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

a hieroglyphic word meaning _Temple_--all so placed and preserved as
to show, beyond doubt, that they had high symbolic meaning. Whether
they were in the original foundation, or were placed there when the
obelisk was removed, no one can tell. Nevertheless, they were there,
concrete witnesses of the fact that the builders worked in the light
of a mystical faith, of which they were emblems.
Much has been written of buildings, their origin, age, and
architecture, but of the builders hardly a word--so quickly is the
worker forgotten, save as he lives in his work. Though we have no
records other than these emblems, it is an obvious inference that
there were orders of builders even in those early ages, to whom these
symbols were sacred; and this inference is the more plausible when we
remember the importance of the builder both to religion and the state.
What though the builders have fallen into dust, to which all things
mortal decline, they still hold out their symbols for us to read,
speaking their thoughts in a language easy to understand. Across the
piled-up debris of ages they whisper the old familiar truths, and it
will be a part of this study to trace those symbols through the
centuries, showing that they have always had the same high meanings.
They bear witness not only to the unity of the human mind, but to the
existence of a common system of truth veiled in allegory and taught in
symbols. As such, they are prophecies of Masonry as we know it, whose
genius it is to take what is old, simple, and universal, and use it to
bring men together and make them friends.
/P
Shore calls to shore
That the line is unbroken!
P/
FOOTNOTES:
[10] There are many books in this field, but two may be named: _The
Lost Language of Symbolism_, by Bayley, and the _Signs and Symbols of
Primordial Man_, by Churchward, each in its own way remarkable. The
first aspires to be for this field what Frazer's _Golden Bough_ is for
religious anthropology, and its dictum is: "Beauty is Truth; Truth
Beauty." The thesis of the second is that Masonry is founded upon
Egyptian eschatology, which may be true; but unfortunately the book is
too polemical. Both books partake of the poetry, if not the confusion,
of the subject; but not for a world of dust would one clip their wings
of fancy and suggestion. Indeed, their union of scholarship and poetry
is unique. When the pains of erudition fail to track a fact to its
lair, they do not scruple to use the divining rod; and the result often
passes out of the realm of pedestrian chronicle into the world of
winged literature.
[11] _The Word in the Pattern_, Mrs. G.F. Watts.
[12] _The Swastika_, Thomas Carr. See essay by the same writer in which
he shows that the Swastika is the symbol of the Supreme Architect of
the Universe among Operative Masons today (_The Lodge of Research_, No.
2429, Transactions, 1911-12).
[13] _Signs and Symbols_, Churchward, chap. xvii.