Masonic Symbolism.

spirit shall return to God who gave it " was the teaching of the Hebrew sage , and the Egyptian magi inculcated a similar dogma , while the Hindoo Brahmin was content to pass to the unseen Avorld in the sure hope of an ultimate absorption into the first great object of worship— "Brahma the Creator . " The letter N was imported into Masonry as a symbol at the same time as the hexalpha , the tau , the pentaclethe crossand the V or Y . The first

, , origin of these symbols is shrouded in an altogether impenetrable darkness . They Avere probably , as Mrs . Hardinge Britten says in her " Art Magic , " connected with fire worshi p , and as such were sculptured in the galleries and corridors of the mighty " sun temples , " which we now call the Pyramids . The Rosicrucians , or brethren of the Rosy Cross , Avere the first to introduce them into Mediaeval Masonry . Let me prove my position in regard to the

connection betAveen the two . Egyptian mysticism was essentially a form of spiritualism ; not the form that we know now , ivith its attendant beAvilderments of table til tings and rappings on the ceilings , but a veritable , unquestionable rapport and intercommunion with tho denizens of the unseen world . Witness the great works Avhich in India and E gypt are performed at the present day : witness the revelations received by the Jewish patriarch on Mount Sinai , and

the " serpent transformations " which symbolized the ivorship which was then in Egypt beginning to be practised ; the deification of the serpent as the—to them—Avisest of all the beasts Ancl the Rosicrucians maintained the same ideas in regard to superhuman intercourse . They taught the theory of the . two kinds of life , the " elementary " and the " compound . " They advocated man ' s dual nature . The elementary was the " sylphide" or spirit life . The

compound was the human , or soul-life . The duty of their sages Avas by fasting , contemplation , and prayer to bring about a union or "Rosicrucian marriage" with the sylphide or elementary . That union produced another ( which it Avould be more proper to call a "tripartite" nature ) , which ivas compound life in the next world—in the paradise of heaven . " It was , " so they held and taught , "the desertion of the spirit-bride Avhich

constituted the fall of man . " The grand purpose of the brethren Avas to bring about the entire regeneration , and perfection , and immortalization in mankind in body , soul , ancl spirit . B y the help of the " spirit-brides" they could penetrate the secrets of nature , or , as the Tab ' esin says of the Druidical god life , they could see into the life of things ; and the fruits of the glorious alliance which they sought were to be science , genius , and immortality , as in the Eleusian initiation .

The symbol N to which I have referred assumed a variety of modifications . Thus , by distortion and a series of metamorphoses , it produced the following , all of which are knoAvn to those of the Master Degree : —

A/ V\ r * ST^^^ f sh Thus a straight line cuts it into its two terminal angles , as if it would draw our thoughts to the duality of these angles ; then a second N takes the place of the division

, and Ave have the - | - or X or - |" , which , among the mystical nations , has always been assigned a prominent place . It is worth remark that the third to the last of the figures given is identically the same as the mark of the ancient Hindoo Jaius ; and the last is a symbol known and venerated among both the Chinese and Hindoos , just as the Y symbol is known in this and other countries as an heraldic bearingaud as the " pall " official vestment of the

, or » atican archbishops . In all the varieties of the N symbol there is the same Peculiarit y as in tbe St . Andrew ' s Cross X , viz ., the two reversed angles . Here ^ ay be seen an equivalent for the sexual union of the V and A of the feminine and masculine signs of the Egyptians , and by putting the V and A together thus AV the N may be regarded as a compound syllable . Regarding the con-