originated with the Templars in Palestine as early as 1188; whilst the Eastern origin of the word Heredom, supposed to derive from a mythical mountain on an island south of the Hebrides where the Culdees practised their rites, is indicated by another eighteenth-century writer, who traces it to a Jewish source. In this same year of 1314 Robert Bruce is said to have united the Templars and the Royal Order of H.R.M. with the guilds of working masons, who had also fought in his army, at the famous Lodge of Kilwinning, founded in 1286, which now added to its name that of Heredom and became the chief seat of the Order. Scotland was essentially a home of operative masonry, and, in view of the Templar's prowess in the art of building, what more natural than that the two bodies should enter into an alliance? Already in England the Temple is said between 1155 and 1199 to have administered the Craft. It is thus at Heredom of Kilwinning, "the Holy House of Masonry"--"Mother Kilwinning," as it is still known to Freemasons--that a speculative element of a fresh kind may have found its way into the lodges. Is it not here, then, that we may see that "fruitful union between the professional guild of mediæval masons and a secret group of philosophical Adepts" alluded to by Count Goblet d'Aviella and described by Mr. Waite in the following words:
The mystery of the building guilds--whatever it may be held to have been--was that of a simple, unpolished, pious, and utilitarian device; and this daughter of Nature, in the absence of all intention on her own part, underwent, or was coerced into one of the strangest marriages which has been celebrated in occult history. It so happened that her particular form and figure lent itself to such a union, etc.<sup></sup>?
Mr. Waite with his usual vagueness does not explain when and where this marriage took place, but the account would