'The usage and customs among Freemasons
have ever borne a near affinity to those of the Ancient
Egyptians. Their philosophers, unwilling to expose their
mysteries to vulgar eyes, couched systems of learning and
polity under signs and hieroglyphical figures, which were
communicated to their chief priests or magi alone, who were
bound by solemn oath to conceal them. The system of
Pythagoras was founded on a similar principle, as well as
many others of more recent date' (Extract from
'Explanation of the first degree tracing board' given in the
'Emulation Ritual')
Masonic ritual and mythology is awash with
references to the Egyptian gods such as osiris, isis and
anubis. Indeed Masonic author Robert Freke Gould
writes in his book History of Freemasonry 1:13..
"Masonry is regarded as the direct descendant, or as a
survival of the mysteries...of Isis and Osiris in
Egypt"
Ex-33rd
degree Mason Jim Shaw describes the “The Temple of the Supreme
Council of the Thirty third and last degree of the Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite” as follows..
Flanking the entrance are two Sphinx like
granite lions with women’s heads, the neck of one entwined
by a cobra and decorated with the “ankh” (the Egyptian
symbol of life and deity)
Adorning the neck and breast of the other is the image
of a woman, symbolic of fertility and procreation. In the
pavement, just in front of the tall bronze doors, are two
Egyptian swords with curved, serpentine blades and, between
the two swords, brass letters set into the stone saying “The
Temple of the Supreme Council of the Thirty third and last
degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite”
High above the entrance, partially concealed by stone
columns, is an elaborate image of the Egyptian Sun God,
backed with radiating sun and flanked by six large golden
snakes.
The Lion's paw grip used by the worshipful
master in the third degree ritual to raise the candidate from
the dead.
The picture shows how the grip of the Lion's
Paw was given in the Pyramid Mysteries. The priest wore over
his head the mask of a lion. By this grip the spirit in man,
long buried in the sepulchre of substance, is raised to life,
and the candidate goes forth as a builder entitled to the
wages of an initiate.
From the
inside cover of 'The Lost Keys of Freemasonry' by Manly P.
Hall 33rd degree
Egypt means mud, and in Egypt man has been all that man can
be.
There were treasures in Egypt. There was science. There was
glitter and pomp. There was power. There were chariots and horses in
which men trusted for their security. There men erected edifices
which, though crumbling away, still stagger us by their sheer
scale.
But the leeks, the garlic, the cucumbers, the melons and onions
on which men fed themselves grew upon the ground and could only be
gathered by stooping.
Jesus spent some time there in His infancy so that, like us, He
could 'come out of Egypt' Once out He did not revisit Egypt,
nor did He even mention it again.
His concern was and still is, to bring us - in the spiritual
realm - to where Moses first brought God's children in the physical
realm, to the 'promised land' where it is written, every man's
inheritance was to sit under his own fig tree and vine.
The fruits of these plants are gathered, not by stooping, but by
reaching forth the hand and looking upwards.
If God's heart is to bring us out of Egypt then rest assured it
is not God's Spirit that brings men back into the spiritual realms
of ancient Egypt.
Databank index