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

stone all its masonic value and significance. It is upon this fact,
that
it was so inscribed, that its whole symbolism depends.
Looking at these traditions in anything like the light of historical
narratives, we are compelled to consider them, to use the plain
language
of Lee, "but as so many idle and absurd conceits." We must go behind
the
legend, viewing it only as an allegory, and study its symbolism.
The symbolism of the Foundation Stone of Masonry is therefore the next
subject of investigation.
In approaching this, the most abstruse, and one of the most important,
symbols of the Order, we are at once impressed with its apparent
connection with the ancient doctrine of stone worship. Some brief
consideration of this species of religious culture is therefore
necessary
for a proper understanding of the real symbolism of the Stone of
Foundation.
The worship of stones is a kind of fetichism, which in the very infancy
of religion prevailed, perhaps, more extensively than any other form of
religious culture. Lord Kames explains the fact by supposing that
stones
erected as monuments of the dead became the place where posterity paid
their veneration to the memory of the deceased, and that at length the
people, losing sight of the emblematical signification, which was not
readily understood, these monumental stones became objects of worship.
Others have sought to find the origin of stone-worship in the stone
that
was set up and anointed by Jacob at Bethel, and the tradition of which
had
extended into the heathen nations and become corrupted. It is certain
that
the Phoenicians worshipped sacred stones under the name of _Baetylia_,
which word is evidently derived from the Hebrew _Bethel_; and this
undoubtedly gives some appearance of plausibility to the theory.
But a third theory supposes that the worship of stones was derived from
the unskilfulness of the primitive sculptors, who, unable to frame, by
their meagre principles of plastic art, a true image of the God whom
they
adored, were content to substitute in its place a rude or scarcely
polished stone. Hence the Greeks, according to Pausanias, originally
used
unhewn stones to represent their deities, thirty of which that
historian
says he saw in the city of Pharas. These stones were of a cubical form,
and as the greater number of them were dedicated to the god Hermes, or
Mercury, they received the generic name of _Hermaa_. Subsequently, with
the improvement of the plastic art, the head was added.[227]
One of these consecrated stones was placed before the door of almost
every