Masonic & Occult Symbols Illustrate

the carrying of torches and candles in honor of Februa, for whom our month February is named! The Greeks held the feast in honor of the goddess Ceres, the mother of Proserpina, who with candle- bearing celebrants searched for her in the underworld. Thus we can see how adopting February 2 to honor the purification of Mary was influenced by pagan customs involving candles, even to calling it ‘Candlemas’ day. On this day all of the candles to be used during the year in Catholic rituals are blessed....Says The Catholic Encyclopedia, ‘We need not shrink from admitting that candles, like incense and lustral water, were commonly employed in pagan worship and in rites paid to the dead.’” [Emphasis in the original] Candlemas, the Festival of Torches, is just one of the pagan uses of the flame. Many of the gods and goddesses of mythology carried torches. Some of these are: Hecate (the “Queen of the Witches”), Comus, Eros, Hymenaeus (or Hymen), Apollo, Ilithyia, Eos (or Aurora), Iakchos, and Phosphorus (who is also called Lucifer). Listen to what occultist Edouard Schure says about Lucifer and his flaming torch: “Lucifer, having regained his star and his diadem, will assemble his legions for new works of creation. Attracted by his flaming torch, celestial spirits will descend...and he will send these messengers from unknown spheres to earth. Then the torch of Lucifer will signal ‘From Heaven to Earth!’—and the...(New Age) Christ will answer ‘From Earth to Heaven!”’ Light (as signified by the torch) is a very important Masonic term. Masonic writer, Arthur H. Ward, in Masonic Symbolism and the Mystic Way, notes: “When later he [the Mason] is given LIGHT, it means really that he is taught the principles of OCCULTISM....” Occultist and Mason, Manly Palmer Hall, states that “the torches represent the OCCULT arts and sciences, the doctrines and dogmas by the light of which Truth is made visible.”