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

house in Athens. They were also placed in front of the temples, in the
gymnasia or schools, in libraries, and at the corners of streets, and
in
the roads. When dedicated to the god Terminus they were used as
landmarks,
and placed as such upon the concurrent lines of neighboring
possessions.
The Thebans worshipped Bacchus under the form of a rude, square stone.
Arnobius[228] says that Cybele was represented by a small stone of a
black color. Eusebius cites Porphyry as saying that the ancients
represented the deity by a black stone, because his nature is obscure
and
inscrutable. The reader will here be reminded of the black stone
_Hadsjar
el Aswad_, placed in the south-west corner of the Kaaba at Mecca, which
was worshipped by the ancient Arabians, and is still treated with
religious veneration by the modern Mohammedans. The Mussulman priests,
however, say that it was originally white, and of such surprising
splendor
that it could be seen at the distance of four days' journey, but that
it
has been blackened by the tears of pilgrims.
The Druids, it is well known, had no other images of their gods but
cubical, or sometimes columnar, stones, of which Toland gives several
instances.
The Chaldeans had a sacred stone, which they held in great veneration,
under the name of _Mnizuris_, and to which they sacrificed for the
purpose
of evoking the Good Demon.
Stone-worship existed among the early American races. Squier quotes
Skinner as asserting that the Peruvians used to set up rough stones in
their fields and plantations, which were worshipped as protectors of
their
crops. And Gam a says that in Mexico the presiding god of the spring
was
often represented without a human body, and in place thereof a pilaster
or
square column, whose pedestal was covered with various sculptures.
Indeed, so universal was this stone-worship, that Higgins, in his
"_Celtic Druids_," says that, "throughout the world the first object of
idolatry seems to have been a plain, unwrought stone, placed in the
ground, as an emblem of the generative or procreative powers of
nature."
And the learned Bryant, in his "_Analysis of Ancient Mythology_,"
asserts
that "there is in every oracular temple some legend about a stone."
Without further citations of examples from the religious usages of
other
countries, it will, I think, be conceded that the cubical stone formed
an