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

early nations? Carry our thoughts back to their remote times, and our
only
wonder would be if they did not so adore it. The sun is life as well as
light to all that is on the earth--as we of the present day know even
better than they of old. Moving in dazzling radiance or brilliant-hued
pageantry through the sky, scanning in calm royalty all that passes
below,
it seems the very god of this fair world, which lives and blooms but in
his smile."
[104] The _Institutes of Menu_, which are the acknowledged code of the
Brahmins, inform us that "the world was all darkness, undiscernible,
undistinguishable altogether, as in a profound sleep, till the
self-existent, invisible God, making it manifest with five elements and
other glorious forms, perfectly dispelled the gloom."--Sir WILLIAM
JONES,
_On the Gods of Greece. Asiatic Researches_, i. 244.
Among the Rosicrucians, who have, by some, been improperly confounded
with
the Freemasons, the word _lux_ was used to signify a knowledge of the
philosopher's stone, or the great desideratum of a universal elixir and
a
universal menstruum. This was their _truth_.
[105] On Symbolic Colors, p. 23, Inman's translation.
[106] Freemasonry having received the name of _lux_, or light, its
disciples have, very appropriately, been called "the Sons of Light."
Thus
Burns, in his celebrated Farewell:--
"Oft have I met your social band,
And spent the cheerful, festive night;
Oft, honored with supreme command,
Presided o'er the _sons of light_."
[107] Thus defined: "The stone which lies at the corner of two walls,
and
unites them; the principal stone, and especially the stone which forms
the
corner of the foundation of an edifice."--Webster.
[108] Among the ancients the corner-stone of important edifices was
laid
with impressive ceremonies. These are well described by Tacitus, in his
history of the rebuilding of the Capitol. After detailing the
preliminary
ceremonies which consisted in a procession of vestals, who with
chaplets
of flowers encompassed the ground and consecrated it by libations of
living water, he adds that, after solemn prayer, Helvidius, to whom the
care of rebuilding the Capitol had been committed, "laid his hand upon
the
fillets that adorned the foundation stone, and also the cords by which
it
was to be drawn to its place. In that instant the magistrates, the