Albert Mackey

“ A letter of the English alphabet can scarcely be considered an appropriate symbol of an institution which dates its organization and refers its primitive history to a period long anterior to the origin of that language. Such a symbol is deficient in the two elements of antiquity and universality which should characterize every masonic symbol. There can, therefore, be no doubt that, in its present form, it is a corruption of the old Hebrew symbol, the letter yod, by which the sacred name was often expressed. ”

“ The triangle has, in all ages and in all religions, been deemed a symbol of Deity.
The Egyptians, the Greeks, and the other nations of antiquity, considered this figure, with its three sides, as a symbol of the creative energy displayed in the active and passive, or male and female, principles, and their product, the world; the Christians referred it to their dogma of the trinity as a manifestation of the Supreme God; and the Jews and the primitive masons to the three periods of existence included in the signification of the tetragrammaton--the past, the present, and the future. ”

“ The symbol of universal nature among the Egyptians was the right-angled triangle, of which the perpendicular side represented Osiris, or the male principle; the base, Isis, or the female principle; and the hypothenuse, their offspring, Horus, or the world emanating from the union of both principles. ”

“ For, taking the word sex, not in its ordinary and colloquial signification, as denoting the indication of a particular physical organization, but in that purely philosophical one which alone can be used in such a connection, and which simply signifies the mere manifestation of a power, it is not to be denied that the Supreme Being must possess in himself, and in himself alone, both a generative and a prolific power. ”

“ They all taught that God, the Creator, was both male and female.
Now, this theory is undoubtedly unobjectionable on the score of orthodoxy, if we view it in the spiritual sense, in which its first propounders must necessarily have intended it to be presented to the mind, and not in the gross, sensual meaning in which it was subsequently received. ”

“ This figure was called by Pythagoras the tetractys--a word equivalent in signification to the tetragrammaton; and it was deemed so sacred that on it the oath of secrecy and fidelity was administered to the aspirants in the Pythagorean rites. [10]
Among the Scandinavians, as among the Jewish Cabalists, the Supreme God who was made known in their mysteries had twelve names, of which the principal and most sacred one was Alfader, the Universal Father. ”

“ The frontispiece is a coarsely executed wood cut, divided into six compartments, and representing the six days of the creation. The Father is, in each compartment, pictured as an aged man engaged in his creative task.↑ Christian Iconography, Millington's trans., vol. i. p. 59.↑ The triangle, or delta, is the symbol of Deity for this reason. In geometry a single line cannot represent a perfect figure; neither can two lines; three lines, however, constitute the triangle or first perfect and demonstrable figure. ”

“ In fact, they may all be included in the one great Hermaphrodite, the [Greek: a) r (r) enothêlys] who combines in his nature all the elements of production, and who continues to support the vast creation which originally proceeded from his will."--RUSSELL'S Connection, i. p. 402.↑ It is a tradition that it was pronounced in the following seven different ways by the patriarchs, from Methuselah to David, viz.: Juha, Jeva, Jova, Jevo, Jeveh, Johe, and Jehovah. ”

“ And this train of thought is eminently applicable to the admission of the name into the system of Masonry. With us, the name of God, however expressed, is a symbol of DIVINE TRUTH, which it should be the incessant labor of a Mason to seek.
Footnotes ↑ From the Greek [Greek: tetra\s] , four, and [Greek: gra/mma] , letter, because it is composed of four Hebrew letters. Brande thus defines it: "Among several ancient nations, the name of the mystic number four, which was often symbolized to represent the Deity, whose name was expressed by four letters." ”