Chapter 8. Astronomical Explanations (Continued)
when the sun was in Scorpio, in the month of Athyr, the Egyptians inclosed the body of their god Osiris in an ark, or chest, and during this ceremony a great annual festival was celebrated. Three days after the priests had inclosed Osiris in the ark, they pretended to have found him again. The death of Osiris was lamented by them when the sun, in Scorpio, descended to the lower hemisphere; and, when he arose at the vernal equinox, then Osiris was said to be born anew. The use made of the ark, or sacred chest, in certain masonic degrees, derives no one of its particulars from anything narrated in the Bible; on the contrary, it bears so striking an analogy to the ark of the Egyptian Mysteries as to at once disclose the original from which it was copied. The masonic ark, like that of the Egyptian Mysteries, is lost or hidden, and after a difficult search at last found. The masonic ark, it is true, does not, like the Egyptian one, contain the body of the slain sun-god Osiris. It does however, contain something symbolically representing the true God, and also certain matters which, it is claimed, lead to a superior knowledge of him. The analogy is therefore perfect, and the astronomical allegory is strictly preserved. Q. What is the meaning of the emblem of the key? KEY, EMBLEM OF
A. This is a very ancient emblem, and formerly alluded to in the initiation into the Mysteries, which at once unlocked to the aspirant all the hidden secrets of religion, and furnished him with a key to those allegories and tales under which the sublime facts of astronomy and other sciences were concealed from the profane. In Freemasonry it is, more properly, an emblem of the first degree, which, in like manner, furnishes the candidate with a key, and opens the door to the "hidden 197