NOTES ON THE ACACIA

  NOTES ON THE ACACIA 

 Our rocks are rough but smiling there 
Th Acacia waves her yellow hair 
Lonely and sweet nor loved the less 
For flow ring in a wilderness 

                             Lalla Rookh 

Why is the Acacia always put in the funeral wreaths for Freemasons?- It is reputed to recall a tragedy; it signifies a remote, unknown, and liable to be forgotten site.

In ancient Egypt the Acacia tree is connected with the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; resurrection, and perhaps reincarnation. A Note, in the "Christian Year," on the poem for the fifth Sunday after Easter, on which day the Lesson is read descriptive, of Moses seeing the Bush burning with fire but not consumed, mentions that the towering thorn Seneh is said to be a sort of Acacia." And Seneh in Hebrew means "a thorn bush ." Again, the Acacia is a tree, and not a shrub and therefore it might have been used for the Cross of our Saviour, and to be the Acacia that is named in Masonic works. 

In the Story of Anpu and Batu (Flinders 'Petrie's Egyptian Tales"), the Acacia tree is clearly the link between a deceased body and its soul, for the passage runs: "And this is what shall come to pass, that I draw out my sou,l and I shall put it upon the top of the flowers of the acacia, and when the acacia is cut down or falls." 

One of the legends of Isis and Osiris mentions that at a spot where the former interred a limb of Osiris she placed a sprig of Acacia to mark it.  

According to Folkard's :Plant Lore,: the Acacia used by Freemasons is not a true Acacia, but Robinia pseudacaciaM or American locust tree(OR BLACK LOCUST). The practice of dropping twigs of this tree on the coffins of the Brethren seems to have originated in America. 

originated in America The Acacia Seyal is reputed to have yielded the shittim wood of Scripture which was much used in the building of the Ark hence perhaps the reverence Freemasons pay to the Acacia The Acacia Mimosa Nilotica of Linnæus is a shrub, which grew in abundance in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem.

GARDENIA  

References:

1.The Freemason IST JULY I9II