In contradistinction to Speculative Masonry, therefore, it is said to be engaged in the construction of a material temple.

ORAL LAW.  The oral law among the Jews was the commentary on and the interpretation of the written contained in the Pentateuch; and the tradition is, that it was delivered to Moses at the same time, accompanied by the divine command, “Thou shalt not divulge the words which I have said to thee out of my mouth.”  The oral law was, therefore, never intrusted to books; but being preserved in the memories of the judges, prophets, priests, and wise men, was handed down from one to the other through a long succession of ages.  But after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans under Adrian, A.D. 135, and the final dispersion of the Jews, fears being entertained that the oral law would be lost, it was then committed to writing, and now constitutes the text of the Talmud.

ORMUZD.  Worshipped by the disciples of Zoroaster as the principle of good, and symbolized by light.  See Ahriman.

OSIRIS.  The chief god of the ancient Egyptians, and worshipped as a symbol of the sun, and more philosophically as the male or generative principle.  Isis, his wife, was the female or prolific principle; and Horus, their child, was matter, or the world—­the product of the two principles.

OSIRIS, MYSTERIES OF.  The Osirian Mysteries consisted in a scenic representation of the murder of Osiris by Typhon, the subsequent recovery of his mutilated body by Isis, and his deification, or restoration to immortal life.

OVAL TEMPLES.  Temples of an oval form were representations of the mundane egg, a symbol of the world.

P

PALM TREE.  In its secondary sense the palm tree is a symbol of victory; but in its primary signification it is a symbol of the victory over death, that is, immortality.

PARABLE.  A narrative in which one thing is compared with another.  It is in principle the same as a symbol or an allegory.

PARALLEL LINES.  The lines touching the circle in the symbol of the point within a circle.  They are said to represent St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist; but they really refer to the solstitial points Cancer and Capricorn, in the zodiac.

PASTOS. (From the Greek [Greek:  pasto\s], a nuptial couch.) The coffin or grave which contained the body of the god or hero whose death was scenically represented in the ancient Mysteries.

It is the analogue of the grave in the third degree of Masonry.

PELASGIAN RELIGION.  The Pelasgians were the oldest if not the aboriginal inhabitants of Greece.  Their religion differed from that of the Hellenes who succeeded them in being less poetical, less mythical, and more abstract.  We know little of their religious worship, except by conjecture; but we may suppose it resembled in some respects the doctrines of the Primitive Freemasonry.  Creuzer thinks that the Pelasgians were either a nation of priests or a nation ruled by priests.