THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

What, then, is the signification of this symbol, so important and so
extensively diffused? What interpretation can we give to it that will
account for its universal adoption? How is it that it has thus become
so
intimately interwoven with Freemasonry as to make, to all appearances,
a
part of its very essence, and to have been always deemed inseparable
from
it?
To answer these questions, satisfactorily, it is necessary to trace, in
a
brief investigation, the remote origin of the institution of
Freemasonry,
and its connection with the ancient systems of initiation.
It was, then, the great object of all the rites and mysteries which
constituted the "Spurious Freemasonry" of antiquity to teach the
consoling doctrine of the immortality of the soul.[159] This dogma,
shining as an almost solitary beacon-light in the surrounding gloom of
pagan darkness, had undoubtedly been received from that ancient people
or
priesthood[160] what has been called the system of "Pure Freemasonry,"
and
among whom it probably existed only in the form of an abstract
proposition
or a simple and unembellished tradition. But in the more sensual minds
of
the pagan philosophers and mystics, the idea, when presented to the
initiates in their Mysteries, was always conveyed in the form of a
scenic
representation.[161] The influence, too, of the early Sabian worship of
the sun and heavenly bodies, in which the solar orb was adored, on its
resurrection, each morning, from the apparent death of its evening
setting, caused this rising sun to be adopted in the more ancient
Mysteries as a symbol of the regeneration of the soul.
Thus in the Egyptian Mysteries we find a representation of the death
and
subsequent regeneration of Osiris; in the Phoenician, of Adonis; in the
Syrian, of Dionysus; in all of which the scenic apparatus of initiation
was intended to indoctrinate the candidate into the dogma of a future
life.
It will be sufficient here to refer simply to the fact, that through
the
instrumentality of the Tyrian workmen at the temple of King Solomon,
the
spurious and pure branches of the masonic system were united at
Jerusalem,
and that the same method of scenic representation was adopted by the
latter from the former, and the narrative of the temple builder
substituted for that of Dionysus, which was the myth peculiar to the
mysteries practised by the Tyrian workmen.
The idea, therefore, proposed to be communicated in the myth of the
ancient Mysteries was the same as that which is now conveyed in the