The Lodge of No. 646 was sponsored by the Rosanna Lodge No. 525 and Consecrated in the Masonic Temple, Heidelberg by R. Wor. Bro. T. Baillie, Deputy Grand Master, on the 28th June, 1948.
It was believed that a more splendid or significant name than Memphis could not have been selected.
Menes, the first dynastic King of Egypt, founded the City of Memphis which was, for a time, the capital of the country. It was situated about fourteen miles South of the present City of Cairo and a few miles from the Pyramids of Gizeh, the ruins of which are to be seen today.
It is said that, at the epoch of Menes, the Egyptians were already a civilised and numerous people.
Manetho, the great priest and historian, tells us that – 'Athothis, the son of King Menes, built the Palace of Memphis; was a physician and left anatomical books'.
Following the invariable rule in the East, the Temple at Memphis stood oriented to the East so that he who stood up on the Threshold gazed upon the refulgent glory of the rising Sun.
In that Temple, which was dedicated to the Kabiri – 'the great, beneficent and powerful Gods' as Cassius Hemina called them – only the priests were suffered to enter the Holy precincts in which the doctrine of Immortality was taught.
There, also, were performed the Ten Mysteries or Degrees of Ptah, the first Architect Builder.
Beneath the Temple lay the subterranean crypts of vast extent and greater renown wherein were performed the sacred mysteries of 'The Unavoidable Circle – The Circle of Necessity' – the inescapable doom imposed upon every souI after the bodily death.
From that Temple there streamed forth Light to illumine Ancient Egypt for countless ages until the teachings of the Temple decayed and eventually vanished.
The decay of the Temple at Memphis commenced the decline of the Mystery Schools; the Light waned; the Night came and reached its utmost depth during the so–called Dark Ages of Europe.
This could well have become permanent had there not been a sufficient resurgence, during recent centuries, of the spiritual aspiration and activity without which mankind must fail.
With the foundation of the Lodge of Memphis commenced, in small measure, a contribution towards the rekindling and restoration of Light in the world with the hope that it would inherit much of the splendour and inspiration of the Temple which, of olden days, was one of the greatest glories of the World.
