“We have no wish to make a pretense of exposing secrets long since hawked about the world by perjured Masons. Everything vital, whether in symbolical representations, rites, or passwords, as used in modern Freemasonry, is known in the Eastern fraternities; though there seems to be no intercourse or connection between them. If Madea is described by Ovid as having “arm, breast, and knee made bare, left foot slipshod”; and Virgil, speaking of Dido, shows this queen herself…now resolute on death, having one foot bare, etc., why doubt that there are in the East real “Patriarchs of the Sacred Vedas”, explaining the esotericism of pure Hindu theology and Brahmanism quite as thoroughly as European “Patriarchs”?
But, if there are a few Masons who, from study of kabalistic and other rare works, and coming in personal communication with “Brothers” from the faraway East, have learned something of esoteric Masonry, it is not the case with the hundreds of American Lodges.
While engaged on this chapter, we have received most unexpectedly, through the kindness of a friend, a copy of Mr. Yarker’s volume, from which passages are quoted above. It is brimful of learning and, what is more, of knowledge, as it seems to us. It is especially valuable at this moment, since it corroborates, in many particulars, what we have said in this work. Thus we read in the following: “We think we have sufficiently established the fact of the connection of Freemasonry with other speculative rites of antiquity, as well as the antiquity and purity of the old English Templar-Rite of seven degrees, and the spurious derivation of many of the other rites therefrom.”
Such high Masons need not be told, though Craftsmen in general do, that the time has come to remodel Masonry, and restore those ancient landmarks, borrowed from the early sodalities, which the eighteenth-century founders of speculative Freemasonry meant to have incorporated in the fraternity. There are no longer any secrets left unpublished; the Order is degenerating into a convenience for selfish men to use, and bad men to debase.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 