ASHMOLE, ELIAS.
A celebreted antiquary, and a the author of, among other works, the well-known History of the Order of the Garter, and founder of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford. He was born at Litchfield, in England, on the 23d of May, 1617, and died at London on the 18th of May, 1692. He was made a Freemason on the 16th of October, 1646, and gives the following account of his reception in his Dairy page 303:
"1646. Oct: 16. 4h,30' P.M., I was made a Freemason at Warington, in Lancashire, with Colonel Henry Mainwaring, of Karincham, in Cheshire. The names of those that were then of the Lodge, Mr. Richard Penket Warden, Mr. James Collier, Mr. Rich: Sankey, Henry Littler, John Ellam, Rich: Ellam and Hugh Brewer."
In his Diary, page 362, he again speaks of his attendance at a meeting, and thirty-six years afterward makes the following entry:
"1682. March 10. About 5 h PM, I received a summons to appear at a Lodge to be held the next day at Masons' HaII, London.
"ll. Accordingly, I went, and about Noone were admitted into the Fellowship of Freemasons, Sir William Wilson, knight, Capt. Richard Borthwick, Mr. William Woodman, Mr. William Wise"
I was the senior fellow among them, (it being thirty-five years since I was admitted;) there was present besides myself the Fellowes afternamed: Mr. Thomas Wise, Master of the Masons company this present year; Mr. Thomas Shorthofe, Mr. Thomas Shadbolt,-Waindsford, Esq., Mr. Nicholas Young, Mr. John Shorthofe, Mr. William Hamon, Mr. John Thompson, and Mr. William Stanton. We all dyned at the halfe Moone Taveme in Cheapeside, at a noble dinner prepared at the charge of the new Accepted' Masons."
It is to be regretted that the intention expressed by Ashmole to write a history of Freemasonry was never carried into effect. His laborious research as evinced in his exhaustive work on the Order of the Garter, would lead us to have expected from his antiquarian pen a record of the origin and early progress of our Institution more valuable than any that we now possess.
The following remarks on this subject, contained in a letter from Doctor Knipe, of Christ Church, Oxford, to the publisher of Asmole's Life, while it enables us to form some estimate of the loss that Masonic literature has suffered, supplies interesting particulars which are worthy of preservation.
"As to the ancient society of Freemasons, concerning whom you are desirous of knowing what may be known with certainty, I shall only tell you, that if our worthy Brother, E. Ashmole, Esq., had executed his intended design, our Fraternity had been as much obliged to him as the Brethren of the most noble Order of the Garter. I would not have you surprised at this expression, or think it all too assuming.
The sovereigns of that Order have not disdained our fellowship, and there have been times when emperors were also Freemasons. What from Mr. E. Ashmole's collection I could gather was, that the report of our society's taking rise from a bull granted by the Pope, in the reign of Henry III, to some Italian architects to travel over all Europe, to erect chapels, was iIlfounded. Such a bull there was, and those architects were Masons; but this bull, in the opinion of the learned Mr.Ashmole, was confirmative only, and did not by any means create our Fraternity, or even establish them in this kingdom.
But as to the time and manner of that establishment, something I shall relate from the same collections. Saint Alban the Proto-Martyr of England, established Masonry here; and from his time it flourished more or less, according as the world went, down to the days of King Athelstan, who, for the sake of his brother Edwin, granted the Masons a charter. Under our Norman princes.
They frequently received extraordinary marks of royal favor. There is no doubt to be made, that the skilI of Masons, which was always transcendent, even in the most barbarous times,-their wonderful kindness and attachment to each other, how different soever in condition, and their inviolable fidelity in keeping religiously their secret,-must expose them in ignorant, troublesome, and suspicious times to a vast variety of adventures, according to the different fate of parties and other alterations in government.
By the way, I shalI note that the Masons were always loyal, which exposed them to great severities when power wore the trappings of justice, and those who committed treason punished true men as traitors.
Thus, in the third year of the reign of Henry VI, an act of Parliament was passed to abolish the society of Masons, and to hinder, under grievous penalties, the holding Chapters, Lodges, or other regular assemblies.
Yet this act was afterwards repealed, and even before that, King Henry VI, and several of the principal Lords of his court, became fellows of the Craft."
But the most difficult question for the student is to find an answer to the following: What induced men like Ashmole and others to be made Masons early in the seventeenth century? Was it.for' cake and ale'? Surely not. Was it for company sake? perhaps; but then why so much mystery ?
It is certain that men like Dr. Plot, John Aubrey, Randle Holme, and Elias Ashmole were attracted to the subject for something more than what we find given at length in the Manuscript Constitutions."-Edward Conder, in Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge (volume xvi, page 15, 1903). Another question a the influence exerted by such Brethren at and after their initiation and possibly up .to the time of the notable organisation of the Grand Lodge of 1717. Our old friend Brother Trevaman W. Hugo wrote among his last contributions---printed after his death-for the Daluth Masonic Calendar (March, 1923), a biographical article on Elias Ashmole and he concludes thus:
" The object of going into those details is to enable the writer, and you who may read it, to have in mind the personage for whom we want to find a place between the date of his death, 1687 and 1717. We do not know whether there is some place in between there where such a personage could have made an impression on the Operative Masons at that time, so that his influence, when the time came, would make them willing to fall in and join with the Speculative Brethren, or vice versa, or whether the Speculative Brethren were able to deliver to the Operative Masons in 1717, the Astrologic, Philosophic, Symbolic Lore, which they held in regard to the order of Free Masons. There is an unquestionable 'hole in the Ballad'somewhere between 1646 and 1717."
ASIA.
In the French Rite of Adoption, the East end of the Lodge is called Asia. The Lodge-room is divided into quarters called Realms, the French word being Climat, the East is Asia; the West, Europe; the North, America, and the South, Africa.
ASIA, INITIATED KNIGHTS AND BROTHERS OF.
This Order was introduced in Berlin, or, as some say, in Vienna, in the year 1780, by a schism of several members of the German Rose Croix. They adopted a mixture of Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan ceremonies, to indicate, as Ragon supposes, their entire religious tolerance. Their object was the study of the natural sciences and the search for the universal panacea to prolong life. Thory charges them with this ; but may it not have been, as with the Alchemists, merely a symbol of immortality?
They forbade all inquiries into the art of transmutation of metals. The Grand Synédrion, properly the Grand Sanhedrim, which consisted of seventy-two members and was the head of the Order, had its seat at Vienna.
The Order was founded on the three symbolic degrees, and attached to them nine others, as follows :
4 Seekers;
5. Sufferers;
6. Initiated Knights and Brothers of Asia in Europe;
7. Masters and Sages;
8. Royal Priests, or True Brothers of Rose Croix;
9. Melchizedek.
The Order no longer exists. Many details of it will be found in Luchet's Essai sur les Illumines.
AISIA, PERFECT INITIATES OF.
A rite of very little importance, consisting of seven Degrees, and said to have been invented at Lyons. A very voluminous manuscript, translated from the German, was sold at Paris, in 1821, to M. Bailleul, and came into the possession of Ragon, who reduced its size, and, with the assistance of Des Etangs, modified it. We have no knowledge that it was ever worked.
ASIATIC TURKEY.
The dominions of Turkey in Asia. Smyrna has one Lodge under the Grand Lodge of England and two under the Grand Orient of France. There are two Italian Lodges in the town and several others throughout the country.
ASK, SEEK, KNOCK.
In referring to the passage of Matthew (vii, 7), "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you " Doctor Clarke says : "These three words ask, seek, knock---include the ideas of want loss, and earnestness." The application made to the passage theologically is equally appropriate to it in a Masonic Lodge. You ask for acceptance, you seek for light, you kock for initiation, which includes the other two.
ASPIRANT.
One who eagerly seeks to know or to attain something. Thus, Warburton speaks of "the aspirant to the Mysteries." The word is applied also to one about to be initiated into Freemasonry. There seems, however, to be a shade of difference in meaning between the words candidate and aspirant. The candidate is one who asks for admission ; so called from the Latin word candidatus, meaning one who is clothed in white, because candidates for office at Rome wore a white dress. The aspirant is one already elected and in process of initiation, and coming from aspiro, to seek eagerly, refers to the earnestness with which he prosecutes his search for light and truth.
ASSASSINS.
The Ishmaelites, or Assassins, constituted a sect or confratemity, which was founded by Hassan Sabah, about the year 1090, in Persia. The name is derived, it is supposed, from their immoderate use of the plant haschish, or henbane, which produced a delirious frenzy. The title given to the chief of the Order was Scheikh-el-Jebel, which has been translated the Old Man of the Mountain, but which Higgins has shown in his Anacalypsis (i, 700) to mean literally The Sage of the Cabala or Traditions. Von Hammer has written a History of the Assassins, but his opposition to secret societies has led him to speak with so much prejudice that, although his historical statements are interesting, his philosophical deductions have to be taken with many grains of allowance. Godfrey Higgins has probably erred on the other side, and by a too ready adherence to a preconceived theory has, in his Annacalypsis, confounded them with the Templars, whom he considers as the precursors of the Freemasons. In this, as in most things, the middle course appears to be the most truthful.
The Assassins were a secret society, that is to say, they had a secret esoteric doctrine, which was imparted only to the initiated. Hammer says that they had a graduated series of initiations, the names of which he gives as Apprentices, Fellows, and Masters ; they had, too, an oath of passive obedience, and resembled, he asserts, in many respects, the secret societies that subsequently existed in Europe. They were governed by a Grand Master and Priors, and had regulations and a special religious code, in all of which Von Hammer finds a close resemblance to the Templars, the Hospitalers, and the Teutonic Knights. Between the Assassins and the Templars history records that there were several amicable transactions not at all consistent with the religious vows of the latter and the supposed religious faith of the former, and striking coincidences of feeling, of which Higgins has not been slow to avail himself in his attempt to prove the close connection, if not absolute identity, of the two Orders.
It is most probable, as Sir John Malcolm contends, that they were a race of Sofis, the teachers of the secret doctrine of Mohammed.
Von Hammer admits that they produced a great number of treatises on mathematics and jurisprodence ; and, forgetting for a time his bigotry and his prejudice, he attributes to Hassan, their founder, a profound knowledge of philosophy and mathematical and metaphysical sciences, and an enlightened spirit, under whose influence the civilization of Persia attained a high degree ; so that during his reign of forty-six years the Persian literature attained a point of excellence beyond that of Alexandria under the Ptolemies, and of France under Francis I.
The old belief that they were a confederacy of murderers-whence we have taken our English word assassins---must now be abandoned as a figment of the credulity of past centuries, and we must be content to look upon them as a secret society of philosophers, whose political relations, however merged them into a dynasty. If we interpret Freemasonry as a generic term, signifying a philosophic sect which teaches truth by a mystical initiation and secret symbols, then Higgins was not very far in error in calling them the Freemasons of the East.
ASSAISSINS OF THE THIRD DEGREE.
There is in Freemasonry a legend of certain unworthy Craftsmen who entered into a conspiracy to extort from a distinguished Brother a secret of which he was the possessor. The legend is altogether symbolic, and when its symbolism is truly comprehended, becomes a surpassingly beautiful. By those who look at it as having the pretension of an historical fact, it is sometimes treated with indifference, and sometimes considered an absurdity.
But it is not thus that the legends and symbols of Freemasonry must be read, if we would learn their true spirit. To behold the goddess in all her glorious beauty, the veil that conceals her statue must be withdrawn. Masonic writers who have sought to interpret the symbofism of the legend of the conspiracy of the three assassins, have not agreed always in the interpretation, although they have finally arrived at the same result, namely, that it has a spiritual signification.
Those who trace Speculative Freemasonry to the ancient solar worship, of whom Ragon may be considered as the exponent, find in this legend a symbol of the conspiracy of the three winter months to destroy the life-giving heat of the sun.
Those who, like the disciples of the Rite of Strict Observance, trace Freemasonry to a Templar origin, a explain the legend as referring to the conspiracy of the three renegade knights who falsely accused the Order, and thus aided King Philip and Pope Clement to abolish Templarism, and to slay its Grand Master. Hutchinson and Oliver, who labored to give a Christian interpretation to all the symbols of Freemasonry, referred the legend to the crucifixion of the Messiah, the type of which is, of course, the slaying of Abel by his brother Cain.
Others, of whom the Chevalier Ramsay has been set forth as the leader, sought to give it a political significance; and, making Charles I the type of the Builder, symbolized Cromwell and his adherents as the conspirators.
The Masonic scholars whose aim has been to identify the modern system of Freemasonry with the Ancient Mysteries, and especially with the Egyptian, which they supposed to be the germ of all the others, interpret the conspirators as the symbol of the Evil Principle, or Typhon, slaying the Good Principle, or Osiris; or, when they refer to the Zoroastic Mysteries of Persia, as Ahriman contending against Ormuzd.
Lastly, in the Philosophic Degrees, the myth is interpreted as signifying the war of Falsehood, Ignorance, and Superstition against Truth. Of the supposed names of the three Assassins, there is hardly any end of variations, for they materially differ in all the principal rites. Thus, we have Jubela, Jubelo, and Jubelum in the York and American Rites. In the Adonhiramite system we have Romvel, Gravelot, and Abiram. Romvel has been claimed as a corruption of Cromwell. In the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite we find the names given in the old rituals as Jubelum Akirop, sometimes Abiram, Jubelo Romvel, and Jubela Gravelot. Schterke and Oterfut are in some of the German rituals, while other Scottish rituals have Abiram, Romvel, and Hobhen. In all these names there is manifest corruption, and the patience of many Masonic scholars has been well-nigh exhausted in seeking for some plausible and satisfactory derivation.
ASSEMBLY.
The meetings of the Craft during the operative period in the Middle Ages, were called Assemblies, which appear to have been tantamount to the modem Lodges, and they are constantly spoken of in the Old Constitutions. The word Assembly was also often used in these documents to indicate a larger meeting of the whole Craft, which was equivalent to the modem Grand Lodge, and which was held annually. The York Manuscript No. l, about the year 1600, says ''that Edwin procured of ye King his father a charter and commission to hold every yeare an assembly wherewever they would within ye realm of England,'' and this statement, whether true or false, is repeated in all the old records. Preston says, speaking of that medieval period, that''a sufficient number of Masons met together within a certain district, with the consent of the sheriff or chief magistrate of the place, were empowered at this time to make Masons, etc. To this assembly, every Freemason was bound, when summoned, to appear.
Thus, in the Harleian Manuscript, about 1660, it is ordained that "every Master and Fellow come to the Assembly, if it be within five miles about him, if he have any waming." The term General Assembly, to indicate the annual meeting, is said to have been first used at the meeting, held on December 27, 1663, as quoted by Preston. In the Old Constitutions printed in 1722 by Roberts, and which claims to be taken from a manuscript of the eighteenth century, the term used is Yearly Assembly. Anderson speaks of an Old Constitution which used the word General; but his quotations are not always verbally accurate.
ASSISTANCE.
See Aid and Assistance.
ASSOCIATES OF THE TEMPLE.
During the Middle Ages, many persons of rank, who were desirous of participating in the spiritual advantages supposed to be enjoyed by the Templars in consequence of the good works done by the Fratemity, but who were unwilling to submit to the discipline of the Brethren made.valuable donations to the Order, and were, in consequence, admitted into a sort of spiritual connection with it.
These persons were termed Associales of the Temple. The custom was most probably confined to England, and many of these Associates had monuments and effigies erected to them in the Temple Church at London
ASSOCIATION.
Although an association a properly the union of men into society for a common purpose, the word is scarcely ever applied to the Order of Freemasonry. Yet its employment, although unusual, would not be incorrect, for Freemasonry is an association of men for a common purpose. Washington uses the term when he calls Freemasonry "an association whose principles lead to purity of morals, and are beneficial of action," from his letter to the Grand Lodge of South Carolina.
ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE.
The discovery in 1882 of the remaina of a town, clo' to and north of Nineveh, built by Sargon, about 721 B.c., in size abo/ut a mile .square, with .its angles facing .the cardinal points, and the enclosure containing the finest specimens of their architecture, revived much interest in archeologists. The chief place of regard is the royal palace, which was like unto a city of itself, everything being on a colosml 'ale. The walls of the town were 45 feet thick. The inclined approach to the palace was flanked by strangely formed bulls from 15 to 19 feet high. There were terraces, courts, and pa'age-ways to an innermost square of 150 feet, surrounded by
state apartments and temples. The Hall of Judgment was prominent, as also the astronomiml observatory.
All entrances to great buildings were omamented by colosml animals and porcelain deoerations and inscriptions.
ASTRAEA.
The Grand Lodge established in Russia, on the 30th of August, 1815, assumed the title of the Grand Lodge of Astraea. It held its Grand East at St. Petersburg, and continued in existence until 1822, when the Czar issued a Ukase, or proclamation dated August 1, 1822, closing all Lodges in Russia and forbidding them to reopen at any future time.
|
