Enoch's Stone Door Vault Cover with Iron Ring

Made into a Golden Jewel

This is not your everyday Masonic Jewel... you must read the following text to understand the full significance of this Masonic story!  In the study of the sciences, in teaching them to his children and his contemporaries, and in instituting the rites of initiation, Enoch is supposed to have passed the years of his peaceful, his pious, and his useful life, until the crimes of mankind had increased to such a height that, in the expressive words of Holy Writ, "every imagination of the thoughts of man's heart was only evil continually."   It was then, according to a Masonic tradition, that Enoch, disgusted with the wickedness that surrounded him, and appalled at the thought of its inevitable consequences, fled to the solitude and secrecy of Mount Moriah, and devoted himself to prayer and pious contemplation.  It was on that spot--then first consecrated by this patriarchal hermitage, and afterward to be made still more holy by the sacrifices of Abraham, of David, and of Solomon--that we are informed that the Shekinah, or sacred presence, appeared to him, and gave him those instructions which were to preserve the wisdom of the antediluvians to their posterity when the world, with the exception of but one family, should have been destroyed by the forthcoming flood.  The circumstances which occurred at that time are recorded in a tradition which forms what has been called the great Masonic Legend of Enoch, and which runs to this effect:

Enoch, being inspired by the Most High, and in commemoration of a wonderful vision, built a temple underground, and dedicated it to God.  His son, Methuselah, constructed the building; although he was not acquainted with his father's motives for the erection.  This temple consisted of nine brick vaults, situated perpendicularly beneath each other and communication by apertures left in the arch of each vault.  Enoch then caused a triangular plate of gold to be made, each side of which was a cubit long; he enriched it with the most precious stones, and encrusted the plate upon a stone of agate of the same form.  On the face he engraved, in ineffable characters, the true name of Deity, and placing it on a cubical pedistal of white marble, he deposited the whole within the deepest arch.

When this subterranean building was completed, he made a door of stone, and attaching to it a ring of iron (which looked like the jewel above), by which it might be occasionally raised, he placed it over the opening of the uppermost arch, and so covered it over that the aperture could not be discovered.   Enoch himself was permitted to enter it but once a year; and on the death of Enoch, Methuselah, and Lamech, and the destruction of the world by the deluge, all knowledge of this temple, and of the sacred treasure which it contained, was lost until, in after times, it was accidentally discovered by another worthy of Freemasonry, who, like Enoch, was engaged in the erection of a temple on the same spot.

The legend goes on to inform us that after Enoch had completed the subterranean temple, fearing that the principles of those arts and sciences which he had cultivated with so much assiduity would be lost, in that general destruction of which he had received a prophetic vision, he erected two pillars--the one of marble, to withstand the influence of fire, and the other of brass, to resist the action of water.  On the pillar of brass he engraved the history of creation, the principles of the arts and sciences, and the doctrines of Speculative Masonry as they were practiced in his times; and on the one of marble he inscribed characters in hieroglyphics, importing that near the spot where they stood a precious treasure was deposited in a subterranean vault.

Museum Home Page     Phoenixmasonry Home Page

Copyrighted © 1999 - 2019   Phoenixmasonry, Inc.      The Fine Print