Sacred Mysteries Among the Mayas and the Kʼicheʼs (Illustrated) . Augustus Le Plongeon
East from times immemorial. It is well known that one of the charges made against Jacques de Molay and his associates by their accusers was that they used secret rites in their initiations. Their four oaths were well known; but not their rites of initiation. What were they?
We are told that the aim of the Society of Architects was to perpetuate the ancient Order of the Temple. It is therefore to be presumed that they continued to observe the rites and ceremonies practiced in the chapters of the Templars, to use them at the initiations of members into the new Society, to whom they communicated the intimate meaning of their symbols. Were these rites analogous to those observed in the initiations to the symbolical degrees? These degrees were, it must be remembered, the only ones originally recognized by the brotherhood; as there are but three in the Society of Jesus; the Neophites—the Coadjutors—and the Profess; as there were anciently among the priests of the temples of Egypt, who indeed considered it a great honor to be judged worthy of admission to the third degree; that is, to participation in the greater mysteries. Was their explanation of the symbols similar to that taught in M⸫ lodges? The Templars were accused, as Masons are to day, by the Romish Church, since it has lost its hold and influence on the association, of the crime of heresy, and many Masons have suffered death by being burnt alive as heretics.
From whom did the Templars receive those symbols, and their esoteric meaning, in which we plainly trace the doctrine of Pythagoras? No doubt from the Christians who, like the Emperor Julian, the Bishop Synnesius, Clement of Alexandria and many other pagan philosophers, who had been initiated to the mysteries by the priests of Egypt, before being converted to Christianity. In that case the connection of modern Masonry with the ancient religious mysteries of Egypt, consequently with those of Greece and Samothracia is easily traced; and the resemblance of the symbolical marks and ceremonials of M⸫ lodges with those of the mysteries naturally accounted for. Thus it is that many masonic authors may have been led to trace the origin of the craft to followers of Pythagoras; and others to the Essenes and first Christians.
Krause, in his work, has endeavored to prove that Masonry originated in the associations of operative masons that in the Middle Ages travelled through Europe, and by whom the cathedrals, monasteries, and castles were built; whose fundamental laws, traditions, customs and tools are now used in the lodges in a figurative sense.
These associations may have sprung from the building corporations of the Romans: if so, we have a connecting link between the lodges of the Middle Ages and the mysteries of the ancients. The initiates of the architectural collegia of the Romans did not call themselves Brothers; this is a title that came into use only when the Christian Masonic fraternities adopted it. They styled themselves Collega or Incorporatus.
They worked in buildings apart or in secluded rooms; and the constitution of M⸫ lodges, so far as the officers, their titles and duties, and the symbols are concerned, is so similar to theirs that one might be inclined to believe that the early Masons imitated the Roman collegia.
This theory is not without semblance of plausibility. Rome, during several centuries, held sway over Gaul and Britain. Roman colonists settled in various parts of those countries. With their language and customs they imported many of their institutions and associations. That of the builders or collegia, as is manifest from the remains still existing of the magnificent roads and edifices of various kinds constructed by them. The Collegæ held their lodges wherever they established themselves; no doubt initiated new members. In the course of time, when those countries freed themselves from the yoke of Rome, these societies of builders became the associations of the itinerant operative masons which inherited the symbols, tokens and pass words of the Collegæ. These, in all probability, had received them, either from the Chaldean magicians, who flocked to Rome at the beginning of the Christian era, when the progress of philosophical incredulity had shaken the confidence in legal divination; or from some of the priests of inferior order, all initiated to part of the lesser mysteries, that, when the sacerdotal class having lost in majesty, power and wealth, in order to preserve whole its numerous hierarchy, repaired to the Capital of the world to escape misery by levying contributions on the credulity and superstition of the people.
The Christian Church, on the one hand, the Roman emperors on the other, fearing the influence of those magicians and priests, persecuted them even to death. These learned and wise men formed secret societies to preserve and transmit their knowledge. These societies lasted during the Middle Ages—the Rosicrucians, the Theurgists, among them. Leibnitz, one of the greatest men of science that ever lived, who died in Hanover, in 1716, at the age of seventy years, became a member of one of these societies; and there received an instruction he had vainly sought elsewhere.
Were their mysterious meetings remnants of the ancient learned initiations? Everything tends to make us suspect it. The trials and examinations to which those who applied for initiation were obliged to submit; the nature of the secrets they possessed; the manner in which they were preserved. In these again may be found an explanation of why so many of the Pythagorean doctrines made their way into Masonry.
Of the ceremonies performed at the initiation into the mysteries of Egypt we know but little at present, for the initiated were very careful to conceal these sacred rites. Herodotus tells that if any person divulged any part of them, he was thought to have called down Divine judgment upon his head, and it was accounted unsafe to abide in the same house with him. He was even apprehended as a public offender and put to death.
Still, on reading the visions in the book of Henoch, and comparing them with what we know of the trials to which were subjected the applicants for initiation into the greater mysteries of Eleusis and Egypt, and those of Xibalba, one can scarcely refrain from believing that, under the title of Visions, the author relates his experience at the initiation, and what he learned in the mysteries before being converted to Christianity. That book is believed to have been written at the beginning of the Christian era, when, under the yoke of the Roman emperors, the customs and religion of the Egyptians fell into decadency; and the Christian bishops of Alexandria, such as George, Theophilus, Cyril, the murderer of the beautiful, learned and noble Hypathia, daughter of the mathematician Theon, persecuted the worshipers of Isis and Osiris, and converted their temples into Christian churches, after defacing and whitewashing the ancient sculptures that covered their walls, on which they painted rough images of saints. It may be that its author, although having embraced Christianity, still retained in his heart of hearts a strong love for the ancient institutions that were fast disappearing in the midst of the political and religious dissensions that were raging at the time. Fearing lest the learning of the priests of old and the knowledge he had acquired by his initiation into the mysteries should become lost, the dread of death being removed by the new order of things, he put, for greater safety, in the mouth of Henoch, as instructing his son, what he had seen and learned in the secrecy of the temples.
Let us hope that further discoveries in the ruins of the temples, or in the tombs, may put into our possession some papyrus whose contents will throw light on the subject, and reveal these secrets. The masonic objects found under the base of the obelisk, known as Cleopatra's needle, now in Central Park, New York, show that many of the symbols pertaining to the rites of modern Free Masonry, were used in Egypt by building organizations and architects at least 1900 years ago. And although I do not agree with all the conclusions of Dr. Fanton, notwithstanding they are approved by some of the high masons at Cairo and Alexandria, I am ready to recognize many of the emblems, and admit that they belonged to the mysteries, if their meaning anciently was not quite the same as we give them to-day.
The reluctance of the Egyptians to admit strangers to the holy secret of their mysteries was for a very long time insuperable. However, they seem to have relaxed at rare intervals, in favor of personages noted for their wisdom and knowledge. So they admitted the great philosopher Thales, who went to Egypt to learn geometry and astronomy, about 587 years before the Christian era. Eumolpus, king of Eleusis, who, on returning to his country, instituted the mysteries of that name in honor of the goddess Ceres, that presided over the crops and other fruits of the earth. Orpheus, the celebrated Greek poet, obtained likewise the honor of the initiation, and established the Orphic ceremonies, which, according to Herodotus, were observed alike by the Egyptians and the Pythagoreans. It must be remembered that Pythagoras, after being submitted to extremely severe ordeals, to cause him to desist from his desire of being initiated,