Masonic & Occult Symbols Illustrate

for two-thirds of each year at which time the earth would bloom profusely with flowers— associating bees with rebirth. And because of their importance in pollenizing flowers, bees are an accepted symbol of generative power. “The bee is also considered a symbol of the soul influenced by the Sun and possessing immortality and spiritual telepathy.” One Masonic bulletin admits: “The Egyptians always excellent and Ancient FreeMasons paid Divine Worship to a Bee under the outward Shape of a Bull, the better to conceal the mystery; which Bull, by them called Apis, is the Latin word for a Bee; the Enigma of presenting the Bee by a Bull consisteth in this, that according to the doctrine of the Pythagorean Lodge of Freemasons, the souls of all the Cow King transmigrate into Bees...."

The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia adds that the beehive is an: “emblem of industry; appropriate to the third degree. This virtue is ever held in high esteem in the Craft, for the Old Charges tell us that ‘all Masons shall work honestly on working days, that they may live creditably on holidays.’ The esoteric meaning of the beehive was that of regeneration; and a hive was a type of the ark. ‘Hence,’ says Faber (Orig. of Pag. Idol., vol. ii, p. 133), ‘both the diluvian priestesses and the regenerated souls were called bees; hence bees were feigned to be produced from the carcase (sic) of a cow, which also symbolized the ark and, hence, as the great father was esteemed an INFERNAL god, honey was much used both in funeral rites and in the mysteries.’...Bees and lilies have many esoteric significations.”