Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry

Mystic Masonry

^[24] 1. Mystic Masonry is not only the key to the religion taught to all men in all ages from the very beginning of conscious life up to the present, but it holds the keys to these religious and is, in fact, the very repository of religion itself. Its degrees give this secret to its initiates as no religion nor any other order can. It has for its base the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. It recognizes man as the living temple of God, that temple which was built without sound of hammer or any noise whatever. It recognizes the Christos (Christ) as the living principle of the soul of man and without which no one can be immortal. It has for its object the uniting of mankind into a Universal Brotherhood, the exercise of benevolence; the practice of the arts; the practice of virtue and the study of both Nature and God as He is.

2.The language used may seem strong, but we who know the work in these degrees must be the ones to judge as to what they are and what they contain. The Degrees, starting with the First up to the eleventh, teach all there is of Religion, they give the key to religion itself.

^[25] 3. The Ancient and Mystic Oriental Rite is Universal, and is open to every Master Mason who believes in the Fatherhood of God and the Universal Brotherhood of all Men. The other qualification necessary of the Neophyte is that he shall be honorable and upright in his dealings.

4.The cradle of the Symbolism used in all Masonry is placed by many of the best authorities in that country which they believe was first inhabited, i. e., the plateau of Tartary, and from there transmitted to this generation by the sages of India, Persia, Ethiopia, and Egypt. We are not indebted to either ancient Egypt for either Religion or Masonry, but to America.

5.It is a fact that at Memphis, Egypt, in the Pyramids, under the guidance of the Kings, the Mystic Rites of Masonry were worked many thousands of years ago, but at that time Egypt and the continent of America were one and the same.

6."In America, re-discovered in the fifteenth century and re-populated in the seventeenth, was re-covered Egypt and the promised land, or the land of the constellation of the Eagle."*

7."No matter how numerous or complicated the works of a lock may be, if but the right key be applied. The Great Pyramid proves to be the long-sought key to the mysteries at once of Mythology and of the great world religions. Especially interesting is it to Americans in this year of the Columbian celebration of the four hundredth anniversary of the re-discovery of America, to see it demonstrated that the cosmic terrors ^[26] interwoven with the very warp and woof of all sacred literature, Christian and pagan, refer to occurrences as literally true as the earthquake of Lisbon, these stupendous events being connected primarily with a great destruction and recovery of equilibrium in the solar system;* and secondly with the consequent wrecking of the continent of America when the globe became involved in the consequences of the disorder of the skies. America (known to the Mystic as Atlantis), when this ruin befel, was the seat of the greatest empire that has ever existed, and its irresistible armies were terrorizing all Europe and Asia.