Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
On Freemasonry. Evidences, Doctrines, And Traditions.
of virtue and religion . The same circumstances were found equally favourable to the propagation of science , and tended to impress upon the minds of the hearers the awful dictates of truth and wisdom . The Brahmins of Asia , and the Druids of Europe , were therefore constantly to be found in the recesses of the sacred grotto . Hereundisturbedthey chanted
, , forth their devout orisons to their Creator;—here , they practised the severities of bodily mortification;—here , they taught mankind the vanity of wealth , the folly of power , and the madness of ambition . All Asia beside cannot boast such august and admirable monuments of antiquity as the caverns of Salsette and Elephantaand the sculptures that adorn
, them , I consider them not only as stupendous subterraneous temples of the Deity , but as occasionally used by the Brahmins for inculcating the profoundest arcana of those sciences for which they were so widely celebrated throughout the
East . " But we are also furnished , by the same industrious writer , with a series of evidence to prove that the ancients met in these lowest and most secret of valleys , to practise the mystical rites of their Spurious Freemasonry ; which was denominated " The Mysteries ; " as well because the initiated
were enjoined to keep the doctrines inculcated , and the rites practised , in the secret cell , sacred from the profane , as because the former were constantly taught , and the latter celebrated eva-mra KOL WKTI , in the bosom of darkness , and in the dead silence of the night . This profound darkness—this midnight silencethey imagined threw a kind of sacred
, horror over their rites , and the priests , both of Egypt and Athens , thought these a securer defence against intrusion , than either the secret depths of those subterranean caverns in which they were originally celebrated , or the lofty walls that in succeeding ages encircled the superb Temple of Ceres at Eleusis .
All our best authorities are agreed on this point . The learned Faber says , that " rocky cavities were esteemed peculiarly sacred by the ancient idolaters ; and they were constantly used in the celebration of their most secret rites . The same idea prevailed among the Druidical priests of Britain ; and was also the cause of those immense artificial
excavations which abound in Persia and Hindostan . In places of such a nature the Helioarkite gods were worshipped under the titles of Dii Patroi ' , and Dii Petrei ; appellations equally borne by the Penates or Cabin , and by
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
On Freemasonry. Evidences, Doctrines, And Traditions.
of virtue and religion . The same circumstances were found equally favourable to the propagation of science , and tended to impress upon the minds of the hearers the awful dictates of truth and wisdom . The Brahmins of Asia , and the Druids of Europe , were therefore constantly to be found in the recesses of the sacred grotto . Hereundisturbedthey chanted
, , forth their devout orisons to their Creator;—here , they practised the severities of bodily mortification;—here , they taught mankind the vanity of wealth , the folly of power , and the madness of ambition . All Asia beside cannot boast such august and admirable monuments of antiquity as the caverns of Salsette and Elephantaand the sculptures that adorn
, them , I consider them not only as stupendous subterraneous temples of the Deity , but as occasionally used by the Brahmins for inculcating the profoundest arcana of those sciences for which they were so widely celebrated throughout the
East . " But we are also furnished , by the same industrious writer , with a series of evidence to prove that the ancients met in these lowest and most secret of valleys , to practise the mystical rites of their Spurious Freemasonry ; which was denominated " The Mysteries ; " as well because the initiated
were enjoined to keep the doctrines inculcated , and the rites practised , in the secret cell , sacred from the profane , as because the former were constantly taught , and the latter celebrated eva-mra KOL WKTI , in the bosom of darkness , and in the dead silence of the night . This profound darkness—this midnight silencethey imagined threw a kind of sacred
, horror over their rites , and the priests , both of Egypt and Athens , thought these a securer defence against intrusion , than either the secret depths of those subterranean caverns in which they were originally celebrated , or the lofty walls that in succeeding ages encircled the superb Temple of Ceres at Eleusis .
All our best authorities are agreed on this point . The learned Faber says , that " rocky cavities were esteemed peculiarly sacred by the ancient idolaters ; and they were constantly used in the celebration of their most secret rites . The same idea prevailed among the Druidical priests of Britain ; and was also the cause of those immense artificial
excavations which abound in Persia and Hindostan . In places of such a nature the Helioarkite gods were worshipped under the titles of Dii Patroi ' , and Dii Petrei ; appellations equally borne by the Penates or Cabin , and by