Desaguliers' Code

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The Grove

More often than not, Biblical translators rendered Asherah as ‘grove’ (albeit, groves were sacred to the goddess but their translation only served to conceal more than it revealed).

Isis as tree

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According to Strong's Hebrew Dictionary (#7650/2) "Sheba" can mean "Seven" or "Oath". Thus, the following interpretation of 1 Kings 10:1/13 is possible and may have occurred to Desaguliers and others: The Queen of the Oath came to prove Solomon with hard questions and, being satisfied with his responses, she communicated her 'secrets.'

she came to prove him with hard questions
1 Kings 10:1
(One may infer it was first necessary that he give proof of his existing proficiency before being advanced)

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Related Sites

[a href="The Sons of the Great Mother"]The Sons of the Great Mother[/a]

The Companion Bible (Appendix 42 – The Asherah)

The Queen of Sheba

Recommended Reading

William Bond, n.d., Freemasonry and the Hidden Goddess, Lulu.com

Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy, 2002, Jesus and the Lost Goddess, Thorsons, London

Patai, Raphael, 1990, The Hebrew Goddess, (3rd enlarged edition), Wayne State University Press, Detroit

John Sebastian Marlow Ward, n.d., Who was Hiram Abiff?, The Baskerville Press, London

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Queen of Sheba / Mistress of Kush

At this juncture the story gets somewhat complicated. There are layers upon layers of interpretation: There is that in which I am engaged, determining the literal, “genuine secrets” alluded to by clues inserted as part of the ritual changes wrought by Desaguliers and others (and speculating as to their possible reasons for doing so); there was the biblical exegesis on which they appear to have relied, especially that of the Geneva Bible; There are the earlier translations into Greek, Latin and vernacular tongues, (which influenced subsequent understandings of the text); There was the redaction by Ezra (?) and others, in compiling the Torah; And there was the selective tradition of writings and earlier storytelling upon which the Redactor/s drew, all deriving from folk histories, Just-so stories , myths and both long redundant and contemporary geo-political propaganda, together with a smattering of religious insights (both superficial and profound), derived from different traditions and seen through differing historical and cultural perspectives.

These earliest interpreters of what became Biblical traditions, in making sense of the Queen of Sheba story, are likely to have been influenced by contemporary realities. Thus, in considering how Josephus described her as "Queen of Egypt and Ethiopia" (Antiq. 8:6:5) we should bear-in-mind that Egypt by then was “a broken reed” (Isaiah 36:6), long since controlled by Persia and Greece (and later by Rome). The only independent outpost of Egyptian culture at the time was that of the former Egyptian province of Kush (that of Retjenu, which included Jerusalem, had long since succumbed). The Kushites considered themselves to be more Egyptian than the Egyptians and their royal family had ruled lower Egypt as the Twenty-fifth Dynasty until forced south by the Persians (no doubt they still considered themselves to be the rightful rulers of Egypt).

The feminine, Kushite position of Candace (Kandake) held such remarkable power that it was commonly thought to take the place of the king and appears to have derived from the position of Divine Adoratrice of Amun, which was the one unifying office office during Egypt’s Third Intermediate Period (constituting in effect a Pharaonic dydnasty in their own right, as had the High Priests of Amun at one point). The Adoratrices had ruled the priethoods and thus held sway over Egypt's theocratic government.

The rule of the Candaces was formerly centered on the capital city of Saba (Sheba), (which, according to Josephus, the Greeks called Meroë, Antiq. 2:10:2). Thus, the title “Queen of Sheba” is equivalent to that of “Mistress of Kush,” a title borne by Isis and personified by the successive Candaces (Welsby, pp.76/7).

As early as the New Kingdom, Isis is described as ‘Mistress of Kush’…Together with Osiris she is invariably invoked on the funerary stelae, large numbers of which have been recovered from Lower Nubia…

In the world of the living, Isis was personified in the person of the queen mother, her son the king represented Horus. The interaction of these two mortals closely followed that of the divine duo. The king derived his legitimacy from being the son of the queen mother and for his part his actions as heir confirmed his right to rule.

Having been forced south from Egypt to Nubia, the Kushites were eventually forced even further south, from Nubia to Ethiopia. Derek Welsby, in The Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires (p.197), tells us that:

A close scruitiny of what little additional literary evidence there is indicates that probably at least as late as AD 336, the Kushites were still a force to be reckoned with in the affairs of Lower Nubia.

Earlier Welsby had declared (p.196), "To some extent the end of the Kushite state is now discounted altogether!" This is an important point to bear-in-mind when we read of the explorer James Bruce (Moorehead, pp.34/5):

Outside Shendy ‘heaps of broken pedestals and pieces of obelisks’ covered with hieroglyphics were strewn in the desert. His route did not take him past the pyramids that lay nearby but he noted in his journal: ‘It is impossible to avoid risking a guess that this is the ancient city of Meroë;’ and his guess was perfectly right.

Curiously he does not mention Shendy castle but during his two weeks stay he paid court to the Sittina, the queen of the province who lived about half a mile outside the town.

She sat behind a screen when she first received Bruce but he induced her to emerge on his second visit and he beheld a tall beautiful woman of 40 with very red lips and the finest teethe and eyes he had ever seen. She was dressed in a purple stole with a magnificent gold crown on her head and her plaited hair fell below her waist; and to Bruce she seemed a living reincarnation of the legendary Queen Candace who had ruled Meroë and all the Nile north to Egypt in Pharonic times. He kissed her hand and the Queen, starting back, exclaimed that such a thing had never happened to her before.

These Rider Haggard-like effects were increased by the fact that all through this month - October 1772 - a strange light glowed in the sky. ‘The planet Venus,’ Bruce says, ‘appeared shining with undiminished light all day, in defiance of the brightest sun’ - a statement that seems hardly credible although indeed Venus did, that year, approach very close to the earth.

BTW, "Sittina" is a feminine title signifying a holy companion,
reminiscent of each Candace having been "God's Wife" (indeed, a living "god" in her own right).

Sources:

Alan Moorehead, 1962, The Blue Nile, Harper & Row, New York

Welsby, Derek A., 2002, The Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires, The British Museum Press, London

Installation of a Kandake

See also: Mysteries Black Queen of Sheba?

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Bilqis

According to Arabic tradition the personal name of the Queen of Sheba was Bilqis, Balkis or Balqais. However, this name sounds more like a title, ‘Baal-Qais’: meaning ‘Lord of the Qais’.*

* ‘Baal’ principally means ‘Lord’. Even the god of the Hebrews was called ‘Baal’ and it was not until around 750 BCE that the prophet Hosea is said to have called for the title ‘Baal’ to be reserved as a derogatory appellation for other gods (H 2:16).

* The Qays or Qais were a tribe from Yemen who eventually lost a drawn out battle with the Quaraish, to which Muhammad belonged (Zakaria, p.402).

One of the important developments in Muhammad’s life was his alignment with the Quaraish in the latter’s fight against another tribe, Qais, which harassed pilgrims at the annual fair at a place called Ukaz on the outskirts of Mecca. The fight between the two tribes, known as the Battle of Fijar, continued year after year, with considerable loss of life and poverty [sic].

Thousands of the Qais were later deported to Egypt, after it fell to the Arabs (Watterson, p.153).

The first Arabs seem to have arrived in Egypt only with the conquest of 641, and it was not until 727 that a major attempt at settlement was made when Khalif Hisham (724-743) ordered several thousand members of the tribe of Qays of the Yemen to migrate to Egypt. During the next century or so, they were followed by many others.

Sources:

Watterson, Barbara, 1988, Coptic Egypt, Scottish Academic Press, Edinburgh

Zakaria, Rafiq, 1991, Muhammad and the Quran , Penguin Book, London

* Perhaps in connection with this possibility, the name has been translated, in an Indian context, as, "Those who take pride."

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Yemen or Ethiopia?

At first sight there appear to be mutually exclusive claims as to the queen being from either Saba, with its capital of Marib, in the present day state of The Yemen, or from Kush, with its capital of Saba (later Meroë), in the present day state of The Sudan (later forced south into what became Ethiopia). This is only an apparent conflict as the Nubian state at times extended to both sides of the Red Sea.

Kingdom of Sheba (left) / Kingdom of Aksum (right)

Wendell Phillips, who undertook excavations at Marib, concluded (Sheba's Buried City, p.263) that the ruins his team excavated were too recent, by several hundred years, to be attributed to the Queen of Sheba. Even so, as already stated, both the south-eastern and south-western coastal regions of the Red Sea at times shared a common government, variously centred on either side of the relatively narrow straights, (more recently, Timothy Kendall has undertaken excavations at Meroë’s sacred mountain, Gebel Barkal).

See: The Queen Of Sheba And Sun Worship
And: Queen of Sheba, ruler of Ethiopia and Yemen

Jewish Brides, Yemen

The Land of Prester John

The Orthodox Coptic Church of Ethiopia practices an ancient form of Christianity; the Falashas, Beta Israel or `Black Jews of Ethiopia' practice an archaic form of Judaism; and the worship of the Ethiopian Qemant still includes elements of the pre-judaic Hebrew religion, including the worship in sacred groves of a Pantheon). Moreover, a growing number of Ethiopians are Muslims. Ethiopians once ruled in Egypt (25th Dynasty) and were noted for the conservative worship of the gods Amen and Mut.

In the Kebra Nagast, a sacred Ethiopian book whose title means `the Glory of the Kings', there is much written about Solomon, King of Israel, and Makeda, Queen of Sheba (the Ethiopian emperors are said to have been their descendants).

In the Twelfth Century, the Ethiopian Emperor Lalibela was deposed and exiled. He sojourned in Jerusalem for a quarter of a century before returning triumphant (Hancock; p.103). Also in Jerusalem at this time were the Knights Templar. Upon Lalibela's return, he is credited with commissioning white men to build eleven churches, featuring Templar forms and symbols (ibid.; pp.116/9). Possibly the Templars were seeking the Ark of the Covenant which Ethiopians call "Our Lady of Zion" and claim to possess (e.g., Hausman; pp.103/119).

Ethiopian Knight (left) / Order of St. Anthony (right)

The Ethiopian Order of St. Anthony is one of the world's oldest Orders of Chivalry and is now only conferred on members of the Clergy. Among Ethiopia's other Orders (conferred now by the Imperial Crown Council, in exile), we find the curious fact that prior membership of a "Templar Order" is well regarded as a recommendation. Thus we read of the Ethiopian Order of Baronets , "All Baronets appointed thus far (5) have been Templars, two of which are members of the Priory." And, in relation to the Order of St. Mary of Zion, "members of the Templar Order meet all requirements."

Medieval Ethiopian Sword

In A Brief Account of the Rebellions and Bloudshed Occasioned by the Anti-Christian Practices of the Jesuits and other Popish Emissaries in the Empire of Ethiopia (Wansleben; p.29: published in 1679 under the imprimatur of the `Archiep. Cant.'), we read of Peter Heyling, a Lutheran of Lubec, and his advancement in the Ethiopian Court:

These remarkable qualities and endowments [of his] could not long brook the concealment of a private life, but brake out into such an advantageous report of him as reached the Emperors Ears, and won him so high an esteem at Court that [after some Trial had been made of his Capacity for publick employments] he was by large steps and degrees quickly raised to the principal Charge of the Empire, in which great Office and Trust he acquited himself with such prudent address, that his Great Master obliged him (with courteous violence) ....

References:
Doresse, Jean (Director of Archaeological Research in Ethiopia), Ethiopia, (translated from the French by Elsa Coult), 1959, Elek Books, London.
Hancock, Graham, The Sign and the Seal: A Quest for the Lost Ark of the Covenant, 1993, Mandarin, London
Hausman, Gerald, (Editor) The Kebra Nagast: The Lost Bible of Rastafarian Wisdom and Faith from Ethiopia and Jamaica, 1997, St. Martin's Press, New York
Wansleben, Johann Michael, A Brief Account of the Rebellions and Bloudshed Occasioned by the Anti-Christian Practices of the Jesuits and other Popish Emissaries in the Empire of Ethiopia: Collected out of a Manuscript History Written in Latin by Jo. Michael Wansleben, a Learned Papist, 1679, Printed, to be sold by Jonathan Edwin, London.

See also: Knights Templar & Ethiopia

And: The Imperial Orders and Decorations of Ethiopia

And: The Queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon

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James Bruce
Quote

Editorial Notes:
According to Andrew Collins, "James Bruce...was a member of the Canongate Kilwinning No. 2 lodge of Edinburgh, known to be one of the oldest in Scotland, with side-orders and mystical teachings entrenched in Judaeo-Christian myth and ritual." (Ashes of Angels... 1996, p. 12). Some historical researchers believe that much of the motivation behind James Bruce's epic travels in Ethiopia centered around his desire to recover sacred objects connected with Solomon's Temple. As a leading Freemason Bruce may have also been interested in verifying legends associating the medieval Knights Templar with old Christian churches in Ethiopia.

Bruce was particularly interested in obtaining examples of Ethiopian books, such as the "Kebra Nagast" and the "Book of Enoch," both of which were written in Ge'ez, the classical language of Ethiopia. According to Graham Hancock, Bruce began studying this obscure language as early as 1759. In going to remote Ethiopia, Bruce risked "numberless dangers and sufferings," purportedly just "in order to discover the source of the Nile." Hancock further states: "Lest any should be in any doubt that this was indeed his ambition he enshrined it conspicuously in the full title of the immense book that he later wrote: Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile in the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773. The mystery is this: long before he set out for Ethiopia, James Bruce knew that the Blue Nile's source had already been visited and thoroughly explored by two other Europeans: Pedro Paez and Jeronomo Lobo (both of whom were Portuguese priests who had lived in Ethiopia in the 1600s before the Fasilidas ban [that any Portuguese seeking entry into Ethiopia be beheaded] was put into effect." (The Sign and the Seal.)

Bruce did not relate much of the story of the Ethiopian "Book of Enoch" or the historical "Kebra Nagast" in the pages of his Travels, It is, however, likely that he communicated the essential stories of both obscure texts, translated into English, in limited-circulation Masonic publications, both in Scotland and in England's American colonies. (That portion of the "Kebra Nagast" which relates the Israelite colonization of Ethiopia contains numerous textual parallels with the Book of Mormon.) Word-of-mouth accounts of Bruce's discoveries in regard to the contents of both books may well have circulated in American Royal Arch lodges prior to 1800. It is a firm (but not yet demonstrated) possibility that Bruce's discoveries, both public and private, reached the ear of the Rev. Solomon Spalding in New England by 1795. Spalding would have at least seen American editions of Bruce's Travels before he moved to Ohio in about 1809. It appears likely that Bruce's work influenced Spalding's writings.

Gebel Barkal, the "original" of Amun's two seats (the other was Thebes)
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a lithograph in Caillaud

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That Which Was Lost

All this may be fascinating, but what, you may ask, has it to do with the thesis that Desaguliers and others, in changing the first two degrees and creating the third, left clues as to what may literally be considered to be the genuine secrets of a Master Mason? A difficulty with this thesis is that the details, at least, are news to the Freemasons of today.

Despite having been advanced to the ne plus ultra ("nothing more beyond") Degree in the "Scottish Rite" and its equivalent in the "York Rite" and, while in hindsight along the way, recognising many clues "hidden" in plain sight, never was this thesis explicitly revealed and never did the Brethren with whom I was involved show any substantial prior awareness of it when first mentioned.

The ritual clues speak for themselves; The extraordinary travels of Freemason James Bruce and his drawing an analogy between the queen of Shendy and the Candaces of Meroë, suggests he had some insight into the historical circumstances described above; The continued unfolding and illumination of the "secrets," with the proliferation of degrees on the Continent; The masonic illustrations already featured and the masonic associations with the Statue of Liberty and other monuments; Together with the prevalent use of feminine icons in masonic contexts at the time.

All these points support the notion that the "secrets" were once discoverable and the search was probably aided by others, once individuals stumbled upon the first clues and expressed sympathy with the notion of tolerance and even sympathy for a now long extinct religion condemned in the Bible. This raises the question as to when the "secrets," which were allegorically lost, became lost in reality.

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Privy to the "Secrets"

The importance given to the Queen of Sheba by early, speculative Freemasons is suggested by the illustrations below. That on the left is the frontispiece to the ‘American Book of Constitutions’, 1792, dedicated to George Washington and drawn and engraved by Seymour (Lennhoff, The Freemasons, opp. p.171) and that on the right is an earlier, though less contextually significant, illustration of the same theme (1760 oil painting entitled, King Solomon Shows Queen Sheba the Plans for the Temple which are Held by His Architect Hiram, (courtesy Deutsches Freimaurer Museum). They depict a tradition in which the queen saw not only the finished Temple, but was privy to its plans (secrets?). The prominence of the tradition is suggested by the context in which Seymour's engraving was used and, in both illustrations, H.K.T. is conspicuous by his absence, with his place in the trinity arguably filled by the queen.

See also: The Harris Frontispiece
(the king (left) is said to be holding a baby!)

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The Brazen Serpent

25° Knight of the Brazen Serpent

Usually only exemplified or conferred in passing to the 30°. The cross is an Egyptian ankh entwined with a serpent. The apron features the Pleiades, the Hyades, Orion and Capella constellations.

Of the regalia in this degree, Jim Tresner, 33°, informs us:

The names on the cordons include the names of many of the gods and goddesses who appear in the ancient vegetation myths, stories which usually centered around a goddess and her lover who must die each year in order for the earth to bring forth a harvest.