The Masonic Goat

From whence came the curious belief that in the making of a Mason, the candidate must ride upon the goat?

It is, alas, sufficiently easy to understand why the idea persists. It continues because well-intentioned but unthinking Freemasons tell their friends, prior to initiation, to "Look out for the goat!" and "The goat will be starved so he'll butt the harder." and "I'll be there to see you ride the goat!"

Not one in a thousand who so demeans a fraternity wholly concerned with such serious matters as belief in a Great Architect, the inculcation of charity, the establishment of brotherly love, the building of character, realizes that by such silly jokes he perpetuates an ancient ridicule of Freemasonry, and, far worse, an old accusation of blasphemy against an organization which has ever held the Most High in greatest reverence.

Many animals have played curious parts in secular history and in religion. the Russian Bear, the British Lion, the American Eagle, are national emblems the world over. The lamb plays a part in both Christianity and Freemasonry. The bull is sacred in India, as was the cat in Egypt. Lion and lamb are both important to Freemasonry, as are "beasts of the field and vultures of the air." But search the rituals of all lands and climes and ages and no goat is found in Freemasonry, save in the minds and on the lips of those who ridicule the brotherhood which stretches 'round the world.

In the north of Europe, popular belief has the wood spirit, Ljesche, wearing a goat's horns, ears and legs. The African Bijagos worship the goat as a principal deity.

Mythologically the goat played a prominent part. Silenus, chief of the Satyrs, attendants of Dionysus, also of Bacchus, was half goat. The Fauns, also half goat, were familiars and servants of Pan, the Arcadian God of the shepherds, huntsmen, country people. He is represented as horned, long eared, a man with the lower half of his body a goat. He plays a pipe made of reeds of various lengths, the Pan's Pipes or Syrinx. He is supposed to have been of terrifying appearance, when he wished - our word "panic" comes from the terror he is said to have inspired. but mythology makes him on the whole a gentle deity with elfin characteristics. Except for scaring the countryside, he is depicted as mischievous rather than dangerous.

The early Christian fathers understood that a world could not be won from a paganism which had permeated lives for thousands of years, merely by ukase. It was far simpler to keep the old, transfer to it a Christian significance, as in Christmas and harvest festivals, anciently days of pagan ceremonies, made Christian and brought into the church. Mythology could not be uprooted, but it could be made useful. Gradually gentle Pan was resolved, or evolved, into Satan. Thus Satan has Pan's horns and tail and, in early England, the devil rode upon a goat!

It is an old superstition in England and Scotland that a goat is never seen during an entire twenty-four period. Once a day he visits the devil to have his beard combed! Even in this enlightened age, when a goat is considered to do no more harm than is inherent in eating tin cans and leather shoes, he retains his ancient smirched character in our language. To "be the Goat" is to get the worse of an affair, be blamed for what we did not do. To "Get your goat" is to annoy, perturb, distress. To "Separate the sheep from the goats" is no longer a mere act of division as it was in Matthew, but dividing the fit from the unfit,m the good and the bad, the evil and the pure.

Those familiar with Shakespeare will recall the incantation of the Third Witch in the cavern, forth act of Macbeth. The witch is adding to the list of horrible articles to be tossed in the cauldron for the hellish brew;

Scale of dragon, tooth of wold,
Witches mummy; maw and gulf
Of the ravin'd salt-sea shark,
Root of hemlock, digged i' the dark,
Liver of blaspheming jew
Gall of goat and slips of yew...
Old Testament instructions for priestly sacrifices included the goat among the clean animals. Most important from the standpoint of the metamorphosis of the goat from a gently and inoffensive beast to one of terrifying propensities, was the scapegoat. We read (Leviticus 16:7-10).

"And he shall take the two goats, and present them before
the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation. And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two
goats; one lot for the Lord , and the other lot for the
scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the
Lord's lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. but
the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat,
shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an
atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat
into the wilderness."

The idea that the sins of the people might be transferred to a goat, which, driven into the wilderness to die, carried away the moral trespasses with which he was symbolically loaded, doubtless had much to do with the change which came over the complexion of the Great God Pan, when Christianity commenced to rewrite the ancient heathen mythology. Gently Pan, who harmed no one beyond creating terror, became first Satanic, and then, in the end, Satan himself. In the middle ages, men believed that the Evil One took the form of a goat on earth, when he wished to work his wicked will unseen of men in his true character. Therefore Satan gradually grew both horns and tail!

Mackey says:

"Then cane the witch stories of the Middle Ages, and the belief in the witch orgies, where it was said the Devil appeared riding on a goat. These orgies of the witches were, amid fearfully blasphemous ceremonies, they practiced initiation into their Satanic rites, became, to the vulgar and illiterate, the type of the Masonic mysteries; for, as Dr. Oliver says, it was in England a common belief that the Freemasons were accustomed in their Lodges to "raise the Devil". So riding of the goat, which was believed to be practiced by the witches, was transferred to the Freemasons."

Two organizations of the early eighteenth century seem to have been formed and to have lived their short lives wholly to bring ridicule on Freemasonry. the Gormogons began in 1724, the Scald Miserables held their Mock Masonry processions in 1741.

According to Mackey, one of the rules of the Gormogons was:

"No Freemason could be admitted until he was first degraded and then renounced the Masonic order. It was absurbly and intentionally pretentious in its character, in ridicule of Freemasonry claiming a great antiquity and pretending that it was descended from an ancient society in China. There was much antipathy between the two as will appear from the following verses, published in 1729 by Henry Cary:

The Masons and the Gormogons
are laughing at one another
While all mankind is laughing at them;
then why do they make such a pother?

"They bait their hook for simple gulls,
And truth with bam they smother;
But when they've taken in their culls
Why then, tis; 'Welcome, Brother'

"The Gormogons made a great splutter in their day, and published many squibs against Freemasonry; yet that is still living, while the Gormogons were long ago extinguished. They seem to have flourished for but a very few years."

The Scald Miserables paraded in mockery of the Masonic processions of early days, ridiculing the Order and being in turn ridiculed by members of the Fraternity in the somewhat brutal give and take of those days. the efforts of the Scald Miserables were frowned upon by the better classes, who respected the Fraternity to which at that time so many men eminent in public life in England were turning.

It is perhaps, too much to state that these two societies had much to do with the spread of the idea that the Masonic Fraternity, "raised the devil" in its Lodges. Yet a print by Hogarth entitled "The Mystery of Masonry brought to Light by Gormogons," shows a curious goat-like figure walking in the procession in the middle of the picture. Nor is it likely that organizations conceived in hatred of the Fraternity would omit from their guns of ridicule so powerful a weapon as the belief that Masons "raised the devil" and "rode upon the goat."

That Masons were supposed to "raise the devil" in their secret meetings may be understandable in the credulous times of a century or two ago, but it does seem rather incredible that in a modern day and age any one should so believe. Yet as late as 1894, the Transactions of Quatuor Coronati, the great Research Lodge of England, published a note which reads as follows:

"A curious and interesting libel suit is, our Berlin Correspondent says, pending against two newspapers, one at Rome and the other at Bonn. A Catholic priest at Friburg in Switzerland lately refused to allow a lady to participate in Holy communion. The Swiss court, however, rejected her claim. The above-mentioned papers in reporting the case denounced the lady as a grand mistress of a lady's lodge and added that this lodge had accepted the Satan worship imported from America and the devil's Mass..."

This is bad enough, but what shall we think of men so credulous as to believe in 1927 - nine years ago - that Masonic bodies in France steal the Hosts from the Catholic church to use in blasphemous ceremonies in Masonic Lodges, the celebration of the Black Mass (whatever that is!) and the "raising of the devil?"

Yet an article in La Revue Internationale des Societies Secretes, of Paris, sets forth these alleged "facts" in some detail!

It is natural to believe the worst of an opponent; all secret societies are supposed by their detractors to be secret because of concealed evil. The Grand Orient of France, frankly anti-clerical, accepts either theists or atheists as members, but because it does not demand a believe in Deity, is often supposed to be anti-religious. As well say political parties, chambers of Commerce or a social club are anti-religious because no belief in a Deity is demanded as a qualification for membership. Some Clerical enthusiasts have read anti-religion into anti-clericalism, just as the people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from jealously at not being permitted to join, or dislike of that which contained "secrets" that they did not know, denominated Freemasonry as anti-religious, "raising the devil" in its Lodges.

Of course no one well informed believes that Freemasonry has anything to do with goats. If any one does so believe, he marks himself at once either as singularly credulous, or as ignorant. Yet the idea that the goat is a part of Masonic initiation has soiled the reputation of the fraternity in many minds; many people do believe that Freemasonry's initiations are humorous in character, concerned with horse play, a sort of exaggerated college fraternity in action.

The fact is of enough importance to bear repetition - the responsibility for the goat idea of Masonic initiation today rests squarely on the shoulders of the unthinking, who perpetuate it by attempting to terrify petitioners. The same idea is sometimes carried into Lodge rooms, where one of the most beautiful of ceremonies is occasionally butchered to make a holiday for those who cannot or will not see its sublime symbolism.

When all Freemasons reverence the holy teachings of the Order and find in the ceremonies only uplift and inspiration, the goat will disappear from the lips of those who profess brotherhood, and soon thereafter will vanish from the minds and the literature of those not of the fraternity.

SPEED THE DAY!