ALETHOPHILES.
Greek for Lovers of Truth.
Graf von Manteuffel as president organized this society in Berlin, 1736, upon Wolf's philosophical teaching, the search after positive truth. Kenning's Cydopaedia of Freemasonry says they. adopted a hexalogue (from the Greek, six and words) of axioms, of which two only. are given by Lenning :
1. Let truth be the only end and only object of your understanding and will.
2. Hoid nothing for truth, hoid nothing for falsehood, as long as you are not convinced of either by some suflicient grounds. In the system of the African Builders, the fifth grade was called Alethophile, some connection seeming to have existed between the two societies.
ALETHOPHILOTE,
Lover of Truth. Given by Thory as the Fifth Degree of the Order of African Architects (see his Acta Latatomorum, 1, page 292).
ALEXANDER I
I, Emperor of Russia. Alexander I succeeded Paul I in the year 1801, and immediately after his accession renewed the severe prohibitions of his predecessor against all secret societies, and especially Freemasonry. In1803, M. Boeber, counselor of state and director of the mylitary school at St.Petersburg, resolved to remove, if possible, from the mind of the Emperor the prejudices which he had conceived against the Order. Accordingly, in an audience which he had solicited and obtained, he described the objeet of the Institution and the doctrine of its mysteries in such a way as to lead the Emperor to rescind the obnoxious decrees, and to add these words:
"What you have told me of the Institution not only induces me to grant it my protection and patronage, but even to ask for initiation into its mysteries. Is this possibil to be obtained?"
To this question M. Boeber replied:
"Sire, I cannot myself reply to the question. But I will call together the Masons of your capital, and make your Majesty`s desire known; and I have no doubt that they will be eager to comply. with jour wishes."
Accordingly Alexander was soon after initiated, and the Grand Orient of all the Russias was in consequence established with M. Boeber as Grand Master (see Thory's Acta Latomorum1, page 218)
ALEXANDER III
king of Scotland, and legend tells us that he favored Freemasons and that Kilwinning Abbey was built under his guidance. Claims have been made that these facts refer rather to his son, David I. The ritual of the Scottish Knight of Saint Andrew credits Alexander als Protector of the Masonic Order.
ALEXANDRIA, SCHOOL OF.
When Alexander built the city of Alexandria in Egypt, with the intention of making it the seat of his empire, he invited thither learned men from all nations, who brought with them their peculiar notions. The Alexandria School of Philosophy which was thus established, by the commingling of Orientalists, Jews, Egyptians, and Greeks, became eclectic in character, and exhibited a heterogeneous mixture of the opinions of the Egyptian priests, of the Jewish Rabbis, of Arabic teachers, and of the disciples of Plato and Pythagoras.
From this school we derive Gnosticism and the Cabala, and, above all, the system of symbolism and allegory which lay at the foundation of the Masonic philosophy. To no ancient sect, indeed, except perhaps the Pythagoreans, have the Masonic teachers been so much indebted for the substance of their doctrines, as well as the esoteric method of communicating them, as to that of the School of Alexandria. Both Aristobulus and Philo, the two most celebrated chiefs of this school, taught, although a century intervened between their births, the same , theory, that the sacred writings of the Hebrews were, by their system of allegories, the true source of all religious and philosophic doctrine, the literal meaning of which alone was for the common people, the esoteric or hidden meaning being kept for the initiated. Freemasonry still carries into practise the same theory.
ALGERIA.
The number of Lodges in Algeria is, in comparison with the size of the State, quite large.
Several are controlled by the Grand Lodge of France and many more are under the Grand Orient of that country, the Grand Orient having organized Bélisaire Lodge at Alger on March 1, 1832, and Hippone Lodge at Bone on July 13, 1832.
ALINCOURT, FRANÇOIS D'.
A Freneh gentleman, who, inthe year 1776, was sent with Don Oyres de Ornellas Praçao, a Portuguese nobleman, to prison, by the governor of the island of Madeira, for being Freemasous. They were afterward sent to Lisbon, and confined in a common jail for fourteen months, where they would have perished had not the Freemasons of Lisbon supported them, through whose intercession , with Don Martinio de Mello they were at last released (see Captain George Smith's Use and Abuse of Freemasonry, page 206).
ALISON, SIR ARCHIBALD.
English author, born December 29, 1792, at Kenley, Shropshire, England; died at Glasgow, Scotland, May 23, 1867. A member of Glasgow Kilwinning Lodge, having received his Degrees in 1837 (see New Age, May.,1925).
ALLAH.
Assyrian (Figure 1), ilu; Aramaic, elah,' Hebrew, eloah. The Arabic name of God, derived from (Figure 2) ilah, god, and the article (Figure 3) al, expressing the God by way of eminence.
In the great profession of the Unity, on which is founded the religion of Islam, both terms are used, as pronounced La ilaha ill`Allah, there is no god but God, the real meaning of the expression being, There id only one God (see Figure 4).
Mohammed relates that in his night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, on ascending through the seven heavens, he beheid above the throne of God this formula; and the green standard of the Prophet was adorned with the mystic sentence.
It is the first phrase lisped by the infant, and the devout Moslem utters the profession of the faith at all times, in joy, in sorrow, in praise, in prayer, in battle, and with his departing breath the words are wafted to heaven; for among the peculiar virtues of these words is that they may be spoken without any motion of the lips. The mourners on their way to the grave continue the strain in melannholy tones.
Around the supreme name is clustered the masbaha, or rosary, of the ninety-nine beautiful names of God, which are often repeated by the Mohammedan in his devotions.
ALLEGIANCE.
Every Freemason owes allegiance to the Lodge, Chapter, or other body of which he is a member, and also to the Grand Lodge, Grand Chapter or other supreme authority from which that body has received its charter. But this is not a divided allegiance. If, for instance, the edicts of a Grand and a Subordinate Lodge conflict, there is no question which is to be obeyed. Supreme or governing bodies in Freemasonry claim and must receive a paramount allegiance.
ALLEGORY.
A discourse or narrative in which there is a literal and a figurative sense, a patent and a concealed meaning ; the literal or patent sense being jntended, by analogy or comparison, to indicate the figurative or concealed one. Its derivation from the Greek, ... and , to say something different, that is, to say something where the language is one thing and the true meaning another, exactly expresses the character of an allegory. It has been said that there is no essential difference between an allegory and a symbol. There is not in design, but there is in their character.
An allegory may be interpreted without any previous conventional agreement, but a symbol cannot.
Thus, the legend of the Third Degree is an allegory, evidently to be interpreted as teaching a restoration to life ; and this we learn from the legend itself, without any previous understanding. The sprig of acacia is a symbol of the immortality of the soul. But this we know only because such meaning had been conventionally determined when the symbol was first established. It is evident, then, that an allegory whose meaning is obscure is imperfect. The enigmatical meaning should be easy of interpretation ; and hence Lemiére, a French poet, has said: "L`allégorie habite un palais diaphane;" meaning Allegory lives in a transparent palace.
All the legends of Freemasonry are more or less allegorical, and whatever truth there may be in some of them in an historival point of view, it is only as allegories or legendary symbols that they are of importance. The English lectures have therefore very properly defined Freemasonry to be "a system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.''
The allegory was a favorite figure among the ancients, and to the allegorizing spirit are we to trace the construction of the entire Greek and Roman mythology. Not less did it prevail among the older Aryan nations, and its abundant use is exhibited in the religions of Brahma and Zoroaster. The Jewish Rabbis were greatly addicted to it, and carried its employment, as Maimonides intimates, in his More Nevochim (III, xliii), sometimes to an excess. Their Midrash, or system of commentaries on the sacred book, is almost altogether allegorical. Aben Ezra, a learned Rabbi of the twelfth century:, says, "The Scriptures are like bodies, and allegories are like the garments with which they are clothed. Some are thin like fine silk, and others are coarse and thick like sackcloth."
Jesus, to whom this spirit of the Jewish teachers in his day was familiar, taught many truths in parables, all of which were allegories. The primitive Fathers of the Christian Church were thus infected; and Origen, the most famous and influential Christian writer of his time, 186 to 254 A.D., who was especially addicted to the habit, tells us that all the Pagan philosophers should be read in this spirit : "hoe facere solemus quando philosophos legimus."
Of modern allegorizing writers, the most interesting to Freemasons are Samuel Lee, the author of Orbis Miraculum or the Temple of Solomon portrayed by Scripture Light, and John Bunyan, who wrote Solomon's Temle Spirituatized.
William Durand, or to use his Latin name, Guillelmus Durandus, who lived A.D, 1230 to 1296, wrote a treatise in Italy before 1286 on the origin and symbolic sense of the Christian Ritual, the ceremonies and teaching related to the church buildings. An English edition of this work entitled The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments, by J. M. Neale and Benjamin Webb, was published at London, 1906, and is a most suggestive treatise.
ALLEN, VISCOUNT JOHN.
From 1744 to 1745 Brother Allen was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ireland.
ALLIANCE, SACRED.
An organization of twentyone brethren possessing the ultimate degree of the Scottish Rite, was formed in New York September 19, 1872, to assemble annually on that day. One by one, in the due course of time, this Assembly was to decrease until the sad duty devolved on some one to banquet alone with twenty draped chairs and covers occupied by the imaginary presence of his fellows. This body was instituted to commemorate the breaking of a deadlock in the close corporation of the Supreme Council by the admission of four very prominent members of the Fraternity.
ALLIED MASONIC DEGREES.
A body has been formed in England called the Grand Council of the Allied Masonic Degrees, in order to govern various Degrees or Orders having no central authority of their own. The principal degrees controlled by it are those of St. Lawrence the Martyr, Knight of Constantinople, Grand Tiler of King Solomon, Secret Monitor, Red Cross of Babylon, and Grand High Priest, besides a large number, perhaps about fifty, of side degrees, of which some are actively worked and some are not (see Council of Allied Masonic Degrees).
ALLOCUTION.
A word of Latin origin and meaning something spoken to. The address of the presiding officer of a Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite is sometimes so calied. First used by the Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, the expression is derived from the usage of the Roman Church, where certain addresses of the Pope to the Cardinals are called allocutions, and this in turn is to be traced to the customs of Pagan Rome, where the harangues or forcible speeches of the Generals to their soldiers were called attocutions.
ALLOWED.
In the old manuseript Constitutions, this word that is now unusual is found in the sense of accepted. Thus, "Every Mason of the Craft that is Mason allowed, ye shall do to him as ye would be done unto yourself" as in the Lansdowne Manuscript, of about 1600 A.D., Mason allowed means Mason accepted, that is, approved. Phillips, in his New World of Words, 1690, defines the verb allow, "to give or grant; to approve of; to permit or suffer."
Latimer, in one of his sermons, uses it in this sense of approving or accepting, thus : ''Saint Peter, in forsaking his old boat and nets, was allowed as much before God as if he had forsaken all the riches in the world." In a similar sense is the word used in the Office of Public Baptism of Infants, in the Common Prayer Book of the Church of England.
The Bible (see Romans xiv, 22), also has "Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth." Halliwell's Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words suggests the connection of the word with the Anglo-Norman alowe, meaning to praise.
ALL-SEEING EYE.
An important symbol of the Supreme Being, borrowed by the Freemasons from the nations of antiquity. Both the Hebrews and the Egyptians appear to have derived its use from that natural inclination of figurative minds to select an organ as the symbol of the function which it is intended peculiarly to discharge. Thus, the foot was often adopted as the symbol of swiftness, the arm of strength, and the hand of fidelity.
On the same principle, the open eye was selected as the symbol of watchfulness, and the eye of God as the symbol of Divine watchfulness and eare of the universe. The use of the symbol in this sense is repeatedly to be found in the Hebrew writers. Thus, the Psalmist says, Psalm xxxiv, 15 : "The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their cry," which explains a subsequent passage (Psalm cxxi, 4), in which it is said: "Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. "
In the Apocryphal Book of the Conversation of God with Moses on Mount Sinai, translated by the Rev.WT. Cureton from an Arabic manuscript of the fifteenth century, and published by the Philobibion Society of London, the idea of the eternal watchfulness of God is thus beautifully allegorized:
"Then Moses said to the Lord, O Lord, dost thou sleep or not? The Lord said unto Moses, I never sleep: but take a cup and fill it with water. Then Moses took a cup and filled it with water, as the Lord commanded him. Then the Lord cast into the heart of Moses the breath of slumber; so he slept, and the cup fell from his hand, and the water which was therein was spilled. Then Moses awoke from his sleep.
Then said God to Moses, I declare by my power, and by my glory, that if I were to withdraw my providence from the heavens and the earth, for no longer a space of time than thou hast slept, they would at once fall to ruin and confusion, like as the cup fell from thy hand."
On the same principle, the Egyptians represented Osiris, their chief deity, by the symbol of an open aye, and placed this hieroglyphic of him in all their Temples. His symbolic name, on the monuments, has represented by the eye accompanying a throne, to which was sometimes added an abbreviated figure of the god, and sometimes what has been called a hatchet, but which may as correctly be supposed to be a representation of a square.
The All-Seeing Eye may then be considered as a symbol of God manifested in his omnipresence---his guardian and preserving character-to which Solomon alludes in the Book of Proverbs (xv, 3 ), where he says: "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding (or, as in the Revised Version, keeping watch upon) the evil and the good." It is a symbol of the Omnipresent Deity.
ALL SOULS' DAY.
A day set apart for prayers in behalf of all the faithful dead. A festival established in 998 A.D. by an Abbot Odilo of Cluny in France.
The feast falls on the 2nd of November, or on the 3rd if the 2nd is a Sunday or a festival of the first class. The celebration of the day was abolished in the Church of England at the Reformation but has had some revival there. On the Continent of Europe the practise has been longer maintained among Protestants. The date is observed as a feast day by Chapters of Rose Croix.
ALMANAC, MASONIC.
Almanacs for the special use of the Fraternity are annually published in many countries of Europe, but the custom has not been so favored in America. As early as 1752 we find an Almanach des Francs-Maçons en Ecosse published at the Hague. This, or a similar work, continued to be published annually at the same place until the year 1778 (see Kloss, Bibliographie, Nos. 107-9). The first in English appeared in 1775, under the title of:
The Freemason's Calendar, or an Almanac for the year 1775, containing, besides an accurate and useful Calendar of all remarkable occurrences for the year, many useful and curious particulars relating to Masonry. Inscribed to Lord Petre, G.M., by a Society of Brethren. London, printed for the Society of Stationers.
This work was without any official authority, but two years later the Freemason's Calendar for 1777 was Published "under the sanction of the Grand Lodge of England." A Masonic Year Book has been issued annually by the Grand Lodge of England, and most of the English Provinces have published Masonic Almanacs.
The first German work of this class was the Freimaurer Kalendar auf das Jahr 1771 and the first French was Etrennes Intéressantes, ou Almanach pour les années1796 et 1797, the latter meaning in English Interesting Gifts, or Almanac for the years 1796 and 1797.
The Masonic Year, an annual digest of timely facts from reliable sources to show the scope and success of Freemasonry, was first published for the year1920 by the Masonic History Company, Chicago, and edited by R. I. Clegg.
ALMIGHTY.
In Hebrew ...., pronounced Ale Shad-dahee. The name by which God was known to the patriarchs before He announced Himself to Moses by His Tetragrammatonic name of Jehovah (see Exodus vi, 3). Almighty refers to His power and might as the Creator and Ruler of the universe, and hence is translated in the Septuagint by ....., and in the Vulgate by Omnipotens. The word Tetragrammaton is used for the four consonants of the sacred name YHVH.
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