other kinds of magic, he composed this celebrated tale, hitherto so little understood, to expose the magic of theurgy. It is, as we said, & philosophic allegory, delivered in the adventures of Psyche, or the soul, whose various labours and traverses in this progress, are all represented as the effects of her indiscreet passion for that species of magic called Theurgy.

To understand this, we must observe, that the enthusiastic Platonists, in their pursuit of the Supreme Good, the union with the Deity, made the completion and perfection of it to consist in the theurgic vision of the Autopton Aglama or the self-seen image, that is, seen by the splendour of its own light. Now the story tells us, there were three sisters, the youngest of whom was called Psyche; by which we are to understand, the three precipitate souls, the sensitive, the animal, and the rational; or, in other words, sense, appetite, and reason: that the beauty of Psyche was so divine, that men forsook the altars of the gods to follow and worship her according to the ancient aphorism.

Nullum Numen abest, si sit Prudentia.

No Deity is wanting, if Prudence is consulted.

She is contracted to, and possesses the celestial Cupid or divine love, invisibly. In the mean time her sisters, envious of her superior enjoyments, take advantage of the god's invisibility to perplex her with a thousand doubts and scruples, which end in exciting her curiosity to get a sight of her lover. By which the author seems to insinuate that they are the irregular passions and appetites which stir up men's curiosity to this species of magic, the theurgic vision. Psyche is deluded by them, and against the express injunction of the god who calls it sacrilega curiositas, attempts this forbidden sight. She succeeds, and is undone. Divine love forsakes her: the scenes of pleasure vanish: and she finds herself forlorn and abandoned; surrounded by miseries, and persued with the vengeance of Heaven. In this distress she comes to the temples of Ceres and Juno, and seeks protection of those deities; by which is meant, the having recourse to their mysteries, against the evils and disasters of life; as is plainly marked by the reason given for her application:-" Not willing to omit any even doubtful means of bettering my condition." They both deny admittance to her; intimating that the purer mysteries discouraged all kind of magic, even the most specious. In a word, after a long and severe repentance and penance, in which the author seems to have shadowed the trials and labours undergone by the aspirants to the mys teries, she is pardoned and restored to the favour of Heaven. She is put again into possession of Divine Love, and rewarded with the prerogative of immortality.

There are many other circumstances in this fine allegory equally serving to the end here explained; as there are others which allude to divers beautiful platonic notions, foreign to the present discourse. It is enough that we have pointed to its chief and peculiar purpose; which it was impossible to see while the nature and design of the whole fable lay undiscovered.

Before I totally dismiss this matter it may not be improper to observe,

that both Virgil and Apuleius have represented the genuine mysteries, as rites of perfect sanctity and purity; and recommended only such to their countrymen; while they expose impure and impious rites to the public aversion; for it was their purpose to stigmatize the reigning corruptions and to recommend the ancient sanctity. On the contrary, a man attached by his office to the recommendation of the mysteries, as then practised, was to do the best he could, when deprived of the benefit of this distinction; and was to endeavour to give fair colours to the foulest things. This was the case of Jamblichus. His friend Porphyry had some scruples on this head. He doubts whether those rites could come from the gods, which admitted such a mixture of lewdness and impurity. Such a mixture Jamblichus confesses, but at the same time endeavours to account for their divine original, by showing that they are only the emblems of natural truths, or a kind of moral purgation of the inordinate passions.

Hitherto we have considered the legislator's care in perpetuating the doctrine of a future state. And if I have been longer than ordinary on this head, my excuse is, that the topic was new, and the doctrine itself, which is the main subject of the present inquiry, much interested in it.

Theurgy.

Theürgy is compounded of Theos, God, and ergon, work, and signifies magic operating by divine or celestial means, or the power of doing extraordinary and supernatural things by lawful means, as prayer, invocation of God, etc., called by some white magic.-Bailey.

"The wisest of the pagan world, and their greatest philosophers, held Theürgic magic in the highest esteem. Theurgy was, according to them, a divine art, which served only to advance the mind of man to the highest perfection, and render the soul more pure; and they who by means of this magic had the happiness to arrive at what they called Autopsia, or Intuition, a state wherein they enjoyed intimate intercourse with the gods, believed themselves invested with all their power, and were persuaded that nothing to them was impossible. Towards this state of perfection all those aspired who made profession of that sort of magic; but then it laid them under severe regulations. None could be priest of this order but a man of unblemished morals, and all who joined with him in his operations were bound to strict purity; they were not allowed to have any commerce with women; to eat any kind of animal food, nor to defile themselves by the touch of a dead body. The philosophers, and persons of the greatest virtue, thought it their honour to be initiated into the mysteries of this sort of magic."-Mayo's Myth. v. 1. p. 277.

Thomas Taylor, in a note to his translation of Jamblichus, observes: "This art of divine works is called theurgy, in which Pythagoras was initiated among the Syrians, as we are informed by Jamblichus in his life of that philosopher. Proclus was also skilled in this art, as may be seen in his life by Marinus. Psellas, in his MS. treatise on Demons,

!

says, that magic formed the last part of the sacerdotal science;' in which place by magic he doubtless means that kind of it which is denominated theurgy. And that theurgy was employed by the ancients in their mysteries, I have fully proved in my treatise on the Eleusinian and Bacchic mysteries. This theurgy, is doubtless the same as the magic of Zoroaster, which Plato in his first Alcibiades says, consisted in the worship of the gods."

"The emperor Julian alludes to this theurgical art, in the following extracts from his Arguments against the Christians, preserved by Cyril:

For the inspiration which arrives to men from the gods is rare, and exists but in a few. Nor is it easy for every man to partake of this, nor at every time. It has ceased among the Hebrews, nor is it preserved to the present time among the Egyptians. Spontaneous oracles, also, are seen to yield to temporal periods. This, however, our philanthropic lord and father Jupiter understanding, that we might not be entirely deprived of communion with the gods, has given us observation through sacred arts, by which we have at hand sufficient assistance.""-(p. 343, 347.)

This art was professed by the early masons, as appears by an exami nation of one of the brotherhood of King Henry VI. It is, as before observed, a fundamental doctrine of the Roman Catholic church.

The priests of Egypt, Persia, India, etc., pretended to bind the gods to their idols, and to make them descend from heaven at their pleasure; they threatened the sun and moon to reveal the secret mysteries, to shake the heavens, etc." (Eusebius, Prep. Evang. p. 198, and Jamb. do Myst. Egypt.-See Ruins, p. 235.)

CHAPTER IV.

A SKETCH OF THE LIFE AND DOCTRINES OF PYTHAGORAS, THE FOUNDER OF THE SECT OF ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS THAT BORE HIS NAME. ALSO THE DOCTRINES AND CUSTOMS OF THE DRUIDS, THE PRIESTS OF THE ANCIENT BRITONS.

Notwithstanding Pythagoras died, at least fifteen hundred years before the institution of the Freemasons' society, he is hailed by the fraternity as a brother mason. Both Cross and Webb, in treating of masonic emblems, among which they include a diagram of the forty-seventh problem of Euclid, hold the following language:

"This was an invention of our ancient friend and brother, the great Pythagoras, who, in his travels through Asia, Africa, and Europe, was initiated into several orders of priesthood, and raised to the sublime degree of master-mason. This wise philosopher enriched his mind abundantly in a general knowledge of things, and more especially in geometry or masonry; on this subject he drew out many problems and theorems," etc.

The appellation of grandfather of freemasons would perhaps apply much more appropriately to Pythagoras, than that of brother; for he probably was the father of Druidism, and this was the father of the masonic society; which it made use of as a mere cloak to cover its religious observances, with no special regard to the improvement of the craft. The idea however of a connection between Pythagoras and masonry, must have been handed down in tradition by the old Druidical masons; which is a strong evidence, that the secrets and ceremonies of masonry are derived from the ancient Egyptian mysteries through the Pythagorean school.

Upon this supposition, of the truth of which I have no doubt, it becomes important to give some account of this celebrated philosopher, whose memory is so deservedly venerated by the masonic order.

The best arranged account of his life and doctrines, that I have met with, is contained in Rees's Cyclopedia; I therefore make the following abstract from that work.

Pythagoras was of Samos, the son of a lapidary, and the pupil of Pherecydes, and flourished, says Bayle, about five hundred years before Christ, in the time of Tarquin, the last king of Rome, and not in Numa's

time, as many authors have supposed.-(See Cicero Tus. Ques. lib. iv. cap. 1.

Posterity has been very liberal to this philosopher, in bestowing upon him all such inventions as others had neglected to claim, particularly in music; for there is scarcely any part of it, as a science, with which he has not been invested by his generous followers in biography.

Musical ratios have been assigned to him, with the method of determining the gravity or acuteness of sounds by the greater or less degree of velocity in the vibration of strings; the addition of an eighth to the lyre (Pliny, lib. ii. cap. 2); the harmony of the spheres (Plato); and the Greek musical notation (Boethius). His right, indeed, to some of these discoveries has been disputed by several authors, who have given them to others with as little reason, perhaps, as they have been before bestowed upon him.

After musical ratios were discovered and reduced to numbers, they were made, by Pythagoras and his followers, the type of order and just proportion in all things; hence virtue, friendship, good government, celestial motion, the human soul, and God himself were harmony.

This discovery gave birth to various species of music, far more strange and inconceivable than chromatic and enharmonic; such as divine music, mundane music, elementary music, and many other divisions and sub-divisions, upon which Zarlino, Kircher, and almost all the old writers, never fail to expatiate with wonderful complacence.* It is perhaps, equally to the credit and advantage of music and philosophy, that they have long descended from these heights, and taken their proper and separate stations upon earth; that we no longer admit of music that cannot be heard, or of philosophy that cannot be understood.

Master Thomas Mace, author of a most delectable book, called "Music's Monument," would have been an excellent Pythagorean; for he maintains that the mystery of the Trinity is perspicuously made plain by the connection of the three harmonical concords, 1, 3, 5; that music and divinity are nearly allied; and that the contemplation of concord and discord, of the nature of the octave and unison, will so strengthen a man's faith, "that he shall never after degenerate into that gross subbeastical sin of atheism."

Pythagoras is said by the writers of his life, to have regarded music as something celestial and divine, and to have had such an opinion of its power over the human affections, that according to the Egyptian system, he ordered his disciples to be waked every morning, and lulled to sleep every night, by sweet sounds. He likewise considered it as greatly conducive to health, and made use of it in disorders of the body, as well as in those of the mind. His biographers pretend to tell us what

*The terms sacred and profane music, are still retained, appropriating grave and plaintive tones to the former, and gay and lively to the latter. On this account, it is reported that Wesley, the founder of the Methodist sect, declared that the Devil should not have all the best tunes, and accordingly, he introduced into his church service the most sprightly airs, which are still in use among his followers, having, it is said, the most happy effect.-Edit.