We would be unworthy the name of Freemasons did we, because comparatively small in numbers, fear to do that which was right, on account of the power and strength of the Grand Lodge perpetrating a gross injustice.

We shall be glad of the support of our sister Grand Lodges, but whether such support is received or not can make no difference in the stand we have taken in the defence of our position as a sovereign Grand Lodge.

We can rest assured that in the end right must prevail.

The appointment of a committee to consider the question of a Masonic Home was then referred to as was also the removal from this jurisdiction of R. W. Bro. Kerr, one of the Grand Chaplains of this Lodge. The Grand Master also recommended a memorial page for the lamented dead, who during the past twelve month have shaken off this earthly clay to live forevernamely, R. W. Bros. Massie, of Bedford, and McMinn, of Montreal; and concluded by referring to the usual attacks made on Freemasonry by its enemies, and in returning the gavel asked that his successor might have the same corpial assistance that he had always received.--Masonic News.

Manitoba.

THE Grand Lodge of Manitoba met in Winnipeg on Feb. 9. Out of the 30 chartered Lodges 26 were represented at the opening, as were also two of the eight Lodges working under dispensation. The address of Grand Master Pearson detailed his official acts the granting of dispensations for seven new Lodges, and the appointment of Representatives near foreign Grand Bodies. England has at last exchanged Representative, Ireland being the only English speaking Grant Body that is not represented near Manitoba. The G.M. refers to the amicable settlement of the disputed territory (Rat Portage) case with the G. L. of Canada, and recommends the recognition of the G. L, of Peru. The fraterna dead of sister Jurisdictions are remembered, the late P.G.M. Gurney, of Illinois, receiving special mention. Other matters of local interest were discussed in M. W. Bro. Pearson's well-known, business-like

manner.

The address is conceded to have been the best that has yet eminated from the Grand East of Manitoba, and elicited very complimentary expressions from all present.

Every Lodge made returns, and with only one exception, had paid dues.— Toronto Freemason.

BOOK NOTICES.

THE New Princeton (A. C. Armstrong & Son, publishers,) for March has a very interesting table of contents-Napoleon Bonaparte; Some Political and Social Aspects of the Tariff; of the Study of Politics; Victor Hugo; Geo. Meredi h, etc. We place the New Princeton first in our estimate of the Reviews and Quarterlies. It is always broad and fair and thorough in its treatment of the vital questions of the day.

S.

Now, the chief burden of the mysteries, i. e., the Cabbalah, laying concealed in the Hebrew books, was that of all the old nations in common, under various modes of symbolic or allegorical expression; and the Hebrew learning is said to have been derived from Chaldea, first, indirectly, through Egypt, and secondly, directly, at the time of the Captivity: - though there seems to be good ground for tracing it, for its first appearance on the continent of Asia, to Æthiopia, stretching as it did from the mouth of the Nile to that of the Euphrates. The original wisdom must have been Semitic, as it seems to the writer,-but this said, then handed down through the ages, the clearest, best and most conclusive exhibits of the fundamental doctrines of the Cabbalah appear at last to have been gathered together and concentrated in these Hebrew books. It is from these books that we can recover guiding clews, by means of which we can decipher the occulted wisdom of other races; and it is proposed to take up such a clew in this article, viz., the 318 trained men of Abraham, by means of which it may be proven from the Grecian Mysteries that the Copernican system was then known, and the earth was taught to be a sphere with rotation on its axis. If such was the containment of the Cabbalah, it was and is a treasure-house of monumented wisdom.

Vol. 67.-No. 3.-I.

129

The chief scientific (contrasted with a possible learning of the phenomenal, as of animal magnetism and of magic) burden of the mysteries consisted of geometry, with applied mathematics, or number applications, especially worked to set forth astronomy;—and in a more phenomenal way, astrology. This kind of knowledge was secreted as sacred, and was confined to the sacerdotal class. In Egypt, society was divided into seven classes, headed by (1), the sacerdotal, to which the monarch belonged, and was subject;-he, in the order of the priesthood, holding the place of prophet, and wearing, as his peculiar dress, the spotted skin of the leopard, and (2), the military. To this first caste belonged all science and constructive arts, with the origins and first significations of weights and

measures.

Volney says:

"Clemens Alexandrinus has transmitted to us (Stromat. lib. vi.) a curious detail of the forty-two volumes which were borne in the procession of Isis. 'The leader,' said he, or chanter, carries one of the symbolic instruments of music, and two of the books of Mercury, one containing the hymns of the gods, the other the list of the kings. Next to him the horoscope (calculator of time) carries a palm and a dial, symbols of astrology; he must know by heart the four books of Mercury which treat of astrology-the first on the order of the planets, the second on the rising of the sun and moon, and the last two on the rising and aspect of the stars. Then comes the sacred writer, with feathers on his head, and a book in his hand, together with ink and a reed to write with. He must be versed in hieroglyphics, must understand the description of the universe, the course of the sun, moon and planets; be acquainted with the division of Egypt (into 36 nomes), with the course of the Nile, with instruments, measures, sacred ornaments, and holy places, etc. Next comes the stole-bearer, carrying the cubit of justice, or measure of the Nile, and a chalice for libations; ten volumes treat of the sacrifices, hymns, prayers, offerings, ceremonies, festivals. Lastly arrives the prophet, bearing in his bosom, and exposed to view, a pitcher; he is followed by persons carrying loaves of bread. This prophet, as president of the mysteries, learns ten (other) sacred volumes concerning the laws, the gods, and the discipline of the priests, etc. Now, there are in all forty-two volumes, thirty-six of which are learned by these personages, and the remaining six are reserved for the pastophores; they treat of medicine, the construction of the human body, diseases, remedies, instruments,'" etc.

That a part of their astronomical learning was the heliocentric, or our Copernican system, we hope to show quite conclusively; and if we do, it will only be in accordance with hints that they had such knowledge, quite fully set forth by Rawlinson in his Herodotus, New York Edition, 1872, Vol. 2, page 277. He says:

"That the Greeks should have been indebted to Egypt for their early lessons in science is not surprising, since it is known, in those days, to have taken the lead in all philosophical pursuits. If Plato ascribes the invention of geometry to Thoth; if Iamblichus says it was known in Egypt during the reign of the gods; and if Manetho attributes a knowledge of science and

literature to the earliest kings; these merely argue that such pursuits were reputed to be of very remote date there. The practical result of their knowledge had sufficiently proved the great advancement made by them ages before the Greeks were in a condition to study, or search after science.It was in Egypt that the Israelites obtained that knowledge which enabled them to measure and divide the land.' * * * It was doubtless from Egypt that Thales and his followers' derived the fact of the moon receiving its light from the sun,' which Anacreon has introduced into a drinking song (Ode 19). The same was the belief of Aristarchus at a later time, and Macrobius says lunam, quae luce propriâ caret, et de sole mutuatur.' ** No one will for a moment imagine that the wisest of the Greeks went to study in Egypt for any other reason than because it was there that the greatest discoveries were to be learnt; and that Pythagoras and his followers, suggested, from no previous experience, the theory (we now call Copernican) of the sun being the center of our system; or the obliquity of the ecliptic, or the moon's borrowed light, or the proof of the milky way being a collection of stars, derived from the fact that the earth would otherwise intercept the light if derived from the sun, taught by Democritus and by Anaxagoras, according to Aristotle, the former of whom studied astronomy for five years in Egypt, and mentions himself as a disciple of the priests of Egypt, and of the Magi, having also been in Persia and at Babylon. The same may be said of the principle by which the heavenly bodies were attracted to a center, and impelled in their order, the theory of eclipses and the proofs of the earth being round. * These and many other notions were doubtless borrowed from Egypt, to which the Greeks chiefly resorted, or from the current opinion of the Egyptians and Babylonians,' the astronomers of those days. ** This heliocentric system was finally revived in Europe by Copernicus after having been for ages lost to the world."

But after all it was not lost,-it slept,-treasured up in the Hebrew scrolls, and in the Grecian and other mysteries, as Cabbalah. Our proofs are to be taken from the treatise on the "Cessation of the Oracles," and that of the "Apparent Face in the Orb of the Moon," in the translation of Plutarch's Morals, by C. W. King, of Cambridge College, England, -a translation of very great worth by reason of its extreme literalness;-and the discovery of such proofs in the text will serve to show admirably how skilfully the exposition of the very mysteries therein under discussion could be made in the text of the discussion itself, while yet so concealed in that very open plain text as to have evaded recognition. The disclosure and the concealment, is a marvel of cunning, and but one of the modes for such purposes, resorted to agreeably to the art and genius of each nation.

But, to get at a base for the exhibition of our proofs, we must refer to some facts of geometry belonging to the Hebrew sacred books:

(1). The god-word Elohim, or Alhim, indicated the numerical enunciation of what is called the pi value, or relation of circumference to diameter of a circle,-or the ratio of 31415 to One,—by

the placement of the letters of the name upon the bounds of a circle, as has already been stated.

(2). The god-word Jehovah, was merely a variant on the same ratio in another form of value, viz., circumference 355 to 113 diameter. (3). There was another great god-word, viz., Shaddai, . The first of these letters had the value of 300, the second of 4, and the third of 10, the sum of which is 314,-which is an abbreviation of the pi value of Alhim, or 314 to One. But a dot will be observed in the bosom of the second letter,-this was called the dagesh sign, which denoted that the letter was to be doubled;-therefore, with the doubling of the value of this letter, or D, or 4, we will have for the sum of the letters of the word, 318 in place of 314. And this involves a curious feature. We, in our system, are satisfied to make use of but one form of expression for the numerical ratio of the elements of the circle, viz., its value of circumference to a diameter of One. But those old wise ones took also into the expression of definition the alternative of this, viz., for a circumference of One the diameter will be 318. Thus the word Shaddai was chosen for a god-name, related to that of Alhim and that of Jehovah, because it had the function of setting forth, by this peculiarity of its number values, the correlation of these variant forms of value of the same ratio of pi, viz., 314 to One, and One to 318.

And right here the writer would call attention to a fact of much interest and import in this connection. In a correspondence, he asked Madame H. P. Blavatsky, the authoress of Isis Unveiled, whether there were any vestiges in the ancient Hindu religious works, either written or in architecture, of the use of this same geometrical relation. In reply, among other matters of great learning and interest, she says:

31415) are found as they are given above, around the chakra (circle) painted on the oldest temples, above the door, in the sign of Vishnu, or inside the six pointed star, thus: -reading the geometrical figures from left toright, and these producing the triangle, 3, the straight line, 1, the square, 4, the straight line, 1, and the five-pointed star, 5, in order, or together the 31415," which plainly must have had the object of this numerical reading, because they are placed at once on the