In all the ancient systems of initiation the candidate was shrouded in darkness, as a preparation for the reception of light.  The duration varied in the different rites.  In the Celtic Mysteries of Druidism, the period in which the aspirant was immersed in darkness was nine days and nights; among the Greeks, at Eleusis, it was three times as long; and in the still severer rites of Mithras, in Persia, fifty days of darkness, solitude, and fasting were imposed upon the adventurous neophyte, who, by these excessive trials, was at length entitled to the full communication of the light of knowledge.

Thus it will be perceived that the religious sentiment of a good and an evil principle gave to darkness, in the ancient symbolism, a place equally as prominent as that of light.

The same religious sentiment of the ancients, modified, however, in its details, by our better knowledge of divine things, has supplied Freemasonry with a double symbolism—­that of Light and Darkness.

Darkness is the symbol of initiation.  It is intended to remind the candidate of his ignorance, which Masonry is to enlighten; of his evil nature, which Masonry is to purify; of the world, in whose obscurity he has been wandering, and from which Masonry is to rescue him.

Light, on the other hand, is the symbol of the autopsy, the sight of the mysteries, the intrusting, the full fruition of masonic truth and knowledge.

Initiation precedes the communication of knowledge in Masonry, as darkness preceded light in the old cosmogonies.  Thus, in Genesis, we see that in the beginning “the world was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.”  The Chaldean cosmogony taught that in the beginning “all was darkness and water.”  The Phoenicians supposed that “the beginning of all things was a wind of black air, and a chaos dark as Erebus.” [104]

But out of all this darkness sprang forth light, at the divine command, and the sublime phrase, “Let there be light,” is repeated, in some substantially identical form, in all the ancient histories of creation.

So, too, out of the mysterious darkness of Masonry comes the full blaze of masonic light.  One must precede the other, as the evening preceded the morning.  “So the evening and the morning were the first day.”

This thought is preserved in the great motto of the Order, “Lux e tenebris”—­Light out of darkness.  It is equivalent to this other sentence:  Truth out of initiation. Lux, or light, is truth; tenebrae, or darkness, is initiation.

It is a beautiful and instructive portion of our symbolism, this connection of darkness and light, and well deserves a further investigation.

“Genesis and the cosmogonies,” says Portal, “mention the antagonism of light and darkness.  The form of this fable varies according to each nation, but the foundation is everywhere the same.  Under the symbol of the creation of the world it presents the picture of regeneration and initiation.” [105]