THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON THE KING
is spontaneously plunged into a surging mill-race of classical
deities and heroes, many of whom thrust themselves boister-
ously upon him without rhyme or reason.
Ushered as it were into a Judgment Hall in which the law
expounded to him is not only entirely unknown but is written
in a language which he cannot even read, he is cross-questioned
in a foreign tongue and judged in words which at present
convey not a symptom of sense tohim. As the Rituals pro-
ceed it might be expected that these difficulties would gradually
lessen, but this is far from being the case; for, as we have
seen, the complexities already involved by the introduction of
Ancient Egyptian deities, concerning whom it is probable the
candidate has but little knowledge, are further heightened by
a general intrusion on the part of Hebrew, Christian, Mace-
donian and Phrygian gods, angels and demons, and a profuse
scattering of symbols; which, unitedly, are apt either so to
bewilder the candidate that he leaves the temple with an
impression that the whole ritual is a huge joke, a kind of
buffoonish carnival of Gods which in the sane can only
provoke laughter; or, on account of it being so utterly in-
comprehensible
to him, his ignorance makes him feel that it is so
vastly beyond him and above his own simple standard of know-
ledge, that all that he can do is to bow down before those who
possess such an exalted language, concerning even the words
and alphabet of which he can get no grasp or measure.
The result of this obscurity naturally is that in both cases
the Rituals fail to initiate—in the first case they, not being
understood, are jeered at; in the second they, though equally
incomprehensible, are however revered. Instead of teaching
the Alphabet by means of simple characters they teach it by
grotesque and all but impossible hieroglyphics, and in the
II T 289