A | B |
C | D |
E | F |
G | H |
I | J |
K | L |
M
N |
O | P |
Q | R |
S | T |
U | V |
W | X |
Y | Z
A
In the Accadian, Greek,
Etruscan, Pelasgian, Gallic, Samaritan, and Egyptian or Coptic, of nearly the
same formation as the English letter. It originally meant with or together,
but at present signifies one. In most languages it is the initial letter of
the alphabet not so, however, in the Ethiopian, where it is the thirteenth.
This familiar first letter of the alphabet comes down to our own modern times
from the most remote period recorded of the world's history. The common form
of the letter corresponds closely to that in use by the Phoenicians at least
ten centuries before the Christian Era, as in fact it does to almost all its
descendants. Men of Tyre were Phoenicians, and we may trace the sound of the
name they gave this letter by noting the pronunciation of the first letters in
the alphabets of the Hebrews and the Grieks who took them from the same
source. We derive the word alphabet from the first two Greek letters, and
these are akin in their names to the Hebrew Aleph, or Awlef, and Bayth. Sounds
of these letters, as in English words, must not be confused with the
pronunciation of the names for them. The name of the Hebrew Aleph, signifies
ox from the resemblance of the letter to the head and horns of that animal.
The sacred Aleph has the numerical value of one and is made up of two Yodes,
one on each side of an inclined bar or Vawv. This combination of characters is
said to typify the Trinity in Unity. The Divine name in Hebrew connected with
this letter is, A H I H.
*
A. A. O. N. M. S.
These letters are the initials
of the words Ancient Arabic Order Noblea Mystia Shrine (see shrine).. They may
be rearranged to spell out the words A Mason. The claim has been made in all
sincerity that this peculiarity was prearranged and is not at all accidental.
Such a probability is not as rare as in type as may at first be imagined.
For instance the York Roll No.
1, about 1600 A.D., starts out quaintly with such an endeavor in the form of
an anagram, the letters of words or phrases transposed to make different words
or phrases, thus:
An Anagraimee upon the name of
Masonrie
William Kay to his friend Robert Preston
upon his Art of Masonrie as Followeth :
Much might be said of the O noble Artt
A Craft that'a worth estieming in each part
Sundry Nations Noobles & their Kings also
Oh how they fought its worth to know
Nimrod & Solomon the wisest of all men
Reason saw to love this Science then
Ile say noe more lest by my shallow verses I
Endeavoring to praise should blemish Masonrie.
*
AARON
Hebrew, A-har-ohne, a word of
doubtful etymology, but generally supposed to signify a mountaineer. Mackenzie
says the name means the illuminated. He was the brother of Moses, and the
first High Priest under the Mosaic dispensation, whence the priesthood
established by that lawgiver is known as the Masonic. He is mentioned in the
English lectures of the Second Degree, in reference to a certain sign which is
said to have taken its origin from the fact that Aaron and Hur were present on
the hill from which Moses surveyed the battle which Joshua was waging with the
Amalekites, when these two supported the weary arms of Moses in an upright
posture, because upon his uplifted hands the fate of the battle depended (see
Exodus xvii, 10-12). Aaron is also referred to in the latter section of the
Royal Arch Degree in connection with the memorials that were deposited in the
Ark of the Covenant. In the Degree or Grade of Chief of the Tabernacle, which
is the Twenty-third of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the presiding
officer represents Aaron, and is styled Most Excellent High Priest. In the
Twenty-fourth Degree of the same Rite, or Prince of the Tabernacle, the second
officer or Senior Warden also personates Aaron.
*
AARON'S BAND
A Degree instituted in 1824,
in New York City, mainly for social purposes, and conferred in an independent
body. Its ceremonies were similar to those of the Order of High Priesthood,
which caused the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the State to take offence, and
the small gathering dispersed in 1825.
*
AARON'S ROD
The method by which Moses
caused a miraculous judgment as to which tribe should be invested with the
priesthood, is detailed in the Book of Numbers (chapter xvii). He directed
that twelve rods should be laid up in the Holy of Holies of the Tabernacle,
one for each tribe; that of Aaron, of course, represented the tribe of Levi.
On the next day these rods were brought out and exhibited to the people, and
while all the rest remained dry and withered, that of Aaron alone budded and
blossomed and yielded fruit. There is no mention in the Pentateuch of this rod
having been placed in the ark, but only that it was put before it. But as
Saint Paul, or the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews ix, 4),
asserts that the rod and the pot of manna were both within the ark, Royal Arch
Masons have followed this later authority. Hence the rod of Aaron is found in
the ark; but its import is only historical, as if to identify the substitute
ark as a true copy of the original, which had been lost. No symbolical
instruction accompanies its discovery.
*
AB
1. The 11th month of the
Hebrew civil year and corresponding to the months July and Augustus, beginning
with the new moon of the former.
2. It is also a Hebrew word, signifying father, and will be readily recognized
by every Freemason as a component part of the name Hiram Abif, which literally
means Hiram his father (see Abif).
*
ABACISCUS
The diminutive of Abacus- and,
in architecture, refers to the squares of the tessellated pavement or
checkered surface of the ground floor of King Solomon's Temple.
*
ABACUS
A term which has been
erroneously used to designate the official staff of the Grand Master of the
Templars. The word has no such meaning ; for an abacus is either a table used
for facilitating arithmetical calculations, or is in architecture the crowning
plate of a column and its capital. The Grand Master's staff was a baculus,
which see.
*
ABADDON
A Hebrew word ab-ad-done,
signifying destruction. By the Rabbis it is interpreted as the place of
destruction, and is the second of the seven names given by them to the region
of the dead.
In the Apocalypse (Revelation ix, 11) it is rendered by the Greek word
Apollyon, and means the destroyer. In this sense it is used as a significant
word in the high degrees.
*
ABAZAR
Probably from the Hebrew word
ab-ee-ay-zer, meaning helpful. The title given to the Master of Ceremonies in
the Sixth Degree of the Modern French Rite.
*
ABBREVIATIONS
Abbreviations of technical
terms or of official titles are of very extensive use in Freemasonry. They
were, however, but rarely employed in the earlier Masonic publications. For
instance, not one is to be found in the first edition of Anderson's
Constitutions. Within a comparatively recent period they have greatly
increased, especially among French writers, and a familiarity with them is
therefore essentially necessary to the Masonic student.
Frequently, among English and
always among French authors, a Masonic abbreviation is distinguished by three
points,.:, in a triangular form following the letter, which peculiar mark was
first used, according to Ragon, on the 12th of August, 1774, by the Grand
Orient of France, in an address to its subordinates. No authoritative
explanation of the meaning of these points has been given, but they may be
supposed to refer to the three lights around the altar, or perhaps more
generally to the number three, and to the triangle, both important symbols in
the Masonic system.
A representative list of
abbreviations is given, and these will serve as a guide to the common
practice, but the tendency to use such conveniences is limited only by
personal taste governed by the familiarity of the Brethren using them with one
another. This acquaintance may permit the mutual use of abbreviations little
known elsewhere. All that can be done is to offer such examples as will be
helpful in explaining the usual custom and to suggest the manner in which the
abbreviations are employed. With this knowledge a Freemason can ascertain the
meaning of other abbreviations he may find in his Masonic reading.
Before proceeding to give a
list of the principal abbreviations, it may be observed that the doubling of a
letter is intended to express the plural of that word of which the single
letter is the abbreviation.
Thus, in French, F.:,
signifies Frére, or Brother, and FF :. Fréres, or Brothers. And in English, L
:. is sometimes used to denote Lodge, and LL :, to denote Lodges. This remark
is made once for all, because we have not deemed it necessary to augment the
size of the list of abbreviations by inserting these plurals. If the reader
finds S:.G:.I:. to signify Sovereign Grand Inspector, he will be at no loss to
know that SS:.GG:.II:. must denote Sovereign Grand Inspectors. A:.&A:. Ancient
and Accepted.
A:.&A:. R :. Ancient and
Accepted Rite as used in England.
A:.&A:. S :. R :. Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
A:.&P:. R :. Ancient and Primitive Rite.
A:.C:. Anno Coadio. Latin, meaning the Year of Destruction; referring to the
year 1314 in Knights Templar history.
A:.D:. Anno Domini. Latin, meaning Year of Our Lord.
A:.Dep:. Anno Depositionis. Latin, meaning In the Year of the Deposit. The
date is used by Royal and Select Masters.
A:.F:.M:. Ancient Freemasons.
A:.F:.&A:.M :. Ancient Free and Accepted Masons.
A:.H:. Anno Hebraico. Latin, meaning Hebrew Year.
A:.Inv:. Anno Inventionis. Latin, meaning In the Year of the Discovery. The
date used by Royal Arch Masons.
A:.L:. Anno Lucis. Latin, meaning In the Year of Light. The date used by
Ancient Craft Freemasons.
A.:L:.G:.D:.G:.A:.D:.L:.U:. A la Gloire du Grand Architecte de l'Universe.
French, meaning To the Glory of the Grand Architect of the Universe. The usual
caption of French Masonic documents.
A:.L:. O:. A L Orient. French, meaning At the East. The Location or seat of
the Lodge.A.:M:. Anno Mundi. Latin, meaning In the Year of the World. The date
used in the Ancient and Accepted Rite.
A.:O:. Anno Ordinis. Latin, meaning In the Year of the 0rder. The date used by
Knights Templar.
A.:Q.:C:. Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, the Latin name for the printed reports of
the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076, London.
A.:V.:L:. An du Vraie Lumiére. French, meaning Year of the True Light.
A.:V:.T:.O:.S.:A.:G:. Ad Universi Terrarum Orbis Summi Architecti Gloriam.
Latin, meaning To the glory of the Grand Architect of the Universe.
A.:Y.:M:. Ancient York Masons or Ancient York Masonry.
B.: Bruder. German, meaning Brother.
B.:A.: Buisson Ardent. French, meaning Burning Bush.
B:.B:. Burning Bush.
Bn:. Brudern. German, meaning Brethren.
Comp.: Companion. Used by Brethren of the Royal Arch.
C:.C:. Celestial Canopy.
C:.H:. Captain of the Host.
D:. Deputy.
D:.A:.F:. Due and Ancient Form.
D:.D:.G:.M:. Sometimes abbreviated Dis :.
D:.G:.M:. District Deputy Grand Master.
D:.G:.B:.A:.W:. Der Grosse Baumeister aller Welten. German, meaning The. Grand
Architect of all Worlds.
D:.G:.G:.H:.P:. Deputy General Grand High Priest.
D:.G:.H:.P:. Deputy Grand High Priest.
D:.G:.M:. Deputy Grand Master.
D:.M:.J:. Deus Meumque Jus. Latin, meaning God and my right.
D:.Prov:.G:.M:. Deputy Provincial Grand Master.
Deg:. Degree or Degrees. Another way is as in 33 ,meaning Thirty-Third Degree.
Dis:. District.
E:.Eminent; Excellent; also East.
E:.A:. Entered Apprentice. Sometimes abbreviated E:.A:.P:.
E:.C:. Excellent Companion.
Ec:. Ecossaise. French, meaning Scottish; belonging to the Scottish Rite.
E:.G:.C:. Eminent Grand Commander.
E:.G:.M:. Early Grand Master. A central Authority had been made to control the
Knights Templar of Ireland independently of the Grand Lodge and at the very
first meeting of the Lodge "at High Noon of St. John." 1779, the Worshipful
Master appended to his name the letters E. G. M.,that is, Early Grand Master.
There was then no governing body in Freemasonry except the Grand Lodge (see
"Templar Legends," by Brother W. J.Chetwode Crawley, Transactions, Quatuor
Coronati Lodge, 1913, volume xxvi).
E:.O:.L:. Ex Oriente Lux. Latin, meaning Out of the East comes Light. E:.V:.
Era Vulgus. Latin, meaning Common Era, also stands for Ere Vulgaire, French,
meaning Vulgar Era; Year of the Lord.
F:. Frére. French, meaning Brother.
F:.A:.M:. Free and Accepted Masons.
F:.E:.R:.T:. According to the statutes of the United Orders of the Temple &nd
Saint John of Jerusalem, etc., the standard of Saint John is described as
gules, on a Cross Argent, the Agnus Dei-meaning Red on a Silver Cross with a
representation of the Lamb of God-with the letters F.E.R.T. These letters are
the initials of the words of the motto Fortitudine Ejus Rhodum tenuit, meaning
By his courage he held Rhodes. Brother Gordon P. G. Hills, Transactions of
Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1914, volume xxvii page 233, says, "I suppose it
refers to the gallant defense by the Grand Master in 1522, when however, the
Island was surrendered, although the garrison were permitted to depart with
the honors of war." A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette, June 4, 1901, states
that the legend appears on the coinage of Louis of Savoy in 1301 and on that
of Thomas in 1233.
F:.C:. Fellow Craft.
F:.M:. Freemason.
G:.Grand- Sometimes read as Great; Geometry. Also has another meaning well
known to the Craft.
G:.A:.O.:T:.U:. Grand Architect of the Universe.
G:.A:.S:. Grand Annual Sojourn.
G.:C:. Grand Chapter; Grand Council; Grand Cross; Grand Commander; Grand
Chaplain; Grand Conclave; Grand Conductor; Grand Chancellor.
G:.C:.G:. Grand Captain General; Grand Captain of the Guard.
G :.C:.H.: Grand Captain of the Host; Grand Chapter of Herodom.
G:.Com:. Grand Commandery; Grand Commander.
G:.D:. Grand Deacon.
G:.D:.C:. Grand Director of Ceremonies.
G:.E:. Grand Encampment; Grand Bast; Grand Ezra.
G:.J:.W:. Grand Junior Warden.
G:.G:.C:. General Grand Chapter
. G:.G:.H:.P:. General Grand High Priest.
G:.G:.K:. General Grand King.
G:.G:.M:.F:.V:. General Grand Master of the First Veil.
G:.G.:S:. General Grand Scribe.
G:.G.:T:. General Grand Treasurer.
G:.H:.P:. Grand High Priest.
G:.K:. Grand King.
G:.L:. Grand Lodge. Grande Loge, in French. Grosse Loge, in German.
G:.M:. Grand Master; Grand Marshal; Grand Monarch.
G:.N:. Grand Nehemiah.
G:.O:. Grand Orient; Grand Organist.
G:.P. Grand Pursuivant; Grand Prior; Grand Prelate; Grand Preceptor; Grand
Preceptory; Grand Patron; Grand Priory; Grand Patriarch; Grand Principal.
G:.P:.S:. Grand Principal Sojourner
G:.R:. Grand Registrar; Grand Recorder.
G:.R:.A:.C:. Grand Royal Arch Chapter.
G:.S:. Grand Scribe; Grand Secretory; Grand Steward.
G:.S:.B:. Grand Sword Bearer; Grand Sword Bearer.
G:.S:.E.: Grand Scribe Ezra.
G:.S:.N:. Grand Scribe Nehemiah.
G:.S:.W:. Grand Senior Warden.
G:.T:. Grand Treasurer; Grand Tyler.H:.A:.B:. Hiram Abif.
H:.E:. Holy Empire.
H:.J:. Heilige Johannes. German, meaning Holy Saint John.
H:.K:.T:. Hiram, King of Tyre.
H:.R:.D:.M:. Heredom.
Ill:. Illustrious.
I:.N:.R:.I:. Jesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudoeorum. Latin, meaning Jesus of Nazareth,
King of the Jews. The Letters are also the initials of a significant sentence
in Latin, namely, Igne Natura Renovatur Integra, meaning by fire nature is
perfectly renewed.
I:.P:.M:. Immediate Past Master. English title of an official last promoted
from the chair.
I:.T:.N:.O:.T:.G:.A:.O:.T:.U:. In the Name of the Grand Architect of the
Universe. Often forming the caption of Masonic documents.
J:.W:. Junior Warden.
K:.King.
K:.E:.P:. Knight of the Eagle and Pelican
K:.H:. Kadash, Knight of Kadosh.
K:.H:.S:. Knight of the Holy Sepulcher
K:.M:. Knight of Malta
K:.S:. King Salomon (Suleiman)
K:.T:. Knights Templar; Knight Templar.
L:. Lodge. Lehrling, the German for Apprentice.
L:.R:. Lonon Rank. A distinction introduced in England in 1908.
L:.V:.X:. Lux Latin, meaning Light.
M:. Mason; Masonry; Marshal; Mark; Minister; Master. Meister, in German.
Maitre, in French.
M:.C:. Middle Chamber.
M:.E:. Most Eminent; Most Excellent.
M:.E:.G:.H:.P:. Most Excellent Grand High Priest.
M:.E:.G:.M:. Most Eminent Grand Master (of Knights Templar).
M:.E:.M:. Most Excellent Master.
M:.E:.Z:. Most Excellent Zerubbabel.
M:.K:.G:. Maurer Kunst Geselle. German, meaning Fellow Craft.
M:.L:. Maurer Lehrling. German, meaning Entered Apprentice.
M:.L:. Mére Loge. French, meaning Mother Lodge.
M:.M:. Master Mason. Mois Maçonnique. French, meaning Masonic Month. March 18
the first Masonic month among French Freemasons.
Meister Maurer. German, meaning Master Mason.
M:.P:.S:. Most Puissant Sovereign.
M:.W:.Most Worshipful.
M:.W:.G:.M:. Most Worshipful Grand Master; Most Worthy Grand Matron.
M:.W:.G:.P:. Most Worthy Grand Patron.
M:.W:.M:. Most Wise Master
M:.W:.S:. Most Wise Sovereign
N:. Novice.
N:.E:.C:. North-east Corner.
N'o:.P:.V:.D:.M:. N'oubiez pas vos décorations Maçonniques French, meaning Do
not forget your Masonic regalia, a phrase used in France on the corner of a
summons.
O:. Orient.
O:.A:.C:. Ordo ab Chao. Latin, meaning Order out of Chaos.
OB:. Obligation.
P:. Past; Prelate; Prefect; Prior.
P:.C:.W:. Principal Conductor of the Work.
P:.G:.M:. Past Grand Master; Past Grand Matron.
P:.J:. Prince of Jerusalem.
P:.K:. Past King.
P:.M:. Past Master.
P:.S:. Principal Sojourner.
Pro:.G:.M:. Pro-Grand Master.
Prov:. Provincial.
Prov:.G:.M:. Provincial Grand Master.
R:.A:. Royal Arch; Royal Art.
R:.A:.C:. Royal Arch Captain; Royal Arch Chapter.
R:.A:.M:. Royal Arch Mason; Royal Arch Masonry; Royal Ark Mariner. R:.C:. or
R:.t:. Rose Croiz. Appended to the signature of one having that degree
R:.E:. Right Eminent.
R:.E:.A:.et A:.Rite Ecossaise Ancien et Accepte. French, meaning Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite.
R:.F:. Respectable Free. French, meaning Worshipful Brother.
R:.L:. or R:.[]:. Respectable Loge. French, meaning Worshipful Lodge.
R:.S:.Y:.C:.S:. Rosy Cross (in the Royal order of Scotland).
R:.W:. Right Worshipful.
R:.W:.M:. Right Worshipful Master.
S:.Scribe,Sentinel, Seneschal, Sponsor.
S:.C:. Supreme Council.
S:.G:.D:. Senior Grand Deacon.
S:.G:.I:.G:. Sovereign Grand Inspector General
S:.G:.W:. Senior Grand Warden.
S:.M:. Secret Master; Substitute Master; Select Master; Secret Monitor;
Sovereign Master; Supreme Master; Supreme Magus.
S:.O:. Senior Overseer.
S:.P:.R:.S:. Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret.
S:.S:. Sanctum Sanctorum. Latin, meaning Holy of Holies. Formerly also used
for Soverein of Sovereigns
S:.S:.M:. Senior Substitute Magus.
S:.S:.S:. The initials of the Latin word Salutem, meaning Greeting, repeated
thrice and also found similarly in the French, Trois Fois Salut, meaning
Thrice Greeting. A common caption to French Masonic circulars or letters
S:.W:. Senior Warden.
Sec:. Secretary.
Soc:.Ros:. Societas Rosicruciana
Sum:. Surveillant. French, meaning Warden.
T:.C:.F:. Tres Cher Frére. French, meaning Very Dear Brother.T:.G:.A:.O:.T:.U:.
The Grand Architect of the Universe. T:.S:. Tres Sage. Meaning Very Wise,
addressed to the presiding officer of French Rite.
U:.D:. Under Dispensation.
V:.or Ven:. Venerable. French, meaning Worshipful.
V:.D:.B:. Very Dear Brother.
V:.D:.S:.A:. Veut Dieu Saint Amour, or Vult Dei Sanctus Animus. A formula used
by Knights Templar. The expression Veut Dieu Saint Amour means literally,
Wishes God Holy Love, which in correct English might be expressed by Thus
wishes God (who is)holy love. Vult Dei Sanctus Animus is the Latin Version of
the same phrase. Only in this case God is in the genitive case and therefore
the exact translation would be The holy spirit of God wishes or Thus wishes
God's holy spirit.
V:.E:. Viceroy Eusebius; Very Eminent.
V:.F:. Venerable Frére. French, meaning Worshipful Brother.
V:.L:. Vraie Lumiere. French, meaning True Light
V:.S:.L:. Volume of the sacred Law.
V:.W:. Very Worshipful
W:. Worshipful
W:.M:. Worshipful Master. Wurdiger Meister, in German, meaning Worshipful
Master.
[]Lodge.
[][]Lodges.
An equilateral triangle is an
emblem of the Trillity and also of the Chapter in Royal Arch Masonry.
The Swastika or Pylfot or Jaina Cross, as it bears all three names which are
explained else where, has been used as a part of the signatures of members of
Hermetic bodies and is then called the Hermetic Cross, which is attached to
documents. The position of such a Cross in relation to the signature and the
color of the ink indicates the rank of the signer and these particulars are
subject to change.
This combination of the
Maltese Cross and the equilateral triangle is not only sometimes found as a
designation for the Knight of Rose Cross but was used as early as 1725 to mean
a reference to a Lodge of Saint John.
The supreme Council of the
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, for the Northern
Jurisdiction of the United States, has on page 36 of the book entitled
information for Bodies and Officers (this being a part of the report of the
Committee on Rituals and Ritualistic Matters in the Proceedings of 1870, pages
64, 65), the following illustrated Instructions :
The Sovereign Grand Commander
shall prefix the triple cross, in red ink, to his signature, thus:-
The Supreme Council of the
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, for the Southern
Jurisdiction of the United States, has in the Statutes as amended to October,
1921, Article xiv, section 3, the following illustrated instructions: The
distinctive symbol to be used before the signature of the Sov:.Gr:. Commander
is a Cross with three cross-bars, near that extremities of which and of the
shaft are small cross-bars, the signature to be followed by a rayed
equilateral triangle enclosing the figures 33 (violet ink to be used). The
Symbol Cross to precede the signature of a Sov:.Gr:.Insp:.General has two
cross-bars near the extremities of which and of the shaft are small
cross-bars, the signature to be followed by a rayed equilateral triangle
enclosing the figures 33 (purple ink to be used);the title to be written
Sov:.Gr:.Insp:.Genl:.. The Symbol Cross to precede the signature of an
Inspector Honorary is a plain cross with two crossbars (no crossbars at the
extremities), followed by a rayed equilateral triangle enclosing the figures
33, the title to be written Insp:.Genl:.Hon:.(crimson ink to be used). The
rest of the symbols to precede signatures and titles to remain the same as
given in the present edition of the Statutes (the ink to be red). In each of
the above the cross-bar are to be horizontal and except where shown
differently the shaft is inclined to the right to correspond with the angle of
the strokes of slanting writing. The shafts of the crosses used by the Court
of Honor are vertical, the ends of the shaft and cross-bars being provided
with a cross-bar at the extremities.
For the Rose Croix the symbol
is a Passion Cross set on the apex of a pyramid or equatorial triangle.
*
ABDA
A word used in some of the
high degrees. He was the father of Adoniram (see First Kings iv, 6). Lenning
in the Encyclopedie der Freimaurerei is wrong in saying that he is represented
by one of the officers in the degree of Master in Israel. He has confounded
Abda with his son.
*
ABDAMON
The name of the Orator in the
Fourteenth Degree of the Rite of Perfection, or the Sacred Vault of James VI.
The word means a servant, from abed, to serve, although somewhat corrupted in
its transmission into the rituals. Lenning says it is the Hebrew Habdamon,
meaning a servant; but there is no such word in Hebrew.
*
ABDIEL
A Hebrew word meaning servant
of God. The name of an angel mentioned by the Jewish Cabalists. He is
represented in Milton's Paradise Lost, Book V, lines 894-7, as one of the
seraphbn, who, when Satan tried to stir up a revolt among the angels
subordinate to his authority, alone and boldly withstood his traitorous
designs :
Among the faithless, faithful
only he;
Among innumerable false, unmoved,
unshaken un-seduced, un-terrified,
His loyalty be kept, his love, his zeal.
The name Abdiel became the
synonym of honor and faithfulness.
*
ABDITORIUM
A secret place for the deposit
of records
*
ABELITES
A secret Order which existed
about the middle of the eighteenth century in Germany, called also the Order
of Abel The organization was in possession of peculiar signs, words, and
ceremonies of initiation, but, according to Gadicke, Freimaurer Lexicon, it
had no connection with Freemasonry. According to Clavel the order was founded
at Griefswald in 1745.
*
ABERCORN, DUKE OF
Grand Master of Ireland 1874
to 1885.
*
ABERCORN, EARL OF
James Hamilton, Lord Paisley,
was named Grand Master of England by the retiring Grand Master, the Duke of
Richmond, in 1725. He was at that time the Master of a Lodge, and had served
on the Committee of Charity during that year. He succeeded his father as Earl
of Abercorn in 1734.
*
ABERDOUR, LORD
Grand Master of Scotland, 1755
to 1756. Also of England 1757 to 1761.
*
ABIB
The original name of the
Hebrew month Nisan, nearly corresponding to the month of March, the first of
the ecclesiastical year. Abib is frequently mentioned in the sacred
scriptures, and signifies green ears of com or fresh fruits.
*
ABIBALE
The name of the first Assassin
in the Elu of the Modem French Rite. The word is derived most probably from
the Hebrew abi and balah, which mean father of destruction, though it is said
to mean le Meurtrier du Pere, this phrase meaning in French the Murder of the
Father.
*
ABIDE BY
See stand to and abide by.
*
ABIF
(or ABIFF, or perhaps more
correctly ABIV).
A name appeared in scripture to that celebrated builder who was sent to
Jerusalem by King Hiram, of Tyre, to superintend the construction of the
Temple. The word, which in the original Hebrew is ...and which may be
pronounced Abiv or Abif, is compounded of the noun in the construct-state ....Abi,
meaning father, and the pronominal suffix i, which, with. the preceding vowel
sound, is to be sounded as iv or if, and which means his; so that the word
thus compounded Abif literally and grammatically signifies his father. The
word is found in second Chronicles iv, 16, in the following sentence:
"The pots also, and the
shovels, and the flesh hooks, and all their instruments, did Hiram his father
make to King Solomon." The latter part of this verse is in the original as
follows: shelomoh lamelech Abif Huram gnasah
Luther has been more literal
in his version of this passage than the English translators, and appearing to
suppose that the word Abif is to be considered simply as an appellative or
surname, he preserves the Hebrew form, his translation being as follows: "Machte
Hiram Abif dem Konige Salomo." The Swedish version is equally exact, and,
instead of "Hiram his father," gives us Hiram Abiv. In the Latin Vulgate, as
in the English version, the words are rendered Hiram pater ejus. We have
little doubt that Luther and the Swedish translator were correct in treating
the word Abif as a surname.
In Hebrew, the word ab, or
father, is often used as a title of respect, and may then signify friend,
counselor. wise man, or something else of equivalent character.
Thus, Doctor Clarke,
commenting on the word abrech, in Genesis XLI, 43, says: "Father seems to have
been a name of office, and probably father of the king or father of Pharaoh
might signify the same as the king's minister among us." And on the very
passage in which this word Abif is used, he says: " father, is often used in
Hebrew to signify master, inventor, chief operator."
Gesenius, the distinguished
Hebrew lexicographer, gives to this word similar significations, such as
benefactor, master, teacher, and says that in the Arabic and the Ethiopia it
is spoken of one who excels in anything.
This idiomatic custom was
pursued by the later Hebrews, for Buxtor tells us, in his Talmudic Lexicon,
that "among the Talmudists abba, father, was always a title of honor, " and he
quotes the following remarks from a treatise of the celebrated Maimonides,
who, when speaking of the grades or ranks into which the Rabbinical doctors
were divided, says: "The first class consists of those each of whom bears his
own name, without any title of honor; the second, of those who are called
Rabbanim; and the third, of those who are called Rabbi, and the men of this
class also receive the cognomen of Abba, Father."
Again, in Second Chronicles11,
13, Hiram, the King of Tyre, referring to the same Hiram, the widow's son, who
is spoken of subsequently in reference to King Solomon as his father, or Abif
in the passage already cited, writes to Solomon: "And now I have sent a
cunning man, endued with understanding, of Huram my father's." The only
difficulty in this sentence is to be found in the prefixing of the letter
lamed, before Huram, which has caused our translators, by a strange blunder,
to render the words Huram abi, as meaning of Huram my father's, instead of
Huram my father. Brother Mackey remarked that Huram my father's could not be
the true meaning, for the father of King Hiram was not another Hiram, but
Abibal.
Luther has again taken the
correct view of this subject, and translates the word as a surname: "So sende
ich nun einen weisen Mann, der Berstand hat, Huram Abif"; that is, "So now I
send you a wise man who has understanding, Huram Abif." The truth, we suspect,
is, although it has escaped all the commentators, that the lamed in this
passage is a Chaldaism which is sometimes used by the later Hebrew writers,
who incorrectly employ, the sign of the dative for the accusative after
transitive verbs.
Thus, in Jeremiah XL 2, we
have such a construction, vayikach rab tabachim l Yremyahu; that is,
literally, "and the captain of the guards took for Jeremiah,"
Where the l, or for, is a
Chaldaism and redundant, the true rendering being, "and the captain of the
guards took Jeremiah." Other similar passages are to be found in Lamentations
IV, 5; Job V, 2, etc.
In like manner we suppose the
.. before Huram which the English translators have rendered by the preposition
of, to be redundant and a Chaldaic form.
The sentence should be read
thus : ''I have sent a cunning man, endued with understanding, Huram my
father;" Or, if considered as a surname, as it should be, Huram Abi.
From all this we conclude that
the word Ab, with its different suffixes is always used in the Books of Kings
and Chronicles, in reference to Hiram the Builder, as a title of respect. When
King Hiram speaks of him he calls him ''my father Hiram," Hiram Abi and when
the writer of the Book of Chronicles is speaking of him and King Solomon in
the same passage, he calls him "Solomon's father, his father," Hiram Abif. The
only distinction is made by the different appellation of the pronouns my and
his in Hebrew. To both the kings of Tyre and of Judah he bore the honorable
relation of Ab, or father, equivalent to friend, counselor, or minister. He
was Father Hiram.
The Freemasons are therefore
perfectly correct in refusing to adopt the translation of the English version,
and in preserving, after the example of Luther, the word Abif as an
appellative, surname, or title of honor and distinction bestowed upon the
relief builder of the Temple, as Dr. James Anderson suggests in his note on
the subject in the first edition (1723) of the Constitutions of the
Freemasons.
*
ABIRAM
One of the traitorous
craftsmen, whose act of perfidy forms so important a part of the Third Degree,
receives in some of the high degrees the name of Abiram Akirop. These words
certainly have a Hebrew look; but the significant words of Freemasonry have,
in the lapse of time and in their transmission through ignorant teachers,
become so corrupted in form that it is almost impossible to trace them to any
intelligible root. They may be Hebrew or they may be anagrammatized (see
Anagram) ; but it is only chance that can give us the true meaning which the
two words in combination undoubtedly possess. The word Abiram means father of
loftiness, and may have been chosen as the name of the traitorous craftsman
with allusion to the Biblical story of Korah, Dathan and Abiram who conspired
against Moses and Aaron. Numbers xvi. In the French ritual of the Second Elu
it is said to mean murderer or assassin, but this would not seem to be correct
etymologically. Brother Mackenzie suggests that Akirop may be from, Karab, the
Hebrew meaning to join battle. He also offers Abi-ramah, to mean in Hebrew
destroyer of the father.
*
ABLE
There is an old use of the
word able to signify suitable. Thus, Chaucer says of a monk that "he was able
to ben an abbot," that is, suitable to be an abbot. In this sense the old
manuscript Constitutions constantly employ the word, as when they say, in the
Lansdowne Manuscript, that the apprentice should be "able of Birth that is
free borne," the ff then meaning F.
*
ABLUTION
A ceremonial purification by
washing, much used in the Ancient Mysteries and under the Mosaic Dispensation.
It is also employed in some of the advanced degrees of Freemasonry. The better
technical term for this ceremony is lustration, which see.
*
ABNET
The band or apron,. made of
fine linen, variously wrought, and worn by the Jewish priesthood. It seems to
have been borrowed directly from the Egyptians, upon the representations of
all of whose gods is to be found a similar girdle. Like the zennaar, or sacred
cord of the Brahmans, and the white shield of the Scandinavians, it is the
analogue of tho Masonic apron.
*
ABOMINABLES, LES
Terms of contempt used in some
of the foreign rites, referring more particularly to Philippe le Bel and
Bertrand de Got, persecutors of the Knights Templar.
*
ABORIGINES
A secret society which existed
in England about the year 1783, and of whose ceremony of initiation the
following account is contained in the British Magazine of that date. The
presiding officer, who was styled the Original, thus addressed the candidate:
Original. Have you faith
enough to be made an Original?
Candidate. I have.
Original. Will you be
conformable to all honest rules which may support steadily the honor,
reputation, welfare, and dignity of our ancient undertaking?
Candidate. I will.
Original. Then, friend,
promise me that you will never stray from the paths of Honor, Freedom,
Honesty, Sincerity, Prudence, Modesty, Reputation, Sobriety, and 'True
Friendship.
Candidate. I do.
Which done, the Crier of the
Court commanded silence, and the new member, being uncovered, and dropping on
his right knee, had the following oath administered to him by the Servant, the
new member laying his right hand on the Cap of Honor, and Nimrod holding a
staff over his head:
"You swear by the Cap of Honor, by the Collar of Freedom, by the Coat of
Honesty, by the Jacket of Sincerity, by the Shirt of Prudence, by the Breeches
of Modesty, by the Garters of Reputation, by the Stockings of Sobriety, and by
the Steps of True Friendship, never to depart from these laws."
Then rising, with the staff
resting on his head he received a copy of the laws from the hands of the Grand
Original, with these words, "Enjoy the benefits hereof."
He then delivered the copy of
the laws to the care of the servant, after which the word was given by the
secretary to the new member, namely: Eden, signifying the garden where ADAM,
the great aboriginal, was formed.
Then the secretary invested
him with the sign, namely: resting his right hand on his left side, signifying
the first conjunction of harmony.
This organization had no
connection with Freemasonry, but was simply one of those numerous imitative
societies to which that Institution has given rise.
*
ABOYNE, GEORGE, EARL OF
From 1802 to 1803 Grand Master
of Scotland.
*
ABRAC
In the Leland Manuscript it is
said that the Masons conceal "the wey of wynninge the facultye of Abrac." John
Locke (though it is doubtful if it was he who wrote a commentary on the
manuscript) is quoted as saying: ''Here I am utterly in the dark.'' However,
it means simply the way of acquiring the science of Abrac. The science of
Abrac is the knowledge of the power and use of the mystical abraxas, which see
; or very likely Abrac is merely an abbreviation of Abracadabra
*
ABERDEEN Alter, THE LODGE
The second quarter of the
Twentieth century in the 'Literature of Freemasonry was characterized above
everything else by the publication (in some twenty languages) of Lodge
histories. Taken collectively, and in their impact as a single body of
writings, these histories have worked some two, or possibly three, fundamental
changes in the older conception of the history of the Fraternity, and their
data have caused the revisions of many details-this last applying particularly
to the work of the pioneers of modern historical scholarship, Gould, Hughan,
Crawley, Lane, Sadler, etc., and Gould especially. Of the Lodge histories some
five or six are indubitable masterpieces, both in their literary form and in
their scholarship.
Among the more slender books
of the last named class is Notes on the Early History and Records of The
Lodge, Aberdeen, No. Alter, by A. L. Miller, a Past Master of it; Aberdeen;
University Press; 1919. It is written modestly, with a fine spirit, and with a
just sense of proportion ; it is a model for Lodge historians everywhere to
pattern on; moreover it contains the clearest of pictures of a Lodge of the
Transition Period, as it was and as it worked, a century before the first
Grand Lodge of 1717.
Only three Lodges take
precedence of it on the rolls of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, Mother
Kilwinning, Mary's Chapel, and Melrose St. John.
There is a written record of a
Mason in Aberdeen in 1264, a Provost. In 1357 Andrew Scott came with other
Masons from Melrose to rebuild the Cathedral. The records of the Burgh of
Aberdeen, unbroken since 1398, contain many references to Masons. Masons came
from everywhere to build King's College, In those same records is a reference
to the Mason "Lodge" (a building) in 1483. In the Burgh minutes of 1483 is the
wording of an oath taken by the masonry of the luge; offenders were to be
"excluded" (expelled). In 1486 the Burgh adopted rules governing Masons. In
1493 three Masons were permanently employed by the Burgh (now called "town").
A record of 1544 refers to the Lodge building, which was a permanent Masonic
headquarters.
In 1527 the Masons were
incorporated (by a Seal of Cause) and given disciplinary powers over their own
members.
A Warden over the Masons was
appointed in 1590. Masons, unlike most workers, could work inside or away from
the town; they were "free." An early Masons' Lodge "supposed to have been
situated on the southern slope near the top of st Katharine's Hill, was built
of Wood and was burned by enemies of the Craft, who were said to have been
numerous, and to have in cludet the clergy "(From Wycliff down "the
clergy"have been the hardest workers in it. The Roman Church has been
officially against it ever since the General Council of Afignon, when all
secret societies"were condemned) Another Lodge was afterwards built near where
Aberdeen's St. Paul's now stands, but was burned down, and many old records
with it, probably by the Marquis of Huntly when be ravaged Aberdeen with 2000
soldiers.
In 1700 the members built yet
another Lodge, out upon the links, well apart ; the father of the famous
architect James Gibbs lived in part of it.
Thus the written records prove
a continuing existence of Masonry in Aberdeen from 1264, and doubtless
Aberdeen iter is in a direct and unbroken line of descent from the Thirteenth
Century. It is probable that the Masons have had a separate and organized
society, self-governing, since at least as early as 1541, which was in the
earliest period of Protestantism.
The Work Book written in 1670
contains pictures of Working Tools. Of the members at that date ten of the
forty-nine were Operative Masons; among the non-operatives were four noblemen.
The oldest known written record of a non-Operative in Scotland is 1600.
In Aberdeen records mention is
made of "the Mason Word" : of "the oaths we received." The Officers in 1670
were a Master, Warden, Boxmaster, Clerk and Officer (Tiler). Masons' sons (the
"Lewis") received special privileges. Until 1754 "intrants" (apprentices) made
presents of aprons and gloves; they were trained by "Intenders." A permanent
Charity Fund (in the "Box") was set up in 1670.
The most interesting among the
records are these two: "No Lodge be holden within a dwelling house where there
is people living in but in the open fields, except it be ill weather, and then
let there be a house chosen that no person shall hear nor see us." And : "We
ordain likewise that all entering Prentices be entered in our ancient outfield
Lodge in the Mearns in the parish of Nigg at the sources [piers or bulwarks]
at the point of the Ness." the principal point made by the members when they
wrote the Work Book of 1670 was that they were making sure that old customs
were to be continued.
The first Freemason to come to
America was John Skene, in 1684, of which the record was discovered by Bro.
David McGregor. John Skene was a member of the Aberdeen Lodge. the first name
in the list of members in the Work Book of 1670 was Harrie Elphingston, the
Master; be was the booking agent who arranged passage on the vessel Henry and
Francis on which a number of Aberdeenians emigrated to New Jersey, in America.
The arrangement was made under the patronage of the Earl of Perth, one of the
chief proprietors of New Jersey, also a Freemason, Robert Gordon, George
Alexander, John Forles, also on the same list of members, purchased an
interest in New Jersey. John Forbes came to East Jersey in 1684, then returned
to Scotland. John Skene settled at Burlington, capital of East Jersey, and was
Deputy Governor from 1685 until his death in 1690.
*
ADULTERINE GILDS
In the Anglo-Saxon period of
English history the majority of gilds ("frith gilds," "crich ten gilds") were
religious, military, or social fraternities. In the Twelfth Century a number
of "secular gilds" began to arise, and it was these which later came to be
called City Companies or (because certain of their members wore a prescribed
costume) Livery Companies. The Exchequer Rolls of London show that by 1180 a
number of these were legally organized; and because they could enforce laws,
enact rules, levy fines and other penalties, etc., they had to have legal
sanction for these governmental functions. This sanction was obtained in two
ways : first, by having their rules and records approved at certain times by
the Court of Aldermen, which was called Prescription ; or, second, by
receiving a Charter of Incorporation from the King.
If a company, society,
fraternity, or gild undertook to perform gild functions without the required
legal authorization it was called an Adulterine (illegal) Gild; and after
being tried and found guilty was heavily fined or otherwise punished, or was
destroyed.
In l181 no fewer than 18 such
gilds were found in London, and each was heavily fined. The fact is important
in Masonic history because it shows why Masons attached so much importance to
their Charters, Old Charges, etc. To act in association or hold assemblies or
enforce rules and regulations without legal authorization would have made of
them an adulterine Gild. The Masons Company of London became a recognized body
not later than 1220, and by prescription. In 1481 it received its
"Enfranchisement," or permission to wear Livery. In 1677 it received a Charter
(a very expensive luxury) from Charles II. What Prescription, Enfranchisement,
and Charter were to a City Company, the Old Charges must have been to Lodges;
once such a Lodge set itself up as a permanent society its first thought would
be to have a written sanction lest it be condemned as adulterine. By the same
token the new Grand Lodge of 1717 began as soon as possible to have a written
legal instrument of its own, which took the form of the Book of Constitutions
in 1723, and it compelled each new Lodge to have written warrant from it, and
later, it began to issue Charters of its own to new Lodges.
A clandestine Lodge of the
present time, which is a body without a regular Charter, is nothing other than
the modern form of the ancient ''adulterine gild."
*
AFRICA, CONTINENT OF
The historic mission of
Freemasonry in Africa has been for its Lodges and other Bodies to serve as a
center of union and unity in communities of which the majority of citizens
belong to a conglomerate of nationalities, languages, and races. The first
Lodge in South Africa was Goede Hoop, of Holland origins, constituted in the
Transvaal in 1772. (See article in this Supplement under Slavery, etc. ) The
English founded British Lodge, No. 334, at Cape Town, in 1811. In 1860 a Lodge
under Scotland was constituted as Southern Cross, No. 398. The earliest Lodge
under an Irish warrant was Abercom No. 159, in 1895. Haille Selassie, the
Emperor, was preparing to establish Lodges in Abyssinia shortly before the
Italian conquest.
By 1936 there were on the
Continent 389 Lodges recognized by Grand Lodges in the United States, and an
undiscoverable number not recognized, many of the latter being of French,
Spanish, and Italian origin. There were 254 Lodges under English Constitutions
103 under Scotland, 31 under Ireland. Since very little of Africa is under any
Exclusive Territorial Jurisdiction the way is open for Lodges for America.
nationals, of which there are many in port cities businessmen, sailors, men of
the Navy, airmen etc. In size African Lodges range from 25 to 301 members.
Egypt at the Sudan had in
1936, 25 Lodges; Province of Natal, 46; Union of South Africa and the
Transvaal, 228; Johannesburg, 31; Cape Town, 12 Nigeria, 21; Rhodesia, 24;
West Africa, 17; East Africa, 11; Tanganyika Territory, 6; Cape Colony, 9
Orange Free State, 2; etc. The English Lodges have five District Grand Lodges,
Ireland has a Provincial Grand Lodge of South Africa, Southern. The Scottish
Rite has two Grand Inspectors General among Lodges under English
Constitutions. The Knights Templar and the Royal Arch are vigorous. The
Transvaal Bodies have a Masonic Home. the majority of Bodies have a
Benevolence Fund. A possible United Grand Lodge for South Africa is discussed,
but appears unlikely.
*
ALCHIMY, THE ORDINALL OF
This is the title of a book by
Thomas Norton, of Bristol, England, which was reproduced in facsimile by
Williams & Wilkins Company, Baltimore, 1929, taken from Theatrum Chemicum
Britannicum with annotations by Elias Ashmole (made a Freemason at Warrington
Lodge, in 1646). It contains an introduction, tantalizingly brief, by E. J.
Holmyard. the study of chemistry, then called alchemy, is said to have been
introduced into Europe in l144 when Robert of Chester translated Book of the
Composition of Alchemy. (See Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, by Haskins.)
Thomas Norton's father was
Mayor of Bristol in 1413, and was a member of Parliament. Thomas himself was a
man of much education and wealth. He learned his art (mystery it was then
called, meaning craft or trade) from a study of the works of George Ripley,
born fifteen years after the death of Chaucer. The Ordinal is one of three
books on alchemy written by Thomas Norton. It is somewhat cryptic ;
presupposes a certain amount of erudition; is written in a loose imitation of
Chaucer's verse; is not a great work of literature but is easy to read, and
surpasses on most counts books written in the first half of the Fifteenth
Century.
In addition to Ashmole's
interest in it, the original has two particular points of interest for Masonic
students. First, in describing the contemporary craze for chemistry, Norton
declares that common workmen are as curious about it "as well as Lords," and
among them, along with weavers, goldsmiths, tailors, etc., he names "Free
Masons" and it is interesting that be used that form of the word.
Second, on page 33, be tells
how the "Master" from whom he learned alchemy refused to instruct him in
writing, therefore Norton had "to ride to my Master an hundred miles and more"
for oral, and secret, instruction (chemistry was an unlawful science) ; and on
the same page, addressing prospective pupils he writes:
"Wherefore it is need that
within short space,
We speak together, and face to face;
If I should write, I should my fealty [oath] break,
Therefore mouth to mouth I must needs speak.''
This passage caught Ashmole's
eye. In a long annotation he gives a paragraph about famous instances of
secret, mouth to-ear instructors and instructions, including Aristotle, and
hints that because of dangers from the vulgar and prohibitions from princes
and prelates "divers" arts and sciences have been thus propagated.
In a page contributed by him
to Ars Quatuor coronatorum, 1894, entitled "The Medical Profession and
Freemasonry" Robert Freke Gould devotes a paragraph to each of a number of
famous physicians (Michael Scott, Lully, Paracelsus, Jerome Cardan, etc.) who
had been alchemists, kabbalists, or had engaged in other forms of Hermetism.
After quoting Dr. Stukeley as baving averred that Freemasonry may be suspected
to be "remains of the Mysteries of the Ancient," Gould continues: "With very
little latitude of interpretation, the conclusion he arrived at, may be safely
accepted as a correct one. the mysteries of Freemasonry are evidently the
fragments of some ancient and nearly forgotten learning." Gould then admits it
as possible that "the Cabbalists, the Hermetical [or Occult] Philosophers, and
the Rosicrucians, are the intermediaries" by whom those "fragments" have come
down to us.
These remarks, coming as they
do from one whom Hughan described as the premier Masonic historian, are
interesting in themselves, and also may serve as the point of departure for a
set of comments which it is now (a half century later) possible to make:
1. The remarks show that the
veteran historian, with both his History and his Concise History behind him,
and after eight years of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research, was not yet
sure in his own mind about the origin of Freemasonry ; for if Freemasonry came
from Medieval chemists, mathematicians, astronomers, etc., it did not come
from the cathedral building and other Freemasons.
2. Hermetism was not a vague,
floating or "occult" tradition ; but derived from a book full of Greek
materials on the sciences and entitled Hermes Trismegistus, copies and
fragments of which came into Europe via Constantinople, Sicily, and Spain.
3. The physicians named by
Gould had not been "occultists," they had been physicians and chemists; the
'alchemy" they studied was chemistry, and they studied it for medical uses.
The fact that they studied chemistry (along with botany, etc.) affords no
ground for believing that they had any reason to be "the channel" for
transmitting fragments of the Ancient Mysteries-in their day they had heard
fragmentary reports of ancient mythologies, of old forms of secret knowledge
and of mysteries in the sense of skilled or professional trades, but they had
never heard of the Ancient Mystery Cults properly so called; even Mithraism
which had been the createst of the Mystery cults, had been wholly forgotten in
the Middle Ages, and continued to be so until the Renaissance, and was not
fully recovered until modern archeology unearthed the data.
4. Rosicrueianism was not "
Medieval " It was a fantasy of the seventeenth Century. Freemasonry was full
blown long before it was invented.
5. Documentary evidence,
external evidence internal evidence Craft traditions, The Old Charges and the
kind of reasoning which historians use, combine into one body of evidence to
show that Freemasonry had its origin among the Medieval Freemasons, who were
builders or architects scarcely a one of which, as far as any records show
(and the names of hundreds are known, and as far back as the Twelfth Century)
was ever an occultist or a mystic except in some such pedestrian, commonplace
sense as could be applied to the Church in the Middle Ages.
Hermetism, properly so called,
connected with a book, a collection of writings, composed in Alexandria in
Ptolemaic times, and containing many portions on Greek and Alexandrian
science. (Almost everything Medieval men, even scholars, knew about Egypt came
to them via Alexandria. The Crusaders, contrary to assumptions of some Masonic
writers, were little in Egypt but were established in Palestine, Syria,
Armenia, etc.) Kabbalism was a form of religious mysticism concocted by Jews
in Spain; and Graetz, whose knowledge of Jewish history was encyclopedic,
believes it was a reaction to the science and rationalism of Maimonides (a
modern man astray in the Middle Ages.) Medieval astrology was a vague version,
or half memory, as if written on a palimpsest, of Ptolemy's astronomy; and
that, as present-day astronomers now admit, if his "cycles theory" were
deleted out of it, was very sound astronomy. It is admitted that the texts and
nomenclature of Medieval materials on those subjects (Cornelius Agrippina
wrote the most dreadful nonsense) were cryptic and queer; but for that there
are several explanations the need for secrecy, the mixture of languages owing
to the many living and dead languages of the sources used, the need to keep
laymen from endangering themselves with drugs they could not understand
(Norton's Ordinall mentions this), a general use of symbols in an illiterate
age, etc. To throw Hermetism, alchemy, astrology, Kabbalism, and
Rosicrucianism into one pot, to stir them up into an olla podrida, and then to
call the mixture by the one misleading name of "hermetism" is not history but
is obscurantism.
It certainly has nothing to do
with Masonic history, because no Freemason ever built a cathedral, abbey, or
priory from a recipe found in the Kabbala, nor was he in the practice of
medicine.
*
ALL-SEEING EYE, THE
On page 52 Dr. Mackey
interpreted the All-Seeing Eye as a symbol of God's omniscience, and in doing
so had at the time (about 1870) the support of the Masonic students of his
generation. The soundness of that interpretation need not be questioned in the
sense that it represents the logical goal toward which any other possible
interpretation may be aimed; but it is doubtful if it can be supported by
Masonic history. Almost less is known about the symbol (and it is a symbol!)
than any other; it did not once come into the purview of the studies on which
this Supplement is based, and if any researcher has found anywhere solid data
on the origin of the symbol it must be hidden in a book of more than average
obscurity. There are a number of considerations based on other known data
which throw some sidelights on the question :
1. During the long formative
period of the Ritual from about 1717 to about 1770 Lodges were small,
convivial, worked while seated about their dining table; they were serious,
reverent, and the great majority of Masons were members of a church, but they
were neither theological nor mystical, and they instinctively shrank from
anything which bordered too closely upon the province of the Church. It is a
sound rule in the interpretation of the symbols on the Tracing Boards used by
those Lodges not to begin by assuming a theological meaning, because as a rule
they shrank from theology. In Freemasonry before 1717 they shrank from it even
more. They were a Brotherhood, a Fraternity, carrying on the traditions of the
building craft, and they never had any consciousness of standing in the
tradition of religion. Solemnity, seriousness, symbolism, ritualism, these do
not betoken theology because they belong to man by nature and are found
everywhere. Though the All-Seeing Eye is one of the religious symbols, it does
not follow that the early Speculative Masons used it as a religious symbol.
2. The All-Seeing Eye may have denoted the Divine omniscience. Also, it may
have symbolized any one or more of some five or six other truths or ideas. It
may have denoted the sun originally, as it came up at dawn - it had been thus
used by Shakespeare and many other writers. It may have meant the Grand Master
or the worshipful Master, and been a reminder of the fact that wherever a man
is and in whatever he may be doing he continues to be a Mason, and the eye of
the Craft is on him. It may have stood for enlightenment, wisdom, intelligence
; and it may have been the Tracing Board representation of the Blazing Star in
the Tessellated Pavement, in which case it was again the sun, or day-star,
which shines on through day and night. (Note: Until modern astronomy made a
number of its difficult facts familiar to everybody the majority of men did
not see any necessary connection between daylight and the sun, because the day
begins before the sun appears, and remains after it has sunk.) There are many
omnisciences in addition to those known to theology and metaphysics-the
omniscience of the law, the omniscience of the Government which keeps its eye
on every citizen, etc.; if the first Freemasons had a symbol for omniscience
it does not follow that it was therefore the Divine Omniscience that was
meant.
3. If their symbol signified
the Divine Omniscience it does not follow that it would have had for them a
depressing meaning, as if that Omniscience were for no other purpose than a
final Judgment Day. Omniscience needs not search a man out in order to condemn
him for sins he has tried to hide ; it may search him out to honor him for
virtues he has tried to hide. The Sword Pointing at the Naked Heart is another
emblem which need not have a depressing meaning; it should have, rather, a
cheerful meaning, because when justice searches out every heart it means that
men have security, live in civil order, and therefore can be happy. We could
use the All-Seeing Eye as a symbol of the Divine Omniscience we could use it
at the same time as a symbol for what ought to be the Fraternity's own
omniscience (the word need not be defined so absolutely as many think it
should) in the sense that it never loses sight of a man once that man has
become a member, not even if he does not attend Lodge, or is confined at home
by illness or accident, or has moved away.
*
ABRAHAM
The founder of the Hebrew
nation. The patriarch Abraham is personated in the Degree or Order of High
Priesthood, which refers in some of its ceremonies to an interesting incident
in his life, After the friendly separation of Lot and Abraham, when the former
was dwelling in the plain in which Sodom and its neighboring towns were
situated, and the latter in the valley of Mamre near Hebron, a king from
beyond the Euphrates, whose name was Chedorlaomer, invaded lower Palestine.
and brought several of the smaller states into a tributary condition.
Among these were the five
cities of the plain, to which Lot had retired. As the yoke was borne with
impatience by these cities Chedorlaomer, accompanied by four other kings, who
were probably his tributaries, attacked and defeated the kings of the plain,
plundered their towns, and carried their people away as slaves.
Among those who suffered on
this occasion was Lot. As soon as Abraham heard of these events, he armed
three hundred and eighteen of his slaves, and, with the assistance of Aner,
Eshcol, and Mamre, three Amoritish chiefs, he pursued the retiring invaders,
and having attacked them near the Jordan, put them to flight, and then
returned with all the men and goods that had been recovered from the enemy. On
his way back he was met by the King of Sodom, and also by Melchizedek, King of
Salem, who was, like Abraham, a worshiper of the true God. Melchizedek
refreshed Abraham and his people with bread and wine, and blessed him. The
King of Sodom wished Abraham to give up the persons, but retain the goods that
he had recovered; however, Abraham positively refused to retain any of the
spoils, although, by the customs of the age, he was entitled to them, and
declared that he had sworn that he would not take "from a thread even to a
shoelatchet" (Genesis XIV). Although the conduct of Abraham in this whole
transaction was of the most honorable and conscientious character, the
incidents do not appear to have been introduced into the ritual of the High
Priesthood for any other reason except that of their connection with
Melchizedek, who was the founder of an Order of Priesthood.
*
ABRAHAM, ANTOINE FIRMIN
A Freemason who made himself
notorious at Paris, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, by the
manufacture and sale of false Masonic diplomas and by trading in the higher
degrees, from which traffic he reaped for some time a plentiful harvest. The
Supreme Council of France declared, in 1811, all his diplomas and charters
void and deceptive. He is the author of L'Art du Tuileur, dédié à tous les
Maçons des deux hémisphéres, French for The Art of the Tiler, dedicated to all
the Freemason of the two hemispheres, a small volume of 20 pages, octavo,
printed at Paris in 1804, and he published from 1800 to 1808 a periodical
entitled Le Miroir de la vérité, dédié à tous les Maçons, French for The
Mirror of Truth, dedicated to all the Freemasom, 3 volumes, octavo. This
contains many interesting details concerning the history of Freemasonry in
France. In 1811 there was published at Paris a Circulaire du Conseil Supréme
du 33e degré, etc., relative à la vente, par le Sieur Abraham de grades et
cahiers Maçonniques; French, meaning. A Circular from the Supreme Council of
the Thirty-third Degree, etc., relative te the sale by the Mr. Abraham of
Masonic information in books and grades. This announcement, in octavo, sixteen
pages, shows that Abraham was nothing else but a Masonic fraud.
*
ABRAXAS
Basilides, the head of the
Egyptian sect of Gnosties, taught that there were seven outflowings,
emanations, or aeons, from the Supreme God ; that these emanations engendered
the angels of the highest order; that these angels formed a heaven for their
habitation, and brought forth other angels of a nature inferior to their own ;
that in time other heavens were formed and other angels created, until the
whole number of angels and their respective heavens amounted to 365, which
were thus equal to the number of days in a year; and, finally, that over all
these an omnipotent Lord-inferior, however, to the Supreme God - presidented,
whose name was Abraxas. Now this word Abraxas, in the numerical force of its
letters when written in Greek, ABPAZAE, amounts to 365 the number of worlds in
the Basilidean system, as well as the number of days in the year thus
A,1...,B,2..,P,100...,A,1...,Z,60...,A,1...,E 200 = 365. The god Abraxas was
therefore a type or symbol of the year, or of the revolution of the earth
around the sun. This mystical reference of the name of a god to the annual
period was familiar to the ancients, and is to be found in at least two other
instances. Thus, among the Persians the letters of the name of the god Mithras,
and of Belenus along the Gauls, amounted each to 365.
M = 40
E = 5
I = 10
O = 9
P =100
A = 1
Z = 200
= 365
B = 2
H= 8
A = 30
E = 5
N = 50
O = 70
Z = 200
= 365
The word Abrazas, therefore,
from this mystical value of the letters of which it was composed, became
talismanic or magical. This was frequently inscribed, sometimes with and
sometimes without other superstitious inseriptions, on stones or gems as
amulets. Many of these have been preserved or are continually being
discovered, and are to be found in the cabinets of the curious.
There have been many guesses and beliefs among the learned as to the source of
the word Abrazas.
Beausobre, in his History of
Manicheism, volume 2, derives it from the Greek, A., signifying the
magnificent Savior, He who heals and preserves.
Bellermann, Essay on the Gems
of the Ancients, supposed it to be compounded of three Coptic words signifying
the holy word of bliss. Pignorius and Vandelin think it is composed of four
Hebrew and three Greek letters, whose numerical value is 365, and which are
the initials of the sentence: saving man by wood, that is, the Cross.
*
ABRAXAS STONES
Stones on which the word
Abrazas and other devices are engraved, and which were used by the Egyptian
Gnosties as amulets.
*
ABSENCE
Attendance on the
communications of his Lodge, on al convenient occasions, is considered as one
of the duties of every Freemason, and hence the Old Charges of 1722 say that
''in ancient Times no Master or Fellow could be absent from it [the Lodge]
especially when warned to appear at it, without incurring a severe censure,
until it appeared to the Master and Wardens that pure Necessity hindered him."
At one time it was usual to
enforce attendance by fines, and the By-Laws of the early Lodges contain lists
of fines to be imposed for absence, swearing and drunkenness, but that usage
is now discontinued, so that attendance on ordinary communications is no
longer enforced by any sanction of law.
Attendance is a duty the
discharge of which must be left to the conscientious convictions of every
Freemason. In the ease, however, of a positive summons for any express
purpose, such as to stand trial, to show cause, etc., the neglect or refusal
to attend might be construed into a contempt, to be dealt with according to
its magnitude or character in each particular case.
The absence of an officer is a
far more important matter and it is now generally held in the case of the
absence of the Worshipful Master or Wardens the inferior officer assumes the
duties of the office that is vacant The Wardens, as well as the Master, are
entrusted with the government of the Lodge and in the case of the absence of
the Master at the time of opening, the Senior Warden, if present and, if not,
then the Junior Warden may open the Lodge and the business transacted will be,
regular and legal.
While this is the practice in
the United States of America, the same rule is not followed under the Grand
Lodge of England, where it is provided in Rule 141 of the Book of
Constitutions that in the absence of the Worshipful Master the Immediate Past
Master shall take the chair. In the event that the Immediate Past Master is
not present, then the Senior Past Master of the Lodge or, if no Past Masters
of the Lodge are in attendance, the Senior Past Master who is a subscribing
member of the Lodge shall officiate. But failing all of these, then we have
the Senior Warden or, in his absence, the Junior Warden shall rule and govern
the Lodge, but shall not occupy the Master's chair and no degree can be
conferred unless a Master or Past Master in the Craft presides at the
ceremony.
Thus it will be seen that the
general rule does not apply to both countries in the same way.
*
ABSENCE OF WORSHIPFUL MASTER
Rule 141 of the English Book of Constitutions states that the Immediate Past
Master or in his absence the Senior Past Master of the Lodge, or, if no Past
Master of the Lodge be present, the Senior Past Master who is a subscribing
member of the Lodge shall take the chair. Failing all of these the Senior
Warden, or, if he is absent, the Junior Warden, is to rule the Lodge, but
without occupying the Master's chair. No initiation is to take place or Degree
be conferred unless a Master or Past Master in the Craft occupies the chair.
In the United States, however, especially where many Candidates await their
Degrees, the custom has developed for the Worshipful Master at his pleasure to
place in the chair temporarily any Brother in his judgment competent to
properly give the ritualistic work.
*
ABYSSINIA
A Lodge at Adis-Ababa was
constituted by the 'Grand Orient of France on October 20, 1909.
*
ACACIA
An interesting and important
symbol in Freemasonry. Botanically, it is the acacia vera of Tournefort, and
the mimosa nilotica of Linnaeus, called babul tree in India. The acacia
arabica grew abundantly in the vicinity of Jerusalem, where it is still to be
found, and is familiar in its modern use at the tree from which the gum arabic
of commerce is derived.
Oliver, it is true,'says that
"there is not the smallest trace of any tree of the kind growing so far north
as Jerusalem" (Landmarks, volume 2, page 1490). But this statement is refuted
by the authority of Lieutenant Lynch, who saw it growing in great abundance in
Jericho, and still farther north (Expedition to the Dead Sea, page 262).
The Rabbi Joseph Schwarz, who
is excellent authority, says: "The Acacia (Shittim) tree, Al Sunt, is found in
Palestine of different varieties, it looks like the Mulberry tree, attains a
great height, and has a hard wood. The gum which is obtained from it is the
gum arabic" (Descriptive Geography and Historical Sketch of Palestine, page
308, Leeser's translation, Philadelphia, 1850). Schwarz was for sixteen years
a resident of Palestine, and wrote from personal observation. The testimony of
Lynch and Schwarz should, therefore, forever settle the question of the
existence of the acacia in Palestine.
Hastings' Dictionary of the
Bible, page s51, states that the acacia seyal and the acacia tortilis are
plentiful around the Dead Sea.
The acacia is called in the
Bible Shittim, which is really the plural of Shittah, which last form occurs
once only, in Isaiah XLI, 19. It was esteemed a sacred wood among the Hebrews,
and of it Moses was ordered to make the tabernacle, the ark of the covenant,
the table for the shewbread, and the rest of the sacred furniture (Exodus
xxv-xxvii).
Isaiah (XLI, 19), in
recounting the promises of God's mercy to the Israelites on their return from
the captivity, tells them that, among other things, he will plant in the
wilderness, for their relief and refreshment, the cedar, the acacia, (or, as
it is rendered in our common version, the shittah), the fir, and other trees.
The first thing, then, that we
notice in this symbol of the acacia, is that it had been always consecrated
from among the other trees of the forest by the sacred purposes to which it
was devoted. By the Jew, the tree from whose wood the sanctuary of the
tabernacle and the holy ark had been constructed would ever be viewed as more
sacred than ordinary trees. The early Freemasons, therefore, very naturally
appropriated this hallowed plant to the equally sacred purpose of a symbol,
which was to teach an important divine truth in all ages to come.
Having thus briefly disposed
of the natural history of this plant, we may now proceed to examine it in its
symbolic relations.
First. The acacia, in the
mythic system of Freemasonry, is pre-eminently the symbol of the IMMORTALITY
OF THE SOUL--that important doctrine which it is the great design of the
Institution to teach. As the evanescent nature of the flower, which "cometh
forth and is cut down," reminds us of the transitory nature of human life, so
the perpetual renewal of the evergreen plant, which uninterruptedly presents
the appearance of youth and vigor, is aptly compared to that spiritual life in
which the soul, freed from the corruptible companionship of the body, shall
enjoy an eternal spring and an immortal youth. Hence, in the impressive
funeral service of our Order, it is said that "this evergreen is an emblem of
our faith in the immortality of the soul. By this we are reminded that we have
an immortal part within us, which shall survive the grave, and which shall
never, never, never die." And again, in the closing sentences of the
monitorial lecture of the Third Degree, the same sentiment is repeated, and we
are told that by "the evergreen and ever-living emblem of immortality, the
acacia" the Freemason is strengthened "with confidence and composure to look
forward to a blessed immortality." Such an interpretation of the symbol is an
easy and a natural one ; it suggests itself at once to the least reflective
mind; and consequently, in some one form or another, is to be found existing
in all ages and nations.
There was an ancient
custom-which is not, even now, altogether disused-for mourners to carry in
their hands at funerals a sprig of some evergreen, generally the cedar or box,
or the cypress, and to deposit it in the grave of the deceased.
According to Dalcho, the
Hebrews always planted a sprig of the acacia at the head of the grave of a
departed friend.
Dalcho says, in his Second
Oration (page 23), "This custom among the Hebrews arose from this
circumstance. Agreeably to their laws, no dead bodies were allowed to be
interred within the walls of the City; and as the Cohens, or Priests, were
prohibited from crossing a grave, it was necessary to place marks thereon,
that they might avoid them. For this purpose the Acacia was used.'' Brother
Mackey could not agree to the reason assigned by Dalcho, but of the existence
of the custom there can be no question, notwithstanding the denial or doubt of
Doctor Oliver. Blount, Travels in the Levant (page 197), says, speaking of the
Jewish burial customs, "those who bestow a marble stone over any [grave) have
a hole a yard long and a foot broad, in which they plant an evergreen, which
seems to grow from the body and is carefully watched." Hasselquist, Travels
(page 28), confirms his testimony. We borrow the citations from Brown,
Antiquities of the Jews (volume 2, page 356), but have verified the reference
to Hasselquist. Potter, Antiquities of Greece (page 569), tells us that the
ancient Greeks "had a custom of bedecking tombs with herbs and flowers." All
sorts of purple and white flowers were acceptable to the dead, but principally
the amaranth and the myrtle.
The very name of the former of
these plants, which signifies never fading, would seem to indicate the true
symbolic meaning of the usage, although archeologists have general supposed it
to be simply an exhibition of love on the part of the survivors. Ragon says
that the ancients substituted the acacia for all other plants because they
believed it to be incorruptible, and not liable to injury from the attacks of
any kind of insect or other animal thus symbolizing the incorruptible nature
of the soul.
Hence we see the propriety of
placing the sprig of acacia, as an emblem of immortality, among the symbols of
that degree, all of whose ceremonies are Intended to teach us the great truth
that "the life of man, regulated by morality, faith, and justice, will be
rewarded at its closing hour by the prospect of Eternal Bliss'' as in the
manuscript of Doctor Crucefix quoted by Brother Oliver in his Landmarks (11,
20). So, therefore, says Doctor Oliver, when the Master Mason exclaims, "My
name is Acacia," it is equivalent to saying, "I have been in the grave, I have
triumphed over it by rising from the dead, and being regenerated in the
process, I have a claim to life everlasting" (see Landmarks 11, 151, note 27).
The sprig of acacia, then, in
its most ordinary signification, presents itself to the Master Mason as a
symbol of the immortality of the soul, being intended to remind him, by its
ever-green and unchanging nature, of that better and spiritual part within us,
which, as an emanation from the Great Architect of the Universe, can never
die. And as this is the most ordinary, the most generally accepted
signification, so also is it the most important; for thus, as the peculiar
symbol of immortality, it becomes the most appropriate to an Order all of
whose teachings are intended to inculcate the great lesson that "life rises
out of the grave." But incidental to this the acacia has two other
interpretations which are well worthy of investigation.
Secondly, then, the acacia is
a symbol of INNOCENCE.
The symbolism here is of a
peculiar and unusual character, depending not on any real analogy in the form
or use of the symbol to the idea symbolized, but simply on a double or
compound meaning of the word.
For ....., in the Greek
language, signifies both the plant in question and the moral quality of
innocence or purity of life. In this sense the symbol refers, primarily, to
him over whose solitary grave the acacia was planted, and whose virtuous
conduct, whose integrity of life and fidelity to his trusts have ever been
presented as patterns to the craft, and consequently to all Master Masons,
who, by this interpretation of the symbol, are invited to emulate his example.
Hutchinson, indulging in his
favorite theory of Christianizing Freemasonry, when he comes to this
signification of the symbol, thus enlarges on the interpretation. We Masons,
describing the deplorable estate of religion under the Jewish law, speak in
figures.
Her tomb was in the rubbish
and filth east forth of the temple, and ACACIA wove its branches over her
monument, acacia being the Greek word for innocence, or being free from sin,
implying that the sins and corruptions of the old law, and devotees of the
Jewish altar, had hid religion from those who sought her, and she was only to
be found where INNOCENCE survived, and under the banner of the divine Lamb ;
and as to ourselves professing that we were to be distinguished by our ACACY,
or as true ACACIANS in our religious faith and tenets" (see Hutehinson's
Spirit of Masonry, Lecture IX, page 160, edition of 1775). '
But, lastly, the acacia is to
be considered as the symbol of INITIATION. This is by far the most interesting
of its interpretations, and was, we have every reason to believe, the primary
and original ; the others being but incidental. It leads us at once to the
investigation of the significant fact that in all the ancient initiations and
religious mysteries there was some plant peculiar to each, which was
consecrated by its own esoteric meaning, and which occupied an important
position in the celebration of the rites. Thus it was that the plant, whatever
it might be, from its constant and prominent use in the ceremonies of
initiation, came at length to be adopted as the symbol of that initiation.
Thus, the lettuce was the
sacred plant which assumed the place of the acacia the mysteries of Adonis
(see Lettuce). The lotus was that of the Brahmanical rites of India, and from
them adopted by the Egyptians (see Lotus). The Egyptians also revered the
erica or heath; and the mistletoe was a mystical plant among the Druids (see
Erica and Mistletoe). And, lastly, the myrtle performed the same office of
symbolism in the mysteries of Greece that the lotus did in Egypt or the
mistletoe among the Druids (see Myrtle).
In all of these ancient
mysteries, while the sacred plant was a symbol of initiation, the initiation
itself was symbolic of the resurrection to a future life, and of the
immortality of the soul. In this view, Freemasonry is to us now in the place
of the ancient initiations, and the acacia is substituted for the lotus, the
erica, the ivy, the mistletoe, and the myrtle. The lesson of wisdom is the
same-the medium of imparting it is all that has been changed.
Returning, then, to the
acacia, we find that it is capable of three explanations. It is a symbol of
immortality, of innocence, and of initiation. But these three significations
are closely connected, and that connection must be observed, if we desire to
obtain a just interpretation of the symbol. Thus, in this one symbol, we are
taught that in the initiation of life, of which the initiation in the Third
Degree is simply emblematic, innocence must for a time lie in the grave, at
length, however, to be called, by the word of the Great Master of the
Universe, to a blissful immortality.
Combine with this instruction
the recollection of the place where the sprig of acacia was planted-Mount
Calvary-the place of sepulture of Him who "brought life and immortality to
light," and Who, in Christian Freemasonry, is designated, as He is in
Scripture, as the lion of the tribe of Judah; and remember, too, that in the
mystery of His death, the wood of the cross takes the place of the acacia.
Therefore, in this little and
apparently insignificant symbol, but which is really and truly the most
important and significant one in Masonic science, we have a beautiful
suggestion of all the mysteries of life and death, of time and eternity, of
the present and of the future.
*
ACACIAN
A word introduced by
Hutchinson, in his book, The Spirit of Masonry, to designate a Freemason in
reference te the akakia, or innocence with which he was to be distinguished,
from the Greek word axaxia (see the preceding article on the Acacia). The
Acacians constituted a heretical seat in the primitive Christian Church, who
derived their name from Acacius, Bishop of Caesarea from 340 to 365. The
doctrine of these Acacians was that Christ is not of the same substance as
God, but merely resembles Him. There was subsequently another sect of the same
name under Acacius, who was Patriarch of Constantinople from 471. He died in
the year 489. But it is needless to say that the Hutchinsonian application of
the word Acacian to signify a Freemason has nothing to do with the theological
reference of the term.
*
ACADEMIE DES IILLUMINES
D'AVIGNON
meaning, literally, the School
of the Enlightened Ones at Avignon. The words Illumines and Illuminati have
been used by various religious sects and secret societies in their names. A
Hermetic system of philosophy created in 1785, and making some use of the
doctrines of Emanuel Swedenborg.
*
ACADEMY
The Fourth Degree of the
Rectified Rose Croix of Schroeder who founded a Rite by this name.
ACADEMY OF ANCIENTS OR OF
SECRETS
The French name is Académie
des Secrets. A society instituted at Warsaw, in 1767, by M. Thoim de Salverte,
and founded on the principles of another which bore the same name, and which
is said to have been established at Rome, about the end of the sixteenth
century, by John Baptiste Porta. The object of the institution was the
advancement of the natural sciences and their application to the occult
philosophy.
*
ACADEMY OF SAGES
An order which existed in
Sweden in 1770, deriving its origin from one credited with being founded in
London by Elias Ashmole, on the doctrines of the New Atlantis of Bacon. A few
similar societies were subsequently founded in Russia and France, one
especially noted by Thory in his book, Acta Latomorum, as having been
established in 1776 by the Mother Lodge of Avignon.
*
ACADEMY OF SECRETS
See Academy of Ancients
*
ACADEMY OF SUBLIME MASTERS OF
THE LUMINOUS RING
The French name of this
society is Académie des Sublimes Maîtres de l'Anneau Lumineux. Founded in
France, in 1780, by Baron Blaerfindy, one of the Grand Officers of the
Philosophy Scotch Rite. The Academy of the Luminous Ring was dedicated to the
philosophy of Pythagoras, and was divided into three Degrees.
The first and second were
principally occupied with the history of Freemasonry, and the last with the
dogmas of the Pythagorean school, and their application to the highest grades
of science. The historical hypothesis which was sought to be developed in this
Academy was that Pythagoras was the founder of Freemasonry.
*
ACADEMY OF TRUE MASONS
The French name of the society
is Académie des Vraies Maçons. Founded at Montpelier, in France, by Dom
Pernetty in 1778, and occupied with instructions in Hermetic Science, which
were developed in six Degrees, namely :
1. The True Mason ;
2. The True Mason in the Right Way;
3. Knight of the Golden Key;
4. Knight of Iris;
5. Knight of the Argonauts;
6. Knight of the Golden Fleece.
The Degrees thus conferred constituted the Philosophic Scotch Rite, which was
the system adopted by the Academy. It afterward changed its name to that of
Russo-Swedish Academy, which circumstance leads Thory to believe that it was
connected with the Alchemical Chapters which at that time existed in Russia
and Sweden. The entirely Hermetic character of the Academy of True Masons may
readily be perceived in a few paragraphs cited by Clavel (page 172, third
edition, 1s44), from a discourse by Goyer de Jumilly at the; installation of
an Academy in Martinique. "To seize," says the orator, "the graver of Hermes
to engrave the doctrines of natural philosophy on your columns; to call Flamel
the Philalete, the Cosmopolite, and our other masters to my aid for the
purpose of unveiling the mysterious principles of the occult sciences,-these,
Illustrious Knights, appear to be the duties imposed on me by the ceremony of
your installation. The fountain of count Trevisan, the pontifical water, the
peacock's tail, are phenomena with which you are familiar."
*
ACADEMY, PLATONIC
Founded in 1480 by Marsilius
Ficinus, at Florence, under the patronage of Lorenzo de Medicis. This
organization is said by the Freemasons of Tuscany to have been a secret
society, and is supposed to have had a Masonic character, because in the hall
where its members held their meetings, and which Doctor Mackey reported was
remaining in his time, many Masonic symbols are to be found. Clavel (page 65,
third edition, 1844) supposes it to have been a society founded by some of the
honorary members and patrons of the Fraternity of Freemasons who existed in
the Middle Ages, and who, having abandoned the material design of the
Institution, confined themselves to its mystic character. If his suggestion be
correct, this is one of the earliest instances of the separation of
Speculative from Operative Masonry.
*
ACANTHUS
A plant, described by
Dioseorides, a Greek physician and botanist of the first century,. with broad,
flexible, prickly leaves, which perish in the winter and sprout again at the
return of spring. Found in the Grecian islands on the borders of cultivated
fields or gardens, it is common in moist, rocky situations. It is memorable
for the tradition which assigns to it the origin of the foliage carved on the
capitals or upper parts of Corinthian and Composite columns. Hence, in
architecture, that part of the Corinthian capital is called the Acanthus which
is situated below the abacus or slab at the top, and which, having the form of
a vase or bell, is surrounded by two rows of leaves of the acanthus plant.
Callimachus, who invented this
ornament, is said to have had the idea suggested to him by the following
incident: A Corinthian maiden who was betrothed, fell ill, and died just
before the appointed time of her marriage. Her faithful and grieving nurse
placed on her tomb a basket containing many of her toys and jewels, and
covered it with a flat tile. It so happened that the basket was placed
immediately over an acanthus root, which afterward grew up around the basket
and curled under the weighty resistance of the tile, thus exhibiting a form of
foliage which was, on its being seen by the architect, adopted as a model for
the capital of a new order; so that the story of affection was perpetuated in
marble.
Dudley ( Naology, page 164)
thinks the tale puerile, and supposes that the acanthus is really the lotus of
the Indians and Egyptians, and is symbolic of laborious but effectual effort
applied to the support of the world.
With him, the symbolism of the
acanthus and the lotus are identical (see Lotus).
*
ACCEPTED
The Worshipful Company of
Masons of the City of London-a flourishing Gild at the Present day-possesses
as its earliest document now existing an account book headed:1620.
The Account of James Gilder Mr
William Warde & John Abraham wardens of the Company of freemasons within the
City of London beginning the first day of Julie 1619 And ending the day of
Julie 1620 of all receipts & payments for & to the use the same company as
followeth, viz. From the entries in this book it appears that besides the
ordinary Freemen and Liverymen of this Company there were other members who
are termed in the books the Accepted Masons and that they belonged to a Body
known as the Accepcon or Acception, which was an Inner Fraternity of
Speculative Freemasons.
Thus in the year 1620 the
following entry is found:
"They charge themselves also
with Money Received of the Persons hereafter named for they're gratuities at
they're acceptance into the Lyvery viz" (here follow six names). Among the
accounts for the next year (1621) there is an entry showing sums received from
several persons, of whom two are mentioned in the entry of 1620, "Att the
making masons," and as all these mentioned were already members of the Company
something further must be meant by this.
In 1631 the following entry of
the Clerk's expenses occurs, " Pel in going abroad at a meeting at the hall
about the Masons that were to be accepted vi- vid," that is, Paid in going
about and at a meeting at the hall about the Masons that were to be accepted.
vi, -vi-.
Now the Company never accepted
its members; they were always admitted to the freedom either by
apprenticeship, patrimony, or redemption. Thus the above entries suggest that
persons who were neither connected with the trade nor otherwise qualified were
required, before being eligible for election on the livery of the Company, to
become Accepted Masons, that is, to join the Lodge of Speculative Masonry that
was held for that purpose in the Company's Hall. Thus in the accounts for
1650, payments are entered as made by several persons ''for coming on the
Liuerie & admission upon Acceptance of Masonry," and it is entered that Mr.
Andrew Marvin, the present Warden, and another paid 20 shillings each "for
coming on the Accepcon," while two others are entered as paying 40 shillings
each "for the like," and as the names of the last two cannot be found among
the members of the Masons Company it would seem as if it was possible for
strangers to join "the Accepcon" on paying double fees.
Unfortunately no books
connected with this Acception, or Lodge, as it may be called, have been
preserved. But there are references to it in several places in the account
books which show that the payments made by newly accepted Freemasons were paid
into the funds of the Company, that some or all of this amount was spent on a
banquet and the attendant expenses. Any further sum required was paid out of
the ordinary funds of the Company, proving that the Company had entire control
of the Lodge and its funds.
Further evidence of the
existence of this Symbolical Lodge within the Masons Company is given by the
following entry in an inventory of the Company's property made in 1665.
"Item. The names of the
Accepted Masons in a faire inclosed frame with lock and key."' In an inventory
of the Company's property for 1676 is found:
"Item. One book of the
Constitutions of the Accepted Masons." No doubt this was a copy of one of the
Old Charges.
"A faire large table of the
Accepted Masons."
Proof positive of its
existence is derived from an entry in the diary of Elias Ashmole-the famous
antiquary-who writes:
"March 10th. 1682. About 5
p.m. I received a summons to appear at a Lodge to be held next day at Masons
Hall London.
"March 1lth. Accordingly I
went and about noon were admitted into the. Fellowship of Free Masons:
Sir William Wilson Knight,
Capt. Rich Borthwick, Mr Will Woodman, Mr Wm Grey, Mr Samuell Taylor, and Mr
William Wise."
In the edition of Ashmole's
diary published in 1774 the above paragraph was changed into "I went, and
about noon was admitted, by Sir William Wilson &c.," an error which has misled
many Masonic historians (see Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, volume xi, page 6).
"I was the Senior Fellow among
them (it being 35 years since I was admitted)."
Ashmole then mentions the
names of nine others who were present and concludes: "We all dinned at the
half Moone Taverne in Cheapeside, at a noble dinner prepared at the charge of
the New-Accepted Masons."
All present were members of
the Masons Company except Ashmole himself, Sir W. Wilson and Capt. Borthwick,
and this entry proves conclusively that side by side with the Masons Company
there existed another organization to which non-members of the Company were
admitted and the members of which were known as Accepted Masons.
It may here be mentioned that
Ashmole has recorded in his diary that he was made a Freemason at Warrington
in Lancashire on October 16, 1646. In that entry the word Accepted does not
occur.
No mention is made of the Accepted Masons in the accounts of the Masons
Company after 1677, when £6, the balance remaining of the last Accepted
Masons' money-was ordered to be laid out for a new banner. It would seem that
from that time onward the Lodge kept separate accounts, for from the evidence
of Ashmole's diary we know it was at work in 1682, but when and why it finally
ceased no evidence is forthcoming to show.
However, it may fairly be
assumed that this Masons Hall Lodge had ceased to exist before the Revival of
Freemasonry in 1717, or else Anderson would not have said in the Constitutions
of 1723 (page 82), "It is generally believed that the said Company, that is
the London Company of Freemen Masons, is descended of the ancient Fraternity;
and that in former Times no Man was made Free of that Company until he was
installed in some Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons, as a necessary
Qualification. But that laudable Practice seems to have been long in
Desuetude." This passage would indicate that he was aware of some tradition of
such a Lodge as has been described attached to the Masons Company admitting
persons in no way operatively connected with the Craft, who were called
Accepted Masons to distinguish them from the Operative or Free Masons (see
Conder's Hole Craft and Fellowship of Masonry and Ars Quatuor Coronatorum,
volume ix).
Anderson in the 1738
Constitutions quotes from a copy of the old Constitutions some regulations
which he says were made in 1663, and in which the phrases accepted a Free
Mason and Acceptation occur several times. These regulations are found in what
is known as the Grand Lodge Manuscript No. 2, which is supposed to have been
written about the middle of the 17th century, so that Anderson's date in which
he follows the Roberts Old Constitution printed in 1722 as to the year, though
he changes the day from December 8th to December 27th, may quite possibly be
correct. Brother Conder (Hole Craft and Fellowship of Masonry, page 11), calls
special attention to these regulations on account of the singular resemblance
that one of them bears to the rules that govern the Masons Company.
The extracts given above from
the books of the Masons Company, the Ancient Regulations, if that date be
accepted, and the quotation from Ashmole's diary, are the earliest known
instances of the term Accepted Masons. Although the Inigo Jones Manuscript is
headed "The Ancient Constitutions of the Free and Accepted Masons 1607," yet
there is a consensus of opinion among experts that. such date is impossible
and that the document is really to be referred to the end of the seventeenth
century or even the beginning of the eighteenth.
The next instance of the use
of the term is in 1686 when Doctor Plot in The Natural History of
Staffordshire wrote with reference to the secret signs used by the Freemasons
of his time "if any man appear, though altogether unknown, that can shew any
of these signs to a Fellow of the Society, whom they otherwise call an
Accepted Mason, he is obliged presently to come to him from what company or
place soever he be in, nay, though from the top of steeple."
Further, in 1691, John Aubrey,
author of The Natural History of Wiltshire, made a note in his manuscript:
"This day (May 18, 1691) is a great convention at St. Paul's Church of the
fraternity of the free Masons," in which he has erased the word free aud
substituted accepted, which, however, he changed into adopted in his fair
copy.
In the ''Orders to be observed
by the Company and Fellowship of Freemasons att a Lodge held at Alnwick, Sept.
29, 1701, being the Gen Head Meeting Day," we find: "There shall not be
apprentice after he have served seven years be admitted or accepted but upon
the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel."
From that time onward the term
Accepted Masons becomes common, usually in connection with Free.
The term Free and Accepted Masons thus signifying both the Operative members
who were free of their Gild and the Speculative members who had been accepted
as outsiders. Thus the Roberts Print of 1722 is headed, "The Old Constitutions
belonging to the Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons."
In the Constitutions of 1723 Anderson speaks (on page 48) of wearing "the
Badges of a Free and Accepted Mason" and uses the phrase in Rule 27, though he
does not use the phrase so frequently as in the 1738 edition in which "the
Charges of a Free-Mason" become "the old Charges of the Free and Accepted
Masons," the "General Regulations" become "The General Regulations of the Free
and Accepted Mason," and Regulation No. 5: "No man can be made or admitted a
Member" becomes "No man can be accepted a Member, " while the title of the
book is The new book of Constitutions of the Ancient and Honorable Fraternity
of Free and Accepted Masons instead of The Constitution of the Free-Masons as
in the earlier edition.
*
ACCEPTION or ACCEPCON
This term occurs in the
records of the Company of Masons of London in the years 1620 and 1621 aud
Brother Hawkins thought it to be the name of the non-operative or speculative
body attached to that Company, this being the Lodge that Ashmole visited in
1682. Brother Edward Couder, Jr., says (in his work, The Hole craft and
Fellowship of Masons, page 155), "It is evident that these Accepted Masons
were on a different footing to those who were admitted to the freedom of the
Company by servitude or patrimony. The word Accepted only occurs a few times
in the whole of the accounts, and from the inventories of the Company's goods
and the other entries concerning these members, proof is obtained that the
Accepted Masons who joined this London Masons' Gild, did so not necessarily
for the benefit of the freedom of the Company but rather for the privilege of
attending the Masons' Hall Lodge at which Ashmole was present." Brother Conder
points out that the item of 1631, referring to the Masons that were to be
Accepted, together with the entries in the Minute Book of 1620, are the
earliest post-reformation notices of speculative Freemasonry yet discovered in
England (see Accepted).
*
ACCEPTION, THE
The Masons Company of London
show this phrase in one of their records, 1620-1, in connection seemingly with
a non-operative or speculative body which was associated with them.
In 1682 Elias Ashmole visited this Lodge.
*
ACCLAMATION
A certain form of words used
in connection with the battery. In the Scottish Rite it is hoshea; in the
French vivat; in Adoptive Masonry it was Eva; and in the Rite of Misraim,
hallelujàh (see Battery).
*
ACCOLADE
From the Latin ad and collum,
meaning around the neck. Generally but incorrectly it is supposed that the
accolade means the blow given on the neck of a newly created knight with the
flat of the sword. The best authorities define it to be the embrace, or a
slight blow on the cheek or shoulder, accompanied with the kiss of peace, by
which the new knight was at his creation welcomed into the Order of Knighthood
by the sovereign or lord who created him (see Knighthood).
*
ACCORD
We get this word from the two
Latin ones ad cor, meaning to the heart, and hence it means hearty consent.
Thus in Wiclif's translation we find the phrase in Philippians, which in the
Authorized Version is "with one accord," rendered "with one will, With one
heart." Such is its signification in the Masonic formula, "free will and
accord," that is, "free will and hearty consent." The blow given among the
Romans to a slave was a necessary part of the manumission ceremony in
bestowing freedom upon him, the very word manumit in Latin being derived from
manus, hand; and mitto, send (see Free Will and Accord).
*
ACCUSER
In every trial in a Lodge for
an offense against the laws and regulations or the principles of Freemasonry
any Master Mason may be the accuser of another, but a profane cannot be
permitted to Prefer charges against a Freemason. Yet, if circumstances are
known to a profane upon which charges ought to be predicated, a Master Mason
may avail himself of that information, and out of it frame an accusation to be
presented to the Lodge. Such accusation will be received and investigated
although remotely derived from one who is not a member of the Order.
It is not necessary that the
accuser should be a member of the same Lodge. It is sufficient if he is an
affiliated Freemason; but it is generally held that an unaffiliated Freemason
is no more competent to prefer charges than a profane.
In consequence of the Junior
Warden being placed over the Craft during the hours of refreshment, and of his
being charged at the time of his installation to see "that none of the Craft
be suffered to convert the purposes of refreshment into those of intemperance
and excess," it has been very generally supposed that it is his duty, as the
prosecuting officer of the Lodge, to prefer charges against any member who, by
his conduct, has made himself amenable to the penal jurisdiction of the Lodge.
We know of no ancient regulation which imposes this unpleasant duty upon the
Junior Warden; but it does seem to be a very natural deduction, from his
peculiar prerogative as the custosmorum or guardian of the conduct of the
Craft, that in all cases of violation of the law he should, after due efforts
toward producing a reform, be the proper officer to bring the conduct of the
offending Brother to the notice of the Lodge.
*
ACELDAMA
From the Syro-Chaldaic,
meaning field of blood, so called because it was purchased with the
blood-money which was paid to Judas Iscariot for betraying his Lord (see
Matthew xxvii, 7-10; also Acts 1, 19 ). The reader will note that the second
letter of the word is sounded like k. It is situated on the slope of the hi1ls
beyond the valley of Hinnom and to the south of Mount Zion. The earth there
was believed, by early writers, to have possessed a corrosive quality, by
means of which bodies deposited in it were quickly consumed; and hence it was
used by the Crusaders, then by the Knights Hospitaler, and afterward by the
Armenians, as a place of sepulture, and the Empress Helena is said to have
built a charnel-house in its midst. Doctor Robinson (Biblical Researches,
volume 1, page 524) says that the field is not now marked by any boundary to
distinguish it from the rest of the field, and the former charnel-house is now
a ruin. The field of Aceldama is referred to in the ritual of the Knights
Templar.
*
ACERRELLOS, R. S.
A nom de plume or pen name
assumed by Carl Rössler, a German Masonic writer (see Rossler).
*
ACHAD
One of the names of God. The
word Achad, in Hebrew signifies one or unity. It has been adopted by
Freemasons as one of the appellations of the Deity from the passage in
Deuteronomy (vi, 4): "Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God is (Achad) one Lord''
which the Jews wear on their phylacteries, and pronounce with great fervor as
a confession of their faith in the unity of God. Speaking of God as Achad, the
Rabbis say, "God is one (Achad) and man is one (Achad). Man, however, is not
purely one, because he is made up of elements and has another like himself;
but the oneness of God is a oneness that has no boundary.
*
ACHARON SCHILTON
In Hebrew signifying the new
kingdom Significant words in some of the advanced degrees. The Latin term is
given in the Manuel Maçonnique (1830, page 74) as Novissimus lmperium.
*
ACHIAS
A corruption of the Hebrew
Achijah the brother of Jah; a significant word in some of the advanced
degrees.
*
ACHISHAR
Mentioned in first Kings iv,
6, under the name of Ahishar, and there described as being "over the
household" of King Solomon. This was a situation of great importance in the
East, and equivalent to the modern office of Chamberlain. The Steward in a
Council of Select Masters is said to represent Achishar. In Hebrew the word is
pronounced ak-ee-shawr.
*
ACHMETA
See Echatana
*
ACHTARIEL
A Cabalistic name of God
belonging to the Crown or first of the ten sephiroth ; and hence signifying
the Crown or God. The sephiroth refer in the Cabalistic system to the ten
persons, intelligence or attributes of God.
*
ACKNOWLEDGED
When one is initiated into the
degree of Most Excellent Master, he is technically said to be received and
acknowledged as a Most Excellent Master. This expression refers to the
tradition of the degree which states that when the Temple had been completed
and dedicated, King Solomon received and acknowledged the most expert of the
Craftsmen as Most Excellent Masters. That is, he received them into the
exalted rank of perfect and acknowledged workmen, and acknowledged their right
to that title. The verb to acknowledge here means to own or admit, to belong
to, as, to acknowledge a son.
*
ACOUSMATICI
The primary class of the
disciples of Pythagoras, who served a five years' probation of silence, and
were hence called acousmatici or hearers. According to Porphyry or Porphyrius,
a Greek philosopher who lived about 233-306 A.D., they received only the
elements of intellectual and moral instruction, and, after the expiration of
their term of probation, they were advanced to the rank of Mathematici (see
Pythagoras).
*
ACQUITTAL
Under this head it may be
proper to discuss two questions of Masonic law.
l. Can a Freemason, having
been acquitted by the courts of the country of an offense with which he has
been charged, be tried by his Lodge for the same offense?
2. Can a Freemason, having
been acquitted by his Lodge on insufficient evidence, be subjected, on the
discovery and production of new and more complete evidence, to a second trial
for the same offense?
To both of these questions the
correct answer would seem to be in the affirmative.
l. An acquittal of a crime by
a temporal court does not relieve a Freemason from an inquisition into the
same offense by his Lodge. Acquittals may be the result of some technicality
of law, or other cause, where, although the party is relieved from legal
punishment, his guilt is still manifest in the eyes of the community. If the
Order were to be controlled by the action of the courts, the character of the
Institution might be injuriously affected by its permitting a man, who had
escaped without honor from the punishment of the law, to remain a member of
the Fraternity. In the language of the Grand Lodge of Texas, "an acquittal by
a jury, while it may, and should, in some circumstances, have its influence in
deciding on the course to be pursued, yet has no binding force in Masonry. We
decide on our own rules, and our own view of the facts" (Proceedings, Grand
Lodge of Texas, volume ii page 273). The Code Governing Procedure and Practice
in Masonic Trials, in the Book of Constitutions edited by Brother Henry Pirtle
for the Grand Lodge of Kentucky, says, on page 195, fifth edition, "Conviction
or acquittal by a civil or military court for the same offense can not be
pleaded in bar of trial by a Masonic Lodge.
"2. To come to a correct
apprehension of the second question, we must remember that it is a
long-settled principle of Masonic law, that every offense which a Freemason
commits is an injury to the whole Fraternity, inasmuch as the bad conduct of a
single member reflects discredit on the whole Institution. This is a very old
and well-established principle of the Institution. Hence we find the Old
Constitutions declaring that Freemasons ''should never be thieves nor thieves'
mountaineers''(Cooke Manuscript line 916 ).
The safety of the Institution
requires that no evil-disposed member should be tolerated with impunity in
bringing disgrace on the Craft. Therefore, although it is a well-known maxim
of the common law - Nemo debet bis puniri pro uno delicto - that is, No one
should be twice placed in peril of punishment for the same crime, yet we must
also remember that other and fundamental maxim - Salus populi suprema lex-which
may, in its application to Freemasonry, be well translated. The well-being of
the Order is the first great law. To this everything else must yield.
Therefore, if a member, having been accused of a heinous offense and tried,
shall, on his trial, for want of sufficient evidence, be acquitted, or, being
convicted, shall, for the same reason, be punished by an inadequate penalty,
and if he shall thus be permitted to remain in the Institution with the stigma
of the crime upon him, ''whereby the Craft comes to shame, " then, if new and
more sufficient evidence shall be subsequently discovered, it is just and
right that a new trial shall be had, so that he may, on this newer evidence,
receive that punishment which will vindicate the reputation of the Order. No
technicalities of law, no plea of autrefois acquit, already acquitted, nor
mere verbal exception, should be allowed for the escape of a guilty member,
for so long as he lives in the Order, every man is subject to its discipline.
A hundred wrongful acquittals of a bad member, who still bears with him the
reproach of his evil life, can never discharge the Order from its paramount
duty of protecting its own good fame and removing the delinquent member from
its fold. To this great duty all private and individual rights and privileges
must succumb, for the well-being of the Order is the first great law in
Freemasonry.
*
ACTA LATOMORUM
ou Chronologie de l'Histoire
de la Franche-Maçonnerie française et étrangére, etc. That is: The Acts of the
Freemasons, or a Chronological History of French and Foreign Freemasonry, etc.
This work, written or complied by Claude Antoine Thory, was published at
Paris, in two volumes, octavo, in 1815. It contains the most remarkable facts
in the history of the Institution from obscure times to the year1814; the
succession of Grand Masters; a nomenclature of rites, degrees, and secret
associations in all the countries of the world ; a bibliography of the
principal works on Freemasonry published since 1723; and a supplement in which
the author has collected a variety of rare and important Masonic documents. Of
this work, which has never been translated into English, Lenning says in his
Encyclopädie der Freimaurerei that it is, without dispute, the most scientific
work on Freemasonry that French literature has ever produced. It must,
however, be confessed that in the historical portion Thory has committed many
errors in respect to English and American Freemasonry, and therefore, if ever
translated, the work wi1l require much emendation (see Thory)
*
ACTING GRAND MASTER
The Duke of Cumberland,
grandson of George II, brother of George III, having, in April, 1782, been
elected Grand Master of England, it was resolved by the Grand Lodge "that
whenever a prince of the blood did the Society the honor to accept the office
of Grand Master, he should be at liberty to nominate any peer of the realm to
be the Acting Grand Master" (Constitutions of Grand Lodge of England, edition
1784, page 341). The officer thus provided to be appointed was subsequently
called in the Constitutions of the Grand Lodge of England (edition 1841), and
is now called the Pro Grand Master.
In the American system, the
officer who performs the duties of Grand Master in case of the removal, death,
or inability of that officer, is known as the Acting Grand Master. For the
regulations which prescribe the proper person to perform these duties, see
Grand Master.
*
ACTIVE LODGE
A Lodge is said to be active
when it is neither dormant nor suspended, but regularly meets and is occupied
in the labors of Freemasonry.
*
ACTIVE MEMBER
An active member of a lodge is
one who, in contradistinction to an honorary member, assumes all the burdens
of membership, such as contributions, arrears, and participation in its
labors, and is invested with all the rights of membership, such as speaking,
voting, and holding office.
*
ACTUAL PAST MASTERS
This term is sometimes applied
to those who have actually served as Master of a Craft Lodge in order to
distinguish them from those who have been made Virtual Past Masters, in
Chapters of the United States, or Past Masters of Arts and Sciences, in
English Chapters, as a preliminary to receiving the Royal Arch degree (see
Past Master).
*
ADAD
The name of the principal god
among the Syrians, and who, as representing the sun, had, according to
Macrobius, a Roman author of about the early part of the fifth century, in the
Satualiorum (I, 23), an image surrounded by rays.
Macrobius, however, is wrong,
as Selden has shown, De Diis Syris, volume I, page 6, in confounding Adad with
the Hebrew Achad, or one-a name, from its signification of unity, applied to
the Great Architect of the Universe.
The error of Macrobius,
however, has been perpetuated by the inventors of the high degrees of
Freemasonry, who have incorporated Adad, as a name of God, among their
significant words.
*
ADAM
The name of the first man. The
Hebrew word, Adam, signifies man in a generic sense, the human species
collectively, and is said to be derived from , Adamah, the ground, because the
first man was made out of the dust of the earth, or from Adam, to be red, in
reference to his ruddy complexion. Most probably in this collective cense. as
the representative of the whole human race, and, therefore, the type of
humanity, that the presiding officer in a Council of Knights of the Sun, the
Twenty-eighth Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, is called
Father Adam, and is occupied in the investigation of the great truths which so
much concern the interests of the race. Adam, in that degree, is man seeking
after divine truth. The Cabalist and Talmudists have invented many things
concerning the first Adam, none of which are, however, worthy of preservation
(see Knight of the Sun). Brother McClenachan believed the entered Apprentice
Degree symbolizes the creation of man and his first perception of light. The
argument in support of that belief continues: In the Elohist form of the
Creation we read, Elohim said, "Let us make man in Our image, according to Our
likeness, and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, over the fowls
of the air, over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every Reptilia
that creeps upon the earth. And Elohim created man in His image, in the image
of Elohim He created him, male and female He created them. And Yahveh Elohim
formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed in his nostrils the breath
of life, and man was made a living being."
Without giving more than a
passing reference to the speculative origin and production of man and to his
spontaneous generation, Principe Générateur, as set forth by the Egyptians,
when we are told that "the fertilizing mud left by the Nile, and exposed to
the vivifying action of heat induced by the sun's rays, brought forth germs
which spring up as the bodies of men," accepted cosmogonies only will be
hereinafter mentioned ; thus in that of Peru, the first man, created by the
Divine Omnipotence, is called Alpa Camasca, Animated Earth. The Mandans, one
of the North American tribes, relate that the Great Spirit molded two figures
of clay, which he dried and animated with the breath of his mouth, one
receiving the name of First Man, and the other that of Companion. Taeroa, the
god of Tahiti, formed man of the red earth, say the inhabitants; aud so we
might continue.
But as François Lenormant
remarks in the Beginnings of History, let us confine ourselves to the
cosmogony offered by the sacred traditions of the great civilized nations of
antiquity. "The Chaideans call Adam the man whom the earth produced. And he
lay without movement, without life, and without breath, just like an image of
the heavenly Adam, until his soul had been given him by the latter," The
cosmogonic account peculiar to Babylon, as given by Berossus, says: "Belos,
seeing that the earth was uninhabited, though fertile, cut off his own head,
and the other gods, after kneading with earth the blood that flowed from it,
formed men, who therefore are endowed with intelligence, and share in the
divine thought," etc. The term employed to designate man, in his connection
with his Creator, is admu, the Assyrian counterpart of the Hebrew Adam (G.
Smith, Chaldean Account of Genesis). Lenormant further says that. the
fragments of Berossus give Adoros as the name of the first patriarch, and
Adiuru has been discovered on the cuneiform inscriptions.
Zoroaster makes the creation
of man the voluntary act of a personal god, distinct from primordial matter,
and his theory stands alone among the learned religions of the ancient world.
According to Jewish tradition
in the Targumim and the Talmud, as also to Moses Maimonides, Adam was created
man and woman at the same time, having two faces, turned in two opposite
directions, and that during a stupor the Creator separated Hawah, his feminine
half, from him, in order to make of her a distinct person. Thus were separated
the primordial androgen or first man-woman.
With Shemites and Mohammedans
Adam was symbolized in the Lingam, whilst with the Jews Seth was their Adam or
Lingam, the masculine symbol, and successively Noah took the place of Seth,
and so followed Abraham and Moses. The worship of Adam as the God-like, idea,
succeeded by Seth, Noah, Abraham, and Moses, through the symbolism of pillars,
monoliths, obelisks, or Matsebas (images), gave rise to other symbolic images,
as where Noah was adored under the emblems of a man, ark, and serpent,
signifying heat, fire, or passion.
Upon the death of Adam, says
traditional history, the pious Gregory. declared that the "dead body should be
kept above ground, till a fulness of time should come to commit it to the
middle of the earth by a priest of the most high God.'' This traditional
prophecy was fulfilled, it is said, by the body of Adam having been preserved
in a chest until about 1800 B.C., when "Melchizedek buried the body in Salem
(formerly the name of Jerusalem), which might very well be the middle of the
habitable world."
The Sethites used to say their
prayers daily in the Ark before the body of Adam. J. G. R. Foriong, in his
Rivers of Life, tells us that ''It appears from both the Sabid Aben Batric and
the Arabic Catena, that there existed the following 'short litany, said to
have been conceived by Noah.' Then follows the prayer of Noah, which was used
for so long a period by the Jewish Freemasons at the opening of the Lodge.
'' O Lord, excellent art thou
in thy truth, and there is nothing great in comparison of thee. Look upon us
with the eye of mercy and compassion. Deliver us from this deluge of waters,
and set our feet in a large room. By the sorrows of Adam, the first made man ;
by the blood of Abel, Thy holy one ; by the righteousness of Seth, in whom
Thou art well pleased ; number us not amongst those who have transgressed Thy
statutes, but take us into Thy merciful care, for Thou art our Deliverer, and
Thine is the praise for all the works of Thy hand for evermore. And the sons
of Noah said, Amen, Lord."
The Master of the Lodge would
omit the reference to the deluge and add the following to the prayer:
"But grant, we beseech Thee,
that the ruler of this Lodge may be endued with knowledge and wisdom to
instruct us and explain his secret masteries, as our holy brother Moses did
(in His Lodge) to Aaron, to Eleazar, and to Ithamar (the sons of Aaron), and
the several elders of Israel."
*
ADAM KADMON
In the Cabalistic doctrine,
the name given to the first emanation or outflowing from the Eternal Fountain.
It signifies the first man, or the first production of divine energy, or the
son of God, and to it the other emanations are subordinate.
*
ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY
Sixth President of the United
States, who served from 1825 to 1829. Adams, who has been very properly
described as "a man of strong points and weak ones, of vast reading and
wonderful memory, of great credulity and strong prejudices," became notorious
in the latter years of his life for his virulent opposition to Freemasonry.
The writer already quoted, who had an excellent opportunity of seeing
intimately the workings of the spirit of Anti-Masonry, says of him: "He hated
Freemasonry, as he did many other things, not from any harm that he had
received from it or personally knew respecting it, but because his credulity
had been wrought upon and his prejudices excited against it by dishonest and
selfish politicians, who were anxious, at any sacrifice to him, to avail
themselves of the influence of his commanding talents and position in public
life to sustain them in the disreputable work in which they were enlisted. In
his weakness, he lent himself to them. He united his energies to theirs in an
impracticable and unworthy cause" (IV. Moore, Freemasons magazine, volume vii,
page 314).
The result was a series of
letters abusive of Freemasonry, directed to leading politicians, and published
in the public journals from 1831 to 1833. A year before his death they were
collected and published under the title of Letters on the Masonic Institution,
by John Quincy Adams (published at Boston, 1847, 284 pages).
Some explanation of the cause
of the virulence with which Adams attacked the Masonic Institution in these
letters may be found in the following paragraph contained in an Anti-Masonic
work written by one Henry Gassett, and affixed to his Catalogue of Books on
the Masonic Institution (published at Boston, 1852). "It had been asserted in
a newspaper in Boston, edited by a Masonic dignitary, that John 11. Adams was
a Freemason. In answer to an inquiry from a person in New York State, whether
he was so, Mr. Adams replied that 'he was not, and never should be.'
These few words, undoubtedly,
prevented his election a second time as President of the United States. His
competitor, Andrew Jackson, a Freemason, was elected."
Whether the statement
contained in the italicized words be true or not, is not the question. It is
sufficient that Adams was led to believe it, and hence his ill-will to an
association which had, as he supposed, inflicted this political evil on him,
and baffled his ambitious views.
Above reference to Adams being
a member of the Craft is due to a confusion of the President's name with that
of a Boston printer, John Quincy Adams, who was proposed for membership in St.
Johns Lodge of that city on October 11, 1826. He was admitted on December 5.
But on the latter date the
President was busily engaged at Washington as may be seen by reference to his
Memoirs. This diary' also shows (on page 345, volume vii, Lippincott edition),
a statement by Adams himself which settles the question. He says "I told
Wilkins he might answer Tracy, that I am not and never was a Freemason."
*
ADAR
Hebrew, pronounced ad-awr; the
sixth month of the civil and the twelfth of the ecclesiastical year of the
Jews. It corresponds to a part of February and of March. The word has also a
private significance known to advanced Brethren.
*
AD AREL
Angel of Fire. Referred to in
the Hermetic Degree of Knight of the Sun. Probably from ... pronounced eh-der,
meaning splendor, and .., El, God' that is, the splendor of God or Divine
splendor.
*
ADRRESSES, MASONIC
Doctor Oliver, speaking oi the
Masonic discourses which began to be published soon after the reorganization
of Freemasonry, in the commencement of the eighteenth century, and which he
thinks were instigated by the attacks made on the Order, to which they were
intended to be replies, says : "Charges and addresses were therefore delivered
by Brethren in authority on the fundamental principles of the Order, and they
were printed to show that its morality was sound, and not in the slightest
degree repugnant to the precepts of our most holy religion. These were of
sufficient merit to insure a wide circulation among the Fraternity, from
whence they spread into the world at large, and proved decisive in fixing the
credit of the Institution for solemnities of character and a taste for serious
and profitable investigations."
There can be no doubt that
these addresses, periodically delivered and widely published, have continued
to exert an excellent effect in behalf of the Institution, by explaining and
defending the principles on which it is founded.
Not at all unusual is it now
as formerly for Grand Lodges to promote the presentation of such addresses in
the Lodges. For example, the Grand Lodge of Ohio (in the Masonic Code of that
State, 1914, page 197, section 82), says of the several Subordinate Lodges:
"It is enjoined upon them, as often as it is feasible, to introduce into their
meetings Lectures and Essays upon Masonic Polity, and the various arts and
sciences connected therewith."
The first Masonic address of
which we have any notice was delivered on the 24th of June, 1721, before the
Grand Lodge of England, by the celebrated John Theophilus Desagullers, LL.D,
and F.R.S. The Book of Constitutions (edition 1738, page l13), under that
date, says "Brother Desaguliers made an eloquent oration about Masons and
Masonry." Doctor Oliver, in his Revelations of a Square (page 22), states that
this address was issued in a printed form, but no copy of it now remains---at
least it has escaped the researches of the most diligent Masonic
bibliographers.
On the 20th of May, 1725,
Martin Folkes, then Deputy Grand Master, delivered an address before the Grand
Lodge of England, which is cited in the Freemason's Pocket Companion for 1759,
but no entire copy of the address is now extant.
The third Masonic address of
which we have any knowledge is one entitled "A Speech delivered to the
Worshipful and Ancient Society of Free and Accepted Masons, at a Grand Lodge
held at Merchants' Hall, in the City of York, on Saint John's Day, December
27, 1726, the Right Worshipful Charles Bathurst, Esq., Grand Master. By the
Junior Grand Warden. Olim meminisse juvabit. York: Printed by Thomas Gent, for
the benefit of the Lodge."
The Latin words Olim meminisse
juvabit, as given on the above copy of the title page of this printed address,
are taken from the works of the Roman epic poet Vergil, Who writes thus:
Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit meaning Perchance even these things it
will be hereafter delightful to remember.
The author of the above
address was Francis Drake, M.D., F.R.S., who was appointed Junior Grand Warden
of the Grand Lodge of All England at York on December 27, 1725 (see Drake,
Francis). The first edition of the speech bears no date, but was probably
issued in 1727, and it was again published at London in 1729, and a second
London edition was published in 1734, which has been reprinted in Hughan's
Masonic Sketches and Reprints (American edition, page 106). This is,
therefore, the earliest Masonic address to which we have access. It contains a
brief sketch of the history of Freemasonry, written as Masonic history was
then written. The address is, however, remarkable for advancing the claim of
the Grand Lodge of York to a superiority over that of London, and for
containing a very early reference to the three degrees of Craft Masonry. The
fourth Masonic address of whose existence we have any knowledge is "a Speech
Delivered to the Worshipful Society of Free and Accepted Masons, at a Lodge,
held at the Carpenters Arms in Silver-Street, Golden Square, the 31st of
December, 1728. By the Right Worshipful Edw. Oakley, Architect, M.M., late
Provincial Senior Grand Warden in Carmarthen, South Wales." This speech was
reprinted by Cole in his Ancient Constitutions at London in 1731.
America has the honor of
presenting the next attempt at Masonic oratory. The fifth address, and the
first American, which is extant, is one delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on
June 24, 1734. It is entitled "A Dissertation upon Masonry, delivered to a
Lodge in America, June 24th, 1734. Christ's Regm."
This last word is doubtless an
abbreviation of the Latin word for kingdom. Discovered by Brother C. W. Moore
in the archives of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, it was published by him
in his magazine in 1849. This address is well written, and of a symbolic
character, as the author represents the Lodge as a type of heaven.
Sixthly, we have "An Address
made to the body of Free and Accepted Masons assembled at a Quarterly
communication, held near Temple Bar, December 11, 1735, by Martin Clare,
Junior Grand Warden."
Martin Clare was distinguished
in his times as a Freemason, and his address, which Doctor Oliver has inserted
in his Golden Remains, has been considered of value enough to be translated
into the French and German languages.
Next, on March 21, 1737, the
Chevalier Ramsay delivered an oration before the Grand Lodge of France, in
which he discussed the Freemasonry and the Crusaders and traced an imaginary
history of its course through Scotland and England into France, which was to
become the center of the reformed Order.
Ramsay and his address are
discussed at length in Doctor. Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry. A
report of this speech is to be found in the Histoire &c. de la tre ven.
Confratenité des F. M. &c. Traduit par 1e Fr. de la Tierce. Francfort, 1742.
This French title means History of the very Worshipful Fraternity of
Freemasons, etc. Translated by the Brother of the Third Degree. Frankfort,
1742. An English version of this much discussed address by the Chevaller
Ramsey is given in Robert F. Gould's History of Freemasonry, vo1unle 3, pages
84-9 (see Ramsay).
After this period, Masonic addresses rapidly multiplied, w that it would be
impossible to record their titles or even the names of their authors.
What Martial (1, 17), in the
first century, said of his own epigrams, that some were good, some bad, and a
great many middling, may, with equal propriety and justice, be said of Masonic
addresses. Of the thousands that have been delivered, many have been worth
neither printing nor preservation.
One thing, however, is to be
remarked : that within a few years the literary character of these productions
has greatly improved. Formerly, a Masonic address on some festal occasion of
the Order was little mor than a homily on brotherly love or some other Masonic
virtue. Often the orator was a clergyman, selected by the Lodge on account of
his moral character or his professional ability. These clergymen were
frequently among the youngest members of the Lodge, and men who had no
opportunity to study the esoteric construction of Freemasonry. In such cases
we will find that the addresses were generally neither more nor less than
sermons under another name.
They contain excellent general
axioms of conduct, and sometimes encomiums or formal praises on the laudable
design of our Institution.
But we look in vain in them
for any ideas which refer to the history or to the occult philosophy of
Freemasonry. Only in part do they accept the definition that Freemasonry is a
science of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols. They dwell
on the science of morality, but they say nothing of the symbols or the
allegories. But, as has been already said, there has been an evident
improvement. Many of the addresses now delivered are of a higher order of
Masonic literature. The subjects of Masonic history, of the origin of the
Institution, of its gradual development from an operative art to a speculative
science, of its symbols, and of its peculiar features which distinguish it
from all other associations, have been ably discussed in many recent Masonic
addresses. Thus have the efforts to entertain an audience for an hour become
not only the means of interesting instruction to the hearers, but also
valuable contributions to the literature of Freemasonry.
Masonic addresses should be
written in this way.
All platitudes and old truisms
should be avoided.
Sermonizing, which is good in
its place, is out of place there. No one should undertake to deliver a Masonic
address unless he knows something of the subject on which he is about to
speak, and unless he is capable of saying what will make every Freemason who
hears him a wiser as well as a better man, or at least what will afford him
the opportunity of becoming so.
*
ADELPH
From the Greek, meaning a
brother. The first degree of the Order of the Palladium. Reghellini says that
there exists in the archives of Douai the ritual of a Masonic Society, called
Adelphs, which has been communicated to the Grand Orient, but which he thinks
is the same as the Primitive Rite of Narbonne.
*
ADEPT
One fully skilled or well
versed in any art; from the Latin word Adeptus, meaning having obtained,
because the Adept claimed to be in the possession of all the secrets of his
peculiar mystery.
The Alchemists or Hermetic
philosophers assumed the title of Adepts (see Alchemy). Of the Hermetic
Adepts, who were also sometimes called Rosicruzians, Spence thus writes, in
1740, to his Mother: "Have you ever heard of the people called Adepts? They
are a set of philosophers superior to whatever appeared among the Greeks and
Romans. The three great points they drive at, are, to be free from poverty,
distempers, and death; and, if you believe them, they have found out one
secret that is capable of freeing them from all three. There are never more
than twelve of these men in the whole world at a time ; and we have the
happiness of having one of the twelve at this time in Turin.
I am very well acquainted with
him, and have often talked with him of their secrets, as far as he is allowed
to talk to a common mortal of them" (Spence's Letter to his Mother, in
Singer's Anecdotes, page 403).
In a similar allusion to the
possession of abstruse knowledge, the word is applied to some of the advanced
degrees of Freemasonry.
*
ADEPT, PRINCE
One of the names of the
Twenty-eighth Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (see Knight of
the Sun). It was the Twenty-third Degree of the System of the Chapter of
Emperors of the East and West of Clermont.
*
ADEPT, THE
A Hermetic Degree of the
collection of A. Viany. It is also the Fourth Degree of the Rite of Relaxed
Observance, and first of the advanced degrees of the Rite of Elects of Truth.
"It has much analogy, " says Thory, "with the degree of Knight of the Sun." It
is also called Chaos Dismantled.
*
ADEPTUS ADOPTATUS
The Seventh Degree of the Rite
of Zinnendorf, consisting of a kind of chemical and pharmaceutical
instruction.
*
ADEPTUS CORONATUS
Called a1so Templar Master of
the Key. The Seventh Degree of the Swedish Rite.
*
ADEPTUS EXEMPTUS
The Seventh Degree of the
system adopted by those German Rosicrucians who were known as the Gold und
Rosenkreutzer, or the Gold and Rosy Cross, and whom Lenning supposes to have
been the first who engrafted Rosicrucianism on Freemasonry.
*
ADHERING MASON
Those Freemasons who, during
the anti-Masonic excitement in America, on account of the supposed abduction
of Morgan, refused to leave their Lodges and renounce Freemasonry, were so
called. They embraced among their number some of the wisest, best, and most
influential men of the country.
*
ADHUC STAT
Latin phrase meaning It yet
stands or She yet stands and frequently found on Masonic medals (see
Mossdorf's Denkmûnzen). Probably originally used by the Strict Observance and
then refers to the preservation of Templary.
*
ADJOURNMENT
C. W. Moore (Freemasons
Magazine xii, page 290) says: "We suppose it to be generally conceded that
Lodges cannot properly, be adjourned. It has been so decided by, a large
proportion of the Grand Lodges in America, and tacitly, at least, concurred in
by all. We are not aware that there is a dissenting voice among them. It is,
therefore, safe to assume that the settled policy is against adjournment."
The reason which he assigns
for this rule, is that adjournment is a method used only in deliberative
bodies, such as legislatures and courts, aud as Lodges do not partake of the
character of either of these, adjournments are not applicable to them. The
rule which Brother Moore lays down is undoubtedly correct, but the reason
which he assigns for it is not sufficient. If a Lodge were permitted to
adjourn by the vote of a majority of its members, the control of the labor
would be placed in their hands. But according to the whole spirit of the
Masonic system, the Master alone controls and directs the hours of labor.
In the fifth of the Old
Charges, approved in 1722, it is declared that "All Masons shall meekly
receive their Wages without murmuring or mutiny, and not desert the Master
till the Lord's work is finished." Now as the Master alone can know when "the
work is finished," the selection of the time of closing must be vested in him.
He is the sole judge of the proper period at which the labors of the Lodge
should be terminated, and he may suspend business even in the middle of a
debate, if he supposes that it is expedient to close the Lodge. Hence no
motion for adjournment can ever be admitted in a Masonic Lodge. Such a motion
would be an interference with the prerogative of the Master, and could not
therefore be entertained.
The Earl of Zetland, when
Grand Master of England, ruled on November 19, 1856, that a Lodge has no power
to adjourn except to the next regular day of meeting. He said: "I may, say
that Private Lodges are governed by much the same laws as Grand Lodges, and
that no meeting of a Private Lodge can be adjourned; but the Master of a
Private Lodge may, and does, convene Lodges of Emergency. "
This is in the Freemasons
Magazine (1856, page 848).
This prerogative of opening
and closing his Lodge is necessarily vested in the Master, because, by the
nature of our Institution, he is responsible to the Grand Lodge for the good
conduct of the body over which he presides. He is charged, in those questions
to which he is required to give his assent at his installation, to hold the
Landmarks in veneration, and to conform to every edict of the Grand Lodge, and
for any violation of the one or disobedience of the other by the Lodge, in his
presence, he would be answerable to the supreme Masonic authority. Hence the
necessity that an arbitrary power should be conferred upon him, by the
exercise of which he may at any time be enabled to prevent the adoption of
resolutions, or the commission of any act which would be subversive of, or
contrary to, those ancient laws and usages which he has sworn to maintain and
preserve.
*
ADMIRATION, SIGN OF
A mode of recognition alluded
to in the Most Excellent Master's Degree, or the Sixth of the American Rite.
Its introduction in that place is referred to a Masonic legend in connection
with the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Kings Solomon, which states that,
moved by the widespread reputation of the Israelitish monarch, she had
repaired to Jerusalem to inspect the magnificent works of which she had heard
so many encomiums.
Upon arriving there, and
beholding for the first time the Temple, which glittered with gold, and which
was so accurate1y adjusted in all its parts as to seem to be composed of but a
single piece of marble, she raised her hands and eyes to heaven in an attitude
of admiration, and at the same time exclaimed, Rabboni! equivalent to saying A
most excellent master hath done this! This actions has since been perpetuated
in the ceremonies of the Degree of Most Excellent Master. The legend is,
however, of doubtful authority, and is really to be considered only as
allegorical, like so many other of the legends of Freemasonry (see Sheba,
Queen of).
*
ADMISSION
Although the Old Charges,
approved in 1722, use the word admitted as applicable to those who are
initiated into the mysteries of Freemasonry, yet the General Regulations of
1721 employ the term admission in a sense different from that of initiation.
By the word making they imply the reception of a profane into the Order, but
by admission they designate the election of a Freemason into a Lodge. Thus we
find such expressions as these clearly indicating a difference in the meaning
of the two words. In Regulation v-"No man can be made or admitted a member of
a particular Lodge." In Regulation vi-"But no man can be entered a Brother in
any particular Lodge, or admitted to be a member thereof." And more distinctly
in Regulation viii-"No set or number of Brethren shall withdraw or separate
themselves from the Lodge in which they were made Brethren or were afterwards
admitted members." This distinction has not always been rigidly preserved by
recent writers; but it is evident that, correctly speaking, we should always
say of a profane who has been initiated that he has been made a Freemason, and
of a Freemason who has been affiliated with a Lodge, that he has been admitted
a member. The true definition of admission is, then, the reception of an
unaffiliated Brother into membership (see Affiliated Freemason).
*
ADMONITION
According to the ethics of
Freemasonry, it is made a duty obligatory upon every member of the Order to
conceal the faults of a Brother; that is, not to blazon forth his errors and
infirmities, to let them be learned by the world from some other tongue than
his, and to admonish him of them in private. So there is another but a like
duty or obligation, which instincts him to whisper good counsel in his
Brother's ear and to warn him of approaching danger. This refers not more to
the danger that is without and around him than to that which is within him ;
not more to the peril that springs from the concealed foe who would waylay him
and covertly injure him, than to that deeper peril of those faults and
infirmities which lie within his own heart, and which, if not timely crushed
by good and earnest resolution of amendment, will, like the ungrateful serpent
in the fable, become warm with life only to sting the bosom that has nourished
them.
Admonition of a Brother's
fault is, then, the duty of every Freemason, and no true one will, for either
fear or favor, neglect its performance. But as the duty is Masonic, so is
there a Masonic way in which that duty should be discharged. We must admonish
not with self-sufficient pride in our own reputed goodness-not in imperious
tones, as though we looked down in scorn upon the degree offender---not in
language that, by its hardness, will wound rather than win, wil1 irritate more
than it will reform; but with that persuasive gentleness that gains the heart-
with the all-subduing influences of "mercy unrestrained"-with the magic' might
of love---with the language and the accents of affection, which mingle grave
displeasure for the offense with grief and pity for the offender.
This, and this alone is
Masonic admonition. I am not to rebuke my Brother in anger, for I, too, have
my faults, and I dare not draw around me the folds of my garment lest they
should be polluted by my neighbor's touch; but I am to admonish in private,
not before the world, for that would degrade him; and I am to warn him,
perhaps from my own example, how vice ever should be followed by sorrow, for
that goodly sorrow leads to repentance, and repentance to amendment, and
amendment to joy.
*
ADONAI
In Hebrew, pronounced ad-o-noy,
being the plural of excellence for Aden, meaning to rule, and signifying the
Lord. The Jews, who reverently avoided the pronunciation of the sacred name
JEHOVAH, were accustomed, whenever that name occurred, to substitute for it
the word Adonai in reading. As to the use of the plural form instead of the
singular, the Rabbis say, "Every word indicative of dominion, though singular
in meaning, is made plural in form." This is called the pluralis excellentiae.
The Talmudists also say, as in Joannes Buxtorfius, Lexicon Chaldaicum,
Talmudicum et Rabbinicum, that the Tetragrammaton is called Shem hamphorash,
the name that is separated or explained, because it is explained, uttered, and
set forth by the word Adonai (see Jehovah and Shem Hamphorasch).
Adonai is used as a
significant word in several of the advanced degrees of Freemasonry, and may
almost always be considered as allusive to or symbolic of the True Word.
*
ADONHIRAM
This has been adopted by the
disciples of Adonhiramite Freemasonry as the spelling of the name of the
person known in Scripture and in other Masonic systems as Adoniram (which
see). They correctly derive the word from the Hebrew Adon and hiram,
signifying the master who is exalted, which is the true meaning of Adoniram,
the ..or h being omitted in the Hebrew by the union of the two words. Hiram
Abif has also sometimes been called Adonhiram, the Adon having been bestowed
on him by Solomon, it is said, as a title of honor.
*
ADONIS, MYSTERIES OF
An investigation of the
Mysteries of Adonis peculiarly claims the attention of the Masonic student.
First, because, in their symbolism and in their esoteric doctrine, the
religious object for which they were instituted, and the mode in which that
object is attained, they bear a nearer analogical resemblance to the
Institution of Freemasonry than do any of the other mysteries or systems of
initiation of the ancient world. Secondly, because their chief locality brings
them into a very close connection with the early history and reputed origin of
Freemasonry. These ceremonies were principally celebrated at Byblos, a city of
Phoenicia, whose Scriptural name was Gebal, and whose inhabitants were the
Giblites or Gebalites, who are referred to in the First Book of Kings (v; 18),
as being the stone-squarers employed by King Solomon in building the Temple
(see Gebal and Giblim). Hence there must have evidently been a very intimate
connection, or at least certainly a very frequent intercommunication, between
the workmen of the first Temple and the inhabitants of Byblos, the seat of the
Adonisian Mysteries, and the place whence the worshipers of that Rite were
spread over other regions of country.
These historical circumstances
invite us to an examination of the system of initiation which was practiced at
Byblos, because we may find in it something that was probably suggestive of
the symbolic system of instruction which was subsequently so prominent a
feature in the system of Freemasonry.
Let us first examine the myth
on which the Adonisiac initiation was founded. The mythological legend of
Adonis is that he was the son of Myrrha and Cinyras, King of Cyprus. Adonis
was possessed of such surpassing beauty, that Venus became enamored of him,
and adopted him as her favorite. Subsequently Adonis, who was a great hunter,
died from a wound inflicted by a wild boar on Mount Lebanon. Venus flew to the
succor of her favorite, but she came too late. Adonis was dead. On his descent
to the infernal regions, Proserpine became, like Venus, so attracted by his
beauty, that, notwithstanding the entreaties of the goddess of love she
refused to restore him to earth At length the prayers of the desponding Venus
were listened to with favor by Jupiter, who reconciled the dispute between the
two goddesses, and by whose decree Proserpine was compelled to consent that
Adonis should spend six months of each year alternately with herself and
Venus.
This is the story on which the
Greek poet Bion founded his exquisite idyll entitled the Epilaph of Adonis,
the beginning of which has been thus rather inefficiently "done into English"
:
I and the Loves Adonis dead
deplore:
The beautiful Adonis is indeed
Departed, parted from us. Sleep no more
In purple, Cyprisi but in watchet weed,
All wretched! beat thy breast and all aread
" Adonis is no more." The Loves and I
Lament him. " Oh her grief to see him bleed,
Smitten by white tooth on whiter thigh,
Out-breathing life's faint sigh upon the mountain high."
It is evident that Bion
referred the contest of Venus and Proserpine for Adonis to a period subsequent
to his death, from the concluding lines, in which he says:
"The Muses, too, lament the
son of Cinyras, and invoke him in their song; but he does not heed them, not
because he does not wish, but because Proserpine will not release him." This
was, indeed, the favorite form of the myth, and on it was framed the symbolism
of the ancient mystery. But there are other Grecian mythologies that relate
the tale of Adonis differently. According to these, he was the product of the
incestuous connection of Cinyras and his daughter Myrrha.
Cinyras subsequently, on
discovering the crime of his daughter, pursued her with a drawn sword,
intending to kill her.
Myrrha entreated the gods to
make her invisible, and they changed her into a myrrh tree. Ten months after
the myrrh tree opened, and the young Adonis was born. This is the form of the
myth that has been adopted by the poet Ovid, who gives it with all its moral
horrors in the Tenth Book (lines 29s-559) of his Melamrphoses.
Venus, who was delighted with
the extraordinary beauty of the boy, put him in a coffer or chest, unknown to
all the gods, and gave him to Proserpine to keep and to nurture in the under
world. But Proserpine had no sooner beheld him than she became enamored of him
and refused, when Venus applied for him, to surrender him to her rival. The
subject was then referred to Jupiter, who decreed that Adonis should have
one-third of the year to himself, should be another third with Venus, and the
remainder of the time with Proserpine. Adonis gave his own portion to Venus,
and lived happily with her till, having offended Diana, he was killed by a
wild boar. The mythographer Pharnutus gives a still different story, and says
that Adonis was the grandson of Cinyras, aud fled with his father, Ammon, into
Egypt, whose people he civilized, taught them agriculture, and enacted many
wise laws for their government. He subsequently passed over into Syria, and
was wounded in the thigh by a wild boar while hunting on Mount Lebanon. His
wife, Isis, or Astarte, and the people of Phoenicia and Egypt, supposing that
the wound was mortal, profoundly deplored his death. But he afterward
recovered, and their grief was replaced by transports of joy.
All the myths, it will be
seen, agree in his actual or supposed death by violence, in the grief for his
loss in his recovery or restoration to life, and in the consequent joy
thereon. On these facts are founded the Adonisian mysteries which were
established in his honor.
While, therefore, we may grant
the possibility that there was originally some connection between the Sabean
worship of the sun and the celebration of the Adonisian festival, we cannot
forget that these mysteries, in common with all the other sacred initiations
of the ancient world, had been originally established to promulgate among the
initiates the once hidden doctrine of a future life.
The myth of Adonis in Syria,
like that of Osiris in Egypt, of Atys in Samothrace, or of Dionysus in Greece,
presented, symbolically, the two great ideas of decay and restoration. This
doctrine sometimes figured as darkness and light, sometimes as winter and
summer, sometimes as death and life, but always maintaining, no matter what
was the framework of the allegory, the inseparable ideas of something that was
lost and afterward recovered, as its interpretation, and so teaching, as does
Freemasonry at this day, by a similar system of allegorizing, that after the
death of the body comes the eternal life of the soul. The inquiring Freemason
will thus readily see the analogy in the symbolism that exists between Adonis
in the Mysteries of the Gebalites at Byblos and Hiram the Builder in his own
Institution.
*
ADONHIRAMITE FREEMASONRY
Of the numerous controversies
which arose from the middle to near the end of the eighteenth century on the
Continent of Europe, and especially in France, among the students of Masonic
philosophy, and which so frequently resulted in the invention of new Degrees
and the establishment of new Rites, not the least prominent was that which
related to the person and character of the Temple Builder. The question, Who
was the architect of King Solomon's Temple? was answered differently by the
various theorists, and each answer gave rise to a new system, a fact by no
means surprising in those times, so fertile in the production of new Masonic
systems. The general theory was then, as it is now, that this architect was
Hiram Abif, the widow's son, who had been sent to King Solomon by Hiram, King
of Tyre, as a precious gift, and as a curious and cunning workman.
This theory was sustained by
the statements of the Jewish Scriptures, so far as they threw any light on the
Masonic legend. It was the theory of the English Freemasons from the earliest
times; was enunciated as historically correct in the first edition of the Book
of Constitutions (published in 1723, page 11) ; has continued ever since to be
the opinion of all English and American Freemasons; and is, at this day, the
only theory entertained by any Freemason in the two countries who has a theory
at all on the subject. This, therefore, is the orthodox faith of Freemasonry.
But such was not the case in
the last century on the Continent of Europe. At first the controversy arose
not as to the man himself, but as to his proper appellation.
All parties agreed that the
architect of the Temple was that Hiram, the widow's son, who is described in
the First Book of Kings (chapter vii, verses 13 and14), and in the Second
'Book of Chronicles (chapter ii, verses 13 and 14), as having come out of Tyre
with the other workmen of the Temple who had been sent by King Hiram to
Solomon. But one party called him Hiram Abif, and the other, admitting that
his original name was Hiram, supposed that, in consequence of the skill he had
displayed in the construction of the Temple, he had received the honorable
affix of Adon, signifying, Lord or Master, whence his name became Adonhiram.
There was, however, at the
Temple another Adoniram, of whom it will be necessary in passing to say a few
words, for the better understanding of the present subject.
The first notice that we have
of this Adoniram in Scripture is in the Second Book of Samuel (chapter xx,
verse 24), where, in the abbreviated form of his name, Adoram, he is said to
have been over the tribute in the house of David ; or, as Gesenius, a great
authority on Hebrew, translates it, prefect over the tribute service, or, as
we might say in modem phrase, principal collector of the taxes.
Seven years afterward, we find
him exercising the same office in the household of Solomon; for it is said in
First Kings (iv, 6) that Adoniram, "the son of Abda, was over the tribute."
Lastly, we hear of him still occupying the same station in the household of
King Rehoboam, the successor of Solomon. Forty-seven years after he is first
mentioned in the Book of Samuel, he is stated under the name of Adoram, First
Kings (xii, 1s), or Hadoram, Second Chronicles (x, 18), to have been stoned to
death, while in the discharge of his duty, by the people, who were justly
indignant at the oppressions of his master.
The legends and traditions of
Freemasonry which connect this Adoniram with the Temple at Jerusalem derive
their support from a single passage in the First Book of Kings (v, 14), where
it is said that Solomon made a levy of thirty thousand workmen from among the
Israelites; that he sent these in courses of ten thousand a month to labor on
Mount Lebanon, and that he placed Adoniram over these as their superintendent.
The ritual-makers of France,
who were not all Hebrew scholars, nor well versed in Biblical history, seem at
times to have confounded two important personages, and to have lost all
distinction between Hiram the Builder, who had been sent from the court of the
King of Tyre, and Adoniram, who had always been an officer in the court of
King Solomon. This error was extended and facilitated when they had prefixed
the title Aden, that is to say, lord or master, to the name of the former,
making him Aden Hiram, or the Lord Hiram.
Thus, about the year 1744, one
Louis Travenol published at Paris, under the name of Leonard Gabanon, a work
entitled Catéchisme des Francs Maçons, ou Le Secret des Maçons, in which he
says:
"Besides the cedars of
Lebanon, Hiram made a much more valuable gift to Solomon, in the person of
Adonhiram, of his own race, the son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali. His
father, who was named Hur, was an excellent architect and worker in metals.
Solomon, knowing his virtues, his merit, and his talents, distinguished him by
the most eminent position, intrusting to him the construction of the Temple
and the superintendence of all the workmen" (see Louis Guillemain de Saint
Victor's Recueil Précieuz, French for Choice Collection, page 76).
From the language of this
extract, and from the reference in the title of the book to Adoram, which we
know was one of the names of Solomon's tax collector, it is evident that the
author of the catechism has confounded Hiram Abif, who came out of Tyre, with
Adoniram, the son of Abda, who had always lived at Jerusalem ; that is to say,
with unpardonable ignorance of Scriptural history and Masonic tradition, he
has supposed the two to be one and the same person.
Notwithstanding this literary
blunder, the catechism became popular with many Freemasons of that day, and
thus arose the first schism or error in relation to the Legend of the Third
Degree. In Solomon in all His Glory, an English exposure published in 1766,
Adoniram takes the place of Hiram, but this work is a translation from a
similar French one, and so it must not be argued that English Freemasons ever
held this view.
At length, other ritualists,
seeing the inconsistency of referring the character of Hiram, the widow's son,
to Adoniram, the receiver of taxes, and the impossibility of reconciling the
discordant facts in the life of both, resolved to cut the Gordian knot by
refusing any Masonic position to the former, and making the latter, alone, the
architect of the Temple. It cannot be denied that Josephus (viii, 2) states
that Adoniram, or, as he calls him, Adoram, was, at the very beginning of the
labor, placed over the workmen who prepared the materials on Mount Lebanon,
and that he speaks of Hiram, the widow's son, simply as a skillful artisan,
especia1ly in metals, who had only made all the mechanical works about the
Temple according to the will of Solomon (see Josephus, viii, 3). This apparent
color of authority for their opinions was readily claimed by the Adoniramites,
and hence one of their most prominent ritualists, Guillemain de Saint Victor
(in his Recueil Précieux de la Maçonnerie Adonhiramite, Pages 77-s), propounds
their theory thus: "we a11 agree that the Master's Degree is founded on the
architect of the Temple. Now, Scripture says very positively, in the 14th
verse of the 5th chapter of the Third Book of Kings, that the person was
Adonhiram. In the Septuagint, the oldest translation of the Hebrew Scriptures,
the two books of Samuel are called the First and Second of Kings. Josephus and
all the secrete writers say the same thing, and undoubtedly distinguish him
from Hiram the Tyrian, the worker in metals. So that it is Adonhiram then whom
we are bound to honor.
There were therefore, in the
eighteenth century, from about the middle to near the end of it, three schools
of Masonic ritualists who were divided in opinion identity of this Temple
Builder:
1. Those who supposed him to
be Hiram the son of a widow of the tribe of Naphtali, whom the King of Tyre
had sent to King Solomon, and whom they designated as Hiram Abif. This was the
original and most popular school, and which we now suppose to have been the
orthodox one.
2. Those who believed this
Hiram that came out of Tyre to have been the architect, but who supposed that,
in consequence of his excellence of character, Solomon had bestowed upon him
the appellation of Adon, Lord or Master, calling him Adonhiram. As this theory
was wholly unsustained by Scripture history or previous Masonic tradition, the
school which supported it never became prominent or popular, and soon ceased
to exist, although the error on which it is based is repeated at intervals in
the blunder of some modern French ritualists.
3. Those who, treating this
Hiram, the widow's son, as a subordinate and unimportant character, entirely
ignored him in their ritual, and asserted that Adoram, or Adoniram, or
Adonhiram, as the name was spelled by these ritualists, the son of Abda, the
collector of tribute and the superintendent of the levy on Mount Lebanon, was
the true architect of the Temple, and the one to whom all the legendary
incidents of the Third Degree of Freemasonry were to be referred.
This school, in consequence of
the boldness with which, unlike the second school, it refused all compromise
with the orthodox party and assumed a wholly independent theory, became, for a
time, a prominent schism in Freemasonry. Its disciples bestowed upon the
believers in Hiram Abif the name of Hiramite Masons, adopted as their own
distinctive appellation that of Adonhiramites, and having developed the system
which they practiced into a peculiar rite, called it Adonhiramite Freemasonry.
Who was the original founder
of the rite of Adonhiramite Freemasonry, and at what precise time it was first
established, are questions that cannot now be answered with any certainty.
Thory does not attempt to reply to either in his Nomenclature of Rites, where,
if anything was known on the subject, we would be most likely to find it.
Ragon, it is true, in his Orthodoxie Maçonnique, attributes the Rite to the
Baron de Tschoudy. But as he also assigns the authorship of the Recueil
Précieux (a work of which we shall directly speak more fully) to the same
person, in which statement he is known to be mistaken, there can be but little
doubt that he is wrong in the former as well as in the latter opinion. The
Chevalier de Lussy, better known as the Baron de Tschoudy, was, it is true, a
distinguished ritualist. He founded the Order of the Blazing Star, and took an
active part in the operations of the Council of Emperors of the East and West;
but we have met with no evidence, outside of Ragon's assertion, that he
established or had anything to do with the Adonhiramite Rite.
We are disposed to attribute
the development into a settled system, if not the actual creation, of the Rite
of Adonhiramite Freemasonry to Louis Guillemain de Saint Victor, who published
at Paris, in the year 1781, a work entitled Recueil Precieux de la Maçonnerie
Adonhiramite, etc.
As this volume contained only the ritual of the first four degrees, it was
followed, in 1785, by another, which embraced the higher degrees of the Rite.
No one who peruses these volumes can fail to perceive that the author writes
like one who has invented, or, at least, materially modified the Rite which is
the subject of his labors. At a1l events, this work furnishes the only
authentic account that we possess of the organization of the Adonhiramite
system of Freemasonry.
The Rite of Adonhiramite
Freemasonry consisted of twelve degrees, which were as follows, the names
being given in French as well as in English:
1. Apprentice-Apprenti.
2. Fellow-Craft-Compagnon.
3. Master Mason-Maître.
4. Perfect Master-Maitre parfait.
5. Elect of Nine---Premier Elu, qu L'Elu des Neuf.
6. Elect of Perignan-Second Elu nommé Elu de Pérignan.
7. Elect of Fifteen-Troisiéme Elu nommé Elu des Quinze.
8. Minor Architect-Petit Architecte.
9. Grand Architect, or Scottish Fellow Craft-Grand Archirecte, ou Compagnon
Ecossais.
10. Scottish Master-Maître Ecossais.
l1, Knight of the Sword, Knight of the East, or of the Eagle-Chevalier de
l'Épée surnommé Chefalier de l'Orient ou de l'Aigle.
12. Knight of Rose Croix-Chevalier de la Rose Croiz.
This is the entire list of
Adonhiramite Degrees.
Thory and Ragon have both
erred in giving a Thirteenth Degree, namely, the Noachite, or Prussian Knight.
They have fallen into this mistake because Guillemain has inserted this degree
at the end of his second volume, but simply as a Masonic curiosity, having
been translated, as he says, from the German by M. de Bérage. It has no
connection with the preceding series of degrees, and Guillemain positively
declares in the second part (2nd Ptie, page l18) that the Rose Croix is the ne
plus ultra, the Latin for nothing further, the summit and termination, of his
Rite.
Of these twelve degrees, the first ten are occupied with the transactions of
the first Temple; the eleventh with matters relating to the construction of
the second Temple; and the twelfth with that Christian symbolism of
Freemasonry which is peculiar to the Rose Croix of every Rite. All of the
degrees have been borrowed from the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, with
slight modifications, which have seldom improved their character. On the
whole, the extinction of the Adonhiramite Rite can scarcely be considered as a
loss to Freemasonry.
Before concluding, a few words
may be said on the orthography of the title. As the Rite derives its peculiar
characteristic from the fact that it founds the Third Degree on the assumed
legend that Adoniram, the son of Abda and the receiver of tribute, was the
true architect of the Temple, and not Hiram, the widow's son, it should
properly have been styled the Adoniramite Rite, and not the Adonhiramite. So
it would probably have been called if Guillemain, who gave it form, had been
acquainted with the Hebrew language, for he would then have known that the
name of his hero was Adoniram and not Adonhiram.
The term Adonhiramite
Freemasons should really have been applied to the second school described in
this article, whose disciples admitted that Hiram Abif was the architect of
the Temple, but who supposed that Solomon had bestowed the prefix Adon upon
him as a mark of honor, calling him Adonhiram. But Gui1lemain having committed
the blunder in the name of his Rite, it continued to be repeated by his
successors, and it would perhaps now be inconvenient to correct the error.
Ragon, however, and a few
other recent writers, have ventured to take this step, and in their works the
system is called Adoniramite Freemasonry.
*
ADONIRAM
The first notice that we have
of Adoniram in Scripture is in the Second Book of Samuel (xx, 24), where, in
the abbreviated form of his name Adoram, he is said to have been over the
tribute in the house of David, or, as Gesenius translates it prefect over the
tribute service, tribute master, that is to say, in modern phrase, he was the
chief receiver of the taxes.
Clarke calls him Chancellor of
the Exchequer. Seven years afterward we find him exercising the same office in
the household of Solomon, for it is said, First Kings (iv, 6), that "Adoniram
the son of Abda was over the tribute."
Lastly, we hear of him still
occupying the same station in the household of King Rehoboam, the successor of
Solomon. Forty-seven years after he is first mentioned in the Book of Samuel,
he is stated under the name of Adoram, First Kings (xii, 18), or Hadoram,
Second Chronides (X,18), to have been stoned to death, while in the discharge
of his duty, by the people, who were justly indignant at the oppressions of
his master.
Although commentators have
been at a loss to determine whether the tax-receiver under David, under
Solomon, and under Rehoboam was the same person, there seems to be no reason
to doubt it; for, as Kitto says, ''It appears very unlikely that even two
persons of the same name should successively bear the same office, in an age
when no example occurs of the father's name being given to his son. We find,
a1so, that not more than forty-seven years elapse between the first and last
mention of the Adoniram who was 'over the tribute and as this, although a long
term of service, is not too long for one life and as the person who held the
office in the beginning of Rehoboam's reign had served in it long enough to
make himself odious to the people, it appears, on the whole, most probable
that one and the same person is intended throughout" (John Eitto in his
Cyclopedia of Biblical Literature).
Adoniram plays an important
part in the Masonic system, especially in advanced degrees, but the time of
action in which he appears is confined to the period occupied in the
construction of the Temple. The legends and traditions which connect him with
that edifice derive their support from a single passage in the First Book of
Kings (V, 14),where it is said that Solomon made a levy of thirty thousand
workmen from among the Israelites ; that he sent these in courses of ten
thousand a month to labor on Mount Lebanon, and that he placed Adoniram over
these as their superintendent. From this brief statement the Adoniramite
Freemasons have deduced the theory, as may be seen in the preceding article,
that Adoniram was the architect of the Temple; while the Hiramites, assigning
this important office to Hiram Abif, still believe that Adoniram occupied an
important part in the construction of that edifice. He has been called "the
first of the Fellow Crafts'' is mid in one tradition to have been the
brother-in-law of Hiram Abif, the latter having demanded of Solomon the hand
of Adoniram's sister in marriage; and that the nuptials were honored by the
kings of Israel and Tyre with a public celebration. Another tradition,
preserved in the Royal Master's Degree of the Cryptic Rite, informs us that he
was the one to whom the three Grand Masters had intended first to communicate
that knowledge which they had reserved as a fitting reward to be bestowed upon
all meritorious craftsmen at the completion of the Temple. It is scarcely
necessary to say that these and many other Adoniramic legends, often fanciful,
and without any historical authority, are but the outward clothing of abstruse
symbols, some of which have been preserved, and others lost in the lapse of
time and the ignorance and corruptions of sundry ritualists.
Adoniram, in Hebrew ....
compounded of .. Adon, Lord, and ... Hiram, altitude, signifies the Lord of
altitude. It is a word of great importance, and frequently used among the
sacred words of the advanced degrees in all the Rites.
*
ADONIRAMITE FREEMASONRY
See Adonhiramite Freemasonry
An organization which bears a very imperfect resemblance to Freemasonry in its
forms and ceremonies, and which was established in France for the initiation
of females, has been called by the French Maçonnerie d'Adoption, or Adoptive
Freemasonry, and the societies in which the initiations take place have
received the name of Loges d'Adeption, or Adoptive Lodges. This appellation is
derived from the fact that every Female or Adoptive Lodge is obliged, by the
regulations of the association, to be, as it were, adopted by, and thus placed
under the guardianship of, some regular Lodge of Freemasons.
As to the exact date which we
are to assign for the first introduction of this system of Female Freemasonry,
there have been several theories, some of which, undoubtedly, are wholly
untenable, since they have been founded, as Masonic historical theories too
often are, on an unwarrantable mixture of facts and fictions---of positive
statements and problematic conjectures. M. J. S. Boubee, a distinguished
French Freemason, in his Études Maçonniques (Masonicstudies), places the
origin of Adoptive Freemasonry in the seventeenth century, and ascribes its
authorship to Queen Henrietta Maria, the widow of Charles I of England. He
states that on her return to France, after the execution of her husband, she
took pleasure in recounting the secret efforts made by the Freemasons of
England to restore her family to their position and to establish her son on
the throne of his ancestors. This, it will be recollected, was once a
prevalent theory, now exploded, of the origin of Freemasonry-that it was
established by the Cavaliers, as a secret political organization, in the times
of the English civil war between the king and the Parliament, and as an engine
for the support of the former.
M. Boubee adds that the queen
made known to the ladies of her court, in her exile, the words and signs
employed by her Masonic friends in England as their modes of recognition, and
by this means instructed them in some of the mysteries of the Institution, of
which, he says, she had been made the protectress after the death of the king.
This theory is so full of absurdity, and its statements so flatly contradicted
by well-known historical facts, that we may at once reject it as wholly
without authority.
Others have claimed Russia as
the birthplace of Adoptive Freemasonry; but in assigning that country and the
year 1712 as the place and time of its origin, they have undoubtedly
confounded it with the chivalric Order of Saint Catharine, which was
instituted by the Czar, Peter the Great, in honor of the Czarina Catharine,
and which, although at first it consisted of persons of both sexes, was
subsequently confined exclusively to females. But the Order of Saint Catharine
was in no manner connected with that of Freemasonry. It was simply s Russian
order of female knighthood.
The truth seems to be that the regular Lodges of adoption owed their existence
to those secret associations of men and woman which sprang up in France before
the middle of the eighteenth century, and which attempted in all of their
organization, except the admission of female members, to imitate the
Institution of Freemasonry. Clavel, who, in his Histoire Pitoresque de la
Franc-Maçonnery, an interesting but not always a trustworthy work, adopts this
theory, says (on page iii, third edition) that female Masonry was instituted
about the year 1730, that it made its first appearance in France, and that it
was evidently a product of the French mind. No one will be disposed to doubt
the truth of this last sentiment. The proverbial gallantry of the French
Freemasons was most ready and willing to extend to women some of the blessings
of that Institution, from which the churlishness, as they would call it, of
their Anglo-Saxon Brethren had excluded them.
But the Freemasonry of
Adoption did not at once and in its very beginning assume that peculiarly
imitative form of the Craft which it subsequently presented, nor was it
recognized as having any connection with our own Order until more than thirty
years after its first establishment. Its progress was slow and gradual. In the
course of this progress it affected various names and rituals, many of which
have not been handed down to us. Evidently it was convivial and gallant in its
nature, and at first seems to have been only an imitation of Freemasonry,
inasmuch as that it was a secret society, having a form of initiation and
modes of recognition. A specimen of one or two of these associations of women
may be interesting.
One of the earliest of these
societies was that which was established in the year 1743, at Paris, under the
name of the Ordre des Félicitaires, which we might very appropriately
translate as the Order of Happy Folks.
The vocabulary and all the
emblems of the order were nautical. The sisters made symbolically a voyage
from the island of Felicity, in ships navigated by the brethren. There were
four degrees, namely, those of Cabin-boy, Captain, Commodore, and
Vice-Admiral, and the Grand Master, or presiding officer, was called the
Admiral. Out of this society there sprang, in 1745, another, which was called
the Knights and Ladies of the Anchor, which is said to have been somewhat more
refined in its character, although for the most part it preserved the same
formulary of reception.
Two years afterward, in 1747, the Chevalier Beauchaine, a very zealous Masonic
adventurer, and the Master for life of a Parisian Lodge, instituted an
androgynous society, or system of men and women, under the name of the Ordre
des Fendeurs, or the Order of Wood-Cutters, whose ceremonies were borrowed
from those of the well-known political society of the Carbonari. All parts of
the ritual had a reference to the sylvan vocation of wood-cutting, just as
that of the Carbonari referred to coal-burning. The place of meeting was
called a wood-yard, and was supposed to be situated in a forest; the presiding
officer was styled Pére Maître, which might be idiomatically interpreted as
Goodman Maser; and the members were designated as cousins, a practice
evidently borrowed from the Carbonari.
The reunions of the
Wood-Cutters enjoyed the prestige of the highest fashion in Paris; and the
society became so popular that ladies and gentlemen of the highest distinction
in France united with it, and membership was considered an honor which no
rank, however exalted, need disdain. It was consequently succeeded by the
institution of many other and similar androgynous societies, the very names of
which it would be tedious to enumerate (see Clavel's History, pages lll-2).
Out of al1 these
societies-which resembled Freemasonry only in their secrecy, their
benevolence, and a sort of rude imitation of a symbolic ceremonial --at last
arose the true Lodges of Adoption, which did far claimed a connection with and
a dependence on Freemasonry as that Freemasons alone were admitted among their
male members-a regulation which did not prevail in the earlier organizations.
It was about the middle of the
eighteenth century that the Lodges of Adoption began to attract attention in
France, whence they speedily spread into other countries of Europo-into
Germany, Poland, and even Russia; England alone, always conservative to a faut,
steadily refusing to take any cognizance of them.
The Freemasons, says Clavel in
his History (page 112), embraced them with enthusiasm as a practicable means
of giving to their wives and daughters some share of the pleasures which they
themselves enjoyed in their mystical assemblies. This, at least, may be said
of them, that they practiced with commendable fidelity and diligence the
greatest of the Masonic virtues, and that the banquets and balls which always
formed an important part of their ceremonial were distinguished by numerous
acts of charity.
The first of these Lodges of
which we have any notice was that established in Paris, in the year 1760, by
the Count de Bemouville. Another was instituted at Nijmegen, in Holland, in
1774, over which the Prince of Waldeck and the Princess of Orange presided. In
1775 the Lodge of Saint Antoine, at Paris, organized a dependent Lodge of
Adoption, of which the Duchess of Bourbon was installed as Grand Mistress and
the Duke of Chartres, then Grand Master of French Freemasonry, conducted the
business.
In 1777 there was an Adoptive
Lodge of La Candeur, or Frankness, over which the Duchess of Bourbon presided,
assisted by such noble ladies as the Duchess of Chartres, the Princess
Lamballe, and the Marchioness de Genlis; and we hear of another governed by
Madame Helvetius, the wife of the il1ustrious philosopher; so that it will be
perceived that fashion, wealth, and literature combined to give splendor and
influence to this new order of Female Freemasonry.
At first the Grand Orient of
France appears to have been unfavorably disposed to these imitation pseudo
Masonic and androgynous associations, but at length they became so numerous
and so popular that a persistence in opposition would have evidently been
impolitic, if it did not actually threaten to be fatal to the interests and
permanence of the Masonic Institution. The Grand Orient, therefore, yielded
its objections, and resolved to avail itself of that which it could not
suppress. Accordingly, on the 10th of June, 1774, it issued an Edict by which
it assumed the protection and control of the Lodges of Adoption. Rules and
regulations were provided for their government, among which were two: first,
that no males except regular Freemasons should be permitted to attend them;
and, secondly, that each Lodge should be placed under the charge and held
under the sanction of some regularly constituted Lodge of Freemasons, whose
Master, or in his absence, his deputy, should be the presiding officer,
assisted by a female President or Mistress; and such has since been the
organization of al1 Lodges of Adoption.
A Lodge of Adoption, under the
regulations established in 1774, consists of the following officers: Grand
Master, a Grand Mistress, an Orator, dressed as a Capuchin or Franciscan monk,
an Inspector, an Inspectress, a Male and Female Guardian, a Mistress of
Ceremonies. All of these officers wear a blue watered ribbon over the
shoulder, to which is suspended a golden trowel, and all the brothers and
sisters have aprons and white gloves.
The Rite of Adoption consists
of four Degrees, whose names in French and English are as follows :
1. Apprentice, or Female
Apprentice.
2. Compagnonne, or Craftswoman.
3. Maîtresse, or Mistress.
4. Parfaite Maçonne, or Perfect Masoness.
It will be seen that the
Degrees of Adoption, in their names and their apparent reference to the
gradations of employment in an operative art, are assimilated to those of
legitimate Freemasonry; but it is in those respects only that the resemblance
holds good. In the details of the ritual there is a vast difference between
the two Institutions.
There was a Fifth Degree added
in1817-by some modern writers called Female elect-Sublime Dame Ecossaise, or
Sovereign I1ustrious Scottish Dame, but it seems to be a recent and not
generally adopted innovation. At all events, it constituted no part of the
original Rite of Adoption. The First, or Female Apprentice's Degree, is simply
preliminary in its character, and is intended to prepare the Candidate for the
more important lessons which she is to receive in the succeeding Degrees. She
is presented with an apron and a pair of white kid gloves. The apron is given
with the following charge, in which, as in all the other ceremonies of the
Order, the Masonic system of teaching by symbolism is followed:
"Permit me to decorate you
with this apron, kings, princes, and the most illustrious princesses have
esteemed, and will ever esteem it an honor to wear it, as being the symbol of
virtue."
On receiving the gloves, the
candidate is thus addressed:
"The color of these gloves
will admonish you that candor and truth are virtues inseparable from the
character of a true Freemason. Take your place among us, and be pleased to
listen to the instructions which we are about to communicate to you."
The following Charge is then
addressed to the members by the Orator.
''MY DEAR SISTERS Nothing is
better calculated to assure you of the high esteem our society entertains for
you, than your admission as a member. The common herd, always unmannerly, full
of the most ridiculous prejudices, has dared to sprinkle on us the black
poison of calumny; but what judgment could it form when deprived of the light
of truth, and unable to feel all the blessings which result from its perfect
knowledge? You alone, my dear sisters, having been repulsed from our meetings,
would have the right to think us unjust; but with what satisfaction do you
learn to-day that Freemasonry is the school of propriety and of virtue, and
that by its laws we restrain the weaknesses that degrade an honorable man, in
order to return to your side more worthy of your confidence and of your
sincerity. However, whatever pleasure these sentiments have enabled us to
taste, we have not been able to fill the void that your absence left in our
midst ; and I confess, to your glory, that it was time to invite into our
societies some sisters who, while rendering them more respectable will ever
make of them pleasures and delights. We call our Lodges Temples of Virtue,
because we endeavor to practice it. The mysteries which we celebrate therein
are the grand art of conquering the passions and the oath that we take to
reveal nothing is to prevent self-love and pride from entering at all into the
good which we ought to do. The beloved name of Adoption tells you sufficiently
that we choose you to share the happiness that we enjoy, in cultivating honor
and charity. It is only after a careful examination that we have wished to
share it with you. Now that you know it we are convinced that the light of
wisdom will illumine all the actions of your life, and that you will never
forget that the more valuable things are the greater is the need to preserve
them. It is the principle of silence that we observe, it should be inviolable.
May the God of the Universe
who hears us vouchsafe to give us strength to render it so." Throughout this
Charge it will be seen that there runs a vein of gallantry, which gives the
true secret of the motives which led to the organization of the society, and
which, however appropriate to a Lodge of Adoption, would scarcely be in place
in a Lodge of the legitimate Order.
In the Second Degree, or that of Compagnonne, or Craftswoman, corresponding to
our Fellow Craft, the Lodge is made the symbol of the Garden of Eden, and the
candidate passes through a mimic representation of the temptation of Eve, the
fatal effects of which, culminating in the deluge and the destruction of the
human race, are impressed upon her in the lecture or catechism.
Here we have a scenic
representation of the circumstances connected with that event, as recorded in
Genesis. The candidate plays the part of our common mother. In the center of
the Lodge, which represents the garden, is placed the tree of life, from which
ruddy apples are suspended. The serpent, made with theatrical skill to
represent a living reptile, embraces in its coils the trunk. An apple plucked
from the tree is presented to the recipient, who is persuaded to eat it by the
promise that thus alone can she prepare herself for receiving a knowledge of
the sublime mysteries of Freemasonry. She receives the fruit from the tempter,
but no sooner has she attempted to bite it, than she is startled by the sound
of thunder; a curtain which has separated her from the members of the Lodge is
suddenly withdrawn, and she is detected in the commission of the act of
disobedience. She is sharply reprimanded by the Orator, who conducts her
before the Grand Master.
This dignitary reproaches her
with her fault, but finally, With the consent of the Brethren and sisters
Present, he pardons her in the merciful spirit of the Institution, on the
condition that she will take a vow to extend hereafter the same clemency to
others.
All of this is allegorical and
very pretty, and it cannot be denied that on the sensitive imaginations of
females such ceremonies must produce a manifest impression. But it is needless
to say that it is nothing like Freemasonry.
There is less ceremony, but
more symbolism, in the Third Degree, or that of Mistress. Here are introduced,
as parts of the ceremony, the tower of Babel and the theological ladder of
Jacob. Its rounds, however, differ from those peculiar to true Freemasonry,
and are said to equal the virtues in number. The lecture or catechism is very
long, and contains some very good points in its explanations of the symbols of
the degree. Thus, the tower of Babel is said. to signify the pride of man-its
base, his folly-the stones of which it was composed, his passions---the cement
which united them, the poison of discord-and its spiral form, the devious and
crooked ways of the human heart. In this manner there is an imitation, not of
the letter and substance of legitimate Freemasonry, for nothing can in these
respects be more dissimilar, but of that mode of teaching by symbols and
allegories which is its peculiar characteristic.
The Fourth Degree, or that of
Perfect Masoness, corresponds to no Degree in legitimate Freemasonry.
It is simply the summit of the
Bite of Adoption, and hence is also called the Degree of Perfection. Although
the Lodge, in this , is supposed to represent the Mosaic tabernacle in the
wilderness, yet the ceremonies do not have the same reference. In one of them,
however, the liberation, by the candidate, of a bird from the vase in which it
had been confined is said to symbolize the liberation of man from the dominion
of his passions; and thus a far-fetched reference is made to the liberation of
the Jews from Egyptian bondage. On the whole, the ceremonies are unrelated,
they are disconnected, but the lecture or catechism contains some excellent
lessons. Especially does it furnish us with the official definition of
Adoptive Freemasonry, which is in these words.
It is a virtuous amusement by
which we recall a part of the mysteries of our religion; and the better to
reconcile humanity with the knowledge of its Creator, after we have inculcated
the duties of virtue, we deliver ourselves up to the sentiments of a pure and
delightful friendship by enjoying in our Lodges the pleasures of
society-pleasures which among us are always founded on reason, honor, and
innocence.
Apt and appropriate
description is this of an association, secret or otherwise, of agreeable and
virtuous well-bred men and women, but having not the slightest application to
the design or form of true Freemasonry.
Guillemain de Saint Victor,
the author of Manuel des Franches-Maçonnes, on La Vraie Maçonnerie d'Adoption,
meaning Handbook of the Women Freemasons or the True Freemasonry of Adoption,
which forms the third part of the Recueil Précieux, or Choice Collection, who
has given the best ritual of the Rite and from whom the preceding account has
been taken, thus briefly sums up the objects of the Institution :
"The First Degree contains
only, as it ought, moral ideas of Freemasonry ; the Second Degree is the
initiation into the first mysteries, commencing with the sin of Adam, and
concluding with the Ark of Noah as the first favor which God granted to men ;
the Third and Fourth Degrees are merely a series of types and figures drawn
from the Holy Scriptures, by which we explain to the candidate the virtues
which she ought to practice" (see page 13, edition 1785).
The Fourth Degree, being the
summit of the Rite of Adoption, is furnished with a Table Lodge, or the
ceremony of a banquet, which immediately succeeds the dosing of the Lodge, and
which, of course, adds much to the social pleasure and nothing to the
instructive character of the Rite.
Here, also, there is a
continued imitation of the ceremonies of the Masonic Institution as they are
practiced in France, where the ceremoniously conducted banquet, at which
Freemasons only are present, is always an accompaniment of the Master's Lodge.
Thus, as in the banquets of the regular Lodges of the French Rite, the members
always use a symbolical language by which they designate the various
implements of the table and the different articles of food and drink, calling,
for instance, the knives swords, the forks pickaxes, the dishes materials, and
bread a rough ashlar (see Clavel's History, page 30).
In imitation of this custom,
the Rite of Adoption has established in its banquets a technical vocabulary,
to be used only at the table. Thus the Lodge room is called Eden, the doors
barriers, the minutes a ladder, a wineglass is styled a lamp, and its contents
oil-water being white oil and wine red oil. To fill your glass is te trim your
lamp, to drink is to extinguish your lamp, with many other eccentric
expressions (Clavel's History, page 34).
Much taste, and in some
instances, magnificence, are displayed in the decorations of the Lodge rooms
of the Adoptive Rite. The apartment is separated by curtains into different
divisions, and contains ornaments and decorations which of course vary in the
different degrees.
The orthodox: Masonic idea
that the Lodge is a symbol of the world is here retained, and the four sides
of the hall are said to represent the four continents-the entrance being
called Europe, the right side Africa, the left America, and the extremity, in
which the Grand Master and Grand Mistress are seated, Asia. There are statues
representing Wisdom, Prudence, Strength, Temperance, Honor, Charity, Justice,
and Truth. The members are seated along the sides in two rows, the ladies
occupying the front one, and the whole is rendered as beautiful and attractive
as the taste can make it (Recueil Précieuz, page 24).
The Lodges of Adoption
flourished greatly in France after their recognition by the Grand Orient. The
Duchess of Bourbon, who was the first that received the title of Grand
Mistress, was installed with great pomp and splendor, in May, 1775, in the
Lodge of Saint Antoine, in Paris. She presided over the Adoptive Lodge La
Candeur until 1780, when it was dissolved. Attached to the celebrated Lodge of
the Nine Sisters, which had so many distinguished men of letters among its
members, was a Lodge of Adoption bearing the same name, which in 1778 held a
meeting at the residence of Madame Helvetius in honor of Benjamin Franklin
then American ambassador at the French court.
During the Reign of Terror of
the French Revolution, Lodges of Adoption, like everything that was gentle or
humane, almost entirely disappeared. But with the accession of a regular
government they were resuscitated, and the Empress Josephine presided at the
meeting of one at Strasburg in the year 1805. They continued to flourish under
the imperial dynasty, and although less popular, or less fashionable, under
the Restoration, they, subsequently recovered their popularity, and are still
in existence in France .
As interesting additions to
this article, it may not be improper to insert two accounts, one, of the
installation of Madame Cesar Moreau, as Grand Mistress of Adoptive Masonry, in
the Lodge connected with the regular Lodge La Jarusalem des Vallées
Egyptiennes, on the 8th of July, 1854, and the other, of the reception of the
celebrated Lady Morgan, in 1819, in the Lodge La Belle et Bonne, meaning-the
Beautiful and Good, as described in her Diary.
The account of the
Installation of Madame Moreau, which is abridged from the Franc-Maçon, a
Parisian periodical, is as follows :
The fête was most interesting
and admirably arranged. After the introduction in due form of a number of
brethren and sisters, the Grand Mistress elect was announced, and she entered,
preceded by the Five Lights of the Lodge and escorted by the Inspectress,
Depositress, Oratrix, and Mistress of Ceremonies. M. J. S. Boubee, the Master
of the Lodge La Jerusalem des Vallées Egyptiennes, conducted her to the altar,
where, having installed her into office and handed her a mallet as the symbol
of authority, he addressed her in a copy of verses, whose merit will hardly
claim for them a repetition. To this she made a suitable reply, and the Lodge
then proceeded to the reception of a young lady, a part of the ceremony of
which is thus described:
Of the various trials of
Virtue and fortitude to which she was subjected, there was one which made a
deep impression, not only on the fair recipient, but on the whole assembled
company. Four boxes were placed, one before each of the male officers.
The candidate was told to open
them, which she did, and from the first and second drew faded flowers, and
soiled ribbons and laces, which being placed in an open vessel were instantly
consumed by fire, as an emblem of the brief duration of such objects.
From the third she drew an
apron, a blue silk scarf, and a pair of gloves, and from the fourth a basket
containing the working tools in silver gilt. She was then conducted to the
altar, where, on opening a fifth box, several birds which had been confined in
it escaped, which was intended to teach her that liberty is a condition to
which all men are entitled, and of which no one can be deprived without
injustice. After having taken the vow, she was instructed in the modes of
recognition, and having been clothed with the apron, scarf, and gloves, and
presented with the implements of the Order, she received from the Grand
Mistress an esoteric explanation of all these emblems and ceremonies.
Addresses were subsequently delivered by the Orator and Oratrix, an ode was
sung, the poor or alms box was handed round, and the labors of the Lodge were
then closed.
Madame Moreau lived only six
months to enjoy the honors of presiding officer of the Adoptive Rite, for she
died of a pulmonary affection at an early age, on the eleventh of the
succeeding January.
The Lodge of Adoption in which
Lady Morgan received the degrees at Paris, in the year 1819, was called La
Belle et Bonne or the Beautiful and Good. This was the pet name which long
before had been bestowed by Voltaire on his favorite, the Marchioness de
Villette, under whose presidency and at whose residence in the Faubourg St.
Germain the Lodge was held. Hence the name with which all France, or at least
all Paris, was familiarly acquainted as the popular designation of Madame de
Villette (see Clavel's History, page 114).
Lady Morgan, in her
description of the Masonic fête, says that when she arrived at the Hotel la
Villette, where the Lodge was held, she found a large concourse of
distinguished persons ready to take part in the ceremonies. Among these were
Prince Paul of Wurtemberg, the Count de Cazes, elsewhere distinguished in
Freemasonry, the celebrated Denon, the Bishop of Jerusalem, and the
illustrious actor Talma.
The business of the evening
commenced with an installation of the officers of a sister Lodge, after which
the candidates were admitted.
Lady Morgan describes the
arrangements as presenting, when the doors were opened, a spectacle of great
magnificence.
A profusion of crimson and
gold, marble busts, a decorated throne and altar, an abundance of flowers, and
incense of the finest odor which filled the air, gave to the whole a most
dramatic and scenic effect. Music of the grandest character mingled its
harmony with the mysteries of initiation, which lasted for two hours, and when
the Lodge was closed there was an adjournment to the hall of refreshment,
where the ball was opened by the Grand Mistress with Prince Paul of Wurtemberg.
Lady Morgan, upon whose mind
the ceremony appears to have made an impression, makes one remark worthy of
consideration: "That so many women," she says, "young and beautiful and
worldly, should never have revealed the secret, is among the miracles which
the much distrusted sex are capable of working." In fidelity to the Vow of
Secrecy, the Female Freemasons of the Adoptive Rite have proved themselves
fully equal to their brethren of the legitimate Order.
Notwithstanding that Adoptive
Freemasonry has found an advocate in no less distinguished a writer than
Chemin Dupontés, who, in the Encyclopédie Maçonnique, calls it "a luxury in
Freemasonry, and a pleasant relaxation which cannot do any harm to the true
mysteries which are practiced by men alone," it has been very generally
condemned by the most celebrated of French, German, English, and American
Freemasons. Chemin Dupontés, by the way, published in 1819-25 his Encyclopédie
Maçonnique or Masonic Encyclopedia at Paris in four volumes. Gaedicke, in the
Freimaurer Lezicon, or Dictionary for the Freemason, speaks lightly of it as
established on insufficient grounds, and expresses his gratification that the
system no longer exists in Germany.
Thory, in his History of the
Foundation of the Grand Orient (page 361), says that the introduction of
Adoptive Lodges was a consequence of the relaxation of Masonic discipline; and
he asserts that the permitting of women to share in mysteries which should
exclusively belong to men. is not in accordance with the essential principles
of the Masonic Order. The Abbé Robin, the author of an able work entitled
Recherches sur les initiations, Anciennes et Modernes, or Inquiries upon
Ancient and Modern initiations, maintains on Page 15 that the custom of
admitting women into Masonic assemblies will perhaps be, at some future
period, the cause of the decline of Freemasonry in France. The prediction is
not, however, likely to come to pass; for while legitimate Freemasonry has
never been more popular or prosperous in France than it is at this day, it is
the Lodges of Adoption that appear to have declined.
Other writers in various
countries have spoken in similar terms, so that it is beyond a doubt that the
general sentiment of the Fraternity is against this system of Female
Freemasonry.
Lenning is however, more qualified in his condemnation, and says, in his
Encycloadie der Freimaurerei, or Freemason's Encyclopedia, that while leaving
it undecided whether it is prudent to hold assemblies of women with ceremonies
which are called Masonic, yet it is not to be denied that in these Lodges of
women a large amount of charity has been done.
Adoptive Freemasonry has its
literature, although neither extensive nor important, as it comprises only
books of songs, addresses, and rituals. Of the latter the most valuable are:
1. La Maçonnerie des Femmes,
or Feminine Freemasonry, published in 1775, and containing only the first
three degrees, for such was the system when recognized by the Grand Orient of
France in that year.
2. La Vraie Maçonnerie
d'Adoption, or The True Freemasonry of Adoption, printed in 1787. This work,
which is by Guillemain de Saint Victor, is perhaps the best that has been
published on the subject of the Adoptive Rite, and is the first that
introduces the Fourth Degree, of which Guillemain is supposed to have been the
inventor, since all previous rituals include only the three degrees.
3. Maçonnerie d'Adoption pour
les Femmes, or The Freemasonry of Adoption for Women, contained in the second
part of E. J. Chappron's Necessaire Maçonnique, or Essential Freemasonry, and
printed at Paris in 1817. This is valuable because it is the first ritual that
contains the Fifth Degree.
4. La Franc-Maçonnerie des
Femmes, or The Freemasonry of Women. This work, which is by Charles Monselet,
is of no value as a ritual, being simply a tale founded on circumstances
connected with Adoptive Freemasonry.
In Italy, the Carbonari, or
Wood Burners, a secret political society, imitated the Freemasons of France in
instituting an Adoptive Rite, attached to their own association. Hence, an
Adoptive Lodge was founded at Naples in the beginning of the nineteenth
century, over which presided that friend of Freemasonry, Queen Caroline, the
wife of Ferdinand II. The members were styled Giardiniere, or Female Gardeners
; and they called each other Cugine, or Female Cousins, in imitation of the
Carbonari, who were recognized as Buoni Cugini, or Good Cousins. The Lodges of
Giardiniere flourished as long as the Grand Lodge of Carbonari existed at
Naples (see also Eastern Star, and Adoptive Freemasonry, American).
*
ADONIS, MYSTERIES OF
An investigation of the
Mysteries of Adonis peculiarity claims the attention of the Masonic student.
First, because, in their symbolism and in their esoteric doctrine, the
religious object for which they were instituted, and the mode in which that
object is attained they bear a nearer analogical resemblance to the
Institution of Freemasonry than do any of the other mysteries or systems of
initiation of the ancient world. Secondly, because their chief locality brings
them into a very close connection with the early history and reputed origin of
Freemasonry. These ceremonies were principally celebrated at Byblos, a city of
Phoenicia, whose Scriptural name was Gebal, and whose inhabitants were the
Giblites or Gebalites, who are referred to in the First Book of Kings (v; 18),
as being the stone-squares employed by King Solomon in building the Temple
(see Gebal and Giblin). Henee there must have evidently been a very intimate
connection, or at least certainly a very frequent intercommunication, between
the workmen of the first Temple and the inhabitants of Byblos, the seat of the
Adonisian Mysteries, and the place whence the worshipers of that Rite were
spread over other regions of country.
These historical circumstances
invite us to an examination of the system of initiation which was practiced at
Byblos, because we may find in it something that was probably suggestive of
the symbolic system of instruction which was subsequently so prominent a
feature in the system of Freemasonry.
Let us first examine the myth
on which the Adonisiac initiation was founded. The mythological legend of
Adonis is that he was the son of Myrrha and Cinyras, King of Cyprus. Adonis
was possessed of such surpassing beauty, that Venus became enamored of him,
and adopted him as her favorite. Subsequently Adonis, who was a great hunter,
died from a wound inflicted by a wild boar on Mount Lebanon. Venus flew to the
succor of her favorite, but she came too late Adonis was dead. On his descent
to the infernal regions, Proserpine became, like Venus, so attracted by his
beauty, that, notwithstanding the entreaties of the goddess of love, she
refused to restore him to earth. At length the prayers of the desponding Venus
were listened to with favor by Jupiter, who reconciled the dispute between the
two goddesses, and by whose decree Proserpine was compelled to consent that
Adonis should spend six months of each year alternately with herself and
Venus.
This is the story on which the
Greek poet Bion founded his exquisite idyll entitled the Epitaph of Adonis,
the beginning of which has been thus rather inefficiently "done into English":
I and the Loves Adonis dead deplore:
The beautiful Adonia is indeed
Departed, parted from us. Sleep no more
In purple, Cypris! but in watchet weed,
All'wretched! beat thy breast and all aread-
" Adonis is no more." The Loves and I
Lament him. " Oh! her grief to see him bleed,
Smitten by white tooth on whiter thigh,
Out-breathing life's faint sigh upon the mountain high."
It is evident that Bion
referred the contest of Venus and Proserpine for Adonis to a period subsequent
to his death, from the concluding lines, in which he says:
"The Muses, too, lament the
son of Cinyras, and invoke him in their song; but he does not heed them, not
because he does not wish, but because Proserpine will not release him." This
was, indeed, the favorite form of the myth, and on it was framed the symbolism
of the ancient mystery. But there are other Grecian mythologies that relate
the tale of Adonis differently. According to these, he was the product of the
incestuous connection of Cinyras and his daughter Myrrha. Cinyras
subsequently, on discovering the crime of his daughter, pursued her with a
drawn sword, intending to kill her.
Myrrha entreated the gods to
make her invisible, and they changed her into a myrrh tree. Ten months after
the myrrh tree opened, and the young Adonis was born. This is the form of the
myth that has been adopted by the poet Ovid, who gives it with all its moral
horrors in the Tenth Book (lines 298-559) of his Metamorphoses.
Venus, who was delighted with
the extraordinary beauty of the boy, put him in a coffer or chest, unknown to
all the gods, and gave him to Proserpine to keep and to nurture in the under
world. But Proserpine had no sooner beheld him than she became enamored of him
and refused, when Venus applied for him, to surrender him to her rival. The
subject was then referred to Jupiter, who decreed that Adonis should have
one-third of the year to himself, should be another third with Venus, and the
remainder of the time with Proserpine. Adonis gave his own portion to Venus,
and lived happily with her till, having offended Diana, he was killed by a
wild boar.
The mythographer Pharnutus
gives a still different story, and says that Adonis was the grandson of
Cinyras, and fled with his father, Ammon, into Egypt, whose people he
civilized, taught them agriculture, and enacted many wise laws for their
government. He subsequently passed over into Syria, and was wounded in the
thigh by a wild boar while hunting on Mount Lebanon.
His wife, Isis, or Astarte,
and the people of Phoenicia and Egypt, supposing that the wound was mortal,
profoundly deplored his death. But he afterward recovered, and their grief was
replaced by transports of joy.
All the myths, it wi1l be
seen, agree in his actual or supposed death by violence, in the grief for his
loss, in his recovery or restoration to life, and in the consequent joy
thereon. On these facts are founded the Adonisian mysteries which were
established in his honor.
While, therefore, we may grant
the possibility that there was originally some connection between the Sabean
worship of the sun and the celebration of the Adonisian festival, we cannot
forget that these mysteries, in common with all the other sacred initiations
of the ancient world, had been originally established to promulgate among the
initiates the once hidden doctrine of a future life.
The myth of Adonis in Syria,
like that of Osiris in Egypt, of Atys in Samothrace, or of Dionysus in Greece,
presented, symbolically, the two great ideas of decay and restoration. This
doctrine sometimes figured as darkness and light, sometimes as winter and
summer, sometimes as death and life, but always maintaining, no matter what
was the framework of the allegory, the inseparable ideas of something that was
lost and afterward recovered, as its interpretation, and so teaching, as does
Freemasonry at this day, by a similar system of allegorizing, that after the
death of the body comes the eternal life of the soul. The inquiring Freemason
will thus readily see the analogy in the symbolism that exists between Adonis
in the Mysteries of the Gebalites at Byblos and Hiram the Builder in his own
Institution.
*
ADOPTION MASONIC
The adoption by the Lodge of
the child of a Freemason is practiced with peculiar ceremonies in some of the
French and German Lodges, and has been introduced, but not with the general
approval of the Craft, into one or two Lodges of this country.
Clavel, in his Histoire
Pittoresque de la Franc-Maçonnerie, meaning in French The Picturesque History
of Freemasonry (page 40, third edition), gives the following account of the
ceremonies of Adoption :
"It is a custom, in many
Lodges, when the wife of a Freemason is near the period of her confinement,
for the Hospitaller, if he is a physician, and if not, for some other Brother
who is, to visit her, inquire after her health, in the name of the Lodge, and
to offer her his professional services, and even pecuniary aid if he thinks
she needs it.
Nine days after the birth of
her child, the Master and Wardens call upon her to congratulate her on the
happy event. If the infant is a boy, a special communication of the Lodge is
convened for the purpose of proceeding to its adoption.
The hall is decorated with
flowers and foliage, and censers are prepared for burning incense. Before the
commencement of labor, the child and its nurse are introduced into an
anteroom. The Lodge is then opened, and the Wardens, who are to act as
godfathers, repair to the infant at the head of a deputation of five Brethren.
The chief of the deputation, then addressing the nurse, exhorts her not only
to watch over the health of the child that has been intrusted to her care, but
also to cultivate his youthful intellect, and to instruct him with truthful
and sensible conversation. The child is then taken from the nurse, placed by
its father upon a cushion, and carried by the deputation into the Lodge room.
The procession advances beneath an arch of foliage to the pedestal of the
east, where it halts while the Master and Senior Warden rehearse this
dialogue: "'Whom bring you here, my Brethren? says the Master to the
godfathers.
"'The son of one of our
Brethren whom the Lodge is desirous of adopting, is the reply of the Senior
Warden.
"'What are his names, and what
Masonic name will you give him?'
"The Warden replies, adding to
the baptismal and surname of the child a characteristic name, such as Truth,
Devotion, Benevolence, or some other of a similar nature.
"The Master then descends from
his seat, approaches the Louveteau or Lewis, for such is the appellation given
to the son of a Freemason, and extending his hands over its head, offers up a
prayer that the child may render itself worthy of the love and care which the
Lodge intends to bestow upon it.
He then casts incense into the
censers, and pronounces the Apprentice's obligation, which the godfathers
repeat after him in the name of the Louveteau.
Afterwards he puts a white
apron on the infant, proclaiming it to be the adopted child of the Lodge, and
causes this proclamation to be received with honors.
"As soon as this ceremony has
been performed, the Master returns to his seat, and having caused the Wardens
with the child to be placed in front of the north column, he recounts to the
former the duties which they have assumed as godfathers. After the Wardens
have made a suitable response, the deputation which had brought the child into
the Lodge room is again formed, carries it out, and restores it to its nurse
in the anteroom.
"The adoption of a Louveteau
binds all the members of the Lodge to watch over his education, and
subsequently to aid him, if it be necessary, in establishing himself in life.
A circumstantial account of the ceremony is drawn up, which having been signed
by all the members is delivered to the father of the child.
This document serves as a
Dispensation, which relieves him from the necessity of passing through the
ordinary preliminary examinations when, at the proper age, he is desirous of
participating in the labors of Freemasonry. He is then only required to renew
his obligations." Louveteau in French with Lewis in English, mean the same.
Two meanings may be applied to each of the words in both countries. Among
members of the trade as distinct from Brethren of the Craft, a Louveteau or
Lewis means a wedge of iron or steel to support a stone when raising it, a
chain or rope being attached to the wedge which grips a place cut for it in
the stone.
The words Louveteau and Lewis
are thus applied to sons of Freemasons as supports of their fathers.
In the United States, the ceremony has been practiced by a few Lodges, the
earliest instance being that of Foyer Maçonnique Lodge of New Orleans, in
1859.
The Supreme Council for the
Southern Jurisdiction, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, has published the
ritual of Masonic Adoption for the use of the members of that Rite. This
ritual under the title of offices of Masonic Baptism, Reception of a Louveleau
and Adoption, is a very beautiful one, and is the composition of Brother
Albert Pike. It is scarcely necessary to say that the word Baptism there used
has not the slightest reference to the Christian sacrament of the same name
(see Lewis).
*
ADOPTIVE FREEMASONRY, AMERICAN
The Rite of Adoption as
practiced on the continent of Europe, and especially in France, has never been
introduced into America. The system does not accord, with the manners or
habits of the people, and undoubtedly never would become popular. But Rob
Morris attempted, in 1855, to introduce an imitation of it, which he had
invented under the name of the American Adoptive Rite. This consisted of a
ceremony of initiation, which was intended as a preliminary trial of the
candidate, and of five degrees, named as follows:
1. Jephthah`s Daughter, or the
Daughter's Degree.
2. Ruth, or the Widow's Degree.
3. Esther, or the Wife's Degree.
4. Martha or the Sister's Degree.
5. Electa, or the Christian Martyr's Degree.
The whole assemblage of the
five degrees was called the Eastern Star.
The objects of this Rite, as
expressed by the framer, were "to associate in one common bond the worthy
wives, widows, daughters, and sisters of Freemasons, so as to make their
adoptive privileges available for all the purposes contemplated in
Freemasonry; to secure to them the advantages of their claim in a moral,
social, and charitable point of view, and from them the performance of
corresponding duties." Hence, no females but those holding the above recited
relations to Freemasons were eligible for admission.
The male members were called
Protectors; the female, Stellae; the reunions of these members were styled
Constellations; and the Rite was presided over and governed by a Supreme
Constellation. There is some ingenuity and even beauty in many of the
ceremonies, although it is by no means equal in this respect to the French
Adoptive system.
Much dissatisfaction was,
however, expressed by the leading Freemasons of the country at the time of its
attempted organization; and therefore, notwithstanding very strenuous efforts
were made by its founder and his friends to establish it in some of the
Western States, it was slow in winning popularity.
It has, however, gained much
growth under the name of The Eastern Star. Brother Albert Pike has also
printed, for the use of Scottish Rite Freemasons, The Masonry of Adoption.
It is in seven degrees, and is
a translation from the French system, but greatly enlarged, and is far
superior to the original.
The last phrase of this Female
Freemasonry to which our attention is directed is the system of androgynous
degrees which are practiced to some extent in the United States.
This term androgynous is
derived from two Greek words, a man, and a woman, and it is equivalent to the
English compound, masculo-feminine. It is applied to those side degrees which
are conferred on both males and females.
The essential regulation
prevailing in these degrees, is that they can be conferred only on Master
Masons, and in some instances only on Royal Arch Masons, and on their female
relatives, the peculiar relationship differing in the various degrees.
Thus there is a degree
generally called the Mason's Wife, which can be conferred only on Master
Masons, their wives, unmarried daughters and sisters, and their widowed
mothers. Another degree, called the Heroine of Jericho, is conferred only on
the wives and daughters of Royal Arch Masons; and the third, the only one that
has much pretension of ceremony or ritual, is the Good Samaritan, whose
privileges are confined to Royal Arch Masons and their wives.
In some parts of the United
States these degrees are very popular, while in other places they are never
practiced, and are strongly condemned as modern innovations.
The fact is, that by their
friends as well as their enemies these so-called degrees have been greatly
misrepresented. When females are told that in receiving these degrees they are
admitted into the Masonic Order, and are obtaining Masonic information, under
the name of Ladies' Freemasonry, they are simply deceived. When a woman is
informed that, by passing through the brief and unimpressive ceremony of any
one of these degrees, she has become a Freemason, the deception is still more
gross and inexcusable. But it is true that every woman who is related by ties
of consanguinity to a Master Mason is at all times and under all circumstances
peculiarly entitled to Masonic protection and assistance.
Now, if the recipient of an
androgynous degree is candidly instructed that, by the use of these degrees,
the female relatives of Freemasons are put in possession of the means of
making their claims known by what may be called a sort of oral testimony,
which, unlike a written certificate, can be neither lost nor destroyed; but
that, by her initiation as a Mason's Wife or as a Heroine of Jericho, she is
brought no nearer to the inner portal of Freemasonry than she was before---if
she is honestly told all this, then there can hardly be any harm, and there
may be some good in these forms if prudently bestowed. But all attempts to
make Freemasonry of them, and especially that anomalous thing called Female
Freemasonry, are reprehensible, and are well calculated to produce opposition
among the well-informed and cautious members of the Fraternity.
*
ADOPTIVE FREEMASONRY, EGYPTIAN
A system invented by
Cagliostro (see Cagliostro).
*
ADORATION
The act of paying divine
worship. The Latin word adorare is derived from ad, to, and os, oris, the
mouth, and we thus etymologically learn that the primitive and most general
method of adoration was by the application of the fingers to the mouth.
Hence we read in Job (xxxi,
26). "If I beheld the sun when it shined, or the moon walking in brightness,
and my heart hath been secretly enticed, or my mouth hath kissed my hand, this
also were an iniquity to be punished by the judges; for I should have denied
the God that is above." Here the mouth kissing the hand is equal in meaning
and force to adoration, as if he had said, If I have adored the sun or the
moon.
This mode of adoration is said to have originated among the Persians, who, as
worshipers of the sun, always turned their faces to the east and kissed their
hands to that luminary. The gesture was first used as a token of respect to
their monarchs, and was easily transferred to objects of worship. Other
additional forms of adoration were used in various countries, but in almost
all of them this reference to kissing was in some degree preserved.
It is yet a practice of quite
common usage for Orientals to kiss what they deem sacred or that which they
wish to adore---as, for example, Wailing Place of the Jews at Jerusalem, the
nearest wall to the Temple where they were permitted by the Mahommedans to
approach and on which their tears and kisses were affectionately bestowed
before the British General Allenby, took possession of the city in the World
War and equalized the rights of the inhabitants.
The marble toes of the statue
of Saint Peter in the Cathedral of Saint Peter's at Rome have been worn away
by the kissings of Roman Catholics and have been replaced by bronze.
Among the ancient Romans the
act of adoration was thus performed: The worshiper, having his head covered,
applied his right hand to his lips, thumb erect, and the forefinger resting on
it, and then, bowing his head, he turned round from right to left. Hence,
Lucius Apuleius, a Roman author, born in the first century, in his Apologia
sive oratio de magia, a defense against the charge of witchcraft, uses the
expression to apply the hand to the lips, manum labris admovere, to express
the act of adoration.
The Grecian mode of adoration
differed from the Roman in having the head uncovered, which practice was
adopted by the Christians. The Oriental nations cover the head, but uncover
the feet.
They also express the act of adoration by prostrating themselves on their
faces and applying their foreheads to the ground.
The ancient Jews adored by
kneeling, sometimes by prostration of the whole body, and by kissing the hand.
This act, therefore, of kissing the hand was an early and a very general
symbol of adoration.
But we must not be led into
the error of supposing that a somewhat similar gesture used in some of the
high degrees of Freemasonry has any allusion to an act of worship. It refers
to that symbol of silence and secrecy which is figured in the statues of
Harpocrates, the god of silence.
The Masonic idea of adoration
has been well depicted by the medieval Christian painters, who represented the
act by angels prostrated before a luminous triangle.
*
ADVANCED
This word has two technical
meanings in Freemasonry.
l. We speak of a candidate as
being advanced when he has passed from a lower to a higher degree; as we say
that a candidate is qualified for advancement from the Entered Apprentice
Degree to that of a Fellow Craft when he has made that "suitable proficiency
in the former which, by the regulations of the Order, entitle him to receive
the initiation into and the instructions of the latter." When the Apprentice
has thus been promoted to the Second Degree he is said to have advanced in
Freemasonry.
2. However, this use of the
term is by no means universal, and the word is peculiarly applied to the
initiation of a candidate into the Mark Degree, which is the fourth in the
modification of the American Rite.
The Master Mason is thus said
to be "advanced to the honorary degree of a Mark Master," to indicate either
that he has now been promoted one step beyond the degrees of Ancient Craft
Freemasonry on his way to the Royal Arch, or to express the fact that he has
been elevated from the common class of Fellow Crafts to that higher and more
select one which, according to the traditions of Freemasonry, constituted, at
the first Temple, the class of Mark Masters (see Mark Master).
*
ADVANCEMENT HURRIED
Nothing can be more certain
than that the proper qualifications of a Candidate for admission into the
mysteries of Freemasonry, and the necessary proficiency of a Freemason who
seeks advancement to a higher degree, are the two great bulwarks which are to
protect the purity and integrity of our Institution. Indeed, we know not which
is the more hurtful-to admit an applicant who is Unworthy, or to promote a
candidate who is ignorant of his first lessons. The one affects the externa1,
the other the internal character of the Institution. The one brings discredit
upon the Order among the profane, who already regard us, too often, with
suspicion and dislike; the other introduces ignorance and incapacity into our
ranks, and dishonors the science of freemasonry in our own eyes. The one
covers our walls with imperfect and worthless stones, which mar the outward
beauty and impair the strength of our temple the other fills our interior
apartments with confusion and disorder, and leaves the edifice, though
externally strong, both inefficient and inappropriate for its destined uses.
But, to the candidate himself,
a too hurried advancement is often attended with the most disastrous effects.
As in geometry, so in Freemasonry, there is no royal road to perfection. A
knowledge of its principles and its science, and consequently an acquaintance
with its beauties, can only be acquired by long and diligent study. To the
careless observer it seldom offers, at a hasty glance, much to attract his
attention or secure his interest. The gold must be deprived, by careful
manipulation, of the dark and worthless ore which surrounds and envelops it,
before its metallic luster and value can be seen and appreciated.
Hence, the candidate who
hurriedly passes through his degrees without a due examination of the moral
and intellectual purposes of each, arrives at the summit of our edifice
without a due and necessary appreciation of the general symmetry and
connection that pervade the whole system. The candidate, thus hurried through
the elements of our science, and unprepared, by a knowledge of its fundamental
principles, for the reception and comprehension of the corollaries which are
to be deduced from them, is apt to view the whole system as a rude and
undigested mass of frivolous ceremonies and puerile conceits, whose intrinsic
value will not adequately pay him for the time, the trouble, and expense that
he has incurred in his forced initiation. To him, Freemasonry is as
incomprehensible as was the veiled statue of Isis to its blind worshipers, and
he becomes, in consequence, either a useless drone in our hive, or speedily
retire in disgust from all participation in our labors.
But the candidate who by slow
and painful steps has proceeded through each apartment of our mystic Temple,
from its porch to its sanctuary, pausing in his progress to admire the
beauties and to study the uses of each, learning, as he advances, line upon
line, and precept upon precept, is gradually and almost imperceptibly imbued
with so much admiration of the Institution, so much love for its principles,
so much just appreciation of its design as a conservator of divine truth, and
an agent of human civilization, that he is inclined, on beholding, at last,
the whole beauty of the finished building, to exclaim, as did the wondering
Queen of Sheba: ''A Most Excellent Master must have done all this!"
The usage in many
jurisdictions of the United States, when the question is asked in the ritual
whether the candidate has made suitable proficiency in his preceding degree,
is to reply, ''Such as time and circumstances would permit." We have no doubt
that this was an innovation originally invented to evade the law, which has
always required a due proficiency. To such a question no other answer ought to
be given than the positive and unequivocal one that "He has.'' Neither lime
nor circumstances of candidate should be permitted to interfere with his
attainment of the necessary knowledge, nor excuse its absence. This, with the
wholesome rule, very generally existing, which requires an interval between
the conferring of the degrees, would go far to remedy the evil of too hurried
and unqualified advancement of which all intelligent Freemasons are now
complaining.
After these views of the
necessity of a careful examination of the claims of a candidate for
advancement in Freemasonry, and the necessity, for his own good as well as
that of the Order, that each one should fully prepare himself for this
promotion, it is proper that we should next inquire into the laws of
Freemasonry, by which the wisdom and experience of our predecessors have
thought proper to guard as well the rights of those who claim advancement as
the interests of the Lodge which is called upon to grant it. This subject has
been so fully treated in Mackey's Text Book of Masonic Jurisprudence that we
shall not hesitate to incorporate the views in that work into the present
article.
The subject of the petition of
a candidate for advancement involves three questions of great importance:
First, how soon, after receiving the First Degree, can he apply for the
Second? Second, what number of black balls is necessary to constitute a
rejection? Third, what time must elapse, after a first rejection, before the
Apprentice can renew his application for advancement?
l. How soon, after receiving a
former degree, can a candidate apply for advancement to the next? The
necessity of a full comprehension of the mysteries of one degree, before any
attempt is made to acquire those of a second, seems to have been thoroughly
appreciated from the earliest times; thus the Thirteenth Article in the Regius
Manuscript, which is the oldest Masonic document now extant, provides that "if
the master a prentice have, he shall teach him thoroughly and tell him
measurable points, that he may know the Craft ably, wherever he goes under the
sun. " Similar direction is found in most all the Manuscripts.
But if there be an obligation
on the part of the Master to instruct his Apprentice, there must be, of
course, a correlative obligation on the part of the latter to receive and
profit by those instructions. Accordingly, unless this obligation is
discharged, and the Apprentice makes himself acquainted with the mysteries of
the degree that he has already received, it is, by general consent, admitted
that he has no right to be entrusted with further and more important
information.
The modern ritual sustains
this doctrine, by requiring that the candidate, as a qualification in passing
onward, shall have made suitable proficiency in the preceding degree. This is
all that the general law prescribes. Suitable proficiency must have been
attained, and the period in which that condition will be acquired must
necessarily depend on the mental capacity of the candidate. Some men will
become proficient in a shorter time than others, and of this fact the Master
and the Lodge are to be the judges.
An examination should
therefore take place in open Lodge, and a ballot immediately following will
express the opinion of the Lodge on the result of that examination, and the
qualification of the candidate. Such ballot, however, is not usual in Lodges
under the English Constitution.
Several modern Grand Lodges,
looking with disapprobation on the rapidity with which the degrees are
sometimes conferred upon candidates wholly incompetent, have adopted special
regulations, prescribing a determinate period of probation for each degree.
Thus the Grand Lodge of
England requires an interval of not less than four weeks before a higher
degree can be conferred. This, however, is a local law, to be obeyed only in
those jurisdictions in which it is in force. The general law of Freemasonry
makes no such determinate provision of time, and demands only that the
candidate shall give evidence of suitable proficiency.
2. What number of black balls
is necessary to constitute a rejection ? Here we are entirely without the
guidance of any express law, as all the Ancient Constitutions are completely
silent upon the subject. It would seem, however, that in the advancement of an
Apprentice or Fellow Craft, as well as in the election of a profane, the
ballot should be unanimous. This is strictly in accordance with the principles
of Freemasonry, which require unanimity in admission, lest improper persons be
intruded, and harmony impaired.
Greater qualifications are
certainly not required of a profane applying for initiation than of an
initiate seeking advancement; nor can there be any reason why the test of
those qualifications should not be as rigid in the one case as in the other.
It may be laid down as a rule, therefore, that in all cases of balloting for
advancement in any of the degrees of Freemasonry, a single black ball will
reject.
3. What time must elapse,
after a first rejection, before the Apprentice or Fellow Craft can renew his
application for advancement to a higher degree ? Here, too, the Ancient
Constitutions are silent, and we are left to deduce our opinions from the
general principles and analogies of Masonic law. As the application for
advancement to a higher degree is founded on a right enuring to the Apprentice
or Fellow Craft by virtue of his reception into the previous degree---that is
to say, as the Apprentice, so soon as he has been initiated, becomes invested
with the right of applying for advancement to the Second Degree---it seems
evident that, as long as he remains an Apprentice in good standing, he
continues to be invested with that right.
Now, the rejection of his
petition for advancement by the Lodge does not impair his right to apply
again, because it does not affect his rights and standing as an Apprentice; it
is simply the expression of the opinion that the Lodge does not at present
deem him qualified for further progress in Freemasonry.
We must never forget the
difference between the right of applying for advancement and the right of
advancement. Every Apprentice possesses the former, but no one can claim the
latter until it is given to him by the unanimous vote of the Lodge. As,
therefore, this right of application or petition is not impaired by its
rejection at a particular time, and as the Apprentice remains precisely in the
same position in his own degree, after the rejection, as he did before, it
seems to follow, as an irresistible deduction, that he may again apply at the
next regular communication, and, if a second time rejected, repeat his
applications at all future meetings. The Entered Apprentices of a Lodge are
competent, at all regular communications of their Lodge, to petition for
advancement. Whether that petition shall be granted or rejected is quite
another thing, and depends altogether on the favor of the Lodge. What is here
said of an Apprentice, in relation tn advancement to the Second Degree, may be
equally said of a Fellow Craft in reference to advancement to the Third
Degree.
This opinion has not, it is
true, been universally adopted, though no force of authority, short of an
opposing landmark, could make one doubt its correctness. For instance, the
Grand Lodge of California decided, in 1857, that "the application of
Apprentices or Fellow Crafts for advancement should, after they have been once
rejected by ballot, be governed by the same principles which regulate the
ballot on petitions for initiation, and which require a probation of one
year." Brother Mackey commented on this action as follows:
"This appears to be a singular
decision of Masonic law. If the reasons which prevent the advancement of an
Apprentice or Fellow Craft to a higher degree are of such a nature as to
warrant the delay of one year, it is far better to prefer charges against the
petitioner, and to give him the opportunity of a fair and impartial trial. In
many cases a candidate for advancement is retarded in his progress from an
opinion, on the part of the Lodge, that he is not yet sufficiently prepared
for promotion by a knowledge of the preceding degree ---an objection which may
sometimes be removed before the recurrence of the next monthly meeting.
In such a case, a decision
like that of the Grand Lodge of California would be productive of manifest
injustice. It is, therefore, a more consistent rule, that the candidate for
advancement has a right to apply at every regular meeting, and that whenever
any moral objections exist to his taking a higher degree, these objections
should be made in the form of charges, and their truth tested by an impartia1
trial. To this, too, the candidate is undoubtedly entitled, on all the
principles of justice and equity."
*
ADYTUM
The most retired and secret
part of the ancient temples, into which the people were not permitted to
enter, but which was accessible to the priests only, was called the adytum.
Hence the derivation of the word from the Greek privative prefix a, and, to
enter = that which is not to be entered. In the adytum was generally to be
found a or tomb, or some relics or sacred images of the god to whom the temple
was consecrated. It being supposed that temples owed their origin to the
superstitious reverence paid by the ancients to their deceased friends, and as
most of the gods were men who had been deified on account of their virtues,
temples were, Perhaps, at first only stately monuments erected in honor of the
dead. Thus the interior of the temple was originally nothing more than a
cavity regarded as a Place for the reception of a person interred, and in it
was to be found the ‚or coffin, the T…os, or tomb, or, among the
Scandinavians, the barrow or mound grave. In time, the statue or image of a
god took the place of the coffin; but the reverence for the spot as one of
peculiar sanctity remained, and this interior part of the temple became, among
the Greeks, the ....or Chapel, among the Romans the adytum, or forbidden
place, and among the Jews the kodesh hakodashim, the Holy of Holies (see Holy
of Holies). "The sanctity thus acquired, " says Dudley ( Naology, page 393 ),
"by the Cell of interment might readily and with propriety be assigned to any
fabric capable of containing the body of the departed friend, or the relic, or
even the symbol, of the presence or existence of a divine personage." Thus it
has happened that there was in every ancient temple an adytum or most holy
place.
The adytum of the small temple
of Pompeii is still in excellent preservation. It is carried some steps above
the level of the main building, and, like the Jewish sanctuary, is without
light.
*
AENEID
Bishop Warburton (Divine
Legation of Moses Demonstrated) has contended, and his opinion has been
sustained by the great majority of subsequent commentators, that Vergil, in
the Sixth Book of his immortal epic, has, under the figure of the descent of
Aeneas into the infernal regions, described the ceremony of initiation into
the Ancient Mysteries.
An equally noteworthy allusion
is to be found in the Third Book of the Aeneid by Vergil. Here the hero,
Aeneas, by means of a message given to him by the uprooting of a plant on the
hillside, discovers the grave of a lost prince. A free translation is given as
follows of this interesting story by the ancient Roman poet:
"Near at hand there chanced to
be sloping ground crested by trees and with a myrtle rough with spear like
branches. Unto it I came. There I strove to tear from the earth its forest
growth of foliage that the altars I might cover with the leafy boughs. But at
that I saw a dreadful wonder, marvelous to tell.
That tree when torn from the
soil, as its rooted fibers were wrenched asunder, distilled black blood in
drops and gore smeared the ground. My limbs shook with cold terror and the
chill veins froze with fear.
"Again I essayed to tear off
one slender branch from another and thus thoroughly search for the hidden
cause. From the bark of that bough there descended purpled blood. Awaking in
my mind many an anxious thought, I reverently beseeched the rural divinities
and father Mars, who presides over these Thracian territories, to kindly bless
the vision and divert the evil of the omen. So a third time I grasped the
boughs with greater vigor and on my knees struggled again with the opposing
ground. Then I heard a piteous groan from the depths of the hill and unto mine
ears there issued forth a voice :
"'Aeneas, why dost thou strive
with an unhappy wretch? Now that I am in my grave spare me. Forbear with guilt
to pollute thy pious hands. To you Troy brought me forth no stranger. Oh, flee
this barbarous land, flee the greedy shore. Polydore am I. Here an iron crop
of darts hath me overwhelmed, transfixed, and over me shoots up pointed
javelins.'
"Then indeed, depressed with
perplexing fear at heart, was I stunned. On end stood my hair, to my jaws
clung my tongue. This Polydore unhappy Priam formerly had sent in secrecy with
a great weight of gold to be stored safely with the King of Thrace when Priam
began to distrust the arms of Troy and saw the city blocked up by close siege.
The King of Thrace, as soon as
the power of the Trojans was crushed and gone their fortune, broke every
sacred bond, killed Polydore and by violence took his gold. Cursed greed of
gold, to what don't thou not urge the hearts of men! When fear left my bones I
reported the warnings of the gods to our chosen leaders and especially to my
father, and their opinion asked. All agreed to quit that accursed country,
abandon the corrupt associations, and spread our sails to the winds. Thereupon
we renewed funeral rites to Polydore. A large hill of earth was heaped for the
tomb. A memorial altar was reared to his soul and mournfully bedecked with
grey wreaths and gloomy cypress. Around it the Trojan matrons stood with hair
disheveled according to the custom. We offered the sacrifices to the dead,
bowls foaming with warm milk, and goblets of the sacred blood. We gave the
soul repose in the grave, and with loud voice addressed to him the last
farewell."
Egyptian mythology also
supplies us with a similar legend to the above in the story of the search for
the body of slain Osiris. This was placed in a coffin and thrown into the sea,
being cast upon the shores of Phoenicia at the base of a tamarisk tree. Here
it was found by Isis and brought back to Egypt for ceremonious burial (see
Mysteries).
*
AEON
This word, in its original
Greek, ...., signifies the age or duration of anything. The Gnostics, however,
used it in a peculiar mode to designate the intelligent, intellectual, and
material powers or natures which flowed as emanations from the B.... or
Infinite Abyss of Deity, and which were connected with their divine fountain
as rays of light are with the sun (see Gnostics).
*
AERA ARCHITECTONICA
This is used in some modern
Masonic lapidary or monument inscriptions to designate the date more commonly
known as anno lucis, the year of light.
*
AFFILIATE, FREE
The French gave the name of
Free Affiliates to those members of a Lodge who are exempted from the payment
of dues, and neither hold office nor vote. These Brethren are known among
English-speaking Freemasons as honorary members. There is a quite common use
of Affiliate in Lodges of the United States to designate one who has joined a
Lodge by demit.
*
AFFILIATED FREEMASON
A Freemason who holds
membership in some Lodge. The word affiliation in Freemasonry is akin to the
French affilier, which Richelet, Dictionnaire de la langue Française,
Dictionary of the French Language, defines, "to communicate to any one a
participation in the spiritual benefits of a religious order,'' and he says
that such a communication is called an affiliation. The word, as a technical
term, is not found in any of the old Masonic writers, who always use admission
instead of affiliation.
There is no precept more
explicitly expressed in the Ancient Constitutions than that every Freemason
should belong to a Lodge. The foundation of the law which imposes this duty is
to be traced as far back as the Regius Manuscript, which is the oldest Masonic
document now extant, and of which the "Secunde poynt" requires that the
Freemason work upon the workday as truly as he can in order to deserve his
hire for the holiday, and that he shall "truly labor on his deed that he may
well deserve to have his meed" (see lines 269-74). The obligation that every
Freemason should thus labor is implied in all the subsequent Constitutions,
which always speak of Freemasons as working members of the Fraternity, until
we come to the Charges approved in 1722, which explicitly state that "every
Brother ought to belong to a Lodge, and to be subject to its By-Laws and the
General Regulations." Opportunity to resign one's membership should therefore
involve a duty to affiliate.
*
AFFIRMATION
The question has been mooted whether a Quaker, or other person having peculiar
religious scruples in reference to taking oaths, can receive the degrees of
Freemasonry by taking an affirmation. Now, as the obligations of Freemasonry
are symbolic in their character, and the forms in which they are administered
constitute the essence of the symbolism, there cannot be a doubt that the
prescribed mode is the only one that ought to be used, and that affirmations
are entirely inadmissible.
The London Freemason's
Quarterly (1828, page 28G) says that "a Quaker's affirmation is binding." This
is not denied. The only question is whether it is admissible. Can the
obligations be assumed in any but one way, unless the ritual be entirely
changed?
Can any "man or body of men"
at this time make such a change without affecting the universality of
Freemasonry? Brother Chase (Masonic Digest, page 448) says that "Conferring
the degrees on affirmation is no violation of the spirit of Freemasonry, and
neither overthrows nor affects a landmark." In this he is sustained by the
Grand Lodge of Maine (1823).
On the report of a Committee,
concurred in by the Grand Lodge of Washington in 1883 and duly incorporated in
the Masonic Code of that State (see the 1913 edition, page130), the following
was adopted: "The solemn obligation required from all persons receiving the
degrees may be made equally binding by either an oath or an affirmation
without any change in the time-honored Landmarks. " A decision of the Grand
Lodge of Rhode Island on November 13, 1867 (see also the1918 edition of the
Constitution, General Regulations, etc., of that State, page 34) was to the
effect that "An affirmation can be administered instead of an oath to any
person who refuses, on conscientious grounds, to take the latter." But the
other Grand Lodges which expressed an opinion on this subject-namely, those of
Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Delaware, Virginia, and Pennsylvania made an
opposite decision.
During the latest revision of
this work the Masonic authorities in each of these States were invited to give
the latest practice in their respective Jurisdictions. Their replies are given
substantially as below, and in the main the early custom has been continued.
Missouri has not recognized
the word affirmation in the work, and unless the candidate is willing to
conform to the wording of the obligation the instructions have been to not
accept him and this has been the rule of successive Grand Masters in that
State.
Tennessee has not made any
change in the law, and in 1919 the Grand Lodge held that the Grand Master had
no right to allow the Ritual to be changed in order to suit the religious
views of a profane.
There has been no change in
the attitude of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky in the matter of affirmation. That
State has required the candidate to take the obligation in the usual manner.
Delaware reported that there had been no change in the approved decision
adopted by the Grand Lodge in 1890 which is as follows: "An applicant who
desires to affirm instead of swear to the obligation cannot be received." The
Grand Lodge of Virginia allows the use of an affirmation, not by the written
law, but by the decision of a Grand Master of that State.
In Pennsylvania a petitioner
becomes a member of the Lodge by initiation and dues begin from that time. He
may, if he desires, remain an Entered Apprentice Freemason, a member of the
Lodge, or he may resign as such. There is only one way of making an Entered
Apprentice, Fellow Craft, or Master Freemason, in this Jurisdiction, which is
by use of the greater lights, without any equivocation, deviation, or
substitution.
One decision of Grand Master
Africa of Pennsylvania, on October 24, 1892, does not state precisely at what
point the candidate for initiation refused to obey, and even the original
letter written by Grand Master Africa does not show it.
Presumably the reference was
in regard to the candidate's belief in a supreme Being, yet it covers other
points as follows:
"After having been duly
prepared to receive the First Degree in Freemasonry, a candidate refused to
conform with and obey certain landmarks of the craft. This refusal
disqualifies him from initiation in any Lodge in this jurisdiction, and you
will direct your Secretary to make proper record thereof, and , to make report
to the Grand Secretary accordingly.
Freemasonry does not
proselyte. Those who desire its privileges must seek them of their own free
will, and must accept and obey, without condition or reservation, all of its
ancient usages, customs, and landmarks."
The general practice of Lodges
in America is also against the use of an affirmation. But in England Quakers
have been initiated after affirmation, the principle being that a form of
obligation which the candidate accepts as binding will suffice.
*
AFRICA
Anderson (Constitutions, 1738,
page195) has recorded that in 1735 Richard Hull, Esq., was appointed
"Provincia1Grand Master at Gambay in West Africa," that in 1736 David
Creighton, M.D., was appointed "Provincial Grand Master at Cape Coast, Castle
in Africa," and that in 1737 Capt. William Douglas was appointed "Provincial
Grand Master on the Coast of Africa and in the Islands of America, excepting
such places where a Provincial Grand Master is already deputed." . However, in
spite of these appointments having been made by the Grand Lodge of England,
there is no trace of the establishment of any Lodges in West Africa until
1792, in which year a Lodge numbered 586 was constituted at Bulam, followed in
1810 by the Torridzonian Lodge at Cape Coast Castle. There have been, on the
West Coast of Africa, Lodges Warranted by the Grand Lodge of England, or
holding an Irish Warrant, as Lodge 197 at Calabar, founded in 1896, or under
the Grand Lodge of Scotland, or by authority from Grand Bodies in Germany. In
the Negro Republic of Liberia a Grand Lodge was constituted in 1867, with nine
daughter Lodges subordinate to it, and with headquarters at Monrovia.
In the north of Africa there
was founded the Grand Lodge of Egypt with headquarters at Cairo. Both Eng1and
and Scotland have established District Grand Lodges in Egypt by consent of the
former, While Italy, France, and Germany have organized Lodges at Alexandria,
Cairo, Port Said and Suez.
In Algeria and Morocco French
influence has been predominant, but in Tunis an independent Grand Lodge was
established in 1881.
Freemasonry was introduced
into South Africa by the erection of a Dutch Lodge, De Goede Hoop, at Cape
Town in 1772, followed by another under the same Jurisdiction in 1802. Not
until nine years later was it that the first English Lodge was established
there, which was gradually followed by others. The Dutch and English
Freemasons worked side by side with such harmony that the English Provincial
Grand Master for the District who was appointed in 1829 was also Deputy Grand
Master for the Netherlands. In 1860 a Scotch Lodge was set up at Cape Town.
Thirty-five years later a Lodge was erected at Johannesburg, under the Grand
Lodge of Ireland, so that there have been four independent Masonic Bodies
exercising jurisdiction and working amicably together in South Africa, namely,
the Grand Lodges of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and the Grand Orient of
the Netherlands.
Under the Grand Lodge of
England the subordinate Lodges were arranged in five Districts, namely,
Central, Eastern and Western South Africa, Natal, and the Transvaal. At the
same time there were Lodges owing allegiance to the Grand Lodge of Ireland, as
well as those under the Scotch Constitution, divided among the Districts of
Cape Colony, Cape Colony Western Province, Natal, Orange River Colony,
Rhodesia, and the Transvaal, and those under the Jurisdiction of the Grand
Orient of the Netherlands, in addition to the German Lodges at Johannesburg.
Under the Jurisdiction of the
Grand Orient of the Netherlands there was appointed a Deputy Grand Master and
two Districts, one being the Provincial Grand Lodge of South Africa and the
Provincial Grand Lodge of the Transvaal. The first of these had its
headquarters at Cape Town, the other at Johannesburg.
The Grand Orient of Belgium
chartered a Lodge in 1912 at Elizabethville, in Northern Rhodesia. On the East
Coast of the Dark Continent there were erected two Lodges at Nairobi, one of
them being English and the other Scotch, and there was also established in
1903 an English Lodge at Zanzibar.
(See also the following
references to other geographical divisions of Africa: Abyssinia, Algeria,
Belgian Congo, British East Africa, Cape Colony, Cape Verde Islands, Egypt,
Eritrea, French Guinea, German Southwest Africa, Liberia, Madagascar, Morocco,
Mauritius, Nigeria, Nyasaland, Portuguese East Africa, Portuguese West Africa,
Reunion Island, Rhodesia, Sierra Leone, St. Helena, Somaliland, Tripoli, Tunis
and Uganda.)
*
AFRICA
In the French Rite of
Adoption, the South of the Lodge is called Africa.
*
AFRICA, GERMAN SOUTHWEST
See German Southwest Africa.
*
AFRICAN ARCHITECTS, ORDER OF
Sometimes called African
Builders; or in French, Architectes de l'Afrique; and in German, Afrikanische
Bauherren.
Of all the new sects and
modern Degrees of Freemasonry which sprang up on the continent of Europe
during the eighteenth century, there was none which, for the time, maintained
so high an intellectual position as the Order of African Architects, called by
the French Architectes de l'Afrique, and by the Germans Afrikanische Bauherren.
A Masonic sect of this name had originally been established in Germany in the
year 1756, but it does not appear to have attracted much attention, or indeed
to have deserved it; and hence, amid the multitude of Masonic innovations to
which almost every day was giving birth and ephemeral existence it soon
disappeared.
But the Society which is the
subject of the present article, although it assumed the name of the original
African Architects, was of a very different character.
It may, however, be
considered, as it was established only eleven years afterward, as a
remodification of it.
The Society admitted to
membership those possessing high intellectual attainments rather than those
possessing wealth or preferment.
There was probably no real
connection between this Order and the Freemasonry of Germany, even if the
members of the latter organization did profess kindly feelings for it.
Brethren of the former based their Order on the degrees of Freemasonry, as the
fist of degrees shows, but their work began in the Second Temple. while they
had a quasi-connection with Freemasonry, we cannot call them a Masonic body
according to the present day standards.
The degrees of the Order of
African Architects were named and classified as follows:
First Temple
1. Apprentice.
2. Fellow Craft.
3. Master Mason.
Second Temple
4. Architect, or Apprentice of Egyptian Secrets. Thory (Acta Latomorum I, page
297) gives the ...title as Bosonien.
5. Initiate into Egyptian Secrets. Acta Latomorum (1, page 292) gives the
title as Alethophile.
6. Cosmopolitan Brother.
7. Christian Philosopher. Thory calls this the Fourth Degree in his Acta
Latomorum (1, page ....632).
8. Master of Egyptian Secrets.
9. Esquire of the Order.
10. Soldier of the Order.
ll. Knight of the Order.
The last three were called
superior Degrees, and were conferred only, as a second or higher class, with
great discrimination, upon those who had proved their worthiness to receive
promotion.
The assemblies of the Brethren
were called Chapters.
The central or superintending
power was styled a Grand Chapter, and it was governed by the following twelve
officers:
1. Grand Master.
2. Deputy Grand Master.
3. Senior Grand Warden.
4. Junior Grand Warden.
5. Drapier.
6. Almoner.
7. Tricoplerius, or Treasurer.
8. Graphiarius, or Secretary.
9. Seneschal.
10. Standard Bearer.
l1. Marshal.
12. Conductor.
Mackenzie says the Order was
instituted between 1756 and 1767, under the patronage of Frederick II of
Prussia, by Baucheren, and that the objects were chiefly historical but the
ritual was a compound of Freemasonry, Christianity, Alchemy, and Chivalry. He
quotes from its claims thus: "When the Architects were by wars reduced to a
very small number, they determined to travel together into Europe, and there
to form together new establishments. Many of them came to England with Prince
Edward, son of Henry III, and were shortly afterward called into Scotland by
Lord Stewart. They received the protection of King Ing of Sweden in l125; of
Richard Coeur-de-Lion, King of England in l190; and of Alexander III of
Scotland in 1284. " He further states that the Order came to an end in 1786,
that the three last degrees conferred offices for life, that the Order
possessed a large building for the Meetings of the Grand Chapter, containing a
library, a museum, a chemical laboratory', and that for many, years they gave
annually a gold medal of the value of fifty ducats for the best essay on the
history of Freemasonry, Lenning does not mention any connection of Frederick
the Great with the Order and Woodford is inclined to limit its activity to ten
years, presumably from 1767, though he points out that it has been said to
have had an existence into the year 1806. A claim has been made that it was
but an enlargement of a Lodge in action at Hamburg in 1747, and the further
assertion has been offered of the French origin of the Order. The names of the
degrees have also been named as:
1. Knight or Apprentice.
2. Brother or Companion.
3. Soldier or Master.
4. Horseman or Knight.
5. Novice.
6. Aedile, or Builder.
7. Tribunus, or Knight of the Eternal Silence.
The members are said by
Woodford to have all been Freemasons and men of learning, the proceedings
being, it is claimed, conducted in the Latin language, a circumstance that has
a parallel in the Roman Eagle Lodge, No. 160, Edinburgh, Scotland, founded in
1785. This Lodge had its By-Laws and Minutes written in Latin, the object
being "to erect and maintain a Lodge whose working and records should be in
the classical Latin tongue" (see Historical Notes, Alfred A. A. Murray,
Edinburgh, 1908, also The Jacobite Lodge at Romne, William J. Hughan, 1910,
page 14).
For a helpful guide to the
conditions under Frederick the Great's control favoring the existence of such
organizations as the African Architects. the student may refer to volume ii,
pages 60--73, The Beautiful Miss Craven, by Broadley and Melville, 1914.
The African Architects was not
the only. society which in the eighteenth century sought to rescue Freemasonry
from the impure hands of the charlatans into which it had well-nigh fallen.
*
AFRICAN BROTHER
One of the degrees of the Rite
of the Clerks of Strict Observance, according to Thory (Acta Latorum 1, page
291), but it is not mentioned in other lists of the degrees of that Rite.
*
AFRICAN BROTHERS
One of the titles given to the
African Architects, which see.
*
AFRICAN BUILDERS
See African Architects
*
AFRICAN LODGE
See Negro Lodges
*
AGAPAE
The Agapae, or love feasts,
were banquets held during the first three centuries in the Christian Church.
They were called love feasts, because, including the partaking of the
Sacrament, the Brethren met, both rich and poor, at a common feast-the former
furnishing the provisions, and the latter, who had nothing, being relieved and
refreshed by their more opulent Brethren. Tertullian (Apologia, chapter xxxix)
thus describes these banquets: "We do not sit down before we have first
offered up prayers to God; we eat and drink only to satisfy hunger and thirst,
remembering still that we are to worship God by night: we discourse as in the
presence of God, knowing that He hears us: then, after water to wash our
hands, and lights brought in, every one is moved to sing some hymn to God,
either out of the Scripture, or, as he is able, of his own composing.
Prayer again concludes our
feast, and we depart, not to fight and quarrel, or to abuse those we meet, but
to pursue the same care of modesty and chastity, as men that have fed at a
supper of philosophy and discipline, rather than a corporeal feast."
The agapae united the group
meal and the Lord's Supper because that Sacrament was first observed at a
feast (see Matthew xxvi, 26-9). This custom was readily adopted among Gentile
converts as such meals were usual practices by both the Greeks and Romans.
Even in Bible times the observance was not always free of fault as is shown by
Paul's rebuke at Corinth (see First Corinthians xi, 17-34; also in this
connection note Second Peter11, 13; and Jude12).
These disorders marred the
religious value of the function and led to its suppression in churches. The
merit of the purpose, when properly carried out. gives substantial service to
right living and has therefore much ceremonial and social importance.
Dr. August Kestner, Professor
of Theology, published in Jena, in 1819, a work in which he maintains that the
agapae, established at Rome by Clemens, in the reign of Domitian, were
mysteries which partook of a Masonic, symbolic, and religious character.
In the Rosicurcian Degrees of Freemasonry we find an imitation of these love
feasts of the primitive Christians; and the ceremonies of the banquet in the
Degree of Rose Croix of the Ancient and accepted Rite, especially as practiced
by French Chapters, are arranged with reference to the ancient agapae.
Reghellini, indeed, finds an
analogy between the Table Lodges of modern Freemasonry and these love feasts
of the primitive Christians.
*
AGATE
A stone varying in color, but
of great hardness, being a variety of the flint. The agate, in Hebrew ...,
SheBO, was the center stone of the third row in the breastplate of the High
Priest.
Agates often contain
representations of leaves, mosses, etc., depicted by the hand of nature. Some
of the representations on these are exceedingly singular. Thus, on one side of
one in the possession of Velschius was a half moon, and on the other a star.
Kircher mentions one which had
a representation of an armed heroine ; another, in the church of Saint Mark in
Venice, which had a representation of a king's head, adorned with a diadem;
and a third which contained the letters I. N. R. I. (see Oliver's Historical
Landmarks ii, page 522). In the collections of antiquaries are also to be
found many gems of agate on which mystical inscriptions have been engraved,
the significations of which are for the most part no longer understood.
*
AGATE, STONE OF
Among the Masonic traditions
is one which asserts that the Stone of Foundation was formed of agate. This,
like everything connected with the legend of the stone, is to be mystically
interpreted. In this view, agate is a symbol of strength and beauty, a
symbolism derived from the peculiar character of the agate, which is
distinguished for its compact formation and the ornamental character of its
surface (see Stone of Foundation).
*
AGATHOPADES
A liberal ecclesiastical order
founded in Brussels in the sixteenth century. Revived and revised by Schayes
in 1846. It had for its sacred sign the pentastigma, a term meaning the stamp
of the five points.
*
AGBATANA
See Echatana
*
AGE, LAWFUL
One of the qualifications for
candidates is that they shall be of lawful age. What that age must be is not
settled by any universal law or landmark of the Order. The Ancient Regulations
do not express any determinate number of years at the expiration of which a
candidate becomes legally entitled to apply for admission.
The language used is, that he
must be of "mature and discreet age."
But the usage of the Craft has
differed in various countries as to the construction of the time when this
period of maturity and discretion is supposed to have arrived. The sixth of
the Regulations, which are said to have been made in 1663, prescribes that "no
person shall be accepted a Freemason unless he be one and twenty years old or
more"; but the subsequent Regulations are less explicit. At
Frankfort-on-the-Main, the age required is twenty; in the Lodges of
Switzerland, it has been fixed at twenty-one. The Grand Lodge of Hanover
prescribes the age of twenty-five, but permits the son of a Freemason to be
admitted at eighteen see Lewis).
The Grand Lodge of Hamburg
decrees that the lawful age for initiation shall be that which in any country
has been determined by the laws of the land to be the age of majority. The
Grand Orient of France requires the candidate. to be twenty-one, unless he be
the son of a Freemason who has performed some important service to the Order,
or unless he be a young man who has served six months in the army, when the
initiation may take place at the age of eighteen.
In Prussia the required age is
twenty-five. Under the Grand Lodge of England the Constitutions of 1723
provided that no man should be made a Freemason under the age of twenty-five
unless by Dispensation from the Grand Master. This remained the necessary age
until it was lowered in the Constitutions of 1784 to twenty-one years, as at
present, though the Ancient Freemasons still retained the requirement of
twenty-five until the Union of 1813. Under the Scotch Constitution the age was
eighteen until 1891, when it was raised to twenty-one. Under the Irish
Constitution the age was twenty-one until 1741, when it was raised to
twenty-five and so remained until 1817, when it was lowered again to
twenty-one. In the United States, the usage is general that the candidate
shall not be less than twenty-one years of age at the time of his initiation,
and no Dispensation can issue for conferring the degrees at an earlier period.
*
AGE, MASONIC
In some Masonic Rites a mystical age is appropriated to each degree, and the
initiate who has received the degree is said to be of such an age. Thus, the
age of an Entered Apprentice is said to be three years ; that of a Fellow
Craft, five; and that of a Master Mason, seven. These ages are not arbitrarily
selected, but have a reference to the mystical value of numbers and their
relation to the different degrees.
Thus, three is the symbol of
peace and concord, and has been called in the Pythagorean system the number of
perfect harmony, and is appropriated to that degree, which is the initiation
into an Order whose fundamental principles are harmony and brotherly love.
Five is the symbol of active life, the union of the female principle two and
the male principle three, and refers in this way to the active duties of man
as a denizen of the world, which constitutes the symbolism of the Fellow
Craft's Degree ; and seven, as a venerable and perfect number, is symbolic of
that perfection which is supposed to be attained in the Master's Degree. In a
way similar to this, all the ages of the other degrees are symbolically and
mystically explained.
The Masonic ages are---and it
will thus be seen that they are all mystic numbers-3, 5, 7, 9, 15, 27, 63, 81.
*
AGENDA
A Latin word meaning things to
be done. Thus an "Agenda Paper" is a list of the matters to be brought before
a meeting.
*
AGLA
One of the Cabalistic names of
God, which is composed of the initials of the words of the following sentence:
..........., Atah Gibor Lo1am Adonai, meaning "Thou art mighty forever, O
Lord." This name the Cabalists arranged seven times in the center and at the
intersecting points of two interlacing triangles, which figure they called the
Shield of David, and used as a talisman, believing that it would cure wounds,
extinguish fires, and perform other wonders (see Shield of David). The four
Hebrew letters forming the initials of the above words were used on the floor
cloths of Lodges in the eighteenth century.
*
AGNOSTUS, IRENAEUS
This is supposed by Kloss (Bibliographie
der Friemaurerei, Nos. 2442, 2497, etc. ) to have been a nom-de-plume or pen
name of Gotthardus Arthusius, a co-rector in the Gymnasium of
Frankfort-on-the-Main, and a writer of some local celebrity in the beginning
of the seventeenth century (see Arthusius).
Under this assumed name of
Irenaeus Agnostus, he published, between the years 1617 and 1620, many works
on the subject of the Rosicrucian Fraternity, which John Valentine Andrea had
about that time established in Germany, Among those works were the
Fortaliciuni Scientiae, 1617; Clypeum Veritatis, 1618 ; Speculum Constantiae,
1618; Fons Gratiae, 1619; Frater non Frater, 1619; Thesaurus Fidei, 1619;
Portus Tranquillitatis, 1620, and several others of a similar character and
equally quaint title.
*
AGNUS DEI
The Agnus Dei, meaning the
Lamb of God, also called the Paschal Lamb, or the Lamb offered in the Pascal
Sacrifice, is one of the jewels of a Commandery of Knights Templar in America,
and is worn by the Generalissimo.
The lamb is one of the
earliest symbols of Christ in the iconography of the Church, and as such was a
representation of the Savior, derived from that expression of Saint John the
Baptist (John1, 29), who, on beholding Christ, exclaimed, "Behold the Lamb of
God."
"Christ," says Didron
(Christian Iconography 1, page 318), "shedding his blood for our redemption,
is the Lamb slain by the children of Israel, and with the blood of which the
houses to be preserved from the wrath of God were marked with the celestial
tau.
The Paschal Lamb eaten by the
Israelites on the night preceding their departure from Egypt is the type of
that other divine Lamb of whom Christians are to partake at Easter, in order
thereby to free themselves from the bondage in which they are held by vice."
The earliest representation
that is found in Didron of the Agnus Dei is of the sixth century, and consists
of a lamb supporting in his right foot a cross. In the eleventh century we
find a banneret attached to this cross, and the lamb is then said to support
"the banner of the resurrection." This is the modern form in which the Agnus
Dei is represented.
*
AGRIPPA, HENRY CORNELIUS
Born in 1486 at Cologne,
Germany, his real name being Von Nettesheim. Died in 1535 at Grenoble, France.
Author of On the Vanity of the Sciences, published in 1527 at Cologne, and
Libri Tres de Occulta Philosophia, published in 1533 at the same place. A
scholarly and learned man whose writings led him into many controversies.
Lenning and Gädicke say that Agrippa founded a secret literary and mystical
society at Paris and during his life was reputed to have been a magician (see
Henry Morley's Life of Cornelius Agrippa).
Agrippa was, as well as being
a writer, a soldier, a physician and a well-known alchemist.A writer in the
Quarterly Review of 1798 states that Cornelius Agrippa came to London in 1510
and founded there a secret alchemical society and was practically the founder
of Freemasonry.
There does not seem to be any
foundation for such a statement. Many of his writings dealt with
Rosicrucianism.
*
AHABATH OLAM
Two Hebrew words signifying
eternal love. The name of a prayer which was used by the Jews dispersed over
the whole Roman Empire during the times of Christ. It was inserted by Dermott
in his Ahiman Rezon (page 45, edition 1764), and copied into several others,
with the title of A Prayer repeated in the Royal Arch Lodge at Jerusalem. The
prayer was most probably adopted by Dermott and attributed to a Royal Arch
Lodge in consequence of the allusion in it to the "holy, great, mighty, and
terrible name of God."
*
AHIAH
So spelled in the common
version of the Bible (First Kings iv, 3 ), but according to the Hebrew
orthography the word should be spelled and pronounced Achiah, or akh-ee-yaw
according to Strong.
He and Elihoreph or Elichoreph were the Sopherim, the Scribes or Secretaries
of King Solomon. In the ritual of the Seventh Degree of the Ancient and
Accepted Rite, according to the modern American system, these personages are
represented by the two Wardens.
AHIMAN REZON
The title given by Dermott to
the Book of Constitutions of the Grand Lodge of Ancient Freemasons in England,
which was established about the middle of the eighteenth century in opposition
to the legitimate Grand Lodge and its adherents who were called the Moderns,
and whose code of laws was contained in Anderson's work known as the Book of
Constitutions. Many attempts have been made to explain the significance of
this title ; thus according to Doctor Mackey, it is derived from three Hebrew
words, zhiln, meaning brothers; ..manah, to appoint, or to select in the sense
of being placed in a peculiar class (see Isaiah liii, 12), and ..ratzon, the
will, pleasure, or meaning; and hence the combination of the three words in
the title, Ahiman Rezon, signifies the will of selected Brethren- the law of a
class or society of men who are chosen or selected from the rest of the world
as Brethren.
Doctor Dalcho (Ahiman Rezon of
South Carolina, page 159, second edition) derives it from ahi, a brother,
manah, to prepare, and rezon, secret, so that, as he says, " Abiman Rezon
literally means the secrets of a prepared brother." But the best meaning of
manah is that which conveys the idea of being placed in or appointed to a
certain, exclusive class, as we find in Isaiah liii, 12 "he was numbered (nimenah)
with the transgressors," placed in that class, being taken out of every other
order of men. Although rezon may come from ratzon, a will or law, it can
hardly be elected by any rules of etymology out of the Chaldee word raz,
meaning a secret, the termination in on being wanting; and furthermore the
book called the Ahiman Rezon does not contain the secrets, but only the public
laws of Freemasonry. The derivation of Dalcho seems therefore inadmissible.
Not less so is that of Brother
W. S. Rockwell, who as recorded in the Ahiman Rezon of Georgia (1859, page 3)
thinks the derivation may be found in the Hebrew, ... amun, meaning a builder
or architect and .., rezon, as a noun, prince, and as an adjective, royal, and
hence, Ahiman Rezon, according to this etymology, wifl signify the royal
builder, or, symbolically, the Freemason. But to derive ahiman from amun, or
rather amon, which is the masoretic pronunciation, is to place all known laws
of etymology at defiance. Rockwell himself, however, furnishes the best
argument against his strained derivation, when he admits that its correctness
will depend on the antiquity of the phrase, which he acknowledges that he
doubts. In this, he is right. The phrase is altogether a modern one, and has
Dermott, the author of the first work bearing the title, for its inventor.
Rockwell's conjectural
derivation is, therefor, for this reason still more inadmissible than Dalcho's.
But the most satisfactory
explanation is as follows: In his prefatory address to the reader, Dermott
narrates a dream of his in which the four men appointed by Salomon to be
porters at theTempel (First Cronicles ix, 17 ) appear to him sojourners from
Jerusalem, and he tells them that he is writing a history of Freemasonry; upon
which, one of the four, named Ahiman, says that no such history has ever yet
been composed and suggests that it never can be.
It is clear, therefore, that
the first word of the title is the name of this personage. What then does
Rezon signify? Now the Geneva or Breeches Bible, publishes in 1560 contains a
table giving the meanings of the Bible names and explains Ahiman as a prepared
brother or brother of the right hand and Rezon as a secretary, so that the
title of the book would mean Brother Secretary. That Dermott used the Geneva
Bible is plain from the fact that he quotes from it in his address to the
reader, and therefore it may fairly be assumed that he selected these names to
suit his purpose from the list given in it, especially as he styles himself on
his title-page merely Secretary.
The first Book of Masonic Law
published by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania was entitled: Ahiman Rezon
abridged and digested: as a Help to atilt are or would be Free and Accepted
Masons. It was prepared by the Grand Secretary, the Rev. Brother William
Smith, D.D., Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, and was almost
entirely a reprint of Dermott's work; it was approved by the Grand Lodge
November 22, 1781, published in, 1783, and dedicated to Brother George
Washington. It is reprinted in the introduction to the first or edited reprint
of the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, 1730-l808. On April 18,
1825, a revision of the Ahinwn Rezon was adopted, being taken largely from
Anderson's Constitutions.
In the 1919 edition (page 210)
are these comments: "The revision of 1825 contains the following as the
definition of the words Ahiman Rezon: The Book of Constitutions is usually
denominated Ahiman Rezon. The literal translation of Ahiman is A prepared
Brother, from manah, to prepare, and Rezon, secret; so that Ahiman Rezon
literally means, the secrets of a prepared Brother. It is likewise supposed to
be a corruption of Achi Man Ratzon, the thoughts or opinions of a true and
faithful Brother. As the Ahiman Rezon is not a secret, but a published book,
and the above definition has been omitted from subsequent revisions of the
book, the words were submitted to Hebrew scholars for translation upon the
assumption that they are of Hebrew origin. The words however are not Hebrew.
"Subsequent inquiry leads to
the belief that they come from the Spanish, and are thus interpreted: Ahi,
which is pronounced Ah-ee, is demonstrative and means there, as if pointing to
a thing or place; man may be considered a form of monta, which means the
account, amount, sum total, or fullness; while razon or rezon means reason,
principle, or justice, the word justice being used in the sense of law. If,
therefore, we ascribe the words himan Rezon to Spanish origin, their meaning
is-There is the full account of the law."
But the history of the origin
of the book is more important and more interesting than the history of the
derivation of its title.
The premier Grand Lodge of
England was established in 1717 and ruled the Freemasons of London and the
South of England without opposition until in 1751 when some Irish Freemasons
established another body in London. This organization professed to work
"according to the old institutions," and the Brethren called themselves
Ancient Freemasons and the members of the older Grand Lodge .
Moderns, maintaining that they
alone preserved the ancient usage of Freemasonry.
The former of these contending bodies, the Grand Lodge of England, had, In the
year 1722, caused Dr. James Anderson to collect and compile all the Statutes
and Regulations by which the Fraternity had in former times been governed.
These, after having been submitted to due revision, were published in 1723, by
Anderson, with the title of The Constitutions of the Freemasons. This work, of
which several other edit out subsequently appeared, has always been called the
Book of Constitutions, and contains the foundations of the written law by
which the Grand Lodge if England and the Lodges deriving from it, both in that
country and in America, are governed.
But when the Irish Freemasons
established their rival Grand Lodge, they found it necessary, also, to have a
Book of Constitutions. Accordingly, Laurence Dermott, who was at one time
their Grand Secretary, and afterward their Deputy Grand Master, compiled such
a work, the first edition of which was published by James Bedford, at London,
in 1756, with the following title: Ahiman Rezon: or a Help to a Brother;
showing the Excellency of Secrecy, and the first cause or motive of the
Institution of Masonry; the Principles of the Craft; and the Benefits from a
strict Observance thereof, etc., etc. ; also the Old and New Regulations, etc.
To which is added the greatest collection of Masons' Songs, etc. By Bro.
Laurence Dermott, Secretary.
A second edition was published
in 1764 with this title : Ahiman Rezon: or a help to all that are or would be
Free and Accepted Masons; containing the Quintessence of all that has been
published on the subject of Freemasonry, with many Additions, which renders
this Work more useful than any other Book of Constitution now extant. By Lau.
Dermott, Secretary. London, 1764. A third edition was published in 1778, with
the following title: Ahiman Rezon: or a Help to all that are or would be Free
and Accepted Masons (with many Additions). By Lau. Dermott, D.G.M. Printed for
James Jones, Grand Secretary; and sold by Peter Shatwell, in the Strand.
London, 1778.
Five other edit out were
published: the fourth, in 1778 ; the fifth in 1787 ; the sixth in 1800 ; the
seventh in 1801; the eighth in 1807, and the ninth in 1813.
In this year, the Ancient
Grand Lodge was dissolved by the union of the two Grand Lodges of England, and
a new Book of Constitutions having been adopted for the united body, the
Ahiman Rezon became useless, and no subsequent edition was ever published.
The earlier edit out oi this
work are among the rarest of Masonic publications, and are highly prized by
collectors.
In the year 1855, Leon Hyneman,
of Philadelphia, who was engaged in a reprint of old standard Masonic works,
an enterprise which should have received better patronage than it did,
republished the second edition, with a few explanatory notes.
As this book contains those
principles of Masonic law by which, over three-fourths of a century, a large
and intelligent portion of the Craft was governed; and as it is now becoming
rare and, to the generality of readers, inaccessible, some brief review of its
contents may not be uninteresting. In the preface or address to the reader,
Dermott pokes fun at the history of Freemasonry as written by Doctor Anderson
and others, and wittily explains the reason why he has not published a history
of Freemasonry.
There is next a Philacteri for
such Gentlemen as may be inclined to become Freemasons. This article, which
was not in the first edition, but appeared for the first time in the second,
consists of directions as to the method to be pursued by one who desires to be
made a Freemason. This is followed by an account of what Dermott calls Modern
Masonry, that is, the system pursued by the original Grand Lodge of England,
and of the differences existing between it and Ancient Masonry, or the system
of his own Grand Lodge. He contends that there are material differences
between the two systems; that of the Ancient being universal, and that of the
Moderns not; a Modern being able with safety to communicate all his secrets to
an Ancient, while an Ancient cannot communicate his to a Modern; a Modem
having no right to be called free and accepted; all of which, in his opinion,
show that the Ancient have secrets which are not in the possession of the
Moderns. This, he considers, a convincing proof that the Modern Freemasons
were innovators upon the established system, and had instituted their Lodges
and framed their ritual without a sufficient knowledge of the arcana of the
Craft. But the Modern Freemasons with more semblance of truth, thought that
the additional secrets oi the Ancient were only innovations that they had made
upon the true body of Freemasonry; and hence, they considered their ignorance
of these newly invented secrets was the best evidence of their own superior
antiquity. In the later editions Dermott has published the famous Leland
Manuscript, together with the commentaries of Locke; also the resolutions
adopted in 1772, by which the Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland agreed to
maintain a "Brotherly Connexion and correspondence" with the Grand Lodge of
England (Ancient).
The Ahiman Rezon proper, then,
begins with twenty-three pages of an encomium on Freemasonry, and an
explanation of its principles. Many a modem Masonic address is better written,
and contains more important and instructive matter than this prefatory
discourse.
Then follow The Old Charges of
the Free and Accepted Masons, taken from the 1738 edition of Anderson's
Constitutions. Next come A short charge to a new admitted Mason, The Ancient
manner of constituting a Lodge, a few prayers, and then the General
Regulations of the Free and Accepted Masons. These are borrowed mainly from
the second edition of Anderson with a few alterations and additions. After a
comparison of the Dublin and London Regulations for charity, the rest of the
book, comprising more than a hundred pages, consists of A collection of Masons
Songs, of the poetical merits of which the less said the better for the
literary reputation of the writers.
Imperfect, however, as was
this work, it for a long time constituted the statute book of the Ancient
Masons. Hence those Lodges in America which derived their authority from the
Dermott or Ancient Grand Lodge of England, accepted its contents as a true
exposition of Masonic law. Several of their Grand Lodges caused similar works
to be compiled for their own government, adopting the title of Ahiman Rezon,
which thus became the peculiar designation of the volume which contained the
fundamental law of the Ancient, while the original title of Book of
Constitutions continued to be retained by the Moderns, to designate the volume
used by them for the same purpose .
Of the Ahiman Rezons compiled
and published in America, the following are the principal: 1. Ahiman Rezon
abridged and digested; as a help to all that are or would be Free and Accepted
Masons, etc. Published by order of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania; by William
Smith, D.D. Philadelphia, 1783. A new Ahiman Rezon was published by the Grand
Lodge of Pennsylvania in 1825.
2. Charges and Regulation8 of
the Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons, extracted from
the Ahiman Rezon, etc. Published by the consent and direction of the Grand
Lodge of Nova Scotia. Halivax, 1786.
3. The New Ahiman Rezon,
containing the Laws and Constitution of Virginia, etc. By John K. Reade,
present Deputy Grand Master of Virginia, etc. Richmond, 1791. Another edition
was published in 1818, by James Henderson.
4. The Maryland Ahiman Rezon
of Free and Accepted Masons, containing the History of Masonry from the
establishment of the Grand Lodge to the present time; with their Ancient
Charges, Addresses, Prayers, Lectures, Prologues, Epilogues, Songs, etc.,
collected from the Old Records, Faithful Traditions and Lodge Books; by G.
Keating. Compiled by order of the Grand Lodge of Maryland. Baltimore, 1797.
5. The Ahiman Rezon and
Masonic Ritual, published by the order of the Grand Lodge of North Carolina
and Tennessee. Newbern, North Carolina, 1805.
6. An Ahiman Rezon, for the
use of the Grand Lodge of South Carolina, Ancient York Masons, and the Lodges
under the Register and Masonic Jurisdiction thereof. Compiled and arranged
with considerable additions, at the request of 'the Grand Lodge, and published
by their authority. By Brother Frederick Dalcho, M.D., etc. Charleston, South
Carolina, 1807. A second edition was published by the same author, in 1822,
and a third, in 1852, by Dr. Gilbert G. Mackey. In this third edition, the
title was changed to that of The Ahiman Rezon, or Book of Constitutions, etc.
Furthermore, the Work was in a great measure purged of the peculiarities of
Dermott, and made to conform more closely to the Andersonian Constitutions. A
fourth edition. Was published by the same editor, in 1871, from which
everything antagonistic to the original Book of Constitutions has been
omitted.
7. The Freemason's Library and
General Ahiman Rezon ; containing a delineation of the true principles of
Freemasonry, etc.; by Samuel Cole. Baltimore, 1817. 8vo, 332 + 92 pages. There
was a second edition in 1826.
8. Ahiman Rezon; prepared
under the direction of the Grand Lodge of Georgia; by Wm. S. Rockwell, Grand
Master of Masons of Georgia. Savannah, 1859. 4to and 8vo, 404 pages. But
neither this work nor the third and fourth edition of the Ahiman Rezon of
South Carolina had any connection in principle or theory with the Ahiman Rezon
of Dermott. They have borrowed the name from the Ancient Freemasons. but they
derive all their law aud their authorities from the Moderns, or, as Doctor
Mackey preferred to Call them, the legal Freemasons of the last century.
9. The General Ahiman Rezon and Freemason's Guild, by Daniel Sickles. New
York, 1866. 8vo, 408 . Pages. This book, like Rockwell's, has no other
connection with the work of Dermott but the name.
Many of the Grand Lodges of
the United States having derived their existence and authority from the
Dermott Grand Lodge, the influence of his Ahiman Rezon was for a long time
exercised over the Lodges of this country. Indeed, it is only within a
comparatively recent period that the true principles of Masonic law, as
expounded in the first editions of Anderson's Constitutions, have been
universally adopted among American Freemasons.
However, it must be observed,
in justice to Dermott, who has been rather too grossly abused by Mitchell and
a few other writers, that the innovations upon the old laws of Freemasonry,
which are to be found in the Ahiman Rezon, are for the most part not to be
charged upon him, but upon Doctor Anderson himself, who, for the first time,
introduced them into the second edition of the Book of Constitutions,
published in 1738. It is surprising, and accountable only on the ground of
sheer carelessness on the part of the supervising committee, that the Grand
Lodge should, in 1738, have approved of these alterations made by Anderson,
and still more surprising that it was not until 1756 that a new or third
edition of the Constitutions should have been published, in which these
alterations of 1738 were expunged, and the old regulations and the old
language restored. But whatever may have been the causes of this oversight, it
is not to be doubted that, at the time of the formation of the Grand Lodge of
the Ancient, the edition of the Book of Constitutions of 1738 was considered
as the authorized exponent of Masonic law by the earlier, or, as Doctor Mackey
would say, the original or regular Grand Lodge of England, and was adopted,
with but little change, by Dermott as the basis of his Ahiman Rezon. How much
this edition of 1738 differed from that of 1723, which is now considered the
only true authority for ancient law, and how much it agreed with Dermott's
Ahiman Rezon, will he evident from the following specimens of the first of the
Old Charges, correctly taken from each of the three works:
First of the Old Charges in
the Book of Constitutions, edition of 1723:
"A Mason is obliged by his
tenure to obey the moral law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will
never be a stupid Atheist, nor an irreligious libertine. But though in ancient
times Masons were charged, in every country, to be of the religion of that
country or nation, whatever it was, yet it is now thought more expedient only
to oblige them to that religion in which all men agree, leaving their
particular opinions to themselves; that is to be good men and true, or men of
honor aud honesty, by whatever denominations or persuasions they may be
distinguished; whereby Masonry becomes the center of union, and the means of
conciliating true friendship among persons that must have remained at a
perpetual distance."
First of the Old Charges in
the Book of Constitutions, edition of 1738:
"A Mason is obliged by his
tenure to observe the moral law, as a true Noach.ida; and if he rightly
understands the Craft, he will never be a stupid Atheist, nor an irreligious
libertine, nor act against conscience.
"In Ancient times, the
Christian Masons were charged to comply with the Christian usages of each
country where they traveled or worked. But Masonry being found in all nations,
even of divers religions, they are now only charged to adhere to that religion
in which all men agree (leaving each Brother to his own particular opinions;
that is, to be good men and true, men of honor and honesty, by whatever names,
religions, or persuasions they may be distinguished; for they all agree in the
three great articles of Noah enough to preserve the cement of the Lodge. Thus,
Masonry is the center of their union, and the happy means of conciliating
persons that otherwise must have remained at a perpetual distance."
First of the Old Charges in
Dermott's Ahiman Rezon:
"A Mason is obliged by his
tenure to observe the moral law, as a true Noachido ; and if he rightly
understands the Craft, he will never be a stupid Atheist, nor an irreligious
libertine, nor act against conscience.
"In Ancient times, the
Christian Masons were charged to comply with the Christian usages of each
country where they traveled or worked; being found in all nations, even of
divers religions.
"They are generally charged to adhere to that religion in which all men agree
(leaving each brother to his own particular opinions) ; that is, to be good
men and true, men of honor and honesty, by whatever names religions, or
persuasions they may be distinguished; for they all agree in the three great
article of Noah enough to preserve the cement of the Lodge.
"Thus, Masonry is the center of their union, and the happy means of
conciliating persons that otherwise must have remained at a perpetual
distance. "
The italics in the second and
third extracts will show what innovations Anderson made in 1738 on the Charges
as originally published in 1723, and how closely Dermott followed him in
adopting these changes. There is, in fact, much less difference between the
Ahiman Rezon of Dermott and Anderson's edition of the Book of Constitutions,
printed in 1738, than there is between the latter and the first edition of the
Constitutions, printed in 1723. But the great points of difference between the
"Ancient" and the "Moderns," points which kept them apart for so many years,
are to be found in their work and ritual, for an account of which the reader
is referred to the article Ancient Freemasons.
*
AHISAR
See Achishar
*
AHOLIAB
A skillful artificer of the
tribe of Dan, who was appointed, together with Bezaleel, to construct the
tabernacle in the wilderness and the ark of the covenant (Exodus xxxi, 6). He
is referred to in the Royal Arch Degree of the English and American systems.
*
AHRIMAN
See Ormuzd and Ahriman, also
Zoroaster.
*
AID AND ASSISTANCE
The duty of aiding and
assisting, not only all worthy distressed Master Masons, but their widows and
orphans also, "wheresoever dispersed over the face of the globe, " is one of
the most important obligations that is imposed upon every Brother of the
mystic tie by the whole scope and tenor of the Masonic Institution.
The regulations for the
exercise of this duty are few, but rational. In the first place, a Master
Mason who is in distress has a greater claim, under equal circumstances, to
the aid and assistance of his brother, than one who, being in the Order, has
not attained that Degree, or who, is altogether a profane. This is strictly in
accordance with the natural instincts of the human heart, which will always
prefer a friend to a stranger, or, as it is rather energetically expressed in
the language of Long Tom Coffin "a messmate before a shipmate, a shipmate
before a stranger, and a stranger before a dog''; and it is also strictly in
accordance with the teaching of the Apostle to the Gentiles, who has said: "As
we have therefore opportunity, Let us do good unto all men, especially unto
them who are of the household of faith" (see Galatians vi, 10). But this
exclusiveness is only to be practiced under circumstances which make a
selection imperatively necessary. Where the granting of relief to the profane
would incapacitate us from granting similar relief to our Brother, then must
the preference be given to him who is "of the household." But the earliest
symbolic lessons of the ritual teach the Freemason not to restrict his
benevolence within the narrow1imits of the Fraternity, but to acknowledge the
claims of all men who need it, to assistance. Linwood has beautifully said:
"The humble condition both of property and dress, of penury and want, in which
you were received into the Lodge, should make you at all times sensible of the
distresses of poverty, and all you can spare from the call of nature and the
due care of your families, should only remain in your possessions as a ready
sacrifice to the necessities of an unfortunate, distressed brother. Let the
distressed cottage feel the warmth of your Masonic zeal, and, if possible,
exceed even the unabating ardour of Christian charity. At your approach let
the orphan cease to weep, and in the sound of your voice let the widow forget
her sorrow" (Sermons, page 18).
Another restriction laid upon
this duty of aid and assistance by the obligations of Freemasonry is, that the
giver shall not be lavish beyond his means in the disposition of his
benevolence. What he bestows must be such as he can give "without material
injury to himself or family." No man should wrong his wife or children that he
may do a benefit to a stranger, or even to a Brother. The obligations laid on
a Freemason to grant aid and assistance to the needy and distressed seem to be
in the following gradations, first to his family; next, to his Brethren; and,
lastly, to the world at large.
So far this subject has been
viewed in a general reference to that spirit of kindness which should actuate
all men, and which it is the object of Masonic teaching to impress on the mind
of every Freemason as a common duty of humanity, and whose disposition
Freemasonry only seeks to direct and guide. But there is another aspect in
which this subject may be considered, namely, in that peculiar and technical
one of Masonic aid and assistance due from one Freemason to another. Here
there is a duty declared, and a correlative right inferred; for if it is the
duty of one Freemason to assist another, it follows that every Freemason has
the right to claim that assistance from his Brother. It is this duty that the
obligations of Freemasonry are especially intended to enforce; it is this
right that they are intended to sustain.
The symbolic ritual of
Freemasonry which refers, as, for instance, in the First Degree, to the virtue
of benevolence, refers to it in the general sense of a virtue which all men
should practice. But when the Freemason reaches the Third Degree, he discovers
new obligations which restrict and define the exercise of this duty of aid and
assistance. So far as his obligations control him, the Freemason, as a
Freemason, is not legally bound to extend his aid beyond the just claimants in
his own Fraternity. To do good to all men is, of course, inculcated and
recommended; to do good to the household of faith is enforced and made
compulsory by legal enactment aud sanction.
Now, as there is here, on one side, a duty, and on the other side a right, it
is proper to inquire what are the regulations or laws by which this duty is
controlled and this right maintained. The duty to grant and the right to claim
relief Masonically is recognized in the following passages of the Old Charges
of l722:
"But if you discover him to be
a true and genuine Brother, you are to respect him accordingly; and if he is
in want, you must relieve him if you can, or else direct him how he may be
relieved. You must employ him some days, or else recommend him to be employed.
But you are not charged to do beyond your ability; only to prefer a poor
brother, that is a good man and true, before any other poor people in the same
circumstances.''
This written law agrees in its
conditions and directions, so far as it goes, with the unwritten law of the
Order, and from the two we may deduce the following principles:
1. The applicant must be a
Master Mason. In 1722, the charitable benefits of Freemasonry were extended,
it is true, to Entered Apprentices, and an Apprentice was recognized, in the
language of the law, as "a true and genuine brother." But this was because at
that time only the First Degree was conferred in subordinate Lodges, Fellow
Crafts and Master Masons being made in the Grand Lodge.
Hence the great mass of the
Fraternity consisted of Apprentices, and many Freemasons never proceeded any
further. But the Second and Third Degrees are now always conferred in
subordinate Lodges, and very few initiates voluntarily stop short of the
Master's Degree. Hence the mass of the Fraternity now consists of Master
Masons, and the law which formerly applied to Apprentices is, under our
present organization, made applicable only to those who have become Master
Masons.
2. The applicant must be
worthy. We are to presume that every Freemason is "a good man and true'' until
a Lodge has pronounced to the contrary. Every Freemason who is "in good
standing," that is, who is a regularly contributing member of a Lodge, is to
be considered as worthy, in the technical sense of the term. An expelled, a
suspended, or a nonaffiliated Freemason does not meet the required condition
of ''a regularly contributing member.'' Such a Freemason is therefore not
worthy, and is not entitled to Masonic assistance.
3. The giver is not expected
to exceed his ability in the amount of relief. The written law says, "you are
not charged to do beyond your ability"; the Unwritten law requires that your
relief must be "without material injury to yourself or family." The principle
is the same in both.
4. The widow and orphans of a
Master Mason have the claim of the husband and father extended to them. The
written law says nothing explicitly on this point, but the unwritten or
ritualistic law expressly declares that it is our duty "to contribute to the
relief of a worthy, distressed brother, his widow and orphans."
5. And lastly, in granting
relief or assistance, the Freemason is to be preferred to the profane. He must
be placed "before any other poor people in the same circumstances."
These are the laws which
regulate the doctrine of Masonic aid and assistance.
They are often charged by the
enemies of Freemasonry with showing a spirit of exclusiveness. But it has been
shown that they are in accordance with the exhortation of the Apostle, who
would do good "especially to those who are of the household of faith," and
they have the warrant of the law of nature; for everyone will be ready to say,
with that kindest-hearted of men, Charles Lamb, "I can feel for all
indifferently, but I cannot feel for all alike. I can be a friend to a worthy
man, who, upon another account, cannot be my mate or fellow.
I cannot like all people
alike.'' So also as Freemasons, while we should be charitable to all persons
in need or in distress, there are only certain ones who can claim the aid and
assistance of the Order, or of its disciples, under the positive sanction of
Masonic law.
*
AITCHISON'S-HAVEN LODGE
Also spelled ATCHESON, ACHISON.
This was one of the oldest Operative Lodges consenting to the formation of the
Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1736. The age of this Lodge, like many or most of
the oldest Lodges of Scotland, is not known. Some of its members signed the
Saint Clair Charters in 1600 and 1601. The place of its meeting, Aitchison-Haven,
is no longer on the map, but was in the County of Midlothian. The origin of
the town was from a charter of James V, dated 1526, and probably the Lodge
dated near that period. Aitchison's-Haven was probably the first
meeting-place, but they seem to have met at Musselburgh at a later period.
Lyon, in his History of the
Lodge of Edinburgh, speaks of trouble in the Grand Quarterly Communication
respecting representatives from this Lodge when in May, 1737, it was "agreed
that Atcheson's Haven be deleted out of the books of the Grand Lodge, and no
more called on the rolls of the Clerk's highest peril."
The Lodge was restored to the
roll in 1814, but becoming dormant, it was finally cut off in 1866. The Lodge
of Edinburgh has long enjoyed the distinction of having the oldest preserved
Lodge Minute, which is dated July, 1599.
Just recently Brother R. E.
Wallace-James has brought to light a Minute Book bearing this title: The Buik
of the Actis and Ordinans of the Nobile Maisteris and fellows of Craft of the
Ludg of Aitchison's heavine, and contains a catalogue of the names of the
fellows of Craft that are presently in the Zeir of God 1598.
The first page of this rare
book bears in a bold hand the date 1598.
The Minute to which we have
already referred is as follows :
"The IX day of Januerie the Zeir of God upon ye quhilk day Robert Widderspone
was maid fellow of Craft in ye presens of Wilzam Aytone Elder, Johne Fender
being Warden, Johne Pedden Thomas Pettencrief John Crafurd George Aytone
Wilzame Aytone younger Hendric Petticrief all fellowis of Craft upon ye quhilk
day he chois George Aytone Johne Pedded to be his intenders and instructouris
and also ye said Robert hes payit his xx sh. and his gluffis to everie Maister
as efferis" (see 'volume xxiv, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum).
*
AITCHISON'S-HAVEN MANUSCRIPT
One of the Old Charges, or
records of Freemasonry now in the custody of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, was
formerly preserved in the archives of the Aitchison-Haven Lodge, which met
later on at Musselburgh in Scotland. The manuscript. is engrossed in the
Minute Book of Aitchison-Haven Lodge. The writer attests to his transcription
in the following manner:
"Insert by me undersub and the
19" of May, 1666, Jo. Auchinleck, clerk to the Masones of Achisones Lodge."
This manuscript. has been
reproduced, with 24 lines in facsimile, by D. Murray Lyon in his History of
the Lodge of Edinburgh.
*
AIX-LA-CHAPELLE
The French name of what is
called in German, Aachen. A city of Germany, remarkable in Masonic history for
a persecution which took place in the eighteenth century, and of which Gadicke,
in his Freimaurer Lexicon, 1818 and 183l, gives the following account:
In the year 1779, Ludwig
Grienemann, a Dominican monk, a follower of Dominic de Guzman, who founded an
Order whose violent zeal led to the atrocities of the Inquisition in Spain and
elsewhere, delivered a course of Lenten sermons, in which he attempted to
prove that the Jews who crucified Christ were Freemasons, that Pilate and
Herod were Wardens in a Freemason's Lodge, that Judas, previous to his
betrayal of his Master, was initiated into the Order, and that the thirty,
pieces of silver, which he is said to have returned, was only the fee which he
paid for his initiation. Aix-1a-Chapelle being a Roman Catholic city, the
magistrates were induced, by the influence of Grienemann, to issue a decree,
in which they declared that anyone who should permit a meeting of the
Freemasons in his house should, for the first offense, be fined 100 florins,
for the second 200, and for the third, be banished from the city. The mob
became highly incensed against the Freemasons, and insulted all whom they
suspected to be members of the Order.
At length Peter Schuff, a
Capuchin, so called from the capuche, or pointed hood, worn by the monks of
this Order, jealous of the influence which the Dominican Grienemann was
exerting, began also, with augmented fervor, to preach against Freemasonry,
and still more to excite the popular commotion.
In this state of affairs, the
Lodge at Aix-la-Chapelle applied to the princes and Masonic Lodges in the
neighboring territories for assistance and protection, which were immediately
rendered. A letter in French was received by both priests, in which the
Writer, who stated that he was one of the former dignitaries of the Order,
strongly, reminded them of their duties, and, among other things, said that
"Many priests, a pope, several cardinals, bishops, and even Dominican and
Capuchin monks, had been, and still were, members of the Order." Although this
remonstrance had some effect, peace was not altogether restored until the
neighboring free imperial states threatened that they would prohibit the monks
from collecting alms in their territories unless they ceased to excite the
popular commotion against the Freemasons.
*
AKIROP
The name given, in the ritual
of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, to one of the ruffians celebrated in the
legend of the Third Degree. The word is said in the ritual to signify, an
assassin. It might probably be derived from ..., KaRaB. to assault or join
battle; but is just as probably a word so corrupted by long oral transmission
that its etymology can no longer be traced (see Abiram).
*
ALABAMA
Before the institution of the
Grand Lodge of Alabama several Lodges there were organized by other Grand
Jurisdictions. The first of these was Madison, No. l, at. Huntsville,
established by, the Grand Lodge of Kentucky, under Dispensation dated August
29, 1811. A Charter was issued to this Lodge on August 28, 1812. On June 11,
1821, a Convention was held at Cahaba in the Hall of Halo Lodge for the
purpose of constituting a Grand Lodge, Nine Lodges were represented;
namely, Halo Lodge, No. 21;
Madison Lodge, No. 21; Saint Stephens Lodge; Rising Virtue Lodge, No. 30;
Alabama Lodge, No. 51; Farrar Lodge, No. 41; Alabama Lodge, No. 21; Moulton
Lodge, No. 34; Russellville Lodge, No. 36. Brother J. W. Farrar who presided
over the meeting was the first Grand Master. Charters were issued to nine
Lodges on June 15, l821, and to three others at the Annual Communication of
December 11, 1821.
In l826 the Anti-Masonic
agitation in the United States caused the Grand Lodge of Alabama, like very
many others, to fade out of existence. A meeting was held at Tuscaloosa on
December 6, l836, when, as there was not a quorum present, the Grand Lodge was
declared extinct. At this meeting were present twelve brethren who declared
the meeting a Convention in order to form a new Constitution and create a new
Grand Lodge. They appointed William Leigh, Chairman, and John H. Vincent,
Secretary. Grand Lodge officers were elected and John C. Hicks was installed
the first Most Worshipful Grand Master under the new Constitution. The Grand
Lodge was then opened in Ample Form.
Prior to May, 1823, there were
four Chapters in Alabama, all chartered by the General Grand Chapter. In May
and June, 1823, delegates of these met and decided to form a Grand Chapter of
Alabama.
The General Grand Chapter,
however, did not sanction it because one year had not elapsed since the
establishment of the Junior Chapter of the four. On June 2, 1827, the Grand
Chapter was reorganized, and met annually, until l830. On December 8, l837,
the delegates from the several Chapters of the State met and recognized the
Grand Chapter.
By authority of John Barker, a
member of the Southern Supreme Council, several Councils were established and
on December 13, 1838, 27 Royal and Select Masters assembled and formed the
Grand Council of Alabama.
The first Commandery to be
established in Alabama was Washington, No. l, at Marion, which was chartered
in l844. This Commandery with four others, Mobile, No. 2; Montgomery, No. 4;
Selma, No. 5 ; Tuscumbia, No. 3, agreed to meet of December 1, 1860, and they
organized the Grand Commandery of Knights Templar for the State of Alabama. At
the actual meeting the representative of Washington, No, l, was absent.
A Consistory of the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite, Alabama, No. 1, at Birmingham, was chartered on
December 27, 1900, and a Council of Kadosh was established at Birmingham, No.
1, on September 21, 1599. Hermes, No. 1, at Montgomery, was constituted a
Chapter of Rose Croix by Letters Temporary and a Charter was given to Alabama,
No. 1, as a Lodge of Perfection on April 13, 1574.
*
ALAPA
A Latin word signifying a blow
on the cheek with the open hand. Such a blow was given by the master to his
manumitted slave as a symbol of manumission, and as a reminder that it was the
last unrequited indignity which he was to receive. In fact, the very word
manumit is derived from two Latin words meaning to send by hand. Hence, in
medieval times, the same word was applied to the blow inflicted on the cheek
of the newly created knight by the sovereign who created him, with the same
symbolic signification. This was sometimes represented by the blow on the
shoulder with the flat of a sword, which has erroneously been called the
accolade (see Knighthood).
*
ALARM
The verb to alarm signifies, in Freemasonry, to give notice of the approach of
some one desirinq admission. Thus, to alarm the Lodge is to inform the Lodge
that there is some one without who is seeking entrance.
As a noun, the word alarm has
two significations :
1.An alarm is a warning given
by the Tiler, or other appropriate officer, by which he seeks to communicate
with the interior of the Lodge or Chapter.
In this sense the expression
so often used, "an alarm at the door," simply signifies that the officer
outside has given notice of his desire to communicate with the Lodge.
2. An alarm is also the
peculiar mode in which this notice is to be given. In modern Masonic works,
the number of knocks given in an alarm is generally expressed by musical
notes. Thus, three distinct knocks would be designated thus, . . .; two rapid
and two slow ones thus,. . . - - and three knocks , three times repeated thus,
. . ./. . . /. . . , etc. The word comes from the French alarme, which in
return comes from the Italian all'arme, literally a cry to arms, uttered by
sentinels surprised by the enemy. The legal meaning of to alarm is not to
frighten, but to make one aware of the necessity of defense or protection.
This is precisely the Masonic
signification of the world.
*
ALASKA
The Grand Master of the
Territory, of Washington issued, on April 14, 1868, a Dispensation to form a
Lodge at Sitka, Alaska. This Dispensation was renewed on October 13, 1868, and
on September 17, 1869, a Charter was granted to Alaska Lodge, No. 14. This
Charter was revoked on October 28, 1872. A Commission as Deputy Grand Master
for Alaska Was, on September 18, 1869, issued under the same authority to
Brother W. H. Wood, P.D. G.M. December 9, 1879, a Dispensation was issued by
the Grand Lodge of the Territory of Washington for a new Lodge at Sitka and in
due course a Charter Was granted to Jamestown Lodge, No. 33, on January 3,
1880. This Charter was returned and canceled on June 4, 1886. A Dispensation
from the Grand Lodge of Washington was issued on November 15, 1900, and a
Charter granted on June 12, 1901, to White Pass Lodge, No. 113, of Skagway.
Other Lodges chartered in Alaska by the same Grand Lodge have been Gastineaux
Lodge, No. 124, at Douglas, on June 10, 1903; Anvil Lodge, No. 140, at Nome,
on June 14, 1905; Mt. Juneau Lodge, No. 147, at Juneau, on June 14, 1905;
Ketchikan Lodge, No. 159, at Ketchikan, on June 12, 1907; Tanana Lodge, No.
l62, at Fairbanks, on June 17, 1908; Valdez Lodge, No, 168, at Valdez, on June
17, 1908; Mount McKinley Lodge, No, 183, at Cordova, on June 14, 1911; Seward
Lodge, No. 219, at Seward, on June 14, 1917; Anchorage Lodge, No. 221, at
Anchorage, on June 14, 1917.
A Royal Arch Chapter was
authorized at Fairbanks by Dispensation from the General Grand High Priest
Nathan Kingsley, on June 15, 1909, and this Chapter was granted a Charter on
November 12, 1909. Seward Chapter at Nome received a Dispensation dated July
13, 1911, from General Grand High Priest Bernard G. Witt, and a Charter was
granted on September 12, 1912. A third Chapter received a Dispensation from
General Grand High Priest Frederick W. Craig dated January 16, 1919, and
Charter was granted on September 29, 1921, to Anchorage Chapter at Anchorage.
The first Council of Royal and
Select Masters was authorized at Fairbanks on March 16, 1914, and was granted
a Charter as Artic Council, No. l, by the General Grand Council on August 31,
1915.
Alaska Commandery, No. l, was
authorized by the Grand Encampment, Knights Templar of the United States, on
August 14, 1913, at Fairbanks, and a Dispensation for Anchorage Commandery,
No. 2, at Anchorage was issued on July 1, 1920, by Grand Master Joseph K. Orr.
Alaska No, I, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, at
Juneau, was established a Consistory by Charter granted October 22, 1915.
By Charters granted October
22, 1915, October 23, 1915, and October 16, 1911, respectively, at the same
body were established a Council of Kadosh, a Chapter of Rose Croix and a Lodge
of Perfection.
*
ALAVA, MIGUEL RICARDO DE
Famous Spanish General,
Aide-de-Camp under the Duke of Wellington and in 1814 imprisoned for being a
Freemason.
*
ALBAN, SAINT
See Saint Alban
*
ALBERTA
(Canada). The Grand Lodge of
Manitoba had jurisdiction over the Lodges in the Northwest Territories of
Canada but the division of these into Provinces, on September 1, 1905,
influenced Medicine Hat Lodge, No. 31, to invoke the oldest Masonic Body, Bow
River Lodge, No. 28, to call a preliminary Convention at Calgary on May 25,
1905.
This was followed by another
meeting on October 12, 1905, when seventeen lodges were represented by
seventy-nine delegates, the Grand Lodge of Alberta was duly organized, and
Brother Dr. George MacDonald elected Grand Master and was installed by Grand
Master W. G. Scott of the Grand Lodge of Manitoba.
*
ALBERTUS MAGNUS
A scholastic philosopher of
the Middle Ages, of great learning, but who had among the vulgar the
reputation of being a magician.
He was born at Lauingen,
Swabia, in 1205, of an illustrious family, his subtitle being that of Count of
Bollstadt. He studied at Padua, and in 1223 entered the Order of the
Dominicans. In 1249 he became head-master of the school at Cologne. In 1260
Pope Alexander VI conferred upon him the bishopric of Ratisbon. In 1262 he
resigned the episcopate and returned to Cologne, and, devoting himself to
philosophic pursuits for the remainder of his life, died there in 1280. His
writings were very voluminous, the edition published at Lyons, in 1651,
amounting to twenty-one large folio volumes.
Albertus Magnus has been
connected with the Operative Freemasonry of the Middle Ages because he has
been supposed by many to have been the real inventor of the German Gothic
style of architecture.
Heideloff, in his Bauhhutte
des Mittelalters, says that "he recalled into life the symbolic language of
the ancients, which had so long lain dormant, and adapted it to suit
architectural forms. " The Freemasons were said to have accepted his
instructions, with a system of symbols which was secretly communicated only to
the members of their own body, and served even as a medium of
intercommunication. He is asserted to have designed the pian for the
construction of the cathedral of cologne, and to have altered the Constitution
of the Freemasons, and to have given to them a new set of laws.
*
ALBRECHT, HEINRICH CHRISTOPH
A German author, who published
at Hamburg, in 1792, the first and only part of a work entitled Materialen zu
einer kritischen Geschichte der Freimaurerei, meaning Collections towards a
Critical History of Freemasonry.
Kloss says that this was one
of the first attempts at a clear and rational history of the Order.
Unfortunately, the author never completed his task, and only the first part of
the work ever appeared. Albrecht was the author also of another work entitled
Geheime Geschichte eines Rosenkreuzers, or Secret History of a Rosicrucian,
and of a series of papers which appeared in the Berlin Archive der Zeit,
containing Notices of Freemasonry in the first half of the Sixteenth Century.
Albrecht adopted the theory
first advanced by the Abb‚ Grandidier, that Freemasonry owes its origin to the
Steinmetzen of Germany (see Stone-masons of the Middle Ages ).
*
ALCHEMY
The Neo-Platonicians
introduced at an early period of the Christian era an apparently new science,
which they called .............…, or the Sacred Science, which materially
influenced the subsequent condition of the arts and sciences. In the fifth
century arose, as the name of the science, alchemia, derived from the Arabic
definite article al being added to chemia, a Greek word used in Diocletian's
decree against Egyptian works treating of the ...... or transmutation of
metals; the word seems simply to mean "the Egyptian Art," ......, or the land
of black earth, being the Egyptian name for Egypt, and Julius Firmicius, in a
work On the Influence of the Stars upon the Fate of Man, uses the phrase
scientia alchemiac. From this time the study" Of alchemy was openly followed.
In the Middle Ages, and up to the end of the seventeenth century, it was an
important science, studied by some of the most distinguished philosophers,
such as Avicenna, Albertus Magnus, Raymond Lulli, Roger Bacon, Elias Ashmole,
and many others. Alchemy has also been called the Hermetic Philosophy, because
it is said to have been first taught in Egypt by Hermes Trismegistus.
Alchemists are those who
practised the art or science of alchemy, the pioneer chemistry of the Middle
Ages, either alone or in a group with others seeking the transmutation of base
metals into gold the elixir of life, etc, The word alchemy is evidently from
the same root as chemistry and is related to Khem, the name of the Egyptian
god of curative herbs. The Greeks called Egypt Chemita and in the ancient
Egyptian, according to Plutarch, the country was called Khem because of the
black color of the soil but the standard Dictionary prefers the first of these
explanations. An Egyptian priest, Hermes Trismegistus, the Thrice-greatest
Hermes, supposed to have lived about 2000 B.C., was one of the first to
practice alchemy. Although our accounts of him are of a purely legendary
character; so closely has the name of alchemy been connected with him that it
became generally referred to as the Hermetic Art.
Toward the end of the eighth
century. we have another famous alchemist, Geber, who wrote many books and
treatises in Latin on the transmutation of metals and kindred subjects,
setting forth many of the formulas, as well as the scientific, mystical and
philosophical aspects of the art at that early period.
In the tenth century there was
an Arabian medical philosopher named Rhazes or Rhasis, who numbered among his
writings one, The Establishment of Alchemy, which caused him great misfortune.
It is said that he presented a copy of this work to his prince, who
immediately demanded that he verify some of his experiments. Failing in this,
he was struck across the face with a whip so violently by the prince that he
was blinded. During the next three or four centuries alchemy was studied by
the scientists or chemists, as they are called today, and to them must be
reedited the development of science such as it was until the Middle Ages.
Unfortunately, the mystical terms in which the art was clothed, the great
secrecy in which all knowledge was kept and the esoteric quality of the
teaching made it a natural prey of the charlatans, quacks, necromancers and
fortune-tellers who thrived upon the ignorance and superstition of the people.
There are on record several instances of these adepts being put to death as a
result of their inability to demonstrate certain claims made by them. Many
sincere and learned scientific men came under the ban owing to the disrepute
into which the art had failed and their work had to be done in secret to avoid
punishment and death. J. E. Mercer in his Alchenly says that Marie Ziglerin
was bummed to death by Duke Julius of Brunswick in 1575. David Benther killed
himself in fear of the anger of the Elector Augustus of Saxony. In 1590 the
Elector of Bavaria had Bragadino hanged and the Margrave of Bayreuth caused a
like fate to befall William de Krohnemann.
A well-known example of the
use to which alchemy was put was the case of Cagliostro. Kings and rulers
retained alchemists in their employ, consulting them as to future events and
often basing their campaigns upon the prophecies of their wise men. It was
when these prophecies turned out contrary to expectations that the rulers took
their revenge by condemning their counselors to death or imprisonment.
The first man of record to put
alchemy to medical use was Paracelsus, probably born near Zurich, in 1493 and
dying in 1541. He became a great teacher of medicine and has been proclaimed
by the Encyclopedia Britannica as ''the pioneer of modern chemists and the
prophet of a revolution in science. " Many new and powerful drugs were
produced in his laboratory among which was laudanum. He was in great disfavor
with the medical men of his time, he having done much to destroy many of the
traditions and errors practiced by them, After his death a score of alchemists
claimed the power of euring bodily ailments by the mystical powers of the
philosopher's Stone, health and long life being among the benefits supposed to
be derived from the art. Thory says that there was a society of alchemists at
The Hague in 1622 which called itself Rose Croiz. It is claimed that
Rosenkreutz founded the Order in 1459 with the ordinance that its existence
should be kept a secret for two hundred years. Another organization of
alchemists was known to have been in existence in 1790 in Westphalia, the
Hermetic Society, which continued to flourish until about 1819. During the
Middle Ages alchemy came in for the attention and study at least of many of
the foremost men of the time. Raymond.
Lully, Roger Bacon, Albertus
Magnus and Thomas Aquinas made it the subject of many of their writings and it
was not until the middle of the fifteenth century that the science as
practised by the earlier artificers was relegated to the past. At that time an
alchemical center was established in England at Oxford, Robert Boyle
organizing a class for experiment and research. Such men as Elias Ashmole and
Sir Isaac Newton assisted in the project and John Locke and Christopher Wren
were among the pupils. A renowned Rosicrucian chemist was brought over from
Strasburg. As a result of this determined and consistent work a new
understanding of chemistry and physics was developed, marking the beginning of
the modern science as it is known today.
For a more detailed account
see J. E. Mercer's Alchemy, M. M. Pattison Muir"s The Story of Alchemy and
Lewis Spence's An Encyclopedia of Occultism.
Astrology and the magic arts
are usually associated with alchemy but we may fairly look upon it as having
had a wider scientific scope. Indeed alchemy was the pioneer of our modern
systematic chemistry. The alchemists of old sought by observation and
experiment, by research and reflection, to gain the secret of nature's
operations. Their early dreams were ambitious but not idle of a discovery of
the means to change base metals into gold, and the concoction of an elixir to
cure all diseases and overcome death.
From these hopes have come
less revolutionary results but the gains have nevertheless been wondrously
beneficial. Even the language of the ancient alchemists persists with a
curious tenacity. They applied moral qualities, virtues and vices, to things
of nature and today we still speak of noble and base metals, of gases perfect
and imperfect, of good and bad electrical conductors, and so on. A meed of
gratitude is due from us to these laborers who trod a thorny path in their
zealous studies of physical forces. Against the prevailing superstitions, the
lack of ready communications with other investigators and of a complete
practical working knowledge of recent or remote discoveries, these hardy
students laid the foundation for later conquests.
Fraud was tempting, fakers were easily made, yet honesty and fervor was
manifest in so much of what was accomplished that we owe a distinct debt to
the alchemists. Poor they were, yet rich, for as Alexander Pope says of them
and their successors in his Essay on Man (ii, line 269) : "The starving
chemist in his golden views, supremely blest.''
Freemasonry and alchemy have
sought the same results (the lesson of Divine Truth and the doctrine of
immortal life), and they have both sought it by the same method of symbolism.
It is not, therefore, strange that in the eighteenth century, and perhaps
before, we find an incorporation of much of the science of alchemy into that
of Freemasonry. Hermetic Rites and Hermetic Degrees were common, and their
relics are still to be found existing in degrees which do not absolutely trace
their origin to alchemy, but which show some of its traces in their rituals.
The Twenty-eighth Degree of
the Scottish Rite, or the Knight of the Sun, is entirely a Hermetic study, and
claims its parentage in the title of Adept of Masonry, by which it is
sometimes known.
*
ALDWORTH, HON. MRS.
This lady, who is well known
as the Lady Freemason, was the Hon.Elizabeth St. Leger, daughter of Lord
Doneraile of Doneraile Court, County Cork, Ireland. She was born in 1693, and
married in 1713 to Richard Aldworth, Esq., of Newmarket Court, County Cork.
There appears to be no doubt
that while a girl she received the First and Second Degrees of Freemasonry in
Ireland, but of the actual circumstances of her initiation several different
accounts have been given. Of these the most authentic appears to be one issued
at Cork, with the authority of the family, in 1811, and afterward republished
in London. From this narrative it appears that her father, Viscount Doneraile,
together with bisons and a few friends, was accustomed to open a Lodge and
carry on the ordinary ceremonies at Doneraile Court, and it was during one of
these meetings that the occurrence took place which is thus related:
"It happened on this
particular occasion that the Lodge was held in a room separated from another,
as is often the case, by stud and brickwork. The young lady, being giddy and
thoughtless, and determined to gratify her curiosity, made her arrangements
accordingly, and, with a pair of scissors (as she herself related to the
mother of our informant), removed a portion of a brick from the wall, and
placed herself so as to command a full view of everything which occurred in
the next room; so placed, she witnessed the first two degrees in Freemasonry,
which was the extent of the proceedings of the Lodge on that night.
Becoming aware, from what she
heard, that the Brethren were about to separate, for the first time she felt
tremblingly alive to the awkwardness and danger of her situation, and began to
consider how she could retire without observation. She became nervous and
agitated, and nearly fainted, but so far recovered herself as to be fully
aware of the necessity of withdrawing as quickly as possible; in the act of
doing so, being in the dark, she stumbled against and overthrew something,
said to be a chair or some ornamental piece of furniture.
"The crash was loud ; and the
Tiler, who was on the lobby or landing on which the doors both of the Lodge
room and that where the Honorable Miss St. Leger was, opened, gave the alarm,
burst open the door and, with a light in one hand and a drawn sword in the
other, appeared to the now terrified and fainting Lady. He was soon joined by
the members of the Lodge present, and luckily; for it is asserted that but for
the prompt appearance of her brother, Lord Doneraile, and other steady
members, her life would have fallen a sacrifice to what was then esteemed her
crime. The first care of his Lordship was to resuscitate the unfortunate Lady
without alarming the house, and endeavor to learn from her an explanation of
what had occurred; having done so, many of the members being furious at the
transaction, she was placed under guard of the Tiler and a member, in the room
where she was found. The members reassembled and deliberated as to what, under
the circumstances, was to be done, and over two long hours she could hear the
angry discussion and her death deliberately proposed and seconded.
"At length the good sense of
the majority succeeded in calming, in some measure, the angry and irritated
feeling of the rest of the members, when, after much had been said and many.
things proposed, it was resolved to give her the option of submitting to the
Masonic ordeal to the extent she had witnessed (Fellow Craft), and if she
refused, the brethren were again to consult. Being waited on to decide, Miss
St. Leger, exhausted and terrified by the storminess of the debate, which she
could not avoid partially hearing, and yet, notwithstanding all, with a secret
pleasure, gladly and unhesitatingly accepted the offer.
She was accordingly
initiated."
The above reference to Lord
Doneraile, her brother, is a mistake ; her father, the first Lord Doneraile,
was then alive. He did not die until 1727, when his daughter had been married
for fourteen years.
A very different account is
given in the Freemason's Quarterly Review for 1839 (page 322 ), being
reprinted from the Cork Standard of May. 29, 1839.
According to this story Mirs.
Aldworth was seized with curiosity about the mysteries of Freemasonry and set
herself to discover them ; so she made friends with the landlady of an inn in
Cork in which a Lodge used to meet, and with her connivance was concealed in a
clock case which was placed in the Lodge room; however, she was unable to
endure the discomfort of her confinement in such narrow quarters and betrayed
herself by a scream, on which she was discovered by the members of the Lodge
and then and there initiated.
It will be observed that
according to this version the lady. was already married before she was
initiated.
The story is said to be
supported by the testimony of two members of Lodge 71, at Cork, in which Lodge
the initiation is said to have taken place. However, this can hardly be
correct, for that Lodge did not meet at Cork until 1777, whereas, Mrs.
Aldworth died in1773.
If, however, the commoner
version of the story is preferred, according to which Miss St. Leger was
initiated as a young girl, then the occurrence must have taken place before
her marriage in 1713, and therefore before the establishment of Grand Lodges
and the introduction of warranted and numbered Lodges, and it is therefore a
proof of the existence of at least one Lodge of Speculative Freemasons in
Ireland at an early period.
After her marriage Mrs.
Aldworth seems to have kept up her connection with the Craft, for her portrait
in Masonic clothing, her apron and jewels, are still in existence, and her
name occurs among the subscribers to Dassigny's Enquiry of 1744, her name
being the second on the list and immediately following that of the Grand
Master of Ireland, the accompanying names all being brethren ; and it has even
been stated that she presided as Master of her Lodge.
The story has been fully
discussed by Brothers Conder, Crawley, and others in the eighth volume (1895)
of the Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, of Quatuor Coronati Lodge of London, to which
the curious are referred for further information.
*
ALETHOPHILES
Greek for Lovers of Truth.
Graf von Manteuffel as president organized this society in Berlin, 1736, upon
Wolf's philosophical teaching, the search after positive truth. Kenning's
Cydopaedia of Freemasonry says they. adopted a hexalogue (from the Greek, six
and words) of axioms, of which two only are given by Lenning :
1. Let truth be the only end
and only object of your understanding and will.
2. Hold nothing for truth, Hold nothing for falsehood, as long as you are not
convinced of either by some sufficient grounds. In the system of the African
Builders, the fifth grade was called Alethophile, some connection seeming to
have existed between the two societies.
*
ALETHOPHILOTE
Lover of Truth. Given by Thory
as the Fifth Degree of the Order of African Architects (see his Acta
Latatomorum, 1, page 292).
*
ALEXANDER I
I, Emperor of Russia.
Alexander I succeeded Paul I in the year 1801, and immediately after his
accession renewed the severe prohibitions of his predecessor against all
secret societies, and especially Freemasonry. In1803, M. Boeber, counselor of
state and director of the military school at St.Petersburg, resolved to
remove, if possible, from the mind of the Emperor the prejudices which he had
conceived against the Order. Accordingly, in an audience which he had
solicited and obtained, he described the object of the Institution and the
doctrine of its mysteries in such a way as to lead the Emperor to rescind the
obnoxious decrees, and to add these words:
"What you have told me of the Institution not only induces me to grant it my
protection and patronage, but even to ask for initiation into its mysteries.
Is this possible to be obtained?" To this question M. Boeber replied:
"Sire, I cannot myself reply
to the question. But I will call together the Masons of your capital, and make
your Majesty`s desire known; and I have no doubt that they will be eager to
comply. with jour wishes."
Accordingly Alexander was soon
after initiated, and the Grand Orient of all the Russias was in consequence
established with M. Boeber as Grand Master (see Thory's Acta Latomorum1, page
218)
*
ALEXANDER III
king of Scotland, and legend
tells us that he favored Freemasons and that Kilwinning Abbey was built under
his guidance. Claims have been made that these facts refer rather to his son,
David I. The ritual of the Scottish Knight of Saint Andrew credits Alexander
as Protector of the Masonic Order.
*
ALEXANDRIA, SCHOOL OF
When Alexander built the city
of Alexandria in Egypt, with the intention of making it the seat of his
empire, he invited thither learned men from all nations, who brought with them
their peculiar notions. The Alexandria School of Philosophy which was thus
established, by the commingling of Orientalists, Jews, Egyptians, and Greeks,
became eclectic in character, and exhibited a heterogeneous mixture of the
opinions of the Egyptian priests, of the Jewish Rabbis, of Arabic teachers,
and of the disciples of Plato and Pythagoras.
From this school we derive
Gnosticism and the Cabala, and, above all, the system of symbolism and
allegory which lay at the foundation of the Masonic philosophy. To no ancient
sect, indeed, except perhaps the Pythagoreans, have the Masonic teachers been
so much indebted for the substance of their doctrines, as well as the esoteric
method of communicating them, as to that of the School of Alexandria. Both
Aristobulus and Philo, the two most celebrated chiefs of this school, taught,
although a century intervened between their births, the same , theory, that
the sacred writings of the Hebrews were, by their system of allegories, the
true source of all religious and philosophic doctrine, the literal meaning of
which alone was for the common people, the esoteric or hidden meaning being
kept for the initiated. Freemasonry still carries into practice the same
theory.
*
ALGERIA
The number of Lodges in
Algeria is, in comparison with the size of the State, quite large. Several are
controlled by the Grand Lodge of France and many more are under the Grand
Orient of that country, the Grand Orient having organized Bélisaire Lodge at
Alger on March 1, 1832, and Hippone Lodge at Bone on July 13, 1832.
*
ALINCOURT, FRANÇOIS D'
A French gentleman, who, in
the year 1776, was sent with Don Oyres de Ornellas Praçao, a Portuguese
nobleman, to prison, by the governor of the island of Madeira, for being
Freemasons. They were afterward sent to Lisbon, and confined in a common jail
for fourteen months, where they would have perished had not the Freemasons of
Lisbon supported them, through whose intercession , with Don Martinio de Mello
they were at last released (see Captain George Smith's Use and Abuse of
Freemasonry, page 206).
*
ALISON, SIR ARCHIBALD
English author, born December
29, 1792, at Kenley, Shropshire, England; died at Glasgow, Scotland, May 23,
1867. A member of Glasgow Kilwinning Lodge, having received his Degrees in
1837 (see New Age, May.,1925).
*
ALLAH
Assyrian (Figure 1), ilu;
Aramaic, elah,' Hebrew, eloah. The Arabic name of God, derived from (Figure 2)
hah, god, and the article (Figure 3) al, expressing the God by way of
eminence. In the great profession of the Unity, on which is founded the
religion of Islam, both terms are used, as pronounced La ilaha ill`Allah,
there is no god but God, the real meaning of the expression being, There id
only one God (see Figure 4).
Mohammed relates that in his
night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, on ascending through the seven heavens,
he beheld above the throne of God this formula; and the green standard of the
Prophet was adorned with the mystic sentence.
It is the first phrase lisped
by the infant, and the devout Moslem utters the profession of the faith at all
times, in joy, in sorrow, in praise, in prayer, in battle, and with his
departing breath the words are wafted to heaven; for among the peculiar
virtues of these words is that they may be spoken without any motion of the
lips. The mourners on their way to the grave continue the strain in melancholy
tones.
Around the supreme name is
clustered the masbaha, or rosary, of the ninety-nine beautiful names of God,
which are often repeated by the Mohammedan in his devotions.
*
ALLEGIANCE
Every Freemason owes
allegiance to the Lodge, Chapter, or other body of which he is a member, and
also to the Grand Lodge, Grand Chapter or other supreme authority from which
that body has received its charter. But this is not a divided allegiance. If,
for instance, the edicts of a Grand and a Subordinate Lodge conflict, there is
no question which is to be obeyed. Supreme or governing bodies in Freemasonry
claim and must receive a paramount allegiance.
*
ALLEGORY
A discourse or narrative in
which there is a literal and a figurative sense, a patent and a concealed
meaning ; the literal or patent sense being intended, by analogy or
comparison, to indicate the figurative or concealed one. Its derivation from
the Greek, ... and , to say something different, that is, to say something
where the language is one thing and the true meaning another, exactly
expresses the character of an allegory. It has been said that there is no
essential difference between an allegory and a symbol. There is not in design,
but there is in their character.
An allegory may be interpreted
without any previous conventional agreement, but a symbol cannot.
Thus, the legend of the Third Degree is an allegory, evidently to be
interpreted as teaching a restoration to life ; and this we learn from the
legend itself, without any previous understanding. The sprig of acacia is a
symbol of the immortality of the soul. But this we know only because such
meaning had been conventionally determined when the symbol was first
established. It is evident, then, that an allegory whose meaning is obscure is
imperfect. The enigmatical meaning should be easy of interpretation ; and
hence Lemiére, a French poet, has said: "L`allégorie habits un palais diaphane;"
meaning Allegory lives in a transparent palace.
All the legends of Freemasonry
are more or less allegorical, and whatever truth there may be in some of them
in an historical point of view, it is only as allegories or legendary symbols
that they are of importance. The English lectures have therefore very properly
defined Freemasonry to be "a system of morality veiled in allegory and
illustrated by symbols.''
The allegory was a favorite
figure among the ancients, and to the allegorizing spirit are we to trace the
construction of the entire Greek and Roman mythology. Not less did it prevail
among the older Aryan nations, and its abundant use is exhibited in the
religions of Brahma and Zoroaster. The Jewish Rabbis were greatly addicted to
it, and carried its employment, as Maimonides intimates, in his More Nevochim
(III, xliii), sometimes to an excess. Their Midrash, or system of commentaries
on the sacred book, is almost altogether allegorical. Aben Ezra, a learned
Rabbi of the twelfth century:, says, "The Scriptures are like bodies, and
allegories are like the garments with which they are clothed. Some are thin
like fine silk, and others are coarse and thick like sackcloth."
Jesus, to whom this spirit of
the Jewish teachers in his day was familiar, taught many truths in parables,
all of which were allegories. The primitive Fathers of the Christian Church
were thus infected; and Origen, the most famous and influential Christian
writer of his time, 186 to 254 A.D., who was especially addicted to the habit,
tells us that all the Pagan philosophers should be read in this spirit : "hoe
facere solemus quando philosophos legimus."
Of modern allegorizing
writers, the most interesting to Freemasons are Samuel Lee, the author of
Orbis Miraculum or the Temple of Solomon portrayed by Scripture Light, and
John Bunyan, who wrote Solomon's Temle Spirituatized.
William Durand, or to use his
Latin name, Guillelmus Durandus, who lived A. D, 1230 to 1296, wrote a
treatise in Italy before 1286 on the origin and symbolic sense of the
Christian Ritual, the ceremonies and teaching related to the church buildings.
An English edition of this work entitled The Symbolism of Churches and Church
Ornaments, by J. M. Neale and Benjamin Webb, was published at London, 1906,
and is a most suggestive treatise.
*
ALLEN, VISCOUNT JOHN
From 1744 to 1745 Brother
Allen was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ireland.
*
ALLIANCE, SACRED
An organization of twenty-one
brethren possessing the ultimate degree of the Scottish Rite, was formed in
New York September 19, 1872, to assemble annually on that day. One by one, in
the due course of time, this Assembly was to decrease until the sad duty
devolved on some one to banquet alone with twenty draped chairs and covers
occupied by the imaginary presence of his fellows. This body was instituted to
commemorate the breaking of a deadlock in the close corporation of the Supreme
Council by the admission of four very prominent members of the Fraternity.
*
ALLIED MASONIC DEGREES
A body has been formed in
England called the Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees, in order to
govern various Degrees or Orders having no central authority of their own. The
principal degrees controlled by it are those of St. Lawrence the Martyr,
Knight of Constantinople, Grand Tiler of King Solomon, Secret Monitor, Red
Cross of Babylon, and Grand High Priest, besides a large number, perhaps about
fifty, of side degrees, of which some are actively worked and some are not
(see Council of Allied Masonic Degrees).
*
ALLOCUTION
A word of Latin origin and
meaning something spoken to. The address of the presiding officer of a Supreme
Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is sometimes so called.
First used by the Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States,
the expression is derived from the usage of the Roman Church, where certain
addresses of the Pope to the Cardinals are called allocations, and this in
turn is to be traced to the customs of Pagan Rome, where the harangues or
forcible speeches of the Generals to their soldiers were called attocutions.
*
ALLOWED
In the old manuscript
Constitutions, this word that is now unusual is found in the sense of
accepted. Thus, "Every Mason of the Craft that is Mason allowed, ye shall do
to him as ye would be done unto yourself" as in the Lansdowne Manuscript, of
about 1600 A.D., Mason allowed means Mason accepted, that is, approved.
Phillips, in his New World of Words, 1690, defines the verb allow, "to give or
grant; to approve of; to permit or suffer."
Latimer, in one of his sermons, uses it in this sense of approving or
accepting, thus : ''Saint Peter, in forsaking his old boat and nets, was
allowed as much before God as if he had forsaken all the riches in the world."
In a similar sense is the word used in the Office of Public Baptism of
Infants, in the Common Prayer Book of the Church of England.
The Bible (see Romans xiv,
22), also has "Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he
alloweth." Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words suggests the
connection of the word with the Anglo-Norman alone, meaning to praise.
*
ALL-SEEING EYE
An important symbol of the
Supreme Being, borrowed by the Freemasons from the nations of antiquity. Both
the Hebrews and the Egyptians appear to have derived its use from that natural
inclination of figurative minds to select an organ as the symbol of the
function which it is intended peculiarly to discharge. Thus, the foot was
often adopted as the symbol of swiftness, the arm of strength, and the hand of
fidelity.
On the same principle, the
open eye was selected as the symbol of watchfulness, and the eye of God as the
symbol of Divine watchfulness and care of the universe. The use of the symbol
in this sense is repeatedly to be found in the Hebrew writers. Thus, the
Psalmist says, Psalm xxxiv, 15 : "The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous,
and his ears are open unto their cry," which explains a subsequent passage
(Psalm cxxi, 4), in which it is said: "Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall
neither slumber nor sleep. "
In the Apocryphal Book of the
Conversation of God with Moses on Mount Sinai, translated by the Rev.WT.
Cureton from an Arabic manuscript of the fifteenth century, and published by
the Philobibion Society of London, the idea of the eternal watchfulness of God
is thus beautifully allegorized:
"Then Moses said to the Lord,
O Lord, dost thou sleep or not? The Lord said unto Moses, I never sleep: but
take a cup and fill it with water. Then Moses took a cup and filled it with
water, as the Lord commanded him. Then the Lord cast into the heart of Moses
the breath of slumber; so he slept, and the cup fell from his hand, and the
water which was therein was spilled. Then Moses awoke from his sleep.
Then said God to Moses, I
declare by my power, and by my glory, that if I were to withdraw my providence
from the heavens and the earth, for no longer a space of time than thou hast
slept, they would at once fall to ruin and confusion, like as the cup fell
from thy hand."
On the same principle, the
Egyptians represented Osiris, their chief deity, by the symbol of an open aye,
and placed this hieroglyphic of him in all their Temples. His symbolic name,
on the monuments, has represented by the eye accompanying a throne, to which
was sometimes added an abbreviated figure of the god, and sometimes what has
been called a hatchet, but which may as correctly be supposed to be a
representation of a square.
The All-Seeing Eye may then be
considered as a symbol of God manifested in his omnipresence---his guardian
and preserving character-to which Solomon alludes in the Book of Proverbs (xv,
3), where he says: "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding (or, as
in the Revised Version, keeping watch upon) the evil and the good." It is a
symbol of the Omnipresent Deity.
*
ALL SOULS' DAY
A day set apart for prayers in
behalf of all the faithful dead. A festival established in 998 A.D. by an
Abbot Odilo of Cluny in France.
The feast falls on the 2nd of
November, or on the 3rd if the 2nd is a Sunday or a festival of the first
class. The celebration of the day was abolished in the Church of England at
the Reformation but has had some revival there. On the Continent of Europe the
practise has been longer maintained among Protestants. The date is observed as
a feast day by Chapters of Rose Croix.
*
ALMANAC, MASONIC
Almanacs for the special use
of the Fraternity are annually published in many countries of Europe, but the
custom has not been so favored in America. As early as 1752 we find an
Almanach des Francs-Maçons en Ecosse published at the Hague. This, or a
similar work, continued to be published annually at the same place until the
year 1778 (see Kloss, Bibliographie, Nos. 107-9). The first in English
appeared in 1775, under the title of:
The Freemason's Calendar, or
an Almanac for the year 1775, containing, besides an accurate and useful
Calendar of all remarkable occurrences for the year, many useful and curious
particulars relating to Masonry. Inscribed to Lord Petre, G.M., by a Society
of Brethren. London, printed for the Society of Stationers.
This work was without any
official authority, but two years later the Freemason's Calendar for 1777 was
Published "under the sanction of the Grand Lodge of England." A Masonic Year
Book has been issued annually by the Grand Lodge of England, and most of the
English Provinces have published Masonic Almanacs.
The first German work of this
class was the Freimaurer Kalendar auf das Jahr 1771 and the first French was
Etrennes Intéressantes, ou Almanach pour les années1796 et 1797, the latter
meaning in English Interesting Gifts, or Almanac for the years 1796 and 1797.
The Masonic Year, an annual digest of timely facts from reliable sources to
show the scope and success of Freemasonry, was first published for the
year1920 by the Masonic History Company, Chicago, and edited by R. I. Clegg.
*
ALMIGHTY
In Hebrew ...., pronounced Ale
Shad-dahee. The name by which God was known to the patriarchs before He
announced Himself to Moses by His Tetragrammatonic name of Jehovah (see Exodus
vi, 3). Almighty refers to His power and might as the Creator and Ruler of the
universe, and hence is translated in the Septuagint by ....., and in the
Vulgate by Omnipotens. The word Tetragrammaton is used for the four consonants
of the sacred name YHVH.
*
ALMANACS
The annual almanac was the
Eighteenth Century's monthly magazine, encyclopedia, calendar, a repository of
literature, and what not, and is the mirror of the American mind between 1700
and the Revolution. Benjamin Franklin made his name with one, but his Poor
Richard was not the first of the species nor, by long odds, was it the last
(it is impossible to draw a line between almanacs and magazines in the history
of American journalism).
James Franklin issued his
Rhode Island Almanac five years before Poor Richard appeared in Philadelphia;
and Nathaniel Ames, of Dedham, Mass., issued his eight years before, in 1725.
This last was, except for Poor Richard, the most famous of the almanacs, and
it was among the longest lived. Its author was physician, inn-keeper, scholar,
wit, orator, and one of the brightest stars in the constellation of the famous
Ames family. His biography was written and his works edited in 1891, in a
volume entitled The Essays, Humor, and Poems of Nathaniel Ames, father and
son, of Dedham, Mass., from their Almanacs, 1726-1775 with notes and comments,
by Sam Briggs (Cleveland, Ohio). From this delicious old volume which should
be read with a pipe and bowl of apples in front of the fireplace, it
transpires that Bro. Ames was a member of Constellation Lodge in Dedham, and
more than once aimed his skits and verses at the Fraternity. Thus, on page
116, in a poem are the lines: "So Masonry and Death are both the same, Tho' of
a different name" ; meaning that a man knows nothing of either until be bas
been initiated.
Of these words Editor Briggs notes that "These few lines of verse are the
first I have noticed in any publication of the kind, adverting to the
institution, which had been but lately introduced to the [New England]
Colonists, through the office of Henry Price, who established the first Lodge
in New England, in 1733." On page 203 is a verse for the month of October, not
easily construed:
"Heaven's Candidates go
clothed with foul Disguise,
And Heaven's Reports are damned for senseless lies :
Tremendous Mysteries are (so Hell prevails)
Lampooned for Jargon and fantastic Tales.''
Bro. Briggs says be can make
nothing of this. As a guess Ames bad been reading exposés and Anti-Masonic
lampoons brought over from England. Beginning on page 464 is a long
Hudibrastic poem entitled "Entertainment for a Winter's Evening" which runs to
six pages, describes a Masonic church service with wit and satire, and
contains dozens of topical allusions, some very obscure ; it was written by
Joseph Greene, an alumnus of Harvard University of the class of 1726, a Tory
who fled to England, where he resided until his death in 1780. It is
recommended to some member of Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research that he edit
this (in its way) important document and publish it in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum.
On page 34: Vol. I of The
Book-worm (A. C. Armstrong & Son; 1888) is a paragraph about the first
American almanac.
''It is a fact upon which most
bibliographers are agreed, that the first almanac printed in America came out
in 1639, and was entitled 'An Almanac Calculated for New England,' by Mr.
Pierce, Mariner: The printer was Stephen Day, or Daye, to whom belongs the
title of first printer in North Arnerica. The press was at Cambridge, Mass.,
and its introduction was effected mainly through the Rev. Jesse Glover, a
wealthy Non-conformist minister who had only recently left England. Some
Amsterdam gentlemen 'gave towards furnishing of a printing-pre' with letters,
forty-nine pounds and something more.' The first book issued was the 'Bay
Psalm-Book,' in 1640." (Day is a famous and frequent name in the history of
printing. The John Day Company of New York was named in honor of one of them.)
*
AMERICANISMS
In an article contributed to
the New York Masonic Outlook, in 1931, Brother Sir Alfred Robbins, President
of the Board of General Purposes of the Grand Lodge of England, and present in
America at the time as personal representative of the Grand Master of Masons
in England, the Duke of Connaught, commented on certain "Americanisms" which
he had observed in his visits to Lodges and Grand Lodges.
He singled out the Ancient
Land- marks, which he said the English Craft seldom mentioned ; and the
Doctrine of Exclusive Territorial Jurisdiction. He could have included the
"Due guard," the Weeping Virgin symbol, the Working Tool of the Third Degree,
etc. In discussing these points Bro. Robbins was carrying on what had come to
be almost a tradition among English Brothers of animadverting upon what they
have called "Americanisms,'' a tradition as old as the Rev. George Oliver's
works. Usually, by an Americanism bas been meant some symbol, rite, rule,
etc., invented here in this country, and in the majority of instances, in
British eyes, a corruption of the original design of Masonry.
When making his comments Bro.
Robbins apparently had not familiarized himself with the researches made in
that particular subject by a large number of Masonic scholars in America over
a quarter of a century. Those findings connect themselves with a
carefully-considered statement which Sir Alfred made in a conversation with
the writer during the two or three days be spent at the headquarters of the
Nationa1 Masonic Research Society; and, considering Sir Alfred's own great
Masonic experience, and his authorship of a history of English-speaking
Masonry, is of an importance which calls for its being permanently recorded in
print: not in his owrl words but with the following unambiguous meaning, Sir
Alfred said that after witnessing the conferring of Degrees in Lodges and
Grand Lodges be was both surprised and gratified to discover that we in the
United States are still using the original Ritual practiced by English Lodges
in the middle of the Eighteenth Century; and that if American ceremonies
differ from those used in present-day English Lodges the difference is not
because we have altered the old Working, but because we have not altered it.
The majority of those elements
of American Lodge practice and ceremonies which so many English writers have
called, and often (vide Hughan !) have stigmatized, as "Americanisms," turn
out to be a continuation of sound Lodge working in England as it was a half
century or so before the Union of 1813. Interest in the Ancient Landmarks is
not peculiar to America ; the Minutes of the oldest English Lodges refer to
them a large number of times, they were the whole point at issue in the
controversy between the Ancient and the Modern Grand Lodges, and English
Lodges give as much attention to them as do American Lodges but not by name.
the Doctrine of Exclusive Territorial Jurisdiction is not peculiar to us ; the
Grand Lodges of England, Scotland, and Ireland practice it.
The now obsolescent " York''
as a name for the Craft and Royal Arch Degrees came into use here from Britain
via Canada. the Weeping Virgin symbol, which a few Grand Lodges retain as a
relic in memory of Jeremy Cross, was not invented in America. Cross may have
found it in some old French engravings which he took to be of English origin.
"Due guard" appears to be Peculiar to American working but certainly is not an
"Americanism"; it also is very possibly of French origin. In many early
Eighteenth Century English and Irish engravings and portraits the Trowel is a
jewel hung round the neck, and appears in a majority of old Tracing Boards;
its prominence in the Third Degree is not modern but old, is not American but
is British.
Our English colleagues, having
what they have taken to be Americanisms in the forefront of their minds, refer
again and again to "American" Masonry as if it differed from their Masonry.
They speak of French Masonry, because the French altered Masonry, because the
French altered Masonry (and War hatreds was one of the reasons for their
unwisely doing so) and of Swedish Masonry, because the Swedes altered Masonry.
In that sense there is no "American " Masonry; there is Freemasonry in America
and it is the same, unaltered Freemasonry that it was in England about 1750.
Apropos of the subject of
so-called "Americanisms'' as a whole and in principle, as it is referred to,
and somewhat frequently, by British Bothers in their Masonic magazines and
Research Lodge Transactions, it may be recalled to them that they continually
overlook the fact that the Grand Lodge of Ireland and the Ancient Grand Lodge
of England together, both directly and indirectly, bad a larger part in
shaping pre-Revolutionary American Masonry than did the Modern Grand Lodge of
England. And not only because Modern Lodges in the Colonies were filled with
members on the Tory side for years before 1775, but more largely because the
Ancient and Ireland sent over so many military and naval Lodges; and because
so many of the Masons among the immigrants between 1760 and 1775 were members
of Ancient and Irish Lodges. What often may appear as an "Americanism" or an
innovation to an English student whose mind is saturated with the history of
the Modern Grand Lodge, is neither an Americanism nor an innovation but is a
continuation of the standard Working in the Ancient and Irish Lodges of that
period; and which at that time differed so essentially from Modern Workings
that it took nearly twenty years to bring Moderns and Ancient into Union.
The true basis for an
understanding of the history of Freemasonry in America is not in the history
of the Modern Grand Lodge, for Masonry in America from 1760 on differed from
Modern practices fundamentally ; it is in the history of Ireland, and of the
Ancient Grand Lodge which was Irish in origin. Bro. Melvin M. Johnson spoke
truly when in his Foreword to Gould's History of Freemasonry (Scribners'; New
York) he wrote: "Gould was the Thucydides of Masonic history" ; but the true
Thucydides for the student specializing in American Masonic history is not
Gould but is a double-headed Thucydides in the persons of Chetwode Crawley and
Henry Sadler. Gould suffered from fundamental misunderstandings of Freemasonry
in Colonial and Revolutionary America because be hated the Ancient, and
against the pleas of his own colleagues stubbornly insisted on calling them
Schismatics; and because be left out of account the role of Ireland in the
establishment of American Lodges and practices, so that it is necessary for
American students of Masonic history to keep revising Gould in the act of
reading him whenever what be is writing bears on the American Craft.
*
AMERICAN MERCURY ARTICLE
In its issue for February,
1941 (page 184), the American Mercury, a national monthly magazine
specializing in non-fiction articles for the well educated, published "The
Annihilation of Freemasonry,'' by Sven Lunden.
The article in itself was
sound, competent, unexceptionable, but is here placed on record among the
memorabilia of the Fraternity not for its content but because it marks a
mile-stone in the history of American Freemasonry. For the whole length of the
period between World War I and World War II Freemasonry was publicly and
freely discussed in Europe in books, newspapers, magazines, and from the
platform by Masons and non-Masons alike, and in the same manner as any other
subject important to the public; but during the same period in the United
States Masonry almost never appeared in the public prints except incidentally,
and in what journalists call "spot news''; certainly its principles were not
discussed nor was there any public awareness of its role in American ways of
life. The American Mercury article was the first of its kind; it is possible
that it may be one of very few; it is more probable that by 1950 it will be
proved to have been the first of innumerable instances.
One of the indications of this
latter probability is the rapidly increasing number of books in which
Freemasonry is discussed (most of them by anti-masons) that are appearing on
the shelves of public libraries.
Mr. H. L. Mencken, the
founder-editor of The American Mercury, once undertook a campaign of derision
against those whom he described as "joiners," but his campaign recoiled upon
his own head because be discovered that more than thirty million American men
and women held membership in at least one fraternity, and be was unable even
to convince himself that almost one-third of the population could be "playing
at Indian" or belonged to "the booboisie."
*
AMERICAN PROTECTIVE
ASSOCIATION
European and American Roman
Catholic writers link the American Protective Association with Freemasonry,
and classify it as either a camouflaged "political arm" of the Craft or as a
Side Order. This is not true. It is a matter of known history, of which the
records are preserved, that the A.P.A, was never in any manner either
connected with Masonry or encouraged by it. The A.P.A, was founded in Clinton,
Iowa (a small town in an agricultural district), by seven men "to combat Roman
Catholic influence in public schools and in politics.'' Its founders announced
that they did not oppose Roman Catholicism as a religion; nor Roman Catholics
as foreigners; they denied that theirs was a "nativistic" movement, or that it
was based on racial issues like the Ku Klux Klan; and insisted that they were
only opposed to church interference in politics and the schools. The founder,
H. F. Bowers, a Clinton attorney and a Methodist, was Supreme President until
1893, when he was succeeded by W. J. H. Traynor. The A.P.A. was an active
force in politics throughout the 1890's, and established branches in Canada,
England, and Mexico. It was at one period closely connected with the Junior
Order of United American Mechanics.
Though not one of the "nativistic''
crusades it nevertheless followed the same curve as they of rapid early
development followed by a general decline, of which the typical case was the
once famous Know-Nothing Party. Historians recognize four well-established
reasons for the general lack of success of patriotic secret societies: their
field is too narrow to keep members interested; they are captured by
professional politicians; they tend to split up; and Americans, like
English-speaking peoples everywhere, dislike secret political or patriotic
organizations and prefer to keep their politics in the public forum of open
discussion.
*
AMERICAN SYSTEM, THE
The once universally
established custom of describing the branches of Freemasonry as the York Rite
and the Scottish Rite is falling into a disuse which an increasing number of
Grand Bodies are hoping will become complete.
The two names have always been
anomalous, ambiguous, confusing, and mistaken in fact. Knight Templarism was
never in one "Rite'' with the Royal Arch, and of itself had never been
associated with York; neither the Royal Arch itself nor the Craft Degrees to
which it once belonged had originated in York---or, if a Mason prefers to
accept the Prince Edwin tradition, they had no connection with it for
centuries.
The Scottish Rite had not
originated in Scotland; moreover a number of its Degrees are themselves Royal
Arch or Knight Templar in character. To add to the confusion, the Lodges under
the Ancient Grand Lodge of England (1751) called themselves York Masonry, and
the name as thus used is still incorporated in the titles of two or three
American Grand Lodges. In the process of taking on so many meanings the name
"York" lost any meaning that may ever have properly belonged to it. There was
once a Grand Lodge of All England at York, but it did not last many years, and
Chartered no Lodges in America ; a second Grand Lodge sponsored by it, and
called the Grand Lodge of England South of the River Trent, lasted for an even
shorter time. If the tradition about Prince Edwin which is enshrined in the
Old Charges is accepted as historical (as is seldom done) it gives no peculiar
precedence to Freemasonry in York, because the City of York was merely the
place where a General Assembly was held, and the Fraternity said to have been
Chartered there had no more connection with Freemasonry in York than with
Freemasonry in London.
The phrases "York Rite" and
"Scottish Rite" are giving way to the more descriptive and historically
correct phrase of The American Masonic System.
This System consists of a set
of five Rites in which each maintains undivided its own independence and its
own sovereignty, and yet are bound together by the rules of comity; these
rules rest on the authority of honor, general agreement, and common consent.
These five are: Ancient Craft
(or Symbolic-"Blue Lodge" is slang) Masonry; Royal Arch Masonry; Cryptic
Masonry; Knight Templarism; the Scottish Rite (with 29 Degrees, not including
the 33 ).
Each of the latter four Rites
requires that any one of its own members must be also a member in good
standing in a Regular Lodge of Ancient Craft Masonry, thereby guaranteeing
that American Freemasonry shall not split into a number of separate
Freemasonries as has occurred in European countries. The Ancient Craft Rite is
organized under forty-nine Grand Lodges, each one independent and sovereign.
The Royal Arch and Cryptic
Rites and the Knight Templar Orders are organized under State and National
Grand Bodies; the Scottish Rite is organized under Consistories which belong
to either of two Jurisdictions: the Northern with its seat at Boston, Mass.;
the Southern with its seat at Washington, D.C. Of the "Side Orders" the
largest are the Shrine, the Order of the Eastern Star, and the Grotto ; no one
of these belongs to the American System but each and every one, and of its own
volition, has made it a qualification that each of its own members shall have
some connection, by membership or by family relationship, with one or more of
the five Rites in The American System.
No satisfactory adjectival
phrase for distinguishing the Degrees after the Third from Ancient Craft
Masonry bas as yet been found; at least, none has been officially adopted.
They are called "Concordant Orders," "High Degrees," etc.; according to the
canons of historical usage "High Grades" would be most nearly correct; but the
"high" has a special sense and does not mean that other Degrees are higher
than the Master Mason Degree, except as 32 is a "higher" number than three. In
two respects Ancient Craft Masonry is in a unique position by comparison with
the other four Rites : it guards the doors to Freemasonry as a whole, so that
no Mason can be in any Rite unless be is a member in it; and its own Ritual
was that out of which the other Rituals were formed, or which they elaborated
and expanded, or served as their point of departure: and in addition it bolds
a great primacy in antiquity, for while there are existing records of Craft
Lodges at least as early as the Fourteenth Century the oldest known record of
any High Grade is of the 1740's.
*
ALMOND TREE
When it is said in the passage
of Scripture from the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes, sometimes read during
the ceremonies of the Third Degree, "the almond tree shall flourish,"
reference is made to the white flowers of that tree, and the allegory
signification is to old age, when the hairs of the head shall become gray.
But the pinkish tinge of the
flower has aroused some criticism of the above explanation. However, Doctor
Mackey's study of the allegory is supported by Hastings' Dictionary of the
Bible which says, ''Probably the whiteness of the blossom from a little
distance---the delicate pink at the bases of the petals being visible only on
closer inspection-suggested its comparison to the white hair of age" (see
Ecclesiastes xii, 5).
A poetic view of the flower is
to be seen in Edwin Arnold's Light of the World (book1, page 57), thus:
"The almond's crimson snow,
rained upon crocus, lily, and cyclamen, at feet of feathery palms'." There is
another Bible reference in Jeremiah (1,11, 12), where we find a curious play
upon the Hebrew word for almond, meaning also to watch, and in the same
language an almost identical word, save only for a slight alteration of a
vowel sound, meaning I wi1 hasten.
From these noteworthy examples
the Freemason may make his own choice of the most useful instruction for
practical application, though the suggestion given by Doctor Mackey has
received general favor.
*
ALMONER
An officer elected or
appointed in the Continental Lodges of Europe to take charge of the contents
of the alms-box, to carry into effect the charitable resolutions of the Lodge,
and to visit sick and needy brethren. A physician is usually selected in
preference to any other member for this office. An Almoner may also be
appointed among the officers of an English Lodge. In the United States the
officer does not exist, his duties being performed by a Committee of Charity.
However, it is an important office in all bodies of the Scottish Rite.
*
ALMS-BOX
A box which, toward the close
of the Lodge, is handed around by an appropriate officer for the reception of
such donations for general objects of charity as the brethren may feel
disposed to bestow. This laudable custom is very generally practiced in the
Lodges of England, Scotland, and Ireland and universally in those of the
Continent. The newly initiated candidate is expected to contribute.
Brother Hyde Clarke says in
the Freemasons' Magazine (London, 1859, page 1166) that "Some brethren are in
the habit, on an occasion of thanksgiving with them, to contribute to the box
of the Lodge more than on other occasions."
This custom has not been
adopted in the Lodges of America, except in those of French origin and in
those of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
*
ALMSGIVING
Although almsgiving, or the
pecuniary relief of the destitute, was not one of the original objects for
which the Institution of Freemasonry was established, yet, as in every society
of men bound together by a common tie, it becomes incidentally, yet
necessarily, a duty to be practiced by all its members in their individual as
well as in their corporate capacity.
In fact, this virtue is
intimately interwoven with the whole superstructure of the Institution, and
its practice is a necessary corollary from all its principles. At an early
period in his initiation the candidate is instructed in the beauty of charity
by the most impressive ceremonies, which are not easily to be forgotten, and
which, with the same benevolent design, are repeated from time to time during
his advancement to higher degrees, in various forms and under different
circumstances.
"The true Freemason," says
Brother Pike, '"must be, and must have a right to be, content with himself;
and he can be so only when he lives not for himself alone, but for others
,,who need his assistance and have a claim upon his sympathy."
The same eloquent writer lays
down this rule for a Freemason's almsgiving: "Give, looking for nothing again,
without consideration of future advantages; give to children, to old men, to
the unthankful, and the dying, and to those you shall never see again ;
for else your alms or courtesy
is not charity, but traffic and merchandise. And omit not to relieve the needs
of your enemy and him who does you injury" ( see Exclusiveness of
Freemasonry).
*
ALNWICK MANUSCRIPT
This manuscript is written on
twelve quarto pages as a preface to the Minute Book of the Company and
Fellowship of Freemasons of a Lodge held at Alnwick, where it appears under
the heading of The Masons' Constitutions. The document tells us of the "Orders
to be observed by the Company and Fellowship of Freemasons at a Lodge held at
Alnwick, September 29, 1701, being the General Head Meeting Day."
Among the items are the fifth
and ninth which are of especial interest to us:
"No mason shall take any
Apprentice (but he must) enter him and give him his charge within one whole
year after.''
"There shall no apprentice
after he have served seven years be admitted or accepted but upon the Feast of
St. Michael the Archangel. "
But, the festival was in 1704
changed to that of Saint John the Evangelist and later entries of'" made Free
December 27th" indicate clearly that. those, who had served their time were
admitted or accepted on that date according to the purpose of the ninth
"Order."
This record was first
published in 1871 in Hughan's Masonic Sketches and Reprints, American edition,
and again in 1872 by, the same author in his Old Charges of the British
Freemasons. In this latter work, Brother Hughan says of the records of this
old Lodge that, "ranging from 1703 to 1757 they mostly, refer to indentures,
fines, and initiations, the Lodge from first to last remaining true to its
operative origin.
The members were required
annually to 'appear at the Parish Church of Alnwicke with their aprons on and
common squares as aforesaid on Saint John's Day in Christmas, when a sermon
was provided and preached by some clergyman at their appointment.' A. D.
1708." The manuscript was reproduced in facsimile by the Newcastle College of
the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia in 1895.
*
AL-OM-JAH
In the Egyptian mysteries,
this is said to have been the name given to the aspirant in the highest degree
as the secret name of the Supreme Being. In its component parts we may
recognize the .... ALE or EL of the Hebrews, the AUM or trilateral name of the
Indian mysteries, and the ...JAH of the Syrians.
*
ALOYAU, SOCIETE DE L
The word Atoyau is the French
name for a sirloin of beef and hence the title of this society in English
would be The Society of the Sirloin. This was a Masonic association, which
existed in France before the Revolution of 1789, until its members were
dispersed at that time.
They professed to be
possessors of many valuable documents relating to the Knights Templar and,
according to the Acta Latomorum (i, page 292), they claimed to be their
successors (see Temple Order of the ).
*
ALPHA AND OMEGA
The first, and last letters of
the Greek alphabet, referred to in the Royal Master and some of the advanced
degrees. They are explained by this passage in Revelations &hibar; xxii, 13
'1: ''1 am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the
last." Alpha and Omega is, therefore, one of the appellations of God,
equivalent to the beginning and end of all things, and so referred to in
Isaiah (xiiv, 6), "1 am the first and 1 am the last."
*
ALPHABET, ANGELS
In the old rituals of the
Fourth or Secret Master's Degree of the Scottish and some other Rites, we find
this passage : ''The seventy-two names, like the name of the Divinity, are to
be taken to the Caballstic Tree and the Angels' Alphabet." The Caballstic Tree
is a name given by the Cabalists to the arrangement of the ten Sephiroth
(which see). The Angels' Alphabet is called by the Hebrews ...., chetab
hamalachim, or the writing of the angels.
Gabffarel (Curios. Inouis.,
xiii, 2) says that the stars, according to the opinion of the Hebrew writers,
are ranged in the heavens in the form of letters, and that it is possible to
read there whatsoever of importance is to happen throughout the universe.
The great English Hermetic
philosopher, Robert Fludd, says, in his Apology for the Brethren of the Rosy
Cross, that there are characters in the heavens formed from the disposition of
the stars, just as geometric lines and ordinary letters are formed from
points; and he adds, that those to whom God has granted the hidden knowledge
of reading these characters will also know. not only whatever is to happen,
but all the secrets of philosophy. The letters thus arranged in the form of
stars are called the Angels' Alphabet. They have the power and articulation
but not the form of the Hebrew letters, and the Cabalists say that in them
Moses wrote the Tables of the Law."
The astrologers, and after
them the alchemists, made much use of this alphabet; and its introduction into
any of the high degree rituals is an evidence of the influence exerted on
these degrees by the Hermetic philosophy.
Agrippa, in his Occult
Philosophy, and Kircher, in his Oedipus Egyptiacus, and some other writers,
have given copies of this alphabet. lt may also be found in Johnson's
Typographia, But it is in the mystical books of the Cabalists that we must
look for full instructions on this subject.
*
ALPHABET, HEBREW
figuur Nearly all of the
significant words in the Masonic Rituals are of Hebraic origin, and in writing
them in the rituals the Hebrew letters are frequently used. For convenience of
reference, that alphabet is here given. The Hebrews, like other ancient
nations, had no figures, and therefore made use of the letters of their
alphabet instead of numbers, each letter having a particular numerical value.
They are, therefore, affixed in the following table :
*
ALPHABET, MASONIC
See Cipher Writing
*
ALPHABET, NUMBER OF LETTERS IN
In the Sandwich Island
alphabet there are 12 letters; the Burmese, 19; Italian, 20; Bengalese, 21;
Hebrew, Syrian, Chaldee, Phoenician, and Samaritan, 22 each; Latin, 23; Greek,
24; French, 25; German, Dutch, and English, 26 each ; Spanish and Sclavonic,
27 each ; Persian and Coptic, 32 each; Georgian, 35 ; Armenian, 35; Russian,
41; Muscovite, 43; Sanskrit and Japanese, 50 each; Ethiopic and Tartarian, 202
each.
*
ALPHABET, SAMARITAN
figuur It is believed by
Scholars that, previous to the captivity, the alphabet now called the
Samaritan was employed by the Jews in transcribing the copies of the law, and
that it was not until their return from Babylon that they adopted, instead of
their ancient characters, the Chaldee or square letters, now called the
Hebrew, in which the sacred text, as restored by Ezra, was written. Hence, in
some rituals, especially those used in the United States, the Samaritan
characters find use. For convenience of reference, the Samaritan alphabet is
therefore here inserted. The letters are the same in number as the Hebrew,
with the same power and the same names; the only difference is in form.
*
ALPHA LODGE
Shortly after the Civil War a
constitutional number of white citizens asked for a Dispensation to organize a
Lodge at Newark, New Jersey. The Grand Master issued such authority. In due
course the Grand Lodge authorized a Charter to Alpha Lodge No. 116 under date
of January 19, 1871. At the time following the war many negroes found a haven
in the neighborhood and petitions were received from them by the Lodge. Some
of these petitioners were elected by the Lodge to membership. As a result
several Grand Lodges withdrew their recognition from New Jersey but they all
subsequently rescinded this action, Mississippi finally agreeing in 1927 to
renew former relations.
*
ALPINA
refers to the Grand Lodge of
Switzerland. A Lodge was organized at Geneva in 1736, the Worshipful Master, a
Scotchman, being the following year appointed a Provincial Grand Master by the
Grand Lodge of England. This Lodge was forbidden by the Government to initiate
native citizens. Notwithstanding this handicap, the Institution thrived. Nine
Lodges met in Convention on June 1, 1769, and on June 24 of that year they
formed the Independent Grand Lodge of Geneva. ,another Lodge, named Espérance,
meaning Hope, was chartered at Berne by the Grand Orient of France on
September 14, 1802.
This became a Provincial Grand
Lodge under an English Warrant in 1815. The Helvetic Grand Orient was formed
in 1810. Several of the Lodges working under these two organizations founded
the National Grand Lodge of Switzerland. There were also some other Lodges
using the ritual of the Rectified Rite under the control of a Grand
Directorate. This lack of unity led to various efforts at organized
cooperation and several General Assemblies of Freemasons in Switzerland were
held at Zurich, Bern and Basle in 1836 and for some years later. The union so
long patiently sought was perfected at a Convention held at Zurich, July 22 to
24, 1844, when fourteen Lodges agreed to a Constitution and organized the
Grand Lodge Alpina, the name being a happy allusion to the Alps, a picturesque
mountain range.
*
ALTAR
figuur The most important
article of furniture in a Lodge-room is undoubtedly the altar. It is worth
while, then, to investigate its character and its relation to the altars of
other religious institutions.
The definition of an altar is very simple. It is a structure elevated above
the ground, and appropriated to some service connected with worship, such as
the offering of oblations, sacrifices, or prayers.
Altars, among the ancients, were generally made of turf or stone. when
permanently erected and not on any sudden emergency, they were generally built
in regular courses of Freemasonry, and usually in a cubical form. Altars were
erected long before temples. Thus, Noah is said to have erected one as soon as
he came forth from the ark. Herodotus gives the Egyptians the credit of being
the first among the heathen nations who invented altars.
Among the ancients, both Jews
and Gentiles, altars were of two kinds-for incense and for sacrifice. The
latter were always erected in the open air, outside and in front of the
Temple. Altars of incense only were permitted within the Temple walls. Animals
were slain, and offered on the altars of burnt-offerings. On the altars of
incense, bloodless sacrifices were presented and incense was burnt to the
Deity.
The Masonic altar, which, like
everything else in Freemasonry, is symbolic, appears to combine the character
and uses of both of these altars. It is an altar of sacrifice, for on it the
candidate is directed to lay his passions and vices as an oblation to the
Deity, while he offers up the thoughts of a pure heart as a fitting incense to
the Grand Architect of the Universe.
The altar is, therefore, the
most holy place in a Lodge.
Among the ancients, the altar
was always invested with peculiar sanctity. Altars were places of refuge, and
the supplicants who fled to them were considered as having placed themselves
under the protection of the Deity to whom the altar was consecrated, and to do
violence even to slaves and criminals at the altar, or to drag them from it,
was regarded as an act of violence to the Deity himself, and was hence a
sacrilegious crime.
The marriage covenant among
the ancients was always solemnized at the altar, and men were accustomed to
make all their solemn contracts and treaties by taking oaths at altars. An
oath taken or a vow made at the altar was considered as more solemn and
binding than one assumed under other circumstances.
Hence, Hannibal's father
brought him to the Carthaginian altar when he was about to make him swear
eternal enmity to the Roman power.
In all the religions of
antiquity, it was the usage of the priests and the people to pass around the
altar in the course of the sun, that is to say, from the east, by the way of
the south, to the west, singing paeans or hymns of praise as a part of their
worship.
From all this we see that the
altar in Freemasonry is not merely a convenient article of furniture,
intended, like a table, to hold a Bible. It is a sacred utensil of religion,
intended, like the altars of the ancient temples, for religious uses, and thus
identifying Freemasonry, by its necessary existence in our Lodges, as a
religious institution. Its presence should also lead the contemplative
Freemason to view the ceremonies in which it is employed with solemn
reverence, as being part of a really religious worship.
The situation of the altar in
the French and frequently in the Scottish Rites is in front of the Worshipfu1
Master, and, therefore, in the East. In the York Rite, the altar is placed in
the center of the room, or more property a little to the East of the center.
The form of a Masonic altar
should be a cube, about three feet high, and of corresponding proportions as
to length and width, having, in imitation of the Jewish altar, four horns, one
at each corner.
The Holy Bible with the Square
and Compasses should be spread open upon it, while around it are to be placed
three lights.
These lights are to be in the
East, West, and South, and should be arranged as in the annexed diagram. The
stars show the position of the lights in the East, West, and South. The black
dot represents the position North of the altar where there is no light,
because in Freemasonry the North is the place of darkness.
*
ALTENBURG, CONGRESS OF
Altenburg is a town in Germany
about twenty-three miles south of Leipzig and capital of the Duchy of
Saxe-Aitenburg. Here in the month of June, 1764, the notorious Johnson, or
Leucht, who called himself the Grand Master of the Knights Templar and the
head of the Rite of Strict Observance, assembled a Masonic Congress for the
purpose of establishing this Rite and its system of Templar Freemasonry-.
But he was denounced and
expelled by the Baron de Hund, who, having proved Johnson to be an imposter
and charlatan, was himself proclaimed Grand Master of the German Freemasons by
the Congress (see Johnson and Hund; also Strict Observance, Rite of).
*
ALTENBURG, LODGE AT
One of the oldest Lodges in
Germany is the Lodge of Archimedes of the Three Tracing Boards, or Archimedes
zu den drei Reissbrettern, in Altenburg. This Lodge was instituted on January
31, 1742, by a Deputation from Leipzig. In 1775 the Lodge joined the Grand
Lodge of Berlin, but in 1788 attached itself to the Eclectic Union at
Frankfort-on-the-Main, which body it left in 1801, and established a
Directorate of its own, and installed a Lodge at Gera and another at Scheeberg.
The Lodge published a Book of Constitutions in the year 1803 in a folio of 244
pages, a work which is now rare, and which Lenning says is one of the most
valuable contributions to Masonic literature. Three Masonic journals were also
produced by the Altenburg school of historians and students, one of which -the
Bruderblatter, Fraternal Periodical-continued to appear until 1854. The Lodge
struck a medal in 1804 upon the occasion of erecting a new hall, ln 1842 the
Lodge celebrated its centennial anniversary.
*
AMAI SAGGHI
Great labor. The name of the
fifth step of the mystic ladder of Kadosh, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
*
AMARANTH
A plant well known to the
ancients, the Greek name of which signifies never withering. It is the Cetosia
cristata of the botanists. The dry nature of the flowers causes them to retain
their freshness for a very long time, and Pliny says, although incorrectly,
that if thrown into water they will bloom anew.
Hence it is a symbol of
immortality and was used by the ancients in their funeral rites.
The flower is often placed on coffins at the present day with a like symbolic
meaning, and therefore is one of the decorations of a Lodge of Sorrow.
*
AMARANTH, ORDER OF THE
An organization instituted by
Queen Christina of Sweden in 1653 and numbering thirty-one members, there
being fifteen knights and fifteen ladies, and the Queen officiating as Grand
Mistress. The insignia consisted two letters A interlaced, one being inverted,
within a laurel crown, and bearing the motto Dolce nella memoria, these Words
being the Italian for Sweet to the memory. The annual festival of this
equestrian and chivalric Order was held at the Epiphany. A society of a
similar name was arranged by J. B. Taylor at Newark, New Jersey, and was
developed by Robert Macoy of New York City in 1883. A Supreme Council was
organized June 14, 1883 with Brother Robert Macoy as Supreme Patron and Dr.
Rob Morris as Supreme Recorder. In 1887 he published the Rite of Adoption
containing the standard ritual of Degrees of the Eastern Star, the Queen of
the South, and the Amaranth. Brother Willis D. Engle, in his History of the
Order of the Eastern Star (page 135), says that the Amaranth was intended by
Brother Macoy as the Third and Highest Degree in his revised system of
Adoptive Masonry.
The ritualistic ceremonies
planned by Brother Macoy were changed in 1915. The work is military in
character. The object of the instruction is charity.
The organization has been
incorporated, owns its own ritual and emblem, and has Courts in the several
States of the Union, and in Canada, British Columbia, and the Philippines. The
membership comprises Master Masons and their Wives, Mothers, Sisters, Widows,
and Daughters.
*
AMAR-JAH
Hebrew ...., God spake; a
significant word in the high degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish
Rite. Strong prefers the pronunciation am-ar-yaw- or am-ar-yaw-hoo for the
expression in Hebrew of God has said.
*
AMEN
Sometimes used as a response
to a Masonnic prayer, though in England, as well as in the United States, The
formula is so mote it be. The word Amen signifies in Hebrew verily, truly,
certainty. "Its proper place," says Gesenius, "is where one person confirms
the words of another, and adds his wish for success to the other"s vows." It
is evident, then, that it is the brethren of the Lodge, and not the Master or
Chaplain, who should pronounce the word. Yet the custom in the United Sates is
for the Master or Captain to say "Amen " and the brethren respond, "So mote it
be"It is a response to the prayer.
We note with interest that
line 793 of the Regius Manuscript, that the ancient Masonic poem of about 1390
says: Amen, Amen! so mot it be!"
The word in old English
manuscripts is spelled mot or mote and in each case means may or must, from
the Anglo Saxon motan, meaning to be obliged or compelled. The Talmudists have
many superstitious notions in respect to this word. thus in one trease (Uber
musar) it is said that whosoever pronounces the word with fixed attention and
devotion, to him the gates of Paradise will be opened ; and, again, Whosoever
enunciates the Word rapidly, his days shall pass rapidly away, and whosoever
dwells upon it, pronouncing it distinctly and slowly, his life shall be
prolonged.
*
AMENDMENT
All amendments to the by-laws
of a Lodge must be submitted to the Grand or Provincial or District Lodge for
its approval.
An amendment to a motion
pending before a Lodge takes precedence of the original motion, and the
question must be put upon the amendment first. If the amendment be lost, then
the question will be on the motion ; if the amendment be adopted, then the
question will be on the original motion as so amended ; and if then this
question be lost, the whole motion falls to the ground.
The principal parliamentary
rules in relation to amendments which are applicable to the business of a
Masonic Lodge are the following :
1. An amendment must be made
in one of three ways: by adding or inserting certain words, by striking out
certain words, or by striking out certain words and inserting others.
2. Every amendment is
susceptible of an amendment of itself, but there can be no amendment of the
amendment of an amendment ; such a piling of questions one upon another would
tend to embarrass rather than to facilitate business. The object which is
proposed to be effected by such a proceeding must be sought by rejecting the
amendment to the amendment, and then submitting the proposition in the form of
an amendment of the first amendment in the form desired.
Luther S. Cushing (Lex
parliamentaria Americana; elements of the law and practice of legislative
assemblies in the United States) illustrates this as follows : ''If a
proposition consists of AB, and it is proposed to amend by inserting CD, it
may be moved to amend the amendment by inserting EF; but it cannot be moved to
amend this amendment, as, for example, by inserting G. The only mode by which
this can be reached is to reject the amendment in the form in which it is
presented, namely, to insert EF, and to move it in the form in which it is
desired to be amended, namely, to insert EFG."
3. An amendment once rejected
cannot be again proposed.
4. An amendment to strike out
certain words having prevailed, a subsequent motion to restore them is out of
order.
5. An amendment may be
proposed which will entirely change the character and substance of the
original motion. The inconsistency or incompatibility of a proposed amendment
with the proposition to be amended, though an argument, perhaps, for its
rejection by the Lodge, is no reason for its suppression by the presiding
officer.
Of course an amendment is not
in order if it fails to relate to the question to be amended; if it is merely
equal to the negative of the original question ; if it is identical with a
question previously decided; if it only changes one form of amendment or
motion to another form.
6. An amendment, before it has
been proposed to the body for discussion, may be withdrawn by the mover; but
after it has once been in possession of the Lodge, it can only be withdrawn by
leave of the Lodge. In the Congress of the United States, leave must be
obtained by unanimous consent but the usage in Masonic bodies is to require
only a majority vote.
7. An amendment having been
withdrawn by the mover, may be again proposed by another member.
8. Several amendments may be proposed to a motion or several amendments to an
amendment, and the question will be put on them in the order of their
presentation. But as an amendment takes precedence of a motion, so an
amendment to an amendment takes precedence of the original amendment.
9. An amendment does not
require a seconder, although an original motion always does. There are many
other rules relative to amendments which prevail in parliamentary bodies, and
are discussed in detail in General Henry M. Robert's Rules of Order Revised
(page 134, edition 1921), but these appear to be the principal ones which
regulate this subject in Masonic assemblies.
*
AMENTI
See Book of the Dead
*
AMERICAN BRETHREN
See Free and Accepted
Americans
*
AMERICAN MASONIC FEDERATION
See Clandestine
*
AMERICAN MYSTERIES
Among the many evidences of a
former state of civilization among the aborigines of America which seem to
prove their origin from the races that inhabit the Eastern hemisphere, not the
least remarkable is the existence of Fraternities bound by mystic ties, and
claiming, like the Freemasons, to possess an esoteric knowledge, which they
carefully conceal from all but the initiated.
De Witt Clinton relates, on
the authority of a respectable native minister, who had received the signs,
the existence of such a society among the Iroquois. The number of the members
was limited to fifteen, of whom six were to be of the Seneca tribe, five of
the Oneidas, two of the Cayugas, and two of the St. Regis. They claimed that
their institution had existed from the era of the creation. The times of their
meeting they kept secret, and threw much mystery over all their proceedings.
Brinton tells us in his
interesting and instructive work on The Myths of the New World (page 285),
that among the red race of America "the priests formed societies of different
grades of illumination, only to be entered by those willing to undergo trying
ordeals, whose secrets were not to be revealed under the severest penalties.
The Algonkins had three such grades-the waubeno, the meda, and the jossakeed,
the last being the highest. To this no white man was ever admitted. All tribes
appear to have been controlled by these secret societies. Alexander von
Humboldt mentions one, called that of the Botuto, or Holy Trumpet, among the
Indians of the Orinoco, whose members must vow celibacy, and submit to severe
scourgings and fasts. The Collahuayas of Peru were a gild of itinerant quacks
and magicians, who never remained permanently in one spot."
Brother Robert C. Wright has,
in a later work (Indian Masonry, 1907, Ann Arbor, Michigan), made a collection
of information on this subject enriched with many shrewd and helpful comments
by way of comparison and appraisal of Freemasonry among the aboriginal races
of the new world and those who practice the rites from other lands. Brother
Wright cherishes no illusions and in regard to claims that Masonic signs have
been observed among Indians says:
"Masonic signs, which are
simply gestures given to convey ideas, no doubt have taken their origin from
the same signs or like signs now corrupted but which meant something different
in the beginning. Were we able to trace these signs we would then at once jump
to the conclusion that the people who used them were Freemasons the same as we
ourselves.
The signs which have just been
mentioned as given by the Indians could easily be mistaken for Masonic signs
by an enthusiastic Freemason, more anxious to find what he thinks is in them
than to indulge in sober analysis of the sign and its meaning."
Brother Wright shows clearly how the like sentiments and aspirations among
mankind are exhibited in signs and ceremonies and his book is a mine of useful
information.
Another instructive work of
great value is that by Mrs. Zelia Nuttall, The Fundamental Principles of Old
and New World Civilizations, 1901, published by the Peabody Museum of Harvard
University, Cambridge, Massachusetts. This is a comparative research based on
a study of the ancient Mexican religions, sociological and calendrical
systems. The work is elaborate and leads to the conclusion that the Men of
Tyre, the Phoenicians, had a greater part in the civilization of the world
than has been supposed and that they even established colonies in America.
Much that has long been
mysterious in the prehistoric remains discovered in America is given light by
this book. That there were analogies and resemblances of old and new world
civilizations has often been claimed but the work in question does pioneer
service in showing how the American continent could have become an area of
preservation of primitive forms of civilization, religious cults, symbolism
and industries, drawn at different epochs, from the centers or the outposts of
old world culture.
*
AMERICAN RECTIFIED MARTINIST
ORDER
This Body was organized at
Cleveland, Ohio, at a General Convocation held on June 2, 1902. The Martinist
Body from which this American organization obtained its powers was established
at Paris in 1887, and traces its ancestry to Louis Claude de Saint-Martin, who
initiated M. de Chaptal and the Dr. Gerard Encausse, best known under his pen
name as Papus. The organizer in America was Dr. Edouard Blitz. The American
Body separated from the Supreme Martinist Council of France, and among other
differences of action restricted itself to admitting Freemasons exclusively. A
manifesto explaining the attitude of the American organization was issued
under the direction of the Brethren who met at Cleveland on the above date. An
Independent and Rectified Rite of Martinism was constituted in England the
same year, 1902, but while in sympathy with the American project was not
restricted to Freemasons. See also a paper, Martinisine, by Brother N.
Choumitsky, of Saint Claudius Lodge No. 21, Paris, June 4, 1926, where the
author discusses the periods of Dom Martines de Pasqualiy (1767-74) ; J. B.
Villermo (1752-80) ; Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743-1805), and their
successors, Doctors Encausse (Papus), M. Detre (Jeder) and others.
Martinism has three principal
degrees :
Associate, Initiate, and
secret Superior. Members in session wear red cloaks and masks. To elevate the
soul toward heaven, to labor for the good of humanity, and all to the glory of
the Grand Architect of the Universe, were the avowed purposes of the Order.
*
AMERICAN RITE
The argument for the use of
this term is given by Doctor Mackey thus:
"it has been proposed, and I
think with propriety, to give this name to the series of degrees conferred in
the United States. The York Rite, which is the name by which they are usually
designated, is certainly a misnomer, for the York Rite properly consists of
only the degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason,
including in the last degree the Holy Royal Arch. This was the Freemasonry
that existed in England at the time of the revival of the Grand Lodge in 1717.
The abstraction of the Royal
Arch from the Master's Degree, and its location as a separate degree, produced
that modification of the York Rite which now exists in England, and which
should properly be called the Modern York Rite, to distinguish it from the
Ancient York Rite, which consisted of only three degrees. But in the United
States still greater additions have been made to the Rite, through the labors
of Webb and other lecturers, and the influence insensibly exerted on the Order
by the introduction of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite into the United
States. The American modification of the York Rite, or the American Rite,
consists of nine degrees, namely:
1. Entered Apprentice.
2. Fellow Craft.
3. Master Mason.
Given in Symbolic Lodges, and under the control of Grand Lodges.
4. Mark Master.
5. Past Master.
6. Most Excellent Master.
7. Holy Royal Arch.Given in Chapters, and under the control of Grand Chapters.
8. Royal Master.
9. Select Master.
Given in Councils, and under
the control of Grand Councils.
"A tenth degree, called
Super-Excellent Master, is conferred in some Councils as an honorary rather
than as a regular degree ; but even as such it has been repudiated by many
Grand Councils. To these, perhaps, should be added three more degrees, namely,
Knight of the Red Cross, Knight of Malta, and Knight Templar, or Order of the
Temple, which are given in Commanderies, and are under the control of Grand
Commanderies, or, as they are sometimes called, Grand Encampments. But the
degrees of the Commandery, which are also known as the Degrees of Chivalry,
can hardly be called a part of the American Rite. The possession of the Eighth
and Ninth Degrees is not considered a necessary qualification for receiving
them. The true American Rite consists only of the nine degrees above
enumerated.
"There is, or may be, a Grand
Lodge, Grand Chapter, Grand Council, Grand Commandery in each State, whose
jurisdiction is distinct and sovereign within its own territory. There has
been no General Grand Lodge, or Grand Lodge of the United States, though
several efforts have been made to form one (see General Grand Lodge). There is
a General Grand Chapter, but all Grand Chapters have not been subject to it,
and a Grand Encampment to which Grand commanderies of the States are subject."
In 1776 six Master Masons,
four Fellow Crafts, and one Entered Apprentice, all but one officers in the
Connecticut Line of the Continental army, in camp at Roxbury, Massachusetts,
petitioned Richard Gridley, Deputy Grand Master of St. ,John's Grand Lodge,
for a Warrant to form them into a regular Lodge. On the 1sth of February a
warrant was issued to Joel Clark, appointing and constituting him First Master
of American Union Lodge, "erected at Roxbury, or wherever your body shall
remove on the Continent of America, provided it is where no Grand Master is
appointed."
The Lodge was duly constituted
and almost immediately moved to New York, and met on April 23, 1776, by
permission of Dr. Peter Middleton, Grand Master of Freemasons in the Province
of New York.
It was agreed at this meeting
to petition him to confirm the Massachusetts warrant as, under its terms, they
were without authority to meet in New York.
Doctor Middleton would not
confirm the warrant of American Union Lodge, but in April, 1776, caused a new
warrant to be issued to the same Brethren, under the name of Military Union
Lodge, No. 1, without recalling the former Warrant. They thus presented an
anomaly of a Lodge holding Warrants from and yielding obedience to two Grand
Bodies in different jurisdictions.
The spirit of the Brethren,
though, is shown in their adherence to the name American Union in their
Minutes, and the only direct acknowledgment of the new name is in a Minute
providing that the Lodge furniture purchased by American Union "be considered
only as lent to the Military Union Lodge."
This Lodge followed the
Connecticut Line of the continental Army throughout the War of Independence.
It was Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons of American Union who returned to the
British Army Lodge Unity, No. 18, their Warrant, which had come into
possession of the American army at the taking of Stony Point in 1779. American
Union participated in a Convention at Morristown, N. J., January 31, 1780,
when it was proposed to nominate General Washington as "Grand Master over the
thirteen United States of America, " and it was on the suggestion of Rev.
Israel Evans of American Union that the ''Temple of Virtue, " for the use of
the army and the Army Lodges, was erected at New Windsor, Newburgh, New York,
during the winter of 1782-3.
The Lodge followed the army to
the Northwest Territory after the War of Independence, and participated in the
formation of the Grand Lodge of Ohio.
Shortly afterward the Lodge
withdrew from the Grand Lodge of Ohio and did not appear on the roll
thereafter, but pursued an independent existence for some years.
When the Brethren first
established the Lodge at Marietta there was some question among them as to
whether there was any Masonic power then in America having jurisdiction over
that particular territory. Brother Jonathan Heart, the Worshipful Master,
decided that there was a doubt as to more ample authority being obtainable
elsewhere and he opened a Lodge in due form on June 28, 1790. However, Brother
Heart was chairman of a Committee to bring the matter of regularity and
recognition to the attention of Grand Lodges. Replies were received from the
Grand Lodges of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts and their history interest and
fraternal spirit prompts their appearance here.
May 21, 1792, a letter was
received from Brother Pierre Le Barbier Duplessis, Grand Secretary, as
follows:
"It was with equal surprise
and pleasure the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania received the intelligence of the
formation of a Lodge in the midst of the immense wilderness of the West, where
but lately wild beasts and savage men were the only inhabitants, and where
ignorance and ferocity contributed to deepen the gloom which has covered that
part of the earth from the creation. This ray of light which has thus broke in
upon the gloom and darkness of ages, they consider as a happy presage that the
time is fast approaching when the knowledge of Masonry will completely
encircle the globe, and the most distant regions of the Western Hemisphere
rival those of the Eastern in Masonic splendor. As the account which you have
given of the origin of your Warrant is perfectly satisfactory, and as the
succession to the chair has been uninterrupted, your authority for renewing
your work appears to be incontestable, the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania do
therefore fully and cheerfully recognize the American Union Lodge, No. 1, as a
just and regular lodge, whose members ought to be received as lawful Brethren
in all the Lodges of the two hemispheres.''
December 6, 1791, Brother Moses M. Hays, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of
Massachusetts, wrote that his Grand Lodge:
"Applauds and commends your
views and pursuits, and have desired me to signify how much they are pleased
with your laudable undertaking. Your warrant is, beyond doubt, a perfect and
good one, and must have its force and operation where you are until a Grand
Lodge is founded and established in your territory, when it will become your
duty to surrender it and obtain in its place a Warrant from the Grand Lodge
that may have the government of Masonry in your State. I confirm your Warrant
as good and perfect, as you are where no Grand Lodge is established. I wish
you health and happiness, with the enjoyment of every earthly felicity."
As early as June 6, 1792,
under the auspices of this Lodge there was organized a Royal Arch Chapter
which advanced Brethren through the various grades from the third to the
seventh step in Freemasonry.
We are told that "It was
resolved that the Lodge was competent, both as to numbers and abilities, to
hold Lodges of a higher Degree than that of a Master.
and no fees having been
stipulated for any higher degrees in Masonry, nor any rules preseribed, fees
were agreed on and new rules were added. The Lodge fixed the fees : for
Passing the Chair, $2 ; benefit of the Mark, $2; Most Excellent, $2 ; Royal
Arch, $4. Whenever an Exaltation took place notice to be sent to every Arch
Mason resident within sixteen miles of Marietta, at expense of candidate."
The fees for the above Degrees
may be compared with those earlier established by a Committee of which Brother
Heart was chairman, and which provided that the "E. A, should be four pounds
lawful money, F. C. twelve shillings, and for M. M. eighteen shillings.
Candidates to stand proposed one month.'' Brother Jonathan Heart, then Major,
was killed in Saint Clair's defeat, November 4, 1791, and this tragic event
undoubtedly had serious consequences for the Lodge.
Moreover, the Lodge Hall,
Charter and other documents were destroyed by fire on March 22, 1801.
But a reorganization took
place in January, 1804, under a Dispensation from the Grand Lodge of
Massachusetts which was to remain in full force and effect until a Grand Lodge
should be founded in Ohio.
The present American Union
Lodge at Marietta, Ohio, No, l on the roll of the Grand Lodge of Ohio, was
organized by members of the old Lodge.
The first Minute-Book, from
the original constitution to April 23, 1783, is in the library of the Grand
Lodge of New York. During the war many prominent patriots were members, and
several times Washington was recorded as a visitor.
The operations of this Lodge,
American Union Lodge, Connecticut Line, during the War of the American
Revolution, form a most important link in the chain of Masonic history,
inasmuch as it embraced, in its membership and among its initiates, gentlemen
attached to the Army, coming from various States of the Union, who, "When the
storm of war was done," were separated by the return of peace, and permitted
to repair to their respective homes; not, as we are bound to believe, to
forget or misapply the numerous impressive lessons taught in the Lodge, but to
cultivate and extend the philanthropie principles of "Friendship, Morality,
and Brotherly Love," by fraternal intercourse and correspondence, resulting
finally in the further establishment of Lodges in almost every part of the
country.
A prominent object in
publishing these Lodge proceedings in detail, is to show the character of the
American Masonic Institution in its infancy, by showing who were its members,
who visited its assemblies, and who performed its mystic ceremonies and
observed its mystic rites. For this purpose we copy from the original
Minute-Book of the American Union Lodge, giving the names of all who were
received in it, whether by initiation, admission, or visitation, as it moved
with the Army, as a pillar of "Light," in parts of Connecticut, New York, and
New Jersey.
During the suspension of the
meetings of the Grand Lodge at Boston, in 1776, the following Dispensation was
issued by the Grand Master:
JOHN ROWE, Grand Master,
To Joel Clark, Esq.-Greeting.
By virtue of authority
invested in me, I hereby, reposing special trust and confidence in your
knowledge and skill of the Ancient Craft, do appoint and constitute you, the
said Joel Clark, Esquire, Master of the AMERICAN UNION LODGE, now erected in
Roxbury, or wherever your Body shall remove on the Continent of America,
provided it is where no Grand Master is appointed.
You are to promote in your Lodge the utmost Harmony and Brotherly Love, and to
keep up to the Constitutions, for the reputation of the Craft. In your makings
you are to be very cautious of the Moral Character of such persons, and also
of visitors, and such as desire to become Members of your Lodge (such as were
not made in it).
You are to transmit to the
Grand Lodge a fair account of the choice of your officers, as well as present
as future.
Any matters coming before your
Lodge that cannot be adjusted, you are to appeal to and lay the same before
the Grand Lodge for a decision. You are, as often as the Grand Lodge meets, to
attend with your two Wardens; of the time and place the Grand Lodge shall
meet, you will have previous notice.
In order to support the Grand
Lodge, your Lodge is to pay into the hands of the Grand Secretary, each
Quarierly Night, the sum of 12 shillings lawful money; all of which you will
pay due regard to.
This Commission to remain in
full force and virtue until recalled by me or my successor in office. Given
under my hand, and the hands of the Grand Wardens, (the seal of the Grand
Lodge first after fixed,) this the 15th day of February, Anno Mundi 5776, of
Salvation 1776.
(L. S.) Richard Gridley, D. G. M.
William Burbeck, S. G, W.
J. G. W.
Per order of the G. Master. Recorded, Wm. Hoskins, G. Secretary.
BY-LAWS OF AMERICAN UNION
LODGE
1. That the members of this Lodge shall consist of forty-five and no more,
unless it shall hereafter appear necessary for the benefit of Masonry, in
which ease it shall be determined by a majority of the members present-the
Master having a casting vote in this and all other matters that concern the
true interest of this Lodge, except in cases hereafter mentioned.
2. That this Lodge shall be
held from time to time at such place as by adjournment it shall be ordered, of
which the members are desired to take particular notice and attend punctually.
3. In order to preserve the
credit of the Craft and the harmony of Masonry in general, no candidate shall
be made in this Lodge unless his character is well avouched by one or more of
the Brothers present. Every Brother proposing a candidate shall stand up and
a
