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

The feeling is an instinctive one, belonging to the noblest aspirations
of
our human nature; and hence we find Christian masonic writers indulging
in
it almost to an unwarrantable excess, and by the extent of their
sectarian
interpretations materially affecting the cosmopolitan character of the
institution.
This tendency to Christianization has, in some instances, been so
universal, and has prevailed for so long a period, that certain symbols
and myths have been, in this way, so deeply and thoroughly imbued with
the
Christian element as to leave those who have not penetrated into the
cause
of this peculiarity, in doubt whether they should attribute to the
symbol
an ancient or a modern and Christian origin.
As an illustration of the idea here advanced, and as a remarkable
example
of the result of a gradually Christianized interpretation of a masonic
symbol, I will refer to the subordinate myth (subordinate, I mean, to
the
great legend of the Builder), which relates the circumstances connected
with the grave upon "_the brow of a small hill near Mount Moriah._"
Now, the myth or legend of a grave is a legitimate deduction from the
symbolism of the ancient Spurious Masonry. It is the analogue of the
_Pastos_, _Couch,_ or _Coffin_, which was to be found in the ritual of
all
the pagan Mysteries. In all these initiations, the aspirant was placed
in
a cell or upon a couch, in darkness, and for a period varying, in the
different rites, from the three days of the Grecian Mysteries to the
fifty
of the Persian. This cell or couch, technically called the "pastos,"
was
adopted as a symbol of the being whose death and resurrection or
apotheosis, was represented in the legend.
The learned Faber says that this ceremony was doubtless the same as the
descent into Hades,[172] and that, when the aspirant entered into the
mystic cell, he was directed to lay himself down upon the bed which
shadowed out the tomb of the Great Father, or Noah, to whom, it will be
recollected, that Faber refers all the ancient rites. "While stretched
upon the holy couch," he continues to remark, "in imitation of his
figurative deceased prototype, he was said to be wrapped in the deep
sleep
of death. His resurrection from the bed was his restoration to life or
his
regeneration into a new world."
Now, it is easy to see how readily such a symbolism would be seized by
the
Temple Masons, and appropriated at once to _the grave at the brow of
the