In reviewing what has been said on this subject, it will at once be perceived that the essence of the ancient rite consisted in making the circumambulation around the altar, from the east to the south, from the south to the west, thence to the north, and to the east again.

Now, in this the masonic rite of circumambulation strictly agrees with the ancient one.

But this circuit by the right hand, it is admitted, was done as a representation of the sun’s motion.  It was a symbol of the sun’s apparent course around the earth.

And so, then, here again we have in Masonry that old and often-repeated allusion to sun-worship, which has already been seen in the officers of a lodge, and in the point within a circle.  And as the circumambulation is made around the lodge, just as the sun was supposed to move around the earth, we are brought back to the original symbolism with which we commenced—­that the lodge is a symbol of the world.

XXII.

The Rite of Intrusting, and the Symbolism of Light.

The rite of intrusting, to which we are now to direct our attention, will supply us with many important and interesting symbols.

There is an important period in the ceremony of masonic initiation, when the candidate is about to receive a full communication of the mysteries through which he has passed, and to which the trials and labors which he has undergone can only entitle him.  This ceremony is technically called the “rite of intrusting,” because it is then that the aspirant begins to be intrusted with that for the possession of which he was seeking.[95] It is equivalent to what, in the ancient Mysteries, was called the “autopsy,” [96] or the seeing of what only the initiated were permitted to behold.

This rite of intrusting is, of course, divided into several parts or periods; for the aporreta, or secret things of Masonry, are not to be given at once, but in gradual progression.  It begins, however, with the communication of LIGHT, which, although but a preparation for the development of the mysteries which are to follow, must be considered as one of the most important symbols in the whole science of masonic symbolism.  So important, indeed, is it, and so much does it pervade with its influence and its relations the whole masonic system, that Freemasonry itself anciently received, among other appellations, that of Lux, or Light, to signify that it is to be regarded as that sublime doctrine of Divine Truth by which the path of him who has attained it is to be illuminated in his pilgrimage of life.

The Hebrew cosmogonist commences his description of the creation by the declaration that “God said, Let there be light, and there was light”—­a phrase which, in the more emphatic form that it has received in the original language of “Be light, and light was,” [97] is said to have won the praise, for its sublimity, of the greatest of Grecian critics.  “The singularly emphatic summons,” says a profound modern writer,[98] “by which light is called into existence, is probably owing to the preeminent utility and glory of that element, together with its mysterious nature, which made it seem as