United States or Bangladesh ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The rites, by some supposed to be of the Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleusinian or Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. But wholly to no purpose: that tough faculty of reading, for which the world will not refuse me credit, was here for the first time foiled and set at naught.

CABIRI. Certain gods, whose worship was first established in the Island of Samothrace, where the Cabiric Mysteries were practised until the beginning of the Christian era. They were four in number, and by some are supposed to have referred to Noah and his three sons. In the Mysteries there was a legend of the death and restoration to life of Atys, the son of Cybele.

CADMILLUS. One of the gods of the Cabiri, who was slain by his brothers, on which circumstance the legend of the Cabiric or Samothracian Mysteries is founded. He is the analogue of the Builder in the Hiramic legend of Freemasonry. 256 CAIRNS. Heaps of stones of a conical form, erected by the Druids. Some suppose them to have been sepulchral monuments, others altars.

Naked, black, shouting, raising and lowering their muscular arms which ended in glittering iron-pointed pickaxes, they looked like infernal spirits sent by the Cabiric gods of Carthage for the destruction of the city. Stubborn and tenacious in their work of destruction, they growled and picked, insensible to the blows which fell from above.

The innkeeper was continually throwing into an empty amphora coins of all kinds, those from Zacynthus, bearing the prow of a ship, with Victory flying above it; those from Carthage with the legendary horse and the frightful Cabiric deities; and Alexandrian coins with their elegant Ptolemaic profile.

The candidate represented Cadmillus, the youngest of the Cabiri, who was slain by his three brethren. The legend of the Cabiric Mysteries, as far as it can be understood from the faint allusions of ancient authors, was in spirit and design very analogous to that of the third degree of Masonry.