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The Ancient Mysteries
CHAPTER V
the symbolism of freemasonry
albert gallatin mackey
I now propose, for the purpose of illustrating these views, and of
familiarizing the reader with the coincidences between Freemasonry and the
ancient Mysteries, so that he may be better enabled to appreciate the
mutual influences of each on the other as they are hereafter to be
developed, to present a more detailed relation of one or more of these
ancient systems of initiation.
As the first illustration, let us select the Mysteries of Osiris, as
they were practised in Egypt, the birthplace of all that is wonderful in
the arts or sciences, or mysterious in the religion, of the ancient
world.
It was on the Lake of Sais that the solemn ceremonies of the Osirian
initiation were performed. "On this lake," says Herodotus, "it is that the
Egyptians represent by night his sufferings whose name I refrain from
mentioning; and this representation they call their Mysteries."
17
Osiris, the husband of Isis, was an ancient king of the Egyptians.
Having been slain by Typhon, his body was cut into pieces18
by his murderer, and the mangled remains cast upon the waters of the Nile,
to be dispersed to the four winds of heaven. His wife, Isis, mourning for
the death and the mutilation of her husband, for many days searched
diligently with her companions for the portions of the body, and having at
length found them, united them together, and bestowed upon them decent
interment,—while Osiris, thus restored, became the chief deity of his
subjects, and his worship was united with that of Isis, as the fecundating
and fertilizing powers of nature. The candidate in these initiations was
made to pass through a mimic repetition of the conflict and destruction of
Osiris, and his eventual recovery; and the explanations made to him, after
he had received the full share of light to which the painful and solemn
ceremonies through which he had passed had entitled him, constituted the
secret doctrine of which I have already spoken, as the object of all the
Mysteries. Osiris,—a real and personal god to the people,—to be worshipped
with fear and with trembling, and to be propitiated with sacrifices and
burnt offerings, became to the initiate but a symbol of the
"Great first cause, least understood,"
while his death, and the wailing of Isis, with the recovery of the
body, his translation to the rank of a celestial being, and the consequent
rejoicing of his spouse, were but a tropical mode of teaching that after
death comes life eternal, and that though the body be destroyed, the soul
shall still live.
"Can we doubt," says the Baron Sainte Croix, "that such ceremonies as
those practised in the Mysteries of Osiris had been originally instituted
to impress more profoundly on the mind the dogma of future rewards and
punishments?"
19
"The sufferings and death of Osiris," says Mr. Wilkinson,20
"were the great Mystery of the Egyptian religion; and some traces of it
are perceptible among other people of antiquity. His being the divine
goodness and the abstract idea of 'good,' his manifestation upon earth
(like an Indian god), his death and resurrection, and his office as judge
of the dead in a future state, look like the early revelation of a future
manifestation of the deity converted into a mythological fable."
A similar legend and similar ceremonies, varied only as to time, and
place, and unimportant details, were to be found in all the initiations of
the ancient Mysteries. The dogma was the same,—future life,—and the method
of inculcating it was the same. The coincidences between the design of
these rites and that of Freemasonry, which must already begin to appear,
will enable us to give its full value to the expression of Hutchinson,
when he says that "the Master Mason represents a man under the Christian
doctrine saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith of
salvation."
21
In Phoenicia similar Mysteries were celebrated in honor of Adonis, the
favorite lover of Venus, who, having, while hunting, been slain by a wild
boar on Mount Lebanon, was restored to life by Proserpine. The
mythological story is familiar to every classical scholar. In the popular
theology, Adonis was the son of Cinyras, king of Cyrus, whose untimely
death was wept by Venus and her attendant nymphs: in the physical theology
of the philosophers,22
he was a symbol of the sun, alternately present to and absent from the
earth; but in the initiation into the Mysteries of his worship, his
resurrection and return from Hades were adopted as a type of the
immortality of the soul. The ceremonies of initiation in the Adonia began
with lamentation for his loss,—or, as the prophet Ezekiel expresses it,
"Behold, there sat women weeping for Thammuz,"—for such was the name under
which his worship was introduced among the Jews; and they ended with the
most extravagant demonstrations of joy at the representation of his return
to life,23
while the hierophant exclaimed, in a congratulatory strain,—
"Trust, ye initiates; the god is safe,
And from our grief
salvation shall arise."
Before proceeding to an examination of those Mysteries which are the
most closely connected with the masonic institution, it will be as well to
take a brief view of their general organization.
The secret worship, or Mysteries, of the ancients were always divided
into the lesser and the greater; the former being intended only to awaken
curiosity, to test the capacity and disposition of the candidate, and by
symbolical purifications to prepare him for his introduction into the
greater Mysteries.
The candidate was at first called an aspirant, or seeker of the truth,
and the initial ceremony which he underwent was a lustration or
purification by water. In this condition he may be compared to the Entered
Apprentice of the masonic rites, and it is here worth adverting to the
fact (which will be hereafter more fully developed) that all the
ceremonies in the first degree of masonry are symbolic of an internal
purification.
In the lesser Mysteries24
the candidate took an oath of secrecy, which was administered to him by
the mystagogue, and then received a preparatory instruction,25
which enabled him afterwards to understand the developments of the higher
and subsequent division. He was now called a Mystes, or initiate,
and may be compared to the Fellow Craft of Freemasonry.
In the greater Mysteries the whole knowledge of the divine truths,
which was the object of initiation, was communicated. Here we find, among
the various ceremonies which assimilated these rites to Freemasonry, the
aphanism, which was the disappearance or death; the pastos,
the couch, coffin, or grave; the euresis, or the discovery of the
body; and the autopsy, or full sight of everything, that is, the
complete communication of the secrets. The candidate was here called an
epopt, or eye-witness, because nothing was now hidden from him; and
hence he may be compared to the Master Mason, of whom Hutchinson says that
"he has discovered the knowledge of God and his salvation, and been
redeemed from the death of sin and the sepulchre of pollution and
unrighteousness."
FOOTNOTES
17. Herod. Hist., lib. iii. c. clxxi.
18. The legend says it was cut into fourteen pieces. Compare
this with the fourteen days of burial in the masonic legend of the
third degree. Why the particular number in each? It has been thought by
some, that in the latter legend there was a reference to the half of the
moon's age, or its dark period, symbolic of the darkness of death,
followed by the fourteen days of bright moon, or restoration to
life.
19. Mystères du Paganisme, tom. i. p. 6.
20. Notes to Rawlinson's Herodotus, b. ii. ch. clxxi. Mr. Bryant
expresses the same opinion: "The principal rites in Egypt were confessedly
for a person lost and consigned for a time to darkness, who was at last
found. This person I have mentioned to have been described under the
character of Osiris."—Analysis of Ancient Mythology, vol. iii. p.
177.
21. Spirit of Masonry, p. 100.
22. Varro, according to St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, vi. 5), says that
among the ancients there were three kinds of theology—a mythical,
which was used by the poets; a physical, by the philosophers, and a
civil, by the people.
23. "Tous les ans," says Sainte Croix, "pendant les jours consacrés au
souvenir de sa mort, tout étoit plongé dans la tristesse: on ne cessoit de
pousser des gémissemens; on alloit même jusqu'à se flageller et se donner
des coups. Le dernier jour de ce deuil, on faisoit des sacrifices funèbres
en l'honneur de ce dieu. Le jour suivant, on recevoit la nouvelle
qu'Adonis venoit d'être rappelé à la vie, qui mettoit fin à leur
deuil."—Recherches sur les Myst. du Paganisme, tom. ii. p.
105.
24. Clement of Alexandria calls them μυστ ρια
τ πρ μυστηρ ων,
"the
mysteries before the mysteries."
25. Les petits mystères ne consistoient qu'en cérémonies
préparatoires.—Sainte Croix, i. 297.—As to the oath of secrecy,
Bryant says, "The first thing at these awful meetings was to offer an oath
of secrecy to all who were to be initiated, after which they proceeded to
the ceremonies."—Anal. of Anc. Myth., vol. iii. p. 174.—The Orphic
Argonautics allude to the oath: μετ δ' ρια Μσαις,
. τ. λ., "after
the oath was administered to the mystes," &c.—Orph. Argon., v.
11.
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