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Spurious Freemasonry

For this term, and for the theory connected with it, we are indebted to Doctor Oliver, whose speculations led him to the conclusion that in the earliest ages of the world there were two systems of Freemasonry, the one of which, preserved by the patriarchs and their descendants, he called Primitive or Pure freemasonry (see Primitive Freemasonry).

The other, which was a schism from this system, he designated as the Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity. To comprehend this system of Oliver, and to understand his doctrine of the declension of the Spurious from the Primitive Freemasonry, we must remember that there were two races of men descended from the loins of Adam, whose history is as different as their characters were dissimilar. There was the virtuous race of Seth and his descendants, and the wicked one of Cain. Seth and his children, down to Noah, preserved the dogmas and instructions, the legends and symbols, which had been received from their common progenitor, Adam; but Cain and his descendants whose vices at length brought on the destruction of the earth, either totally forgot or greatly corrupted them.

Their Freemasonry was not the same as that of the Sethites. They distorted the truth, and varied the landmarks to suit their own profane purposes. At length the two races became blended together. The descendants of Seth, becoming corrupted by their frequent communications with those of Cain, adopted their manners, and soon lost the principles of the Primitive Freemasonry, which at length were confined to Noah and his three sons, who alone, in the destruction of a wicked world, were thought worthy of receiving mercy.

Noah consequently preserved this system, and was the medium of communicating it to the post-diluvian world. Hence, immediately after the Deluge, Primitive Freemasonry was the only system extant. But this happy state of affairs was not to last. Ham, the son of Noah, who had been accursed by his father for his wickedness, had been long familiar with the corruptions of the system of Cain, and with the gradual deviations from truth which, through the influence or evil example, had crept into the system of Seth. After the Deluge, he propagated the worst features of both systems among his immediate descendants.

Two sets or parties, so to Speak, now arose in the world-- one which preserved the great truths of religion, and consequently of Freemasonry, which had been handed down from Adam, Enoch, and Noah--and another which deviated more and more from this pure, original Source. On the dispersion at the Tower of Babel, the schism became still wider and more irreconcilable. The legends of Primitive Freemasonry were altered, and its symbols perverted to a false worship; the mysteries were dedicated to the worship of false gods arid the practice of idolatrous rites, and in the place of the Pure or Primitive Freemasonry which continued to be cultivated among the patriarchal descendants of Noah, was established those Mysteries of Paganism to which Doctor Oliver has given the name of the Spurious Freemasonry.

It is not to Doctor Oliver, nor to any very modern writer, that we are indebted for the idea of a Masonic schism in this early age of the world. The doctrine that Freemasonry was lost, that is to say, lost in its purity, to the larger portion of mankind, at the Tower of Babel, is still preserved in the ritual of Ancient Craft Masonry.

And in the Degree of Noachites, a Degree which is attached to the Scottish Rite, the fact is plainly adverted to as, indeed, the very foundation of the Degree. Two races of Freemasons are there distinctly named, the Noachites and the Hiramites; the former were the Conservators of the Primitive Freemasonry as the descendants of Noah; the latter were the descendants of Hiram, who was himself of the race which had fallen into Spurious Freemasonry, but had reunited himself to the true sect at t he building of King Solomon's Temple, as we shall hereafter see. But the inventors of the Degree do not seem to have had any very precise notions in relation to this latter part of the history. The Mysteries, which constituted what has been thus called Spurious Freemasonry, were all more or less identical in character.

Varying in a few unimportant particulars, attributable to the influence of local causes, their great similarity in all important points showed their derivation from a common origin. In the first place, they were communicated through a system of initiation, by which the aspirant was gradually prepared for the reception of their final doctrines; the rites were performed at night, and in the most retired situations, in caverns or amid the deep recesses of groves and forests; and the secrets were only communicated to the initiated after the administration of an obligation.

Thus, Firmicus, a Latin author in the reign of Constantine who about the year 346 A.D. wrote of false objects of worship in De erroributs profanarum religionum (book vii), tells us that "when Orpheus explained the ceremonies of his mysteries to candidates, he demanded of them, at the very entrance, an oath, under the solemn sanction of religion, that they would not betray the rites to profane ears." Hence, as Warburton says from Horus Apollo, the Egyptian hieroglyphic for the mysteries was a grasshopper, because that insect was supposed to have no mouth.

The ceremonies were all of a funereal characters Commencing in representations of a lugubrious description, they celebrated the legend of the death and burial of some mythical being who was the especial object of their love and adoration. But these rites thus beginning in lamentation, and typical of death, always ended in joy. The object of their sorrow was restored to life and immortality, and the latter part of the ceremonial was descriptive of his resurrection. Hence, the great doctrines of the mysteries were the immortality of the soul and the existence of a God.

Such, then, is the theory on the subject of what is called Spurious Freemasonry, as taught by Doctor Oliver and the disciples of his school. Primitive Freemasonry consisted of that traditional knowledge and symbolic instruction which had been handed down from Adam, through Enoch, Noah, and the rest of the patriarchs, to the time of Solomon. Spurious Freemasonry consisted of the doctrines and initiations practiced at first by the antediluvian descendants of Cain, and, after the dispersion at Babel, by the Pagan priests and philosophers in their Mysteries (see Clandestine) .

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