CT 458

THE MYTHOS OF THE ARK

BY

J. W. LAKE,
AUTHOR OF “TREE AND SERPENT WORSHIP.”

“ Back through the dusk

Of ages, Contemplation turns her view
To mark, as from its infancy, the world
Peopled again from that mysterious shrine
That rested on the top of Ararat.”

PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT,

MOUNT PLEASANT, RAMSGATE.

Price Sixpence.
 THE MYTHOS OF THE ARK.

T is recorded in the Hebrew scriptures that once

I upon a time, somewhere about 2400 years before
the Christian era, the Creator of the world was so
incensed at the wickedness of men, that he determined
to destroy the whole world, and that to effect this
destruction he sent a deluge on the earth which
covered the tops of the highest mountains, so that all
living things perished excepting only Noah, his wife,
and his three sons and their wives, with pairs or
sevens of all the various kinds of animals which
Noah was commanded to take with him into an ark,
or floating house, which God had commanded him to
build. These were shut up in the ark for several
months, when, the flood having abated, the ark
grounded on the top of a high mountain, and its
inhabitants, released from their temporary imprison­
ment, replenished the earth with a new race of living
creatures.
We have said the Hebrew scriptures record this
narrative, and Englishmen are taught to believe that
these scriptures are the infallible word of God—so
the clergy of almost all denominations declare them
to be. It is evident that such an event, had it really
happened, could never have become a legitimate part
of history. It relates altogether to times that are pre­
historic, times of which oral tradition alone could telL
But in the Jewish history no traces of this tradition
4 The Mythos of the Ark.

are to be found till after the Babylonish captivity,

that is, for the 2000 years immediately following the
event. The patriarchs knew nothing of the Blood;
Moses seems equally in the dark concerning it; Noah
is never so much as named in Jewish history, till a
comparatively modern period of its annals. The book
of Genesis, though placed at the head of the Jewish
Bible, is one of the most recent instead of being one
of the earliest of its records. Such at least are the
conclusions of modern scholars, and those who are
familiar with the writings of Colenso, Davidson,
Kalisch, and others, know well how irresistible is the
evidence on which these conclusions are based.
Geological researches have long demonstrated the
impossibility of such a flood as that of which the
book of Genesis speaks, having ever taken place.
Yet our clergy are bound by the conditions of their
office to teach the men and women of England to
regard this narrative as a record of actual fact, to
believe that the world was destroyed by a deluge as
the book of Genesis states, and that the record of this
event has been penned under the influence of a special
inspiration from God.
Now the purpose of this pamphlet will be to show
that this story of the Flood is a mere matter of ancient
tradition, and ancient tradition is only another mode
of expressing ancient fable. But the fables of anti­
quity had for the most part a religious, or philoso­
phical, or mythological import. As the ancient
Egyptians expressed their wisdom through hiero­
glyphic inscriptions, so all the ancient priesthood
veiled their knowledge in some apologue or fable.
As moral teaching even in our own day is often ex­
pressed by parable, so the philosophic wisdom of the
ancient world found utterance in fables. Where
moderns would write an essay, the teachers of the
ancient world told a story; and possibly from this
habit the latter phrase has come to have so equivocal
 The Mythos of the Ark. 5
a signification, and the same word is made to stand
at once for a narrative and a falsehood. By way of
commencing our investigation, the reader’s attention
is called to the following traditions of the flood.

TRADITIONS OF THE FLOOD.

All the ancient religions, many of which were long

anterior to Judaism, had in their records similar
stories concerning a deluge, to that which the book of
Genesis contains. “ All the writers of barbarian
histories,” says Josephus, the Jewish historian, “ make
mention of this flood and this ark, among whom is
Berosus the Chaldean.”
The works of Berosus, who wrote probably in the
age of Alexander the Great, i.e., about 240 years before
the Christian era, are lost, save detached portions of
them which are preserved in the writings of the
early fathers, and the account of the Deluge is one of
these. Those who lived before the Flood are re­
presented as a race of giants, all of whom, save one,
became exceedingly impious and depraved. “ But,”
says Berosus, “ there was one among the giants that
reverenced the gods and was more wise and prudent
than all the rest. His name was Noa; he dwelt in
Syria and his three sons, Sem, Japet, Chem, and their
wives the great Tidea, Pandora, Noela, and Noegla.
This man, fearing destruction, which he foresaw from
the stars would come to pass, began in the 78th year
before the inundation to build a ship covered like an
ark; at length the ocean burst its boundaries and
the rain fell violently from heaven for many days,
so that the mountains were overflowed and the whole
human race buried in the waters, save Noa and his
family.”
Another Assyrian tradition relates, that the represent­
ative of the tenth generation after the first man, was
Xisuthrus, a pious and wise monarch. The god
 6 The Mythos of the Ark.

Chronos (Saturn or Belus) revealed to him that con­

tinual rains, commencing on a certain day, the 15th
of the month Dsesius, would cause a general deluge by
which mankind would be destroyed. On the command
of the deity, Xisuthrus built an immense ship about
three-quarters of a mile long and a quarter of a mile
broad, ascended it with his family, his friends, and
every species of quadrupeds, birds, and reptiles, after
having loaded it with every possible provision, and
sailed towards Armenia. When the rain cleared,
he sent out birds to satisfy himself about the condition
of the earth. They returned twice, but the second
time they had mud on their feet, and the third time
they were sent out they returned to him no more.
Xisuthrus, who had by this time grounded in some
Armenian mountain, left the ship, accompanied only
by his wife, his daughters, and the pilot; they erected
an altar and offered sacrifice to the gods and were
soon raised to heaven for their exemplary piety.
The others now left the ship with many lamentations,
but they heard the voice of Xisuthrus admonishing
them to persevere in the fear of the gods. They
settled again in Babylon, from whence they started,
and became the ancestors of a new population.
*
The Hindoo records contain a similar and probably
a more ancient tradition of the flood, in which the
good king Satyavrata takes the place occupied by
Noah in the Hebrew record. The Greeks had an
exactly similar story of which Deucalion was the
hero; while some coins which were struck at
Apamea, named also xil3a)ro$, a boat, in the reign of
the Emperor Septimius Severus, A.D. 193, represent
a chest or ark floating on the waves, and containing
a man and a woman. On the ark a bird is perched
* Kalisch ; Historical Commentary on the Book of Genesis.
But the heathen traditions of the flood may be found in
Colenso on the Pentateuch. Hugh Miller’s ‘ Testimony of
the Kocks,’—Hardwick’s ‘ Christ and other Masters,’ &c., &c.
 The Mythos of the Ark. 7
and another is seen approaching holding a twig with
its feet. The same human pair is figured on the dry
land, with uplifted hands and on several of these
medals the name NO (Nfl) is clearly visible.
*.
The Egyptian tradition of the flood was recorded,
Josephus asserts, by Manetho, but the greater part of
the works of that historian have perished and this
account is not extant. We shall see, however, when we
come to speak of the mythological meaning of the
flood, that the Egyptians had a very similar mythos.f
Traditions of the Flood exist also in the Scandinavian,
Celtic, ancient British, Mexican, and the various my­
thologies, of the new world, and the question naturally
suggests itself, What relation do these traditions bear
to the Hebrew story which our clergy declare has
been given by the special revelation of God ? It used
to be. thought a sufficient answer to say that all the
Gentile traditions were copies and perversions of
the Hebrew record, the prior antiquity of this record
being of course assumed. We know now, however,
that the Hebrew account is of comparatively modern
date. The Jews themselves having no knowledge of
such an event as the Deluge till after the period of the
national captivity in Babylon.

It is acknowledged that the Bible-records referring to the

time previous to Abraham, and which were transmitted to
later generations by the descendants of the ancestor of the
Hebrew race, in some instances admit of an allegorical inter­
pretation. Thus even the name of Noah may possibly have
been chosen for the purpose of referring to the time of the
Flood. It is well known that the word Noah is derived
from the Aryan root ‘ na ’ or ‘ nach ’ which means water,
from which the Indian ‘naus,’ the Latin ‘navis,’ and the
German ‘nachen’ and ‘nass’ are derived.—The Hidden Wisdom
of Christ, p. 10, by Ernest De Bunsen.
The nut, (in German ‘ nuss ’) was a ‘ naus ’ or little ship,
a type of the ark, in which the infant deity lay hidden—Lesley
Man’s Origin and Destiny, p. 308.
t See the legend of Osiris and Typhon. Typhon was the
ocean.
8 The Mythos of the Ark.

Dr Donaldson (Christian Orthodoxy, p. 221) says,

“ the traditions of Babylonian archgeology, preserved to
us in the fragments of Berosus, exhibit a remarkable
correspondence with those which are incorporated in
the Book of Genesis. It might of course be a question
whether the Jews during their captivity borrowed
the ten generations between Adam and Noah from
the ten generations which connect Alorus and
Xisuthrus, or whether they conversely furnished the
Babylonians with the materials of their own cos­
mogony. In the absence of all evidence in favour
of the supposition that the Jews had any such cos­
mogony before the exile, and with positive evidence
of the fact that they borrowed many of their ideas
from the heathen nations among whom they sojourned,
at the time immediately preceding the formation of
their present collection of sacred books, it would be
more reasonable to conclude that the Babylonian
traditions were the source of the Jewish. With
regard to the Deluge, at any rate, every candid in­
quirer must admit that even if we had no other ex­
planation to offer respecting Noah, the fact that the
ark is represented as floating to the mountains of
Armenia, points to the local inundation which devas­
tated Babylonia and which the Babylonians limited
to their own country.”
Dr. Samuel Davidson, in his Introduction to the
Old Testament, Vol. I., page 188, says : “Authentic
Egyptian history ignores the existence of a general
flood, to which there is no allusion in the annals from
the epoch of Menes, the founder of the kingdom of
Egypt, B.C. 3463, till its conquest under Darius
Ochus, B.C. 340, whereas the period of the Noachian
Deluge is said to be about 2348 B.C. At the latter
time when the whole human race is supposed to have
been reduced to a single family, the Egyptian people
must have attained to a flourishing and civilized
state; indeed, they were civilized and settled before
 The Mythos oj the Ark. 9
Menes united them into one great empire,—i.e.,
towards 4000 B.C., the uninterrupted existence of
their annals from Menes till Ochus, as well as the
absence of all reference to a general flood, proves the
non-occurrence of such a disaster.”
The story of Noah’s ark having no proper place in
legitimate history, must thus be relegated to the realms
of mythologic fable. The fables of the ancient world
were, however, the means of concealing some secret
wisdom, and the ark of Noah forms no exception to
this rule.
THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE ARK.

Long before the Jews were acquainted with the

story of the flood, they were accustomed to the use of
an ark in their religious worship. This ark of the
covenant being an oblong box of the same propor­
tionate dimensions with the ship or ark of Noah,
Josephus calls it the ark of God. It was the most
sacred symbol of the Jewish worship, and in it were
kept the tables of the law. To this day the ark of
the covenant is used in the Jewish synagogues for the
purpose of containing the rolls of the Jewish law. A
similar ark, however, to that of the Jews was, we
know, in use among the ancient Egyptians. “ A sculp­
ture exists representing Ramases III., accompanied
by his priests and high officers, and the sacred bull
Apis; and in this sculpture we see that an ark of the
same size and shape as the Jewish ark was carried
along upon men’s shoulders in the sacred procession.”
—Sharpe’s Egyptian Mythology. This was doubtless the
ark of Osiris. A similar sacred chest was also carried
in procession by the priests of Isis in the mysteries of
that goddess, as related by Apuleius, and those who
are familiar with the legend of Osiris well know that
this sacred chest or ark contained the phallic emblems
of fecundity. A ship or boat also formed one of the
sacred symbols of this goddess, who was herself the
io The Mythos of the Ark.

representative of the great mother—the maternal or

prolific principle of nature.
The goddesses of the ancient worships are now well
known to mythological students to have been the pro­
totypes of the Virgin Mary, or mother of God, who is
so highly reverenced in the Roman Catholic churches.
*
They were simply personifications of the maternal
principle. The moon had the same signification;
and as the sun, for the most part, was the symbol of
the gods, so the goddesses were symbolized by the
moon. The bull was in like manner the ancient
symbol of fertility, of the sun at the Spring equinox,
and the cow was for this reason sacred to Isis, and the
symbol under which she was often worshipped. An­
tique statuettes are still in existence which picture
this goddess with a cow’s head, and nursing the infant
god Horus, which statuettes, with a human face,
would serve for the virgin and child of Catholic wor­
ship. The moon was the symbol of all these ancient
goddesses, but only the crescent moon was used for
this purpose. And this crescent moon, which forms
an arc of a circle, was also the symbol of a boat or
* “ The German mariolatry of the middle ages is to a large
degree traceable to these previous heathen customs (the wor­
ship of the storm goddess, Freia Holda, transformed into Freia
the goddess of love, of amorousness, of rejuvenescence, and of
fertility). There are a number of highly-coloured hymns to
the Virgin, the imagery of which is almost literally taken
from similar Freia songs, fragmentary pieces of which latter
have come down to us in children’s rhymes. Many of these
hymns would be perfectly unintelligible if we did not know
the poetical surroundings of the Pagan goddess. Freia, the
queen of the heavens, the sorrowing mother of Balder (that
god of peace who met his death through the traitor Loki),
*
was transfused into the Mater Dolerosa, the ‘ mother of God,’
of the Roman church, but in this transfusion she retained
much of her original character.”—From an interesting article
on Freia Holda, the Teutonic goddess of love, in the “ Cornhill
Magazine” for May 1872.
See the legend of the Death of Osiris.
 The Mythos of the Ark. 11
ship. In a word, the ship or ark of Noah—-the bull
or cow—the crescent moon and the goddesses Isis, or
Diana, or Juno, or Ceres, or Venus, or Freia, were
symbols possessing a common significance, viz., the
fertile principle of nature. In accordance with this
view, we find that an egg was also a symbol of the
ark—a symbol of the germ of animated nature.
In the pictures of the Virgin Mary in Catholic
countries she is often represented with a crescent
moon, this crescent being really the symbol of the
ship or ark, and denoting the secret mythos which the
ark of Noah enshrines. With this thought in our
mind, we have only to read again the scripture nar­
rative of the flood to see in the pairs or sevens—male
and female, of all the various forms of animated life—
in the manifest design of this selection—that the ark
contained the fertile principle of nature, and in this
sense was one and the same symbol with the ark or
chest of Osiris. This reverence of the fertile or
generative principle was the foundation of all the
ancient worship, and it has struck its roots so deeply
into the religion of all subsequent times, that we have
not to look far to find evidences of it in the religious
thought and customs of our own day. Our churches
are built in the form of the ark
* —an oblong square—
and the principal portion of them bears the name
“ nave,” a word derived from the Latin, navis, a ship ;
that word being in its turn derived from the Greek,
Naus, whence our word nautical. “ The early Chris­
tians were called nautai, or sailors.”—Riddles Christian
Antiquities. But the word navel has also a similar
derivation, the English word being associated with
the Greek van?. The Latin umbilicus being an evi­
dent derivation from the Greek 0/z,^>aXo$. Jacob
Bryant has some very curious remarks with regard to
this latter word. He says the term OMPHI was of
* The chancel is a separate and distinct building appended
to a church.
 12 The Mythos of the Ark.

great antiquity, and denoted an oracular influence.

The true rendering was the oracle of Ham, or Cham,
or the sun, or Osiris. The mountains whence these
oracles were delivered came to be denominated Har-
al-ompi, which al-ompi was changed by the Greeks
into Olympus. This word they associated with
Omphalos, a navel, and so they said of the sacred
oracle of Delphi that it was the umbilicus or navel of
the world, and they applied this term to all other
sacred mountains whence divine oracles were delivered.
It is important to notice here the connection between
the. term navel, as associated with the word which
designates a ship, with the act of birth or generation,
and with a divine word or oracle.
. Under the word Noah, the same author says, “The
history of the patriarch was recorded by the ancients
throughout their whole theology, but it has been
obscured by their describing him under so many
different titles and such a variety of characters. They
represented him as Thoth, Hermes, Janus, Menes,
Osiris, Zeuth, Atlas, Deucalion, Inachus, Prometheus,
Saturn, Dionusus, &c., &c. Among the people of the
East the true name of the patriarch was preserved.
They called him “Noas,” “Naus,” and sometimes
contracted “ Nous.” But “ Nous ” is the Greek term
for mind, and Bryant proceeds to quote Anaxagoras,
who identifies the Eastern Noah with the Greek Pro­
metheus. Prometheia, he says, was the mind, and
Prometheus was said to renew mankind by new
forming their minds.
Noah or Noas was thus in all probability the
etymological parent of the Greek word psoj, new,
he having been patriarch or father of the new world.
This connection of the ideas of life and mind has
been fully shown in my pamphlet on “ The Mytho­
logical Meaning of Tree and Serpent Worship,” the
serpent being on one hand the symbol of the gene­
rative power, and on the other hand the symbol of
 The Mythos of the Ark. 13
the Logos or Divine wisdom. The ark is simply
another form of the symbolism through which the
old Nature worship found expression.
To the uninitiated Noah’s ark would seem to have
not the smallest relation to the Virgin Mary, and yet
by an overwhelming amount of evidence we shall
show them to be closely associated,—to be symbolical
of the same mythos,—the crescent moon being the
navicular symbol that unites them.
M. Didron in his “'Christian Iconography” has an
engraving of the Hindoo goddess Maya, her head sur­
rounded by a glory, pressing her breasts, from which
copious streams of milk flow, by which all living
creatures are supported, and in her lap are represented
the various animals, strongly reminding one of the
groups which form the contents of the toy arks in
common use to-day. In a word, Maya as the goddess
mother of Nature is the emblem of the ark, since
all existing beings may be said to have been born
from her, she being but a symbol of the fertilizing
properties of Nature. It is time, however, for us to
consider the curious light which etymology throws
upon the word ark, and though etymology may some­
times mislead us, yet the study of words and language
is the study which of all others throws greatest light
on the ideas which prevailed in the ancient world and
on the origin and growth of religious dogma.
*
* “ The things which we call words are organic things like
animals and vegetables. They have roots and branches.
They grow and decay. They have fixed laws to govern their
existence, like all other beings. They do not leap from our
mouths helter-skelter as the toads and jewels dropped from
the mouth of the cruel mother in the fairy tale. They are
not accidentally created. We are not their voluntary crea­
tors. They breed in us and issue from us, not only from our
lips but from our brains, by laws as regular and permanent
a,s those which govern the conception and birth of broods of
fishes, birds, or serpents. Language therefore must be a
department of natural history. New expressions or idioms
appear upon the face of human society just as new species
 14 77^ Mythos of the Ark.
Our English word ark * is derived from the Greek
“PX’i, signifying a beginning in order of time, an
entrance into being, first or chief in- point of autho­
rity. The word in this sense is in common use.
The Greek rulers were called Archons, our chief
bishops are called ark- or arch-bishops. The science
of antiquity is called ark-eology. The chief builder—
the one who supplies the ideas—is called the archi­
tect. So the lunette or crescent is called the arc of
a circle, and this gives its name to the circular arch.
The Greek word for the ship of Noah was Kibotus.
Our word ark, however, has evident relation to the
Greek apzy, and serves us as a plain guidance to the
mythical meaning of the whole story of the flood.
“ The Greeks called ARGos their most ancient city,
and the mythological prototype of all sea-going ships
was the ARGo. They considered the gods of
ARCadia the most ancient deities. They called
their most ancient and sacred religious ceremonies
ORGs (op'yia), from which the Christians got their
opprobrious term ‘orgies' for all sorts of heathen
ceremonies, especially when they were practised in
secresy. The Roman word for any mystery was
ARCanum; for any religious teaching, ORACulum—
that is an arkite thing—knowledge shut up and con­
cealed from public view. The old Egyptian word
ARK signifies upon the monuments, says Bunsen,
conclusion, shutting up, and in Coptic it signifies to
guard. From this sense we have the word ara, a
citadel, and in this citadel were kept for safety
and. varieties of animals and vegetables have successively
made their appearance upon the surface of the earth and in
the waters of the sea. And words and languages perish and
are preserved in the history of literature precisely like those
fossil forms of extinct plants and animals which we study in
the geological deposits of the past.”—Lesley on Language as a
Test of Race in “Man’s Origin and Destiny.”
* Ark in Sanscrit signifies the sun. Vernon Harcourt’s
“Doctrine of Deluge,” p. 495.
 The Mythos of the Ark. 15
ancient histories and writings, hence termed archives.”
—Lesley.
The ark had thus various meanings. It symbolised
Noah, the great father of the new world, of which he
was at once the parent and first man, and who was in
ancient time worshipped as a god. * It symbolised,
from the nature of its contents, the fertile principle
of Nature, and thus was one and the same with the
virgin goddesses of Paganism, with Maia of India,
Isis of Egypt, Diana, Venus, and Astarte of Syria,
Ceres of Greece, and Juno of Rome, who in turn
were all symbols of the Holy Spirit, i.e., of Deity in
its feminine aspect. The episode of Juno on the top
of Mount Ida is but another version of the ark resting
on the peak of Ararat. The ark, too, was the symbol
of salvation; it was the place of safety by which its
occupants were saved from the devastations of the
deluge. It was the secret receptacle where divine or
creative wisdom was enshrined, and so the ark of the
Jews contained the tables of the law, or in later times
the roll of Scripture, while the ark of Egypt, repre­
senting the grosser idea of Divine wisdom, viz., crea­
tive power, contained the symbols of procreation. It
is a little singular in this connection that the Jews
were ordered to put into the ark of the covenant
Aaron’s rod that budded, and that consequently
symbolised fertility; and here the idea of the Nature
worship was preserved, though redeemed from the
grossness that marked it in the Syrian and Egyptian
religions.
This, too, implies a relation to have existed between
the ark of Noah and the ark of the covenant or testi­
mony.^ The Jewish ark of the covenant was almost
an exact fac-simile of the sacred ark of the Egyptians.
Faber, in his “ Origin of Pagan Idolatry,” says the
* See Harcourt’s “Doctrine of the Deluge.”
+ The ancient meaning of this word is in strict keeping
with the preceding remarks.
 16 The Mythos of the Ark.

sacred ark was a necessary instrument in the due

celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries. It was borne
in solemn procession on the back of an ass, because
an ass was deemed a symbol of typhon or the ocean,
which sustained upon its waters the ark of the’
•deluge, and its contents, according to Clemens Alexan-
drinus, were certain conical pyramids, cakes formed
so as to exhibit the semblance of navels, pomegranates,
and the symbol of the female principle spoken of in
the Old Testament as the “ashera.” For the specific
meaning of these symbols the reader is referred to my
tract, on the “ Mythology of Tree and Serpent Wor­
ship.” Faber goes on to show that the sacred ark
was but a symbol of the earth or world. The ark
was in fact a miniature world, and containing as it
did the germ of all animated things, it was regarded
as the great mother whence all things sprung. Thus
the ark, earth, and goddess were represented by
common symbols. The lotus or lily, the egg, the
ship, the cow, and the navicular or crescent shaped
moon had in the ancient mythology the same typical
significance, and all had reference to the myth of the
deluge. The ark of Noah was thus symbolical of the
earth or world. But according to Josephus the Jewish
Tabernacle had a mystical meaning, and symbolised
the world. Now, the ark of the covenant was re­
garded as a miniature tabernacle. It was, even among
the Jews held to be the especial abode of the god,—of
the source of life,—its contents being in early times
emblematic of physical, as in modern times they are
emblematic of moral or spiritual, life.
Faber shows that a sacred ark was reverenced in all
the ancient religions. This ark was often represented
in the form of a boat or ship, as well as by an oblong
box or chest. Every writer, he says, who treats of
Indian mythology notices the argha or sacred ark of
the god Siva or Isa. The whole tenor of the Druidical
superstition shows that an ark, or chest, or cell, or
 The Mythos of the Ark. !7
boat, or cavern, was no less important in the Celtic
mysteries than in those of Greece, Egypt, Italy,
Phoenicia, Babylon, and Hindostan. The Spanish
authors who discuss the early history and mythology of
the Mexicans tell us that their great god Mezitli, (or
Vitzliputzli was carried in a sacred ark on the shoul­
ders of his priests during their progress in quest of a
settlement, and that afterwards, when they finally
settled in any place the same ark containing the image
of the deity was solemnly deposited in his temple.
Jacob Bryant, in the preface to his Analysis of the
Ancient Mythology, says, “ Upon enquiry we shall
find that the Deluge was the grand epocha of every
ancient kingdom/’ and his work goes to showHhat
this tradition of the destruction of the world by a
flood, and the salvation of a single family in a ship or
ark, was the mythos that lay at the foundation of
all the ancient religious systems. Hence, in all the
old worships the tops of mountains were esteemed
sacred places. The altar derives its name from the
Latin “ altus,”—a high place. The altar was also, as
we shall shortly see, the equivalent of the ark, and it
was also the mountain on which the ark rested—
AL-TOR the mountain. Various terms, says Faber,
are employed by the Greeks to describe this mysteri­
ous ark, and they severally, according to their literal
import, convey to us the idea of a chest, a boat, a
coffin, or a navicular ark, such as that in which Deuca­
lion and Pyrrha were preserved at the time of the
deluge. The Egyptians and Hebrews, however, styled
the ark Tebah,
* Baris, f Argo, and Buto, or a coffin..
The Hebrews used the word TBH (Teba) to designate
the ark of Noah, and ARN (Aron) to designate the ark

* As Apamea was called the city of the Boat or Ark, so

Thebes in Egypt was in like manner the city of the Ark or
Coffin, because of the Royal graves there.
+ From which our word bark or barque—a ship.
B *
 i8 The Mythos of the Ark.

of the covenant.
* This latter was intrusted to the sole
guardianship of a class of priests the sons or descend­
ants of Aaron—the sons or priests of the ark—showing
thus that in all probability Aaron was a mythological
and not a real person. “ The word TBH,” says Lesley,
{“ Man's Origin and Destiny,” page 315), “ is an Egyp­
tian word, meaning a vase or pot. Gesenius says in
his dictionary, that its Hebrew etymology is quite
unknown. In the Coptic it means a cavern, a boat, a
chest or a sarcophagus or coffin.” Lesley also shows
by a multitude of curious and striking ideas, that in
early times architecture was closely associated with
religion—symbolised the early religion in stone That
religion had its origin, for the most part, in the
arkite mythos, in the ship, or house, or chest, on the
mountain top, containing the germs of renewed life.
Thus one of the most common forms of religious
architecture was in Egypt the pyramid or truncated
cone, and in Greece the pediment—a word synony­
mous with pyramid—with a cross or urn at the top.
(fig. 1.) As, however, Ararat was double peaked, and
the ark was, in the current tradition, fabled to rest
between the peaks, this pediment or pyramid was
sometimes split in two, and the urn, or arn, or ark
placed between them (fig. 2).

Fig. i. Fig. 2.

* It would seem probable that the Jews had the ark of the
covenant centuries before they knew anything concerning the
ark of Noah. As monotheists they stood in great measure
aloof from the old world mythologies. The rites and cere­
monies of these, however, occasionally crept in among them,
and were adopted in their religious worship. Very much of
* the Jewish ritual was borrowed about the era of Solomon from
 The Mythos of the Ark. *9
The altar of our Catholic churches, with the sacred
chest which contains the consecrated host, is thus
symbolical of the mountain with the ark. The chest
in question corresponding with the ark or sacred chest
■of the Jewish and Egyptian worship. But the com­
munion-table of Protestant worship is the analogue of
the Catholic altar, is, in short, the TBH or Tebah, or
ark. There are two sacred places in every house, the
table at which meals are taken, the altar, as it were,
of the household, and the circle round the fire-side.
To sit at one’s table is to enter the very sanctuary of
domestic friendship. Just now there is a hot dispute
among the Church of England clergy as to the proper
designation of the piece of church furniture from which
the sacraments are dispensed. Some claim it to be
only a “ table,” others declaring it to be an “ altar”—
neither party apparently discerning that the two
things have, as church symbols, the same meaning,
and have descended from the old arkite worship. The
cup on the table, the chest on the altar, the urn on
the pediment, are one and the same symbol, and repre­
sent the ark on the mountain. Some time back the
writer visited the somewhat notorious church of St
Albans, Holborn—a church in which there is a profuse
reproduction of what is called mediaeval symbolism,
but which in reality is a symbolism derived from these
old worships. Here the “table” is boldly asserted to
be an “ altar.” The writer’s attention was arrested by
the fact that around the arch dividing the chancel
from^the church, and on the wall immediately above
the table or altar the decoration was the well known
water symbol of the Egyptians 7WWV indicative of
the turbulent waves that surrounded the mount of
safety and the ark of rest.
the Egyptians, and the ark had been borrowed at a much
earlier period. The Freemasons at the present day use many
rites and symbols of whose ancient meaning they are wholly
ignorant.
IO The Mythos of the Ark.

We have seen that the ark was designated by a-

word which had the meaning of a sepulchre or tomb.
*
It was the tomb of Noah, and of the remnant of the-
old world life that it contained; and these, when the
flood subsided, were born as it were into new life..
So the ark was the symbol of resurrection or regenera­
tion, and in this sense allusion is made to it in the
baptismal service of the Church of England—in the
prayer which asks that the recipient may be saved
from the waves of this troublesome world, and be
received into “ the ark of Christ’s Church." In the old
mythology Janus was a representation of Noah. He
was represented with two faces, as one that looked
upon two worlds, and on the reverse of his coins was
a dove circled with an olive branch. “ He was repre­
sented,” says Bryant, “ as a just man and a prophet.”
There was a tradition that he raised the first temple
to heaven, and he was regarded as one of the cabiri, or
the eight original deities of the ark. He is represented
with a key, and is termed the deity of the door or
passage; hence, in reference to him, every door among
* In early Christian times the altar was in some sense a
tomb. The sepulchre of a saint became his shrine—that is,
a chest or box containing sacred, relics. Sometimes churches
as well as altars were erected, over the graves of the dead, and
for the same reason the vaults beneath churches were wont to
be used as cemeteries. In the second Council of Nice a law
was passed which made bishops subject to deprivation if they
consecrated a church without relics—that is, remains of a
saint. England was at one time sorely puzzled to find relics -
fast enough for all her new altars (Soame’s Anglo Saxon
Church, 130), and this led to their fraudulent fabrication.
The altar of a saint was in some sense the tomb of the saint,
and the chief altar is in this sense regarded as the tomb of
the god who is worshipped. The ideas of death and resurrec­
tion are closely associated with the mass service performed on
Catholic altars, and with the communion service of the Lord’s,
table, or Tebah, or ark in Protestant churches.
'1 he word “mystery” applied to the pagan celebration of
arkite worship is still applied to the mass and communion,
services of Christian worship.
 7he Mythos of the Ark. 21
'the Latins was called Janua, and the first month of
the year was called January, as being an opening of a
new era. In this sense the ark had the meaning of
the resurrection, and here its symbol was an egg.
An egg was a common symbol in the mythology of
•the ancient world. A bull butting an egg with his
horns, and thus breaking the shell and liberating the
imprisoned life, was the symbol of the opening year
;at the time when the year had its commencement in
•the Spring, or season in which the earth’s fertility,
which had been destroyed by Typhon, or Ahriman,
or winter, was renewed by Osiris, or Ormusd, or the
Spring sun. Virgil alludes to this idea : “ Candidus
auratis aperit quum cornibus annum Taurus.” This
•is the meaning of the Pasch or Easter eggs; they are
symbols of resurrection or renewed life, and in this
sense were used in the religious rites of Greece, India,
and Egypt.
“ The egg,” says Jacob Bryant, “ as it contained
the principles of life, was thought no improper em­
blem of the ark, in which were preserved the rudi­
ments of the future world. Hence in the Dionusian
and in other mysteries one part of the nocturnal
ceremony consisted in the consecration of an egg.”
This egg, he asserts, on the authority of Porphyry,
was symbolical of the world, and was called the mun­
dane egg, or egg which enclosed the world.
The author of the “ Two Babyions ” says : “ From
Egypt these sacred eggs can be distinctly traced to the
banks of the Euphrates. The classic poets are full of
■the fable of the mystic egg of the Babylonians, and
its tale is thus told by Hyginus the Egyptian, the
learned keeper of the Palatine library at Pome in the
time of Augustus : “ An egg of wondrous size is said
to have fallen from heaven into the river Euphrates,
out of which came Venus, who afterwards was called
the Syrian goddess, i.e., Astarte. Hence the egg
•became one of the symbols of Astarte, or Easter, and
 22 The Mythos of the Ark.

accordingly at Cyprus, one of the chosen seats of the

worship of Venus or Astarte, an egg was represented
of huge size. The occult meaning of this mystic egg
of Astarte (for it had a twofold significance) had refer­
ence to the ark during the time of the flood, in which
the whole human race were shut up as a chick is
enclosed in the egg before it is hatched. The appli­
cation of the word egg to the ark comes thus:—
The Hebrew name for an egg is Beitz. This in
Chaldee and Phoenician becomes Beith, which is also
the term for house, as Beth-el, house of God. The
egg was thus the house or ark in which the principle
of life was enclosed/’
The egg thus symbolized a tomb and a resurrection
—destruction and creation. Not a few of the ancient
nations, says Dr. Oliver {Signs and Symbols'), blended
the creation and the deluge so intimately that the
same mythos applies to either event. The book of
Genesis tells us that in the six hundredth year of
Noah’s life, in the second month, and the seventeenth
day of the month, the flood began, and Noah entered
the ark. Plutarch, in his treatise “ De Iside, et Osire,”
says “ that Osiris, to avoid the fury of Typhon, went
into his ark, and that it happened on the seventeenth
day of the month Athyr, when the sun was in Scorpio.
The Egyptians, he tells us, kept two festivals at oppo­
site parts of the year, viz., the spring and autumnal
equinox, the spring festival being the resurrection
and the autumn festival the death of Osiris; and he
says that on the seventeenth day of the second month
after the autumnal equinox Osiris was shut up in his
coffin or ark, and this agrees with the very date at
which Noah was said to have entered his ark, the
civil year of the Jews beginning with the autumnal
equinox. The time of Noah’s liberation from the ark
was the commencement of the natural year, the time
when Osiris was fabled to enter, not the ark, but the
moon (Isis), and to bring back the earth’s fertility.
 The Mythos of the Ark. 23
The interval during which Osiris was in the ark sym­
bolized the Winter or season of the earth’s sterility.
The legend of Osiris being slain by Typhon is thus
the foundation legend of the old nature worship. It
is the sun losing its power—the earth deprived of its
fertility—the death of Osiris, or nature, or Ormusd,
slain by Ahriman; and the opening spring time was
the great resurrection festival, when Noah leaves the
ark, or Osiris quits his tomb, or the egg gives up its
imprisoned life,, or the earth’s fertility is restored, or
the sun’s power regained. Easter Day, as now kept
in connection with the asserted resurrection of Jesus,
is simply the adaptation of a festival of the ancient
religion to the purposes of a new faith. It takes its
name from the Saxon goddess Eostre, who is the same
with the Syrian Astarte and the Egyptian Isis. The
story of the flood has, however, a relation to another
mythological idea—the “ Neros,” or succession of ages
or cycles, or the renewal of worlds. In the Hindoo
mythology this idea finds expression in the Kali Yug,
or great year or age of Brahm, at the expiration of
which the old world is destroyed and a new world
produced. Josephus, however, speaks of a great year
composed of six hundred ordinary years; this consti­
tuted the ancient cycle of the Neros. “ God,” he says,
“ afforded the patriarchs a longer term of life on account
of their virtue and the good use they made of their
wisdom in astronomical discoveries, which they would
not have had the means of foretelling unless they had
lived six hundred years; for the great year is com­
pleted in that interval.” Godfrey Higgins, in his
Celtic Druids, shows that the ancients thought that
six hundred years constituted a soli-lunar period, or
a period in which the sun and moon would again
sustain exactly the same relations to each other.
Thus if at any time there was a new or full moon, at
the same moment six hundred years hence there
would be new or full moon again. With each of
 24 The Mythos of the Ark.

these periods the ancients held that there was a new

age and a new world. The Avatars of the Hindoo
mythology, and the golden, iron, brass, &c., ages of
the Roman mythology, are illustrations of this
thought; and in the celebrated lines of Virgil, pre­
dicting the commencement of a new cycle and the
return of the golden age, the idea finds very plain
expression :—
•‘Jam redit et virgo redeunt saturnia regna,
Jam nova progenies coelo demittitur alto.”
The great series of revolving ages begins anew.
Now too returns the virgin Astrea,* returns the
reign of Saturn, now a new progeny from high heaven
descends ! ” The duration of an age was 600 years,
and then men looked for wonderful changes to come.
It was in the second month of the 600th year of his
age that Noah entered into the ark, and it was on
the first day of the first month of the 601st year, or
the first day of the first year of a new age, that Noah
is said to have left the ark and to have commenced
the inauguration of a new world.
Saturn was the Greek Chronos,! the God of Time.
Jacob Bryant says he was the same with Janus and
Noah. The association of a new rule of justice, of
an age of virtue succeeding an age of wickedness,
and this under the rule of a virgin goddess, identifies
the prediction of Virgil with the mythos of the ark.
The zodiacal emblems show the astronomical ex­
planation of which the mythos is capable. Taurus
or the Bull was the sign in which the sun was,
and under which the sun was worshipped at the
spring equinox. Hence Osiris was represented by
*_ Astrea, in the mythology of the ancients, was the goddess
of justice. She resided on the earth during the reign of
Saturn in the golden age, but shocked at the impiety and
wickedness of men in the succeeding ages, she returned to
heaven, and became one of the signs of the zodiac.
+ Hence our word chrone, signifying an old woman, and
saturnalia as applied to wild and licentious orgies.
 The Mythos of the Ark. 25
the Bull Apis, and Isis represented as a woman
with a cow’s head. The Bull Apis was marked on
the shoulder with a crescent symbolising the moon or
ark. The virgin Isis, with a cow’s head, nursing
Horus, was the prototype of all the virgin goddesses,
mothers of God, and queens of heaven of the old
classic mythology. At Ephesus she was represented
in grotesque though human form, with a multitude of
breasts. Here she bore the name Diana, and repre­
sented in a crude way the principle of maternity.
Greek art represented the Egyptian Isis as a beautiful
woman, nursing the infant Horus ; and Mr Sharpe, in
his “ History of Egypt,” tells us that when the worship
of Isis was interdicted at Rome, and that of Christianity
established in its place, the painters, who hitherto had
got their living by painting pictures of Isis and
Horus, still continued to paint the same pictures of
the Virgin and Child, calling them now Mary and the
Infant Jesus. The old mythological taint still con­
tinues, and I have before me while writing a beauti­
fully coloured picture of the Virgin Mary, accompanied
with a large lunette or curved moon, or ship symbol,
thus showing how Christian art still associates with
its paintings, as Christian festivals continue in their
usages—the buns of Good Friday (the cakes that
were offered to Astarte) and the eggs of Easter—the
symbols of the world’s most ancient mythologies.

THE ARK IN ITS CONNECTION WITH THE ANCIENT

MYSTERIES.

The story of the Ark and Deluge is the story of

the destruction of an old world and the creation of a
new world. The liberation of its occupant is there­
fore to the existing age the creation of the first man,
an event common to all nations, and the point to which
all tradition must converge. The name ark (ap^f)
signifies first, pre-eminent, and most ancient, and in
 26 The Mythos of the Ark.

this sense mingles with our common speech to-day.

It is well known that all the ancient religions con­
sisted of two parts—one a system of ceremonies and
sacrifices open and common to the masses of the people,
the teachings of which were exoteric or public, and
another portion which was kept carefully concealed
from the public eye, in which a high philosophy and
a pure morality were taught, and which from the
secrecy and mystery in which its proceedings were
shrouded was termed esoteric or hidden. To these
religious rites—mysteries as they were termed—only
a select few were admitted, and these only after a
lengthened probation and passing through a series of
symbolical and initiatory rites, in which the candi­
dates were surrounded by a variety of terrors and
difficulties, and were beset by imaginary dangers and
perils, so that their courage of body and mind were
put to a most severe test.
We have seen that the ark signified a coffin or a
sepulchre. The English word boat is derived from
the Greek xifiwros, or an ark; or the Coptic beut, a
coffin or sepulchre. Among the Celtic Britons the
ark of Aeddon was considered as his temple, or
sanctuary, or resting place; this they were wont to
style his bedd, which word, like the Coptic beut,
denotes a coffin or sepulchre. The word is used in
this sense to-day in Wales in the shrine which so
many tourists visit, and which is called indifferently
Bethgelert or Beddgelert, meaning the grave of Gelert.
In the Book of Genesis the same word is used to
designate the ark of the covenant and the soros or
coffin within which the dead body of Joseph was
deposited. This word was ABN (aron), and it lives
in our midst to-day in the word urn, a vase contain­
ing the ashes of the dead.
The ark was thus at once the coffin or the ship of
the hero gods. In the mysteries of Isis and Osiris,
Plutarch relates that the image of a dead man was
 The Mythos of the Ark. 2/
carried about in an ark or small boat of a lunette
form, which served him as a coffin. This person was
Osiris, and this interment they viewed as the dis­
appearance of the Deity, and the lamentations occa­
sioned by his being dead or lost constituted the first
part of the Mysteries. Afterwards, on the third day
subsequent to his enclosure within the ark, a proces­
sion went down to the sea at night, the priests bear­
ing the sacred ark. Into this they poured water
from the river, and when this rite had been duly per­
formed, they raised a shout of joy, exclaiming that
the lost Osiris had been found, that the dead Osiris
had been restored to life, that he who had descended
into Hades had returned from Hades. The exulta­
tions in which they now indulged constituted the
second or joyful part of the mysteries. Hence origi­
nated those watchwords used by the Mystse: “ We
have found him, let us rejoice together.”* The
ancient Mysteries had their celebrations prohibited
by law by the Emperor Theodosius in the 4th century.
Still the mysteries of Diana were celebrated in the
middle ages in many parts of Europe, and the
mysteries themselves still live in our midst to-day in
the rites and initiations of the Freemasons. The
Freemasons’ lodge is a temple, or tabernacle, or ark,
and the ark itself (for the Freemasons, like the Jews
* The women weeping for Tammuz or Adonis, the sun god
of Syria, alluded to by Ezekiel, and the search of the discon­
solate Ceres, in the “Grecian Mysteries,” for her lost daugh­
ter Proserpine, carried off by Pluto into the infernal regions,
are modifications of the same mythos. The reader will be
struck with the similarity of this mourning and rejoicing to
lhe Good Friday celebration of the death of Jesus, and the
rejoicing on account of his resurrection on Easter Sunday.
The scholars of Christ’s Hospital, in their Easter visits to the
Mansion House, have or had (for the writer is speaking his
own experience thirty years since) a piece of paper pinned
upon their coats, about three inches long by one inch broad,
having printed upon it in black letter the legend, ‘ ‘ He is
risen! ”
 28 The Mythos of the Ark.

and Egyptians, use an ark in their rites) is but a

miniature representation of the lodge. (Lodge is
derived from the Sanscrit loga, signifying the world.)
Dr Oliver, who has written very learnedly concerning
the rites and symbols of Masonry, calls the ancient
Paganism spurious “Masonry,” whereas the palpable
fact is that Masonry is spurious Paganism—is a
modern imitation of the ancient mysteries. Dr Oliver
says, “ Masonry was revealed to Adam in Paradise,”
and. certainly its rites carry their allusions back to a
period much more remote than the building of Solo­
mon’s Temple.
Reproducing the ancient religion we surely expect
to find in Freemasonry the reproduction of the ancient
mythos, to find therefore many allusions to the ark.
In Mr Mackey’s interesting lexicon of Freemasonry,
he tells us that the Freemasons call themselves
“Noachites,” or observers of the commandments of
Noah, * and claim that when mankind began to
wander once more from paths of purity, the principles
of Noah were still perpetuated by that portion of
the race whom the Freemasons regard as their im­
mediate ancestors. The seven precepts viz., to re­
nounce all idols, to worship the only God, to commit
* The Noachites were a class of people who were not Jews but
who were said to be the sons of Noah, because they observed
the seven moral precepts called the commandments of Noah.
The Talmud recognises these people as pious men. “Who­
ever receives the seven commandments,” says the oral law,
which the Talmud records, “ and is careful to observe them, he
is one of the pious of the nations of the world and has a share
in the world to come.”—Hilchoth Melachim, ch. 8, 10. Again,
“we are bound, ” says a Talmudist, “ to love as brethren all those
who observe the Noacliides, whatever their religious opinions
may otherwise be. We are bound to visit their sick, to bury
their dead, to assist their poor like those of Israel.” MlCauVs
old Paths. They were probably the virtuous heathen, who,
celebrating the mysteries or receiving the sacraments of their
religion virtually ranked as the true descendants of Noah to
whom under the various names of Osiris, Bacchus, Adonis,
-&c., the mysteries related.
 The Mythos of the Ark. ig

no murder, to abstain from incest, from stealing, to

be just, and to eat no flesh with the blood in it, were
said to form the constitution of the ancient brethren.
Moreover, the acme of masonic science bears the
title of royal arch degree. This word arch is merely
aP% pronounced soft, the word ark and arch are the
same as seen in composition, arch-deacon and arch- or
ark-angel. Accordingly we find this Royal Arch degree
has secret reference to the ship mythos, for in Scot­
land the royal arch masons bear the title of “ Royal Ark
Manners. In the Masters or third degree of masonry
we have the death of Osiris or Noah, celebrated by
the death of Hiram Abiff, the chief builder or
architect of the temple. Mr Mackey says that Free­
masons take the name Hiramites to indicate their
descent from Hiram, and this term is more particularly
used in the Scotch degree of Patriarch Noachite, to dis­
tinguish master-masons from the brethren of that
degree who profess to descend immediately, and with­
out connection with temple masonry, from the sons
of Noah. Some learned writers, he adds, embrace
all masons under the term Noachites.
Before the final initiation into the Isidian or
Osirian mysteries, some very terrible ordeals have to
be passed; a state of darkness besets the aspirant, in
which terrible sounds are heard and across which ap­
palling visions flash. The reader will find a very
vivid delineation of these terrors in Moore’s Epicurean,
in which the ceremonies of initiation are very fully
described. It is these which are imitated in the
ceremonies which the Freemason undergoes before his
admission to the degree of master-mason. Mr Mackey
says, in the master-mason’s degree, which is the per­
fection of symbolic or ancient craft masonry, the
purest of truths are unveiled amid the most awful
ceremonies. None but he who has visited the holy
of holies and travelled the road of peril can have any
conception of the mysteries unfolded in this degree.
 jo The Mythos of the Ark.

In the language of the learned and zealous Hutchinson,

“ the master-mason represents a man saved from the
grave of iniquity and raised to the faith of salvation.”
It testifies our faith in the resurrection of the body,
and while it inculcates a practical lesson of prudence
and unshaken fidelity, it inspires the most cheering
hope of that final reward which belongs alone to the
“just made perfect.”
Dr Oliver, in his exposition of “ masonic signs and
symbols," says,, (and he is here illustrating masonic
practices, the initiatory rites of this degree by the
ancient usages,) “ an extraordinary ceremony referring
to the Deluge, was used in the initiations which shows
how mysteriously that event was preserved and trans­
mitted. The violent death of some unhappy individual
was here celebrated, whose body they affected to have
lost, and much time and many ceremonies were ex­
pended in the search, even the aspirant himself was
made figuratively to die, and to descend into the in­
fernal regions for the purpose of ascertaining the fate
of him whose disappearance they ceased not to deplore.
This part of the ceremony was performed in darkness,
and was accompanied with loud lamentations, the
body being at length found, the aspirant was passed
through the regenerating medium and was said to be
raised from the dead and born again. This was the
commencement of joy and gladness.
* This ceremony
bears evident reference to the descent of Noah into
the darkness of the ark which was his emblematical
■coffin.”
Dr Oliver did not write to enlighten the general
public, but master-masons who know the mysterious
darkness through which they have to pass before
entering on the master’s degree, and the peculiar rites
attending their initiation into it, find them clearly
■explained by these ancient usages and fables.
The master-mason’s degree embodies the story of the
* See the legend of the death of Osiris before referred to.
 clhe Mythos of the Ark. 31
assassination of Hiram, the architect or master builder
of Solomon’s temple, who, tradition relates, was
murdered by three of the fellow-craftsmen or labourers
for refusing to deliver up the secret password that
was entrusted only to master-masons. In the initia­
tory rites of this degree the incidents of this assassina­
tion are rehearsed. The lodge is hung with black and
becomes a sepulchral vault dimly lit with tapers in
the middle of which is placed a coffin; the brother
about to be admitted is suddenly smitten on the fore­
head and falls as if dead, is then in some lodges placed
in the coffin or pastos
* and covered with a pall.
The brethren then stand round in an attitude denot­
ing sorrow and revenge. The ceremonies then go on
to describe the raising of Hiram by Solomon, in which
the brother is restored to life and his initiation after
a lecture on life, death, and immortality, is complete.
In a word, we have in this masonic degree a repetition
of the tradition of the death and resurrection of Osiris,
Adonis, &c., and of the entrance of Noah into the ark
and his egress from it.
While in the ancient religions a crude polytheism
was taught to the people at large, the initiated were
instructed in the great doctrines of the unity of God,
the immortality of the soul, and the system of future
punishment and reward. The initiated, however, are
a select few, and to these the higher and secret
doctrines were revealed. As these initiations are re­
produced, in masonry by the various degrees which
are therein conferred, and the meaning of which is
kept secret from all but the initiated, so they are to be
seen in the. communion services of the Christian church,
especially in that of the church of Scotland, where it is
* Clement of Alexandria says, that in the old mysteries,
those who had undergone the higher initiation of which the
master’s degree is a copy, were wont to say, the better to
veil their meaning from the uninitiated, I have descended into
the bedchamber, i.e., I have slept the sleep of death.
 32 The Mythos of the Ark.

celebrated only at long intervals, half-a-year it may

be. The celebration then takes the character of a
general holiday so that the occasion of its observ­
ance, from the large gatherings of people that are
brought together, has been named the holy fair.
Faber, who of all authors has given this subject
the most elaborate investigation, says, the philosophy
inculcated in these mysteries taught that matter was
eternal, but that it was liable to endless changes and
modifications ; that over it a Demiurgic Intelligence
presided, who, when a world was produced out of
chaos, manifested himself at the commencement of
that world as the great universal father of both men
and animals ; that during the existence of the world
every thing in it was undergoing perpetual change
that at the end of a certain great appointed period
the world was destined to be reduced to its primeval
material chaos, that the agent of its dissolution was a
flood either of water or of fire; that at this time all
its inhabitants perished and the great father from
whose soul the soul of every man proceeded, and into
whose soul all souls must be resolved, was left in the
solitary majesty of abstracted meditation, that during
the prevalence of the Deluge and the reign of chaos
he floated upon the surface of the mighty deep repos­
ing in the bosom of his consort the great mother,
who then assumed the form of a ship, but who was
likewise represented by the lotos, or the egg, or the
serpent, or the navicular leaf, or the lunar crescent
that the two powers of nature, male and female, or
the great creative father, and the great creative mother,
were then reduced to their simplest principles and
sailed over the face of the illimitable ocean in the
form of a ship and mast.
At the close of the divine year the deluge subsided,
and the great father awakening from his deathlike
sleep, and bursting forth from the womb of the great
mother within which he had been confined, created a
 The Mythos of the Ark. 33
new world out of the chaotic wreck of the old world.
That a new race of mortals and of animals was
produced, and that every thing that had occurred
during the existence of the preceding world recurred
again in the new one. The mysteries, in short,
treated throughout of a grand and total regeneration;
a new birth which related to the old world, the great
demiurgic parent, and to every individual man.
Hence, the golden figure of a serpent as a symbol
of immortality was placed in the bosom of the in­
itiated, and hence from the earliest ages, the male
and female principle of fecundity were deemed sacred
symbols of the great father and the great mother, and
were introduced into the orgies (or arg or ark cere­
monies
).
* In the classic mythology Juno was repre­
sented sustaining a lunette upon her head and stand­
ing on a larger lunette, the crescent being depicted as to
appear floating on the surface of the sea, precisely
after the fashion of the modern life-boat.
The Egyptians had two yearly festivals, in the one
of which they celebrated the entrance of Osiris, the
sun, into the moon, Isis, and in the other, his entrance
into that ark in which he was enclosed by Typhon,
and thus set afloat upon Oceanus or the Nile. But
according to Plutarch this ark was itself a navicular
moon.f The account which Diodorus gives is exactly
to the same purpose. He tells us that Isis enclosed
Osiris within a wooden cow during the turbulent reign
of Typhon, or the all-prevailing ocean. Osiris was
* See Milman’s History of Christianity, book 1., chap. 1.
Apuleius Metamorphoses, and see also Buchanan’s Christian
Researches for an account of this worship existing in a de­
generate and licentious form among the Hindoos of the present
day.
t These terms simply imply the conjunction of the sun and
moon, or, as we say now, the new moon of the spring and
autumnal equinox. The first took place in the sign of Taurus
or the Bull; hence the worship of the Bull, and the represent-
-ation of Isis as a cow ; the latter in the sign Scorpio, the em­
blem of Typhon or the destroyer.
C
34 The Mythos of the Ark.

then indifferently said to enter into the moon, into an

ark, and into a cow dedicated to the moon. The
moon, therefore, and the cow dedicated to the moon,
were alike symbols or hieroglyphics of the ship of'
Osiris—the one astronomically, the other physically.
The sacred cow was in Egypt dedicated to the moon,
and was called Tebah,
* which literally signifies an ark,
and she was palpably the same as the ark into which
Osiris was driven by Typhon.—(Faber’s Pag. Idol., vol..
3, page 7.)

THE ARK CONSIDERED AS A TYPE OF BAPTISMAL

REGENERATION.
Baptism as a symbol of regeneration was a religious­
rite in common use in the ancient religions. John
the Baptist, we are told, preceded Jesus, and baptism
by immersion in water was the initiatory rite by
which admission into the Essenian community could
alone be obtained. Tertullian, in his treatise “De
Baptismo,” says that in Egypt disciples were admitted
into the religion of Isis and Mithra by means of
Baptism. This they think sets them free from their-
perjuries and accomplishes their regeneration. The
Persians derived the practice of Baptism from India,
the cradle of the world’s ancient faiths. The use of
water, the agent of material cleansing, as a symbol of
moral purification is so natural that every religion of
antiquity might have adopted it on entirely indepen­
dent grounds. But coupled with baptism we find the
idea, not only of purification, but also of regeneration
or new birth,f and this idea connects the rite with the
* Thebes was the chief city of Egypt, the city where the-
Bull Apis was worshipped and buried.
+ Baptismal regeneration is a question that at the present
moment divides the Established Church into two hostile par­
ties. The High Church party, however, who advocate this-
doctrine, have all the authority of antiquity in their favour.
This was the ancient significance of the baptismal rite; but-
this furnishes no evidence of its being a true doctrine.
 The Mythos of the Ark. 35
fundamental idea of the ark and flood, of a regenerate
or new-born world, and of a regenerate or new-born
man in the person of Noah, which doctrines formed
the basis of the ancient worship.
As water had once purified the world from sin, and,
destroying the old, had produced a world altogether
new ; so immersion in water was the typical rite for
the purification and new birth of the soul. As in the
ancient mysteries, those who were initiated were made
to undergo a figurative death, so on the completion of
the rites they were said to have been new born. To
this day the distinctive title of the Brahmin in Hin-
dostan is “twice born/’ and a Brahmin who loses
caste by travelling can only recover it by being born
again, either from a golden woman or a golden cow, as
symbols of the great mother. Another mode of
regeneration practised in India, and traces of which
are still found throughout Europe, especially in Ire­
land, is by squeezing the individual through a small
hole in a rock. There is an orifice of this description
near the famous Elephanta cavern temple, and another
in the island of Bombay. This latter place, a natural
crevice on the side of the Malabar hill, communicating
with a cavern below, which opens towards the sea, is.
still used by the Hindoos as a mode of gaining puri­
fication from their sins, which, they say, is effected
by their going in at the opening below and emerging
from the orifice above. This orifice is deemed sym­
bolic, as the door of each mithraitic cavern and the
door in the floating moon through which the ancients
fabled all souls were born, and the door in the side of'
the ark through which Noah and his companions
emerged to a new life in a new world.
That a connection was held to exist between the
rite of baptism and the tradition of the Deluge is
amply evidenced by the way in which the earliest
Christian writers connect the two together—an associ­
ation which is still to be found in the Church of
36 The Mythos of the Ark.

England baptismal service. The writer of the second

epistle of Peter alludes to the destruction of the world
by water on account of its wickedness, and to its then
pending destruction by fire, and says, “nevertheless
we, according to his promise, look for a new heaven
and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”
Tertullian writing about the close of the second cen­
tury says, De Baptismo, “As after the waters of the
flood, whereby the ancient iniquity was purged away
after the baptism, if I may so speak, of the world, the
dove sent from the ark announced to the earth that
the wrath of heaven was pacified; so by the same
disposition of spiritual effects the dove of the Holy
Spirit sent forth from heaven where the church is a
spiritual ark, flies down to our earth, that is to our
flesh, emerging from the laver after our former state
of sin, and brings the peace of God. But the world
again relapses into delinquency, and in this evil too
baptism may be compared to the Deluge.”
Origen, who wrote a century later, says, in a homily
on the Hebrew story of the Flood, “ as at the Flood
Noah was told to make an ark and to introduce to it,
not only his sons and relatives, but also animals of
every sort, so our Noah, Jesus Christ, at the bidding
of his Father, made an ark and dens in it for the
reception of various animals. Thus people who are
saved in the church are compared with those, whether
men or beasts, who were saved in the ark,” and then
he goes on to assert that there are degrees among
them, but that the lower pass through ascending
stages till they come to that which is occupied by
“ the sons or relatives of our true Noah or Rest.”
And in commenting upon the fourteenth chapter of
Ezekiel, Origen has these remarks which the reader
would do well to consider in connection with what has
been said of the typical ceremonies of the master’s
degree in Masonry, “ I once heard a Jew say Noe,
Daniel, and Job are introduced because each of them
 The Mythos of the Ark. 37
saw three periods, one of joy, one of sorrow, and
again one of joy. Consider Noe before the Deluge
when the world was in its bloom ; the same Noe
afterwards preserved in the ark (which, in another
place, he says was shaped like a pyramid—the pyra­
mid was the tomb of Osiris) amidst the wreck of the
whole earth. Consider how, after the Deluge, he went
forth and planted a vineyard and became, as it were,
the author of a second world.”
Enough has now been said to indicate that Noah
was a mythological fancy, not an actual historical
personage. The name signifies rest—safety-—salva­
tion. Dr. Donaldson has some curious remarks in
this direction. He says : “ An apostle has told us
that the ark of Noah is a type of baptism (1 Peter
iii. 20, 21), and it was by baptism that the mystse
were admitted to the privileges of initiation. It
could not therefore be an accident that those who
were received into that shadowy church of heathenism
were expressly taught to consider and speak of them­
selves as having just escaped from the waves of a
stormy sea, and as having found shelter and peace.”
And then he goes on to show that Solomon, the
“ man’ of peace,” dedicated his temple on the seven­
teenth day of the seventh month, the day on which
Noah, “ the man of peace” or rest, emerged from the
ark and erected his altar. The dove with the olive
branch is to this day a symbol inseparably associated
with the ark; but the dove is also the bird sacred to
Venus as the symbol of the great mother, while the
Peacock, the symbol of the rainbow, (another arkite
emblem, the first arch or ark of the covenant,) was
the bird sacred to Juno, the queen of heaven, and
the great mother of the gods among the Romans.
The ark has also a meaning of another character.
As in another class of solar myths, the Cross symbol­
ized the Phallus and the Logos, and as the creative act
came also to imply the idea of creative wisdom, so the.
 38 The Mythos of the Ark.

ark, as the symbol of the renovation of the physical

world, came to signify also its intellectual and moral
reger^ation. And so the ark came to symbolize
Divine v .sdom, or the Logos, and was in this higher
sense the symbol of salvation, the emblem of the
Christ. It bears this higher meaning of Divine
wisdom as used in the Jewish synagogue, and it is
employed in this higher sense in the rites of modern
Freemasonry. As the coffin belongs to the Masters’
degree, so the ark is the symbol of the Royal Arch or
Ark degree. In the synagogue it contains the sacred
books, the word or wisdom of God, and in the Free­
masons’ lodge it contains the book of the constitutions
of the society—the secret or sacred wisdom, i.e., the
“Logos.” In the ancient world Noah was often
worshipped as God,
* in the same way as Jesus, in his
character of Christ, is worshipped as God at the pre­
sent day. There are times when a distinction is made,
and Noah and Christ regarded as subordinate to God,
but at other times the characters are merged into one,
and then they were regarded as God. In the heathen
temples the ark was thought to contain the God,—
to be the divine dwelling place, —and it was on the ark,
between the cherubim that covered it, that in the
Jewish temple God was thought to be especially
present. In Catholic and Ritualistic, nay even in the
majority of Protestant churches, it is on the altar or
communion table—the substitutes for the ark of Jew­
ish and heathen worship—that God is held to be
actually present to-day. These are placed in the
central and most sacred portions of the churches, the
chancel being to Catholics and Protestants the holy of
holies of Christian worship. In Freemasonry "the
Royal Arch or Ark degree constitutes the summit
of masonic science. Here the fulness of the secret
wisdom is imparted, and to this degree, as to the
* Vernon Harcourt, on the Worship of Noah in the East.
See Doctrine of the Deluge.
 The Mythos of the Ark. 39
"Communion rite of churches, only a select few are
admitted. These constitute, as it were, the esoteric
brotherhood—the fully initiated. In the ancient mys­
teries of Isis and Osiris in Egypt, and of Ceres and
Bacchus in Greece, the candidate, after witnessing
the terrible celebration of the death of the god, was
at length led out of the darkness and terrors into a
chamber where, amid a flood of dazzling light, he was
permitted to gaze on a beautiful and resplendent
statue of the goddess Ceres or Isis. In this scene of
-celestial splendour the secret doctrine was revealed,
and he who had before been called a “ mystes,” or
novice, was now termed an “ epoptes,” or eyewitness.
Apuleius, who in the second century underwent
■initiation into the mysteries of Isis, has written a
lengthened account of the proceeding and its pre­
paratory rites. In one of these the priest tells him,
“The gates of the shades below and the care of our
life being in the hands of the goddess, the ceremony
of initiation into her mysteries is as it were to suffer
-death, with the precarious chance of resuscitation.
Wherefore the goddess, in the wisdom of her divinity,
hath been accustomed to select as persons to whom
■ the secrets of her religion can with propriety be
intrusted, those, who standing as it were in the
■utmost limit of the course of life they have com­
pleted, may through her providence be in a manner
born again, and commence the career of a new exist­
ence.”*—Apulews’ Metamorpli.
Apuleius, after alluding to the pledge of secresy
which binds him, proceeds to tell as much as he dare
concerning the final process. “ Listen,” he says, “ to
what I shall relate. I approached the abode of
death, with my foot I pressed the threshold of Pro.
* St Paul and other New Testament writers repeatedly
draw illustrations from the rites employed in the mysteries—
the new birth, the death unto sin and the life unto righteous­
ness, the perfect man, &c., &c.
 40 The Mythos of the Ark.

serpine’s palace, — I was transported through the

elements and conducted back again. At midnight I
saw the bright light of the sun shining. I stood in
the presence of the gods,—the gods of heaven and
of the shades below,—ay, stood near and worshipped.
And now have I only told thee such things that
hearing thou necessarily canst not understand, and
being beyond the comprehension of the profane,
* .I
can enunciate without committing a crime.”
The Royal Arch or Ark degree is virtually a copy
. of this final rite of initiation. It is here that the
Masonic holy of holies is open to the newly admitted
brother, or companion as he is now called. The
actual vision of the goddess is however here replaced
by the revelation of the most sacred and ineffable
name of God. This, the legend of the rite relates,
was discovered in the ruins of Solomon’s Temple, by
some master masons coming accidentally upon the
perfect remains of an arch. Removing the keystone,
they cast lots who should go down. The mason on
whom the lot fell being let down by a rope, brought
up a scroll, which proved to be the lost book of the
law. Coming to another arch, they opened it, and
here found a white marble pedestal, on which was a
plate of gold, and on this plate were inscribed double
triangles, in which was engraven the long lost sacred
word of the Master Mason—the grand omnific Royal
Arch word. This consisted in the triple name of
God, JAO-BUL-ON—too sacred to be spoken in one
* Compare with this Paul’s letter to the Church at Corinth,
a city where these mysteries were periodically held. “ How­
beit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect (initiated).
. . . We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the
hidden (secret) wisdom. . . . Eye hath not seen nor ear
heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things
which God hath prepared for them that love him. The
natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit of God, for
they are foolishness to him: neither can he know them, for
they are spiritually discerned.”
 The Mythos of the Ark. 41
breath, so three Masons have to repeat it, taking
each a syllable.
JAO or JAH was the Hebrew name of God, which
the Jews were forbidden to pronounce; which the
Book of Exodus relates was revealed to Moses, and
which rabbinical tradition relates might only be
uttered by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies on
the great day of atonement, and then amid the sound
of cymbals and trumpets, which prevented the people
from hearing it. The Jews believed that this name
possessed unbounded powers. “ He who pronounces
it, they say, shakes the heavens and earth, and
inspires the very angels with astonishment and
terror.” They declare that a sovereign power at­
taches to this name ; that it governs the world by its
power. The Rabbins call it “Shern hamphoresh,”
the unutterable name, and say that David found it
engraved on a stone while he was digging the founda­
tions of the earth. (Mackey's Lexicon).—None dared
to enter the temple of Serapis who did not bear
qn his breast or forehead the name Jao or J-ha-ho,
a name almost equivalent in sound to that of the
Hebrew Jehovah, and probably of identical im­
port, and no name v as uttered in Egypt with more
reverence than this of Jao. In the hymn which the
hierophant or guardian of the sanctuary sung to the
initiated this was the first explanation given of the
nature of the Deity. “ He is one and by himself, and
to him alone do all things owe their existence. (From
the German of Schiller, quoted in “ Time and Faith.")—
Bui or Bel was the name of God among the Pheni-
cians, and signifies lord or master. On was the name
under which the sun was worshipped in Egypt, so
the city ON was called by the Greek Heliopolis.
Joseph’s wife was a daughter of Potipherah, a priest
of On. Thus Dag-on signifies the fish god. Mr Brown,
in his recently published little book, 11 Poseid-on,” a
deity allied to the Latin Neptune, says with regard
 42 The Mythos of the Ark.

to the word On or Aun : “ Its Egyptian sense is the

enlightener, teacher, or instructor, of which the sun
is the natural type. The Semitic root, 11 an,” signifies
primarily labour or energy, especially procreative
power. Hence the Aun is the great enlightener or
teacher, and also the procreator of all, from whom all
spring or are descended, according to the saying,
‘ Omnia ex ovo,’ all things from the egg, 6on, aun.”
The word Aun transposed is the equivalent of Noah,
and Mr Brown traces an identity of character between
the Aun and the Babylonian fish god Oannes, whom
he also identifies with Noah, as the enlightener as
well as the procreator of the world. It is this triple
name of deity, JAO-BUL-ON, involving the full
description of his attributes,—the philosophy of the
creation and government of the world, the existence
of. one sole and supreme God, the creator of all
things, the father of all men, the all-wise, the all­
good, the eternal, who was, and is, and is to be,—
that constitutes the grand secret or sacred wisdom
enshrined in the Royal Arch * Degree. “ The fear of
the Lord,” says a Hebrew writer, “ is the beginning
of wisdom.” It was in the sense of their teaching the
true law of life, and unveiling the providential gover­
nance of the universe, that the mysteries of Paganism
were the shrine of secret wisdom. This knowledge
that God is one, that the soul is immortal, that the
practice of righteousness is its true salvation, is the
secret wisdom of which Freemasonry boasts, and this
wisdom is a portion of the Mythos of the Ark.
Godfrey Higgins (“ Anacalypsis,” vol. i., page 73),
shews that the Hebrew is represented by the Greek
and that it has the meaning of “ wisdom” as well
as “ beginning,” that in fact the accredited authority
* The word “ arch ” in the sense of wisdom has passed into
the familiar language of daily life. We call a shrewd person
“ arch,” and more vulgarly .say he is “ an old one,” an ancient,
i.e., an arkite.
 The Mythos of the Ark. 43
of the Jews the Jerusalem Targum renders the first
verse of Genesis thus, “ By wisdom God created the
world,”—a rendering which the account of wisdom
given in the eighth chapter of the book of Proverbs
amply justifies. Throughout all the east Noah was
held in reverence as a divine lawgiver, and Vernon
Harcourt asserts (“ Doctrine of the Deluge”) Noah
was one and the same, as shown by etymological
identity of name, with the great traditional lawgivers
or patriarchs of the Gentile world, Menu in India,
Minos in Greece, Menes in Egypt, and Numa in Rome.
The ark also was one with the moon, and while in the
ancient religions the sun symbolised divine power, the
moon symbolised the spirit or wisdom of God. Both
•spirit and wisdom are feminine, and hence are allied
to the goddesses Isis, Astarte, J uno, &c., of whom the
moon was the symbol, and who, notwithstanding their
multiform names were one and the same goddess—the
great mother of nature. But Athena and Pallas in «
Greece, and Neith the tree goddess of Egypt, and
Minerva among the Romans, were goddesses of wis­
dom,
* and thus it is that the ark of which these
goddesses were the type, was not only like them the
symbol of fertility, but was the symbol of divine wis­
dom also. Noah, the genius of the ark, is the root of
the Greek word vovc, signifying wisdom, while the
moon, the intermediate and connecting symbol, has a
■ similar sense. Men in the Greek is the moon, and
from this comes the Latin mens, the mind, and mensis,
a month, “ Menes” and “ Minos,” the wise legislators of
antiquity are allied to the same root. The moon was
the great measurer of time, of weeks and months,
whence the word mensuration, and as the priestesses
who gave the divine oracles in a fit of frenzy or mad­
ness were supposed to be under the influence of the
moon, we have the words maniac and lunatic denoting
* Our seats of learning are called to this day “Alma Mater”
by those who have been educated in them.
 44 The Mythos of the Ark.

an insane person, a person of disordered mind; more­

over the Latin mensa, a table, carries us again into
close relation with the altar or ark. The term manes,,
as applied to the dead and to the infernal gods, to the
ghosts or spirits of the dead in hades, is in the same
connection with “mens” and “meen” and “menes.”
It relates to the people in the ark or tomb, and is
thus connected with both moon and ark. The crescent
moon was the universal emblem of the goddesses of
antiquity, of whom the ark with the germs of life
within it was a symbol also. Mythologically, there­
fore, they have one and the same significance, and
thus the picture of the virgin by Albert Durer repre­
senting a beautiful woman with the crescent symbol,
is a picture that represents not the mother of Jesus,
but the beautiful woman that was worshipped in the
ancient world, and of whom the moon and the ark
were symbols. This crescent is to-day the well-known
» symbol of the Mahometan faith— a faith which sprung
up among the self-same Arabian tribes of idolaters, who,
*
making cakes wherewith to celebrate the worship of the
queen of heaven, gave to the corrupt Christian church
of the fourth century the idea of making the mother of
Christ a goddess under the title of the Virgin Mary.f
Had space permitted it would have been pos­
sible largely to have extended the evidence which
has here been adduced in proof of the mytho­
logical identity of Noah’s ark with the moon and
goddess worship of antiquity, and with the cultus of
the Virgin Mary in modern times. It has, however,
been fully shown that the story of the Ark and Flood,
* See Jeremiah vii. 18.
+ In time of deepest trouble and affliction prayers are
offered in the Romish Church to the Blessed Virgin — the
genius or goddess of the ark of salvation. Mr Hislop, in
“The Two Babyions,” p. 401, gives a prayer offered by the
Archbishop of Turin in 1855, on account of the ravages of the
vine disease, which were spreading ruin through the country,
addressed conjointly to Noah and the Blessed Virgin.
 The Mythos of the drk. 45
given in the Book of Genesis, is simply a tradition or
legend founded on an ancient mythological fancy or
fable, and is not what Englishmen are taught to regard
it as being, a supernatural revelation from the eternal
God, only and specially given to the Jewish people.
We have seen that it constituted the mythos which
was unfolded in the ancient mysteries, where the
hiding of Noah in the ark typified physical death, and
in a spiritual sense death to all the passions and vices
of human nature ; while his release from the ark typi­
fied the resurrection from the dead and the new birth
of the soul. The original meaning of all being a
symbolic representation of the death of the sun-god in
*
Autumn, his sojourn in the tomb during the sterile
and stormy months of winter, his resurrection to life
and fertility and joy and gladness in the bright and
happy festival of the opening spring. Our Good-
Friday mournings for the death of Jesus, and our
Easter rejoicings for his resurrection, are Pagan cele­
brations adapted to Christian purposes.
* 'The death
of Jesus or Christ was, simply, the death of a good
man, was a death that knew no restoration to human
life, for resurrection of this kind is not accorded to
•our human nature. + The spirit of a man does not
die at all, and, therefore finding continued life needs
The Pagan goddess “Freya, ” from which our Friday takes
its name, and from whose worship our Good-Friday derives its
custom of cross buns, is simply a form of Astarte or Venus or
Isis. The cross marked on the cakes is the Grecian x, not
the cross of Christian reverence f. It has the significance of
fertility. The cakes offered to Astarte were called boun,
whence our word bun, from the Greek fiovs, an ox. The ox
was sacred to Isis. The Tauribolia or baptismal rites in bul­
lock’s blood were sacred to the Eleusinian goddess. Our town
of Oxford was once the site of a temple dedicated to Isis. It
now stands on the banks of the river Isis, on the spot, where
during the Roman rule, a temple of Isis stood. The ox sacred
to Isis now appears in the name and also in the arms of the
city. The Bull was a prominent feature in the cherubim that
overshadowed the Jewish ark c f the covenant.
t Consult English Life of Jesus, by T. Scott. Esq., new
edition, pp. 316-319. H
46 The Mythos of the Ark.

no resurrection. The idea of a dying God was a Pa-

gan idea, and is a huge fallacy when understood in a
literal sense, though it becomes a sublime truth when
its esoteric or hidden meaning is perceived. It is
taught, however, in its grossest and crudest and falsest
sense to English minds to-day, and our Good-Friday
celebrations to mourn the crucifixion of Jesus as the
death of a god lie open to the reproof which Xenophanes,
B.C. 520, gave to the Egyptian priests. Holding himself
enlightened views as to the oneness and spirituality
and eternity of God, he questioned the priests con­
cerning the meaning of the mournings in which they
indulged at the celebration of the death of Osiris, and
was naturally puzzled at their grief for the sufferings
of one they called a god. He could not understand
how Osiris could have two natures, one human and
one divine, and he argued with them “ that if they
thought him a man they should not worship him,
while if they thought him a god they should cease to
talk of his sufferings.”—{Sharpe's History of Egypt.)
It has been shown that this mythos of death and
resurrection, elevated from a physical to a moral
atmosphere, understood as relating to the new birth
or regenerate spirit of man, to the human and godlike
principles that unite in his nature, to the struggle of
the quickened soul to leave the thraldom of the
body, and to find the freedom of the spirit, to rise
from the death of sin to the life of righteousness was
the secret wisdom which the ancient mysteries en­
shrined. In this sense the mythos of the ark has
passed from the ancient mysteries to the baptismal
and communion services of the Christian church;
services which every student of early Christian history
knows were copies of heathen usages and rites. We
have thus traced the Arkite mystery and shown it to
be one and the same with the secret rites of Freemasons
as practised in their lodges at the present day. In a
word, we have in the story of the ark, when it is pro­
perly comprehended, the germ and development of
 7be Mythos of the Ark. 47
man’s religious nature. The story of the struggles of
humanity to find out God, the record of the ceaseless
strivings of the human soul after the life of virtue
and goodness which alone can entitle it to immortality.
In unfolding the mythology of the ark, it has become
necessary to unfold the hidden meaning of Masonry, to
shew the secret wisdom which it professes to enshrine.
Practically, this is unknown to masons themselves,
their rites, like the rites of antiquated churches, have
become for the most part empty and meaningless
forms ; the lectures delivered in the lodges, put often
a secondary meaning into these rites, so that they now
only serve as a crude illustration for a few trite moral
maxims, and Freemasonry as it exists in England is
simply a benefit association for the wealthy classes,
or an order of good fellowship, and it has as little to-
do with secret wisdom, as a lodge of Foresters or Odd­
fellows. Its signs and passwords are its only real
secrets and these none but the members of the masonic
brotherhood ought to wish to know. They are, how­
ever, trivial matters of no more general concern than
the private marks which houses of business employ.
Freemasonry in its true meaning is a church, not a
benefit society. Its worship is the grand religion of
nature, Spiritual Pantheism, the religion of which
Noah, Menu, Menes, Buddha, Socrates, Christ, and
Paul, and the great, and good, and wise, of every age
and of every land are and have been the preachers. It
is the opponent of all narrow and exclusive theological
faiths, and though it is itself in its organisation a
sect, yet its platform is one on which men of every
faith and of every clime may meet. It is the old
arkite religion existing in our midst in almost the
purity of its ancient form; and if a living soul were
put into it to-day, if Freemasons knew that their
system was a religion, and not a mere social club,
they would inaugurate a religious reformation and lay
the foundation stones of a universal church. That
which of old Noah was fabled to have found in the
48 The Mythos of the Ark.

ark when the deluge was destroying all things else,

rest, peace, salvation, the enlightened devotee of the
old world religions, the worshipper of Isis and Osiris,
of Ceres and Bacchus, of the Persian Mithras and the
Syrian Adonis found in the innermost recesses of the
temple after he had borne the penances and privations
of the initiatory rites ; so the Jew found this peace on
the day of atonement, when the veil was uplifted from
the holy of holies, and the Ark of God was seen, and the
Christian reaches an ark of rest and finds a refuge
from the ills of life, an assurance of the salvation his
soul seeks, when he kneels before the altar at which
mass is celebrated, or sits at the sacred table around
which the brethren of the church assemble. And
thus in like manner the Freemason has a sacred shrine,
around which all his hopes and aspirations centre,
and in the revelation which is made to him in the
Royal Arch degree of the sacred name by which the
power, and attributes, and love, and wisdom of the
Great Architect, and framer, and upholder of the uni­
verse are described ; of the path of duty he himself is to
pursue, of the virtues he should practise, the hopes he
should cherish and the trust he should display; he
finds an oasis in life’s desert, an ark of safety amid the
boisterous waves of its trouble and its strife; for here,
as in the holiest sanctuary of the church, the true word
of life is, or ought to be, sounded in his ears, the true
guidance is, or ought to be, found, the divine mystery
is, or ought to be unveiled, and the purposes of Pro­
vidence made clear. Here at last the temple of truth is,
to his thought, reached, of truth that quickens the angel
nature of the man, and that through a life of love and
virtue, and purity on earth, conducts him to the life
that is everlasting. Here he thinks salvation is attained,
the haven of safety reached. And so he feels that—
Here he can bathe his weary soul
In seas of heavenly rest,
And not a wave of trouble roll
Across his peaceful breast.