BURNING BUSH

In the third chapter of Exodus it is recorded that, when Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro on Mount Horeb, “the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush,” and there communicated to him for the first time his ineffable Name. This occurrence is commemorated in the Burning Bush of the Royal Arch Degree. In all the systems of antiquity, fire is adopted as a symbol of Deity ; and the Burning Bush, or the bush filled with fire which did not consume, whence came forth the Tetragrammaton, the symbol of Divine Light and Truth, is considered in the advanced degrees of Freemasonry, like the Orient in the lower, as the great source of true Masonic light ; wherefore Supreme Councils of the Thirty-Third Degree date their balustres, or official documents, “near the B.'. B.'.,” or Buming Bush, to intimate that they are, in their own rite, the exclusive source of all Masonic instruction.