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

also
unto Baal-peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead." This last
expression,
according to Russel, has a distinct reference to the physical qualities
of
matter, and to the time when death, by the winter absence of the solar
heat, gets, as it were, possession of the earth. Baal-peor was, he
says,
the sun exercising his powers of fecundity.--_Connection of Sacred and
Profane History_
[80] Is there not a seeming reference to this thought of divine
hermaphrodism in the well-known passage of Genesis? "So God created man
in
his own image, in the image of God created he him: _male and female_
created he them." And so being created "male and female," they were "in
the image of God."
[81] The world being animated by man, says Creuzer, in his learned work
on
Symbolism, received from him the two sexes, represented by heaven and
the
earth. Heaven, as the fecundating principle, was male, and the source
of
fire; the earth, as the fecundated, was female, and the source of
humidity. All things issued from the alliance of these two principles.
The
vivifying powers of the heavens are concentrated in the sun, and the
earth, eternally fixed in the place which it occupies, receives the
emanations from the sun, through the medium of the moon, which sheds
upon
the earth the germs which the sun had deposited in its fertile bosom.
The
Lingam is at once the symbol and the mystery of this religious idea.
[82] Such was the opinion of some of the ancient sun-worshippers, whose
adorations were always performed in the open air, because they thought
no
temple was spacious enough to contain the sun; and hence the saying,
"Mundus universus est templum solis"--the universe is the temple of the
sun. Like our ancient brethren, they worshipped only on _the highest
hills_. Another analogy.
[83] _Asgard_, the abode of the gods, is shaded by the ash tree,
_Ydrasil_, where the gods assemble every day to do justice. The
branches
of this tree extend themselves over the whole world, and reach above
the
heavens. It hath three roots, extremely distant from each other: one of
them is among the gods; the second is among the giants, where the abyss
formerly was; the third covers _Niflheim_, or hell, and under this root
is
the fountain _Vergelmer_, whence flow the infernal rivers.--_Edda,
Fab._
8.
[84] Exod. iii. 5.