eremonies which assimilated these rites to Freemasonry, the
_aphanism_, which was the disappearance or death; the _pastos_, the couch,
coffin, or grave; the _euresis_, or the discovery of the body; and the
_autopsy_, or full sight of everything, that is, the complete
communication of the secrets. The candidate was here called an _epopt_, or
eye-witness, because nothing was now hidden from him; and hence he may be
compared to the Master Mason, of whom Hutchinson says that "he has
discovered the knowledge of God and his salvation, and been redeemed from
the death of sin and the sepulchre of pollution and unrighteousness."

VI.

The Dionysiac Artificers.

After this general view of the religious Mysteries of the ancient world,
let us now proceed to a closer examination of those which are more
intimately connected with the history of Freemasonry, and whose influence
is, to this day, most evidently felt in its organization.

Of all the pagan Mysteries instituted by the ancients none were more
extensively diffused than those of the Grecian god Dionysus. They were
established in Greece, Rome, Syria, and all Asia Minor. Among the Greeks,
and still more among the Romans, the rites celebrated on the Dionysiac
festival were, it must be confessed, of a dissolute and licentious
character.[26] But in Asia they assumed a different form. There, as
elsewhere, the legend (for it has already been said that each Mystery had
its legend) recounted, and the ceremonies represented, the murder of
Dionysus by the Titans. The secret doctrine, too, among the Asiatics, was
not different from that among the western nations, but there was something
peculiar in the organization of the system. The Mysteries of Dionysus in
Syria, more especially, were not simply of a theological character. There
the disciples joined to the indulgence in their speculative and secret
opinions as to the unity of God and the immortality of the soul, which
were common to all the Mysteries, the practice of an operative and
architectural art, and occupied themselves as well in the construction of
temples and public buildings as in the pursuit of divine truth.

I can account for the greater purity of these Syrian rites only by
adopting the ingenious theory of Thirwall,[27] that all the Mysteries
"were the remains of a worship which preceded the rise of the Hellenic
mythology, and its attendant rites, grounded on a view of nature less
fanciful, more earnest, and be