Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry

344."This sacred festival does not astonish me,” said Dr. Goodman. "I feel persuaded that this was the first festival that men celebrated, and I do not see why we should not pray to God when we are going to pro-create a being in His image, as we pray before we take our food, which serves to support our body; working to give birth to a reasonable being, is a most noble and Holy action; as thus the first Indians thought who revered the Lingam, the symbol of generation; the ancient Egyptians who carried the Phallus in procession; the Greeks who erected temples to Priapus. "

^[169] 345. "The reverence as well as worship paid to the Phallus, in early primitive days, had nothing in it which partook of indecency: all ideas connected with it were of a reverential and religious kind. When Abraham, as mentioned in Genesis, in asking his servant to take a solemn oath, makes him lay his hand on his parts of generation (in the common version 'under his thigh'), it was that he required, as a token of his sincerity, his placing his hand on the most revered part of his body; as at the present day a man would place his hand on his heart in order to evince his sincerity. Jacob, when dying, makes his son Joseph perform the same act. A similar custom is still retained among the Arabs at the present day. An Arab, in taking a solemn oath, will place his hand on his virile member, in attestation of sincerity.

346."The indecent ideas attached to the representation of the Phallus were, though it seems a paradox to say so, the result of a more advanced civilization verging towards its decline, as we have evidence at Rome and Pompeii.

347."Our ideas of propriety lead us to suppose that a ceremony which appears to us infamous could only be invented by licentiousness; but it is impossible to believe that licentiousness and depravity of manners would ever have led among any people to the establishment of religious ceremonies, profligacy may have crept in in the lapse of time. But the original institution was always innocent and free from it; the early agapes, in which boys and girls kissed one ^[170] another modestly on the mouth, degenerated at last into secret meetings and licentiousness. It is, therefore, probable that this custom was first introduced in times of simplicity, that the first thought was to honor the Deity in the symbol of life which it has given us."

348."To sum up, the Phallus, in the same manner as statues, plants, animals, objects of worship among nations, was only the outward covering, the receptacle, the vehicle of the Deity which was supposed to be contained within it, a Deity to which alone Religious Worship was paid. This outward covering, this receptacle, this vehicle, was varied in an infinity of modes with regard to its form, but it was neither a symbol nor an allegory."*

349.The Mysteries formed an important feature in the system of religion practiced amongst the Greeks. In the institutions of polytheism the gods were worshipped openly by prayer and sacrifice; and to these rites the people of every rank were admitted without distinction, because they formed the beaten track of duty which mortal man was supposed to owe to the immortal Deities. But the highest ceremonies of religion were of a nature too sublime to be exposed to public view; and were, therefore, only celebrated in the presence of that distinguished portion of the community which had bound themselves by voluntary vows to preserve the solemn rites inviolably secret from the rest of the world.

350."These Rites were known under the high and ^[171] significant appellation of The Mysteries; and even in them a subdivision had been made, because it was thought dangerous to entrust the ineffable secrets to any but a select and chosen few, who are prepared to a new accession of knowledge by processes, at once seductive and austere, and bound to secrecy by fearful oaths, and penalties of the most sanguinary. The former were denominated the lesser, and these the greater Mysteries."*

351.Among the Ancients Silence and Secrecy were considered virtues of the highest order. The Egyptians worshipped Harpocrates, the God of Secrecy, raised altars in his name, and wreathed them with garlands of flowers. Among the ancient Romans, too, these virtues were not less esteemed, and a distinguished Latin poet tells us, "For faithful Silence also there is a sure reward."