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THE HOLY TRIAD.

‫ יה‬... ‫ בל‬. ‫און‬

JAH : BAAL - PEOR, THE SYRIAN PRIAPUS :

THE CITY OF IDOLATRY AND INIQUITY.

A REPLY TO THE GRAND CHAPLAIN AND GRAND HIGH

PRIEST OF THE GRAND ROYAL ARCH CHAPTER
OF MASSACHUSETTS.

Pike &

[ FROM MACKEY'S NATIONAL FREEMASON .]

Unde hæc monstra tamen ?

WASHINGTON CITY :
OFFICE OF MACKEY'S NATIONAL FREEMASON .
1873 .
 E
ISI
RIT
 BAAL AND AUN .

"And Joash said unto all that stood against him, Will ye plead for Baal? will ye save
him ? he that will plead for him, let him be put to death while it is yet morning."―JUDGES,
vi, 31.

DEAR BRO. MACKEY : To know the value of Comp. Bland's opinion

of anybody's scholarship, it would be first necessary to know something
of the extent of his own. I shall not imitate him in denying, without
having the means of knowing whether my denial is true . It is no worse
than that, to allege what one knows not to be true. He may be, for
aught I know, as accomplished a linguist as Bopp or Rask, and as learned
otherwise as the great princes of Oriental scholarship ; in which case I
can only say, that his learning needs less mending than his manners .
I make no pretence to extensive scholarship ; but I have enough to
enable me to know all about BAAL and ON, and all the books in my own
library that I need to refer to in regard to these words. I have not
learned that Comp. Bland has given the world any great work on the
Oriental languages or any other subject ; nor that, even in Boston- whose
geese are all swans-at home, he enjoys any extraordinary reputation for
extensive and profound erudition, to entitle him to express a lofty con- .
tempt for the pretensions of others.
And I venture to say, at least, that before he will have it, he will have
to produce something more exhaustive and profound than his opinion on
Jah, Baal, and On : something showing more acquaintance with late
sources of information , and less with cyclopædias and second- hand refer-
ences, and the repetition of common-places, after consultation with
Harvard Professors, on matters of very common learning. I know that
lawyers do not make reputations by references to cheap elementary
books and to digests.
As to Jab and Baal, he stated only what is universally known, so far
as he gave any affirmative information . But he stated much less than is
known ; for Jah is not Jehovah, although he speaks of " Jah or Jehovah "
as if they were the same word ; and he did not give any information as
to the attributes and character of Baal, nor even all the meanings of the
name. For it means, according to Gesenius, not only " lord or master
over anything," but " possessor, husband, creditor, citizen," and " en-
dowed with" or " having."

1
4 Baal and Aun.

It is exceedingly doubtful whether it was derived from the verb baal.

The idea that all nouns are derived from verbs will not hold water. As
Professor Buschmann said, in a paper translated and read before the Philo-
logical Society of London, in 1853 , (Proc. of the Phil. Soc. , vi , 205,)
this philosophy has been " endangered by strong arguments, repeated
from time to time in a thousand different shapes, which advocate the
direct origin of several other parts of speech." , He proves the inde-
pendent formation of many substantives, and thinks that objects and
qualities, " to a certain extent, received names sooner than actions or con-
ditions." The Rev. Richard Garnett, in an article read in 1849, had
taken the same ground, ( Proc. Phil. Soc. , iv, 174,) in which he says that
the roots of Welsh verbs are confessedly nouns, generally of abstract sig-
nification ; and that " this leads to the important conclusion that a verb
is nothing but a noun, combined with an oblique case of a personal pro-
noun, virtually including in it a connecting preposition." And he
believes that this applies to all the Aryan and ' Semitic languages. Al-
most every Indo- European language, he adds, furnishes instances of verbs
formed from nouns ; and the roots of supposed primitives are found, in
whole classes of languages, to be identical with single nouns of cognate
meaning ; and from all he concludes, that the simple verb is formed
from a simple noun, pronoun, or particle.
The verb baal was formed from the noun or name Baal, and not the
noun from the verb ..
If it is cruel to show that, even in regard to the commonest things,
Comp. Bland has but a superficial and rudimentary knowledge , consisting
of what is loosely said by others and accepted by him without any
thorough inquiry, his pretensions and arrogant insolence have provoked
it, and it is just.
The truth probably is, (I am not competent to speak positively, ) that
hy is derived from hy , aal, a Chaldaic and Hebrew (and of course Pho-
nician and Canaanitish) preposition and adverb, meaning, primarily, "up,
above, over," which either also was or became a noun and adjective, mean-
ing " height, and high ; " with a prefixed, which , according to Lee and
Gesenius, and as the use of it clearly shows, very commonly has, when
prefixed, the meaning of " in a condition of," or " being. " Baal thus
means " being above, surpassing in height," and thence " Lord , Master,"
as over or above all others.
" That Baal and Bel are synonymous " is stated by Gesenius, and I
dare say by Furst and Buxtorf. Servius, (ad Eneid, 1 , ) quoted by Lee ,
says, " Lingua Punica Bal dicitur, apud Assyrios autem Bel dicitur quâ-
dam sacrorum ratione et Saturnus et Sol. " Gesenius says he was not
the sun, but the planet Jupiter. But this identity is not at all certain .
 Baal and Aun .] 5

, Bl, as the name of the Babylonian god, is written in the Hebrew,

meant in Chaldee " heart," and was probably the same as x , x being
the root of alah, alohi , and alohim, and meaning " strong, robust, mighty,
or hero ." Gesenius gives the equivalent of Bl in Syriac as meaning
66 heart, mind, intellect.' The Greek writers give the name of the
Babylonian god as Bēlos, with the e long ; and Diodorus Siculus identifies
him with the Greek Dios, and Pliny and Cicero with Jove. Rawlinson
says he was originally the planet Jupiter, but that he afterward became
the acknowledged head of the Pantheon . But he also says , which is
more to my purpose , " it has been usual to suppose that Bel and Baal are
the same word, and therefore that the word Bel means simply Lord . '
But this is very uncertain. Bel is in the original , while Baal is .
These may be distinct roots. " (Herod., i , 318, n. 2. )
A more serious deficiency in the opinion was, that it did not even pre-
tend to show what attributes were ascribed to Baal or to Bel . The
Baal of the Moabites was called BAAL- PEOR or PHEGOR, ( y , Paar, ) the
latter word being said to mean " mountain." But Gesenius gives it the
meaning of " distended the mouth," referring to Job, xvi , 10, where it
is rendered " gaped ; " and xxix, 23, " opened the mouth wide ; "" and
Ps., cxix, 131 , " I have opened (my mouth ; ") and in Isaiah, v, 14, it
is applied to hell. Newman, in his Hebrew Dictionary, tells what
Comp. Bland should have told. He says, " y , (Paaur, ) name of a moun-
tain in the territory of Moab, probably so called from the idol of that
name, which was also called Baal Paaur. This idol is said to be thus
denominated from the obscene practices used in worshiping it. In honor of
it the women opened, or uncovered, and prostituted themselves." Gesenius
renders paaur " hiatus,'" and says of Baal-Peor : " Idolum Moabitarum , in
cujus cultu puellæ pudicitiam prostituebant." The presumption is that ,
like the Syrian Baal, he was a phallic god.
Alexander Polyhistor, speaking of the Temple of Belus at Babylon ,
and of the various and monstrous idols found there, says that one of them
had two heads-or -one male, the other female-and the parts of generation
of both sexes . And the geographer Ptolemy tells us, that " the mem-
bers whose function is generation are sacred with the people of Assyria
and Persia, because they are the symbols of the Sun, of Saturn, and of
Venus-planets that preside over fecundity." And Diodorus Siculus
informs us, that in Assyria and Phoenicia the phallus figured in the mys-
teries and religious pomps. I quote these from Dulaure, Hist. Abr. de
Différens Cultes, ii, 90 .
Herodotus says of the Temple of " Jupiter Belus " at Babylon, that
inside it was a couch of unusual size, richly adorned, and adds : “ There
is no statue of any kind set up in the place ; nor is the chamber occu-
6 Baal and Aun .

pied of nights by any one but a single native woman, who, as the Chal-
dæans, the priests of this god, affirm , is chosen for himself by the Deity
out of all the women of the land . They also declare, but I, for my
part, do not credit it, that the god comes down in person into this cham-
ber and sleeps upon the couch." (Book i, 181 , 182. )
Of this peculiar character of Baal I shall speak again.
Of course I do not hold Comp . Bland responsible for the awful mess
the printer has made of his Hebrew and Greek ; yet, making every possi-
ble allowance for these sins, it is a little singular that and ‫ אך‬should
have become ‫ עיר‬and ‫ עך‬, the former twice. It looks as if the change were
purposely made.y is often represented by o in English ; while & seldom
is, and probably never ought to be, and I was probably aven ; for there
is certainly every reason to believe that it had precisely the sound of
the first letter of the Greek and Arabic alphabet : the same which it has
to-day in many Arabic words, identical with Hebrew ones found in
the Scriptures, e. g. , Allah, Arabim, Abarim, Malak, Hakam, Salam,
Aleikum. It is very doubtful, indeed, whether y, agh or angh , is ever
properly represented by the English o, long or short, or the Greek o or
w, or by the English aa. And there is every reason to believe , that the
real pronunciation of 8 was aven..
I am very well aware that, as Lee says, in his Hebrew Grammar, we
find aleph occasionally put for be or ayin in the Hebrew Bible
itself, and in Syriac and Chaldee for yūd. But I prefer the decision of
Welsford , in his Mithridates Minor, that “ the Samaritan or Phoenician
aleph is the Greek and Roman A, both as to name and power, because
the letter survives to us in a spoken language, the Arabic, with that
power."
And I cannot help inquiring why, when Comp . Bland pretends to
quote literally from Gesenius, does he translate " , &c. , n. pr. domesti-
cum urbis antiquæ ægyptiaca," " a proper name of an ancient Egyptian
city," omitting "domesticum," unless because Lepsius says that Heliopolis
was called On " by the people ; " and Osburn, that Ono was the trivial
name ofthe city, the On, Aun of the Hebrew Bible. And why did he
omit after “ Ez ., 30, 17 ," the words " scriptum " ( with different point-
ing of the Hebrew letters, ) unless because he knew that it is there ren-
dered in the version , as it is in other places, "aven ? "
For these reasons, and for some others that I shall mention, I am not
impressed with any profound awe of the scholarship of Comp . Bland,
notwithstanding his air of superiority ; and, therefore, I think I may
venture to defend what little of it I claim for myself.
In speaking of the Hindu ineffable word, (the original meaning of
which no Hindu knows, ) AUM , AOM, or OM , I said that it was com-

23
 Baal and Aun. 7

posed of the initials of three particular words ; and added that it was not
identical with ON, because n in one language never changes into m, nor
m into n.
I was not thinking about the variances in different tongues in case-
terminations or inflections, and the terminations of tenses and persons of
verbs, nor indeed of nasal terminal letters at all. I meant that neither
change occurred when the letter was an integral part of the body of the
wórd, and not a nasal desinence, terminating it, or a syllable. I meant pre
cisely what Dr. Muir meant, in his Original Sanscrit Texts, ii, 229,
where in a table, abridged from Schleicher, of certain consonants of the
original Aryan language, that in different cognate words remain uniform
in all the derivative languages, and of others that vary, he gives the Indo-
European ʼn as always and everywhere n, and m as m, in Sanscrit, Zend,
Greek, and Latin ; saying afterwards that the nasals n and m became dif-
ferent Sanscrit nasals (forms of n) in consequence of certain phonetic
laws.
The tables that follow show (and I knew, of course, for I had copied
them all) that n was used always in the Greek, and sometimes in the
Latin, where m was used in Sanscrit and Zend, at the end of a word.
As I have had and used Bopp ( English edition, by Eastwick) ever since
its publication in 1856 , and have been engaged for many months in
endeavoring to ascertain the meaning of the Vedic Deities and what
were the doctrines and conceptions of Zarathustra, in which I have
become pretty familiar with Bopp, Eichhoff, Bunsen, Müller, and
Muir, and have made rather extensive tables of words in the different
Aryan languages, derived from the same roots, I could not help know-
ing that, (as Dr. Donaldson says, in the New Cratylus, ) " in Greek m can-
not , according to the laws of euphony, stand at the end of a word ; in
shortening the ending, therefore, in the way we have supposed, the m
must either have been struck out or some representative have been sub-
stituted for it." And, speaking of the accusative, " The regular sign of
this case is m in Sanscrit and Latin, and z in Greek. It is well known
that the laws of euphony, which prevail in the Greek language, do not
permit the appearance of any labial at the end of a word."
For I considered, as this writer does, that " there is reason to believe
that the Latin and Sanscrit m are weaker forms of an original dental,
more truly represented by the Greek n ; " that "the Sanscrit m of the
accusative is generally transformed," in Sanscrit itself, " by anusvâra into
a nasal n," with a dot over it ; and " it.is probable that the Greek final
n occasionally had the same sound, and that it then subsided into the
broad a, which is so frequently its representative. " His conclusion is
66
that, as an accusative case -ending, we must conclude that the Latin m
8 Baal and Aun .

and the Greek n are traceable to a common origin, which is more truly
represented by the Greek affix. ”
"I knew," in the words of Bopp, " that the Sanscrit nasal m is subject at
the end of a word to several alterations, and only remains fast before a
pause, a vowel, or letters of its own class. It otherwise governs itself
according to the nature of the following letters, and may pass into any
other of the four nasals. "
As to all that, the conclusion of Mr. Eastwick, the editor of Bopp , is
no doubt right, that " a careful examination will perhaps show that the
several nasals of the Sanscrit alphabet are mere modifications of one
sound, according to the manner in which they are affected by a succeed-
ing letter." These terminal sounds are very fitly called by Müller
" nasal vowels."
Where m or n is what may be termed a distinguishing, essential, or
substantive letter of a word, initial or medial, and not a nasal, ending a
word or syllable, one, to say the least, very rarely changes into the
other. Thus, the Sanscrit dhûma (smoke) is thumos in Greek and fumus
in Latin ; the Sanscrit gharma (heat) is in Greek thermos, in Latin fumus ;
marmara in Sanscrit is mormoro in Greek ; kalama, kalamos, in Latin cala-
mus ; asman, akmon ; kona, gonia ; sama, homos, in Latín, similis, &c.,
&c.
The reader will understand better what I mean by one example of a
verb in Sanscrit and Greek. I take the verb to give- da, do. Forms of
it as conjugated are :
Sanscrit. Greek. Sanscrit. Greek.
Dadami. Didomi. Adam. Edon.
Dadmas. Didomen. Dadyam. Didoien.
Adadam. Ediden. Dadyama. Didoiemen.
Adadma. Edidomen.

The truth is, that the m or n final, as a nasal, is one sound or letter,
and as a liquid labial elsewhere is another and different letter, and Dr.
Muir's table is right.
Eichhoff (Parallèle des langues de l'Europe et de l'Inde, 84, says, "as
to the nasal desinence which terminates syllables, it is transformed, accord-
ing to the class of the following consonant, into " (three n's that you
have no types to represent ) " n or m; but when it is followed by a
vowel, it invariably becomes m again." This is said of the Sanscrit ; and
the reader will see that, when a vowel follows it, the Sanscrit m is m in
Greek. At page 9 he gives a table of " mutatious of sounds and letters ”
in Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Gothic, German, Lithuanian, Russian and
Keltic. The Sanscrit n (not final) is n in every one, and the Sanscrit m
(notfinal) is m in every one.
 Baal and Aun. 9.

The uncertain character of the terminal nasal was so great, and it was
of so little value as a letter, or rather so little a letter, that in the Latin it
was continually omitted in pronunciation and to a great extent in the
spelling. A little but valuable work by Dr. and Prof. Tafel, chiefly
from Corssen, contains very interesting information in regard to the
character of the nasals n and m in Latin. And in Sanscrit, while m
remains unchanged at the end of a word , if followed by any initial vowel,
it changes to anusvâra, always before some consonants, and may be
changed before the others, becoming a different nasal sound, though
always remaining written the same.
Really it does not seem that Comp . Bland's quotation from Bopp, in
regard to nasal terminations of inflections, evidences any very great judg-
ment or depth of learning, especially as it makes that learned professor
say (by tearing the passage from the context) that the Sanscrit m always
changes into n in Greek ; whereas he was speaking of it as the nasal
termination of an inflection. This must be so , or he could not have
used the words. I have not Bréal's French edition of 1869. If I find
it in the Congress library , I will append a note in regard to it. I fol-
lowed the tables of Eichhoff and Muir as to the bodies of words.
Varying inflections are not radical changes of letters in the words them-
selves ; and these nasal terminations are not taken into consideration in
discussing the changes of letters in the growth of languages from one
stem, because those changes also occur in the same language, and are not phe-
nomena peculiar to the formation of different ones, and because there
is no certainty as to what their original sounds were. If m and n, when
not nasal terminals, had changed in these formations, they would have
been included in Grimm's law.
It would have been little worth while to say all this merely to exone-
rate myself from the imputation of ignorance or carelessness, which could
not interest your readers, and is of little concern to myself. I have a
great contempt for useless learning, perhaps because I have never had the
time to acquire it.
What I wish to explain to the reader is, that although if OM or AUM were
a word terminating with a nasal, it might in another language have become
On ; not being a word in the proper sense, but indeclinable, no part of
speech, i. e. , neither noun , verb , pronoun , nor any other, and being merely
the initial letters of three words , it could not have been changed into ON ,
which would have destroyed it. It probably represents As Ura Maha, and
the Zend name of the Supreme God, Ah Ura Mazda ; and it may have
been used secretly by the Rishis as a mysterious designation of the One
Supreme Deity, when to the common people Agni, Fire, and Indra, Light,
were the highest gods known, and when they had no idea of a Supreme
IO Baal and Aun.

Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omniscient Spirit of God, in our concep-

tion of God ; and to the people it may have been permitted to represent
Agni, Varuna, and Mitra. It is at least certain, that its real derivation
and meaning have not been known to the Brahmins for three thousand
five hundred years . I believe it to be concealed in more than one Masonic
word, and that it was concealed in the covered word of a Royal Arch
Mason until that word was corrupted and made to mean nothing, which
caused the adoption of the Jah- bow - elion humbug. Whether Comps .
Chapman and Bland will value this information, dépend. It will be
worth none the less if they should not. It may at least serve to make
them understand, that my highest interest was not as to what the Gene-
ral Grand Chapter has decided to be the true word . And I can put
their fears to rest on one point. I do not propose to endeavor to restore
the true covered word. It is enough to be accused of sinister purposes
once, for endeavoring to correct one error ; and, moreover, it has caused
too much violation of obligation by unwarrantable disclosures , made
under the blinding influences of petty spite and pride of opinion.
Comps. Lockwood and Chapman and their Grand Chapters have
forced this discussion, outside of the Sanctuary, with improper revelations.
to those who are not of the household. Rarely has anything so utterly
reprehensible and indefensible occurred.
I expressed a desire to know where to find what Sir William Drummond
is accused by Comp . Chapman of having said about the Jah-bow-elion ;
but the learned Companion withholds the information . The nearest
approach to it that I can find in the Origines is the reference to the
Hebrew phrases El Elion and Jehovah El Elion, which should be Al-
Aliun and Jehovah Al -Aliun, the last word meaning High or Highest. It
is the same word that Comp. Chapman calls the " Eliown " of the
Phoenicians. Neither in Aliun nor in Dagon has the second syllable any-
thing to do with any word On. It is an augment, giving an intensitive
meaning, (and occasionally a diminutive one , ) which may have had as its
root aun- strength, power, riches, wealth . Lee thus gives aliun the
meaning of " Most High," ( Lee, Heb. Grammar, 137 , 8. ) A great deal
of nonsense has been got together by the etymologists, like Higgins and
Bryant, about the word and termination on . Dagun was merely " big
fish ; " but Comp. Chapman may find plenty of nonsense about the
prophet-fish Oannes, with the feet and face of a man and tail of a fish,
in Dupuis, Origine de Tous les Cultes, v. 52 to 56, with references to
Syncellus, Photius, and others.
And before parting with Comp. Chapman, I desire to inform him
that there was no such Assyrian Triad as Aun, Bel, and Ao . If Mr.
George Rawlinson, Sir Henry Rawlinson , and Sir J. G. Wilkinson know
 Baal and Aun. II.

anything about it, the governing Triad, below the Supreme Deity Asshur,
was composed of Anu, ( in Babylonian mythology Ana, ) Bilu- Nipru , and
Hêa or Hoa . The last seems to have been the fish-god Oe of Helladius
and Oannes of Berosus and Syncellus. And , by the way, the Assyrian
Dagon does not seem to have been fishy, or the same as the Phoenician
Dagon, but to have been Da-gan, male, and Da- las, female-titles belong-
ing to Belus and Beltiswhich disposes of another termination On.
Nor were Ormazd, Ahriman, and Mithra the Persian Triad . Ahura-
Mazda was the Supreme Deity. Spenta-Mainyu was the Beneficent
Divine Mind, and Anra Mainyu the Evil and Maleficent Mind ; and
Mithra was first the Morning Star, then Light, and finally the Sun: As to
the notion that the Ancient Triads were " human nature aspiring to or
feeling after God, " nothing could have less foundation.
Comp. Chapman did not receive " from the Fathers " the Triad " of
Jah the Creator, Bel the Powerful, and On as He who is, &c. , &c.”
What he received from the " Fathers " was the "lun " word from the
Rite of Perfection, of which I shall say somewhat hereafter. The Jah,
Bel, and On is a modern and an American invention .
As to this and as to all this Fabbowelion nonsense, one has but to read
Dr. Oliver, and especially his Introduction to the " Insignia of the
Royal Arch," to find the notions of Comp. Chapman, who must of
course have known that he says, at page 34, " the Royal Arch word,
to have been perfectly in keeping with the degree, and with the general con-
struction of Masonry, should have been a triad, not only of syllables, but
of letters. Our Transatlantic Brethren have seen this in its true light ; but
they have corrected the error unlearhedly. It ought to have been, if the
principle of its construction be allowed, to be orthodox,

Syriac. Chaldee. Hindoo.

and to have made it intelligible to a mere English scholar, which descrip-

tion will apply to a great majority of Royal Arch Masons, it should be
translated to them thus-

English. English. English.

I cannot be more explicit for obvious reasons ; but every Companion of

the Order will be at no loss to understand my meaning."
This was published in 1847 ; and it proves what you and I well know
to be true, that the Jah-bow-elion word was got up in this country, as a
supposed ingenious and learned explanation of a Scottish Rite word,
J ... m, or Jeha . ... m, and Gui . . . . m, which, ro us, refer to
I2 Baal and Aun.

the " Word " or " Logos,” as also the substitute word does. Any one who
knows what Yabul , ' , means , and what Guibul , 122, means, will have no
difficulty in seeing that the compounds of these words,with another known
to us, expressed precisely what Dr. Oliver thought should be expressed
by the Royal Arch word.
Ignorant of this and of the real meaning of the substitute, too , the
Boston Masonic Savans represented King Solomon as putting on the
Ark, upon two of the three sides of a triangle, to indicate that the word in
the centre was the Ineffable Word, the name of a Phoenician and Assyrian
god , execrated by every Hebrew as a false and evil god, and the word On,
as the supposed name of an Egyptian god. I accepted this in 1856, and
taught it for years , thinking, on the authorities cited by. Oliver and
Gesenius and some of those referred to by Comps . Chapman and Bland,
that ON was the name of an Egyptian deity and of the sun . But when
I made Egyptology a study, in the works of Champollion , Lepsius, Wil-
kinson, Bunsen, and others, I could not find that there ever was any
Egyptian god ON, or that On was an Egyptian name of the sun . I
could have referred Comp. Bland to a better authority on his side than
any he seems to be acquainted with : Goulianof, Archéologie Egyptienne,
who , in vol . iii , 301 , says that Amun, (1 ) may be divided into two
parts, am and un : " the first of which serves as paronyme for the word
am, mother and metropolis ; and the second, un, replaces its homophone ,
an, identical with aun, and which are, one and the other, only the known
transcription of the word (Coptic) on, sun, which was, as is known, the
name of Heliopolis. "
I was not very willing to be convinced that I had been for ten years
teaching what was a mere error, and I tried hard to find evidence that
the old authorities were correct. I could not do it, and gave it up . No
god ON was worshiped at Heliopolis. The sun-god worshiped there
was Phre, and Aun, An, Aven, or On was the trivial and popular name
of the city.
It was natural to suppose, when Pet-phre was said to be a priest of
On, that this meant a deity ; but it did not. Aun in Hebrew has three
meanings, according to Gesenius :
" Aun and Ain, unused roots, meaning nothing and negative ; ain,
nothing, not ; aun, inanity, vanity, falsehood ; inane and vain, Is . xli, 29 ;
Zech . x, 2. Especially of the vanity of idols and all things belonging
to idolatry, I Sam. , xv, 23 ; and therefore of the idols themselves, Isa.
lxvi, 3. Hence, in Hosea, Bith- Aun, the house of idols. So it means
wickedness and crime, misfortune, adversity, and calamity ; and also virility,
virile energy." Suppose Solomon had put 7 , Aun on one side of the
 Baal and Aun. 13

triangle, would it have indicated to the Hebrews what was desired ?

What would they have supposed it to mean ?
Comp. Bland, it seems, has continued to consult the authorities. It
must be admitted that it was desirable he should . His first references
were of the same nature as those of an ill-read lawyer, to the digests of
reports, instead of to the reports themselves. And he is more than ever
convinced that he was right at first. Naturally : he is not of the school
that discusses to attain the truth . There is no such school now, per-
haps. I, on the contrary, wish he could prove to me that On was either
a god or the sun. It would help me to reach some very desirable con-
clusions. I wish I could trace Oм to Egypt and Palestine .
But as to the authorities, they all go back to Cyril. Very little
scholarship is needed in the inquiry as to On or Baal. Gesenius says,
that it is scarcely doubtful that on was Egyptian for light, and especially
for the sun . He adds, as Coptic words meaning " light," ouein, oein,
and ousini. Sir Wm. Drummond says, however, that the Coptic word
for "light " is not oein, but ouoini, in that correcting Jablonski, whose
etymologies, he adds, ( from the Coptic, ) " with very few exceptions, are
incapable of bearing the scrutiny of criticism." Origines, ii , 322 , 321 . .
Gesenius said about all there was to say ; and he had no older or
higher authority than Cyril, who became Bishop of Alexandria in 412,
and connived at or caused the murder of Hypatia in 415 A. D .; and it
is altogether probable that what he said was merely an erroneous con-
clusion, from what is said of Aun in Gesenius and Exodus.
If the word on has been found on any ancient Egyptian monument,
and is given in any work that is now recognized as competent authority
upon the subject as the name of an Egyptian god or of the sun, let that
be made known by Comp . Bland, and it will end the controversy . I
only say that I have found no such proof, and that On is not named
by Bunsen or Wilkinson among the Egyptian gods, or as the name of the
sun.
It would have been well, I think, for Comp. Bland to consult Jablonski ,
instead of contenting himself with the mere reference to his works made
by Dr. Tuch, who reiterates Jablonski's error as to oein meaning in Cop-
tic " light." He may find the city of On spoken of at considerable
length, as being the city called by the Greeks Heliopolis, in his Opuscula,
vol. i, pp. 184 and 185 ; and vol. ii, pp. 20, 23 , 86, 100 , 128 to 130, 138
to 140 , and 182 ; and of these passages those that he wants are i , 184,
and ii, 138. Let us see exactly what Jablonski does say:
In ii, 161 , he says that, according to the most ancient Egyptian tradi-
tion, given by Apion, and as stated by Josephús in his book against that
writer, Moses was a Hieropolitan. And he is of opinion, that it is at
 14 Baal and Aun.

least not to be doubted that Heliopolis was built, in the time of Moses,
by the Hebrew people. And if this be true, there was a very good
reason why the oppressed Hebrews should have called the city built by
their toil, and the walls of it cemented with their blood and tears, Aun—
Calamity, Adversity, Misfortune, Sorrow , Idolatry.”
At page 137 he notes that, although in the Hebrew text of Exodus
1:11 , it is said that the Hebrews built for the King of Egypt Pithom and
Raamses, the Septuagint has it, as I have verified, ( Ed . Leipsic, 1835,)
" Peitho and Raesse and On, which is Heliopolis. " The Coptic version
agrees with the Greek, but has " City of Phre " instead of Heliopolis,
and he thinks Raamses and this to have been the same. Then he says :
" The first and most ancient name of that city seems to have been An ,
for it is so called Gen. xli, 45, 50 ; xlvi, 50. The Egyptian inter-
preters, as I have already said, express that name in their language, as
On," [or Un,] " which I should think was contracted from ouein or
ouoein. So light is called in the dialect of the Thebaid . ' Wherefore
that is not, strictly speaking, to be accepted, which Cyril of Alexandria,
as the celebrated La Croze once told me, left written somewhere, that the
sun was called On by the Egyptians. Ifyou call the sun light by metonymy,
it is correct ; but on, as I think, properly designates the light. To this
oldest name of the city, unless I am mistaken, that of Rameses succeeded ,
which, if you call to your aid the Egyptian language, will mean " Field
of the Sun." For it is now known that the sun was called Re by the
Egyptians. Wherefore the Hebrews, to express the meaning of the
Egyptian name, properly called the city Bith-Shemesh, the House of the
·
Sun."
And, in note, " oein therefore is the root itself, signifying light, which
could easily be contracted into On. But without doubt the sun is to be
understood, as, in Job, xxxi, 26, by aur all the interpreters understand the
sun."
And the editor says, " The passage of Cyril, which Jablonski says in
the Glossary he had searched for in vain, I have referred to, I Opusc.,
p. 184."
At page 184 of vol. i, under the head of " On, a city in Egypt,"
Jablonski says that its true and most ancient name in Egypt was On ;
and he adds what La Croze had informed him ; and says, that he had sus-
pected " that the true Egyptian name of this city was Ouein or Oein, which
means light ; as much as to say, City of the Light, i. e. , of the sun, or con-
secrated to the sun." And the editor says, " The passage is to be found
in Commentaries on Hosea, p. 145. There Cyril states that the Egyp-
tians say that Apis is the son of the moon, but the progeny of the sun ;
and adds, On de esti kať autous ho helios, " and On is with them the sun. "
 Baal and Aun. 15

In another note the editor says, that the conjecture of Jablonski , as to

the name, is opposed by Michaelis and Foster ; and that there is a nota
ble passage in regard to Heliopolis in Ephraim Syrus, by no means a
mere sojourner in Egypt, in his Syrian Works, xi, 144, 145 , " but who
nevertheless does not remember the ancient Egyptian name On.”
This, then, is precisely what we get from Jablonski : " The Hebrews
built Heliopolis in the time of Moses. They called it Aun. Afterwards
the Egyptians called it Raamses , the city of Re, ( or Phre, ) the sun ; and
the Greeks called it Heliopolis. Quein or oein means light ; but was
not a name of the sun, and yet the sun might be called by ' light,' as it is
called aun (light) in Job ; and ouein or oein could easily be contracted
into on ; and Cyril of Alexandria, who lived only one thousand nine hun-
dred years after Moses, said that the ancient Egyptians called the sun On.
The sun was worshiped there ; the city was consecrated to the sun, but
it was to the sun by the name of Re or Phre.”
Add that Pet-phre was the priest of On, whose daughter Joseph mar-
ried, and no doubt can remain what god was worshiped at On. It was
the great hawk-headed god Phre, Ra, or Re, whose emblem was the
disc or the circle surrounding a point.
And now I will tell Comp. Bland what he may find. In the list of
Egyptian Determinatives, (Bunsen : Egypt's Place, i, 537, ) he will find a
disc diffusing rays of light, (three streams downward from it, ) as meaning
light ; as, among the words, ubn, " to illuminate ; " mau, "to gleam ;'
ui, " brilliancy ; " bai, " light ; " and am, " a beam. "
su ra
Also among the Phonetics, ( 557 ,) a tree and owl, ama, " n's ys ;
""
and a cross and owl , am, " to eat ; a perch and water- line , an, a val-
ley ; " and in the Egyptian and Coptic vocabulary , ( 435 ,) un or hun,
Coptic ouadini, " to shine, light, to open, an hour, to be, and a duckling ."
For the meaning " to shine," Champollion is referred to ; for that of
" light," a coffin in the British Museum .
I add, that he may find the passage in Cyril referred to and quoted
by Sir Wm . Drummond, Origines, ii , 326 .
On the other hand, the Marquis Spineto and Champollion say, that
where the name of the god Amon is represented phonetically, it has but
three signs the letters a-m-n ; and that sometimes even the m is left
out, the name seeming anciently to have been pronounced Amen or
Emon. Spineto thinks, without giving any authority for it, that on in the
original Egyptian meant the sun. There is no o in Egyptian. The word
was either An or Un, if there was such a word ; and it may have been .
merely that contraction of amn, an, mistaken for a substantive word of
two letters. Why not take amn, if you must have an Egyptian god ? It
is a Triad, too, and you could say that " the Fathers " had it so . Why
16 Baal and Aun.

not ? The falsehood would be no greater than it is. He was the con-
cealed god, too, and would suit the better ; and then you would not
exclude the Egyptians from Masonry ! Comp. Chapman is afraid that a
Hebrew word by itself would do it. And yet that Hebrew word was
the true word of a Master Mason !
Baron Bunsen said truly, that of the earlier researches in regard to
the Egyptian deities, those of Jablonski , Zoega, Creuzer, and Prichard,
even, he could make but little use. There was no certainty as to the
supposed names of the gods until the hieroglyphics were deciphered .
Scholarship does not consist, now, in knowing what the old writers said
on those subjects. We might as well read Creuzer to obtain a knowledge
of the meaning of the Vedic deities, and of Ahura Mazda and the
Amesha-Spentas and Yazatas. On all these subjects the old works are
almost worthless.
I advise Comp. Bland not to risk his reputation as a scholar on the
ridiculous proposition, that the Hindu Om and Egyptian On were the
same word. The day for these tricks of etymological legerdemain is
past. If he should say it and believe it, he would be greatly to be com-
miserated.
And it is certain that if On was not the name of an Egyptian god , the
sooner we cease telling that fib the better.
And if it was a name of the sun , of which there is no real proof, it was
not a name of a deity. That is so certain, that no one who has any
respect for himself will ever repeat the falsehood . And if it was not the
name, not merely of a god, but of the Supreme God, it could not per-
form the office which it is pretended to have been put on the ark to per-
form . Amn was the " concealed god." His name would have indicated
that the Ineffable name of the Supreme Deity was concealed. Bunsen
says (Egypt's Place in Universal History, 1 , 367) that the third great god
is " Ra, Helios, the god of Heliopolis (On) in the Delta."
That is the latest and highest authority. Champollion , Précis du
Système Hieroglyphique, mentions On, Heliopolis, and renders it " demeure
de Phré, (le soleil;) and Lepsius, Letters from Egypt, &c., (Bohn's ed.,)
478, says of the father-in-law of Joseph : "And his being called a high
priest of On (Heliopolis) is an additional and more certain proof that
the Semitic nation of the Hyksos were not reigning here . . they would
hardly have permitted the worship of Ra (Helios) to continue in the
neighborhood of Memphis, whose high priest must give his daughter to
Joseph for a wife."
Does Comp. Bland need any more proof that On was the city only,
and Phre or Re the sun ? Was the sun worshiped in that city ? At
 Baal and Aun. 17

page 413 Lepsius says, " Heliopolis. As the principal god in that place
was Ra, i. e., Helios, the service of Osiris was, &c."
That On was not an Egyptian god is absolutely certain ; and the mon-
uments afford no proof that the sun ever bore that name. If they do, let
Comp. Bland produce the proof from some modern competent authority ;
or let that blunder, into which we all were led , die in peace. Its brains
are out.
A writer on the Rephaim, in the Journal of Sacred Literature for Oc-
tober, 1852 , edited by Kitto, who is not the author of the article,
ventures on a good many hazardous speculations in regard to the identity
of certain Rephaic deities with those of Egypt, and assumes that Aon was
the original name of the god worshiped at Heliopolis. He thinks it was
given to the place by the Kaphtorim of Lower Egypt, from whom the
Copts come, and who were afterwards established among the Philistines ;
and that aon meant " enlightener." All this need not delay any one, as
it is mere wild assumption ; but he admits this, that aon, which he calls
the ancient mizraimite name, "is never mentioned as a synonym of Ra by
the Egyptians themselves. Except in the name of their month Paôni , .we
only meet with the primeval name among the kindred races out of
Egypt as that of a contemplar god, worshiped under the same attributes,
or learn its former existence in Egypt obliquely from extra-Egyptian
sources. "
Philo Judæus says, ( On the Posterity of Cain, xvi,) " On is said to be
a hill, and it means symbolically the mind, for all reasonings are
stored up in the mind ; and the law-giver himself is a witness of this,
calling On Heliopolis, the City of the Sun. For as the sun, &c. , so also
is the mind, &c."
So much for On. I said that it was the name of a city in Egypt, and
never was the name of an Egyptian god. I repeat it again, here and
now ; and I add, that no respectable scholar will say the contrary.
As to Bel or Baal, I said that it meant the devil. I repeat it. The heathen
gods were to the pious Jews, even of the earliest ages, just what the devil
is to us ; and long before the time of Christ they were called devils by
them. They were called so by the Jews in the time of Christ. They
were called so by the Apostles. They were called devils, and not merely
demons, by the earlier Fathers of the Church, and were expressly said by
them to be devils. And Comp. Bland might just as well and honestly
argue, that Moloch was an Ammonite god and his name meant king, and
that Satan was one of the courtiers of God, and therefore neither was
the devil, as to have argued what he did about Bel or Baal.
I am afraid that Comp. Bland's theological studies have not been
extensive or thorough .
2
18 Baal and Aun.

The Jews, I showed him, said that Christ cast out devils by Beelze-
bub, the Prince of Devils. Let us hear the Apostles and Fathers :
In I Corinthians, x, Paul exhorts those to whom he writes to " flee
from idolatry," and adds : " What say I then ? that the idol is anything,
or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is anything ? But I say that
the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to
God and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils. Ye
cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils : Ye cannot be
partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of devils.”
In II Corinthians, vi, he says : " What concord hath Christ with
Belial ... and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols ? "

And what says Tertullian, (de Præscriptionibus Hæreticorum, 40) ? Sed

quæritur à quo intellectus interpretetur eorum quæ ad hæreses faciant.
A Diabolo scilicet cujus. sunt partes intervertendi veritatem, qui ipsas
quoque res sacramentorum divinorum in idolorum mysteriis æmulatur.
Tingit et IPSE quosdam, utique credentes et fideles SUOS ... signat illic
in frontibus milites suos... Cæterum si Numa Pompilii superstitiones
revolvamus • • nonne manifeste Diabolus morositatem Judææ imitatus
est ? . . . Et ideo neque a Diabolo immissa esse spiritalia nequitiæ , ex qui-
bus etiam hæreses veniunt, dubitare quis debet, neque ab idololatriâ
distare hæreses."
Comp. Bland can say whether that does not mean, that Tertullian,
vituperating the heresies of Valentinus, Marcion, Ebion, and others, says,
that heresy is no better than idolatry ; that those who in the mysteries
imitated the divine sacraments were inspired by the devil, (not a demon,
but the very Diabolos himself ; ) that it was the very devil who baptized
the initiates of Mithra, and he who marked his soldiers (those of Mith-
ras) on the forehead, celebrated the supper of bread and wine, imitated
the resurrection of the dead, and with the sword secured the crown ?
Does he not say that in the worship of the gods by Numa, and its
various instruments and ceremonies, the very devil manifestly imitated the
wonted ceremonial of the Jews ; and that heresies are inspired by the
devil, because they differ very little from idolatry, " Cum et auctoris et
operis ejusdem sint, cujus et idololatria, because heresies are of the same
<
author ' (the devil) and of the same operation ' (i. e., have the same
·
effects) as the worship of heathen gods ?""
Imagine Comp. Bland assuring Tertullian that he erred in thinking
the worship of Baal the worship of the devil, because the name meant
66 Lord ; " and he was a Phoenician and Babylonian god ! The response

would probably not have been at all a flattering one.

The " opinion " is quite as impertinent. It did not need the help of
a Harvard professor to tell us that. So was Baalzebub a Canaanitish
 Baal and Aun. 19

god, and Moloch, and Chemosh, and Chiun, and Remphan, and all these
were to the Hebrews representatives of the Spirit or Principle of Evil.
The devil is simply that ; and whatever name represents that, is a name
of the devil, to the people unto which it so represents it. Ahriman (or Angra
Mainyus) was the devil of the Irano-Aryans and Persians. The false
gods were the devils of the Hebrews.
The word " devil" is from the Zend Daeva, an evil spirit, a vice, an
evil passion, a mischief personified . It is enough that Baal-Zebub was
a devil to the Jews ; and that he was is certain ; for they said that Christ
cast out devils by Baal-Zebub the Prince of Devils ; and Baal- Zebub was
simply Baal, God of Flies. To the Hebrews of the days of Solomon
and his successors, the worship of Baal was an " abomination of the na-
tions." In the time of Samuel, they sinned against the Lord in serving
Baal and Ashtaroth and the Baalim. Why were the false prophets called
prophets of Baal, if Baal was not the principle of evil, the devil, to the
Jews ? Ahab " reared up an altar for Baal, in the house of Baal which
he had built in Samaria," and did more to provoke the Lord God of
Israel to anger than all the kings that were before him. Why should he
not worship Baal, if Solomon had put his name on the Ark of the Cov-
enant? Neander, speaking of what the Jews said as to Baal-Zebub, says,
"The prince of evil spirits, they said, in order to secure favor among the
people ; for the false prophet who was laboring for Satan's kingdom had
given him power to exorcise inferior spirits for men." Comp. Bland
can deny, if he likes, that Baal was to the Jews an evil spirit and prince
of devils, as he can deny any other undeniable fact. Certainly, if he is
bent on knocking his head against as stubborn a fact as that is, his brains
are his own .
Typhon or Set, in Egypt, was once the name of a good deity, and
his name was effaced from the monuments . Down to the time of Ram-
ses and his successor- consequently about 1300 B. C. - Typhon, says
Baron Bunsen, was one of the most venerated and powerful gods, a god
who pours blessings and life on the rulers of Egypt. After this time,
perhaps in consequence of the fall of the 21st Dynasty, a great revolution
overthrew Seth and his worshipers, and stamped him to all future time
as the foe of Osiris and all the gods of Egypt. Then the names of the
detested deity, even his hieroglyphic, the giraffe, were erased from the
monuments. Bunsen : Egypt's Place, i, 442.
" The Scriptures disclose, " Comp. Chapman says, "that Baal or Bel
was worshiped as a god, though not strictly of the Jewish standard."
That is a queer remark. " Not strictly of the Jewish standard ! ” That
is " drawing it very mild," to use a phrase less classical than expressive .
One would hardly think he was, considering the manner in which his
20 Baal and Aun.

priests and prophets were slaughtered, and his worship denounced, by

Jehovah as an abomination. They are tender to Baal in Boston ! " The
Jews, however," he says, " acknowledged him as a god. " " If Yehuah ,"
the prophet Elijah said to the people, " be Alohim ; follow him, but if
Baal be, then follow him. Call on the name of your Alohim , and I will
call on the name of Yehuah, and the Alohim that answereth by fire, let
him be Alohim :" and when Baal did not answer, he mocked them , and
said, “ Cry aloud, for he is an Alohim." And when the fire of Yehuah
fell, the people that saw it fell on their faces, and they said, " Ihuh bua
b'Alohim ! Ihub hua b' Alohim ! the Lord, he is God."
That is what the Hebrews thought Baal was. " Not strictly of the Jew-
ish standard, but yet acknowledged as a god !" So you may acknowledge
him as a god in Boston, and engrave his name on the Holy Ark of the
Covenant of Jehovah- Elohim, if it suits you. He is not of our " stand-
ard." Worship him, if you will ! The Phoenicians, Syrians, and Baby-
lonians did . It is true that the Israelites worshiped many strange gods ;
and Joshua, when about to die, exhorted them to put away the gods
which their fathers served on the other side of the flood and in Egypt,
and serve the Lord. "Choose you this day, " he said, “ whom you will
serve ." And God himself had said to them, upon Mount Sinai, out of
the flame of fire, " I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other
gods in my presence."
Suppose that, after Typhon had ceased to be worshiped, and when
his unholy, detested, and accursed name had been erased from all the
monuments, some priest of the Holy Mysteries of Osiris had proposed to
place his name upon the holy ark of Osiris, representing that in which
his dismembered body was committed to the waters, and had given as a
reason, and not a mere excuse, for associating the accursed with the holy
name, that once he was worshiped in Egypt, and that he was the de-
tested Semitic ass-god, what fate do you suppose would have overtaken
that priest, not less irrational than impious ? What was Typhon to the
Egyptians, then, but the spirit of evil, the devil ? What was his name,
but an accursed thing, (for names were supposed to possess, in that day,
a wonderful efficacy for good or evil, ) carefully erased wherever it had
been cut deep into the solid stone ofthe monuments ?
If it had been proposed to a Median worshiper of Ahura to put the
name of Aindra, the Daeva, on a holy monument, to indicate that certain
characters seen there meant the name of their supreme god, would the
promoter have dared to urge that once, and even still , Indra was the light-
god of the kindred branch of the Aryan race ?
But Baal, it is said, never was a name of the devil. It is not true. It
had become, in the time of Christ, the name of the prince of devils ;
 Baal and Aun. 21

and in Egypt, a god with a head of a peculiar black bird, of an ass, or of

the giraffe, was a determinative sign, meaning, according to Bunsen, "
"" Devils ; St, Sti, Typhon :. Bar, Baal ; Sutoh, Sadak ; Naa-ai, an Ass.”
There is no manner of doubt as to what the R... A... word was and
is-is, for to change it is to destroy the degree. We perfectly well know
what it was. At p. 20 of Dr. Oliver's letter to Bro. Crusifix, in regard
to the schism that caused the creation of the Royal Arch , he says that
he has an old Master Mason's tracing or floor-cloth , published on the
Continent soon after 1725, " which contains the true Master's word in a
very prominent situation." I have three in one French work of that
date, and in each this true word is on a coffin ; and it is the word which
the General Grand Chapter decided correct. And Dr. Oliver adds , “ This
forms an important link in the chain of presumptive evidence that the
word, at that time, had not been severed from the third degree AND TRANS-
FERRED TO ANOTHER ." I should think that this tells plainly enough what
the real Royal Arch word was and is.
And now I will show how the other came to be spoken of, and that
there were Two, making ONE.
I have in my possession a ritual of the degrees of Mark Mason, Royal
Arch, and Past Master, made out by Huet de Lachelle, Gr. Master of
the Gr. and Subl. Chapter of Heredom, of Kilwinning, at the Petit
Goave, in the Island of St. Domingo, in 1796, in French, but translated
into that language from the English , ( and which came in English from
Kingston, in Jamaica, ) as appears from the mark-letters on the cubical stone,
and their explanation given in English as well as French . The R. A.
work contains the origines of our present work in all the essential parts,
including the signs : and the mode of giving " the sacred word " is the
same. That sacred word is double, i. e. , there are two. One is lun with
an m: the other is the word decided to be correct by the General Grand
Chapter. If the Companions of Massachusetts wish to inspect this rit-
ual, it is at their service . It is also to be added, that somebody has
written Gi over Ja in the first word, in most cases where it occurs. But
the original word still appears, and in one or two places is unchanged.
It is on the mark, also.
This ritual proves conclusively what the two words were in 1796, for
our ritual was developed out of that work . It agrees with and explains
what Dr. Oliver says, and the age and authenticity of the MSS . are un-
deniable. I have a dozen MSS . by the same Bro . , and I have the printed
Tableau for 1801 of the Lodge la Réunion Desirée, at Port au Prince, on
which his name appears as an Hon .. officer and free affiliate-" Huet
de la Chelle, Ancien Sénéchal du Petit- Goave, et habitant, né à Paris, M..
E.. T... G..." He established the Lodge Réunion des Cœurs, at Jérémie,
22 Baal and Aun.

and a Chapter styled Triple Unité das Cœurs at the same place, in which
the R... A... degree was given . The President of that Chapter, Etienne
Fourteau, is on the Tableau for 1802, of Lodge Réunion des Cœurs at
Port Republicain (Port au Prince), as its representative at Jérémie, and
he is described as R. · . A.· . R.· . †. ' . P. · . du R. · . S ... It is a curious
fact, that on the 28th of the 5th month of 1796, the Bro. Huet de La-
chelle, by the Bro . Kt. Taveau, his proxy, regularized the Rose Croix
Chapter la Verité, at Baltimore, which had existed at Cap François and
been removed to Baltimore. Was it in that way our present R. A. work
came, in a rough state, to the United States ?
Comps.. Loring Chase, Thomas Waterman , and Abraham A. Dame
were beyond possibility of question right in saying that they received
the word with lun. So did I. Do they pretend that they received the
Jahbowelian ?
The simple truth is, that the word was the old true word of the Master
Mason, which appears in the old tracing boards or floor-cloths on the
coffin ; and that is what Dr. Oliver means by speaking so much of it at
the commencement of the Introduction from which I have quoted. In
the Masonry from which the degree was originally borrowed, there were
two or more words in every degree, called generally a password, and a
covered or sacred word. Sometimes there were more than one, of either
or both. The word of which the lun is a corruption, by the change of
the final letter, was probably the covered word, concealed in the other, as
the Logos was at the beginning in the very Deity, represented by the Master
Mason's Word; and this covered word, and the substitute word also, repre-
sent and MEAN, to him who understands, that Divine Logos or WORD ,
that was in the beginning with God , and was GOD.
And in the stead of this, we are to be forced to accept the Jahbowelian
abomination ; and we hear our endeavor to retain in its proper place that
Holy Name, without which there is not and cannot be any Royal Arch
degree, libeled as " a sectarian attempt to corrupt the ritual ; " and an
"argument" in favor of preserving unimpaired " the Triad as received.
from the Fathers," that is an insult to common sense, stuffed with errors
and old exploded etymological follies, and sustained by an " opinion"
that displays only the knowledge of a freshman, to whom all modern.
works on the ancient monuments are unknown, and all " authorities" are
of equal value. It translates from Gesenius, " idolum Phoenicum," God
of the Phoenicians," and domesticum atque primarium, “ chief domestic
and tutelary." In other respects the English employed in it hardly en-
titles its author to question the scholarship of another. It would beg
to submit," and informs us that the author was " assisted and in con-
junction with" his friend the Professor . " The statement reported to
 Baal and Aun. 23

have been made at the last meeting is not alluded to, in so far as I can
ascertain, by any authority whatever." "On, as the name of an Egyptian
city, was called by the Hebrews, Bethshemesh, • and it was celebrated
for the worship and Temple of the Sun," " without scarcely any doubt : "
and, "that Bel or Baal was worshiped, and there is no evidence to show
that it was ever applied to Satan." I suppose he calls all that "good
English."
"Nec credas ponendum aliquid discriminis inter
Unguenta et corium."

How accurate, again, is this luminary in his statements !

He uses, three or four times, the expression " Jah or Jehovah ," as the
same or synonymous, saying that " It was the name of the Supreme Diety
among the Hebrews." They are very different words. Jah is, in He-
brew ‫יה‬. Jehovah , is ‫יהוה‬ They are not the same name, and do not
have the same meaning.
" It is derived," he says, speaking of both words. Jah was not the
Ineffable Word. A Hebrew is not bound to read it " Adonai," as he is
the Tetragrammaton. Nor is there any reason for Gesenius's notion that
it is a mere abbreviation. That we find in Isaiah xxvi, 4, Jah-Yehuah
together, shows that though both names of God, they are not the same
name ; and there were mysterious meanings to one, which the other did
not have. " Sing to Alohim," it is said in Ps. lxviii, 5, " by his name
Fab."
On was not the Coptic name of light. That name was Ouein, Oein, or
Ouoini. And neither of these is said by any body to have been the name
of the sun.
Aun was the trivial name of the city. Is was not an Egyptian name
at all, as it seems, but a Hebrew one, given by way of reproach by the
enslaved builders of it. The Coptic books, in which it is called An or
On, are versions of our Scriptures.
It is not proven, even by the authorities referred to by Comp . Bland,
that On was worshiped as a god at Heliopolis. On the contrary, these
very authorities expressly prove that the god worshiped there was the
hawk-headed god Re or Phre, to whom the name of On is nowhere
given.
He says and repeats, that Baal or Bel was the name under which many
ancient nations worshiped God, or a God; " both as the Supreme God
and as a God ;" and that by the name On, God was anciently worshiped.
That is simply to say that Baal was the true and very God, as On was
also, only called by a different name, i. e ., He was Jehovah, and the God
of the Christian world. Why were his priests and prophets murdered
then? and why did Jehovah promise " to destroy Bel in Babylon ?" I
24 Baal and Aun.

will admit, (though I do not believe that Boston is yet ready to accept it, )
that if an ancient deity had, inthe conception of him by the people
that worshiped him, the true and perfect attributes and all the attri-
butes of our God, they worshiped our God, no matter by what name ;
but neither Baal nor Bel nor Moloch had these attributes, or was any
more God than the adulterous Jove or lascivious Ashtaroth . And " that
shameful idol at Baal- Peor," so denounced in Hosea ix, 10, and described
by Cyril, in Hoseam, as the most indecent and beastly of all, ( worshiped
at Bubastis, notable for its obscene rites, ) the god by Jerome identified
with Priapus—in the name of all that is decent, is this the Deity that
Boston , Masons present to us as " the Supreme God ? " Comp. Bland
does not even hedge, by saying that he was " not strictly of the Jewish
standard ." I like that phrase.
And so Baal was only a name, under which many ancient nations wor-
shiped God ! Let us couple the name of Jehovah and Baal- Peor to-
gether, then, on the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord , for touching the
original whereof the men of Bethshemesh were smitten by an indignant
God. Upon my word, the whole doctrine is to me hideous and dis-
gusting. As well put the name Priapus, or the symbol by which certain
nations represented the generative power of Baal, Osiris, Mithras, Vishnu,
and Khem, and under which symbol they worshiped these gods, each
being, according to Comp. Bland, " God, and the Supreme God,” —as
well put that upon the Ark ! For, according to his opinion, when the
statue of Baal, priapic, between the great phallic columns of the magnifi-
cent Temple at Hierapolis, in Syria, or that of Khem, at Panopolis, in
Egypt, brandishing the flagellum with one hand, and holding the priapus
with the other, was worshiped by the Arabs, Phoenicians, Babylonians,
Cappadocians, Assyrians, and Cilicians, who flocked to the great Syrian
Temple, to kneel at the feet of the colossal Phalli, and make their offer-
ings to the Syrian Baal, or the Egyptian worshiped the obscene Khem,
or the Hindu adored the Lingam as the symbol of Brahm, he was wor-
shiping " God, the Supreme God," only the god was not according " to
the strict Jewish standard !"
I think it is time that Royal Arch Masons began to look seriously at
this matter. If there is any thing real in our professions, if our Royal
Arch Masonry is not a hideous and detestably hypocritical farce, it is
almost a religion. We inscribe on the mitre of the High Priest, Kadosh-
l'Yebuah-Holiness to the Lord! We forbid taking his name in vain ; and
we claim to be the lineal Masonic descendants of those Israelites to whom
every Baal was a detestable thing, an unclean abomination ; to associate
whose name with that of the Lord God of Israel would have been an
unpardonable sacrilege . And we find Royal Arch Masons pretending to
 Baal and Aun. 25

bring up into the Sanctuary, from the place where it was deposited by
Solomon, the Holy Ark of the Covenant of the Lord, on which once
were the Cherubim, and where the Shekinah, the very God, cohabitant,
spoke to Israel the oracles of truth ; and written on this, by the side
of the name of God, and forming a part of the same Triad, the unclean
name of Baal ; and are given such reasons for it as Comps. Chapman and
Bland have offered. How can Masons, Christian and upright, worthy
men, (for that I am sure they both are, ) be so singularly misled ? And
how can the Royal Arch Fraternity of New England and other States,
and the Masonic press, applaud and republish their reasons and their apol-
ogies?
When they so accept Baal as a name of the true and Supreme God,
and as put upon the Ark as such by Solomon, they accept it with all its
surnames. It is Baal-Zebub, Baal-Amun, Baal- Tsaphun, and Baal- Paar
or Peor.
What was Baal - Peor ? If we are to " bow the knee to Baal, " by re-
ligiously kneeling when we pronounce a barbarous word, of which his
name forms an integral and coequal part, and acknowledge it to be, and
revere it as a name of the true and very God, let us know what manner
of God it is that we are to worship ! I will draw aside the vail . Look
on your God, Comp. Bland !
The Lord said by the mouth of his prophet Hoesa, ix, 10 , " I saw
your fathers as the first ripe in the fig-tree, at her first time. They went
to Baal-Peor, and separated themselves unto shame ; and abominations were
according as they lusted."
In his commentary on this chapter, Saint Jerome says : " But those
who were brought forth out of Egypt fornicated with the Madianites,
and went in unto Baal- Phegor, idol of the Moabites, whom we may call
Priapus," (Quem nos Priapum possumus appellare. )
Isidore, in his Origines, says : Beel- Phegor is interpreted image (or
symbol) of ignominy, (simulacrum ignominia, ) for he was an idol of Moab,
by cognomen Baal, on Mount Phegor, whom the Latins call Priapus, God
of Gardens." Rufinus, in his 3d book on Hosea, says : " They said that
Beel-Phegor had the form of Priapus." And another commentator on the
Bible says, " Beel- Pheegor was the God of Lechery to the Hebrews, as
Priapus was to the Romans."
I have not the originals of these authors. No doubt they are familiar
to a scholar like Comp . Bland. I quote them as cited by Dulaure, Hist.
Abr. de Diff. Cultes, ii, 74.
It will be profitable for Comp. Bland to read Hosea again. The im-
mensity of his other scholastic acquisitions has caused great forgetfulness
of what the Bible contains.
 26 Baal and Aun.

" Their mother hath played the harlot. · For she did not
know that I gave her corn and wine and oil, and multiplied her silver
and gold, which they prepared for Baal. • • and now I will discover
her lewdness in the sight of her lovers. and I will visit upon her
the days of Baalim, wherein she burned incense to them. • and
she went after her lovers and forgat me, saith the Lord. • And it
shall be at that day, saith the Lord, [ Mark, Chaplain of the Grand
Holy Royal Arch Chapter of Massachusetts, and repent ! ] thou shalt
call me Ishi ; and shalt call me no more Baali. FOR I WILL TAKE AWAY
the names of Baalim OUT OF HER MOUTH, and they shall no more be
remembered by their name."
The Boston Baalites mean that Baal shall be remembered ; and will
not permit the Lord God of Isreal " to take away the names of Baalim
out of their mouth." It will be just if he should say to Comp. Bland,
"Because thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee, that thou
shalt be no priest to me ; seeing thou hast forgotten the law of thy God,
I will also forget thy children."
" The inhabitants of Samaria shall fear, because of the calves of Bith-
Aven [ 1 , Aun, On] . . . The high places also of Aven [78, Aun,
On] shall be destroyed . The thorn and the thistle shall come upon
their altars... When Ephraim spoke trembling, he exalted himself
in Israel : but when he offended in Baal, he died ."
The principal feature of the worship of this Baal of Mount Phegor
consisted in presenting one's self naked before his idol. Saint Jerome
nous représente cette idole portant à la bouche le signe characteristique de
Priape. The Rabbi Solomon-Jarchi attributes to his worship a filthier
practice still, for which I refer Comp. Bland to Dulaure . The words of
Saint Jerome, as cited by him, are, " Denique interpretatur Beel- Phegor
idolum tentiginis habens in ore, id est in summitate pellem ut turpitudinem
membri virilis ostenderet."
And I read in Numbers xxv, 1 , 2, 3 , 5 , and 9, " The people began to
commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab ; and they called the
people unto the sacrifices of their gods ; and the people did eat and bowed
down to their gods ; and Israel joined himself unto Baal-peor ; and the
anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel," [ because Baal- peor was
not " strictly of the Jewish standard !"] " and the Lord said unto Moses,
take all the heads of the people, and hang them up before the Lord
against the sun. • And Moses said unto the judges of Israel, slay ye
every one his men that were joined unto Baal- peor. " " Vex the Midi-
anites," the Lord said, " and smite them, for they vex you with their
wiles, wherewith they have beguiled you in the matter of Peor."
If a name is of no import, why is it emphatically said in the Apoca-
 Baal and Aun . 27

lypse, " If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his
mark on his forehead or his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of
the wrath of God. • • They have no rest day nor night, who wor-
ship the beast and his image, and whosoever receiveth the mark of His
NAME ! There were a hundred forty and four thousand others having
the FATHER'S name written in their foreheads." I do not choose to wear
the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
When Ahaziah, king of Israel, was sick in Samaria, " he sent mes-
sengers, and said unto them, go, inquire of Baal- Zebub , the Alohi of
Aakron, whether I shall recover of this disease." And Elijah sent back
his messengers, telling them to say to the king, " Thus saith the Lord,
Is it not because there is no Alohim in Israel that thou sendest to
inquire of Baal- Zebub the Alohi of Aakron ? Therefore thou shalt not
come down from that bed on which thou art gone up, but shalt surely
die."
I do not know, nor does any one, whether the Hebrews had, before
the Babylonian captivity, the conception of a single and sovereign power
of evil, such as the devil was until recently to all of Christendom . Satan
was not what the devil has been. After the captivity at Babylon the
Hebrews had the idea of one power of evil, learned from the Median
magi. Before, then, as well as after, the false gods of the hostile nations
were evil spirits to them, as the Daevas were to the Irano- Aryans. Every
one was a devil, and when they had obtained the idea of one chief or
supreme demon, they believed there was a multitude of others, among
whom was every heathen god. Beel-Zebub had, somehow, come to.
have pre-eminence, in the time of Christ, and was styled " the prince
of demons or devils ;" and in consequence, Baal- Zebub, Beel-Zebub, or
Belzebub has for an unknown time been a common and familiar name of
the devil. It is as proper a name as any ; for satan and devil are no more
appropriate or specific.
I have no belief that any such being as the devil exists. Therefore I
did not speak of him as an actual person. I said that Baal or Bel
was a name of the devil, because Baal-Zebub is called in the Bible the
prince of devils, because it is now a common name of the devil, and be-
cause it was a name that signified to the Jews that principle and power
of evil that we personify by the names, the Devil, Satan, Lucifer,
Apollyon, Belzebub, and many others.
And there never was a more ludicrous farce enacted than the rushing
off of Comp. Chapman to procure a pretentious opinion, given by the
author of it " not as a Mason, but as a scholar," to the effect that Baal
meant " Lord," was a Tyrian and Babylonian god, and never was a name
of the devil. Suppose I had said that Lucifer was a name of the devil,
 28 Baal and Aun.

and Comp. Bland had dashed out from his covert on his Rozinante, visor
down and spear in rest, crying aloud that Lucifer meant light-bearer, was
the morning- star or planet Venus, and never was a name of the devil .
The absurdity would have been precisely the same, no more and no less .
Now, every body knows that the false gods were considered demons or
devils ; and that whenever it has been proved that any doctrine of the
Church had been taught thousands of years before the Church existed, it
has always been sturdily ascribed to the preaching or inspiration of devils
or of the devil . Even teachers of the truth are inspired by devils, if
their preaching preceded that of the Church.
Tertullian, (de Idololatria, 15,) after speaking of the Roman deities of
the doors, Cardea and Forculus, Limentinus and Janus, named from the
hinges, the leaves of the door, the threshold, the gate, says : " And we
surely know, that although they are empty and fabricated names, yet when
they come to be superstitiously regarded, (cum tamen in superstitionem
deducuntur,) they take to themselves demons and every filthy spirit, by the
lien of consecration . Elsewhere the demons have no names individually,
but there they find a name, where they find an estate in pledge ( ibi nomen
inveniunt, ubi et pignus." And Julius Firmicus Maternus (de errore pro-
fanarum religionum, 20) said to Constantius and Constans, that it was in
their power as emperors so to provide, “ ut legibus vestris funditus prostra-
tus Diabolusjaceat, ut extinctæ idololatriæ pereat funesta contagio,” —“ that
by means of your laws the devil shall lie prostrate , totally overthrown ;
and that the deadly contagion of extinct idolatry shall perish." In No.
• 21 he tells the profane, speaking of the two-horned Bacchus or the Sun,
that their god is not tri-formed, but multiform, is the Basilisk, Snake,
Lernæan hydra ; and says that those are very different horns which the
prophet commemorates, and adds, " Quæ tu, diabole, ad maculatam faci-
em tuam putas te posse transferre, --which thou , DEVIL, thinkest thou canst
transfer to thy defiled forehead."
" Benedici per deos nationum," Tertullian says, (de Idol. 227, " maledici T
est per Deum,-to be blessed by the gods of the nations, is to be cursed
by God. " And if, he says, I give alms to any one, or any benefit what-
ever, and he invokes for me the grace of his gods , or of the genii of his
colony, my gift or act will be an honoring of idols, which he compen-
sates by the form of a benediction . 66 Why does he not know that I
have done it on God's account, and that God may rather be glorified and
the demons not honored, by that which I have done for God ?"
The false gods were demons then ; they were demons in the time of
Christ, and they were devils in the time of Moses. For I read in Deu-
teronomy, xxxii, 16, 17, " They provoked him to jealousy with strange
gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed
 Baal and Aun. 29

unto devils, not to God, to gods whom they knew not, to new ones that
came newly up, whom your fathers feared not." .
""
The word rendered " devils" here is shedim, " destroyers." It is
used again in Psalms, (cvi, 37 , ) where it is said, " They joined them-
selves also unto Baal- Peor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead. • . They
served their idols, which were a snare unto them ; yea, they sacrificed
their sons and their daughters unto devils, • unto the idols of Ca-
naan." Ethusan daimoniois, kai ou Theō, theois, ois ouk edeisan, the
Septuagint has it in Deuteronomy ; and in Ps. cvi, 37, it renders shedim
by the same words, tois daimoniois . What is diabolos, devil, in Greek,
but " calumniator ;" and Satan, shaitan, but " adversary ?"
Our English idea is expressed by De Foe, in his " System of Magic."
He says : " The devil had altars and temples of his own ; was another
kind of king in those days than he has appeared to be since ; then he gave
audience in form of a deity, and saw himself worshiped like a god almost
throughout the whole world : here, under the name of Baal ; there, Mo-
loch ; here, in one manner ; there, in another."
And in the " History of the Devil," he says, " We are told in Scripture
of the works of the devil , of casting out the devil, of resisting the devil,
of our Saviour being tempted of the devil, of Simon Magus, a child of the
devil, the devil came down in a great wrath, and the like. And accord-
ing to this usage of speech we go on to this day, and all the infernal
things we converse with in the world are fathered upon the devil, as one
undivided simple essence, by how many agents soever working. • • in
a word, devil is the common name for all devils, that is to say, for all
evil spirits, all evil powers, all evil works and even all evil things. •
Under this denomination , then, of devil, all the powers of hell, all the
princes of the air, all the black armies of Satan are comprehended."
And I quote these sentences, because they precisely express what I
meant and mean by the word " devil," the principle of evil. The He-
brews had no other devil than the false gods of their neighbors ; and
therefore the name of every false god was the name of the evil principle,
of the devil; as Moloch , Baal, Belial, and Baal- Zebub, and even Mammon
still are to us.
In the " Relation of the Martyrdom of St. Ignatius," by the Christians
of Antioch, translated by William, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury,
from the original Greek, published by Dr. Grabe in his Spicileg Patrum,
we find this :
When, in the nineteenth year of his reign, Trajan threatened the
Christians " that they should be persecuted , unless they would choose to
worship the devil, with all other nations ; fear obliged all such as lived
religiously either to sacrifice or to die." Wherefore St. Ignatius went
30 Baal and Aun.

voluntarily before Trajan at Antioch. The emperor railing at him as a

wicked wretch, Ignatius repelled it, saying that " all wicked spirits are
departed far from the servants of God ;" and adding, " but if, because I
am a trouble to those evil spirits, you call me wicked, with reference to
them I.confess the charge ; for having Christ, the heavenly king, I dis-
solve all the snares of the devils."
Trajan asked him, " Do not we, then, seem to thee to have the gods
within us, who fight for us against our enemies ?" And Ignatius replied,
" You err, in that you call the evil spirits of the heathens gods. For
there is but one God. ." So, the relators say, he " trod under foot
the devil," as he said Christ had put all the deceit and malice of the
devil under the feet of those who carry him in their heart."
What was it necessary for Ignatius to do to save his life ? The same
that Polycarp was urged to do, as related in the circular letter of the
church at Smyrna, concerning his martyrdom, in the same book. He
had but to swear by the genius of Cæsar, and to sacrifice to the Roman
gods, whom he considered and called " devils," and whose idols the
Christians threw down ; whence Polycarp was called by the multitude
" Overthrower of our gods."
If the love of life had caused the aged saint to hesitate, and he had
been taken into the presence of the images of the gods, he would have
found there those of Baal and Bel, for Rome naturalized all the gods of
all the peoples she conquered ; and if Baal- Peor had not been there, un-
questionably Priapus would, the sceptered god of gardens, whom the
Saints held to be identical with Peor. If then there had been some one
of authority as paramount and learning as inexhaustible as Comp. Bland's,
to inform him that the Hebrews, especially of Samaria, anciently wor-
shiped this salacious god, who said " Colunt me, Deumque salutant," under
the name of Baal- Peor, that in worshiping him " many of the early na-
tions worshiped God," and that it was wholly a mistake to believe that
he had no real being, but was a name for the devil, because the idea that
Baal or Baal-Zebub was the name of the devil " has apparently not the
slightest foundation , and in fact is not alluded to by any authority what-
ever ;" and if some one, speaking with the approval and to the great sat-
isfaction of as large and pious a body of Christians as the Grand Chapter
of the Holy Royal Arch Masons of Massachusetts, could have advised.
the venerable saint that Baal or Bel was worshiped as a god, though not
strictly of the Jewish standard, and that " the Jews acknowledged him
as a god ;" that his name formed part of a holy and sacred Triad,
making with that of Jehovah and an Egyptian god a most holy Trinity
in Unity ; and that the Word thus composed was " a light revealed,
whereby we may attain unto God ;" that Solomon caused the name of
A
 Baal and Aun. 31

Baal to be engraved on the Holy Ark of the Covenant with the name of
Jehovah, and that it was therefore eminently fit, and equally so the name
or image of Priapus, to be placed on a panel of the holy altar of the
Almighty God, so that in sacrificing or adoring that name also should be
worshiped; if the devil had whispered all this in the ear of Ignatius or
Polycarp, would it not have given him great content, as it did greatly
content the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Holy Royal Arch Masons of
Massachusetts ? The answer of the saint about to be devoured by lions
or burned rather than sacrifice to the heathen gods, each of whom he
called the devil, would have been " Hypage opiso mou, Satana ! Get thee
behind me, Satan ! For it has been written, thou shalt adore the Lord
thy God, and him only shalt thou worship . "
As Comp. Bland consults and relies on dictionaries, did he chance to
see in one of the Greek language, “ Beelzeboul, metaphoricé, Satanæ tri-
buitur ?" It rather strikes me that by this the fact is " alluded to," by
an authority.
"What agreement is there," says the law-book of the anti-Nicene
Church, " between Christ and Belial ? " and so ask the Canones Ecclesiatici
qui dicuntur apostolorum. Yet Belial too can be shown by Comp . Bland
not to have been to the Hebrews a name of the devil .
Let Comp. Bland, ( it is in his line as Chaplain , ) read what is said as
to the demons being the gods of the Gentiles in the " Diataxeis tōn
apostolōn,” in vol. vi of Bunsen's " Christianity and Mankind," pp. 101 ,
129, 171 , and see whether at p . 127 the temple of heathen gods is not
called oikos daimonōn, "the house of devils."
The appellation " Archon of the devils," by which the Jews called
Baal-Zebub in the time of Christ, was evidently one in common use at
the time. From it being so used , and therefore familiar to all readers cf
the Bible, that name has become one of the most common ones in use
for the devil ; and one might as well gravely deny that Diabolos is and
was more than two thousand years ago one of his names, as to make that
denial in regard to Baal-Zebub. What Baal originally was is nothing to
the purpose. Learning has nothing to do with it. And I think with
Baron Bunsen, that common sense is a good argument even for learned
men, and that the public have a right to exact from them a certain respect
for it. Is Satan a name of the devil ? Well, every body knows that it
was not so originally ; for Satan, in Job, was an imaginary angel, in at-
tendance on the court of the Almighty , and executed his orders. We
find it and Beelzebub alike names of the devil in the time of Christ.
When before that time either had become so we do not know.
The whole question is not at all that on which Comp . Bland has ex-
pended his learning. It is whether Baal was to the Hebrews of the time
32 Baal and Aun.

of Solomon the name of an evil and malignant being, at enmity with Je-
hovah, accursed and detested . If it was, it has no business on the Ark,
and infinitely less in a word of Triads.
For the triangle is a peculiar symbol to a Mason, as perhaps Comp . Bland
knows. It represents three, forming unity. So do the Triads, three in
number, represent the triple triangle, interlaced and forming unity, and
its three colors, white, red, black, represent the Hindū Trimurti .
The name of Baal cannot form one of those Triads ; because Baal is
not a member of the divine trinity. To make it so is sacrilege, is blas-
phemy, is an insult offered to the God with whose name the abomina-
tion is thus coupled .
That was the question . The remark made about Bel and On was but
an incidental illustration. The true issue connot be shirked by getting
up a discussion on a side one, or by printing a farrago of absurdity and
error about Triads. The real word was no more composed of three,
than the substitute word was. It had a totally different symbolism ; and
the three pretended words are not three times three, for Jah is IH , Bel is
BL, and if On is but hō on or to on, it also has but two letters. The
whole thing began with a blunder, which it was attempted to improve
by a bigger blunder, and Boston ought to be heartily ashamed of the
whole of it.
If that were all, it would not so much matter. At least, I should feel
little interest in an attempt to correct it. It is enough for me to correct
such errors where I have had authority and power to do, and have found
enough in that line to do. But no man or body of men can make me
accept as a sacred word, as a symbol of the Infinite and Eternal Godhead ,
a mongrel word, in part composed of the name of an accursed and beastly
heathen god, whose name has been for more than two thousand years an
appellation of the devil. It would be no worse to express the word by
hieroglyphics, one of which should reproduce upon the Ark the charac-
teristic symbol of Priapus and Khem. And it is my deliberate opinion
that where that word is used, not merely as an explanation, but as a sacred
word, there is no Royal Arch Masonry. It is truly a worthy cause for
declaring a revolt against the General Grand Chapter and defying and
trampling upon its decision ; which should not have been spoken of in print
for the profane to read.
In regard to the Greek words, wv (ōn) and ov ( on) , of which Comp .
Chapman speaks , there would be no objection to either, if Solomon
had known such a word. But he founded the Temple about 1013
years before Christ, in the time of the second Archon of Athens, and
about 250 years after the Trojan war. Nothing was then known of
Greece, in Palestine at any rate, nothing of the Greek language. The
 Baal and Aun. 33

first word (w , ön , with omega, the long o ,) is used in the Septuagint, in

its translation of the well-known passage ( Exod. iii, 14 , ) " I am that I am,
(ahih asr ahih) . . . I am (ahib) hath sent me unto you. " The Greek
of the Septuagint is, " Ego eimi bo on-ho on apestalke me prõs umas. On
is the present participle of eimi, I am, and ho on means the one who ex-
ists or is ; and on ( with omicron, the short o) is the neuter of it to on,
meaning that which is or exists- being. In the New Testament the
same words bo on are used in speaking of the Son of God. Philo uses
the words to on to designate God.
If it is claimed that the On , in the Jahbowelian compound is either
of these, so much the worse ; it is simply a double sacrilege to sandwich
the obscene name of Bel or Baal in between two undoubted names or
designations of the holy and self- existent God ; and this under false pre-
tenses that the miserable thing came to us from " the Fathers." One
would be amazed at the bravery with which this imposture is defended,
if one did not remember the words of the Roman poet :
"Cùm magna malæ superest audacia causæ, creditur à multis fiducia."
66
I did suppose that Comp. Chapman's remark about our great learn-
ing," (to which I, for one, a mere practicing lawyer all my life, make
no pretensions at all and have never sought to obtain a reputation for it, )
was intended as a sneer ; but that caused no resentment. What I re-
sented was the direct imputation upon our disinterestedness, which the earlier
and more explicit slander of Comp . Lockwood fully explained to mean,
that in what we did we were actuated by a desire to injure Royal Arch
Mesonry, that benefit might from that injury redound to the Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite. Those Companions may have cause to look for
motives of that sort in their own bailiwick, and so be ready to think evil
and say it of Masons elsewhere ; but it will be well for them to hear it
distinctly said, and lay it to heart, that indulgence in that vicious habit of
imputing ill motive , without reasonable cause for believing it to exist, is
the very worst use they can put their pens to, and the very worst busi-
ness for Masonry that they can engage in . And the imputation was as
far from the truth as Baal- Peor was from being God.
And I resented also, though I did not mention it, the characterizing
what we said and did in the General Grand Chapter as a sectarian
attempt " (which, if it means any thing, means an attempt by us as Ma-
sons of the Scottish Rite) “to corrupt the ritual. ”
And I gently remind Comp. Chapman that he himself proves that
the old Masons whom he mentions did not receive the Jah- bow-elian ;
that he knows what Dr. Oliver says about it, and knows that it is a modern
American invention , that it is by it the ritual has been " corrupted ," and
that the Triad which he advocates was not received from the Fathers. I
3
34 Baal and Aun.

first got it from you, as a guess, in 1856, at Hartford. I do not know

whose guess it was originally. I thought it was yours. Not then know-
ing what the lun word really was, before it was corrupted, and it plainly
meaning nothing, I was glad to have anything that sounded like sense in
its stead .
Knowing what he does know, Comp. Chapman has the less excuse
for saying what he has said. I did not go to Baltimore to attend the
Gen.. Gr.. Chapter ; did not know that the question was coming up,
even one minute before it was presented in the morning ; and if I had
known it, I should not have gone to the body at all. I had no desire to
tell there what I had learned elsewhere ; and prefer that others should
learn it where I did. But what I did say there, as to the true original
word, should have prevented the raising of immaterial issues. It is really.
not a question what Baal was or what On was. The question is, what
is the real, true, ORIGINAL Word. As to that there is ample proof. It
was neither lun nor Fabbowelian. The former was the mistake of a
letter, perhaps by misprision of a copyist. The second is a mere un-
authorized modern American invention, and not only means nothing and
is nothing ; but if it meant all that is pretended, it does not belong in the
degree. There was no more right to put it there, and is no more right
to keep it there, than there would be to make a new substitute word, to
accord with somebody's notion of its meaning ; and above all, no word
has any business in the Royal Arch degree that makes the name of a
heathen deity one of the names of the true God.
If for the length of this article an apology is needed, it would little
avail to offer one. If it is worth the reading, it needs none ; for the
importance of the question will hardly be denied by any Royal Arch
Mason.
It may be thought that I am not sufficiently soft and mild and brotherly
in this reply. It, at least, does not conclude with the empty cant of
brotherhood. I call no man " brother " who does not act like one.
There are three things of which I am weary and sick, more weary and
sick in Freemasonry than anywhere else. They are folly, fraud , and
pretension. When the first and last combine to perpetrate or continue
the second, they deserve no soft words.
ALBERT PIKE.
BRITISH
160C77

MUSEUL
503

cc 3

THE HOLY TRIAD.

‫ יה‬... ‫ בל‬... ‫און‬

JAH: BAAL - PEOR, THE SYRIAN PRIAPUS :

THE CITY OF IDOLATRY AND INIQUITY.

A REPLY TO THE GRAND CHAPLAIN AND GRAND HIGH

PRIEST OF THE GRAND ROYAL ARCH CHAPTER
OF MASSACHUSETTS.

[ FROM MACKEY'S NATIONAL FREEMASON . ]

Unde hæc monstra tamen ?

WASHINGTON CITY :
OFFICE OF MACKEY'S NATIONAL FREEMASON .
1873.
‫די‬