En: MACKEY - H
MACKEY – H
- Source: Mackey's Encyclopedia of Freemasonry
In Hebrew the letter is n. Cheth; the hieroglyph was an altar as in the illustration, and finally the Hebrew n. The eighth letter in the alphabet, and in Hebrew has the value in number of 8, while the Hebrew an, He, which is of the same hieroglyphic formation, has the numerical valuation of 5.
- H. . A. . B. .
An abbreviation of Hiram Abif
The Hebrew is "pipan", meaning a struggler, a favorite. The eighth of the twelve minor prophets. No account is contained in the Book of Habakkuk, either of the events of his life or the date when he lived. He is believed by many to have flourished about 630 B. C. In the Thirty-second Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, his name answers to the passwords Tuesday and Xerxes.
The Hebrew is p'an, Intelligus. Name of the initiate in the Fourth Degree of the modern French Rite, sometimes given as Johaben, or Jabin.
- HABRAMAH or JABAMIAH
The Hebrew word is probably "noan" , the Fanum excelsum or high holy place. The French explanation is that the word was applied to a holy place or an elevation near the altar in the Jewish Tabernacle where a feast was prepared. Said to be used in the Thirtieth Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in France; it is not used in America.
- HACQUET, G. A.
French notary at Port-au Prince, subsequently a member of the Grand Orient of Paris, and President of the Royal Arch Chapter at Paris in 1814.
An Arabic word, signifying the traditions handed down by Mohammed and preserved by the Mohammedan doctors. They are said to amount to 5266 in number. Many of the traditions of Mohammedan Freemasonry are said to be borrowed from the Hadeeses, just as much of the legendary lore of European Freemasonry is to be found in the Jewish Talmud.
- HADLY, BENJAMIN
English Freemason said to have attended the Occasional Lodge at The Hague for the conferring of the first two Degrees on the Duke of Tuscany and Lorraine, afterwards Emperor Francis I. William Preston (Illustrations of Masonry, 1812, page 231) asserts Brother Hadly then acted as a Warden.
The second of the four gods worshiped by the Arak tribe of Ad, before the time of Mohammed, to which Hud, or Heber, was sent. These were Sakia, the god of rain; Hafedha, the preserver from danger; Razeka, the provider of food; and Solemn, the god of health.
The old lectures taught the doctrine, and hence it was the theory of the Freemasons of the eighteenth century, that the landmark which requires all candidates for initiation to be free born is derived from the fact that the promise which was given to Isaac, the free-born son of Abraham and Sarah, was denied to Ishmael, the slave-born son of the Egyptian bondwoman Hagar. This theory is entertained by Brother Oliver in all his writings, as a part of the old Masonic system (see Free Born).
According to Jewish tradition, Haggai was born in Babylon during the captivity, and being a young man at the time of the liberation by Cyrus, he came to Jerusalem in company with Joshua and Zerubbabel, to aid in the rebuilding of the Temple. The work being suspended during the reigns of the two immediate successors of Cyrus, on the accession of Darius, Haggai urged the renewal of the undertaking, and for that purpose obtained the sanction of the king. Animated by the courage and patriotism of Haggai and Zechariah, the people prosecuted the work with vigor, and the second Temple was completed and dedicated in the year 516 B.C.
In the Royal Arch system of America, Haggai represents the Scribe, or third officer of a Royal Arch Chapter. In the English system he represents the second officer, and is called the Prophet.
- HAGUE, THE
A city of the Netherlands, formerly South Holland. Freemasonry was introduced there in 1731 by the Grand Lodge of England, when an occasional Lodge was opened for the initiation of Francis, Duke of Lorraine, afterward Emperor of Germany. Between that year and 1735 an English and a Dutch Lodge were regularly instituted, from which other Lodges in Holland subsequently proceeded. In 1749, the Lodge at The Hague assumed the name of the Mother Lodge of the Royal Union, whence resulted the National Grand Lodge, which declared its independence of the Grand Lodge of England in 1770 (see Netherlands).
The Hebrew definite article "n" or the. It forms the second syllable of the Substitute Word.
- HAHNEMANN, SAMUEL CHRISTIAN FRIEDRICH
Famous physician. Born April 10, 1755, at Meissen, Saxony, and a member of the Lodge Minerva at Leipsic, Germany, from 1817. Founder of the homoeopathic system. He died at Paris on July 9, 1843.
- HAIL or HALE.
This word is used among Freemasons with two very different significations.
l. When addressed as an inquiry to a visiting Brother it has the same import as that in which it is used under like circumstances by mariners. Thus: "Whence do you hail?" that is, "Of what Lodge are you a member?" Used in this sense, it comes from the Saxon term of salutation huel, and should be spelled hail.
2. Its second use is confined to what Freemasons understand by the tie, and in this sense it signifies to conceal, being derived from the Saxon word helan, to hide, the e being pronounced in Anglo-Saxon as a in the word fate. By the rules of etymology, it should be written hate, but is usually spelled hele.
The preservation of this Saxon word in the Masonic dialect, while it has ceased to exist in the vernacular, is a striking proof of the antiquity of the Order and its ceremonies in England. "In the western parts of England," says Lord King (Critical History of the Apostle's Creed, page 178), "at this very day, to hele over anything signifies, among the common people, to cover it; and he that covereth an house with tile or slate is called a helliar."
"As regards the Anglo-Saxon hele, it survives of course in the word Hell—the covered world—of the Apostle's Creed, but," says Brother Canon J. W. Horsley, (page 21, Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, volume xxvi, 1913), "I thought until lately that a hellyer, that is, a thatcher who covers over with thatch the sticks of corn, was only North Country. However, lately when asking who had so well covered a stick close to Detling Church I was told it was a hellyer from the next village. And in the best dictionary of the Kentish dialect I find:
Hele (heel) verb, to cover
Heal (heel) verb, to hide, to cover anything up; to roof in.
"All right! I'll work Jim; I've only just got this 'ere row o taturs to heal."
Heler (hee-ler) substantive. anything which is laid over another: as, for instance, the cover of a thurrick, or wooden drain.
To the above information Brother Doctor Hammond added that in the West of England, the word "hele" is used at the present time, and its common pronunciation there and on the moors of the Cornish Country is hale (see also Heler). From correspondence with Brother Charles E. Funk in regard to the pronunciation of the word, we learn he is convinced that in most Lodges until 1750, and perhaps even later than 1800, the words hele, conceal, reveal, were perfect rhymes pronounced hayl, concayl, revayl, as they would be in Ireland today, but modern dictionaries give the pronunciation as heel.
- HALE, NATHAN
American patriot, born at Coventry, Connecticut, in 1756. Gave his life for his country in 1776, when he was hanged as a Spy by the British in New York City on September 29. He was a member of Saint John's Regimental Lodge of New York City and had already received recognition as a Freemason although not twenty-one years of age (see New Age, September, 1924).
- HALL COMMITTEE
A Committee established in all Lodges and Grand Lodges which own the buildings in which they meet, to which is entrusted the supervision of the building. The Grand Lodge of England first appointed its Hall Committee in 1773, for the purpose of superintending the erection of the hall which had been projected.
- HALL, MASONIC
For a long time after the revival of Freemasonry in 1717, Masonic Lodges continued to meet, as they had done before that period, in taverns. Thus, the Grand Lodge of England was organized, and, to use the language of Anderson, "the Quarterly Communications were revived" by four Lodges, whose respective places of meeting were the Goose and Gridiron Ale-House, the Crown Ale-House, the Apple-Tree Tavern, and the Rummer and Grapes Tavern. For many years the Grand Lodge held its quarterly meetings sometimes at the AppleTree, but principally at the Devil Tavern, and kept the Grand Feast at the hall of one of the Livery Companies. The first Lodge in Paris was organized at a tavern kept in the Rue des Boucheries by one Hure, and the Lodges subsequently organized in France continued to meet, like those of England, in public houses. The custom was long followed in other countries of Europe. In the United States the practice ceased only at a comparatively recent period, and it is possible that in some obscure villages it has not yet been abandoned.
At as early a period as the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Gilds, or Livery Companies, of London, had their halls or places of meeting, and in which they stored their goods for sale. At first these were mean buildings, but gradually they rose into importance, and the Goldsmith's Hall, erected in the fifteenth century is said to have been an edifice of large dimensions and of imposing appearance. These halls, probably, as they were very common in the eighteenth century, were suggestive to the Freemasons of similar edifices for their own Fraternity; but undoubtedly the necessity, as the Association grew into importance, of a more respectable, more convenient, and more secure locality than was afforded by temporary resort to taverns and alehouses must have led to the erection of isolated edifices for their own special use.
The first Masonic Hall of which we have any account is the one that was erected by the Lodge at Marseilles, in France, in the year 1765. Smith describes it very fully in his Use and Abuse of Freemasonry (page 165), and calls it "a very magnificent hall." In 1773, the Grand Lodge of England made preliminary arrangements for the construction of a hall, a considerable sum having been already subscribed for that purpose. On May 11 1775, the foundation-stone of the new edifice was laid in solemn form, according to a ceremonial which was then adopted, and which, with a few modifications, continues to be used at the present day on similar occasions. On the foundation-stone it was designated as Aula Latamorum meaning The Freemasons Hall. It was finished in less than twelve months, and was dedicated on May 23, 1776, to Masonry, Virtue, Universal Charity and Benevolence: a formula still adhered to without variation in the English and American lectures.
In the same year, the Lodge at Newcastle, stimulated by the enterprise of the London Freemasons, erected a hall; an example which was followed, two years afterward, by the Lodge of Sunderland. And after this the erection of isolated halls for Masonic purposes became common not only in England, Scotland, and Ireland, but all over the Continent, wherever the funds of a Lodge would permit of the expenditure.
In the United States, Lodges were held in taverns up to a comparatively recent period. It is not now considered reputable. It is impossible to tell at what precise period and in what locality the first Masonic Hall was erected in the United States. It is true that in a Boston paper of 1773 we find, according to Moore's Magazine (xv, page 162), an advertisement summoning the Freemasons to celebrate the festival of Saint John the Evangelist at "Freemasons Hall"; but, on examination, we learn that this was no other than a room in the Green Dragon Tavern. Other buildings, such as the Exchange Coffee-House, only partially used for Masonic purposes, were subsequently erected in Boston, and received by courtesy, but not by right, the name of Masonic Halls: but it was not until 1832 that the first independent hall was built in that city, which received the name of the Masonic Temple, a title which has since been very usually conferred on the halls in the larger cities. We may suppose that it was about this time, when a resuscitation of Masonic energy, which had been paralyzed by the anti-Masonic opposition, had commenced to develop itself, that the Lodges and Grand Lodges began to erect halls for their peculiar use. At present there is no dearth of these buildings for Masonic use of imposing grandeur and architectural beauty to be found scattered all over the land.
In the United States, as well as in Britain, the construction of Masonic Halls is governed by no specific rules, and is too often left to the judgment and taste of the architect, and hence if that person be not an experienced Freemason, the building is often erected without due reference to the ritual requirements of the Order. But in these particulars, says Brother Oliver, the Freemasons of the Continent are governed by a Ritual of Building, and he quotes, as a specimen of the Helvetian ceremonies in reference to the laying of the foundation-stone of a Masonic Hall, the following directions:
A Mason, assisted by two others, if there be a dearth of workmen, or distress, or war, or peril, or threats of danger, may begin the work of building a Lodge; but it is better to have seven known and sworn workmen. The Lodge is, as we know, due east and west; but its chief window or its chief door must look to the east. On a day allowed and a place appointed, the whole company of builders set out after high noon to lay the first stone.
Far more practical are the directions of Doctor Oliver himself for the construction of a Masonic Hall, given in his Book of the Lodge (chapter iii), which are here condensed. A Masonic Hall should be isolated, and if possible surrounded with lofty walls, so as to be included in a court, and apart from any other buildings, to preclude the possibility of being overlooked by cowans or eavesdroppers. As, however, such a situation in large towns can seldom be obtained. the Lodge should be formed in an upper story; and if there be any contiguous buildings, the windows should be either in the roof, or very high from the floor.. These windows ought to be all on one side the south, if practicable and furnished with proper ventilation, that the Brethren be not incommoded, when pursuing their accustomed avocations, by the heat of the Lodge.
The room, to preserve a just proportion, must, of course, be lofty. It should be furnished with a pitched roof, open within, and relieved with an ornamental frame work of oak, or painted so as to represent that species of timber. It should be supported on corbels running along the cornice, on which should be engraven Masonic ornaments. The dimensions of the room, in length and breadth, will depend in a great measure on the situation of the Lodge, or the space which is assigned for its position; and this will often be extremely circumscribed in a large and populous place, where building land is scarce and dear, or the fund inadequate to any extensive operations. But in all eases a due proportion should be observed in the several members of the fabric wherever it is practicable, that no unsightly appearance may offend the eye, by disturbing that general harmony of parts which constitutes the beauty and excellence of every architectural production.
The principal entrance to the Lodge room ought to face the east, because the east is a place of light both physical and moral; and therefore the Brethren have access to the Lodge by that entrance, as a symbol of mental illumination. The approaches to the Lodge must be angular, for a straight entrance is un-masonic and cannot be tolerated. The advance from the external avenue to the east ought to consist of three lines and two angles. The first line passes through a small room or closet for the accommodation of visitors. At the extremity of this apartment there ought to be another angular passage leading to the Tiler's room adjacent to the Lodge: and from thence, by another right angle, you are admitted into the presence of the Brethren with your face to the Light.
In every convenient place the architect should contrive secret cryptae or closets. Then are of indispensable utility; but in practice are not sufficiently attended to in this country. On the Continent they are numerous and are dignified with the name of chapels. Two of these apartments have already been mentioned a room for visitors and the Tiler's room; added to which there ought to be a vestry, where the ornaments. furniture jewels, and other regalia are deposited. This is called the treasury, or Tiler's conclave because these things are under has especial charge, and a communication is usually made to this apartment from the Tiler's room. There ought to be also a chapel for preparations, hung with black and having only one small light. placed high up near the ceiling; a chapel for the dead furnished with a table on which are a lamp and emblems of mortality; the Master's conclave, where the records, the Warrants, the Minutes, and every written document are kept. To this room the Worshipful Master retires when the Lodge is called from labor to refreshment and at other times when his presence in the Lodge is not essential; and here he examines the visitors, for which purpose a communication is formed between his conclave and the visitors chapel. It is furnished with blue. And here he transacts the Lodge business with his Secretary. The Ark of the Covenant is also deposited in thus apartment. None of these closets should exceed twelve feet square, and may be of smaller dimensions, according to circumstances.In the middle of the hall there should he a movable trapdoor in the floor, seven feet long and three or four feet broad, opening into a small crypt, about three feet in depth, the use of which is known to none but perfect Freemasons, who have passed through all the symbolical Degrees. All of these particulars may not be equally necessary to the construction of a Masonic Hall; but a close attendance to their general spirit and direction, or to similar regulations, should be impressed on every Lodge that undertakes the construction of a building exclusively for Masonic purposes; and such a building only is entitled to be called a Masonic Hall
The division in the American Rite of the Degrees among various Bodies imposes the necessity, or at least the convenience, when erecting a Masonic Hall in the United States, of appropriating some of the rooms to the uses of Ancient Craft Lodges, some to Royal Arch Chapters, some to Royal and Select Councils, and some to Commanderies of Knights Templars. It is neither proper nor convenient that a Chapter should be held in a Lodge; and it is equally expedient that the Asylum of a Commandery should be kept separate from both. All of these rooms should be oblong in form, lofty in height, with an elevated dais or platform in the East, and two doors in the West, the one in the Northwest corner leading into the preparation room, and the other communicating with the Tiler's apartment. But in other respects they differ. First, as to the color of the decorations. In a Lodge room the predominating color should be blue, in a Chapter red, and in a Council and Commandery black.
In a Lodge-room the dais should be elevated on three steps, and provided with a pedestal for the Master, while on each side are seats for the Past Masters, and dignitaries who may visit the Lodge. The pedestal of the Senior Warden in the West should be elevated on two steps, and that of the Junior Warden in the South on one. A similar arrangement, either permanent or temporary, should be provided in the Chapter room for working the intermediate Degrees; but the Eastern dais should be supplied with three pedestals instead of one, for the reception of the Grand Council. The tabernacle also forms an essential part of the Chapter room. This is sometimes erected in the center of the room, although the consistency of the symbolism would require that the whole room, during the working of the Royal Arch Degree, shoddy be deemed a tabernacle, and then the veils would, with propriety, extend from the ceiling to the floor, and from one side of the room to the other. There are some other arrangements required in the construction of a Chapter room, of which it is unnecessary to speak.
Councils of Royal and Select Masters are usually held in Chapter rooms, with an entire disregard of the historical teachings of the Degrees. In a properly constructed Council chamber which, of course, would be in a distinct apartment, there should be no veils, but nine curtains of a stone color; and these, except the last, starting from one side of the room, should stop short of the other, so as to form a narrow passage between the wall and the extremities of the curtains, reaching from the door to the ninth curtain, which alone should reach across the entire extent of the room. These are used only in the Select Degree, and can be removed when the Royal Master is to be conferred. Unlike a Lodge and Chapter, in a Council there is no dais or raised platform; but three tables, of a triangular form, are placed upon the level of the floor in the East. It is, however, very seldom that the funds of a Council will permit of the indulgence in a separate room, and those Bodies are content to work, although at a disadvantage, in a Chapter room. It is impossible, with any convenience, to work a Commandery in a Lodge, or even a Chapter room. The officers and their stations are so different, that what is suitable for one is unsuitable for the other. The dais, which has but one station in a Lodge and three in a Chapter, requires four in a Comrnandery, the Prelate taking his proper place on the right of the Generalissimo. But there are other more important differences. The principal apartment should be capable of a division by a curtain, which should separate the Asylum proper from the rest of the room, as the mystical veil in the ancient Church shut off the prospect of the altar, during the Eucharistic sacrifice, from the view of the catechumens. There are several other rooms required in the Templar ritual which are not used by a Lodge, a Chapter, or a Council, and which makes it necessary that the apartments of a Commandery should be distinct. A banquet-room in close proximity to the Asylum is essential; and convenience requires that there should be an armory for the deposit of the arms and costume of the Knights. But it is unnecessary to speak of reflection rooms, and other places well known to those who are familiar with the ceremonies, and which cannot be dispensed with.
Meaning Praise the Lord. Expression of applause in the Degree of Sublime Ecossais, Heavenly Jerusalem, and others.
- HALLIWELL MANUSCRIPT
The earliest of the old Constitutions. It is in poetic form, and was probably transcribed in 1390 from an earlier copy.
The manuscript is in the King's Library of the British Museum. It was published in 1840 by James 0. Halliwell, and again in 1844, under the title of The Early History of Freemasonry in England. The Masonic character of the poem remained unknown until its discovery by Halliwell, who was not a Freemason, because it was catalogued as A Poem of Moral Duties. It is now more commonly known as the Regius Manuscript because it formed part of the Royal Library commenced`by Henry VII and presented to the British Museum by George II.
What is said above by Brother Hawkins of this early reference to the Craft does not exhibit as fully as many may desire the peculiar features of the Hall Udell or Regius Manuscript. The book is about four by five and a half inches, the writing being on vellum, a fine parchment, and it was bound in its present cover, according to Brother H. J. Whymper, about the year 1838. The cover bears the Royal Arms stamped on both sides with G. R. II, and the date 1757. In that year the King, George II, b an instrument that passed the Great Seal of England presented the Library containing the volume to the British Museum where the present reviser of this work had the pleasure of personally examining it. Formerly in the possession of Charles They're, a boox collector of the seventeenth century and listed in Bernards CatulZugous Manuscripts am Anyliac, Oxford, 1697 (page 200), and described in David Casley s Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the Old Royal Library, 1734 (page 259), as a Poem of Moral levities, the contents were mistaken until J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps mentioned it in his paper on the Introduction of Freemasonry into England, read before the Society of Antiquaries during the session of 183tS to 1839. Two small editions of the transcript of the poem were published as Brother Hawkins tells us. The first edition contained a facsimile reproduction of four lines of the manuscript, the second similarly reproduced the first page, and he also gave a glossary which with the transcript was published in a veritable gem of a work in 1889, Spencer and Company with an introduction by Brother H. J. Whymper. Halliwell-Phillipps pointed out that the writer was probable a priest, this evidently from the allusions in line 699 (page LI). He also calls attention to line 143 (page XI), as intimating that a still older manuscript was in existence when the poem was written.
The writing is done in a neat but characteristic style of the earls period and in these modern days far from familiar to us, the English of that generation was also very different from that of our time. Brother Roderick H. Baxter, Past Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge and Past President of the Manchester Association for Masonic Research, has carefully modernized the transcript and permitted us to make use of his valuable labors. Before giving the work of Brother Baxter we ma) submit a transcript of the first eight lines in which may be seen some of the difficulties met in turning such a manuscript into modern English.
- Whose wol bothe wel rede and loke
- He may fynde wryte yn olde boke
- Of grete lord s, and eke ladyysse,
- That hade mony chyldryn y-fere, y- wisse;
- And hade no rentys to fynde hem wyth,
- Nowther yn towne, ny felde, ny fryth:
- A counsel togeder they cowthe hem take,
- To ordeyne for these chyldryn sake, ...
In the following transcript Brother Baxter has adhered strictly to the phraseology of the original with all its vagaries of person, tense and mood, and has retained the peculiarities of double and sometimes even treble negatives, the only variation being in the substitution of modern words for those now obsolete. However, where the modern words at the ends of lines could not have been used to preserve the jingle of the verses the old words have been utilized with their present equivalents added in brackets so as to avoid the necessity or referring to a glossary. The Roman numerals on the right of the lines indicate the pages of the manuscript.
Hic incipiunt constituciones artis gemetriac cecundum Euclydem
Here begin the constitutions of the art of Geometry according to Euclid.
- Whoever will both well read and look
- He may find written in old book
- Of great lords and also ladies,
- That had many children together, y-wisse; (certainly)
- And had no income to keep them with,
- Neither in town nor field nor frith: (enclosed wood)
- A council together they could them take,
- To ordain for these children s sake
- How they might best lead their life
- Without great disease, care, and strife;
- And most for the multitude that was coming
- Of their children after their endings
- They send them after great clerks,
- To teach them then good works;
- And pray we them, for our Lords sake,
- To our children some work to make
- That they might get their living thereby,
- both well and honestly full securely.
- In that time, through good geometry,
- This honest craft of good masonry
- Was ordained and made in this manner,
- Counterfeited of these clerks together;
- At these lords' prayers they counterfeited geometry,
- And gave it the name of masonry,
- For the most honest craft of all.
- These lords' children thereto did fall
- To learn of him the craft of geometry,
- The which he made full curiously;
- Through fathers' prayers and mothers' also,
- This honest craft he put them to.
- He that learned best, and was of honesty
- And passed his fellows in curiosity,
- If in that craft he did him pass
- He should have more worship than the lasse. (less)
- This great clerk's name was called Euclid,
- His name it spread full wonder wide.
- Yet this great clerk more ordained he
- To him that was higher in this degree,
- That he should teach the simplest of wit
- In that honest craft to be parfytte; (perfect)
- And so each one shall teach the other,
- And love together as sister and brother.
- Furthermore yet that ordained he
- Master called so should he be
- So that he were most worshiped,
- Then should he be so called:
- glut masons should never one another call,
- within the craft amongst them all,
- Neither subject nor servant, my dear brother
- Though he be not so perfect as is another;
- Each shall call other fellows by cuthe, (friendship)
- Because they come of ladies' birth
- On this manner, through good wit of geometry,
- began first the craft of masonry:
- The clerk Euclid on this Wise it found,
- This craft of geometry in Egypt land.
- In Egypt he taught it full wide,
- In divers lands on every side;
- Many vears afterwards, I understand
- Ere that the craft came into this land
- This craft came into England, as I you say,
- In time of good King Athelstane's day
- He made then both hall and even bower,
- And high temples of great honor,
- To disport him in both day and night
- And to worship his God with all his might.
- This good lord loved this craft full well,
- And purposed to strengthen it every del, (part)
- For divers faults that in the craft he found;
- He sent about into the land V.
After all the masons of the craft, To come to him full even straghfte, Straight) For to amend these defaults all By good counsel, if it might fall. An assembly then he could let make Of divers lords in their state, Dukes, earls, and barons also, Knights, squires and many mo, (more) And the great burgesses of that city, They were there all in their degree; These were there each one algate, (always) To ordain for these masons' estate, There they sought by their wit, How they might govern it: VI.
Fifteen articles they there sought, And fifteen points there they wrought. Hic Incipit articulus primus. Here begins the first article. The first article of this geometry: The master mason must be full securely Both steadfast, trusty and true, It shall him never then rue: find pay thy fellows after the cost, As victuals goeth then, well thou woste: (knowest) And pay them truly, upon thy fad, (faith) What they deserven may; (may deserve) And to their hire take no more, But what that they may serve for; And spare neither for love nor drede, (dread) VII.
Of neither parties to take no mede; (bribe) Of lord nor fellow, whoever he be, Of them thou take no manner of fee; find as a judge stand upright, And then thou dost to both good right, And truly do this wheresoever thou gost, (goest) Thy worship, thy profit, it shall be most. Articulus secundus. Second article. The second article of good masonry, As you must it here hear specially, That every master, that is a mason, Must be at the general congregation, So that he it reasonably be told Where that the assembly shall be holde; (held) VIII.
And to that assembly he must needs gon, (go) Unless he have a reasonable skwsacyon, (excuse) Or unless he be disobedient to that craft Or with falsehood is over-raft, (overtaken) Or else sickness hath him so strong, That he may not come them among; That is an excuse good and able, To that assembly without fable. Artieulus tercius Third article. The third article forsooth it is, That the master takes to no Prentice, Unless he have good assurance to dwell Seven years with him, as I you tell, His craft to learn, that is profitable; IX.
Within less he may not be able To lords' profit, nor to his own As you may know by good reason. Articulus quartus. Fourth article. The fourth article this must be, That the master him well besee, That he no bondman Prentice make, Nor for no covetousness do him take; For the lord that he is bound to, May fetch the Prentice wheresoever he go. If in the lodge he were y-take, (taken) Much disease it might there make, And such ease it might befal, That it might grieve some or all X.
For all the masons that be there Will stand together all y-fere. (together) If such one in that craft should dwell Of divers dis-eases you might tell: For more ease then, and of honesty Take a 'prentice of higher degree. By old time written I find That the Prentice should be of gentle kind And so sometime, great lords' blood Took this geometry that is full good trticulus quintus. Fifth article. The fifth article is very good, So that the Prentice be of lawful blood The master shall not, for no advantage
Make no Prentice that is outrage; (deformed) It is to mean, as you may hear, That he have his limbs whole all y-fere; (together) To the craft it were great shame, To make a halt man and a lame For an imperfect man of such blood Should do the craft but little good. Thus you may know every one The craft would have a mighty man; A maimed man he hath no might You must it know long ere night. Articulus sextus Sixth article. The sixth article you must not miss That the master do the lord no prejudice To take the lord for his Prentice, As much as his fellows do, in all wise. For in that craft they be full perfect, So is not he, you must see it. Also it were against good reason, To take his hire as his fellows don. (do) This same article in this case, Judgeth his prentice to take less Than his fellows, that be full perfect. In divers matters, know requite it, The masters may his 'prentice so inform, That his hire may increase full soon,
And ere his tertm come to an end, His hire may full well amend. trticulus septimus. Seventh article. The seventh article that is now here Full well will tell you all y-fere (together) That no master for favour nor dread Shall no thief neither clothe nor feed. Thieves he shall harbour never one, Nor hint that hath killed a man Nor the same that hath a feeble name Lest it would turn the craft to shame. Articulus octavus. Eighth article. The eighth article sheweth you so,
That the master may it well do. If that he have any man of craft And he be not so perfect as he ought, He may him change soon anon, And take for him a more perfect man. Such a man through rechelaschepe, (recklessness) Might do the craft scant worship. Articulus nonus. Ninth article. The ninth article sheweth full well That the master be both wise and felle(strong) That he no work undertake, Unless he ean both it end and make And that it be to the lords' profit also, XV And to his craft, wheresoever he go; And that the ground be well y-take, (taken) That it neither flaw nor grake. (crack)
Articulus decimus. Tenth article. The tenth article is fear to know, Among the craft, to high and low, There shall no master supplant another, But be together as sister and brother, In this curious craft, all and some, That belongeth to a master mason. Nor he shall not supplant no other man, That hath taken a work him upon In pain thereof that is so strong, XVI.
That weigheth no less than ten ponge, (pounds) But if that he be guilty found, That took first the work on hand; For no man in masonry Shall not supplant other securely, But if that it be so wrought, That in turn the work to nought; Then may a mason that work crave, To the lords' profit for it to save In such a ease if it do fall, There shall no mason meddle withal. Forsooth he that beginneth the ground, If he be a mason good and sound, He hath it securely in his mind To bring the work to full good end. Articulus undecimus. eleventh articie. The eleventh article I tell thee, That he is both fair and free; For he teacheth, by his might, That no mason should work by night, But if it be in practising of wit, If that I could amend it. Articulus duodecimus. Twelfth article. The twelfth article is of high honesty To every mason wheresoever he be, He shall not his fellows' work deprave, If that he will his honesty save With honest words he it commend,
By the wit that God did thee send; But it amend by all that thou may. Between you both without nay. (doubt) Articulus XIIJus. Thirteenth article. The thirteenth article, so God me save, Is if that the master a Prentice have, Entirely then that he him teach And measurable points that he him reche, (tell) That he the craft ably may conne, (know) Wheresoever he go under the sun. Articulus XIIIJus. Fourteenth article. The fourteenth article by good reason, Sheweth the master how he shall don; (do) He shall no Prentice to him take, XIX.
Unless divers cares he have to make, That he may within his term, Of him divers points may learn. Articulus quindecimus. Fifteenth article. The fifteenth article maketh an end, For to the master he is a friend; To teach him so, that for no man, No false maintenance he take him upon, Nor maintain his fellows in their sin, For no good that he might win; Nor no false oath suffer him to make, For dread of their souls' sake, Lest it would turn the craft to shame, And himself to very much blame. XX
Plures constituciones. Plural constitutions. At this assembly were points ordained mo, (more) Of great lords and masters also, That who win know this craft and come to estate, He must love wed God and holy church algate, (always) And his master also that he is with, Wheresoever he go in field or frythe, (enclosed wood) And thy fellows thou love also, For that thy craft win that thou do Secundus punctus. Second point. The second point as I you say That the mason work upon the work day, As truly as he can or may, XXI
To deserve his hire for the holy-day, And truly to labour on his deed, Well deserve to have his mede. (reward) Tercius punctus. Third point. The third point must be severele, (severely) With the Prentice know it well, His master's counsel he keep and close And his fellows by his good purpose; The privities of the chamber tell he no man, Nor in the lodge whatsoever they don- (do) Whatsoever thou hearest or seest them do, Tell it no man wheresoever you go; The counsel of hall, and even of bower, XXII.
Keep it well to great honour Lest it would turn thyself to blame, And bring the craft into great shame. Quartus punctus. Fourth point. The fourth point teacheth us alse, (also) That no man to his craft be false; Error he shall maintain none Against the craft, but let it gone; (go) Nor no prejudice he shall not do To his master, nor his fellow also; And though the Prentice be under awe Yet he would have the same law. Quintus punctus. Fifth point. The fifth point is without nay, (doubt) That when the mason taketh his pay Of the master, ordained to him, Full meekly taken so must it byn; (be) Yet must the master by good reason, Warn him lawfully before noon, If he will not occupy him no more As he hath done there before; Against this order he may not strive, If he think well for to thrive. Sextus punctus. Sixth point. The sixth point is full given to know, Both to high and even to low, XXIV
For such case it might befall, Among the masons some or all Through envy or deadly hate, Oft ariseth full great debate. Then ought the mason if that he may, Put them both under a day; But loveday vet shall they make none Till that the work-day be clean gone; Upon the holy-day you must well take Leisure enough loveday to make Lest that Il would the work-day Hinder their work for such a fray To such end then that you them draw. XXV
That they stand well in God's law. Septimus punctus. Seventh point. The seventh point he may well mean, Of well long life that God us lene, (lend) As it descrieth well openly, Thou shalt not by thy master's wife lie, Nor by thy fellows', in no manner wise, Lest the craft would thee despise; Nor by thy fellows' concubine, No more thou wouldst he did by thine. The pain thereof let it be sure, That he be Prentice full seven year If he forfeit in any of them
So chastised then must he been (be) Full much care might there begin, For such a foul deadly sin. Octavus punctus. Eighth point. The eighth point, he may be sure, If thou hast taken any cure, Under thy master thou be true, For that point thou shalt never rue; A true mediator thou must needs be To thy master, and thy fellows free; Do truly all that thou might, To both parties, and that is good right. Nonus punctus. Ninth point.
The ninth point we shall him call, That he be steward of our hall, If that you be in chambery-fere, (together) Each one serve other with mild cheer; Gentle fellows, you must it know, For to be stewards all o-rowe, (in turn) Week after week without doubt, Stewards to be so all in turn about, Amiably to serve each one other As though they were sister and brother, There shall never one another costage (cost) Free himself to no advantage, But every man shall be equally free
In that cost, so must it be Look that thou pay well every man algate, (always) That thou hast bought any victuals ate, (eaten) That no craving be made to thee, Nor to thy fellows in no degree, To man or to woman, whoever he be Pay them well and truly, for that will we: Thereof on thy fellow true record thou take, For that good pay as thou dost make, Lest it would thy fellow shame, And bring thyself into great blame. Yet good accounts he must make Of such goods as he hath y-take (taken)
Of thy fellows' goods that thou hast spende, (spent) Where and how and to what end; Such accounts thou must come to, When thy fellows wish that thou do.X Decimus punctus. Tenth point. The tenth point presenteth well good life, To live without care and strife For if the mason live amiss, And in his work be false y-wisse, (I know) And through such a false skewsasyon (excuse) May slander his fellows without reason, Through false slander of such fame.
May make the craft acquire blame. If he do the craft such villainy Do him no favour then securely, Nor maintain not him in wicked life, Lest it would turn to care and strife; But yet him you shall not delayme, (delay) Unless that you shall him constrain For to appear wheresoever you will Where that you will, loud or still; To the next assembly you shall him call, To appear before his fellows all, And unless he will before them appear,
The craft he must need forswear; He shall then be punished after the law That was founded by old dawe. (day) Punctus undecimus. Eleventh point. The eleventh point is of good discrction As you must know by good reason A mason, if he this craft well con, (know) That seeth his fellow hew on a stone And is in point to spoil that stone, Amend it soon if that thou can And teach him then it to amend That the lords' work be not y-schende, (spoiled) And teach him easily it to amend, .
With fair words, that God thee hath lender (lent) For his sake that sit above With sweet words nourish his love. Punctus duodecimus. Twelfth point. The twelfth point is of great royalty There as the assembly held shall be There shall be masters and fellows also, And other great lords many mo- (more) There shall be the sheriff of that country, And also the mayor of that city, Knights and squires there shall be And also aldermen, as you shall see: Such ordinance as they make there,
They shall maintain it all y-fere (together) Against that man, whatsoever he be That belongeth to the craft both fair and free If he any strife against them make Into their custody he shall be take (taken) XIIJus punctus. Thirteenth point. The thirteenth point is to us full lief, He shall swear never to be no thief Nor suecour him in his false craft, For no good that he hath byraft- (bereft) And thou must it know or sin Neither for his good, nor for his kin. XIIIJus punctus. Fourteenth point.
The fourteenth point is full good law To him that would be under awe: A good true oath he must there swear To his master and his fellows that be there; He must be steadfast and true also To all this ordinance, wheresoever he go, And to his liege lord the king, To be true to him over all thing. And all these points here before To them thou must need be y-swore, (sworn) And all shall swear the same oath Of the masons, be they lief be they loath To all these points here before,
That hath been ordained by full good lore. And they shall enquire every man Of his party, as well as he can, If any man may be found guilty In ante of these points specially; And who he be, let him be sought And to the assembly let him be brought Quindecimus punctus. fifteenth point. The fifteenth point is of full lore For them that shall be there y-swore, (sworn) Such ordinance at the assembly was raid Of great lords and mvsters before said For the same that be disobedient y-wisse (I know)
Against the ordinance that there is, Of these articles that were moved there, Of great lords and masons all y-fere. (together) And if they be proved openly Before that assembly by and by Befor that assembly , by and by And for their guils no amends will make, Then must they need the craft forsake; And no masons craft they shall refuse, And swear it never more to use. But if that they will amends make, Again to the craft they shall never take; And if that thev will not do so The sheriff shall come them soon to,.
And put their bodies in deep prison, For the trespass that they have done, And take their goods and their cattle Into the king's hand, every delle, (part) And let them dwell there full still, Till it be our liege king's will. Alia ordinacio artis gemetriae. Another ordinance of the art of geometry. They ordained there an assembly to be y-holde, (held) Every year, wheresoever they would, To amend the defaults, if any were found Among the craft within the land; Bach year or third year it should be holde, (held) In every place wheresoever they would; Time and place must be ordained also, In what place they should assemble to. All the men of craft there they must be, And other great lords, as you must see, To mend the faults that he there spoken, If that any of them be then broken. There they shall be all y-swore, (sworn) That belongeth to this eraft's lore, To keep their statutes every one That were ordained bv King Athelstane; These statutes that I have here found
I ordain they be held through my land, For the worship of my royalty, That I have bv my dignity. Also at every assembly that you hold, That you come to your liege king bold, Beseeching him of his high grace, To stand with you in every place, To confirm the statutes of King Athelstane, That he ordained to this craft by good reason. Ars quatuor coronatorum. The art of the four crowned ones. Pray we now to God almight, (almighty) And to his mother Mary bright, That we may keep these articles here, And these points well all y-fere, (together) As did these holy martyrs four, That in this craft were of great honour; They were as good masons as on earth shall go, Gravers and image-makers they were also. For they were workmen of the best, The emperor had to them great luste; (liking) He willed of them an image to make That might be worshipped for his sake; Such monuments he had in his dawe, (day) To turn the people from Christ's law.
But they were steadfast in Christ's lay (law) And to their craft without nay; (doubt) They loved well God and all his lore, And were in his service ever more. True men they were in that dawe, (day) And lived well in God's law; They thought no monuments for to make For no good that they might take, To believe on that monument for their God, They would not do so, though he were wod; (furious) For they would not forsake their true fay (faith)
And belleve on his false lay. (law) The emperor let take them soon anon, And put them in a deep prison; The more sorely he punished them in that place, The more joy was to them of Crist' s grace. Then when he saw no other one, To death he let them then gon, (go) Whose will of their life yet more know. By the book he might it show In the legend of sanetorum (holy ones) The names of quatuor coronàtorum (four crowned ones)
Their feast will be without nay, (doubt) After Hallow-eten the eighth dale You may hear as I do read, That many years after, for great dread That Noah's flood was all run The tower of Babylon was begun, As plain work of lime and stone As any man should look upon; So long and broad it was begun, Seven miles the height shadoweth the sun. King Nebuchadnezzar let it make To great strength for man's sake,
Though such a flood again should come, Over the work it should not nome, (take) nor they had so high pride, with strong boast, All that work therefore was lost; An angel smote them so with divers speech, That never one knew what the other should reche (tell) Many years after, the good clerk Euclid Taught the craft of geometry full wonder wide, So he did that other time also, Of divers crafts many mo. (more) Through high grace of Christ in heaven, He commenced in the sciences seven;
Grammar is the first science y-wisse, (I know) Dialect the second, so have I bliss Rhetoric the third without nay, (doubt) Music is the fourth, as I you say, Astronomy is the fifth, by my snout, Arithmetic the sixth, without doubt, Geometry the seventh maketh an end, For he is both meek and hende. (courteous) Grammar forsooth is the root, Whoever will learn on the book; But art passeth in his degree, As the fruit doth the root of the tree;
Rhetoric measureth with ornate speech among, And music it is a sweet song; Astronomy numbereth, my dear brother, Arithmetic sheweth one thing that is another, geometry the seventh science it is, That can separate falsehood from truth y-wis. (I know) These be the sciences seven, Who useth them well he may have heaven. Now dear children by your wit Pride and covetousness that you leave it, And taketh heed to good discretion, And to good nurture, wheresoever you come. Now I prav you take good heed, .
For this vou must know nede, (needs) But much more you must wyten, (know) Than you find here written. If thee fail thereto wit Pray to God to send thee it: For Christ himself, he teacheth out (us) That holy church is God's house, That is made for nothing ellus (else) But for to pray in, as the book tellus; (tells us) There the people shall gather in, To pray and weep for their sln. Look thou come not to church late For to speak harlotry by the gate; XLVIII.
Then to church when thou dost fare, Have in thy mind ever mare (more) To worship they lord God both day and night, With all thy wits and even thy might. To the church door when thou dost come Of that holy water there some thou nome"t For every drop thou feelest there Quencheth a venial sin, be thou ser. (sure) But first thou must do down thy hood, For his love that died on the rood. Into the ehureh when thou dost gon, (go) Pull up thy heart to Christ, anon; XLIX.
Upon the rood thou look up then, And kneel down fair upon thy knew (knees) Then pray to him so here to worche (work) After the law of holy church, For to keep the commandments ten, That God gave to all men; And pray to him with mild steven (voice) To keep thee from the sins seven, That thou here may, in this life, Keep thee well from care and strife; Furthermore he grant thee grace, In heaven's bliss to have a place. In holy church leave trifling words Of lewd speech and foul bordes, (jests) find put away all vanity, And say thy pater noster and thine ave; Look also that thou make no bere, (noise) But always to be in thy prayer; If thou wilt not thyself pray, Hinder no other man by no way. In that place neither sit nor stand, But kneel fair down on the ground, And when the Gospel me read shall, Fairly thou stand up from the wall, And bless the fare if that thou can, When gloria tibi is begun; And when the gospel is done, Again thou might kneel down, On both thy knees down thou fall, For his love that bought us all; And when thou hearest the bell ring To that holy sakerynge, (sacrament) Kneel you must both young and old, And both your hands fair uphold, And say then in this manner.
Fair and solf without bere; (noise) "Jesu Lord welcome thou be, In form of bread as I thee see, Now Jesu for thine holy name, Shield me from sin and shame; Shrift and Eucharist thou grant me bo, (both) Ere that I shall hence go, And very contrition for my sin, That I never, Lord, die therein; And as thou were of maid y-bore (born) Suffer me never to be y-lore- (dot) But when I shall hence wend,
Grant me the bliss without end; Amen! Amen! so mote it be! Now sweet lady pray for me." Thus thou might say, or some other thing When thou kneelest at the sakerynge, (sacrament) For covetousness after good, spare thou nought To worship him that all hath wrought; For glad may a man that day be, That once in the day may him see; It is so much worth, without nay, (doubt) The virtue thereof no man tell may But so much good doth that sight,
That Saint Austin telleth full right, That day thou seest God's body Thou shalt have these full securely: Meet and drink at thy need None that day shalt thou gnede; (lack) Idle oaths and words bo, (both) God forgiveth thee also; Sudden death that same day Thee dare not dread by no way Also that day, I thee plight Thou shalt not lose thy eye sight; And each foot that thou goest then,
That holy sight for to sen (see) They shall be told to stand instead When thou hast thereto great need That messenger the angel Gabriel Will keep them to thee full well. From thls matter now I may pass To tell more benefits of the mass To church come yet, if thou may And hear the mass each day If thou may not come to church, Where that ever thou dost worche, (work) When thou hearest the mass knylle, (toll)
Pray to God with heart still To give they part of that service, That in church there done is. Furthermore yet, I will you preach To your fellows, it for to teach, When thou comest before a lord In hall, in bower, or at the board, Hood or cap that thou off do, Ere thou come him entirely to Twice or thrice, without doubt, To that lord thou must lowte; (bow) With thy right knee let it be do, (done) LVII.
Thine own worship thou save so. Hold off thy cap and hood also, Till thou have leave it on to do. (put) All the time thou speakest with him, Fair and amiably hold up thy chin So, after the nurture of the book, In his face kindly thou look. Foot and hand thou keep full still For clawing and tripping. is skill; From spitting and sniffling keep thee also By private expulsion let it go. And if that thou be wise and felle, (discrete) LVIII.
Thou has great need to govern thee well. Into the hall when thou dost wend Amongst the gentles, good and hende, (courteous) Presume not too high for nothing For thine high blood, nor thy cunning, Neither to sit nor to lean, That is nurture good and clean. Let not thy countenance therefore abate, Forsooth good nurture will save thy state. Father and mother, whatsoever they be, Well is the child that well may thee, In hall, in chamber, where thou dost gon; (go) LIX.
Good manners make a man. To the next degree look wisely To do them reverence by and by; Do them yet no reverence all o-rowe, (in turn) Unless that thou do them know. To the meat when thou art set, Fair and honestly thou eat it First look that thine hands be clean, And that thy knife be sharp and keen And cut thy bread all at thy meat, Right as it may be there y-ete. (eaten) If thou sit by a worthier man.
Then thy self thou art one Suffer him first to touch the meat, Ere thyself to it reach. To the fairest morsel thou might not strike, Though that thou do it well like; Keep thine hands fair and well From foul smudging of thy towel; Thereon thou shalt not thy nose smite, (blow) Nor at the meat thy tooth thou pike- (pick) Tco deep in cup thou might not sink, Though thou have good will to drink, Lest thine eyes would vaster thereby when were it no courtesy. Look in thy mouth there be no meat, When thou beginnest to drink or speak. When thou seest any man drinking, That taketh heed to thy carpynge, (speech) Soon anon thou cease thy tale Whether he drink wine or ale, Look also thou scorn no man In what degree thou seest him gone: Nor thou shalt no man deprave, If thou wilt thy worship save For such word might there outburst. That might make thee sit in evil rest Close thy hand in thy fist, And keep thee well from " had-y-wiste." (" had known ") In chamber, among the ladies bright, Hold thy tongue and spend thy sight; Laugh thou not with no great cry, Nor make no lewd sport and ribaldry. Play thou not but with thy peers Nor tell thou not all that thou hears; Discover thou not thine own deed, For no mirth, nor for no mede: (reward) With fair speech thou might have thy will, With it thou might thy self spylle. (spoil) LXIII.
When thou meetest a worthy man, Cap and hood thou hold not on; In church in market or in the gate, Do him reverence after his state. If thou goest v.ith a worthier man Then thyself thou art one, Let thy foremost shoulder follow his For that is nurture without lack; When he doth speak, hold thee still, When he hath done , say for thy will In thy speech that thou be felle, (discreet) And what thou sayest consider thee well But deprive thou not him his tale, Neither at the wine nor at the ale. Christ then of his high grace Save you both w it and space Bell this book to know and read, Heaven to have for your mede. (reward) Amen! Amen! so mote it be! So say we all for charity.
The Manuscript has been discussed at various times by several students. A lengthy and careful examination of it appears in volume i of the Antigrapha of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1889, and among the Collected Essays and Papers Relating to Freemasonry by Robert F. Gould, 1913, published by William Tait of Belfast, Ireland. Brother William Begernann published a discussion of it in the German language, which is summarized by Brother George William Speth in volume vii~ Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge.
The name Reyius Manuscript was the suggestion of Brother Gould as indicating its pre-eminence as a Masonic document as well as its previous ownership by the Kings of England. The Manuscript, as Brother Baxter well said, is of prime importance to the Fraternity of Freemasons as being its oldest preserved document which affords evidence of a legendary history and an indication of a speculative origin. Brother Baxter read a paper upon the subject before the Lodge of Research at Leicester on November 2S, 1914. From this discussion we take the following comments of Brother Baxter:
I should like to ask you to carefully consider the wording of the poem, and to notice the remarkable number of instances in which the phrases have been introduced although in different terminology into our ritual, and the cases in which its requirements have been incorporated with our Constitutions. Even the last stage of the document, which deals with manners at table and in the presence of superiors, and appears at first sight to be quite irrelevant, may be accepted as evidence that our present custom of celebrating special Masonic events by banqueting and fraternizing was a feature of the Craft at the time of which the Manuscript speaks. You will all be acquainted in some degree with the remarkable series of documents known variously as the Manuscript Constitutions, the Gothic Constitutions, or more commonly nowadays as the Old Charoes of the British Freemasons and you will further know that after an introductory prayer, of a purely Christian character, they go on to relate how the science of geometry (or Freemasonry) came to be founded. This same legend forms the first part of the poem we are now considering, and as it clearly states that the story is to be found in old books, abundantly proves that the versifier had access to copies of the Old Charges which are unhappily now lost to us.
I wish to use this legend as the basis of a theory which I shall try to develop. Briefly stated, my idea is that the poem, as well as all the other Old Charges, clearly indicates that architectures the mistress of the arts, which is undoubtedly founded on geometry, was developed in Egypt, the cradle of civilization, and that its early practitioners were, as related in these old Manuscript, of gentle birth. They must have been the actual designers of the structures and have worked, in conjunction so far as the execution of their projects was concerned with the skilled craftsmen and manual laborers who were necessary to their purpose. A gild, composed of different grades of members, would thus be formed, possibly with different secret signs for each class, and from this gild, through different channels of development, would arise the present-day purely speculative form of Freemasonry, with its system of Degrees.
Brothers Speth and Gould have labored hard to establish the fact that prior to the institution of Grand Lodge, and during its early regime, two Degrees only were worked, and I have used the weight of later evidence to back up their assertion. What is more likely than that the higher or Master's Degree was confined to the skilled geometricians, whilst the simpler artificers had to content themselves with the lower step? All students know definitely, that from the earliest times of which we have any monuments remaining, that architecture was a living art developing along clearly defined lines, and varying in character with the nature of the materials employed, and the climatic conditions existing in the countries where they were used, down at least to the close of the Gothic Era in Western Europe, and its counterpart in Eastern countries. (I am not at all suggesting that the Renaissance effected an arrest of creative design, although it reverted to and made use of forms of a bygone age.) It is therefore not possible to conceive that buildings of any architectural pretensions could have been erected, without carefully thought-out designs having been prepared. Dealing more particularly with the actual time of the writing of the poem, we can only conclude that such a progression of design as commonly proceeded over the whole of England almost simultaneously, could only have been produced by a school of thought and not by individual effort. My firm conviction is that this school was composed of the Master Freemasons of the period.
Commenting on lines 143-G of the poem which (modernized) read:
- By old time written I find
- That the Prentice should be of gentle kind
- And so sometime great lords' blood,
- Took this geometry that is full good.
The late F. J. Furnivall said, "I should like to see the evidence of a lords son having become a working mason. and dwelling seven years with his master 'his craft to learn."' All contention is that neither the poem nor any other craft document ever suggested that a lord's son had become a working mason. That they became students of geometry and designers of buildings is in every way likely, and was in no way derogatory to their dignity. I might even point out that the present Lord Ferrers (the successor in the earldom of your own late Provincial Grand Master) was, before his accession to the title, a practicing architect, and that other scions of noble families are at present similarly engaged. There seems to be good evidence of this in the poem, particularly in Lines 279-83, which read: She privities of the chamber tell he no man, Nor in the lodge whatsoever they don; Whatsoever thou hearest or seest them do Tell to no man wheresoever you go; The counsel of hall and even of bower Steep it well to great honor— That these gentlemen were on a different footing from the ordinary craftsmen, and that their labors were conducted. not in the Lodge, but in the chamber, are conditions which I suggest are parallel to the masons' shed and the drawing office. Reverting now to Henry Yevley, whose name is variously spelled, but always easily recognizable, I find on turning up his name in Ivenning's Cyclopaedia Said by the Revd. James Anderson, D.D. (in the first edition of the Book of Constitutions, 1723) to have been the King's Freemason, or general surveyor of the buildings of King Edward III, and employed by His Majesty to 'build several abbies' and other edifices. Unfortunately Doctor Anderson was gifted with the imaginative faculty to an undue extent, so that such statements as the foregoing (which are frequently met with in his work) confuse more than they benefit the general reader, and, Masonically speaking, have done much harm. We fail to see why Masonry requires unhistorical statements to render it acceptable in any way." The Reverend Brother Woodford, who was the author and editor of the encyclopedia, in conjunction with Brother Vaughan, who wrote the articles under the letters U. V, W. Y. and Z. appears, however, to be wrong on this occasion, and the imaginative doctor quite right. Doctor Begemann contributed a note to Transactions. Quatuor Coronati Lodge, xxi, in which he endeavored to prove—and I think with complete success—that the title of Freemason applied to Yevley by Stow in his Survey of London, 1598, had actually been used during the former's lifetime, and was not a posthumous description. Doctor Begemann's note inspired an article by Brother E. W. M Wonnacott, of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, and himself an architect in the same volume, in which he conclusively proved from existing documents, that as early as 1362 Yevley was described as a " deviser of Masonry," and that William of Wykeham, generally credited with having been a great architect, was merely mentioned as a clerk. In 1381 Nicholas Typerton undertook to build the aisle of Saint Dunstan's Church in Thames Street " selon ho devise de Mestre (according to the design of Master) Henry Iveleghe," and in 1395 works were carried out at Westminster Hall from a model made by the advice of Waster Henri Zeveley. " Selone be purport d'une fourme et molde fait par conseil de mesttre Henri Zeveley. (According to the style of a form and mold made by counsel of Master Henri Zeveley.) I have not picked out the ease of Yevley as being at all singular, but merely because it has been so fully dealt faith in Masonic writings which are available to us all. tn examination of the list of names in Wyatt Papworth's paper on the Superintendents of English Buildings during the Middle Ages, and a careful study of their records, could doubtless prove that their duties were in every way analogous to those of the character selected. Surely there can no longer be any doubt that the Master Masons of the Gothic Era at least (and possibly so long as architecture has been practiced), were architects in the truest sense of the word, for when we consider the constructive ingenuity of their buildings, no less than their perfect proportions and beauty, we are compelled at once to admit, that their skill and knowledge of geometry were profound. Thus I think you will agree, I am quite justified in concluding that the legend of the founding of the science of geometry by the children of great lords and ladies, as related in the first part of the poem, is no myth, but is founded on fact, for unlettered working masons could never have produced the temples and churches for the worship of T. G. A. O. T. U., which of all things that excite pleasure to the eye, rank next only to the works of the Great Creator Himself.
The name of the angel that, in accordance with the Cabalistical system, governs the planet Venus.
In 1733, the Earl of Strathmore, Grand Master of England, granted a Deputation "to eleven German gentlemen, good Brothers, for constituting a Lodge at Hamburg" (see Anderson, Constitutions, 1738, page 194). of the proceedings of this Lodge we have no information. In 1740, Brother Luettman brought from England a Warrant for the establishment of a Lodge, and a Patent for himself, as Provincial Grand Master of Hamburg and Lower Saxony. In October, 1741, it assumed the name of Absalom, and in the same year the Provincial Grand Lodge of Hamburg and Saxony was opened, a Body which, Lindel says (on page 239 of his History) was the oldest Mother Lodge in Germany. About the year 1787, the Provincial Grand Lodge adopted the newly invented Rite of Frederick L. Schroder, consisting of only three Degrees. In 1801, it declared itself an independent Grand Lodge, and has so continued. The Grand Lodge of Hamburg practices Schroder's Rite (see Schroder). There is also in Hamburg a sort of Chapter, which was formed by Schroder, under the title of Geschichtliche Engbund, or Historical Select Union. It was intended as a substitute for Fessler's Degrees of Knowledge, the members of which employ their time in studying the various systems of Freemasonry. The Mutter-Bund of the Confederacy of Hamburg Lodges, which make up this system, is independent of the Grand Lodge. The two authorities are entirely distinct, and bear much the same relation to each other as the Grand Lodges and Grand Chapters of the United States.
- HAMILTON, ALEXANDER
American economist and statesman, born January 11, 1757, in West Indies, and as the result of a duel with Aaron Burr at Weehawken, New Jersey, died, July 12, 1804. Organized an artillery company in Revolutionary War, became private secretary to Washington. Brilliant as a soldier, he was equally effective in organizing the United States Government under the 1787 Constitution and became Secretary of State. His able reports cover a wide range of investigation and he bestowed order and confidence to national finances. His name is recorded among those visiting American Union Lodge at Morristown, New Jersey, December 27, 1779, and is identified because the only one of that name then holding a commission in the Army under General Washington.
- HAMILTON, HON. ROBERT, M.A., M.D.
Born 1820; died May, 1880, at Jamaica, of which island he was District Grand Master. This English gentleman was a member of the Queen's Body Guard. He was appointed District Grand Master of Jamaiea, November 5, 1858; District (brand Superintendent of Royal Arch Masons, January 10, 1859; Provincial Grand Master of Mark Masons, 1877; and was a supernumerary member of the Supreme Council, 33 , of England, and Provincial Grand Master of the Royal Order of Scotland.
- HANCOCK, JOHN
Born January 12, 1737; died October 8, 1793. President of the Continental Congress from May 1775, to October 1777, and the first to attach his name to the Declaration of Independence. He took the Masonic Degrees in Merchants Lodge No. 277, Quebec, Canada, in 1762, and on October 14, 1762, affiliated with the Lodge of Saint Andrew, Boston, Massachusetts (see New Age, October, 1925; Masonic Presidents, Vice-Presidents and Signers, Wm. L. Bovden; Masonry in the Formation of our Government 1761-99, Philip A. Roth, page 40).
In Freemasonry, the hand as a symbol holds a high place, because it is the principal seat of the sense of feeling so necessary to and so highly revered by Freemasons. The same symbol is found in the most ancient religions, and some of their analogies to Masonic symbolism are peculiar. Thus, Horapollo says that among the Egyptians the hand was the symbol of a builder, or one fond of building, because all labor proceeds from the hand. In many of the Ancient Mysteries the hand, especially the left, was deemed the symbol of equity. In Christian art a hand is the indication of a holy person or thing. In early medieval art, the Supreme Being was always represented by a hand extended from a cloud, and generally in the act of benediction.
The form of this act of benediction, as adopted by the Roman Church, which seems to have been borrowed from the symbols of the Phrygian and Eleusinian priests or hierophants, who used it in their mystical processions, presents a singular analogy, which will be interesting to Mark Master Masons who will recognize in it a symbol of their own ceremonies. In the benediction referred to, as given in the Latin Church, the thumb, index, and middle fingers are extended, and the two others bent against the palm as in the illustration. The church explains this position of the extended thumb and two fingers as representing the Trinity; but the older symbol of the Pagan priests, which was precisely of the same form, must have had a different meaning.
A writer in the British Magazine (volume I, page 565) thinks that the hand, which was used in the Mithraic mysteries in this position, was symbolic of the Light emanating not from the sun, but from the Creator, directly as a special manifestation; and he remarks that chiromancs or divination by the hand is an art founded upon the notion that the human hand has some reference to the decrees of the supreme power peculiar to it above all other parts of the microcosmus man. Certainly, to the Freemason, the hand is most important as the symbol of that mystical intelligence by which one Freemason knows another "in the dark as well as in the light."
To the above observations by Doctor Mackey we may add that scores of references in the Bible attest the important significance that from the earliest times has been associated with the hand. As a pledge of fidelity the hand is frequently employed in all religious rites, old or new. The sign of a covenant indicated by a movement of the hand is noted by several authors, notably in a chapter on the subject in the Threshold Covenant, H. Clay Trumbull, 1896 (pages 74 to 94).
This authority says "It is a notes worthy fact that the uplifted hand is prominent in the representation of the deities of Babylonia, Assyria, Phenicia, and Egypt, especially of the gods of life or of fertility, who have covenant relations with men. And the same is true of the representations of sovereigns, in the ancient East, who are supposed to be in peculiar relations with the gods. Thus on the seal of Urgur, the earliest ruler of Ur of the Chaldees (see Genesis xi 31 and xv 7), the ruler and his attendants appear with uplifted hands before the moon-god Sin, who in turn is represented with his hand uplifted, as if he were making covenant with him. This is from Perrot and Chipiez's History of Art in Chaldea and Assyria (i, pages 38 and 84). It is the same with the sun-god Shamash and his worshipers, Sayce's Social Life Arrow the Assyrians aru] Babylonians (page 52)."
Professor Trumbull submits numerous instances of the kind in records from various parts of the world and also makes the fact clear that the uplifted hands in the representations of deities and their worshipers was not the attitude of adoration nor of supplication but a symbol of covenanting, the showing of a pledge, a formal act of visible consecration. Of the importance of such an act with the hand there are frequent allusions in the Scriptures. Trumbull (page 82) says, "There is a clear recognition of this idea in many Bible references to the lifting up of the hands unto God, as if in covenant relations with him.
Thus Abraham says to the King of Sodom, 'I have lift up my hand to the Lord,' Genesis xiv 22, as if he would say I have pledged myself to Him. I have given him my hand. And the Psalmist lxiii 4, says 'I will lift up my hand in Thy name.' God Himself says, by His prophet, Isaiah il 22, 'I will lift up Mine hand to the nations;' that is I will covenant with them. Compare Exodus vi 8, Numbers xiv 30, and Nehemiah ix 15. And 80 in many another case. Indeed the Assyrian word for swearing—nish—is literally lifting up the hand, and the Hebrew word nasa means to lift up the hand or to swear (see Tallquist's Die Sprague Contracte Nabu Naido, page 108, and Gesenius's Hebrew Lexicon). Again, there may be a reference to the 'hand of might' in a covenant relation, in those passages where God is spoken of as bringing His people out of Egypt by 'a strong hand' or 'a mighty hand,' and as dealing with them afterwards in the same way (see, for example, Exodus ui 19; xiii 3, 14, 16; xxxii ll; Deuteronomy iii 24; iv 34; v 15, vi 21; vii 8, 19; ix 26; xi 2, etc.; Second Chronicles vi 3 Ezekiel xx 34; Daniel ix 15). An uplifted hand is a symbol found also on the stepped pyramid temples of Polynesia (see Ellis's Polynesian Pesearches ii, page 207, illustration)."
Attention may be directed to the additional authority given in the signing of a document by one's own hand. Even where a person cannot write for himself, a mark made by the one attesting to the truth of the rest of the writing is acceptable and customary. To pass a coin from hand of the one party to a contract into the hand of another person involved in the matter has been accepted as a mutual pledge of the good faith of both concerned to carry out the terms of the undertaking. An English expression about "taking a shilling" refers to the binding of the bargain when a soldier enlists in the British Array. All refer to the covenant authorized by a sign made by the hand. We must not forget the common expressions relating to the hand as an agency, a source, an authority, and so on, as in "at first hand," "by hand," "in hand," "in the hands of," etc. Nor may we overlook the use of blood to emphasize the importance of a contract. Professor Trumbull offers a suggestive comment on the relation of this to an oath or obligation. "The very term sign manual, employed for a veritable signature, may point to an origin in this custom. Indeed, may it not be that the large red seal attached to important documents, at the present time, is a survival of the signature and seal of the bloody hand?" (Threshold Covenant, page 94).
Of such gestures as are made by the laying on of hands in Church ceremonies and elsewhere in sealing a covenant there are many pregnant allusions in the Bible and other places. Compare Genesis it 8, 94; Numbers xxvii, 8 to 23; Acts vi 6; viiu 18, xui 3; xix 6; First Timothy iv 14; vi 2; viii 9; Hebrews vi 2; viii 9 (see Covenant and Oath, also Penalty).
- HAND, LEFT
See Left Hand
- HAND, RIGHT
See Right Hand
- HANDS, CLEA
See Clean Hands
- HANDS, UNITED
Clasped hands are a symbol of Jidelity and trust. A Spanish work was published at Vittoria, in 1774, where three hands are shown united in the vignette on the title.
- HAND TO BACK
See Points of Fellowship
- HAND TO HAND
See Points of Fellowship
Freemasonry was introduced into Hanover, in the year 1744, by the organization of the Lodge Frederick; which did not, however, get into active operation, in consequence of the opposition of the priests, until two years after. A Provincial Grand Lodge was established in 1755, which in 1828 became an independent Grand Lodge. In 1866, in consequence of the war between Austria and Prussia, Hanover was annexed to the latter country. There being three Grand Lodges at that time in Prussia, the Kirlg deemed it inexpedient to add a fourth, and, by a cabinet order of February 17, 1867, the Grand Lodge of Hanover was dissolved. Most of the Hanoverian Lodges united with the Grand Lodge Royal York at Berlin, and a few with the Grand Lodge of the Three Globes.
The Hebrew word 17N'XEN, in Latin Voluntas Dei. A covered word used in the Twenty-third Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
The name of the second king in the Scandinavian Mysteries.
- HARAM, GRAND
The Seventy-third Degree of the Rite of Mizraim
The title of an officer in the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, and also in the Knights of Saint John the Evangelist.
- HARDIE, JAMES
A Freemason of New York, who published, in 1818, a work entitled The New Freemasons' Monitor and Masonic Guide. It evinces considerable ability, was in Brother Mackey's opinion more valuable than the Monitors of Webb and Cross, and deserved a greater popularity than it seems to have received.
- HARLEIAN MANUSCRIPTS
An old record of the Constitutions of Freemasonry, so called because it forms No. 2054 of the collection of manuscripts in the British Museums which were originally collected by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, the celebrated Prime Minister of Queen Anne, and known as the Bibliotheca Harleian, or Harleian Labrary. The Manuscript consists of four leaves, containing six and a half pages of close writing in a cramped hand, said to be that of Randle Holmc, Chester Herald, n ho died in 1699. The Manuscript has first published by Brother William James Hughan, in his Masonic Sketches and Reprints. She Manuscript was carefully transcribed for Brother Hughan by a faithful copyist, and its correctness was verified by Sims, of the Manuscript Department of the British Museum. Brother Hughan places the date of the record in the middle of the seventeenth century, and in this he is probably correct.
The two following folios says the Reverend Brother Woodford in the volume (namely 33 and 34) are of a very important character, inasmuch as the secrets of Freemasonry are referred to in the "obligation" taken by Initiates and the sums are recorded which "William Wade give to be a Freemason," and others who were admitted members of the Lodge. The amounts varied from five shillings to a pound the majority being ten shillings and upwards. The fragment on folio 33 is as follows and was written about the same time as the Manuscript Constitutions; There is several words & signs of a free mason to be received to ye weh as y-u w-ch as will before God at the Great & terrible day of Judgment you keep secret & not to revile the same in the hears of any person or to any hut to the Mrs- & fellows of the said society of free masons so help me God, etc.
A facsimile of the Manuscript has been published by the Quatuor Coronati Lodge. There is another Manuscript in the same collection marked No. 1492, the date of which is conjectured to be about 1650! or rather later. It was copied by Brother Henry Phillips, and first published in the Freemasons Quarterly Retnew in 1836 (pages 288 to 295). The copy, however, unfortunately, is not an exact one, as E. A. Bond, of the Museum, who compared a part of the transcript with the original, says that "the copyist has overlooked peculiarities in many instances." It is important in containing an Oath of Secrecy, which is in the following words:
I (giving full name) in the presence of Almighty God, and my fellows and Brethren here present, promise and declare that I will not at any time hereafter, by any Act, or Circumstance whatsoever, directly or indirectly publish, discover, reveal, or make known any of the Secrete privileges, or Counsels of the Fraternity or fellowship of Freemasonry, which at this time, or any time hereafter shall be made known unto me; so help me God and the holy contents of this book. . A facsimile of this manuscript also has been published by the Quatuor Coronati Lodge.
It is a duty especially entrusted to the Senior Warden of a Lodge, who is figuratively supposed to preside over the Craft during the hours of labor, so to act that none shall depart from the Lodge dissatisfied or discontented, that harmony may be thus preserved, because, as the instruction expresses it, harmony is the strength and support of all well-regulated institutions.
- HARMONY, BRETHREN OF
See Brethren of Harmony
- HARMONY, KNIGHT OF
See Knight of Harmony
- HARMONY, UNIVERSAL
See Mesmeric Free masonry
- HARNETT, CORNELIUS
See Montfort, Colonel Joseph
Lord Harnouester is said to have been elected by the four Lodges of Paris, as the second Grand Master of France, in 1736, succeeding the Earl of Derwentwater. Nothing is known of this nobleman in contemporary history. Burke makes no allusion to him in his Extinct Peerages, and probably the name has undergone one of those indecipherable mutations to which French writers are accustomed to subject all foreign names; indeed, Brother R. F. Gould, in his Concase History of Freemasonry (page 355), considers that the name may even be a corruption of Derwentwater.
We owe the Masonic use of this word to Anderson, who first employed it in the Book of Constitutions, where he tells us that "there were employed about the Temple no less than three thousand and six hundred Princes or Master Masons to conduct the work," and in a note he says that "in First Kings (v, 16) they are called Harodim, Rulers or Provosts" (see Constitutions, 1723, page 10). The passage here alluded to may be translated somewhat more literally than in the authorized version, thus: "Besides from the chiefs or princes appointed by Solomon who were over the work, there were three thousand and three hundred harodim over the people who labored at the work."
Harodim, in Hebrew os , is a grammatically compounded word of the plural form, and is composed of the definite article if, HAR the or those, and a participle of the verb rho, radah, to rule over, and means therefore, those who rule over, or overseers. In the parallel passage of Second Chronicles (ii, 18), the word used is Menatzchim, which has a similar meaning. But from the use of this word Harodim in First Kings, and the commentary on it by Anderson, it has come to pass that Harodim is now technically used to signify Princes in Masonry. They were really overseers of the work, and hence the Masonic use of the term is not altogether inappropriate. Whoever inspects the two parallel passages in First Kings (v, 16) and Second Chronicles (ii, 18), will notice an apparent discrepancy. In the former it is said that there were three thousand and three hundred of these overseers, and in the latter the number is increased to three thousand and six hundred. The commentators have noted but not explained the incongruity. Lee, in his Temple of Solomon, attempts to solve it by supposing that "possibly three hundred at a second review might be added to the number of officers for the greater care of the business." This is not satisfactory; not more so is the explanation offered by myself, continues Brother Mackey, many years ago, in the Lexicon of Freemasonry. It is much more reasonable to suspect a clerical error of some old copyist which has been perpetuated. There is room for such an inadvertence, for there is no very great difference between wIw, the Hebrew for three, and wwt, which is six. The omission of the central letter would create the mistake. Masonic writers have adhered to the three thousand and six hundred, which is the enumeration in Chronicles.
Brother E. L. Hawkins tells us that a Degree bearing this name was commonly conferred by the Lodges in the County of Durham, England, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, but what its exact nature was has now been forgotten.
- HARODIM, GRAND CHAPTER OF
An institution under the title of the Grand Chapter of the Ancient and Venerable Order of Harodim was established in London, in the year 1787, by the celebrated Masonic lecturer, William Preston. He thus defines, in his Illustrations, its nature and objects (see twelfth edition, page 310):
The mysteries of this Order are peculiar to the Institution itself; while the lectures of the Chapter include every branch of the Masonic system, and represent the art of Masonry in a finished and complete form.
Different classes are established, and particular lectures restricted to each class. The lectures are divided into sections, and the sections into clauses. The sections are annually assigned by the Chief Harod to a certain number of skillful Companions in each class, who are denominated Sectionists; and they are empowered to distribute the clauses of their respective sections, with the approbation of the Chief Harod and General Director, among the private companions of the Chapter, who are denominated Clauseholders. Such Companions as by assiduity become possessed of all the sections in the lecture are called Lecturers; and out of these the General Director is always chosen.
Every Clauseholder, on his appointment, is presented with a ticket, signed by the Chief Harod, specifying the clause allotted to him. This ticket entitles him to enjoy the rank and privileges of a Clauseholder in the Chapter; and no Clauseholder can transfer his ticket to another Companion, unless the consent of the Council has been obtained for that purpose, and the General Director has approved the Companion to whom it is to be transferred as qualified to hold it. In case of the death, sickness, or non-residence in London of any Lecturer, Sectionist, or Clauseholder, another Companion is appointed to fill up the vacancy for the time being, that the lectures may be always complete, and during the session a public lecture is usually delivered at stated times. The Grand Chapter is governed by a Grand Patron, two Vice Patrons, a chief Ruler, and two Assistants, with a Council of twelve respectable Companions, who are chosen annually at the Chapter nearest to the festival of Saint John the Evangelist.
The whale system was admirably adapted to the purposes of Masonic instruction, and was intended for propagating the Prestonian system of lectures.
- HARODIM, PRINCE OF
In the old lectures of the Ineffable Degrees, it is said that Tito, the oldest of the Provosts and Judges, was the Prince of Harodim, that is, chief of the three hundred architects who Caere the Harodim, or additional three hundred added to the thirty-three thousand Menatzchim mentioned in Chronicles, and who thus make up the number of three thousand six hundred recorded in the First Book of Kings, and who in the old lecture of the Degree of Provost and Judge are supposed to have been the Harodim or Rulers in Masonry. The Statement is a myth; but it thus attempts to explain the discrepancy alluded to in our article on Harodim.
- HARPER, EDWARDS
There svere two Grand secretaries acting together from the Union of the Grand Lodges of England in 1813, Brother Edwards Harper officiating from 1813 to 1838. For twelve rears previously to 1813 Brother Harper had been Deputy Grand Secretary and on December 1, 1813, he was given a gold jewel or medal by the Grand Lodge for "eminent services rendered the Ancient Craft" during that period. Brother William Henry White, who became Grand Secretary of the Moderns in 1810, continued from 1813 with Brother Harper until 1838 and then acted alone as Grand Secretary up to 1856 (see Memorials of the Masonic Union, W. J. Hughan-John T. Thorp, 1913, pages 11 and 185.
- HARPER, THOMAS
Deputy Grand Master of the Athol Lodge and an ardent Freemason. Published an edition of the Ahiman Rezon in 1800 and two others in 1807 and 1813. At the Union of the two Grand Lodges he opened the Especial Grand Lodge as Deputy Grand Master and by unanimous accord was fraternally requested to continue in office and fulfil the duties until the appointment and installation of a Grand Master, the Duke of Kent, who subsequently appointed and installed Brother Harper as his Deputy (see Memorials of the Masonic Union, W. J. Hughan, John T. Thorp, 1913, pages 17-20) .
The Greek god of silence and seereey. He was, however, a divinity of the Egyptian mythology; his true name being, according to Bunsen and Lepsius, Har-pi-krati, that is, Horus the child; and he is supposed to have been the son of Osiris and Isis. He is represented as a nude figure, sitting sometimes on a lotus flower, either bareheaded or covered by an Egyptian muter, but always with his finger pressed upon his lips. Plutarch thinks that this gesture was an indication of his childlike and helpless nature; but the Greeks, and after them the Romans, supposed it to be a symbol of silence; and hence, while he is sometimes described as the god of the renewed year, whence peach blossoms were consecrated to him because of their early appearance in spring, he is more commonly represented as the god of silence and secrecy. Thus, Ovid says of him:
- Quique premit vocem digitoque silentia suadet.
- He who controls the voice and persuades to silence with his finger.
In this capacity, his statue was often placed at the entrance of temples and places where the mysteries were celebrated, as an indication of the silence and secrecy that should there be observed. Hence the finger on the lips is a symbol of secrecy, and has so been adopted in Masonic symbolism.
- HARRIS, THADDEUS MASON
The Rev. Thaddeus Mason Harris, D.D., an American Masonic writer of high reputation, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, July 7, 1767, and graduated at Harvard University in 1787. He was ordained as minister of a church in Dorchester in 1793, and died at Boston, April 3, 1842. He held at different times the offices of Deputy Grand Master, Grand Chaplain, and Corresponding Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts. Huntoon says (in his Eulogy):
His first great Masonic work was the editing of a collation revision, and publication of the Constitutions of the ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons, a quarto volume, printed at Worcester, Massachusetts 1792: a work which he accomplished with the accustomed diligence and fidelity with which he performed every enterprise confided to his care. His various occasional addresses while Grand Chaplain of the Grand Lodge, Masonic defenses and his volume of Masonic Discourses, published in 1801, constitute a large and valuable portion of the Masonic classic literature of America.
- HARUGARI, ORDER OF
Secret society founded in New York City in 1847 or 1848 among immigrants from Germany to preserve the use of the German language and to mutually assist the needy and aid the widows and orphans of the members. The name is thought to be derived from an old German word, harur, meaning grove or forest, and the title itself to have been that of an ancient organization. The Order teaches Friendship, Love and Humanity (see Cyclopedia of Fraternities, Albert C. Stevens, and the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Conversations-Lexikon).
- HARUSPICES, ORDER OF
The word Haruspet comes from a Sanskrit word hira, meaning entrails; therefore implying a soothsayer or arus pice. The founder of the Etruscan Order was Tages, doubtless a myth of self-creative power. This Order is claimed to have been re-established in Rome at the time of the foundation of the city. It embraced two divisions, those who formed their judgment from the movements and habits of animals as well as the flight of birds, and those who judged and foretold events by the inspection of the entrails of newly killed animals. These were the precursors, the forerunners, of naturalists and physiologists.
- HASIDIM, SOVEREIGN PRINCE
The Seventy-fifth and Seventy-sixth Degrees of the Rite of Mizraim. It should be Chasidim, which see.
To uncover the head in the presence of superiors has been, among all Christian nations, held as a mark of respect and reverence. The Eastern nations uncover the feet when they enter a place of worship; the Western uncover the head. The converse of this is also true; and to keep the head covered while all around are uncovered is a token of superiority of rank or office. The king remains covered, the courtiers standing around him take off their hats.
To wear the hat in an assemblage has been thus done as a sign of equality and it is so worn in the English Parliament and in certain Masonic Lodges on the Continent of Europe. So very common is the ceremonial use of the hat wh`en at labor by the presiding officers of a Masonic Body in the United States and to a far less frequent extent elsewhere, Bristol, in England, where a hat is worn being an exception to the general rule there, that one naturally looks for instances of any similar character in other directions. Among the Romans we are told in Fiske's Classical Antiquities (page 237) that they prayed with the head covered or veiled, capite velato. The woolen cap, the pileus (page 298) was allowed only to the free by birth or manumission, but forbidden to slaves. Fiske says (page 289):
The liberating of slaves took place in several ways. The most ancient mode seems to have been by will manumissio per testamentum, on the decease of the master. There were two other modes, censu, and per vindictam; the former was when the slave, with the master's consent, was enrolled in the taxation list as a freedman, the latter was a formal and public enfranchisement before the praetor. In the last case, the master appeared with his slave, before the tribunal, and commenced the ceremony by striking him with a rod, vindicta; thus treating him as still his slave. Then a protector or defender, assertor liberntatis steps forward and requests the liberation of the Slave by saying hunc hominen liberum esse aio, jure Quiritium, the last nord referring to the inhabitants of Cures a Sabine town, after the union of the Romans and Sabines, being equivalent to meaning citizenship.
The first of the two similar expressions was followed by the other, indicating that it was the owners will the slave should be freed. Then the master, who has hitherto kept hold of the slave, lets him go, e manu emittebat, and gives up his right over him with the words, hunc hominem libertum esse volo. A declaration by the praeter that the slave should be free formed the conclusion. To confirm this manumission the freed slave sometimes went to Terracina and received in the temple of Feronia a cap or hat, pious, as a badge of liberty. The slave to be freed must not be under twenty years of age, nor the person setting him free under thirty.
The goddess of fruits, nurseries, and groves, Feronia, had a Temple on Mount Soracte where a grove was especially sacred to her. She was honored as the patroness of enfranchised slaves, who ordinarily received their liberty in her Temple.
Another, and a custom that prevails in our own times, is mentioned by Dr. George C. Williamson, Cunous Survivals (page 92), writing of the House of Commons, London, "A member has to wear his hat when he is to address the House, and there is often confusion when the member is unable to find his hat at the moment, and to put it on, before he addresses the Speaker, but, were he to rise without his hat, he would be greeted immediately with cries of 'Order, Order'!"
Pascal's Provincial Letters, American edition of 1850 translated by Rev. Thomas McCrie of Edinburgh, Scotland (page 79), gives a curious reference to the old Paris proverb about voting without speaking, Il opine du bonnet comme un moine en sorbonne, means literally: "He votes with his cap like a monk in the Sorbonne" alluding to the custom in that place of learning of taking off the cap when a member was not disposed to speak, or in token of agreement with the rest (see also Nicole i, page 184, Ludovici Montaltii Litterae Provintciales).
Among the German Stone Masons of the Middle Ages, the original Lodge at Strasburg was considered as the head of the Craft, under the title of the Haupt-Hutte, the Head Lodge, or Grand Lodge.
- HAUTES GRADES
French, meaning Hiph Dearees, which see
- HAWAIIAN ISLANDS
- HAWKINS, EDWARD LOVELL
Author of the Concise Cyclopedia and founder of the Miscellanea Latomorum, died on April 17, 1913, and was at the time of his death Senior Warden of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, being appointed to that office on November 8, 1912.
Born on August 10, 1851, initiated in the Apollo University Lodge No. 357 at Oxford, England, and was its Worshipful Master in 1881. He also served as Provincial Grand Steward of Oxfordshire in 1879, becoming Grand Registrar in 1880, Grand Warden in 1882, and was Grand .Secretary of the Province from 1883 to 1885. In the Province of Sussex he was Grand Steward in 1910 and Senior Grand Warden in 1912. In other Bodies he also held prominent rank. one of the earliest joining members of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, on April 7, 1882, the first meeting after the consecration, and on November 8 , 1912, he was appointed Senior Warden of Lodge 2076. Among his literary works are a History of Freemasonry in Oxfordshire, 1882; A Concise Cyclopedia, or Handbook of Masonic References, 1908, and also he took an active part in the preparation of the new and revised edition of Doctor Mackey's monumental Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its Kindred Sciences published in 1912. He conceived the idea of a periodical treating of Masonic notes and queries and in Mail, 1911, the first number of Miscellanea Latomorum appeared and was continued up to his death, then the editorial labor was carried on by Brother F. W. Lavender, and after his death, by Brother Lionel Vibert.
- HAYS, MOSES MICHAEL
Born 1739 in Lisbon, Portugal, his parents were Jews. In 1761, while in Jamaica, he secured the appointment of Deputy Inspector-General for North America for the Masonic Rite of Perfection. From Jamaica Brother Hays went to the West Indies and thence to Newport, Rhode Island, where he became active in the Fraternity. November 5, 1782, Brother Hays was proposed as a member of Massachusetts Lodge, Boston. He was elected Master, December 3, 1782, held this office until 1785, when he was appointed Junior Grand Warden and he served as Grand Master of the Massachusetts Grand Lodge from July 24, 1788, until March 5, 1792, at which time the union was effected between the two Grand Lodges of Massachusetts. which unity was due in a large way to the efforts of Brother Hays.
His death occurred May 9, 1805, and the Columbian Sentinel, Boston, published the following obituary notice ore May 11:
In the character of the deceased there is much worth of our admiration much for our imitation. Possessed by nature of a strong interest there was a vigor in his conception of men and things which gave a seeming asperity to his conversation, which was ever frank anal lucid. He walked abroad fearing no man, but loving all. Under his roof dwelt hospitality, it was an asylum of friendship, the mansion of peace. He was without guile. despising hypocrisy as he despised meanness. Take hint for all in all, he was A MAN. In his death society wills mourn the loss of a most estimable citizen, his family the kindest of husbands, the most indulgent of fathers. But what consolation shall we offer to assuage the violence of their grief? Why this is all—the recollection of his virtues, and that as he lived, so he died, that to his last moment the cheerfulness and benevolence of his whole life wasted not on his falling brow. Calm and without a sign he sunk to rest. and is non secure in the bosom of his Father and our Father, of his God and our God.
Freemasonry, which had been in existence for several years in the island of Hayti, was entirely extinguished by the revolution which drove out the white inhabitants. In 1809, the Grand Lodge of England granted a Charter for a Lodge at Port au-princes and for one at Cayes. In 1817, the same authority constituted two others, at Jeremias and at Jacmel Subsequently, a Provincial Grand Lodge was established under obedience to England. January 25, 1824, this Provincial Grand Lodge declared its independence and organized the Grand Orient of Hayti.
A technical Masonic term which signifies to make valid or legal. Hence one who has received a Degree in an irregular manner or from incompetent authority is not recognized until he has been healed. The precise mode of healing depends on circumstances If the Lodge which conferred the Degree was clandestine, the whole ceremony of initiation would have to be repeated. If the authority which conferred the Degree was only irregular, and the question was merely a technical one of legal competence, it is only necessary to exact an obligation of allegiance, or in other words to renew the covenant.
One of the five senses, and an important symbol in Freemasonry, because it is through it that we receive instruction when ignorant, admonition when in danger, reproof when in error, and the claim of a Brother who is in distress. Without this sense, the Freemason would be crippled in the performance of all his duties; and hence deafness is deemed a disqualification for initiation.
Notwithstanding that all the modern American Masonic Manuals and Masters Carpets from the time of Jeremy L. Cross exhibit the picture of a heart among the emblems of the Third Degree, there is no such symbol in the instructions except as a part of the stern injunction that justice will sooner or later overtake the wrongdoer. But the theory that every man who becomes a Freemason must first be prepared in his heart was advanced among the earliest lectures of the eighteenth century, and demonstrates, as Krause properly remarks, in Speculative Freemasonry, an internal principle which addresses itself not simply to the outward conduct, but to the inner spirit and conscience of all men who seek its instructions.
- HEART OF HIRAM ABIF
There is a legend in some of the advanced Degrees and in Continental Freemasonry, that the heart of Hiram Abif was deposited in an urn and placed upon a monument near the Holy of Holies; and in some of the Tracing Boards it is represented as a symbol. The myth, for such it is, was probably derived from the very common custom in the Middle Ages of persons causing their bodies to be dismembered after death for the purpose of having parts of them buried in a church, or some place which had been dear to them in life. Thus Hardynge, in his Metrical Chronicle of England, tells us of Richard I that
- He queathed his corpse then to be buried
- At Fount Everard, there at his father's feete;
- His herte invyneyb!e to Rome he sent full mete
- For their great truth and stedfast great Constance.
The medieval idea has descended to modern times; for our present instructions in the United States say that the ashes of Hiram were deposited in an urn.
- HEBREW CHRONOLOGY
The ecclesiastical year commences with the first Nisan, March, but the civil reckoning begins with the first Tishri, September, which is New Year's Day.
The following dates are accepted by the Hebrews, as given by Doctor Zunz in Remarks prefacing The 24 Books of the Holy Scriptures according to the Massoretic Text:
BEFORE CONMON ERA.
- 3988, Creation.
- 2332, Flood.
- 2040, Abraham born.
- 1575, Moses born.
- 1495, Exodus.
- 1051, David acknowledged as King.
- 1015, First Temple commenced.
- 586, First Temple destroyed.
- 536, Cyrus Decree.
- 516, Second Temple completed.
- 330, Alexander conquers Palestine.
The succeeding dates are in accord with the research of other authorities.
The Temple was dedicated on five occasions:
- 1. 1004 B.C., fifteenth day of Tishri- Ethanim and Abib. First Kings via 2 to 62.
- 2. 726 B. C., when purified from the abominations of Ahaz.
- 3. 516 B.C., third Adar, upon completion of Zerubbabel's Temple.
- 4. 164 B.C., twenty-fifth Kislev, after the victory of Judas Maceabaeus over the Syrians the service lasted eight days.
- 5. 22 B.C., upon completion of Herod's Temple.
The three Temples were destroyed on the same day and month of the year.
The " three-fold destruction " of the Temple took place on the ninth Ab, or fifth ecclesiastical month.
Destruction of Temple, by Nebuchadnezzar, 588 B.C., or four hundred and sixteen years after dedication.
Taking the city of Jerusalem by Titus is commemorated as a fast day on the seventeenth Tamuz.
Passover, fourteenth Nisan- Little Passover, fifteenth Iyar.
Pentecost, or First Fruits, commemorating the giving of the law on Mount Sinai sixth Sivan Great Day of Atonement, tenth Tishli.
Feast of Tabernaeles, fifteenth to twenty-first Tishri.
Fast for commencement of siege of Jenasalem by Nebuchadnezzar, tenth day of Tebeth.
Feast of Purim, fourteenth and fifteenth Adar.
King Cyrus liberated the Jews, 538 B.C.
King Darius confirmed the Deeree, 520 B. C. (see Cons) .
- HEBREW FAITH
- HECART, GABRIEL ANTOINE JOSEPH
A French Masonic writer, who was born at Valenciennes in 1755, and died in 1838. He made a curious collection of Degrees; and invented a system of five, namely:
- 1. Knight of the Prussian Eagle;
- 2. Knight of the Comet;
- 3. The Scottish Purifier;
- 4. Victorious Knight;
- 5. Scottish Trinitarian, or Grand Master Commander of the Temple.
This cannot be called a Rite, because it was never accepted and practised by any Masonic authority. It is known in nomenclatures as Nécart's System. He was the author of many dissertations and didactic essays on Masonic subjects. He at one time proposed to publish his collection of Degrees with a full explanation of each, but did not carry his design into execution. Many of them are cited in this work.
The Greek compound word hecatotombe, from hecaton, meaning one hundred, and bous, ox. and therefore strictly speaking a reference to the sacrifice of one hundred oxen. But the allusion to a sacrifice, formerly of one hundred bulls, and in later expressions referring probably only to an indefinitely large number of victims, is also capable of being applied and was frequently so employed, to mean any great sacrifice. In this latter sense should the word be understood by Freemasons. Pythagoras was a vegetarian who taught that killing was wicked and to him the sacrifice of a hecatomb could have meant no loss of animal life in the offering (see Forty-seventh Problem).
- HEDGE MASONS
This expression has been believed to be applied to a secret society, probably Masonic, but meeting without Warrant or authority. In Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1913 (volume xxvi, part 2, page 197), we find that a letter of Amicus to the Editor of the Northern Star, Ireland, dated March 21, 1792, mentions that all disorders and mischiefs in the country are being hatched by those who associate under the description of Hedge Masons.
- HEIGHT OF THE LODGE
From the earth to the highest heavens. A symbolic expression (see Form of the Lodge).
- HELDMANN, DR. FRIEDRICH
A Professor of Political Science in the Academy of Bern, in Switzerland, and was born at Margetshochheim, in Franconia, November 24, 1770. He was one of the most profound of the German investigators into the history and philosophy of Freemasonry. He was initiated into the Order at Freiburg, in 1809, and, devoting himself to the study of the works of Fessler and other eminent scholars, he resolved to establish a system founded on a collation of all the rituals, and which should be more in accordance with the true design of the Institution. For this purpose, in 1816, he organized the Lodge zur Brudertreue at Aarau, in Switzerland, where he then resided as a professor. For the Lodge he prepared a Manual, which he proposed to publish. But the Helvetian Directory demanded that the manuscript should be given to that Body for inspection and correction, which the Lodge, unwilling to submit to such a censorship, refused to do. Heldmann, being reluctant to involve the Lodge in a controversy with its superiors, withdrew from it. He subsequently published a valuable work entitled Die drei altesten geschichtlichen Denkmale der deutschen Freimaurerbruderschaft; meaning, The three oldest Memorials of the German Masonic Brotherhood, which appeared at Aarau in 1819. In this work, which is chiefly founded on the learned researches of Krause, the Constitutions of the Stone-Masons of Strasburg were published for the first time.
A tiler or teghtor. From the AngloSaxon Helan. Also written Hillyar and Hilliar.
- HELE, TO
A defensive weapon wherewith the head and neck are covered. In heraldry, it is a mark of chivalry and nobility. It was, of course, a part of the armor of a knight, and therefore, whatever may be the head covering adopted by modern Knights Templar, it is in the instructions called a helmet.
- HELMETS, TO DEPOSIT
In quaint old Templar ritualism, to lay aside the covering of the head.
- HELMETS, TO RECOVER
In the early Templar ritualism, to resume the covering of the head.
See Aid and Assistance
- HEMMING, SAMUEL, D.D.
Previous to the Union of the two Grand Lodges of England in 1813, the Prestonian system of lectures was practiced by the Grand Lodge of Modern Freemasons, while the Atholl Freemasons recognized higher Degrees, and varied somewhat in their ritual of the lower. When the Union was consummated, and the United Grand Lodge of England was organized, a compromise was effected, and Doctor Hemming, who was the Senior Grand Warden, and had been distinguished for his skill as the Master of a Lodge and his acquaintance with the ritual, was appointed to frame a new system of lectures. The Prestonian system was abandoned, and the Hemming lectures adopted in its place, not without the regret of many distinguished Freemasons, among whom was Doctor Oliver. Among the innovations of Doctor Hemming, which are to be regretted, are the abolition of the dedication to the two Saints John, and the substitution for it of a dedication to Solomon. In Brother Mackey's opinion, some other changes that were made were certainly not improvements.
- HENNE-AM-RHYM, O.
Editor of the fourth volume of the German Encyclopadie (see Lenning) .
- HENRIETTA MARIA
The widow of Charles I, of England It is asserted, by those who support the theory that the Master's Degree was invented by the adherents of the exiled house of Stuart, and that its legend refers to the death of Charles I and the restoration of his son, that in the technical Masonic expression of the "Widow's Son," the allusion is to the widow of the decapitated monarch. Those who look further for the foundation of the legend give, of course, no credence to a statement whose plausibility depends only on a coincidence.
- HENRY PRICE MEDAL
See Price, Henry
- HENRY VI
King of England from 1422 to 1461. This monarch is closely connected with the history of Freemasonry because, in the beginning of his reign and during his minority, the celebrated Statute of Laborers, which prohibited the congregations of the Freemasons, was passed by an intolerant Parliament, and because of the questions said to have been proposed to the Freemasons by the king, and their answers, which are contained in what is called the Leland Manuscript, a document which, if authentic, is highly important; but of whose authenticity there are as many oppugners as there are defenders.
In what are called the High Degrees of the Continental Rites, there is nothing more puzzling than the etymology of this word. We have the Royal Order of Heredom, given as the ne plus ultra, meaning nothing farther or nothing beyond, of Freemasonry in Scotland, and in almost all the Rites the Rose Croix of Heredom, but the true meaning of the word is apparently unknown. Ragon, in his Orthodoxie Maçonnique (page 91), asserts that it has a political signification, and that it was invented between the years 1740 and 1745, by the adherents of Charles Edward the Pretender, at the Court of Saint Germain, which was the residence, during that period, of the unfortunate prince, and that in their letters to England, dated from Heredom, they mean to denote Saint Germain. He supposes it to be derived from the medieval Latin word hoeredum, signifying a heritage, and that it alludes to the Castle of Saint Germain, the only heritage left to the dethroned sovereign But as Ragon's favorite notion was that the Hautes Grades or High Degrees, were originally instituted for the purpose of aiding the house of Stuart in its restoration to the throne, a theory not now generally accepted, at least without modification, this etymology must be taken with some grains of allowance The suggestion is, however, an ingenious one.
In some of the old manuscripts the word Heroden is found as the name of a mountain in Scotland; and we sometimes find in the French Cahiers the title of Rose Croiz de Heroden. There is not a very great difference in the French pronunciation of Heredom and Heroden, and one might be a corruption of the other. Brother Mackey says he was once inclined to this theory; but even if it were the correct one we should gain nothing, for the same difficulty would recur in tracing the root and meaning of Heroden.
The most plausible derivation is one given in 1858, by a writer in the London Freemasons Magazine. He thinks it should be spelled Heredom, and traces it to the two Greek words, repass hieros, meaning holy, and biros, domos, meaning house. It would thus refer to Freemasonry as symbolically the Holy House or Temple. In this way the title of Rose Croiz of Heredom would signify the Rosy Cross of the Holy House of Freemasonry. This derivation is now very generally recognized as the true one.
So far Brother Mackey's explanation of the word, but at this point Brother Hawkins observes that according to the view taken in the last paragraph the word should be Hierodom (see also Royal Order of Scotland ).
A corruption of Hermes, found in some of the old Constitutions (see Hermes).
The Spanish word for Brotherhood. An association of the principal cities of Castile and Aragon bound by a solemn league for the defense of their liberties in time of trouble. The sovereigns approved this brotherhood as agents for suppressing w the increasing power of the nobles, and without cost to the government. The Hermandad was first established in Aragon in the thirteenth century, and in Castile about thirty years later, while, in 1295, thirty-five cities of Castile and Leon formed a joint confederacy, pledging themselves to take summary vengeance on every robber noble who injured a member of the association. The Santa, or Holy Brotherhood, finally checked so effectually the outrages of the nobles, that Isabella of Castile, in 1496, obtained the sanction of the Cortez to reorganize and extend it over the whole kingdom.
In all the old manuscript records which contain the Legend of the Craft, mention is made of Hermes as one of the founders of Freemasonry. Thus, in the Grand Lodge Manuscript, No. 1, whose date is 1583 and the statement is substantially and almost verbally the same in all the others that "The great Hermarines that was Cubys sonne, the which Cubye was Semmes sonne, that was Noes sonne. This same Hermarines was afterwards called Hernes the father of Wysdome; he found one of the two pillars of stone, and found the science written therein, and he taught it to other men."
There are two persons of the name of Hermes mentioned in sacred history. The first is the divine Hermes, called by the Romans Mercury. Among the Egyptians he was known as Thoth. Diodorus Siculus describes him as the Secretary of Osiris; he is commonly supposed to have been the son of Mizraim, and Cumberland says that he was the same as Osiris. There is, however, much confusion among the mythologists concerning his attributes.
The second was Hermes Trismegistus or the Thrice Great, who was a celebrated Egyptian legislator, priest, and philosopher, who lived in the reign of Ninus, about the year of the world 2670. He is said to have written thirty-six books on theology and philosophy, and six upon medicine, all of which are lost. There are many traditions of him; one of which, related by Eusebius, is that he introduced hieroglyphics into Egypt. This Hermes Trismegistus, although the reality of his existence is doubtful, was claimed by the alchemists as the founder of their art, whence it is called the Hermetic Science, and whence we get in Freemasonry, Hermetic Rites and Hermetic Degrees.
It is to him that the Legend of the Craft refers; and, indeed, the York Constitutions, which are of importance, though not probably of the date of 926, assigned to them by Krause, give him that title, and say that he brought the custom of making himself understood by signs with him to Egypt. In the first ages of the Christian church, this mythical Egyptian philosopher was in fact considered as the inventor of everything known to the human intellect. It was fabled that Pythagoras and Plato had derived their knowledge from him, and that he had recorded his inventions on pillars. The Operative Masons, who wrote the old Constitutions, obtained their acquaintance with him from the Polycromycon of the monk Ranulf Higden, which was translated from the Latin by Trevisa, and printed by William Caxton in 1482. It is repeatedly quoted in the Cooke Manuscript, whose probable date is the latter part of the fifteenth century, and was undoubtedly familiar to the writers of the other Constitutions.
The art or science of Alchemy, so termed from Hermes Trismegistus, who was looked up to by the alchemists as the founder of their art. The Hermetic philosophers say that all the sages of antiquity, such as Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, and Pythagoras, were initiated into the secrets of their science; and that the hieroglyphics of Egypt and all the fables of mythology were invented to teach the dogmas of Hermetic philosophy (see Alchemy).
- HERMETIC PHILOSOPHY
Pertaining or belonging to that species of philosophy which pretends to solve and explain all the phenomena of nature from the three chemical principles, salt, sulphur, and mercury. Also that study of the sciences as pursued by the Rosicrucian Fraternity. A practice of the arts of alchemy and similar pursuits, involving a duplex symbolism with their peculiar distinctions.
- HERMETIC RITE
A Rite established by Pernetty at Avignon, in France, and more commonly called the Illuminati of Avignon (see Avignon, Illuminati of).
- HERMETIC STUDENTS
See Isis-Uranea Temple
- HERODEM, ROYAL ORDER OF
See Royal Order of Scotland
"Heroden," says a manuscript of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, iris a mountain situated in the northwest of Scotland, where the first or metropolitan Lodge of Europe was held." The word is not now used by Masonic writers, and was, undoubtedly, a corruption of Heredom or Harodim, which see.
- HEROINE OF JERICHO
An androgynous (for both sexes) Degree conferred, in America, on Royal Arch Masons, their wives, and daughters. It is intended to instruct its female recipients in the claims which they have upon the protection of their husbands' and fathers' companions, and to communicate to them an effectual method of proving those claims. An instance of friendship extended to the whole family of a benefactress by those whom she had benefitted, and of the influence of a solemn contract in averting danger, is referred to in the case of Rahab, the woman of Jericho, from whom the Degree derives its name; and for this purpose the second chapter of the Book of Joshua is read to the candidate. When the Degree is received by a male, he is called a Knight of Jericho, and when by a female, she is termed a Heroine. It is a side or honorary Degree, and may be conferred by any Royal Arch Mason on a candidate qualified to receive it.
- HERRING, JAMES
Born in London, England, January 12, 1794; died in France, October 8, 1867; buried in Greenwood Cemetery, New York, October 27, 1867. The family emigrated to America in 1805. James Herring was initiated in Solomon's Lodge, Somerville, New Jersey, in 1816. He was Master of Clinton Lodge, New York City, in 1827, 1828, 1832, and 1834, a period when the anti-Masonic spirit was in its zenith. He, with the remaining members of Clinton Lodge, united with Saint John's, No. 1, and met in union December 18, 1834. He instituted the formation of the Lodge of Strict Observance, which was constituted by Grand Lodge, December 27, 1843, Right Worshipful Brother Herring being the Master, with which Lodge he remained until his death. On September 3, 1528, he was appointed Assistant Grand Secretary, and on June 3, 1829, was elected Grand Secretary, which office he retained until 1846. He sided with the Phillips or Herring Grand Body at the split in Grand Lodge on June 5, 1849, and remained its Grand Secretary until 1858, when, in June, the two Grand Lodges were fused. He was a delegate to the Convention of Grand Lodges held in Washington on March 7, 1842.
Brother Herring delivered the oration, on August 25, 1847, in Saint John's Lodge, in commemoration of the Most Worshipful Grand Masters, Morgan Leavis and Alex. H. Robertson, and other eminent Freemasons, on the occasion of the First Lodge of Sorrow held in America in the English language. He was exalted in Jerusalem Chapter, No. 8, Royal Arch Masons, New York City, January 5, 1817, dubbed a Knight Templar in Columbian Commandery, No. 1, New York, and was received a Sovereign Grand Inspector General, Thirty-third Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Brother Herring was a Past High Priest and Past Grand Secretary of the General Grand Chapter of the United States, Past Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of the United States, and Past Grand Representative of the Orients of Brazil and France. Grand Historian Ossian Lang on page 126, History of Freemasonry in the State of New York, 1922, says "James Herring proved a tower of strength in the trying days. His untiring zeal and masterly management did much to pilot the Grand Lodge through the night of storm."
A corruption of Chesed, which see.
Said to be the real name of the author of the Encyclopadie des Freemaurerei (see Lenning)
Freemasonry appears to have been founded in this Electorate in 1743, by a Lodge at Marburg, called Zu den drei Löwen, or Three Lions, which afterward took the name of Marc Aurel zum flammenden Stern, or of the Blazing Star. A Lodge also appears to have existed in 1771, at Cassel, called Zum blauen Lowen. In 1817 the Grand Mother Lodge of Hesse-Cassel was founded, which lasted until 1821, when the government closed all Lodges. In 1849 one was reopened by General von Helmschwerdt, but it was closed in 1855. It is now understood that this Lodge has been reopened.
- HESSE DARMSTADT, GRAND DUCHY OF
German state. An early Masonic Lodge, Die drei Disteln, or Three Thistles, here said to have been first organized at Mayence in 1765. The Lodges in Darmstadt were in the Frankfort Eclectic Union and formed the Grand Lodge Zur Eintracht or of Concord, at Darmstadt in 1845, which is now called Die grosse Loge des Freimaurer Bundes zur Eintracht in Darns stadt or The Grand Lodge of Masonic Bodies of Concord at Darmstadt.
A figure of six equal sides constitutes a part of the Camp in the Scottish Degree of Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret. Stieglitz, in an essay on the symbols of Freemasonry, published in 1825, in the Altenburg Zeitschrift, says that the hezagon formed by six triangles, whose apices converge to a point, making the accompanying figure, is a symbol of the universal creation, the six points crossing the central point; thus assimilating the hexagon to the older symbol of the point within a circle.
From two words of the Greek language meaning siz and written. A geometrical figure made up of two interlaced equilateral triangles, supposed to possess mysterious powers and frequently used as a symbol of the Pythagorean school. It is also known as the Seal of Solomon and the Shield of David (see Magic Squares).
See Magic Squares
Greek for sixfold. A Bible arranged with six versions in parallel columns, sometimes spoken of as the Hexaplar.-Text of the Holy Scriptures.
- H. G. W.
Initials of an expression frequently used by visiting English Brethren to convey the hearty good wishes of the Master and Brethren of their own Lodge to the officers and members of the Lodge visited.
Means the Beating of the sepulcher. A Mohammedan belief as to the state of the soul after death. The form and mode of judgment is explained in Al Koran. The sarcophagus of an orthodox Moslem is so constructed that the deceased can sit upright when notified by his angel of the approach of the examiners, who question him as to his faith in the unity of God and the mission of Mohammed Satisfactory answers insure peace; but if to the contrary, he is beaten on the temples with iron maces until he roars with anguish. The two angels, Monker and Naku, then press the earth upon the body, which is gnawed and stung by ninety-nine seven-headed dragons until the day of resurrection. As the Mohammedan was an imitative religion, we naturally look for the origin of its customs and beliefs in older faiths; thus the Hibbut-Hakkeber is found in the Jewish, which taught that the angel of death would sit on a new-made grave, the soul would return to the body, which would stand up, the angel striking it thrice with a chain, half iron and half fire; at the sirst blow all the limbs were loosened, at the second the bones were dispersed, but gathered again by angels, and the third stroke reduces it to dust. This need not occur to those who died on the Sabbath or in the land of Israel (see Gilgul).
From the two Greek words which signify the engraving of sacred things. Hieroglyphics are properly the expressions of ideas by representations of visible objects, and the word is more peculiarly applied to that species of picture writing which was in use among the ancient Egyptians, whose priests by this means concealed from the profane that knowledge which they communicated only to their initiates. Browne says (Master Rey, page 87), "The usages amongst Masons have ever corresponded with those of the ancient Egyptians. Their Philosophers, unwilling to expose their Mysteries to vulgar Curiosity, couched the Principles of their Learning and Philosophy under Hieroglyphical Figures and Allegorical Emblems, and expressed their notions of Government by Signs and Symbols, which they communicated to the Magic or wise Men only, who were solemnly obligated never to reveal them."
The title of those priests in the Egyptian mysteries to whom were confided the keeping of the sacred records. Their duty was also to instruct the neophytes in the ritual of initiation, and to secure its accurate observance.
A Hermit Order established in the fourteenth century, formed from the third Order of Saint Francis. Followers of Thomas of Siena, who established themselves among the wild districts of the Sierra Morena, and so forming a community, obtained approval of Pope Gregory XI in 1374.
From the Greek, tepo¡ß ¥¢ which signifies one who explains the sacred things. The Hierophant was, in the Ancient Mysteries, what the Master is in a Masonic Lodge—he who instructed the neophyte or candidate in the doctrines which it was the object of the Mysteries to inculcate.
- HIEROPHANT or MYSTAGOG
The Chief Priest of the Eleusinians, selected from the grade of Eumolpidens He was selected for his imposing personal presence, and his dignity was sustained by the grandeur of his attire, his head encircled with a costly diadem. He was required to be perfect in animal structure, without blemish, and in the vigor of life, with a commanding voice. He was presumed to be surrounded by a halo of holiness. His duty was to maintain and also expound the laws. He was the introductor of the novices into the Eleusinian Temple, and passed them from the lesser into the greater mysteries, where he became the Demiurg, and Impressed the initiate, while instructing him, by his manner and voice. His title of Mystagog was awarded because he alone revealed the secret or mystery.
Title of the Guardian of the holy vessels and vestments, as used in several Rites.
- HIGH DEGREES
Not long after the introduction of Freemasonry on the Continent, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, three new Degrees were invented and named, Ecossais, Novice, and Knight Templar. These gave the impulse to the invention of many other Degrees, all above the Master's Degree. To these the name of Hautes Grades or High Degrees was given. Their number is very great. Many of them now remain only in the catalogues of Masonic collectors, or are known merely by their titles; while others still exist, and constitute the body of the different rites. The word is not properly applicable to the Royal Arch or Degrees of the English and American systems, which are intimately connected with the Master's Degree, but is confined to the additions made to Ancient Craft Freemasonry by continental ritualists. These Degrees have, from time to time, met with great opposition as innovations on Ancient Freemasonry, and some of the Grand Lodges have not only rejected them, but forbidden their cultivation by those who are under their obedience. But, on the other hand, they have been strenuously supported by many who have believed the Ancient Craft Degrees do not afford a sufficient field for the expansion of Masonic thought. A writer in the London Freemasons Magazine (of 1858, I, 1167) has expressed the true theory on this subject in the following language:
It is the necessary consequence of an exclusive addition to Craft Masonry that the intellectual and artistic development of the minds of the members must suffer the ritual sink to formalism, and the administration fail into the hands of the lower members of the Order, by a diminution in the initiations of men of high intellectual caliber, and by the inactivity, or practical secession, of those within the Order. The suppression of the higher Degrees, that is, of the higher Masonry, may be agreeable to those who are content to possess the administrative functions of the Order without genuine qualifications for their exercise, but it is a policy most fatal to the true progress of the Order. When Masonry has so fallen, to restore the higher Degrees to their full activity is the measure essential for restoring the efficacy of Masonry within and without. Thus, in the last century when Craft Masonry had spread rapidly over the whole of Europe, a reaction set in, till the heads of the Order brought the high Degrees into vigor, and they continued to exercise the most powerful influence..
- HIGHEST OF HILLS
In the Old York Lectures was the following passage: "Before we had the convenience of such well-formed Lodges, the Brethren used to meet on the highest of hills and in the lowest of valleys. And if they were asked why they met so high, so low, and so very secret, they replied the better to see and observe all that might ascend or descend; and in case a Cowan should appear, the Tiler might give timely notice to the Worshipful Master, by which means the Lodge might be closed, the jewels put by, thereby preventing any unlawful intrusion." In commenting on this, Doctor Oliver (Landmarks I, page 319) says: "Amongst other observances which were common to both the true and spurious Freemasonry, we find the practice of per forming commemorative rites on the highest of hills and in the lowest of valleys. This practice was in high esteem amongst all the inhabitants of the ancient world, from a fixed persuasion that the summit of mountains made a nearer approach to the celestial deities, and the valley or holy cavern to the infernal and submarine gods than the level country; and that, therefore, the prayers of mortals were more likely to be heard in such situations." Hutchinson also says: "The highest hills and the lowest valleys were from the earliest times esteemed sacred, and it was supposed that the Spirit of God was peculiarly diffusive in those places."
The sentiment was expressed in the language of the earliest lectures of the eighteenth century, and is still retained, without change of words, in the lectures of the present day. But introduced, at first, undoubtedly with special reference to the ancient worship on high places, and the celebration of the mysteries in the caverns of initiation, it is now retained for the purpose of giving warning and instruction as to the necessity of security and secrecy in the performance of our mystical rites, and this is the reason assigned in the modern lectures. And, indeed, the notion of thus expressing the necessity of secrecy seems to have been early adopted, while that of the sacredness of these places was beginning to be lost sight of; for in a lecture of the middle of the eighteenth century, or earlier, it was said that "the Lodge stands Upon holy ground, or the highest hill or lowest vale, or in the Vale of Jehosophat, or any other secret place." The sacredness of the spot is, it is true, here adverted to, but there is an emphasis given to prentices secrecy.
This custom of meeting on the "highest hills and in the lowest valleys," says Brother E. E. Cawthorne, seems to have prevailed at Aberdeen, Scotland, for they say: "We ordain that no Lodge be holden within a dwelling-house where there is people living in it, but in the open fields, except it be ill weather, and then let a house be chosen that no person shall heir or see us." Also, "We ordain lykewayes that all entering prentices be entered in our ancient outfield Lodge in the mearnes in the Parish of Negg, at the Stonnies at the point of the Ness." It is also of interest that Montandon Lodge No. 22, Grand Lodge of Chile, was consecrated in November 1927, at Potrerillos, some ten thousand feet above sea level in the Andes Mountains and named after George Montandon, the constructing engineer who lost his life in building the railroad there in 1908. The Revisor is reminded of attending the consecration of a Masonic Lodge on the top floor of the pioneer skyscraper, the old Masonic Temple, later the Capitol building, a 355 foot structure, at Chicago, Illinois.
- HABERDASHERS' COMPANY, THE WORSHIPFUL
Writing in 1837 William Herbert said of this company "They were incorporated by letters patent of the 26th of Henry Vl Anno 1447, by the style of the Fraternity of St. Catherine of the Virgin, of the Haberdashers of the city of London; but at present are denominated the Master and four Wardens of the Fraternity of the Art or Mystery of Haberdashers in the City of London. This corporation is governed by a master, four wardens, and ninety-three assistants, with a livery of 342 members, who, upon their admission, pay in cash a fine [fee] of twenty-five pounds, and to whom belongs a great estate, out of which, according to the generous benefactions of the several donors, they annually pay to charitable uses about the sum of £3,500.... They may take each too apprentices ... There have been twenty-two lord mayors free of this company. Their principal tenets are Serve and Obey. Their Patroness is St. Catherine. They have had altogether ten charters." Originally, in the Fourteenth Century, the Haberdashers were a branch of the gild of Mercers, dealers in merchandises, or small wares (the phrase "small mercies" may have thus originated), but in course of time the cappers, or hat makers, separated from them. The Haberdashers of small wares also were called Milaners, for selling merchandise from Milan, corrupted into milliner. (In Queen Elizabeth's time the English paid out £60,000 per year for pins alone.) The company, though its first charter w as received in 1447, had been organized a century before that, and had a set of regulations, or by-laws, as early as 1372. Having lost its old documents in the London fire of 1666 the come pony drew up a new code, and among the judges giving it legal sanction was the great jurisconsult Sir Matthew Hale. The officers were named as Master, four Wardens, and 50 Assistants. By "livery" was meant the ceremonial or symbolic clothing which a privileged number of members was entitled to wear: such livery did not signify servitude. The Hurrers, or hatters, and Mercers were combined. The list of the Companies charities is a long one: it supported five schools; four almshouses; six benefices; two lectures; three exhibitions; and paid many pensions. Many other benefactions it administered as a trustee.
The similarities between the Haberdashers' Company and the Masonic Fraternity are very striking; the more so since the Company was here chosen at random as a specimen of the Twelve Great City Companies of London and the long list of lesser Companies, the Mason Company being among the latter. They were ancient; had apprentices; had ceremonies; administered an oath; the membership was divided into ranks; they were governed by Master and Wardens (in a Masonic Lodge that still is the case, for the appointive officers are to assist the Master and Warden, and the Secretary and Treasurer do not govern); they had tenets; arms; were devoted to charity; had quarterly communications and feasts and from a very early time admitted "non-operatives" who "were made free" of the company, so that there were "free Haberdashers" just as there were "free Masons." This entering of non-Operatives into Masonry, of which they were then "free," may be one of the many original meanings of "free Mason." The antiquity, form of organization, oaths, non-operatives, etc., cannot therefore explain why the Free Masons alone continued over into a worldwide fraternity, for the other gilds or fraternities, identical in general customs, would have done the same. It is the extraordinary similarity of the old Free Masonry with the old gilds and companies coupled with the fact that it alone developed into a worldwide Fraternity which is of itself the best proof that the Freemasons also possessed a secret of their own which none of the others ever had.
See London Companies, by William Herbert; London; 1837. It is not as exhaustive as the large histories written since by Hazlitt, etc., but has the advantage of having been written by a man who got his information at first hand, and before the new industrialism had changed the face of London commerce and business.
- HAT, THE MASTER'S
History has more than one device for creating its romantic effects, but none more surprising than inversion which is to have something occur where its opposite would be expected. The universal American custom of the Master's Hat is such an inversion (see page 445); for it is not the custom in contemporary England, where ancient usages are to be expected, yet is required in America, where custom has least weight. American Masons can be glad that this inversion has occurred because there is in craft practice in general and in Masonic practice in particular no custom more honored or more ancient.
The Greeks crowned their poets, their victorious generals, and the winners of the games with wreaths; at Delphi with one of apple boughs, at Olympia with laurel, at Corinth with pine. Even the gods in time came to be represented with a wreath of light or sun rays, the corona, origin of the saints' halo. At a Roman general's Triumph he was crowned with a laurel wreath, called corona triumphalts; in later times a wreath of gold A citizen who had won a peace-time triumph received an ovation, and a crown for his head. Anglo-Saxons had similar customs; so also the French, who crowned graduates of their Universities with caps; and the Italians who set a cap of fur on a man's head when he was made Duke (not the same as duce!). In England a Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount, and Baron received a cap. So also did the alderman or master of a gild or a City Company. Such a cap came to be called "a cap of maintenance," and the coat of arms of the City of London is topped with such a cap. The helmet in military arms is an adaptation of the same custom; the King's "cap" is a six-barred helmet. While Henry VIII was still loyal to the Vatican he was presented with a consecrated cap of maintenance by Pope Leo X. The wearing of such a cap, with its ceremonial significance, was so closely connected with the ceremonial wearing of a sword that the two became enshrines together in the phrase "cap and sword."
It would thus appear that the wreath, cap, or hat began as a badge of honor; perhaps it became afterwards identified with the idea of authority, and then with the idea of a presiding officer, because in so many cases it was the head or chief or leader who was honored. The Master's Hat has both ideas combined in it; it represents his authority to preside; it represents also the fact that he has received the highest honors of his Lodge and it is because it thus is a symbol of that honor that he will not, if he rightly understands his art, take it off and put it aside, as if the honor meant nothing to him; certainly he will not lay it on the floor.
- HEBREW WORDS IN MASONRY
"Ahiman Rezon," the name given by Laurence Dermott to his edition of the Book of Constitutions for the Ancient Grand Lodge, was intended to be Hebrew but to date Hebraists are not certain of its meaning; it is believed to mean "Worthy Brother Secretary," or "Help to a Scribe," but the earliest editions carried on the title page the sub-title "Help to a Brother," and that may have been Grand Secretary Dermott's own translation. But why use a Hebrew title? No answer to this question has ever been found. Dermott himself had some Hebrew. There must have been a special interest in Hebrew by members of the Grand Lodge of Ireland at about the time of the writing of the Constitution of the Ancient Grand Lodge, which was Irish Masonry transplanted to England, because Irish Grand Lodge medals of the period occasionally carried Hebrew words. A Side Order or High Degree (it is impossible to tell which) was practiced in Ireland, England, and Scotland under the Hebrew name of Herodim (or Harodim, or Highrodim, or Highrodian); Preston called a little society for the study of Masonry which he organized, "Order of Herodim." This word was lifted bodily from I Kings, Ch. 5, of the Hebrew Old Testament, where it meant provosts, or "officers which were over the work." Giblim, another word in Masonic usage, was taken from the same chapter. It is possible that a certain word in the Third Degree which cannot be spoken or written is an altered form of a third Hebrew word from that same chapter.
The whole subject of a Hebrew influence at work in the Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Century Freemasonry is a still-virgin field for Masonic research. There were professors and specialists in Hebrew at Oxford, Cambridge, and the University of Dublin; the making of the Authorized Version under King James in 1611 was much discussed everywhere among educated men, and inspired many amateurs to study the language of the Old Testament. Public exhibition at two different times in English cities of models of Solomon's Temple aroused a popular interest in the Book of Kings. The Allegory of the Temple in the Second Degree may have been added to the Ritual in that period; at least an amplification of it. The Raising, which bears the Hebrew name of HA.-. may have originated in the same period (the oldest known Lodge of Master Masons is dated at 1725); this is doubtful because the rite bears internal evidence of having originated much earlier, but it is possible that its general popularity may have been owing to the current of Hebrew interests. The Holy Royal Arch, which in some forms was probably known in Ireland in Time Immemorial Lodges, is Old Testament in spirit and reference; also, if "Arch" meant "chief" or "overseer" the Rite may at one time have been called Herodim.
Thus far no historian has discovered any connection between the origin of Speculative Freemasonry and the Jews. Such Hebraic elements as are found in the Craft Degrees and the High Grades are derived from Hebrew sources at second or at third hand, from the English Bible, from Old Testament traditions and stories, and also, perhaps, and over a roundabout route, from the Kabbala (or Cabala, or Kabbalah). There was much interest in the Kabbala during the early period of the Reformation; Reuchlin, one of Luther's forerunners, was familiar with it; Luther and Melanchton both studied it; there was even a Christian Kabbala. If Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Masons took a lively interest in Hebrew matters it is not to be wondered at the Hebrew Old Testament comprises two-thirds of the English Bible; and British and European culture, as Matthew Arnold was to remind everybody in the Nineteenth Century, was in origin a blend of Hellenism (Greek, and to some extent, Roman) and of Hebraism.
The curious word in the OB which is pronounced to rhyme with fail and which appears to be contradictive of the pledge of which it is a part has been in continuous use in England since the early Middle Ages. In his comments on "Notes on Some Trade Guilds at Ludlow," in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. XXXII., 1919, page 149 (page 14 in reprint) Canon Horsley writes:
"The old Saxon word Helyer is still in use. I asked my church warden who thatched his ricks. 'A helyer from Bearsted ' (the next village), he said. The helyer heles or covers the rick. A gardener heles the potato plants he earths up, and so Hell in the Apostles' Creed is the covered place, the unseen world, the ancient conception of the world being that of a flat place with the river of ocean running round it, while above there was a hemisphere heaved up and hence called heaven, and correspondingly beneath there was the heled or covered place. Men could look up and understand something of the star-spangled arch of blue, but the reversed arch or crypt beneath was to the eyes of flesh 'heled, concealed, and never revealed,' or, as some would I suppose say, 'hailed, concealed, and never reviled."
- HERALDRY, MASONRY AND
Heraldry in Britain was an art or science, professed by learned specialists and officials, with its foundation in civil law. A coat of arms was in essence a patent in the firm of pictures and devices, it was an official and attestation about a family's origin and past; and since special privileged often of large value, might go with such an origin, a coat of arms was more than a badge or a decoration; just as a deed was a legal Charter confirming ownership of a property, a coat of arms was a deed confirming ownership in certain honors, privileges, and titles. Since the Constitution of the United States recognized the existence of no classes or titles, heraldry in America has been either a hobby or a minor branch of the arts.
The Grand Lodge of England (1717) adopted as its seal the old seal of the Masons Company of London; Laurence Dermott adopted for the Ancient Grand Lodge (1751) a seal which he found in a work by Jehudah ben Leon, a Hebrew scholar for whom he felt a great reverence; perhaps the device thus chosen also recommended itself because it contained a plain hint of the Royal Arch Degree. Each of the Grand Lodges in the United States has an official seal; some are designed according to the strict rules of heraldry; others are intended to be so, but without any strictness in the rules; still others are rather wide departures from that art. one of the seals that have been used by California, and the seal of New York are similar to the Ancient Grand Lodge seal.
Landscapes are used in Montana, Vermont, Kansas, North Dakota the Montana picture suggesting High Hills and Low Dales, the North Dakota suggesting Fords of the Jordan. Great Pillars are conspicuous in the designs used by Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, and some nine or ten others. In some designs the Pillars are surmounted by Globes, in others are not. Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, and Utah have two Pillars joined at the top by a round arch; Wisconsin has the Five Orders of Architecture. These lists are suggestive, not exhaustive, and the designs are subject to change. Two blunders are repeated in some ten or twelve designs: inch marks on the square, which make it a carpenter's square; and dividers used where compasses were intended.
See illustrated essay on "The Heraldry of Masonry," by Walter F. Meier, P. G. M., page 3; Masonic Papers; Research Lodge, No. 281; Seattle, Washington; 1943. John Ross Robertson has a characteristically scholarly chapter on Masonic heraldry in his History of Freemasonry in Canada. For general works see: Heraldry, Historical and Popular, by Charles Boutell; 3rd Ed.; illustrated; Richard Bentley, London, Eng.; 1864. A Complete Guide to Heraldry, by Arthur C. Fox Davis; Dodge Pub. Co.; New York. Heraldry in America, by Eugene Ziebler; Bailey, Banks & Biddle Co.; 1895. For an account of the seals of Canadian Grand Lodges see The Builder; August, 1929; page
- HERMES TRISMEGISTUS
Under the head of "Hermes," reference is made to Hermes (or Mercury), a mythologic character, and to Hermes Trismegistus, a legendary wise man of ancient Egypt. At the time those paragraphs were written it was still generally believed that Medieval occultism consisting of alchemy, astrology, and the Kabbala, was collectively called Hermetism because it claimed a mythologic descent from the god Hermes, or else from the ancient Egyptian sage; it is now al most certain that the reference was to neither but to a book or collection of writings entitled Hermes Trismegtstus, a fact which explains why a majority of the Medieval occultists (there never were any large number of them) gave as their authority fragments of old texts. They could not have read Egyptian hieroglyphics; a god would have written no book; but they could read fragments or chapters of a book that had been written in Greek and translated into Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew.
When the early bishops of Christian Churches in Italy and Greece began their systematic destruction of Greek and Latin schools and colleges, arts, sciences, and books, believing it their mission to destroy the "old world" in order to build a new one in its place, mathematicians, scientists, artists, architects, scholars, and philosophers became greatly alarmed lest the whole of civilization be obliterated. This alarm reached such a height at Alexandria, Egypt, the Greek-speaking city which was the center of civilization at the time, that a group of scholars there began a counter-propaganda; and one of them, or possibly a group of them, collected or wrote and published the Hermes Trismegistus as a defense of civilization and as a plea to men-everywhere not to destroy the age old culture of the Mediterranean world.
This attempt to save civilization did not succeed; even the thousand-year-old University at Athens was destroyed; Alexandria itself was burned; illiteracy became universal in Europe; the Dark Ages came on, and lasted between two and three hundred years. But the Hermes did not disappear. It was a favorite book among some of the Post-Nicene Fathers of the Church, who had not approved the destruction of civilization, and in after times a homily modeled on one chapter of it, called Postor Hermes, became one of those pseudepigraphical books which are still ranked second only to the Bible; and it was read by Arabic scholars, from whom portions of it made their way into Europe through Spain.
Hermes was a name given to the mind, and in its larger and more usual sense denoted intelligence, skill, culture. Trismegistus, which etymologically meant "thrice-greatest," was a eulogistic adjective meaning fine, or very fine; the title Hermes Trismegistus carried the general meaning of fine arts, of culture, of civilization. Men of many parties and religions "believed in Hermes"; that is, they fought to save civilization against fanatics in the Church, who were followed by the barbarians from the north. Perhaps the best nontechnical account of Hermes Trismegistus is the essay in Literary Remains of the Late Emanuel Deutsch, published by Henry Holt; New York; 1874. Deutsch, on the staff of the British Museum for some sixteen years, was one of the most brilliant scholars of Nineteenth Century England. Two chapters in his book on the Talmud and four papers on the Vatican Council of 1870 which declared the infallibility of the Pope also are of exceptional value to Masons. It may be taken as a practical certainty that the source of the reference to Hermes in the Masonic Old Charges was Hermes Trismegistus the book, and not faint rumors of an ancient Greek god. At the period when the Old Manuscripts were written very few Freemasons had ever heard of Greek mythology, and least of all of a god named Hermes.
- HIGDEN, RANULF
Ranulf (or Ralph) Higden between 1320 and 1360 (the year of his death) wrote and published in eight books a history of the world, or "universal chronicle," entitled Polychronicon, one of the most famous of the Medieval attempts at an encyclopedic narrative of world events, and used as an authority until some three centuries ago. It was twice translated out of Latin into English; once in the Fifteenth Century; once, in 1387, by John Trevisa.
In 1857 the Archivist of the British Parliament, called Master of the Rolls, proposed the publishing of a series of Medieval chronicles; the most accurate text was to be found by an expert collation of the MSS., and each book was to have a historical and biographical introduction. In the following pear, publication began under the general head of Rerum Brita7z1ticorum Alvi Scriptores, popularly called the Roll Series. By 1915 some 250 volumes had been published. After World War I the series was renewed but came to a temporary halt with World War II. Among the titles was John Capgrave's chronicles of England to 1417, a source book for Medieval Masonic history. Higden's Polychronicon was one of the earliest works thus published, in nine volumes, and contained the abovementioned two English translations in addition to the Latin original.
The Cooke MS., the second oldest existing version of the Old Charges, which was dated at 1450 until 3 few years ago but is now believed to have been written as early as 1410 or 1420, quotes from a Polychronicon some seven times (along with four other sources) and manuscript authorities have taken this to have been Higden's work; but Knoop, Jones & Hamer in their The Two Earliest Masonic MSS. (Manchester University Press; 1938) raise some doubt about this and think the scribe may possibly have used some other polychronicon, a title used regularly for general chronicles. In his treatise on The 'Naimus Grecus' Legend (A.Q.C.; XVIII; 1905; p. 178) Bro. E. H. Dring in speaking of one of the Coolte MS. polychronicon quotations which he could not find in the Rolls Series version of Higden suggests that the seribe may have had another "one of the numerous MSS. of Higden which are scattered all over England ...."
Wynkyn de Worde began as an apprentice under Caxton, England's first printer, and became his foreman. After Caxton's death he tool; over the business, and printed about 100 titles in Caxton's old shop, then moved to London where before his death in 1534 he printed 500 more. In 1435, only three years after Columbus landed in the West Indies, he published an edition of Higden's Polychronicon. It is famous for having in it the first musical notes ever printed in England.
Higden, after long neglect, is becoming studied by historical scholars in the United States, and by Masonic specialists also, as ought to have been done long ago, seeing that in the Polgchronicon is a better exhibit of what men of Britain and Europe knew, thought, and believed in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries than the popular Medieval romances which have received so much attention. (As this is written Mr. Dawson, rare book dealer of Los Angeles, announces for sale a copy of Higden, "Imprinted in Southwerke by my Peter Treveris at the essences of John Reynes bookeseller, 1527," priced at $300.00.)
- HlGH HILLS
In the oldest North Ireland records of Freemasonry are references to "Priests Pillar Lodges" and to "Hedge Masons"; these are taken by the historians of the Irish Craft, Crawley, Lepper, and Crossle, to denote "Lodges" or "makings' out of doors. The Work Book of 1670 of the Lodge Aberdeen 1e of Scotland has a passage connecting the Irish custom with a Scottish one: "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 at the point of the Ness."
The Weekly Journal or British Gazeteer, April 11, 1730, published this item: "A few days since, their Graces the Dukes of Richmond and Montague, accompanied by several gentlemen who were all Free and Accepted Masons, according to ancient custom, formed a lodge upon the top of a hill near the Duke of Richmond's seat, at Goodwood in Sussex, and made the Right. Hon. the Lord Baltimore a Free and Accepted Mason." The Duke of Montague (not to be confused with the Duke of Montagtle who was Grand Master in 1721) was Grand Master in 1732 A Duke of Richmond was Grand Master in 1724.
Bro. R. J. Meekren, a former editor of The Builder, contlilJuteel to the interpretation of the history of the Ritual the valuable suggestion that there is a distinct element in the Ritual which is clearly distinguished in 1721 from the rest; that does not appear to be of architectural origin but is more like certain anthropologic ceremonies, of the sort so abundantly illustrated in Frazer's Golden Bough; that the elite of HA.-. is one of them; that it sounds like an old "cultural survival"; and that it may have been the rite enacted outdoors "on the highest hills or in the lowest vales."
- HINDUS IN FREEMASONRY
When Freemasonry was carried into India early in the Nineteenth Century the bearers of it in the majority of instances were military Lodges; and as they gave way to permanent, local Lodges the latter were composed almost w holly of English, Scottish, and Irish Brethren for in that period the so-called "color line" was strictly drawn; but after many years one Indian after another was admitted, some of them of the Hindu religion, some of them Mohammedans, with a sprinkling from any one of the other numerous Indian faiths. Masons from America, Britain, and Europe watched this experiment with an abiding interest; when the Fraternity of Anglo-Saxondom, which long had kept the Holy Bible on the altar, became admixed with Hindus, Brahmins, Mohammedans, Jains, Parsees, with believers in the Vedas, the Gita, the Tripitaka, etc., what would be the amalgam thus formed? Would Oriental Freemasonry become transformed out of recognition? Would it preserve its forms but lose its original substance? Not all the returns are in as yet, but aftel a half-century of the experiment there are a sufficient number of them to make clear at least one verdict: that Freemasonry is capable of becoming universal in the most literal sense without being altered in Landmarks or purposes. An ever-growing Masonic literature out of India attests that fact.
A representative of that literature which already is out-dated in India but would be new if it could be widely read in America is an extraordinary book: The K. 1V. Cama Masonic Jubilee Volume, Containing Papers on Masonic Subjects Written by Varuxus Freemasons in Honour of Bro. Kharshedji Rustaniji Cama on his completing 50 years of Masonic Life in the year 1904, edited by Jivanji Jamshedji Modi (Fellow of the University of Bombay); 1907; Bombay.
Bro. Cama was Made a Mason in Rising Star of Western India, No. 342, S. C., August 24, 1856, and to honor his many years of service in Craft work and to recognize his fame as an authority on Indian literature and also in Iranian literature, the Lodge proposed a banquet, but he demurred, and in lieu of it his Brethren prepared this volume in his honor. The volume consists of eighteen contributions, along with two or three poems. Among the authors are such names as Mills, Harley, Dover, co-mingled with such names as Wadia, Ghose, Dass; the concluding contribution is a paper on "Zoroaster and Euclid," by Bro. Jivanji Jamshedji Modi. American readers will be pleased to discover one of our own Brothers in this symposium, R.-. W. . William C. Prime, of the Grand Lodge of New York. (The translator has him a resident of the city of Tonkers instead of Yonkers. Yonkers is a large industrial city and Masonic center which would be known the world over were it not smothered by New York City.)
- HINDUSTAN, MYSTERIES OF
Of all the ethnic religions, that of Hindustan is admitted to be the oldest, for its Vedas or sacred books claim an antiquity of nearly forty centuries. However Brahmanism may have been corrupted in more modern times, in its earliest state it consisted of a series of doctrines which embraced a belief in a Supreme Being and in the immortality of the soul. All primitive religions were more or less mystical, and that of India formed no exception to the rule. Brother Oliver, in his History of Initiation, has given a very succinct account of the Brahmanical mysteries, collected from the most authentic sources, such as Maurice, Colebrook, Jones, and Faber. His description refers almost exclusively to the reception and advancement of a Brahman in his sacred profession; for the initiations of India, like those of Egypt, were confined to the priesthood. All Brahmans, it is true, do not necessarily belong to the sacerdotal order, but every Brahman who has been initiated, and thus been made acquainted with the formulas of worship, may at any time become an officiating priest.
The ceremonies of initiation, as they have been described by Brother Oliver, were celebrated in spacious caverns, the principal of which were Elephanta and Salsette, both situated near Bombay. The mysteries were divided into four Degrees, and the candidate was permitted to perform the probation of the first at the early age of eight years. It consisted simply in the investiture with the linen garment and Zennar or sacred cord; of sacrifices accompanied by ablutions; and of an explanatory lecture. The aspirant was now delivered into the care of a Brahman, who thenceforth became his spiritual g ude, and prepared him by repeated instructions and a life of austerity for admission into the Second Degree. To this, if found qualified, he was admitted at the requisite age. The probationary ceremonies of this Degree consisted in an incessant occupation in prayers, fastings, ablutions, and the study of astronomy. Having undergone these austerities for a sufficient period, he was led at night to the gloomy caverns of initiation, vwhieh had been duly prepared for his reception.
The interior of this cavern was brilliantly illuminated, and there sat the three chief hierophants, in the east, west, and south, representing the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, surrounded by the attendant mystagogues, dressed in appropriate vestments. After an invocation to the sun, the aspirant was called upon to promise that he would be obedient to his superiors, keep his body pure, and preserve inviolable secrecy on the subject of the mysteries. He was then sprinkled with water, an invocation of the Deity was whispered in his ear; he was divested of his shoes, and made to circumambulate the cavern three times, in imitation of the course of the sun, whose rising was personated by the hierophant representing Brahma, stationed in the east, whose meridian height by the representative of Siva in the south, and whose setting by the representative of Vishnu in the west. He was then conducted through seven ranges of dark and gloomy caverns, during which period the wailing of Mahadeva for the loss of Siva was represented by dismal howlings.
The usual paraphernalia of dashes of light, of dismal sounds and horrid phantoms, was practised to intimidate or confuse the aspirant. After the performance of a variety of other ceremonies, many of which we can only conjecture, the candidate reached the extremity of the seven caverns; he was now prepared for enlightenment by requisite instruction and the administration of a solemn oath. This part of the ceremonies concluded, then the sacred conch or horn was blown, the folding-doors were suddenly thrown open, and the aspirant was admitted into a spacious apartment filled with dazzling light, ornamented with statues and emblematical figures, richly decorated with gems, and scented with the most fragrant perfumes. This was a representation of Paradise.
The candidate was now supposed to be regenerated, and he was invested by the chief Brahman with the white robe and tiara; a cross was marked upon his forehead, and a tau upon his breast, and he was instructed in the signs, tokens, and lectures of the Order. He was presented with the sacred belt, the magical black stone, the talismanic jewel to be worn upon his breast, and the serpent stone, which, as its name imported, was an antidote against the bite of serpents. And, lastly, he was entrusted with the sacred name, known only to the initiated. This ineffable name was Aum, which, in its trilateral form, was significant of the creative, preservative, and destroying power, that is, of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva. It could not be pronounced, but was to be the subject of incessant silent contemplation. The symbols and the aporrheta, or secret things of the mysteries, were now explained. Here ended the Second Degree.
The Third took place when the candidate had grown old, and his children had all been provided for. This consisted in a total exclusion in the forest, where, as an anchored withdrawn from the world, a hermit, he occupied himself in ablutions, prayers, and sacrifices. In the Fourth Degree he underwent still greater austerities, the object of which was to impart to the happy sage who observed them a portion of the Divine nature, and to secure him a residence among the immortal gods.
The object of the Indian mysteries appears, says Brother Oliver, to have been to teach the unity of God and the necessity of virtue. The happiness of our first parents, the subsequent depravity of the human race, and the universal deluge were described in a manner which showed that their knowledge must have been derived from an authentic source.
A deep valley south of Mount Moriah, known as Gehenna; in which carrion was cast as food for vultures. The holy Valley of Judgment, Jehoshaphat, has been improperly substituted for Hinnom.
- HIRSCHAU, WILHELM VON
The Abbot Wilhelm von Hirschau, Count Palatine of Scheuren, is said to have been the founder, at the close of the eleventh century, of the German Bauhütten. Having been previously the Master of the Bauhütte, or Lodge of St. Emmerau, in Ratisbon, when he became Abbot of Hirschau, he collected together in 1080-91 the Freemasons for the purpose of enlarging the Convent. He incorporated the workmen, says Findel ( History, page 54), with the monastery, as lay Brethren, and greatly promoted their instruction and general improvement. Their social life was regulated by special laws; and the one most frequently inculcated by him was that brotherly concord should prevail, because only by working together and lovingly uniting all their strength would it be possible to accomplish such great works as were these undertakings for the public benefit.
A powerful nation, whose two chief seats were at Kadesh, on the Orontes, and Carchemish, on the River Euphrates, and who subjected as allies, forces from Palestine, Lydia, and the Troad. This great empire had at times contended with the Egyptian monarchs before the days of the Exodus. The Assyrians also had felt their power. They were foremost in arms and in the arts, and carried their religion to the shores of the Aegean Sea; in fact, as shown by the explorations and discoveries of 1879, the early civilization of Greece and other European nations was as much indebted to them as it was to the Phoenicians. Egyptian inscriptions bear out the truth of these discoveries, and more firmly establish Biblical history. Jerusalem came within the influence of this great empire. The Hittites were finally subdued by the capture of their famous capital Carchemish, by Sargon, 717 B.C. For Biblical references, see Judges (i, 26!; First Kings (x, 28-29); Second Kings (vii, 6).
The system of writing by the Hittites was unique; their letters were hieroglyphic and their sculptures a peculiar and curious style of art, some of which may be found in the British Museum (see Fresh Lights, etc., by Sayce, chapter 5).
- H. K. T.
The abbreviation for Hiram, King of Tyre
The name given, in some of the advanced Degrees, to one of the three conspirators commemorated in the Master's Degree. The derivation is uncertain. Oben, in Hebrew, means a stone: or it may be a corruption of Habbone, the Builder or Mason.
The Blind Fate mentioned in the Scandinavian Mysteries (see Balder).
- HOGARTH, WILLIAM
Artist and engraver. Born November 10, 1697, and died on October 25, 1767, London. He was a member of the Masonic Lodge at the Hand and Apple Tree Tavern on Little Queen Street at London. This Lodge was organized and constituted in 1725 and erased in 1737. Hogarth, according to the Grand Lodge Register, was also a member of the Lodge at the Bear and Harrow Tavern in 1731 and was a Grand Steward in 1735. His father-in-law, Sir J. Thornhill, was Senior Grand Warden in 1728.
Brother George W. Speth was of the opinion that the date of Hogarth's famous picture Night, that is the occurrence it celebrates, was intended to be May 29, the anniversary of the Restoration of Charles II, as shown by the oak-leaves over the barber's sign and in the hats of two of the figures. The street is probably Hartshorn Lane, Charing Cross, opening into what is now Trafalgar Square and which was Northumberland Street but is now North Avenue in London. Brother Speth suggests the principal figure is that of Sir Thomas de Veil, a member of Hogarth's first Lodge, the one meeting at the Vine in 1729. A sword under the arm of the boon companion and the Masonic apron, large in size, as was typical of these times, are suggestive of the Tyler and have been taken to mean a caricature of Brother Montgomery. the Grand Tyler, or, as he was then called, "garder of ye Grand Lodge." Note the snuffers, useful where candles were a common source-of illumination, to be seen hanging at the Tyler's belt in the picture representing Night. This engraving was published in 1837.
Brother Hogarth married Jane Thornbill in 1729, daughter of Sir James Thornbill, at whose art school he studied for a time, and who for a long time refused to admit his genius and skill as an artist. It was not until Hogarth finished his series of six pictures depicting A Harlot's Progress that his father-in-law was entirely reconciled to the painter who had finally attained the fame warranted by his art. Hogarth painted a number of these series or pictures or illustrated stories, among the most popular being Marriage à la mode, A Rake's Progress and Four Times a Day. Hogarth also met with success as a portrait painter and in 1746 he painted Garrick as Richard III, for which he wages handsomely paid for that day and age. His celebrated portrait of himself with his dog Trump is now in the National Gallery at London.
Hogarth died at the age of sixty-eight years and was buried in Chiswick, a tomb having since been erected to him, in 1771, by his admirers. A private hou3e in which he spent many of his summers was purchased in 1902 by Lieutenant-Colonel Shipway of Chiswick and turned into a Hogarth Museum.
- HOGG, JAMES
Famous Scottish poet, born 1770; died 1835. Became a Freemason in Canongate Kilwinning Lodge in Scotland, May, 1835 (see New Age, May, 1925).
A combination of the two Hebrew pronouns m, ho, meaning He, and of, hi, meaning 'n; thus mystically representing the twofold sex of the Creator, and obtained by a Cabalistic transposition or inversion of the letters of the Tetragrammaton nln' or Ihoh. Ho-hi, therefore, thus Cabalistically obtained, denotes the male and female principle, the vis genitrix, the phallus and lingam, the point within the circle; the notion of which, in some one form or another of this double gender, pervades all the ancient systems as the representative of the creative power Thus, one of the names given by the mythological writers to the Supreme Jupiter was appevo9vXvs, the man-woman. In one of the Orphic hymns we find the following line:
Jove is a male, Jove is all immortal virgin.
Plutarcht in his Isis and Osiris, says, "God, wbo is a male and female intelligence, being both Life and Light, brought forth another intelligence, the Creator Of the world." All the Paean gods and goddesses, however various their appellation, were but different expressions for the male and fenale principle. "In feet," says Russel, "they may all be included in the one great Hermaphrodite, the appevoinaus who combines in His nature all the elements of production, and who continues to support the vast creation which originally proceeded from His will." And thus, too, may we learn something of the true meaning of the passage in Genesis (I, 27), where it is said, "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." The suggestion of this working of Ho-hi out of Oh- Ho was put forward by George R. Gliddon, the Egyptologist, who had obtained it from the writings of Lanzi, the Italian antiquary.
- HOLINESS TO THE LORD
In Hebrew, Kodesh Layehovah. It was the inscription on the plate of gold that was placed in front of the High Priest's miter. The letters were in the ancient Samaritan character (see Exodus xxix, 30).
The first mention of the Craft in Holland belongs properly to the history of Freemasonry in Austria. In 1731 Francis, Duke of Lorraine, later Emperor of Austria and Germany, was initiated by Doctor Desaguliers at a special Lodge at the Hague. The first regular Dutch Lodge was the Loge du Grand Maitre des Provinces Réunies, Grand Masters Lodge of the Reunited Provinces, instituted at the Hague with Count Vincent de la Chapelle as Worshipful Master. Freemasonry in Holland was regarded with disfavor by the Government and suffered much persecution. On December 25, 1756, however, fourteen Lodges attended a Convention to constitute a Grand Lodge and two days later Baron Aerssen Beyeren was elected Grand Master. A separate Grand Lodge was formed by the Belgian Lodges in 1817 and between the two Grand Bodies there was some dissension. In 1835 a state of peace was at last attained under the leadership of Prince Frederick Wilhelm Karl of the Netherlands.
- HOLY CITY, KNIGHT OF THE
The Fifth and last of the Degrees of the rectified Rite of the Benevolent Knights of the Holy City, or the Rite of Strict Observance, settled at Wilhelmsbad in 1782.
- HOLY GRAAL
See San GEraal
- HOLY GROUND
A Masonic Lodge is said to be held on holy ground, according to the Prestonian lecture, because the first regularly constituted Lodge was held on that holy, consecrated ground wherein the first three grand offerings were made, which afterward met with Divine approbation (see Ground Floor of the Lodge and Grand offerings).
- HOLY LODGE
The lectures of the eighteenth century taught symbolically that there were three Lodges opened at three different periods in Masonic history; these were the Holy Lodge, the Sacred Lodge, and the Royal Lodge. The Holy Lodge was opened in the tabernacle in the wilderness, and over it presided Moses, Aholiab, and Bezaleel; the Sacred Lodge was opened on Mount Moriah during the building of the first Temple, and was presided over by Solomon, King of Israel, Hiram, the King of Tyre, and Hiram the Builder; the Royal Lodge was opened among the ruins of the first Temple, at the building of the second, and was presided over by Joshua, Zerubbabel, and Haggai. Though presented as a tradition, it is really only a symbol intended to illustrate three important events in the progress of Masonic science.
- HOLY NAME
Freemasonry teaches, in all its symbols and rituals, a reverence for the name of God, which is emphatically caned the " Holy Name." In the prayer .Ahabath Olam, first introduced by Dermott, it is said, "because we trusted in Thy holy, great, mighty, and terrible Name"; and in the introductory prayer of the Royal Arch, according to the American system, similar phraseology is employed: "Teach us, we pray Thee, the true reverence of Thy great, mighty, and terrible Name." The expression, if not the sentiment, is borrowed from the Hebrew mysteries.
- HOLY OF HOLIES
Every student of Jewish antiquities knows and every Freemason who has taken the Third Degree ought to knows, what was the peculiar construction, character, and uses of the Sanctum Sanctorum or Holly of Holies in King Solomon's Temple. Situated in the western end of the Temple, separated from the rest of the building by a heavy curtain, and enclosed on three sides by dead walls without any aperture or window, it contained the sacred Ark of the Covenant, and was secluded and set apart from all intrusion save of the High Priest, who only entered it on certain solemn occasions. As it was the most sacred of the three parts of the Temple, so has it been made symbolic of a Master's Lodge, in which are performed the most sacred rites of initiation in Ancient Craft Freemasonry.
But as modern horologists have found in all the Hebrew rites and ceremonies the traces of more ancient mysteries, from which they seem to have been derived, or on which they have been modified, whence we trace also to the same mysteries most of the Masonic forms which, of course, are more immediately founded on the Jewish Scriptures, so we shall find in the ancient Gentile temples the type of this same Sanctum Sanctorum or Holy of Holies, under the name of Adyton or Adytum. And what is more singular, we shall find a greater resemblance between this Adytum of the Pagan temples and the Lodge of Master Masons, than we will discover between the latter and the Sanctum Sanctorum of the Solomonic Temple. It will be curious and interesting to trace this resemblance, and to follow up the suggestions that it offers in reference to the antiquity of Masonic rites.
The Adytum was the most retired and secret part of the ancient Gentile temple, into which, as into the Holy of Holies of the Jewish Temple, the people were not permitted to enter, but which was accessible only to the priesthood. And hence the derivation of the word from the Greek Adoein, meaning not to enter, or that which it is not permitted to enter. Seclusion and mystery were always characteristic of the Adytum, and therefore, like the Holy of Holies, it never admitted of windows.
In the Adytum was to be found a taphos or tomb, and some relic or image or statue of the god to whom the temple was dedicated. The tomb reminds us of the characteristic feature of the Third Degree of Freemasonry; the image or statue of the god finds its analogue or similarity in the Ark of the Covenant and the overshadowing Cherubim.
It being supposed that temples owed their first origin to the reverence paid by the ancients to their deceased friends, and as it was an accepted theory that the gods were once men who had been deified on account of their heroic virtues, temples were, perhaps, in the beginning only stately monuments erected in honor of the dead. Hence the interior of the temple was originally nothing more than a cell or cavity, that is to say, a grave regarded as a place of deposit for the reception of a person interred, and, therefore, in it was to be found the soros or coffin, and the taphos 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 sekos or chapel, among the Romans the AdyEum or forbidden place, and among the Jevvs the kodesh kodashim, or Holy of Holies.
"The sanctity thus acquired," says Dudley in his 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 relic, or even the symbol of the presence or existence, of a divine personage." Thus it happened that there was in every ancient temple an Adytum or Most Holy Place.
There was in the Holy of Holies of the Jewish Temple, it is true, no tomb nor coffin containing the relics of the dead. But there was an Ark of the Covenant which was the recipient of the Rod of Aaron, and the Pot of Manna, which might well be considered the relics of the past life of the Jewish nation in the wilderness. There was an analogy easily understood according to the principles of the science of symbolism. There was no statue or image of a god, but there were the sacred cherubim, and, above all, the Shekinah or Divine Presence, and the bathkol or Voice of God.
But when Freemasonry established its system partly on the ancient rites and partly on the Jewish ceremonies, it founded its Third Degree as the Adytum or holy of holies of all its mysteries, the exclusive place into which none but the most worthy the priesthood of Freemasonry the Masters in Israel were permitted to enter; and then going back to the mortuary idea of the ancient temple, it recognized the reverend for the dead which constitutes the peculiar characteristic of that Degree. And, therefore, in every Lodge of Master Masons there should be found, either actually or allegorically, a grave, or tomb, and coffin, because the Third Degree is the inmost sanctuary, the kodesh kodashim, the Holy of Holies of the Masonic temple.
- HOLY PLACE
Called also the Sanctuary. It was that part of the Temple of Solomon which was situated between the Porch and Holy of Holies. It was appropriated to the purposes of daily worship, and contained the altars and utensils used in that service. It has no symbolic meaning in Freemasonry; although really, as it occupied the ground floor of the Temple, it might be properly considered as represented by an Entered Apprenticed Lodge, that is to say, by the Lodge when occupied in the ceremonies of the First Degree.
- HOLY SEPULCHER, KNIGHT OF THE
See Knight of the Holy Sepulcher
The tree of life and man in the Zoroastrian doctrine of the Persians.
First employed by Entick, in his edition of the Constitutions, in reference to the installation of the Earl of Kintore, in 1740, as Grand Master: "Who having been homaged and duly congratulated according to the forms and solemnity of Masonry." He never repeats the word, using afterward the expression, "received the homage." Noorthouck adopts this latter expression in three or four instances, but more generally employs the word "recognized" or "selected." The expression "to do homage" to the Grand Master at his installation, although now generally disused, is a correct one not precisely in the feudal sense of homagium, the service of a bondman, but in the more modern one of cheerful reverence, obedience, and loyalty.
- HONEST MASON CLUB
An early organization formed by certain members of the Grand Lodge of Scotland in the middle of the eighteenth century for the purpose of instructing the Scottish Brethren in the practice and history of Freemasonry and holding its meetings in Edinburgh. This club, while enthusiastically supported by its projectors, did not meet with success and went out of existence shortly after its inception, only to be revived about twenty-five years later by the forming of a group of Masonic Clubs in various parts of Scotland. These clubs were prohibited by the Grand Lodge because of their unfavorable criticism of the Grand Lodge transactions but in order to further the stated objects of the organization, Grand Lodge resolved to issue "temporary warrants, without fee, for holding Lodges of Instruction in any district or province when a majority of the Masters of the Lodges in the province should petition for it" (see History of the Lodge of Edinburgh, Mary's Chapel, Brother David Murray Lyon, 1873, page 402). This offer has never been taken advantage of to any extent which, as Brother Lyon observes, leaves the Brethren of Scotland without any centralized method for the giving and receiving of instruction.
This was the title formerly given to the Degree of Fellow Craft.
When a Degree of Freemasonry is conferred honoris causa, that is, as a mark of respect, and without the payment of a fee, it is said to be conferred as an honorarium. This is seldom done in Ancient Craft Freemasonry; but it is not unusual in the advanced Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, which have sometimes been bestowed by Inspectors on distinguished Freemasons as an honorarium.
- HONORARY DEGREES
1. The Mark Master's Degree in the American system is called the honorary Degree of Mark Master, because it is traditionally supposed to have been conferred in the Temple upon a portion of the Fellow Crafts as a mark of honor and of trust. The Degrees of Past Master and of High Priesthood are also styled honorary, because each is conferred as an honorarium or reward attendant upon certain offices; that of Past Master upon the elected Master of a Symbolic Lodge, and that of High Priesthood upon the elected High Priest of a Chapter of Royal Arch Masons.
2. These Degrees which are outside of the regular series, and which are more commonly known by the epithet Side Degrees, are also sometimes called Honorary Degrees, because no fee is usually exacted for them.
- HONORARY MASONS
A schismatic Body which arose soon after the revival in the beginning of the eighteenth century, the members of which rejected the established formula of an obligation, and bound themselves to secrecy and obedience by a pledge of honor only. Lilie the Gregorians and the Gormogons, who arose about the same time, they soon died a natural death. A song of theirs, preserved in Carey's Musical Century, is almost the only record left of their existence.
- HONORARY MEMBERS
It is a custom in some Lodges to invest distinguished Freemasons with the rank and title of honorary membership. This confers upon them, as the by-laws may prescribe, sometimes all the rights of active membership and sometimes only the right of speaking, but always without the exaction of annual dues. Nor does honorary membership subject the person receiving it to the discipline of the Lodge further than to a revocation of the honor bestowed. The custom of electing honorary members is a usage of very modern date, and has not the sanction of the old Constitutions. It is common in France; less so, but not altogether unknown, in America and England. Oliver, in the title of one of his works, claimed honorary membership in more than nine Lodges. It may be considered unobjectionable as a method of paying respect to distinguished merit and Masonic services, when it is viewed only as a local regulation, and does not attempt to interfere with Masonic discipline. A Freemason who is expelled forfeits, of course, with his active membership in his own Lodge, his honorary membership in any other Lodge.
- HONORARY THIRTY-THIRDS
The Supreme Councils of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in the United States have adopted the custom of electing honorary members, who are sometimes called Honorary Thirty-Thirds. They possess none of the rights of Inspectors-General or Active Members, except that of being present at the meetings of the Council, taking part to a limited extent in its deliberations, except when it holds an Executive Session.
The earliest record that we have been able to discover is a letter of Morris Holbrook; December 2A, 1897 (volume x, page 208), of iczal Bulletins, Supreme Council Southern Jurisdiction, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. This letter was written to Brother J. J. J. Gourgas and, among other things, he says that Jeremy L. Cross was made an honorary member of this Supreme Council. The same Supreme Council provided for Honorary Thirty-thirds in the Statutes of 1855. Probably the specific idea in this particular case was to make honorary members of those Brethren of the Supreme Council of Louisiana who surrendered their Supreme Council in that year and amalgamated with the Southern Jurisdiction. From that time onward the Statutes contain provisions for Honorary Members.
The original number of Honorary Members in the United States of America was nine Sovereign Grand Inspectors-Central comprising a Supreme Council. The additional Thirty-third Degree Members were made only by vacancies occasioned by the death of one of the original nine.
The necessity arising from the circulation of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite Degrees in America brought about the appointment of Deputy Inspectors-General, assigned sometimes to States; at other times at large. Some of the records of these Deputy Inspectors-General notably omitted the numerical designation of Degree. As time passed on and the organization of Supreme Councils by the several factions proceeded, the number of Thirty-thirds grew. Thirty-three was the number set for a "regular" Supreme Council. After the union of the two Supreme Councils of the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction in 1867, sixty-six was set as the limit and these were expressly defined to be Active Members. The proceedings of the early seventies indicate the differences of opinion resulting in the adjustment of the rite privileges to Honorary Members of the Supreme Council.
In the Northern Masonic Jurisdiction of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite there is but one Thirty-third Degree and persons elected under the provisions of Article 17 of the Constitution became honorary members of the Supreme Council, not Honorary Thirty-third Degree Members—and this subject was carefully dealt with in the Proceedings of 1923 (pages 48 to 50).
Practically the same rule governs in the Southern Jurisdiction except that Honorary Members are invested with a different title, Inspectors-General Honorary (see Article 4, Section 8, of The Statutes).
- HONOR, FEES OF
See Fees of Honor
- HONORS, GRAND
The Grand Honors of Freemasonry are those peculiar acts and gestures by which the Craft have always been accustomed to express their homage, their joy, or their grief on memorable occasions. In the Symbolic Degrees of the American Rite, they are of two kinds, the private and public, which are used on different occasions and for different purposes.
The Private Grand Honors of Freemasonry are performed in a manner known only to Master Masons, since they can only be used in a Master's Lodge. They are practiced by the Craft only on four occasions; when a Masonic Hall is to be consecrated, a new Lodge to be constituted, a Master Elect to be installed, or a Grand Master, or his Deputy, to be received on an official visitation to a Lodge. They are used at all these ceremonies as tokens of congratulation and homage. And as they can only be given by Master Masons, it is evident that every consecration of a hall, or constitution of a new Lodge, every installation of a Worshipful Master, and every reception of a Grand Master, must be done in the Third Degree. It is also evident, from what has been said, that the mode and manner of giving the private Grand Honors can only be personally communicated to Master Masons. They Ere among the aporrheta— the things forbidden to be divulged.
The Public Grand Honors, as their name imports, do not partake of this secret character. They are given on all public occasions, in the presence of the profane as well as the initiated. They are used at the laying of corner-stones of public buildings, or in other services in which the ministrations of the Fraternity are required, and especially in funerals. They are given in the following manner: Both arms are crossed on the breast, the left uppermost, and the open palms of the hands sharply striking the shoulders; they are then raised above the head, the palms striking each other, and then made to fall smartly upon the thighs. This is repeated three times, and as there are three blows given each time, namely, on the breast, on the palms of the hands, and on the thigh making nine concussions in all, the Grand Honors are technically said to be given "by three times three." On the occasion of funerals, each one of these honors is accompanied by the words, The will of God is accomplished; so mote it be, audibly pronounced by the Brethren.
These Grand Honors of Freemasonry have undoubtedly a classical origin, and are but an imitation of the plaudits and acclamations practiced by the ancient Greeks and Romans in their theaters, their senates, and their public games. There is abundant evidence in the writings of the ancients, that in the days of the empire, the Romans had circumscribed the mode of doing homage to their emperors and great men when they made their appearance in public, and of expressing their approbation of actors at the theater, within as explicit rules and regulations as those that govern the system of giving the Grand Honors in Freemasonry. This was not the case in the earlier ages of Rome, for Ovid, speaking of the Sabines, says that when they applauded, they did so without any rules of art, In medio plausu, plausus tunc arte carebat.
Propertius speaks, at a later day, of the ignorance of the country people, who, at the theaters, destroyed the general harmony by their awkward attempts to join in the modulated applause of the more skillful citizens.
The ancient Romans had carried their science on this subject to such an extent as to have divided these honors into three kinds, differing from each other in the mode in which the hands were struck against each other, and in the sound that thence resulted. Suctonius, in his life of Nero (chapter xx), gives the names of these various kinds of applause, which he says were called bombi, imbrices, testoe, and Seneea, in his Quaestionum Naturalium, gives a description of the manner in which they were executed. The bombi, or hums, were produced by striking the palms of the hands together, while they were in a hollow or concave position, and doing this at frequent intervals, but with little force, so as to imitate the humming sound of a swarm of bees. The imbrices, or tiles, were made by briskly striking the flattened and extended palms of the hands against each other, so as to resemble the sound of hail pattering upon the tiles of a roof. The testae, or earthen vases, were executed by striking the palm of the left hand, with the fingers of the right collected into one point. By this blow a sound was elicited which imitated that given out by an earthen vase when struck by a stick.
The Romans, and other ancient nations, having invested this system of applauding with all the accuracy of a science, used it in its various forms, not only for the purpose of testifying their approbation of actors in the theater, but also bestowed it, as a mark of respect or a token of adulation, on their e:nperors, and other great men, on the occasion of their making their appearance in public. Huzzas and cheers have, in this latter case, been generally adopted by the moderns, while the manual applause is only appropriated to successful public speakers and declaimers.
The Freemasons, however, have altogether preserved the ancient custom of applause, guarding and regulating its use by as strict, though different rules as did the Romans; and thus showing, as another evidence of the antiquity of their Institution, that the Grand Honors of Freemasonry are legitimately derived from the plausus, or applaudings, practice I by the ancients on public occasions. In the advanced Decrees, and in other Rites, the Grand Honors are different from those of Ancient Craft Freemasonry in the American Rite as, indeed, are those of England from those of the United States.
A symbol of the secrecy, silence, and darkness in which the mysteries of our art should be preserved from the unhallowed gaze of the profane. It has been supposed to have a symbolic reference to the passage in Saint John's Gospel (I, 5), "And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not." But it is more certain that there is in the hoodwink a representation of the mystical darkness which always preceded the rites of the ancient initiations.
The second round in the theological and Masonic ladder, and symbolic of a hope in immortality. It is appropriately placed there, for, having attained the first, or faith in God, we are led by a belief in His wisdom and goodness to the hope of immortality. This is but a reasonable expectation; without it, virtue would lose its necessary stimulus and vice its salutary fear; life would be devoid of joy, and the grave but a scene of desolation. The ancients represented Hope by a nymph or maiden holding in her hand a bouquet of opening flowers, indicative of the coming fruit; but in modern and Masonic iconology, the science of Craft illustrations and likenesses, it is represented by a virgin leaning on an anchor, the anchor itself being a symbol of hope (see Immortality of the Soul).
- HOPE MANUSCRIPT
A manuscript cops of the old Constitutions, which is in the possession of the Lodge of Hope at Bradford, in England. The parchment roll on which this Constitution is written is six feet long and six inches wide, and is defaced and worn away at the lower edge. Its date is supposed to be about l680. From a transcript in the possession of the late Brother A. F. A. Woodford, whose correctness is certified to by the Master of the Lodge, Brother Hughan first published it in his Old Charades of the British Freemasons.
- HORN OF PLENTY
The jewel of the Steward of a Lodge (see Cornucopia).
- HORNS OF THE ALTAR
In the Jewish Temple, the altars of burnt-offering and of incense had each at the four corners four horns of shittim wood, shittim being a species of acacia having yellowish wood. Among the Jews, as well as all other ancient peoples, the altar was considered peculiarly holy and privileged; and hence, when a criminal, fleeing took hold of these horns, he found an asylum and safety. As the Masonic altar is a representation of the altar of the Solomonic member, it should be constructed with these horns; and Brother Cross has very properly so represented it in his Hieroglyphic Chart.
The word of acclamation used by the French Freemasons of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. In some of the Cahiers it is spelled Ozee. It is, as Brother Mackey believed, a corruption of the word Huzza, which has been used by the English and American Freemasons of the same Rite.
- HOSMER, HESIKIAH LORD
First Chief Justice of Montana, appointed by President Lincoln, 186S, he organized orderly justice from frontier violence. Born at Hudson, New York, December 10, 1814, he died at San Francisco, California, October 31, 1893. Studied law at Cleveland, Ohio; was editor of the Toledo Blade, and author of the novel "Octoroon," 1859, prompting Boucicault's play of that name. Hosmer in 1861 was at Washington as Secretary of House Committee on Territories. Judge Hosmer published in 1887 "Bacon and Shakespeare in the Sonnets." Made a Freemason in Wood County Lodge No. 112, Ohio, 1843, going ten miles into the forest for the Degrees, the Morgan excitement still causing much bitterness; exalted in Circleville Chapter No. 20, Ohio, 1845, and knighted, Toledo Commandery No. 7, 1847. At Toledo he was Master of Rubicon Lodge No. 237; High Priest, Fort Meigs Chapter No. 29, and for several years Eminent Commander, Toledo Commandery No. 7. He became Grand King, Grand Chapter of Ohio; Grand Orator and then Deputy Grand Master, Grand Lodge of Ohio; at Cleveland, 1851, delivering an eloquent address to the Grand Lodge. In Montana in 1865 he was first Master of Montana Lodge No. 2, and six years Eminent Commander of Virginia City Commandery No. 1. In the Grand Lodge of Montana he was for several years Chairman, Foreign Correspondence Committee, and for two years, 1870-1, Grand Secretary. At death he had been thirteen years Prelate of Golden Gate Commandery No. 16, San Francisco, and ten years Grand Prelate of the Grand Commandery of California. An accomplished and impressive ritualist, an able civic and Masonic official (see Proceedings, Grand Lodge of Montana, 1903, page 62, and volume ui, Transactions, Historical Society of Montana, 1890).
An officer in each of the Bodies of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and in the Modern French Rite, one whose duty it is to collect obligatory contributions of the members, and, as the custodian, to disburse the sane, under the advisement of the Master, to needy Brethren, or even worthy profanes who may be in distress. The fund is entirely a secret one, and is reserved apart from all other receipts and disbursements.
- HOSPITALER, KNIGHT
See Rnight Hospzfaler
- HOSPITALERS OF JERUSALEM
In the middle of the eleventh century, some merchants of Amalfi, a rich city of the kingdom of Naples, while trading in Egypt, obtained from the Calif Monstaser Billah permission to establish hospitals in the city of Jerusalem for the use of poor and sick Catholic pilgrims. A site was assigned to them close to the Holy Sepulcher, on which they erected a chapel dedicated to the Virgin, giving it the name of Saint Mary ad Latinos, to distinguish it from those churches where the service was performed according to this Greek ritual.
The building was completed in the year 1048; and at the same time two hospitals, one for either sex, were erected in the vicinity of the chapel for the reception of pilgrims. Subsequently each of these hospitals had a separate chapel annexed to it; that for the men being dedicated to Saint John the Almoner, and that for the women to Saint Mary Magdalen. Many of the pilgrims who had experienced the kindness so liberally bestowed upon all wayfarers, abandoned all idea of returning to Europe, and formed themselves into a band of charitable assistants, and, without assuming any regular, religious profession, devoted themselves to the service of the hospital and the care of its sick inmates. The chief cities of the south of Europe subscribed liberally for the support of this institution; and the merchants of Amalfi who were its original founders acted as the stewards of their bounty, which was greatly augmented from the favorable reports of grateful pilgrims who had returned home, and the revenues of the hospital were thus much increased. The associates assumed the name of Hospitalers of Jerusalern. Afterward, taking up arms for the protection of the holy places against the Saracens, they called themselves Knights Hospitalers, a title which they subsequently changed to that of Knights of Rhodes, and finally to that of Knights of Malta.
This virtue has always been highly esteemed among Freemasons. Nothing is more usual in diplomas or certificates than to recommend the bearer "to the hospitality of all the Brethren wheresoever dispersed over the globe"; a recommendation that is seldom disregarded. All of the old Constitutions detail the practice of hospitality, as one of the duties of the Craft, in language like this: "Every Mason shall receive and cherish strange fellows when they come over the countries."
- HOST, CAPTAIN OF THE
See Captain of the Host
- HOUDON, JEAN ANTOINE
Celebrated French sculptor; born March 20, 1741, at Versailles; died at Paris on July 16, 1828. His name appears on the list of members of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters at Paris for 1779, 1783, 1784 and those of 1806, where he is designated as the "Imperial Sculptor, Member of the Institute, and Professor." At twelve entered the Royal School of Sculpture, won the Prize of Rome at twenty, and became famous for his statues and busts of prominent people. Came to the United States with Franklin and was for a time with Washington at Mount Vernon His statues of Washington and Voltaire are especially well known.
An officer of the Grand Orient of France in 1804. Grand Orator of the Grand Chapter in 1814.
- HOUEL, JEAN PIERRE LOUIS LAURENT
French engraver and painter, born at Rouen about 1735, studied painting and engraving in Italy, and also wrote four volumes entitled voyage Pittoresque de Sicile, de Malte, et de Lipari, 1782-7. His name is listed on the rosters of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters at Paris for the years 1783, 1784, 1806. Brother Houël died on November 14, 1813, at Paris.
An emblem connected with the Third Degree, according to the Webb lectures, to remind us by the quick passage of its sands of the transitory nature of human life. As a Masonic symbol it is of comparatively modern date, but the use of the hourglass as an emblem of the passage of time is older than our oldest known rituals. Thus, in a speech before Parliament, in 1627, it is said: "We may dan dandle and play with the hour-glass that is in our power, but the hour will not stay for us; and an opportunity once lost cannot be regained." We are told in Notes and Queries (First Series, v, page 223) that in the early part of the eighteenth century it was a custom to inter an hour-glass with the dead, as an emblem of the sand of life being run out.
There is in Sir John Soane's Museum, Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, a manuscript account book, of 1614- 41, once owned by Nicholas Stone, Mason to King James I and Charles I, which on the title page has the following written note:
- In time take time while time doth last,
- For time is no time wheel time is past.
A few sad and studious lines written in his Bible by Sir Falter Raleigh are found in Cayley's biography of him (volume in, chapter ix):
- E'en such is time! which takes in trust
- Our youth, our joys, and an we have
- And pays us naught but age and dust,
- Which, in the dark and silent grave,
- When we have wandered all our ways,
- Shuts up the story of our days.
- And from which grave, and earth, and dust
- The Lord will raise me up, I trust.
Longfellow, in his "Sand of the Desert in an Hour glass," has written thus:
- A handful of red sand from the hot clime
- Of Arab deserts brought
- Within the glass comes the spy of Time,
- The minister of Thought.
An hour-glass is in the possession of the Lodge at Alexandria, Virginia, of which our Brother George Washington was Master.
That old treasure, a measure of the flying moments, well exhibits the changing methods brought about in time.
- HOURS, MASONIC
The language of Freemasonry, in reference to the hours of labor and refreshment, is altogether symbolical. The old lectures contained a tradition that our ancient Brethren wrought six days in the week and twelve hours in the day, being called off regularly at the hour of high twelve from labor to refreshment. In the French and German systems, the Craft were said to be called from labor at low twelve, or midnight, which is therefore the supposed or fictitious time at which a French or German Lodge is closed. But in the English and American systems the Craft are supposed to be called off at high twelve, and when called on again the time for recommencing labor is said to be "one hour past high twelve": all this refers to Ancient Craft Freemasonry. In some of the advanced Degrees the hours designated for labor or rest are different. So, too, in the different Rites: thus, in the system of Zinnendorf, it is said that there are in a Mason's Lodge five hours, namely, twelve struck, noon, high noon, midnight, and high midnight; which are thus explained: Twelve struck, is before the Lodge is opened and after it is closed; noon is when the Master is about to open the Lodge; high noon, when it is duly open; midnight, when the Master is about to close it; and high midnight, when it is closed and the uninitiated are permitted to draw near.
- HOURS OF INITIATION
In Masonic Lodges, as they were in the Ancient Mysteries, initiations are always at night. No Lodges ever meet in the daytime for that purpose, if it can be avoided.
More recently than the time of brother Mackey there have been in the United States and in Europe a number of Masonic Bodies which meet in the afternoon because of greater convenience, the majority of the members being connected with the Stage, the Press, and similar businesses (see Night).
- HOUSTON, SAM
Born March 2, 1792; died July 26, 1863. First president of the Republic of Texas in 1836 and later governor of Texas under American rule in 1861. Made a Freemason in 1817, in Cumberland Lodge No. 8, Nashville, Tennessee, and became affiliated with Holland Lodge No. 1, Houston, in 1837. He presided over the Masonic Convention held to create the first Grand Lodge of Texas (see NeuJ Age Magazine, March, 1924; also Mackey's History of Freemasonry, page 1613).
- HOW GO SQUARES
The question was one of the earliest of the tests which were common in the eighteenth century. In the Grand Mystery, published in 1724, we find it in the following form:
- Q. How go squares?
- A. Straight.
It is noteworthy, that this phrases has an earlier date than the eighteenth century, and did not belong exclusively to the Freemasons. In Thomas May's comedy of The Old Couple, published in 1658, Act iv, scene I (see also Dodsley's Colkstion of Old Plays, volume 10), will be found the following passage:
- Sir Argent Scrape. Ha! Mr. Frightful, welcome.
- How go squares? What do you think of me to make a bridegroom? Do I look young enough?
- H. R. D. M.
An abbreviation of Heredom or Herodem
The name of the chief god among the Druids, commonly called Hu Gadarn, or Hu the Mighty. He is thus described by one of the Welsh bards: "The smallest of the small, Hu is the mighty in the world's judgment; yet he is the greatest and Lord over us and our God of mystery. His course is light and swift, his car is a particle of bright sunshine. He is great on land and sea, the greatest whom I shall behold, greater than the worlds. Offer not indignity to him, the Great and Beautiful." Bryant and Davies, in accordance with their arkite theory, think that he was Noah deified; but the Masonic scholar will be reminded of the Hi-hu taken by the Cabalists out of the name of Jehovah.
A word equivalent among the Stone Masons of Germany, in the Middle Ages, to the English word Lodge. Findel defines it as "a booth made of boards erected near the edifice that was being built, where the stone-cutters kept their tools, carried on their work, assembled, and most probably occasionally ate and slept." These Hütten accord exactly with the Lodges which Wren describes as having been erected by the English Masons around the edifice they were constructing.
HUGHAN, WILLIAM JAMES
This able and well-known Masonic scholar was born on February 13, 1841, and died on May 20, 1911. His father vas a native of Dunscore, in Scotland, who had settled at East Stonehouse in Devonshire, where Brother Hughan was born. At the age of fifteen he was apprenticed to a draper at Devonport; at nineteen he entered a wholesale firm at Plymouth, going thence to Manchester and Truro, at which latter place he remained until 1883, when he retired from business and settled at Torquay, where he died.
He was initiated in 1863 in the Saint Aubyn Lodge, No. 954, at Devonport; in the following year he joined the Emulation Lodge of Improvement in London, and on removing to Truro in 1864 he joined the Phenix Lodge of Honor and Prudence, No. 331, of which he was for a time Secretary, and in 1866 the Fortitude Lodge, No. 131, of which he was Worshipful Master in 1868 and 1878. In 1865 he was exalted in the Glasgow Chapter, No. 60, and joined Kilwinning Chapter, Ayr, No. 80, in 1868, becoming its Z., the chief officer, in 1873, and he was appointed Past Assistant Grand Sojourner of England in 1883; at various times he took most, if not all, of the Degrees worked in England and Scotland. In 1869 he was appointed Provincial Grand Secretary for Cornwall, which post he held for two years, and in 1874 he received the rank of Past Senior Grand Deacon of England, in recognition of his literary labors in the service of the Craft, this honor being the first of its kind to be so bestowed. In 1876 he was given the rank of Past Senior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of Egypt, which was followed by many similar honors from various foreign Masonic I3Odies, including Senior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of Iowa.
Brother Hughan was devoted to Masonic study and research ever since he first saw the light of Freemasonry, and the Masonic periodicals of both hemispheres contain innumerable articles from his pen. His chief published works are: Constitutions of the Freemasons, 1869; History of Freemasonry in York, 1871; Unpublished Records of the Craft, 1871- Old Charges of British Freemasons, 1872; Memorials of the Masonic Union of ISIS, 1874; Numerical and Medallic Register of Lodges, 1878; Origin of the English Rite of Freemasonry, 1884 and 1909; Engraved List of Regular Lodges for 1734, 1889; History of the Apollo Lodge and the R. A. York, 1889; History of the Lion and Lamb Lodge, 1894; Old Charges of British Freemasons, 1895; Constitutions of the Freemasons, 1725-1896, 1899 and The Jacobite Lodge at Rome, 1756-7, 1910. His writings cover the whole range of Freemasonry, but he gave special attention to the Old Charges, in the search for which he was indefatigable. The copyright in his books now belongs to the Lodge of Research, Leicester, England.
The Divine Master has said, "He that humbleth himself shall be exalted" (Luke, xiv 2), and the lesson is emphatically taught by a portion of the instructions of the Royal Arch Degree. Indeed, the first step toward the acquisition of truth is a humility of mind which teaches us our own ignorance and our necessity for knowledge, so that thus we may be prepared for its reception. Doctor Oliver has erred in saying (Landmarks ii 471) that bare feet are a Masonic symbol of humility. They are properly a symbol of reverence. The true Masonic symbol of humility is bodily prostration, and it is so exemplified in the Royal Arch Degree.
- HUMMELL, JOHANN NEPOMU
German composer. Born on November l4, 1778, at Pressburg, Hungary, and died at Weimar, Germany, in 1837. Member of the Lodge Amalia at Weimar and a pupil of Mozart's. Sesame celebrated pianoforte player and composer and in the music hook published by the Lodge where he was initiated, 1820, there are two songs by him.
- HUND, BARON VON
Carl Gotthelf, Baron von Hund, was born in Oberlausitz, in Germany, on September ll, 1722. He was a nobleman and hereditary landed proprietor in the Lautsitz. He is said to have been upright in his conduct, although beset by vanity and a love of adventure. But Findel if scarcely correct in characterizing him as a man of moderate understanding, since the position which he took among his Masonic contemporaries many of whom were of acknowledged talent and the ability with which he defended and maintained his opinions, would indicate the possession of very respectable intelligence. In religious faith he was a Protestant. That rare work, the Anti-Saint-Nicaise, contains in its first volume a brief biography of Brother von Hund, from which some details of his personal appearance and character may be obtained he was of middling stature, but well formed; never dressed sumptuously, but always with taste and neatness; and although himself a moderate liver, was distinguished for his hospitality , and his table was always well supplied for the entertainment of friends and visitors. The record that his servants were never changed, but that those who were employed in his domestic service constantly remained with him, is a simple but conclusive testimony to the amiability of his character
The scanty details of the life of Hund, which are supplied by Clavel in his Histoire Pittoresque; by Thory, in tile ilda Lalornor1xrn; by Ragon, in his Orlhorlozie Mtl4nnniqur; by RotiHon, in his Proofs of Conspiracy; tvy Lenning and licke, in the Encyclopedia of huh; by Oliver, in his Historical Lanelmarks, and by Findel, in his l-lialorty, vary so much in dates and in the record of events that he who should depend on their conflicting authority for information would be involved in almost inextricable confusion in attempting to follow any connected thread of a narrative.
AH Thory, however, writes as an annalist, in chronological order, it may he presumed that his dates are more to be depended on than those of the looser compilers of historical essays. He, therefore will furnish Liz with at least an outline of the principal Masonic events in the life of Hund, while from other writers we may derive the material facts which the brevity of Thory does not provide. But even Thory must sometimes be abandoned, where he has evidently neglected to note a particular circumstance, and his omission must be supplied from come other source. On the 20th of March, 1742, when still lacking some months of being twenty years of age, he was initiated into the mysteries of Freemasonry, in the Lodge of the Three Thistles at Frankfort-on-the Main. Findel places the date of his initiation in the year 1741; but, for the reason already assigned, Brother Mackey preferred the authority of Thory, with whom Lenning concurs. The First and Second Degrees were conferred on the same day, and in due time his initiation into the Symbolic Degrees was completed.
Soon after his initiation, the Baron von Hund traveled through England and Holland, and paid a visit to Paris. Robison, who speaks of the Baron as "a gentleman of honorable character," and whose own reputation secures him from the imputation of wilful falsehood, although it could not preserve him from the effects of prejudice, says that Hund, while in Paris, became acquainted with the Earl of Kilmarnock and some other gentlemen, who were adherents of the Pretender, and received from them the new Degrees, which had been invented, it is said, for political purposes by the followers of the exiled house of Stuart. Gadicke states that while there he also received the Order of the Mopses, which he afterward attempted, but without success, to introduce into Germany. This must, however, be an error; for the Order of the Mopses, an androgynous institution, which subsequently gave birth to the French Lodges of Adoption, was not established until 1776, long after the return of Hund to his native country.
This entire article is by Brother Mackey except where otherwise plainly indicated and here we may insert a comment by Brother Hawkins who says the Order of the Mopses was established in 1738 (see Mopses).
While he resided in Paris he received, says Findel, some intimations of the existence of the Order of Knights Templar in Scotland. The legend, which it is necessary to say has been deemed fabulous, is given to us by Clavel (Histoire Pittoresque, page 184), who tells us that, after the execution of Jacques de Molay, Pierre d'Aumont, the Provincial Grand Master of Auvergne, accompanied by two Commanders and five Knights, escaped to Scotland, assuming during their journey, for the purpose of concealment, the costume of Operative Masons. Having landed on one of the Scottish Islands, they met several other companions, Scottish Knights, with whom they resolved to continue the existence of their Order, whose abolition had been determined by the Pope and the King of France. At a Chapter held on Saint John's Day, 1313, Aumont was elected Grand Master, and the Knights, to avoid in future the persecutions to which they had been subjected, professed to be Freemasons, and adopted the symbols of that Order. In 1361, the Grand Master transported his See to the city of Aberdeen, and from that time the Order of the Temple spread, under the guise of Freemasonry, throughout the British Islands and the Continent.
The question now is not as to the truth or even the probability of this legend. It is sufficient for our present purpose to say, that the Baron von Hund accepted it as a veritable historical fact. He was admitted, at Paris, to the Order of Knights Templar, Clavel says, by the Pretender, Charles Edward, who was the Grand Master of the Order. Of this we have no other evidence than the rather doubtful authority of Clavel. Robison intimates that he was inducted by the Earl of Kilmarnock, whose signature was attached to his diploma. Gadicke says that he traveled over Brabant to the French army, and was there made a Templar by high chiefs of the Order. And this statement might be reconciled with that of Robison, for the high chiefs, hohe Obere, of Gädicke were possibly the followers of the Pretender, some of whom were likely to have been with the French army. The point is not, however, worth the trouble of an investigation.
Two things have been well settled, namely: That in 1743 von Hund was initiated as a Knights Templar, and that at the same time he received the appointment of a Provincial Grand Master, with ample powers to propagate the Order in Germany. He returned to his native country, but does not appear to have been very active at first as a missionary of Templarism, although he continued to exhibit his strong attachment to Ancient Craft Freemasonry. In the year 1749 he erected, at his own expense, a Lodge on his estates at Kittlitz, near Lobau, to which he gave the name of the lodge of the Three Pillars. At the same time he built there a Protestant church, the corner-stone of which was laid by the Brethren, with the usual Masonic ceremonies.
We are compelled to suppose, from incidents in his life which subsequently occurred, that Hund must have visited Paris a second time, and that he was there in the year 1754. On November 24, in that year, the Chevalier de Bonneville, supported by some of the most distinguished Freemasons of Paris, instituted a Chapter of the High Degrees, which received the name of the Chapter of Clermont, and into which he introduced the Templar system, that is, the system which finds the origin of Freemasonry in Templarism. In this Chapter Baron von Hund, who was then in Paris, received the Degrees of the Clermont system, and there, says Thory, he learned the doctrine upon which he subsequently founded his new Rite of Strict Observance. This doctrine was, that Freemasonry owes its existence to Knights Templarism, of which it is the natural successor; and, therefore, that every Freemason is a Templar, although not entitled to all the privileges of the Order until he has attained the highest Degree.
Von Hund returned to Germany possessed of powers, or a Deputation granted to him in Paris by which he was authorized to disseminate the advanced Degrees in that country. He was not slow to exhibit these documents, and soon collected around him a band of adherents. He then attempted what he termed a reform in primitive Freemasonry or the simple English system of the three Symbolic Degrees, which alone most of the German Lodges recognized. The result was the establishment of a new system, well known as the Rite of Strict Observance.
But here we again encounter the embarrassments of conflicting authorities. The distinctive feature of the Rite of Strict Observance was, that Freemasonry is the successor of Templarism; the legend of Aumont being unhesitatingly accepted as authentic. The author of Anti-Saint-Nicaise, the book already referred to, asserted that between the years 1730 and 1740, there was already in Lusatia a Chapter of Templars; that he knew one, at least, who had been there initiated before the innovation of the Baron von Hund; and that the dignities of Prior, Sub-Prior, Prefect, and Commander, which he professed to introduce into Germany for the first time, had been known there at a long antecedent period. Ragon also asserts that the Templar system of Ramsay was known in Germany before the foundation of the Chapter of Clermont, whence von Hund derived his information and his powers; that it consisted of six Degrees, to which Hund added a seventh; and that at the time of von Hund's arrival in Germany this regime had Baron von Marshall as its head, to whom Hund's superiors in Paris had referred him. This seems to be the correct version of the affair; and so the Rite of Strict Observance was not actually established, but only reformed and put into more active operation, by von Hund.
One of the peculiarities of this Rite was, that every member was called a Knight, or Eques; the classical Latin for a Roman knight being, by a strange inconsistency, adopted by these professed Templars, instead of the medieval word Miles, which had been always appropriated to the military knights of chivalry. To this word was appended another, and the title thus formed was called the characteristic name. Lists of these characteristic names, and of the persons whom they represented, are given in all the registers and lists of the Rite. Von Hund selected for himself the title of Eques ab Ense, or Knight of the Sword, and, to show the mixed military and Masonic character of his regime, chose for his seal a square and sword crossed, or, in heraldic language, saltierwise. Von Hund divided Europe into nine provinces, and called himself the Grand Master of the Seventh Province, which embraced Lower Saxony, Prussian Poland, Livonia, and Courland. He succeeded in getting the Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick to place himself at the head of the Rite, and secured its adoption bv most of the Lodges of Berlin and of other parts of Prussia. After this he retired into comparative inactivity, and left the Lodges of his Rite to take care of themselves.
But in 1763 he was aroused by the appearance of one, Johnson, on the Masonic stage. This man, whose real name was Leucht, was a Jew, and had formerly been the secretary of the Prince of Anhalt-Bernburg, under the assumed name of Becker. But, changing his name again to that of Johnson, he visited the city of Jena, and proclaimed himself to the Freemasons there as possessed of powers far more extensive than those of von Hund, which he pretended to have received from "Unknown Superiors" at Aberdeen, Scotland, the supposed seat of the Templar Order, which had been revived by Aumont. Von Hund at first admitted the claims of Johnson, and recognized him as the Grand Prior of the Order.
Ragon says that this recognition was a fraud on the part of von Hund, who had really selected Johnson as his agent, to give greater strength to his Rite. I am reluctant to admit the truth of this charge, and am rather disposed to believe that the enthusiasm and credulity of von Hund had made him for a time the victim of Johnson's ostentatious pretensions. If this be so, he was soon undeceived, and, discovering the true character as well as the dangerous designs of Johnson, he proclaimed him to be an adventurer. He denied that Johnson had been sent as a delegate from Scotland, and asserted anew that he alone was the Grand Master of the Order in Germany, with the power to confer the high Degrees. Johnson, accused of abstracting the papers of a Lord of Courland, in whose service he had been, and of the forgery of documents, was arrested at Magdeburg through the influence of von Hund, on the further charges of larceny and counterfeiting money, and died in 1775 in prison.
Von Hund now renewed his activity as a Freemason, and assembled a Congress of the Rite at Altenberg, Where he was recognized as Grand Master of the Templars, and augmented his strength by numerous important initiations. His reappearance among the Brethren exerted as much surprise as joy, and its good effects were speedily seen in a large increase of Chapters; and the Rite of Strict Observance soon became the predominating system in Germany. But dissatisfaction began to appear as a consequence of the high claims of the members of the Rite to the possession of superior knowledge. The Knights looked haughtily upon the Freemasons who had been invested only with the primitive Degrees, and these were offended at the superciliousness with which they were treated. A Mother Lodge was established at Frankfort, which recognized and worked only the three Degrees. Other systems of advanced Degrees also arose as rivals of the Rite, and von Hund's regime began to feel sensibly the effects of this compound antagonism.
Hitherto the Rite of Strict Observance had been cosmopolitan in its constitution, admitting the believers in all creeds to its bosom, and professing to revive only the military and chivalric character of the ancient Templars, without any reference to their religious condition. But in 1767, von Starck, the Rector at Wismar, proposed to engraft upon the Rite a new branch, to be called the clerical system of Knights Templar. This was to be nominally spiritual in character; and, while announcing that it was in possession of secrets not known to the chivalric branch of the Order, demanded as preliminary to admission, that every candidate should be a Roman Catholic, and have previously received the Degrees of the Strict Observance. Starck wrote to von Hund, proposing a fusion of the two branches; and he, "because," to borrow the language of Findel (History of Freemasonry, page 279), "himself helpless and lacking expedients, eagerly stretched out his hand to grasp the offered assistance, and entered into connection with the so-called clergy." He even, it is said, renounced Protestantism and became a Catholic, so as to qualify himself for admission.
In 1774, a Congress assembled at Kohlo, the object of which was to reconcile the difference between these two branches of the Rite. Here von Lund appears to have been divested of some portion of his digmties, for he was appointed only Provincial Superior of Upper and Lower Alsace,.of Denmark and of Courland, while the Grand Mastership of the Rite was conferred on Frederick, Duke of Brunswick.
Another Congress was held in 1775, at Brunswick, where Hund again appeared. Here Findel, who seems to have no friendly disposition toward von Hund, charges him with "indulgence in his love of outward pomp and show," a charge that is not consistent with the character given him by other writers, who speak of his modesty of demeanor. The question of the Superiores Incogniti, or Unknown Superiors, from whom von Hund professed to derive his powers, came under consideration. He denied that he was bound to give any explanations at all, and asserted that his oath precluded him from saying anything more. Confidence in him now declined, and the Rite to which he was so much attached, and of which he had been the founder and the chief supporter, began to lose its influence. The clerical branch of the Rite seceded, and formed an independent Order, and the Lodges of Strict Observance thenceforward called themselves the United German Lodges.
With his failure at Brunswick, the functions of von Hund ceased. He retired altogether from the field of Masonic labor, and died in the fifty-fifth year of his life, on November, 1776, at Meiningen, in Prussia.
The members of the Lodge Minerva, at Leipsic, struck a medal in commemoration of him, which contains on the obverse an urn encircled by a serpent, the symbol of immortality and on the reverse a likeness of him, which is said to be exceedingly accurate.
A copy of it may be found in the Taschenbuche der Freimaurerei, and in the American Quarterly Review of Freemasonry. For this amiable enthusiast, as he certainly was credulous but untiring in his devotion to Freemasonry; deceived but enthusiastic; generous and kind in his disposition; whose heart was better than his head we may not entertain the profoundest generation; but we cannot but feel an emotion of sympathy. We know not how much the antagonism and contest of years, and final defeat and failure, may have embittered his days or destroyed his energy; but we do know that he ceased the warfare of life while still there ought to have been the promise of many years of strength and vigor.
- HUNGARY, NATIONAL GRAND LODGE OF
See Austria Hungary and Czecho Slovacia
The Hebrew word nm, liberty. A term used in the Fourth Degree of Perfect Mistress in the French Rite of Adoption.
- HUTCHINSON, WILLIAM
Of all the Masonic writers of the eighteenth century there was no one who did more to elevate the spirit and character of the Institution than William Hutchinson of Barnard Castle, in the county of Durham, England. To him are we indebted for the first philosophical explanation of the symbolism of the Order, and his Spirit of Masonry still remains a priceless boon to the Masonic student. Hutchinson was born in 173 , and died April 7, 1814, at the ripe age of eighty-two years. He was by profession a solicitor; but such was his literary industry, that a were extensive practice did not preclude his devotion to more liberal studies.
He published several works of fiction, which, at the time, were favorably received. His first contribution to literature was The Hermitage, a British Story, which was published in 1772. This was followed, in 1773, by a descriptive work, entitled An Excursion to the Lakes of Westmoreland and Cumberland. In 1775, he published The Doubtful Marriage, and in 1776 A Week in a Cottage and A Romance after the Fashion of the Castle of Ontranto. In 1778, he commenced as a dramatic writer, and besides two tragedies, Pygmalion, King of Tyre and The Tyrant of Onia, which were never acted, he also wrote The Princess of Zanfara which was successfully performed at several of the provincial theaters.
Hutchinson subsequently devoted himself to archeological studies, and became a prominent member of the Royal Society of Antiquaries. His labors in this direction were such as to win for him from Nichols the title of "an industrious antiquary." He published in 1776, A View of Northumberland; in two volumes; in 1785, 17&7, and 1794, three consecutive quarto volumes of The History and Antiquities of the County Palatinate of Durilam; and in 1794, in two quarto volumes, A History of Cumberland works which are still referred to by scholars as containing valuable information on the subjects of which they treat, and are an evidence of the learning and industry of the author. But it is as a Masonic writer that Hutchinson has acquired the most lasting reputation, and his labors as such have made his name a household word in the Order. He was for some years the Master of Barnard Castle Lodge, where he sought to instruct the members by the composition and delivery of a series of Lectures and Charges, which were so far superior to those then in use as to attract crowds of visitors from neighboring Lodges to hear him and to profit ban his instructions. Some of these were from time to time printed, and won so much admiration from the Craft that he was requested to make a selection, and publish them in a permanent form.
Accordingly, he applied, in 1774, for permission to publish, to the Grand Lodge which then assumed to be a rigid censor of the Masonic press and, having obtained it, he gave to the Masonic world the first edition of his now celebrated treatise entitled The Spzrat of Masonry, in Moral and Elvzidatory Lectures; but the latter part of the title was omitted in all the subsequent editions. The sanction for its publication, prefixed to the first edition, has an almost supercilious sound, when we compare the reputation of the work which at once created a revolution in Masonic literature with that of those who gave the sanction, and whose names are preserved only by the official titles, which were affixed to them. The sanction is in these words:
Whereas, Brother William Hutchinson has compiled a book, entitled The Spirit of Masonry, and has requested our sanction for the publication thereof, we, having perused the said book and finding it will be of use to this Society, do recommend the same.
This approval is signed by the Grand Masterand his Deputy, also by the Grand Wardens, and the Grand Treasurer and Secretary. But their judgment, though tamely expressed, was not amiss. A century has since shown that the book of Hutchinson has really been "of use to the Society." It opened new thoughts on the symbolism and philosophy of Freemasonry, which, worked out by subsequent writers, have given to Freemasonry the high rank it now holds, and has elevated it from a convivial association, such as it was in the beginning of the eighteenth century, to that school of religious philosophy which it now is. To the suggestions of Hutchinson, Hemming undoubtedly owed that noble definition, that "Freemasonry was a science of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols."
The first edition of The Spirit of Masonry was published in 1775, the second in 1795, the third in 1809, the fourth in 1813, the fifth in 1814, and the sixth in 1815, all except the last in the lifetime of the author. Several subsequent editions have been published both in the United States and in Great Britain. In 1780, it was translated into German, and published at Berlin under the title of Der Geist der Freimaurerei, in moralischen und erlauternden Vortragen. Of this great work the Craft appear to have had but one opinion. It was received on its first appearance with enthusiasm, and its popularity among Masonic scholars has never decreased. Doctor Oliver says of it:
It was the first efficient attempt to explain, in a rational and scientific manner, the true philosophy of the Order. Doctor Anderson and the writer of the Gloucester sermon indicated the mine. Calcott opened it, and Hutchinson worked it. In this book he gives to the science its proper value. After explaining his design, he enters copiously on the rites, ceremonies and institutions of ancient nations. Then he dilates on the Lodge, with its ornaments, furniture, and jewels, the building of the Temple; geometry and after explaining the Third Degree with a minuteness which is highly gratifying, he expatiates on secrecy, charity, and brotherly love, and sets at rest all the vague conjectures of cowans and unbelievers, by a description of the occupations of Masons and a masterly defense of our peculiar rites and ceremonies.
The peculiar theory of Hutchinson in reference to the symbolic design of Freemasonry is set forth more particularly in his ninth lecture, entitled "The Master Mason's Order." His doctrine was that the Lost Word was typical of the lost religious purity, which had been occasioned by the corruptions of the Jewish faith. The piety which had planted the Temple at Jerusalem had been expunged, and the reverence and adoration due to God had been buried in the filth and rubbish of the world, so that it might well be said "that the guide to heaven was lost, and the master of the works of righteousness was smitten." In the same way he extends the symbolism. "True religion," he says, "was fled. Those who sought her through the wisdom of the ancients were not able to raise her. She eluded the grasp, and their polluted hands were stretched forth in vain for her restoration. Those who sought her by the old law were frustrated, for death had stepped between, and corruption defiled the embrace."
Hence the Hutchinsonian theory is, that the Third Degree of Freemasonry symbolizes the new law of Christ, taking the place of the old law of Judaism, which had become dead and corrupt. With him, Hiram or Huram is only the Greek huramen, meaning I have found it, and acacia, from the same Greek, signifies freedom from sin; and "thus the Master Mason represents a man, under the Christian doctrine saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith of salvation. " Some of Hutchinson's etymologies are unquestionably inadmissible; as, when he derives Tubal Cain from a corruption of the Greek, tumbon choeo, "I prepare my sepulcher," and when he translates the Substitute Word as meaning "I ardently wish for life." But fanciful etymologies are the besetting sin of all antiquaries.
So his theory of the exclusive Christian application of the Third Degree will not be received as the dogma of the present day. But such was the universally recognized theory of all his contemporaries. Still, in his enlarged and elevated views of the symbolism and philosophy of Freemasonry as a great moral and religious science, he was immeasurably in advance of his age. In his private life, Hutchinson was greatly respected for his cultivated mind and extensive literary acquirements, while the suavity of his manners and the generosity of his disposition secured the admiration of all who knew him. He had been long married to an estimable woman, whose death was followed in only two days by his own, and they were both interred in the same grave.
The acclamation in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. In the old French manuscripts it is generally written Hoschea.
- HYMNS, MASONIC
In the History of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Northamptonshire and Huntingdonshire, England, by Brother Phipps Doran, 1912, we are told that Brother W. Clegg, a member of the Lodge of Harmony, No. 279, Boston, Lincolnshire, was the author of the hymns Hail Eternal and Now the Evening Shadows Falling, which are in frequent use at the opening and closing of many Lodges.
- Hail, Eternal! by whose aid
- All created things are made
- Heav'n and earth thy vast design;
- Hear us, Architect Divine!
- May our work begun in Thee
- Ever blest with order be.
- And may we, when labors cease,
- Part in harmony and peace,
- By Thy glorious Majesty
- By the trust we place in Thee
- By the badge and mystic sign
- Hear us Architect Divine!
NOW THE EVENING SHADOWS FALLING
- Now the evening shadows falling
- Warn from toil to peaceful rest
- Mystic arts and rites reposing
- Sacred in each faithful breast.
- God of Light! whose love unceasing,
- Doth to all Thy works extend
- Crown our Order with Thy blessing;
- Build, sustain us to the end.
- Humbly now we bow before Thee,
- Grateful for Thine aid Divine;
- Everlasting pow'r and glory,
- Mighty Architect! be Thine.
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