Very Interesting Masonic Coded Ritual Book from 1913 on Sale at E-Bay

I saw this listing and thought it worthy of mentioning here. It is a ritual book from 1913. I don't know what jurisdiction this particular book is from but I have one almost identical to it in my personal collection. When you open the book you have the ritual but many of the words are represented by symbols. A Mason familiar with the ritual would have no trouble making out the ritual in the book and begin to understand all the symbols, but someone not familiar at all with the ritual would be utterly lost. It was a great way at the time to keep the ritual a secret. Now of course you can download the ritual from the Internet word for word but this book is a great part of Masonic history and represents a time when secrecy was a large part of the Masonic tradition.

Here is the link to the listing: Masonic Coded Ritual Book from 1913


I'd like to mention a couple things though about this listing. I hate when they refer to Masonic items as OCCULT. Why do they do that? A quick search on E-bay on items using "occult" in their title brings up items about Wicca, Magi ck, sorcery, demons and Masonry. This drives me nuts. And this particular book vendor has a couple of books on Masonry. Well this is one of my pet peeves. When I'm in a book store it also bothers me that they list masonic books many times in the Religion section. It should go under the philosophy section. Does this bother anyone else?

One last note... This item I highlighted today is starting at $75. I think they should have started the listing much lower. For those with money this is a great find but they may be asking a bit too much for a ritual book. They are hard to come by though so I guess if the market can fetch the price then it is earned...