the early Cabala, declaring that it descended from Adam and the first patriarchs of the human race, and thence through groups of Wise Men amongst the Egyptians, Chaldeans, Persians, and Greeks. Mr. Albert Churchward insists particularly on the Egyptian origin of the speculative element in Freemasonry: "Brother Gould and other Freemasons will never understand the meaning and origin of our sacred tenets till they have studied and unlocked the mysteries of the past." This study will then reveal the fact that "the Druids, the Gymnosophists of India, the Magi of Persia, and the Chaldeans of Assyria had all the same religious rites and ceremonies as practised by their priests who were initiated to their Order, and that these were solemnly sworn to keep the doctrines a profound secret from the rest of mankind. All these flowed from one source--Egypt."
Mr. Churchward further quotes the speech of the Rev. Dr. William Dodd at the opening of a masonic temple in 1794, who traced Freemasonry from "the first astronomers on the plains of Chaldea, the wise and mystic kings and priests of Egypt, the sages of Greece and philosophers of Rome," etc.
But how did these traditions descend to the masons of the West? According to a large body of masonic opinion in this country which recognizes only a single source of inspiration to the system we now know as Freemasonry, the speculative as well as the operative traditions of the Order descended from the building guilds and were imported to England by means of the Roman Collegia. Mr. Churchward,