Desaguliers' Code

[Tamrin]

Freemasonry and the Hidden Goddess

by William Bond

(Excerpts)

Asherah is a very ancient Goddess, in the ancient Ugaritic Texts she is called, "She Who Gives Birth to the Gods." Which is similar to what Roman Catholics say about the Virgin Mary in calling her, "The Mother of God". Asherah is also called "she who treads on the sea", which is exactly what Jesus Christ did, in the New Testament. In fact scholars have revealed that much of the Old Testament is about a religious war between the followers of the Goddess Asherah and the followers of the God Yahweh. In the end it was the followers of Yahweh who won, and it was they wrote the Bible as we know today.

Even in the New Testament there are Goddess overtones. We today only know about four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Yet before Christianity became a state religion it seem there was about 150 different Gospels. Some of them were about the Goddess Sophia whom it seems searched for her brother/lover Jesus in much the same way as the Egyptian Goddess Isis searched for her murdered lover Osiris. Other Gospels gave a more prominent role to Mary Magdalene and claimed there were female disciples.

When archaeologists excavated Ancient Palestine and the area around it, the Canadian archaeologist John Holiday claims that, "biblical descriptions does not match what is found in the dirt". What came clear from archaeological evidence is that the Hebrew Bible was a very biased and heavily censored version of Jewish History.

The evidence unearthed shows that Goddess worship was commonplace in Israel right up to early Christian times. With large numbers of Goddess statues discovered in the homes of common people. Archaeologists have shown that the Hebrews worshipped the Goddesses Asherah and Astarte as much as the countries around Israel. So is this what this Freemason symbol is trying to tell us? That within the Bible is a hidden Goddess?

[Tamrin]

Little that is new but still better said than not.

Rabbi Solves Mystery of The Divine Name

[Excerpt - N. T. Wrong site - Linked Above]

The pronunciation and meaning of The Name of YHWH has been a mystery for 2000 years. But, Rabbi Mark Sameth of Westchester now claims to have cracked it! And it turns out that God is a hermaphrodite …

“Rabbi Mark Sameth contends in a soon-to-be-published article that the four-letter Hebrew name for God - held by Jewish tradition to be unpronounceable since the year 70 - should actually be read in reverse.

When the four letters are flipped, he says, the new name makes the sounds of the Hebrew words for “he” and “she.”

God thus becomes a dual-gendered deity, bringing together all the male and female energy in the universe, the yin and the yang that have divided the sexes from Adam and Eve to Homer and Marge.

“This is the kind of God I believe in, the kind of God that makes sense to me, in a language that speaks very, very deeply to human aspirations and striving,” Sameth said. “How could God be male and not female?”

[Tamrin]

As well as the tendentious and archaic testimony of the Bible we have more objective and recent evidence of the worship of the Levantine goddess. For instance, from the second century C.E., we find:

THE SYRIAN GODDESS
A TRANSLATION OF LUCIAN'S "DE DEA SYRIA,"

[Sacred Texts - Excerpt - Linked above]

EDITOR'S PREFACE

To the student of oriental religions the Dea Syria is brimful of interest. It describes the cult and worship of the goddess of Northern Syria, Atargatis, at her sacred city, Hierapolis, now Mumbij. The time when Lucian wrote would be the middle of the second century B.C. We do not see any reason to reject the traditional authorship of the treatise: on the contrary, the work seems to reveal the famous satirist at home, taking a natural interest in local memories and institutions, while making, doubtless, mental notes that were to prove of use in the works for which he is best known.

Of the many writers who refer to the Dea Syria, no one dwells upon the fundamental character of the cult at Hierapolis, nor deals with the problem of its historical origins. It is this aspect of inquiry, therefore, with which we chiefly deal in the Introduction and the foot notes. Lucian's description, amplified by the later account of Macrobius, and further illustrated by the local coinage of Hierapolis, reveals the central cult as that of a divine pair. The male god, a form of Hadad, is symbolised by the bull, and is hence both "Lord of Heaven" and "Creator." The female deity is shown by her very name, "Atargatis," to be a form of Ishtar or Astarte. Being mated with the god, whom Lucian calls "Zeus," she is called by him "Hera": but she wears a mural crown, and is symbolised by the lion; and Lucian recognises in her traces of Kybele, Aphrodite, Artemis, and other aspects of the Mother Goddess. An examination of the materials which modern research has made available, shows this cult to be attributable historically to the Hittites, the earliest known masters of the soil. The argument is developed in our Introduction.

[Tamrin]

The Cult of Isis

[Excerpt - UNRV History - Linked Above]

Unlike Mithraism which was confined to a small percentage of "middle class" Roman males, the Isis cult was truly universal. Unlike Mithraism it could be practiced by both men and women, and it was women who perhaps took it up most enthusiastically. Unlike Mithraism it appealed to all classes; the lower classes and slaves were the mainstay of the cult, but as we have seen even those at the very top of the social strata were also adherents. Unlike Mithraism which was mostly confined to the Latin West, Isis was honored in both halves of the empire. Isis was long honored in the Greek East, and penetrated into the Latin West in even barely Romanized areas such as Britain or northwest Gaul. Isis was however a cult of city dwellers; we see little evidence of Isiac cults in rural areas outside of her native Egypt.

There was little danger of the small cult of Mithras, influential though it was, stemming the tide of Christianity and taking over the world. However, the cult of Isis had the numbers and the appeal to mount a serious threat to Christianity. Some scholars assert that the Holy Trinity of Isis, Serapis and Horus were not really defeated - they were merely absorbed into the new Holy Trinity of Christianity. The reverence for Mary among high Christian churches is similar to faith in Isis. We should consider at the very least that many chapels to the Virgin were built purposely on the remains of temples to Isis, and that furthermore the iconography of the Madonna and Christ is quite similar to Isis and Horus.

[Tamrin]

The Goddess of Reason

From Linda Kelly's Women of the French Revolution (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1987, pp.128/9), we read:

At the same time that women on grounds of morals or expediency, were being forced back into private life, a chosen few were offered a symbolic public role. As goddesses of Reason, in the newly instituted state religion of that name, they presided over festivals all over France. The Jacobin government, while denying women the right of political expression, had no objection to placing them on an official pedestal.

In October 1793 The Revolutionary Calendar had been introduced, substituting the date of September 22, 1792, the first day of the Republic, for the beginning of the Christian era. In a formal policy of de-christianisation the names of the saints' days and religious festivals were replaced by purely secular terms; the year was divided into ten new months; the tenth day, Decadi, took the place of Sunday as a day of rest. Churches were desecrated, the words "Death is an eternal sleep" were printed above the entrances to cemeteries. In early November the Bishop of Paris publicly abjured his faith. Notre Dame was taken over as a Temple of Reason, and a festival to inaugurate the new cult was planned for 20 Brumaire (November 10). The Temple required its tutelary deity, a living figure—since a statue might recall the Virgin Mary—who could be changed from festival to festival. the chosen goddesses, it was decreed, were to be chosen among persons "whose character renders beauty respectable and whose severity of morals and manners repulses license". It was an ideal not always realised; festivals of Reason, more often than not, degenerated into saturnalia.

The opening festival took place as planned in Notre Dame. The cathedral had been stripped of its religious ornaments, and a Temple of Philosophy erected in the aisle. The goddess of Reason, a well known actress, Mademoiselle Maillard, dressed in white with a long blue cloak and scarlet cap of liberty, was carried in procession to the Temple and enthroned to the strains of the "Ça ira" and "Marseillaise". "Chaste ceremony, sad, dry and boring," commented Michelet in his Femmes de la Révolution. Years after, in some provincial town, he met a former goddess of Reason, who had taken part in the festivals of 1793, an exemplary matron, chosen for her height and blameless morals. She had never been beautiful, he noted wryly, "and what is more, she squinted."

Parisians Cheering the Goddess of Reason

[Tamrin]

Liberty.

E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.

[Linked Above]

The Goddess of Liberty. On December 10th, 1793, Mlle. Malliard, an actress, was selected to personify the “Goddess of Liberty.” Being brought to Notre Dame, Paris, she was seated on the altar, and lighted a large candle to signify that Liberty was the “light of the world.” (See Louis Blanc: History, ii. 365–367.)

The statue of Liberty, placed over the entrance of the Palais Royal, was modelled from Mme. Tallien.

The Goddess of Reason. (Aug. 10, 1793.) The Goddess of Reason was enthroned by the French Convention at the suggestion of Chaumette; and the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris was desecrated for the purpose. The wife of Momoro the printer was the best of these goddesses. The procession was attended by the municipal officers and national guards, while troops of ballet girls carried torches of truth. Incredible as it may seem, Gobet (the Archbishop of Paris), and nearly all the clergy stripped themselves of their canonicals, and, wearing red nightcaps, joined in this blasphemous mockery. So did Julien of Toulouse, a Calvinistic minister.

“Mrs. Momoro, it is admitted, made one of the best goddesses of Reason, though her teeth were a little defective.”—Carlyle: French Revolution, vol. iii. book v. 4.

[Solomon]

Jul 14, 2008 7:17:21 GMT 10 Tamrin said:

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!)

Even where the third person of the masonic trinity is not overtly feminine, s/he can oft times be found as being somewhat ambiguous as to gender:

Porcelain plate, Chinese, 18th century.
© The Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London. / Photograph by Painton Cowen

W. Kirk MacNulty, Freemasonry: Symbols, Secrets, Significance,
Thames & Hudson Ltd., London, 2006, p.13



Backcover, Rev. Bro. Neville Barker Cryer's, York Mysteries Revealed
The initial are, on the left (statue), H.K.T.; in the middle (W.M.), H.K.S.; and, on the right (statue), H.AB.

[Solomon]

The Lost Goddess of Israel

[Excerpt - Article by Sandra Scham, Archaeology (Archaeological Institute of America),
Volume 58, Number 2, March/April 2005 - Linked Above]

And [the king] set a graven image of Asherah, that he had made, in the house of which the Lord said to David and Solomon his son, "In this House, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all tribes of Israel, will I put my name for ever."
--II Kings 21:7

Asherah is arguably the most important goddess in the Canaanite pantheon. The prototypical mother of gods and humans and consort of the chief god, El, she is also the mistress of the sea and the land, and protector of all living things. We have long known Asherah from the immense library of thirteenth-century cuneiform tablets found in Syria at the site of Ugarit. But there are also more than 40 references to Asherah in the Old Testament. What could she have meant to the people of monotheistic ancient Israel?

A bit too much, apparently, at least according to the authors of the biblical texts, who attack her relentlessly. They praise Asa, king of Judah (911-870 B.C.), for removing his mother Ma'acah from official duties after "she had an abominable image made for Asherah" (I Kings 15.13, II Chronicles 15.6). They condemn the long-reigning Manas'seh of Judah (698-642) for doing "what was evil in the sight of the Lord" in "making an Asherah" (II Kings 21.7). And they trumpet the achievements of Josiah (639-609), including the destruction of offerings made to Asherah at the temple in Jerusalem, the abolition of "the Asherah from the house of the Lord," and demolition of a shrine there in which women "did weaving for Asherah" (II Kings 23). These passages reflect both the worship of Asherah and efforts to stamp out her cult during in the Iron Age. But it was only in the succeeding Persian period, after the fall of Judah in 586 B.C. and the exile in Babylon, that Asherah virtually disappeared.

[Solomon]

Jul 14, 2008 7:01:09 GMT 10 Tamrin said:

(Please read in conjunction with the 'Icons' featured under the Gallery category:
The Masonic Marianne; Called From Labor; Asherah Unveiled;
The Star; Masonry Helping Humanity; and Liberty Enlightening the World)

To avoid distraction, to comment on this thread please do so on the appropriate thread, under Topics.

[/size][/quote]

Be content, my friend Zabud!
The time will soon come when a door will be left open for your reception

In view of the selective nature of membership, the mature responses thus far and despite having been taught to be cautious, I appear to have been too cautious and have accordingly unlocked this thread.

[Tamrin]

Jul 14, 2008 7:12:08 GMT 10 Tamrin said:

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

Given the controversial, dangerous and even heretical nature of Desaguliers' Code, in its day, only those Brethren open to or deemed to be suitable for assistance toward the solution are likely to have found the key. Among those not privy to the "genuine secrets," whisperings of the importance of the "grove" in the Sanctum Sanctorum appear to have led to dreadful confusion rather than enlightenment, as with the illustration below, featuring a literal grove in the deep darkness of the sanctuary, in which the artist either maintained the deceptive veil or himself failed to penetrate it.

Illustration from Robert Macoy, The true masonic guide:
containing elucidation of the fundamental principles of freemasonry, New York, 1861

W. Kirk MacNulty, Freemasonry: Symbols, Secrets, Significance,
Thames & Hudson Ltd., London, 2006, p.191