194. Ragon thus alludes to this mystical event: "Isis found the body of Osiris in the neighborhood of Biblos, and near a tall plant called the erica. Oppressed with grief, she seated herself on the margin of a fountain, whose waters issued from a rock. This rock is the small hill mentioned in the ritual; the erica has been replaced by the acacia, and the grief of Isis has been changed for that of the fellow crafts."—Cours des Initiations, p. 151.
195. It is singular, and perhaps significant, that the word eriko, in Greek, ἐρίϗω, whence erica is probably derived, means to break in pieces, to mangle.
196. Histoire Pittoresque des Religions, t. i. p. 217.
197. According to Toland (Works, i. 74), the festival of searching, cutting, and consecrating the mistletoe, took place on the 10th of March, or New Year's day. "This," he says, "is the ceremony to which Virgil alludes, by his golden branch, in the Sixth Book of the Æneid." No doubt of it; for all these sacred plants had a common origin in some ancient and general symbolic idea.
198. "Under this branch is figured the wreath of myrtle, with which the initiated were crowned at the celebration of the Mysteries."—WARBURTON, Divine Legation, vol. i. p. 299.
199. "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." Gen. iii. 19. Bush interprets the decree to mean that "some species of toilsome occupation is the appointed lot of all men."
200. Aristotle says, "He that cannot contract society with others, or who, through his own self-sufficiency αὐτάρϗειαν, does not need it, forms no part of the community, but is either a wild beast or a god."
201. "Der Arbeiter," says Lenning, "ist der symbolische Name eines Freimaurers"—the Workman is the symbolic name of a Freemason.—Encyclop. der Fraumererei.
202. John iii. 19-21.
203. I Corinth, iii. 9.