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

88 AZRAEL
BABEL
The goat was then led forth to the mountainside
and rolled down to death .
Longfellow's exquisite poem Azrael .)
time for death was come . (See Henry W.
Azrael . (Heb ., help of God .) In the Jewish
and the Mohammedan mythology, the writings, it is alleged, has been discovered by
Aztec Writings. The key to the Aztec
name of the angel who watches over the dying Rev . Father Damago Soto, of Concordia,Vera
and separates the soul from the body . Prior Cruz .
to the intercession of Mohammed, Azrael inflicted
the death-penalty visibly, by striking Cerulean. The appropriate color of the sym-
Azure . The clear, blue color of the sky .
down before the eyes of the living those whose bolic degrees sometimes termed Blue Degrees .
B. (n, Beth .) A labial consonant standing
second in most alphabets, and in the
Hebrew or Phoenician signifies house, probably
from its form of a tent or house, thus :
n
B
and finally the Hebrew n, having the numerical
value two . When united with the
leading letter of the alphabet, n$, it signifies
Ab, Father, Master, or the one in authority,
as applied to Hiram the Architect . This is
the root of Baal. The Hebrew name of the
Deity connected with this letter is 11t1D, Bakhur
.
Baal. Hebrew, ~y1 He was the chief
divinity among the Phcenicians, the Canaanites
and the Babylonians . The word signifies
in Hebrew lord or master . It was among the
Orientalists a comprehensive term, denoting
divinity of any kind without reference to class
or to sex . The Sabaists understood Baal as
the sun, and Baalim, in the plural, were the
sun, moon, and stars, "the host of heaven ."
Whenever the Israelites made one of their
almost periodical deflections to idolatry, Baal
seems to have been the favorite idol to whose
worship they addicted themselves . Hence
he became the especial object of denunciation
with the prophets . Thus, in 1 Kings (xviii .),
we see Elija showing, by practical demonstration,
the difference between Baal and Jehovah.
The idolaters, at his instigation,
called on Baal, as their sun-god, to light the
sacrificial fire, from morning until noon, because
at noon he had acquired his greatest
intensity . And after noon no fire having
been kindled on the altar, they began to cry
aloud, and to cut themselves in token of mortification,
because as the sun descended there
was no hope of his help . But Elijah, depending
on Jehovah, made his sacrifice toward
sunset, to show the greatest contrast between
Baal and the true God . And when the people
saw the fire come down and consume the offering,
they acknowledged the weakness of their
idol, and falling on their faces cried out, Jehovah
hu hahelohim-" Jehovah, he is the God ."
And Hosea afterward promises the people
that they shall abandon their idolatry, and
that he would take away from them the Shemoth
hahbaalim, the names of the Baalim, so
that they should be no more remembered by
their names, and the people should in that
day "know Jehovah."
Hence we see that there was an evident antagonism
in the orthodox Hebrew mind between
Jehovah and Baal . The latter was,
however, worshiped by the Jews, whenever
they became heterodox, and by all the Oriental
or Shemitic nations as a supreme divinity,
representing the sun in some of his modifications
as the ruler of the day . In Tyre, Baal
was the sun, and Ashtaroth, the moon . Baalpeor,
the lord of priapism, was the sun represented
as the generative principle of nature,
and identical with the phallus of other religions
. Baal-gad was the lord of the multitude
(of stars) that is, the sun as the chief of
the heavenly host . In brief, Baal seems to
have been wherever his cultus was established,
a development or form of the old sun worship .
Babel . In Hebrew, ~7] • which the writer
of Genesis connects with 5 i7Z, balal, "to confound,"
in reference to the confusion of
tongues ; but the true derivation is probably
from BAB-EL, the "gate of El" or the "gate of
God," because perhaps a temple was the first
building raised by the primitive nomads .
It is the name of that celebrated tower attempted
to be built on the plains of Shinar,
A.M . 1775, about one hundred and forty
years. after the deluge which tower, Scripture
nforms us, was c6troyed by a special
interposition of the Almighty . The Noachite
Masons date the commencement of
their Order from this destruction, and much
traditionary information on this subject is preserved
in the degree of "Patriarch Noachite ."
At Babel, Oliver says that what has been
called Spurious Freemasonry took its origin .
That is to say, the people there abandoned the
worship of the true God, and by their dispersion
lost all knowledge of his existence, and of