258 WARFARE IN THE HUMAN BODY 



scoundrel. This is somewhat on a par with the use of the 

 word " Atheists " for the Christians at the time of Julian 

 the Apostate. There does not seem to me any doubt 

 whatever that farmagion is actually the same word as 

 Pharmakos. It is used in Turkey and Asia Minor, and 

 as far east as Afghanistan. It may be that the ancestors 

 of the Greeks borrowed it originally from some Turkic 

 race, and returned it again to the Mahommedans with a 

 fuller connotation. 



Oddly enough, the word farmagion has, since its re- 

 adoption by Eastern races, taken on a new meaning. It 

 now often means " a freemason," one who is looked upon 

 by the orthodox as an outcast and a scoundrel, a sufi and 

 one highly irreligious. Not being a freemason myself, I 

 know nothing of its ritual, but, so far as I can learn, 

 members of this society, or those who are really instructed 

 in its ritual and doctrines, regard their common name 

 as one very uncertain in its etymology. Its present or 

 common meaning is undoubtedly false philology. Our 

 word freemason is, of course, a translation from the French 

 franc-macon, but to my mind " franc " is nothing but a 

 metathesized form of the vour of vourmak and the phar 

 of Pharmakos with an added euphonic nasal. Thus, it is 

 only by a later verbal accident that the " macon " was 

 turned into " mason," and connected with masonry and 

 building. Probably, then, it is actually the same root as 

 the mak of vourmak or farmagion. The early societies and 

 secret orders of the East (the East, as might be expected, 

 being full of secret orders) have linked themselves on to 

 masonry as the last surviving order which used their secret 

 marks. Probably, to begin with, these marks had no rela- 

 tion to building. It seems then that etymologically the 

 freemasons are no more than a band of " pharmakoi." 



