Adams, Walter M.: The house of the hidden places: a clue to the creed of early Egypt from Egyptian sources (London, 1895)

VI.] The Catechumen of Wisdom. 197

contemplation. No man can contemplate the
Deity who has not been instructed in Truth;
nor can any receive that initiation until he
be dead to the flesh. As, therefore, in the
masonic induction the catechumen could ascend
but a few steps in the light of common day,
and passed, when the disc of the starry heaven
was opened by the Master of the Secret, into
the profound darkness of the Descending-
Passage ; so too, when the great preparation
of Death had been accomplished, when soul
and spirit had been released from the dominion
of the senses, when, by the sacred purification
of embalmment, the corruptible body had put
on incorruption, then " On the day of the
funeral," we read, the Unseen Master com-
menced to instruct the catechumen in the
stages which must be undergone preparatory
to his initiation. And so closely does the
masonic path in the Pyramid correspond with
tiie path of the departed in the Ritual, that
the traveller to-day who penetrates the recesses