Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry

251."The Mysteries of Osiris formed the third degree or summit of the Egyptian Initiation. In these, the legend of the murder of Osiris, by his brother Typhon, was represented, and the god was personated by the candidate. Osiris, according to the tradition, was a wise king of Egypt, who having ^[136] achieved the reform of his subjects at home, resolved to spread the blessings of civilization in the other parts of the earth. This he accomplished, but on his return he found his kingdom, which he had left in the care of his wife Isis, distracted by the seditions of his brother Typhon. Osiris attempted, by mild remonstrances, to convince his brother of the impropriety of his conduct, but he fell a sacrifice in the attempt. For Typhon murdered him in a secret apartment, and cutting up the body, enclosed the pieces in a chest, which he committed to the waters of the Nile. Isis, searching for the body, found it, and entrusted it to the care of the priests, establishing at the same time the Mysteries in commemoration of the foul deed. One piece of the body, however, she could not find, the Membrum Virile. For this she substituted a fictitious representation, which she consecrated, and which, under the name of Phallus, is to be found as the emblem of fecundity in all the Ancient Mysteries.

252." This legend was purely astronomical. Osiris was the sun, Isis the moon. Typhon was the symbol of winter, which destroys the fecundating and fertilizing powers of the sun, thus, as it were, depriving him of life. This was the catastrophe celebrated in the Mysteries, and the aspirant was made to pass fictitiously through the sufferings and the death of Osiris."*

253.''The idea of the existence of an enlightened ^[137] people who lived at a remote era, and came from the east, was a very prevalent notion among the Ancient traditions. Ezekiel in verse 2, chapter xliii, says: * The glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the East.' Adam Clark says: 'All knowledge, all religion, and all arts and science have traveled according to the course of the sun from east to west.' Bazot tells us in his Manuel du Franc-Macon, page 154, that 'the veneration which Masons entertain for the east confirms an opinion previously announced, that the religious system of Masonry came from the east, and has reference to the Primitive Religion, whose first occupation was the worship of the sun. "*

254."Among the Egyptians, too, the chief deity, Osiris, was but another name for the sun, while his arch-enemy and destroyer, Typhon, was the typification of the night, or darkness. And lastly, among the Hindu, the three manifestations of their supreme Deity, Brahma, Siva, and Vishni, were symbols of the rising meridian, and setting Sun."

255."This early and very general prevalence of the sentiment of sun-worship is worthy of especial attention on account of the influence that it exercised over the spurious Freemasonry of antiquity,

Many, indeed, nearly all, of the Masonic symbols of the present day can only be thoroughly understood and properly appreciated by this reference to sun-worship.

^[138] 256. "One thing, at least, is incapable of refutation, and that is, that we are indebted to the Tyrian Masons for the introduction of the symbol of Hiram Abif. The idea of the symbol, although modified by the Jewish Masons, is not Jewish in its inception. It was evidently borrowed from the pagan Mysteries, where Bacchus, Adonis, Proserpine, and a host of other apotheosized beings play the same role that Hiram does in the Masonic Mysteries."*

257."In every country under heaven the initiations were performed in caverns, either natural or artificial, and darkness was honored with peculiar marks of veneration, by reason of its supposed priority of existence. 'And God said, Let there be light: and there was Light.' Light was an emblem of Life, and Darkness of death: and Death was a prelude to resurrection. It will at once be seen, therefore, in what manner the doctrine of the resurrection was inculcated and exemplified in these remarkable institutions of the ancients."**