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

of various substances, and I cannot tell what more." _Equatorial
Africa_,
p. 93.
FIFTEEN. A sacred number, symbolic of the name of God, because the
letters
of the holy name JAH are equal, in the Hebrew mode of numeration by the
letters of the alphabet, to fifteen; for [Hebrew: yod] is equal to ten,
and [Hebrew: heh] is equal to five. Hence, from veneration for this
sacred
name, the Hebrews do not, in ordinary computations, when they wish to
express the number 15, make use of these two letters, but of two
others,
which are equivalent to 9 and 6.
FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM. The forty-seventh problem of the first book of
Euclid is, that in any right-angled triangle the square which is
described
upon the side subtending the right angle is equal to the squares
described
upon the sides which contain the right angle. It is said to have been
discovered by Pythagoras while in Egypt, but was most probably taught
to
him by the priests of that country, in whose rites he had been
initiated;
it is a symbol of the production of the world by the generative and
prolific powers of the Creator; hence the Egyptians made the
perpendicular
and base the representatives of Osiris and Isis, while the hypothenuse
represented their child Horus. Dr. Lardner says (_Com. on Euclid_, p.
60)
of this problem, "Whether we consider the forty-seventh proposition
with
reference to the peculiar and beautiful relation established by it, or
to
its innumerable uses in every department of mathematical science, or to
its fertility in the consequences derivable from it, it must certainly
be
esteemed the most celebrated and important in the whole of the
elements,
if not in the whole range of mathematical science."
FOURTEEN. Some symbologists have referred the fourteen pieces into
which
the mutilated body of Osiris was divided, and the fourteen days during
which the body of the builder was buried, to the fourteen days of the
disappearance of the moon. The Sabian worshippers of "the hosts of
heaven"
were impressed with the alternate appearance and disappearance of the
moon, which at length became a symbol of death and resurrection. Hence
fourteen was a sacred number. As such it was viewed in the Osirian
Mysteries, and may have been introduced into Freemasonry with other
relics
of the old worship of the sun and planets.
FREEMASONRY, DEFINITION OF. See _Definition_.