Pope Pius IX was accused of saying: “Damn the clandestine societies.” Oh, My! such shocking language, and so unjust too, for these quasi-religious societies, even like certain churches, were anciently faithful devotees of, and expert manipulators of the mystic symbols.

Dr. Dalcho, a Masonic writer, asserts: “God was the first Grand Master and Adam the second.” And Adam initiated Eve into the profound and archaic mystery of the square and the eye.

It may be interesting to know what they did at the Witches’ Sabbath and the meetings of the ancient mystic societies. They murdered their christ, that is what they did, and the Christians have always charged that they offered up human sacrifices. I should judge from the ritual of the Masons that it originated in the sacrifice of a human being, that in ancient times human beings were sacrificed in the mystic societies, from some of which, perhaps, Masonry descended. Here are extracts from an old ritual as near as the author can decipher them, not guaranteeing that they are correct:

Opening a Lodge of Entered Apprentices.

Sen. War.: “Brother, the lambskin in all ages has been considered an emblem of purity.” This lambskin is the skin of the Lamb of God. It is worn on the stomach for occult reasons. The female emblem, the Eye, is stamped upon it for the same occult reasons. The mystic societies, sun-worshippers and Jews were anciently devotees of the lamb as well as the cow. They sacrificed him and adorned themselves with his skin as a saving rite. The Ram is identical with the god Priapus. You remember that Saul sent David out to gather one hundred Philistine mementos to put in the Ark of the Covenant. These mementos and the lambskin are of equal efficacy, both being relics of the crucifixion.

When christ came in the sign of Capricorn, he came as the goat. At the celebration of Lupercalia in Rome, they sacrificed the goat christ. Two young men are chosen, and the dagger, or Signa Tau, or the Mark of the Living God, is drawn in blood in their foreheads. Then they cut the goatskin into thongs and run about lashing all they meet. “The young wives like to be lashed, fancying that it will make them fruitful.” “The Jews in Jereboam’s time had priests for the service of their divinities, the sacred billy-goats.”—Plutarch, 1-78. The religious sorcerers, who sought to invoke demons, formed their magic circle with strips of goatskin nailed to the ground with four nails from the coffin of a dead child. As the circle was made of the skin of christ, the demons dare not pass it to attack the sorcerer. This is the circle of the Kabalists, of which King Solomon was the Most Worshipful, Sublime and Exalted Phalatz.

In the ritual ascribed to Pope Honorius, the method of raising the Devil was by sacrificing a black cock, which is an emblem of Christ. The eyes, tongue and heart are torn out and burnt to ashes. These are religious symbols and objects of adoration. The sorcerer also sacrifices a lamb, and places the ashes of the eye, the tongue and the heart on the lambskin. He prays to Jesus that the lambskin, with the signs thereon, may save him from the wiles of the demons, that they may be terrified by the sight of these figures. This, I think, is the origin of the figures on the Mason’s lambskin. This ritual provided that the eye, the cross and the moon should be drawn on the lambskin.

In the Fellowcraft degree of the ritual, when the candidate has stuck the heel of his right foot in the hollow of the left, which is a sacred mystic rite that will save your immortal soul from Hell, the Sen. War. says: “You will now show the Worshipful Master the Degree Gag (?) and sign of an Entered Apprentice, and when you step forward, place the heel of your left foot in the hollow of the right. You will now advance with me to the altar. You are now to be made a Fellowcraft in due form. You will now bare your left foot and side and your breast expose. You now receive the mark of the square on the breast.” The Tau Cross, a symbol of identical significance with the square, was used in the Bacchic and Eleusinian Mysteries. It was laid upon the breast of the initiate to cause him to be born again. The square is the Egyptian Ka, the idol worshipped by the savages in the temples of darkest Africa, and which is also worshipped in the Kaaba at Mecca. Ka, Kaaba, abba, father, papa and pope all have the same meaning. See “Kaaba” Stand. Dic.

In the initiation the candidate was allowed to play that he was Hiram Abiff. He was conducted around the circle of the zodiac from one door of the Temple to another and encountered three of the beasts of the four cardinal points, that is, the gentlemen who played the parts of the beasts in the heavenly drama.

First Right. Master: Hiram, give me the sign of a Master Mason.

Sen. Dea.: Candidate, the sign cannot be given except in the presence of three, Solomon, King of Israel, Hiram, King of Tyre, &c.

Master: For the second time I demand of you the sign of a Master Mason.

Sen. Dea.: You cannot have that.

Master: Hiram, for the third and last time I demand of you the sign of a Master Mason. Give it to me, or I will take your life.

Sen. Dea.: You shall not have that (but the candidate can have this, and he hits him on the head with the 24-inch gauge, in the play, as near as I can make out.)

At the Second Right, the Master makes the same demands.

Sen. Dea.: You shall not have that. Blow with the square (on the head of the candidate, I presume, but as he is still alive, he is conducted to the beast at the third door.)

Third Right: The Master repeats the same demands.

Sen. Dea.: Lord of Darkness (who is about to kill the sun-christ in the west) you shall not have that.

Third Right: Damn thee take that, blow with gavel on forehead, (and the candidate or human sacrifice falls dead, in the play.)

Second Right: We have slain our Grand Master Hiram.

Third Right: What shall we do with the body?... Let us carry it a due West course from the Temple (because the crucified sun is buried in the west) and bury it in a grave sunk due East and West.

Master: Brother Sen. War. What is the commotion?

Sen. War.: Our Grand Master Hiram is assassinated.

Master: How was he assassinated?

Sen. War.: By the Brothers at the door of the Temple.

Master: Our Grand Master Hiram may be ill. You will cause search to be made for him in the secret antichambers of the Temple and see if he can be found.

Sen. War.: Search has been made, Worshipful, and he cannot be found.

According to the Egyptian religion Souphis Khunfu Nefer Hept, Lord of the Underworld, murdered the Great Architect. The victim, whether he be called the Great Architect, or Hiram, or Adonis, or Horus, or Christ is always and ever the setting sun murdered by the darkness, or Prince of Darkness, called Sat in Egypt and Satan with us. The sacrifice of Hiram Abiff is one form of the Passion Play.

A Masonic society, established in China from the earliest times, is called Our Ladyship’s Society and the Queen of Heaven Society. In the Chinese society the candidate is made to pass through the arch of swords. He could not be born again or come forth into the light unless he passed through the door of life and came out of the cave. The Chinese god Fo was born of a virgin impregnated by a ray of the sun, as shown in Christian pictures of Mary. In the Indian Mysteries three hierophants sit in the East and the West and the South. After an invocation to the sun, the candidate is baptized, his shoes taken away from him, and he is made to circumnavigate the cavern three times with the sun. He is conducted through seven dark caverns and assailed by legions of hobgoblins. The victim slaughtered is called Siva, and the lamentations of Maya for the death of Siva correspond to the weeping of Mary at the tomb of Christ. The sword was aimed at the throat of the candidate by the Evil One, but he was brought forth at last into the light. The Eye was marked on his forehead and the Tau Cross on his breast. He was presented with the sacred girdle or apron, the magical stone and the talismanic jewel for the breast.—Isis Unveiled.

In the Mysteries of Aphrodite, a male emblem is handed to the initiate, and those initiated bring a piece of money to her as her hire. Demeter, of the Eleusinian Mysteries, is identical with Mary, and Clement says that he knows not whether she is the mother or wife of the god Zeus or Deus. This god is a serpent. The token of the Sabazian Mysteries is this serpent god gliding over the human breast. The offspring of the rape of Proserpine (Mary) by this god was christ, the bull.—Clement 1-29. If you wish to know what foul things were kept in the Ark of the Covenant, see Clement 1-31.

According to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, in the judgment in Amenti, or the Lower World, the deceased or candidate for Heaven is given the name of Osiris, and he is tried before the supreme god Osiris and forty other deities or beasts. An altar stands before the supreme god on which is placed the bribes offered by the soul to god. The forty-two deities are the judges of the forty-two sins. One is called the Devourer of Shades, another the Cracker of Bones, and another the Eater of Hearts. If the soul denies that he has committed the forty-two sins, the judges must acquit him, but if he is convicted of being a land-grabber, he cannot get by, as the priests propose to attend to all that business themselves. In the Christian Judgment, the judges will be the confessors, monks and virgins.—The Elucidarium.

“The Buddhist novice, like the Freemasons, is forced to bare his shoulder and breast and give up his money and bare his feet, in fact to simulate the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience of the Buddhist.”—Buddha & Early Buddhism, 136.

In Lalita Vistara, Buddha is called the Great Physician, and at his appearance the sick are healed, the deaf are cured, the blind see. He cures by the laying on of hands or mesmerism. Akasa, the mesmeric fluid or the astral light, and the Spirit of God are one in the East. Buddha was born of a virgin, presented in the Temple, disputed with the doctors, was tempted in the wilderness, passed his life in preaching and working miracles, and descended into Hell and ascended into Heaven.—Idem, 80.

Heaven was also calmly purloined from Buddhism. The Buddhist heaven is the city four square of John, with the gates of gold and silver, adorned with precious stones. The great throne of God stands in the centre thereof by the gem lake or crystal sea, by which stands the Tree of Life or Tree of Infamy. The Buddhist religion is wholly phallic. See Book of All Religions, 86.

If you read the life of Buddha in the Ency. Brit. you will find that it is almost identical with the life of Christ. In any Chinese store you can buy an idol of Buddha, who, like Christ, is the god of life, bringing us life and life yet more abundantly. He wears a fish skin for a miter, showing that he is the fish god, and on his divine and radiant forehead is the Eye, and on his stomach, between his clasped hands, is the sacred Tree of Life. These divine secrets should not be disclosed to the uninitiated, but, to tell the truth, I am convinced that this is the origin of the hermaphrodite abdominal Eye, worn and revered by all the great and good men from the time our religion found its birth in the foul sties of India down to the immortal Washington.