Now, the myth or legend of a grave is a legitimate deduction from the symbolism of the ancient Spurious Masonry.  It is the analogue of the Pastos, Couch, or Coffin, which was to be found in the ritual of all the pagan Mysteries.  In all these initiations, the aspirant was placed in a cell or upon a couch, in darkness, and for a period varying, in the different rites, from the three days of the Grecian Mysteries to the fifty of the Persian.  This cell or couch, technically called the “pastos,” was adopted as a symbol of the being whose death and resurrection or apotheosis, was represented in the legend.

The learned Faber says that this ceremony was doubtless the same as the descent into Hades,[172] and that, when the aspirant entered into the mystic cell, he was directed to lay himself down upon the bed which shadowed out the tomb of the Great Father, or Noah, to whom, it will be recollected, that Faber refers all the ancient rites.  “While stretched upon the holy couch,” he continues to remark, “in imitation of his figurative deceased prototype, he was said to be wrapped in the deep sleep of death.  His resurrection from the bed was his restoration to life or his regeneration into a new world.”

Now, it is easy to see how readily such a symbolism would be seized by the Temple Masons, and appropriated at once to the grave at the brow of the hill.  At first, the interpretation, like that from which it had been derived, would be cosmopolitan; it would fit exactly to the general dogmas of the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul.

But on the advent of Christianity, the spirit of the new religion being infused into the old masonic system, the whole symbolism of the grave was affected by it.  The same interpretation of a resurrection or restoration to life, derived from the ancient “pastos,” was, it is true, preserved; but the facts that Christ himself had come to promulgate to the multitudes the same consoling dogma, and that Mount Calvary, “the place of a skull,” was the spot where the Redeemer, by his own death and resurrection, had testified the truth of the doctrine, at once suggested to the old Christian Masons the idea of Christianizing the ancient symbol.

Let us now examine briefly how that idea has been at length developed.

In the first place, it is necessary to identify the spot where the “newly-made grave” was discovered with Mount Calvary, the place of the sepulchre of Christ.  This can easily be done by a very few but striking analogies, which will, I conceive, carry conviction to any thinking mind.

1.  Mount Calvary was a small hill.[173]

2.  It was situated in a westward direction from the temple, and near Mount Moriah.

3.  It was on the direct road from Jerusalem to Joppa, and is thus the very spot where a weary brother, travelling on that road, would find it convenient to sit down to rest and refresh himself.[174]