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