peculiar religious institutions were organized which the ancients
designated as the MYSTERIES, and which, from the resemblance of their
organization, their objects, and their doctrines, have by masonic writers
been called the "Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity."

Warburton,[9] in giving a definition of what these Mysteries were, says,
"Each of the pagan gods had (besides the public and open) a secret worship
paid unto him, to which none were admitted but those who had been selected
by preparatory ceremonies, called initiation. This secret worship was
termed the Mysteries." I shall now endeavor briefly to trace the
connection between these Mysteries and the institution of Freemasonry; and
to do so, it will be necessary to enter upon some details of the
constitution of those mystic assemblies.



Almost every country of the ancient world had its peculiar Mysteries,
dedicated to the occult worship of some especial and favorite god, and to
the inculcation of a secret doctrine, very different from that which was
taught in the public ceremonial of devotion. Thus in Persia the Mysteries
were dedicated to Mithras, or the Sun; in Egypt, to Isis and Osiris; in
Greece, to Demeter; in Samothracia, to the gods Cabiri, the Mighty Ones;
in Syria, to Dionysus; while in the more northern nations of Europe, such
as Gaul and Britain, the initiations were dedicated to their peculiar
deities, and were celebrated under the general name of the Druidical
rites. But no matter where or how instituted, whether ostensibly in honor
of the effeminate Adonis, the favorite of Venus, or of the implacable
Odin, the Scandinavian god of war and carnage; whether dedicated to
Demeter, the type of the earth, or to Mithras, the symbol of all that
fructifies that earth,--the great object and design of the secret