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

But this Scottish tradition would take the Stone of Foundation away
from
all its masonic connections, and therefore it is rejected as a masonic
legend.
The legends just related are in many respects contradictory and
unsatisfactory, and another series, equally as old, are now very
generally
adopted by masonic scholars, as much better suited to the symbolism by
which all these legends are explained.
This series of legends commences with the patriarch Enoch, who is
supposed
to have been the first consecrator of the Stone of Foundation. The
legend
of Enoch is so interesting and important in masonic science as to
excuse
something more than a brief reference to the incidents which it
details.
The legend in full is as follows: Enoch, under the inspiration of the
Most
High, and in obedience to the instructions which he had received in a
vision, built a temple under ground on Mount Moriah, and dedicated it
to
God. His son, Methuselah, constructed the building, although he was not
acquainted with his father's motives for the erection. This temple
consisted of nine vaults, situated perpendicularly beneath each other,
and
communicating by apertures left in each vault.
Enoch then caused a triangular plate of gold to be made, each side of
which was a cubit long; he enriched it with the most precious stones,
and
encrusted the plate upon a stone of agate of the same form. On the
plate
he engraved the true name of God, or the tetragrammaton, and placing it
on a cubical stone, known thereafter as the Stone of Foundation, he
deposited the whole within the lowest arch.
When this subterranean building was completed, he made a door of stone,
and attaching to it a ring of iron, by which it might be occasionally
raised, he placed it over the opening of the uppermost arch, and so
covered it that the aperture could not be discovered. Enoch himself was
not permitted to enter it but once a year, and after the days of Enoch,
Methuselah, and Lamech, and the destruction of the world by the deluge,
all knowledge of the vault or subterranean temple, and of the Stone of
Foundation, with the sacred and ineffable name inscribed upon it, was
lost
for ages to the world.
At the building of the first temple of Jerusalem, the Stone of
Foundation
again makes its appearance. Reference has already been made to the
Jewish
tradition that David, when digging the foundations of the temple, found
in