The Mason Merlin

In his left hand he holds a book,“Morals and Dogma."

"I cannot conceive of anything that could have induced Ashmole, Mainwaring, and other men of their class to unite themselves with a lodge of working Masons, except this - that as the Alchemists, Hermeticists, and Rosicrucians had no association of [their] own in England or Scotland, they joined the Masonic lodges in order to meet one another without being suspected, and I am convinced that it was the men who inherited their doctrine who brought their symbols into Masonry, but kept the Hermetic meanings to themselves. To these men we owe, I believe, the Master's degree. The substitute word means "the Creative Energy from the Father" - the Demiourgos and Hiram, I think, was made the hero, because his name resembled Hermes, "The Master of the Lodge"; the Divine Word (the Egyptian Thoth), the Mercury of the Alchemists." - Albert Pike