ricator of High Degrees, or to some of his immediate successors in the manufactory of Masonic Rites.

Ramsay was too learned a man to be ignorant of the numerous Oriental traditions, Arabic, Egyptian, and Rabinical, concerning Enoch, that had been long in existence. Of this we have evidence in a very learned work on The Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion, published by him in 1749.

In this work1 he refers to the tradition extant in all nations, of a great man or legislator who was the first author of sacred symbols and hieroglyphics, and who taught the people their sacred mysteries and religious rites. This man, he says, was, among the Phoenicians, Thaut; the Greeks, Hermes; the Arabians, Edris. But he must have known that Thaut, Hermes, and Edris were all synonymous of Enoch, for he admits that "all these lived some time before the universal deluge, and they were all the same man, and consequently some antediluvian patriarch."

And, finally, he adds that "some think that this antediluvian patriarch was Enoch himself." And then he presents, in the following language, those views which most probably supplied the suggestions that were afterward developed by himself, or some of his followers, in the full form of the Masonic Legend of Enoch.

"Whatever be in these conjectures," says Ramsay, "it is certain, from the principles laid down, that the antediluvian or Noevian patriarchs ought to have taken some surer measures for transmitting the knowledge of divine truths to their posterity, than by oral tradition, and, consequently, that they either invented or made use of hieroglyphics or symbols to preserve the memory of these sacred truths." And these he calls the Enochian symbols.

He does not, indeed, make any allusion to a secret depository of these symbols of Enoch, and supposes that they must have been communicated to the sons of Noah and their descendants, though in time they lost their true meaning. But the change made in the Masonic Legend was necessary to adapt it to a peculiar system of ritualism.

It is singular how Enoch ever became among the ancients a type of the mysteries of religion. The book of Genesis devotes only

1 Vol. ii., p. 12 et seq.

three short verses to an account of him, and nothing is there said of him, his deeds, or his character, except an allusion to his piety.

The Oriental writers, however, abound in traditionary tales of the learning of the Patriarch. One tradition states that God bestowed upon him the gift of knowledge, and that he received thirty volumes from Heaven, filled with all the secrets of the most mysterious sciences. The Babylonians supposed him to have been intimately acquainted with the nature of the stars, and they attribute to him the invention of astrology.

The Jewish Rabbins maintained that he was taught by Adam how to sacrifice and to worship the Deity aright. The Cabalistic book of Raziel says that he received the divine mysteries through the direct line of the preceding Patriarchs.

Bar Hebræus, a Jewish writer, asserts that Enoch was the first who invented books and writing; that he taught men the art of building cities thus evidently confounding him with another Enoch, the son of Cain; that he discovered the knowledge of the Zodiac and the course of the stars; and that he inculcated the worship of God by religious rites.

There is a coincidence in the sacred character thus bestowed upon Enoch with his name and the age at which he died, and this may have had something to do with the mystical attributes bestowed upon him by the Orientalists.

The word Enoch signifies, in the Hebrew, initiated or consecrated, and would seem, as all Hebrew names are significant, to have authorized, or, perhaps, rather suggested the idea of his connection with a system of initiation into sacred rites.

He lived, the Scriptures say, three hundred and sixty-five years. This, too, would readily be received as having a mystical meaning, for 365 is the number of the days in a solar year and was, therefore, deemed a sacred number. Thus we have seen that the letters of the mystical word Abraxas, which was the Gnostic name of the Supreme Deity, amounted, according to their numerical value in the Greek alphabet, to 365, which was also the case with Mithras, the god to whom the Mithraic mysteries were dedicated. And this may account for the statement of Bar Hebræus that Enoch appointed festivals and sacrifices to the sun at the periods when that luminary entered each of the zodiacal signs.

Goldziher, one of the latest of the German ethnologists, has ad

vanced a similar idea in his work on Mythology Among the Hebrews.

He says:

"The solar character of Enoch admits of no doubt. He is brought into connection with the building of towns-a solar feature. He lives exactly three hundred and sixty-five years, the number of days of the solar year; which can not be accidental. And even then he did not die, but 'Enoch walked with Elohim, and was no more (to be seen), for Elohim took him away.' In the old times when the figure of Enoch was imagined, this was doubtless called Enoch's Ascension to heaven, as in the late traditional legends Ascensions to heaven are generally acknowledged to be solar features."1

These statements and speculations have been objected to, because they would tend to make Enoch an idolater and a sun-worshipper. This is a consequence by no means absolutely necessary, but, as the whole is merely traditionary, we need waste no time in defending the orthodox character of the Patriarch's religious views.

After all, it would appear that the Legend of Enoch, being wholly unknown to the Fraternity in the Middle Ages, unrecognized in the Legend of the Craft, and the name even, not mentioned in any of the old records, was first introduced into the rituals of some of the higher degrees which began to be fabricated toward the middle of the 18th century; that it was invented by the Chevalier Ramsay, or by some of those ritual-mongers who immediately succeeded him, and that in its fabrication very copious suggestions were bor rowed from the Rabbinical and Oriental traditions on the same subject.

It is impossible then to assign to this Legend the slightest historical character. It is made up altogether out of traditions which were the inventions of Eastern imagination.

We must view it, therefore, as an allegory; but as one which has a profound symbolic character. It was intended to teach the doctrine of Divine Truth by the symbol of the Holy Name-the Tetragrammaton—the Name most reverently consecrated in the Jewish system as well as in others, and which has always constituted one of the most important and prominent symbols of Speculative Masonry.

In the Continental system of the High Degrees, this symbol is

presented in the form of the Legend of Enoch. From the English system of Ancient Craft Masonry, that Legend is rejected, or rather it never has been admitted into it. In its place, there is another esoteric Legend, which, differing altogether in details, is identical in result and effects the same symbolism. But this will be more appropriately discussed when the symbolism of Freemasonry is treated, in a future part of this work.

CHAPTER XLII

NOAH AND THE NOACHITES

N reality, there is no Legend of Noah to be found in any of the Masonic Rituals. There is no myth, like that of Enoch or Euclid, which intimately connects him with the legendary history of the institution. And yet the story of his life has exercised a very important influence in the origin and the development of the prin

Dr. Oliver has related a few traditions of Noah which, he says, are Masonic, but they never had any general acceptance among the Craft, as they are referred to by no other writer, and, if they ever existed, are now happily obsolete.

The influence of Noah upon Masonic doctrine is to be traced to the almost universal belief of men in the events of the deluge, and the consequent establishment in many nations of a system of religion known to ethnologists as the "Arkite worship." Of this a brief notice must be taken before we can proceed to investigate the connection of the name of Noah with Speculative Masonry.

The character and the actions of Noah are to be looked upon from a twofold stand-point, the historic and the legendary.

The historic account of Noah is contained in portions of the sixth and seventh chapters of the Book of Genesis, and are readily acces sible to every reader, with which, however, they must already be very familiar.

The legendary account is to be found in the almost inexhaustible store of traditions which are scattered among almost all the nations of the world where some more or less dim memory of a cataclysm has been preserved.

If we examine the ancient writers, we shall find ample evidence that among all the pagan peoples there was a tradition of a deluge which, at some remote period, had overwhelmed the earth. This