I have endeavored in a cursory manner to show that the ancient sacred mysteries were established for the same purpose in every civilized nation of antiquity, that is for the cultivation of science; the acquirement of knowledge; the bettering of man's moral and physical nature; the development of his intellectual and mental faculties; the understanding and study of the laws that govern the material and spiritual world, thus bringing him into closer contact with Deity. They kept their learning and discoveries a profound secret, surrounding them with mysterious allegories, and enigmatical symbols, for, as says Strabo: "to surround the things that are holy with a mysterious obscurity is to make Divinity venerable, is to imitate its nature that escapes man's senses," or, as Gregory of Nazianze, wrote to Jerome: "the less ignorant men understand the more they admire," and as the priests of to-day, in fact of all times, of all religions, they wished to be regarded by the masses as dispensers of the god's favors, as mediators between the Deity and man.
This similarity of the rites practiced in the initiations, the identity of symbols, proves that these rites and symbols had been communicated from one to another, just as in modern Free Masonry the initiations are the same in the lodges, the world over, having been carried to the most distant lands, by travelers, colonists or missionaries, from the fountain head, the Grand Lodge of England.
But with respect to the ancient Sacred Mysteries, the query arises as to where they originated. We know that from Egypt and Chaldea they were brought to Greece and Rome. From whom did the Egyptians and Chaldeans receive them? The Brahmins asserted that the Magi and the Hierophants were their disciples.
Admitting this assertion to be true, may we not ask, from whom did the Brahmins learn them? No doubt, if we question them on the subject, they will answer that they are the originators of these mystic rites, and secret societies of learned men; and with difficulty we could gainsay their assertion, were it not that Plutarch and other Greek writers, who have described the Eleusinian mysteries, have taken care to preserve the words used at the closing of the ceremonies by the officiating priest; and also made known to us the name and shape they gave to their place of meeting.
It is well known that the Brahmins, in many of their religious ceremonies, make use of words that are not Sanscrit, but are said to belong to a very ancient form of speech—now dead—the Akkadian, spoken by the inhabitants of the countries situated along the banks of the Euphrates, near its mouth. Strange as it may appear, this language presents many affinities with the Maya, which is still the vernacular of the aborigines of Yucatan and other countries south of the Peninsula. The fact is that the words con-x—om—pan-x, mean nothing in Greek, but, as we have said, are pure Maya vocables, that have the same meaning as that given to can-sha—om—Pansha by Captain Wilford.
That is not all. We are also told that the place or temple where the initiated assembled to perform their ceremonies, had the form of a rectangle,
and that it represented the "Universe." Modern Masons have wrongly translated that idea by the Sanscrit word loga, from which the word lodge has been derived, and the form of M⸫ lodges adopted.
The shape of the temples was that of the Egyptian letter M called "ma", a word that also means place, country and, by extension, the Universe. The Egyptians adopted it, therefore, not because they believed, as Dr. Fanton suggests, that the earth was square or oblong, for they knew full well it was spherical, but because the sign of the word ma', conveyed to their mind the idea of the Earth, as the word earth represents it to ours. But ma is also the radical of Mayax; and likewise, in the Maya language, it means the country, the Earth. The Mayas selected the oblong square