Cross).[301] These two degrees now constitute the Royal
Order of Scotland, and it seems not improbable that in reality they were
brought to Scotland by the Templars. Thus, according to one of the early
writers on Freemasonry, the degree of the Rose-Croix originated with the
Templars in Palestine as early as 1188[302]; whilst the Eastern origin
of the word Heredom, supposed to derive from a mythical mountain on an
island south of the Hebrides[303] where the Culdees practised their
rites, is indicated by another eighteenth-century writer, who traces it
to a Jewish source.[304] In this same year of 1314 Robert Bruce is said
to have united the Templars and the Royal Order of H.R.M. with the
guilds of working masons, who had also fought in his army, at the famous
Lodge of Kilwinning, founded in 1286,[305] which now added to its name
that of Heredom and became the chief seat of the Order.[306] Scotland
was essentially a home of operative masonry, and, in view of the
Templar's prowess in the art of building, what more natural than that
the two bodies should enter into an alliance? Already in England the
Temple is said between 1155 and 1199 to have administered the
Craft.[307] It is thus at Heredom of Kilwinning, "the Holy House of
Masonry"--"Mother Kilwinning," as it is still known to Freemasons--that
a speculative element of a fresh kind may have found its way into the
lodges. Is it not here, then, that we may see that "fruitful union
between the professional guild of mediaeval masons and a secret group of
philosophical Adepts" alluded to by Count Goblet d'Aviella and described
by Mr. Waite in the following words:

The mystery of the building guilds--whatever it may be held to have
been--was that of a simple, unpolished, pious, and utilitarian
device; and this daughter of Nature, in the absence of all
intention on her own part, underwent, or was coerced into one of
the strangest marriages which has been celebrated in occult
history. It so happened that her particular form and figure lent
itself to such a union, etc.[308]?

Mr. Waite with his usual vagueness does not explain when and where this
marriage took place, but the account would certainly apply to the
alliance between the Templars and Scottish guilds of working masons,
which, as we have seen, is admitted by masonic authorities, and presents
exactly the conditions described, the Templars being peculiarly fitted
by their initiation int