version of this tradition, the first Cabala of the Jews, in no
way incompatible with Christianity, descending from Moses, David and
Solomon to the Essenes and the more enlightened Jews; and thirdly, the
perverted Cabala, mingled by the Rabbis with magic, barbaric
superstitions, and--after the death of Christ--with anti-Christian
legends.

Whatever Cabalistic elements were introduced into Craft Masonry at the
time of the Crusades appear to have belonged to the second of these
traditions, the unperverted Cabala of the Jews, known to the Essenes.
There are, in fact, striking resemblances betwen Freemasonry and
Essenism--degrees of initiation, oaths of secrecy, the wearing of the
apron, and a certain masonic sign; whilst to the Sabeist traditions of
the Essenes may perhaps be traced the solar and stellar symbolism of the
lodges.[294] The Hiramic legend may have belonged to the same tradition.

The Templar Tradition

If then no documentary evidence can be brought forward to show that
either the Solomonic legend or any traces of Judaic symbolism and
traditions existed either in the monuments of the period or in the
ritual of the masons before the fourteenth century, it is surely
reasonable to recognize the plausibility of the contention put forward
by a great number of masonic writers--particularly on the
Continent--that the Judaic elements penetrated into Masonry by means of
the Templars.[295] The Templars, as we have already seen, had taken
their name from the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. What then more
likely than that during the time they had lived there they had learnt
the Rabbinical legends connected with the Temple? According to George
Sand, who was deeply versed in the history of secret societies, the
Hiramic legend was adopted by the Templars as symbolic of the
destruction of their Order. "They wept over their impotence in the
person of Hiram. The word lost and recovered is their empire...."[296]
The Freemason Ragon likewise declares that the catastrophe they lamented
was the catastrophe that destroyed their Order.[297] Further, the Grand
Master whose fate they deplored was Jacques du Molay. Here then we have
two bodies in France at the same period, the Templars and the
_compagnonnages_, both possessing a legend concerning the Temple of
Solomon and both mourning a Maitre Jacques who had been barbarously put
to death. If we accept the possibility that the Hiramic legend existed
amongst the masons before th