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There are authors who attribute the origin of modern Free Masonry to the followers of Pythagoras, because some of the speculations of that Philosopher concerning the meaning of the numbers are to be found in the esoteric doctrines taught in the masonic lodges. Others, on account of the Christian symbols that have been incorporated in the decoration of things pertaining to Masonry, following the Swedish system, say that the Essenes and first Christians founded it. Others, again, make it originate in the building of Solomon's temple, many Jewish names, emblems and legends, taken from the Bible, having found their way into the rites of initiation to several degrees. Others, still, make it go back to Adam. Ask them why—they do not know. While not a few, and I among them, earnestly believe that Masonry existed before Adam was created. I believe it, because I am convinced that this pretended ancestor of man is a myth—and has never existed. Thomas Payne and those of his school say that the Druids were the fathers of the craft; they being worshipers of the sun, moon and stars: and these jewels of the firmament being represented on the ceilings of the M⸫ lodges. Dance of Villoison speaks of Herculaneum as its birth place, because of the many similarities that existed between the collegia of the Romans and the lodges of the operative Masons of the middle ages. Michael Andrew Ramsay, a Scotch gentleman, in a discourse delivered in Paris in 1740, suggested the possibility of the fraternity having its origin, in the time of the crusades, among the Knight Templars, and he explains it in this way:—

The Pope, Clement V., and Phillippe-le-bel, King of France, fearing the power of the Templars and coveting their immense wealth, resolved to destroy the Order. When, in 1308, Jacques de Molay, then Grand Master of the Order, was preparing an expedition to avenge the wrongs and disasters suffered by the Christians in the East, the Pope, who was the only power to which, in the spiritual, the Templars owed allegiance, enticed him to France.

On his arrival he was received with every mark of friendship: but, soon after, the King caused him to be arrested together with some of the other dignitaries, accusing them of the most heinous crimes, imputing to them the secret rites of their initiation. By order of the Archbishop of Sens and his provincial council, Jacques de Molay, Guy of Auvergne and several other officers of the Order were burned alive on March 18, 1314.

The Pope, by a bull dated on the 2d of April, and published on the 2d of May, 1312, that he issued on his own responsibility, the Council of Vienne, in Dauphiné, being adverse to hasty measures, declared the Order abolished throughout the world. The execution of the Grand Master and his companions gave the coup de grace to the Order. Some of the Knights who had escaped to Portugal continued the Order. They assumed the title of Knights of Christ, which it bears to this day; but it never recovered its former prestige and power.

Jacques de Molay, before dying had appointed Johan Marcus Larmenio as his successor to the office of Grand Master. The Knights who, fleeing from the persecution, had taken refuge in Scotland at the Court of King Robert Bruce, refused to recognize his authority; and pretending to reëstablish the Order of the Temple, under the allegory and title of Architects, protected by the King, laid the foundation of the Order of Free and Accepted Masons of the Scottish Rite in 1314.

This new society soon forgot the meaning of the execratory oath that the members were obliged to take at their initiation; the death of Clement V., of Phillippe-le-bel, of the accusers and enemies of Jacques de Molay and the other Knights who had been executed, having removed the object of their vengeance. Still they continued to decorate their lodges with tokens commemorative of the death of the Grand Master, to impose on all new members the obligation of avenging it, which they signified by striking with an unsheathed dagger at unseen beings, his supposed murderers, although all their efforts were now directed to the restoration of the honor of their association. This allegory is well-known to the Knights of Kadosh. A century had scarcely elapsed when this idea also was abandoned, the founders and their disciples having passed away. Their successors saw only allegories in the symbols of the Order, and the extensive use of words and texts from the Bible was then introduced. Of their work but little is positively known until the reign of Charles I. of England, when their mysterious initiations began to attract attention.

The enemies of Cromwell and of the Republic, having in view the reëstablishment of the monarchy, created the degree of Grand Master to prepare the minds of the Masons for that event. King William III. was initiated. Masonry, says Preston, was very much neglected as early as the reign of James II., and even after this period it made but slow progress until 1714, when King George I. ascended the throne.

Three years later, in February, 1717, the first Grand Lodge was established in London. A committee from the four lodges then existing in that city met at the tavern of the "Apple Tree" and nominated Anthony Sayer, who was elected Grand Master on the 24th of the following June, day of St. John the Baptist, that for this reason was selected as patron of the Order.

This origin of the craft is credited by many of the best authorities on the subject. They found their opinion on the fact that many of the ceremonies practiced by the Architects are still observed among the Masons; and that the Grand Lodge preserved, with the spirit of the ancient brotherhood, its fundamental laws. There are others, however, who likewise claim to be well informed, that pretend it did not originate in any order of chivalry, but in the building fraternities of the Middle Ages.

Be the origin what it may, the fact is that after the establishment of the Grand Lodge at "Apple Tree Tavern," Masonry spread over Europe at a rapid rate, notwithstanding the bitter opposition of the Church of Rome that fulminated against it its most terrible anathemas as early as 1738 at the instigation of the Inquisition. Pope Clement XII., on the 28th of April of that year, caused a prohibitory bull to be issued against Free Masonry, entitled In Eminenti, in which he excommunicated all Masons; and the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, by edict in the name of the High Priest of the God of Peace and Mercy, decreed the penalty of death against them in 1739; and on May 18, 1751, Pope Benoit XIV. renewed the bull of Clement XII. by another beginning with these words: Providas Romanorum Pontificum.

The Order was introduced in France in 1725, and on the 14th of September, 1732, all Masonic Associations were prohibited by a decree of the Chamber of Police of the Chatelet of Paris.

In 1727, Lord Coleraine founded a lodge in Gibraltar, and in the succeeding year in Madrid, the capital of Spain, the strong-hold of the Inquisition.

But in 1740, in consequence of the bull of Clement XII., King Philip V., of Spain, promulgated an ordinance against the Masons in his kingdom, many of whom were arrested and sent to the galleys. The Inquisitors took advantage of the opportunity to persecute the members of a lodge they discovered in Madrid. They caused them to be loaded with chains, to be obliged to row in the galleys without other retribution than scanty rations of victuals of the poorest quality, but an abundant supply of bastinade. Fernando VI. renewed the ordinance on July 2, 1751, making Masonry high treason.

The brotherhood made its appearance in Ireland in 1730. It is not positively known if it existed in the country before that time.

In 1732 it crossed the Atlantic and was imported in America. In that year a lodge was held in "Tun tavern" in Philadelphia, the B⸫ having previously met in Boston, which may be regarded as the birthplace of American Free Masonry. Henry Price was the first provincial Grand Master appointed by the Grand Lodge of England on April 30th, 1733.

The same year witnessed its establishment in various cities of Italy. In 1735, the Grand Duke Francis of Lorraine was initiated. He protected the Masons, and the craft flourished in Italy until 1737, when Juan Gaston of Medicis, Grand Duke of Tuscany, issued a decree of prohibition against it. Soon after his death, which occurred the same year, the lodges which had been closed were reopened. It was not long, however, before they were denounced to the Pope Clement XII., who issued his bull of 28th of April 1738, and sent an inquisitor to Florence who caused various members of the society to be cast into dungeons. They were set at liberty as soon as Francis of Lorraine became Grand Duke of Tuscany. He not only protected the Masons, but founded lodges in Florence and other places in his estates.

In 1735 a lodge was established in Lisbon the capital of Portugal. It will be remembered that some of the Knight Templars, under the title of "Knights of Christ," had kept alive the ancient order in that country in defiance of the Pope's thunderbolts.

Among the Masons initiated in England were a great many Germans as early as 1730. These seem to have met occasionally in traveling in Germany, or to have corresponded with each other; but no lodge is known to have existed previous to the year 1737, when one without name was established in Hamburg, although Grand Master Lord Strathmore had authorized in 1733, eleven gentlemen and Brothers to open one.

In 1740, B. Puttman, of the Hamburg lodge, received a patent of Provincial Grand Master from England, and the lodge assumed the title of Absalom.

King Frederick II., denominated the Great, whilst still Crown Prince, had been initiated; and from the time of his initiation took great interest in the welfare of the brotherhood. Crowned King of Prussia, he continued to give it his support, assuming the title of "Great master universal, and Conservator of the most ancient and most respectable association of ancient free masons or architects of Scotland." Masonry enjoyed under his reign such consideration, that many German princes, following his example, were initiated; and so many of the nobility joined the society, that to belong to it came to be regarded as a mark of nobility and high breeding.

Notwithstanding his multifarious State duties, and the many wars that took place during his reign, which demanded his constant attention, he found time to frame a constitution to cement together again the Order, that at one time, owing to external persecutions on the one hand, to internal dissensions, suscitated by the incorporation to it of the Rosicrucians and still more that of the Illuminati on the other, seemed on the eve of falling asunder. That constitution, signed by him in his palace at Berlin, on the 1st of May, 1786, saved Free Masonry from annihilation in Germany, for many regarding it with suspicion, attacked and persecuted it: the Catholics because it came from Protestant England; the Protestant clergy looked upon it as hostile to Christianity, because of the teachings and symbols altogether Catholic of the 18th degree, those of Rosa Cruz, whose motto "we have the happiness of being in the pacific unity of the sacred numbers," and "in the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity," bespeaks its Jesuit origin. The people believed in the accusation of witchcraft and sorcery, made against it by its enemies, because of the vail of secrecy thrown over their meetings.

Authors have endeavored to show that modern free-masonry is not derived from the mysteries of the ancients. J. G. Findel, an advocate of this opinion, says: "Seeing that the ancient symbolical marks and ceremonials in the lodges bear a very striking resemblance to those of the mysteries of the ancients some have allowed themselves to be deceived, and led others astray imagining they can trace back the history of the craft into the cloudy mists of antiquity. Instead of endeavoring to ascertain how and when these ceremonies were introduced into our present system, they have taken it for granted that they were derived from the religious mysteries of the ancients."

Now, if we merely consider the tokens of recognition, the pass words and secret words, the decorations of the lodges, according to the degrees into which modern Masonry is divided, tokens, words and decorations nearly all taken from the Bible and symbolical of events, real or imaginary, some of which are said to have taken place in comparatively modern times, after the decline and final discontinuance of the ancient mysteries in consequence of the spread of Christianity; others having occurred in the early days of the Christian era; others at the time of the building of Solomon's Temple, all of which had certainly nothing to do with the religious mysteries of Egypt, Chaldea, Greece, Etruria, etc., that were instituted ages before the pretended occurrence of those events, then we may positively affirm that it is not derived from these. But if, on the other hand, we observe, and it is difficult to overlook it, that these symbols are precisely the same that we find in the temples of Egypt, Chaldea, India, and Central America, whatever may have been the esoteric meaning given to them by the initiated of those countries, we are bound to admit that a link exists between the ancient mysteries and Free Masonry. It is for us to try to discover when that link was riveted and by whom.

If the theory of Chevalier Ramsay be true, that is, if modern Masonry had its beginning in the Society of Architects founded in Scotland under the protection of King Robert Bruce, and the title of "Ancient and Accepted Masons of the Scottish rite," seems to favor that opinion, then we may trace its origin to the order of Knight Templars; and through them to the ancient mysteries practiced in the 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, was, on account of his firmness, granted the privilege of initiation. Many of the rites and ceremonies were therefore brought from Egypt to Greece. Speaking of the Thesmophoria festivals in honor of Ceres, next in importance to the mysteries of Eleusis, Herodotus says: "These rites were brought from Egypt into Greece by the daughters of Danaus, who taught them to the Pelagic women; but in the course of time they fell into disuse, except among the Arcadians who continued to preserve them. The Pelasgians had also initiated the inhabitants of Samothracia. They in turn taught the Athenians the mysteries of the 'Cabiri.'"

From that it results that if we desire to obtain an insight of the Egyptian mysteries, we must see what happened at the initiation into those of Greece.