailed
among the ancients, that there were two antagonistic
principles continually contending
for the government of the world .
"Light," says Duncan (Relig . of Prof. Ant .,
187), "is a source of positive happiness : without
it man could barely exist. And since all
religious opinion is based on the ideas of
pleasure and pain, and the corresponding
sensations of hope and fear, it is not to be wondered
if the heathen reverenced light . Darkness,
on the contrary, by replunging nature,
as it were, into a state of nothingness, and depriving
man of the pleasurable emotions conveyed
through the organ of sight, was ever
held in abhorrence, as a source of misery and
fear . The two opposite conditions in which
man thus found himself placed, occasioned
by the enjoyment or the banishment of light,
induced him to imagine the existence of two
antagonistic principles in nature, to whose
dominion he was alternately subjected ."
Such was the dogma of Zoroaster, the great
Persian philosopher, who, under the names of
Ormuzd and Ahriman, symbolized these two
principles of light and darkness .
Such was also the doctrine, though somewhat
modified, of Manes, the founder of the
sect of Manichees, who describes God the
Father as ruling over the kingdom of light
and contending with the powers of darkness .
Pythagoras also maintained this doctrine
of two antagonistic principles . He called the
one, unity, light, the right hand, equality, stability,
and a straight line ; the other he named
binary, darkness, the left hand inequality,
instability, and a curved line. bf the colors,
he attributed white to the good principle, and
black to the evil one .
The Jewish Kabbalists believed that, before
the creation of the world, all space was filled
with the Infinite Intellectual Light, which
afterward withdrew itself to an equal distance
from a central point in space, and afterward
by its emanation produced future worlds .
The first emanation of this surrounding light
into the abyss of darkness produced what
they called the "Adam Kadmon," the first
man, or the first production of the Divine
energy.
In the Bhagvat Geeta (one of the religious
books of the Brahmans), it is said : "Light and
darkness are esteemed the world's eternal
ways ; he who walketh in the former path returneth
not-that is, he goeth immediately to
bliss ; whilst he who walketh in the latter cometh
back again upon the earth ."
In fact, m all the ancient systems, this reverence
for light, as an emblematic representation
of the Eternal Principle of Good, is predominant
. In the mysteries, the candidate
passed, during his initiation, through scenes
of utter darkness, and at length terminated
his trials by an admission to the splendidly
illuminated sacellum, where he was said to
have attained pure and perfect light, and
where he received the necessary instructions
which were to invest him with that knowledge
of the Divine truth which had been the object
of all his labors .
Lights, Fixed. According to the old rituals
of the last century every Lodge room was
furnished, or supposed to be furnished, with
three windows, situated in the East, West, and
South . They were called the Fixed Lights,
and their uses were said to be "to light the
men to, at, and from their work ."
Lights, Greater . The Bible, and the
Square and Compasses, which see. In the
Persian initiations, the Archimagus informed
the candidate, at the moment of illumination,
that the Divine Lights were displayed before
him.
Light, To Bring to. A technical expression
in Masonry meaning to initiate ; as
"He was brought to light in such a Lodge,' ;
that is, he was initiated in it .
Ligure. =75 . The first stone in the third
row of the high priest's breastplate . Commentators
have been divided in opinion as to
the nature of this stone ; but it is now supposed
by the best authorities to have been the
rubellite, which is a red variety of the tourma-