ATHELSTAN.  King of England, who ascended the throne in 924.  Anderson cites the old constitutions as saying that he encouraged the Masons, and brought many over from France and elsewhere.  In his reign, and in the year 926, the celebrated General Assembly of the Craft was held in the city of York, with prince Edward, the king’s brother, for Grand Master, when new constitutions were framed.  From this assembly the York Rite dates its origin.

AUTOPSY (Greek [Greek:  ay)topsi/a], a seeing with one’s own eyes).  The complete communication of the secrets in the ancient Mysteries, when the aspirant was admitted into the sacellum, or most sacred place, and was invested by the Hierophant with all the aporrheta, or sacred things, which constituted the perfect knowledge of the initiate.  A similar ceremony in Freemasonry is called the Rite of Intrusting.

AUM.  The triliteral name of God in the Brahminical mysteries, and equivalent among the Hindoos to the tetragrammaton of the Jews.  In one of the Puranas, or sacred books of the Hindoos, it is said, “All the rites ordained in the Vedas, the sacrifices to fire, and all other solemn purifications, shall pass away; but that which shall never pass away is the word AUM, for it is the symbol of the Lord of all things.”

B

BABEL.  The biblical account of the dispersion of mankind in consequence of the confusion of tongues at Babel, has been incorporated into the history of Masonry.  The text has shown the probability that the pure and abstract principles of the Primitive Freemasonry had been preserved by Noah and his immediate descendants; and also that, as a consequence of the dispersion, these principles had been lost or greatly corrupted by the Gentiles, who were removed from the influence and teachings of the great patriarch.

Now there was in the old rituals a formula in the third degree, preserved in some places to the present day, which teaches that the candidate has come from the tower of Babel, where language was confounded and Masonry lost, and that he is travelling to the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, where language was restored and Masonry found.  An attentive perusal of the nineteen propositions set forth in the preliminary chapter of this work will furnish the reader with a key for the interpretation of this formula.  The principles of the Primitive Freemasonry of the early priesthood were corrupted or lost at Babel by the defection of a portion of mankind from Noah, the conservator of those principles.  Long after, the descendants of this people united with those of Noah at the temple of Solomon, whose site was the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, from whom it had been bought by David; and here the lost principles were restored by this union of the Spurious Freemasons of Tyre with the Primitive Freemasons of Jerusalem.  And this explains the latter clause of the formula.