CONSECRATION, ELEMENTS OF.  Those things, the use of which in the ceremony as constituent and elementary parts of it, are necessary to the perfecting and legalizing of the act of consecration.  In Freemasonry, these elements of consecration are corn, wine, and oil,—­which see.

CORN.  One of the three elements of masonic consecration, and as a symbol of plenty it is intended, under the name of the “corn of nourishment,” to remind us of those temporal blessings of life, support, and nourishment which we receive from the Giver of all good.

CORNER STONE.  The most important stone in the edifice, and in its symbolism referring to an impressive ceremony in the first degree of Masonry.

The ancients laid it with peculiar ceremonies, and among the Oriental nations it was the symbol of a prince, or chief.

It is one of the most impressive symbols of Masonry.

It is a symbol of the candidate on his initiation.

As a symbol it is exclusively masonic, and confined to a temple origin.

COVERING OF THE LODGE.  Under the technical name of the “clouded canopy or starry-decked heavens,” it is a symbol of the future world,—­of the celestial lodge above, where the G.A.O.T.U. forever presides, and which constitutes the “foreign country” which every mason hopes to reach.

CREUZER.  George Frederick Creuzer, who was born in Germany in 1771, and was a professor at the University of Heidelberg, devoted himself to the study of the ancient religions, and with profound learning, established a peculiar system on the subject.  Many of his views have been adopted in the text of the present work.  His theory was, that the religion and mythology of the ancient Greeks were borrowed from a far more ancient people,—­a body of priests coming from the East,—­who received them as a revelation.  The myths and traditions of this ancient people were adopted by Hesiod, Homer, and the later poets, although not without some misunderstanding of them, and they were finally preserved in the Mysteries, and became subjects of investigation for the philosophers.  This theory Creuzer has developed in his most important work, entitled “Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Voelker, besonders der Greichen,” which was published at Leipsic in 1819.  There is no translation of this work into English, but Guigniaut published at Paris, in 1824, a paraphrastic translation of it, under the title of “Religions de l’Antiquite considerees principalement dans leur Formes Symboliques et Mythologiques.”  Creuzer’s views throw much light on the symbolic history of Freemasonry.