Ancient Mystic Oriental Masonry

100.Separate from the world, and unknown to it, this Wisdom has been preserved by them and handed down as a Mystery.

101.In the time of the Jews they had made use of the Essenes, in which sect Jesus * was brought up, and had spent the greater part of His life. Having been instructed by Him in a more perfect knowledge of Holy things, they had amidst persecution taught in Silence that which had been committed to their keeping. At the period of the Saracens and the Crusades they were so greatly oppressed that they must ultimately have sought for protection from without. As fate, however, would have it, seven of them, Syriac Christians, pursued by unbelievers near Bastrum, were rescued by the Knights Templars, and afterwards taken under their protection. When they had lived there for a certain time they begged for permission to ^[75] dwell with the Canons or Prebendaries of Jerusalem, as the life there led agreed better with their own inclinations and habits. This was accorded them, and Andreas Montebarrensis effected a union of these Syrians with the Canons, to whom, out of gratitude, they imparted all their science, and so completely did they make the priests of the order the depositories of their secrets that they kept them and handed them over to others under certain conditions.

102.Thus, this secret knowledge, which was continually being added to, lived on in the very heart of the Order of Knights Templars till its abolition. Among these Templars were many Rosicrucians who handed the secret knowledge down from initiate to initiate, and as the Rosicrucian Fraternity has never been abolished from any country, for very good reasons, the secret science has never been disconnected, as it were, as has been the case with every other Order.*

103.The clergy were dispersed with the persecution that ensued, but as the secular arm did not touch them as it did the Knights, they managed to rescue many of their secret writings, and when the Knights sought refuge in Scotland, they founded a chapter at Aberdeen, the first Prior of which was Petrus de Bononia. The Science was disseminated from this place, but very cautiously, first to Italy, then to the extreme North (Sweden and Russia) and France. In Italy Abbot Severin had been the guardian of the True Science.

104.''Although it will be acknowledged by every unbiased reader, that Freemasonry has a wonderful resemblance to the Eleusinian and Dionysian ^[76] Mysteries, the fraternity of Ionian architects and the Essenian and Pythagorean * Associations, yet some may be disposed to question the identity of these institutions, because they had different names, and because some usages were observed by one which were neglected by another.

105.But these circumstances of dissimilarity arise from those necessary changes which are superinduced upon every institution, by a spirit of innovation, by the caprice of individuals, and by the various revolutions in civilized society. Every alteration or improvement in philosophical systems, or ceremonial institutions, generally produces a corresponding variation in their name, deduced from the nature of the improvement, or from the name of the innovator.

106.The different associations, for example, whose nature and tendency we have been considering, received their names from circumstances merely casual, and often of trifling consideration; though all of them were established for the same purpose, and derived from the same source. When the mysteries of the Essenes ** were imported by Pythagoras into Italy, without undergoing much variation; they were there denominated the Mysteries of Pythagoras; and, in our own day, they are called the secrets of Freemasonry, because many of their symbols are derived from the art of building, and because they are believed to have been invented by an association of architects, who ^[77] were anxious to preserve, among themselves, the knowledge which they had acquired. " *

107."The Dionysia, or Mysteries of Bacchus, were intimately connected with those of Ceres and perhaps, still more with Freemasonry; the rites came from Egypt, and there, according to Plutarch Ceres, was the Egyptian Isis, and Bacchus was Osiris.