Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry

52." The Kabalah, on the contrary, embodying considerable of the true and ancient Secret Doctrine, held a different idea of Divinity. While carrying the tradition, therefore, of the lost word as the Ineffable Name of Deity, the symbolism was taken as literal fact, and the people who were commanded to 'make no graven image' ended by making a gigantic idol, half Moloch and half Man. Amid such contradictions, the symbolism adopted from the purer and gentler Aryans was ill at ease and far from home. Rev. Dr. Garrison claims in a 'Contribution to the History of the Lost Word,' appended to Foot's Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry, that the four-syllabled name, Jehovah, was held by the Hebrews as the Ineffable, and that Adonai was used as a substitute. The High Priests once every year, at the time of the atonement, entered alone into the Holy of Holies and there repeated the name. The name was thus withdrawn from and finally lost by the common people. This is ^[50] ingenious and too literal to cover the case. The old query, ' What is in a name? ' is, after all, not so easy of answer; or the answer might be, 'everything or nothing, ' according as you understand it or look at it. Before the introduction of the Masoretic points or indices of vowel sounds, the consonants were read by metrically intoning the text. The principle of the Mantram was therefore known to the High Priests at least, and, therefore, the Word, the Name, that known in all its pentitude and used with power, 'caused the whole world to shake' may have been used or invoked in the Holy of Holies by the Kabalistic Hierophant. Some who read this may be even yet so ignorant of the potency of sound as to smile at the credulity and gullibility that indites it; and yet so superstitious over the letters of a name as to believe them more sacred in one form than another. Notwithstanding, it is the letter that killeth, and the Spirit (the breath) that maketh alive. The consonants composing the Hebrew alphabet are about as sacred as so many wooden blocks. If one knows how to arrange the blocks, and endow them with life, so that they may 'bud and blossom like Aaron's rod,' that of course is a very different matter.

53."The traditional Lost Word of the Master is a Key to all the science of Magic. The knowledge of the Master is not empirical. It does not consist of a few isolated formula by which certain startling or unusual effects can be produced. The Magician's art is based on a science far more deep and exact than modern physical science has yet dreamed of, and back ^[51] of this science lies a philosophy as boundless as Cosmos, as inexhaustible as Time, and as beneficient as the 'Father in Heaven.' If the Masonic meaning of Master, Perfect and Sublime Master, Prince Adept, etc., is less than I have indicated, then it is a roaring farce, or a stupendous humbug. The conception of Masonry is true, but it has adopted or imitated the ritual and glyphics of a science, the Key to which not one Mason in ten thousand possesses, and hence the tradition of the Lost Word has a literal, no less than a symbolical meaning. The 'Substitute' is given to the neophyte — 'till future generations shall find the True Word. ' The question now propounded to every ' obligated,' or so-called Master Mason, is — is the present, the generation in which that which was lost shall be found? and each must answer for himself singly; just as he entered the Lodge, first saw the light, and took his obligation; just as every real Master, or 'White Adept,' has done since the beginning of time. There exists in Masonic literature many learned essays on the history, orthography and philology of the Lost Word; but I am acquainted with no treatise that apprehends the nature of the real secret like that of Brother Albert Pike in his great work, and yet, if he knew the whole secret, he concealed it at last.

54."The True Word of a Mason is to be found in the concealed and profound meaning of the Ineffable Name of Deity communicated by God to Moses" (rather to the Priests of Ancient Atlantis), "and which meaning was long lost by the very precautions taken to conceal it. The true pronunciation of that ^[52] name was in truth a secret, in which, however, was involved the far more profound secret of its meaning. "