vine command, "Thou shalt not divulge the words which I have said
to thee out of my mouth." The oral law was, therefore, never intrusted to
books; but being preserved in the memories of the judges, prophets,
priests, and wise men, was handed down from one to the other through a
long succession of ages. But after the destruction of Jerusalem by the
Romans under Adrian, A.D. 135, and the final dispersion of the Jews, fears
being entertained that the oral law would be lost, it was then committed
to writing, and now constitutes the text of the Talmud.

ORMUZD. Worshipped by the disciples of Zoroaster as the principle of good,
and symbolized by light. See _Ahriman_.

OSIRIS. The chief god of the ancient Egyptians, and worshipped as a symbol
of the sun, and more philosophically as the male or generative principle.
Isis, his wife, was the female or prolific principle; and Horus, their
child, was matter, or the world--the product of the two principles.

OSIRIS, MYSTERIES OF. The Osirian Mysteries consisted in a scenic
representation of the murder of Osiris by Typhon, the subsequent recovery
of his mutilated body by Isis, and his deification, or restoration to
immortal life.

OVAL TEMPLES. Temples of an oval form were representations of the mundane
egg, a symbol of the world.

P

PALM TREE. In its secondary sense the palm tree is a symbol of victory;
but in its primary signification it is a symbol of the victory over death,
that is, immortality.

PARABLE. A narrative in which one thing is compared with another. It is in
principle the same as a symbol or an allegory.

PARALLEL LINES. The lines touching the circle in the symbol of the point
within a circle. They are said to represent St. John the Baptist and St.
John the Evangelist; but they really refer to the solstitial points Cancer
and Capricorn, in the zodiac.

PASTOS. (From the Greek [Greek: pasto\s], _a nuptial couch_.) The coffin
or grave which contained the body of the god or hero whose death was
scenically represented in the ancient Mysteries.

It is the analogue of the grave in the third degree of Masonry.

PELASGIAN RELIGION. The Pelasgians were the oldest if not the aboriginal
inhabitants of Greece. Their religion differed from that of the Hellenes
who succeeded them in being less poetical, less mythical, and more
abstract. We know little of their religious worship, except by conjecture;
but we may suppose it resembled in some respects the doctrines