Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

320 FRANCIS BACON
We read iu the Bible how the Jews, despairing of the return
of Moses from the mount, wished to make for themselves the image
of a god who should lead them through the desert, and cast
out the ungodly from before them. To this end they melted
down their golden ornaments, and made the shape of a calf or
bull, i
The bull's head, although not reproduced in England in its
original form, was and is, as has been said, preserved in disguise.
Plates IV. and V. show a few of the many patterns of
these disguised heads in mock shields. They are exceedingly
various and frequent in Baconian works, and in editions of the
Bible of which Bacon, we think, superintended the revision and
publication. A comparison of the specimens given from the
1632 edition of Shakespeare, the works of " Joseph Mede, " 1677,
and the modern-contemporary water-mark used by L. Van Gelder
(Plate V.) will explain our meaning. In Van Gelder's paper
the bull's head is clearly discernible, and so is the mutual
connection between this and the earlier marks. In the specimens
from the " Diodati " Bible, 1648, there is the same general
effect as in those from the Shakespeare of 1623, and Bacon's
works 1638. Certain particulars are never failing — indications
of horns, eyes, and in some cases protuberant ears.
Doubtless
these mock shields were intended to pass with the profane
vulgar for coats of arms of some great personage, as Jansen and
Sotheby would lead us to think them. But a pennyworth of
observation will correct this notion. The sacred symbols of the
fleur-de-lis, the trefoil, cross, horns, pearls, and diamonds, with
the sacred monograms, numbers, and mystic or cabalistic
marks, show plainly whence the old paper-maker derived
them.
i It is said by some learned authorities that there seems to have been confusion
in words, and that the Greeks put into Greek characters the Egyptian
Ma-v-oein, which means the place of light, or the sun. (See commentary ou the
Apocalypse, iii. 317.) But even this error, if it exists, only serves to show
more clearly the close connection in the minds of the translators of Holy Writ
between the most ancient religious symbols and those which they themselves
employed. Bacon shows, in his Essay of Pan, the connection in parabolic
language between horns and rays.