BLUE BLANKET.
The Lodge of Journeymen, in the city of Edinburgh, is in possession of a blue blanket which is used as a banner in Masonic processions. The history of it is thus given in the London Magazine:
"A number of Scotch mechanics followed Allan, Lord Steward of Scotland, to the holy wars in Palestine, and took with them a banner, on which were inscribed the following words from the 5lst Psalm, the eighteenth vers, 'In bona voluntate tua edificentur muri Hierosolymae,' meaning'ln Thy good pleasure build Thou the walls of Jerusalem.' Fighting under the banner, these valiant Scotchmen were present at the capture of Jerusalem, and other towns in the Holy Land; and, on their return to their own country, they depcisited the banner, which they styled The Banner of the Holy Ghost, at the altar of St. Eloi, the patron saint of the Edinburgh Tradesmen, in the church of Saint Giles. It was occasionally unfurled, or worn as a mantle by the representatives of the trades in the courtly and religious pageants that in former times were of frequent occurrence in the Scottish capital.
"In 1482, James III, in consequence of the assistance wbich he had received from the Craftsmen of Edinburgh, in delivering him from the castle in which he was kept a prisoner, and paying a debt of 6,000 Marks which he had contracted in making preparations for the marriage of his son, the Duke of Rothsay, to Cecil, daughter of Edward IV, of England, conferred on the good town several valuable privileges, and renewed to the Craftsmen their favorite banner of The Blue Blanket.
''James's queen, Margaret of Denmark, to show her gratitude and respect to the Crafts, painted on the banner, with her own hands, a Saint Andrew's cross, a crown, a thistle, and a hammer, with the following inscription : 'Fear God and honor the king ; grant him a long life and a prosperous reign, and we shall ever pray to be faithful for the defence of his sacred majesty's royal person till death.' The king decreed that in all time coming, this flag should be the standard of the Crafts within burgh, and that it should be unfurled in defence of their own rights, and in protection of their sovereign. The privilege of displaying it at the Masonic procession was granted to the journeymen, in consequence of their original connection with the Freemasons of Mary's Chapel, one of the fourmen incorporated trades of the city.
"The Blue Blanket was long in a very tattered condition ; but some years ago it was repaired by lining it with blue silk, so that it can be exposed without subjecting it to much injury. "
An interesting little book was written by Alexander pennecuik, Burgess and Guild-Brother of Edinburgh, and published with this title in 1722 and in later editions deseribing the Operative Companies of Edinburgh. The above particulars in the London Magazine are found in Pennecuik's work with other details.
BLUE DEGREES.
The first three degrees of Freemasonry are so called from the blue color which is peculiar to them.
BLUE LODGE.
A Symbolic Lodge, in which the first three degrees of Freemasonry are conferred, is so called from the color of its decorations.
BLUE MASONRY.
The degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason an sometimes called Blue Masonry.
BLUE MASTER.
In some of the advanced degrees, these words are used to designate a Maste Mason.
BOARD OF GENERAL PURPOSES.
An organization attached to the Grand Lodge of England, consisting of the Grand Master, Pro Grand Master, Deputy Grand Master, the Grand Wardens of the year, the Grand Treasurer, the Grand Registrar, the Deputy Grand Registrar, a President, Past Presidents, the President of the Board of Benevolence, the Grand Director of Ceremonies, and twenty-four other members. The President and six of the twenty-four members are annually nominated by the Grand Master, and the remaining eighteen are elected by the Grand Lodge from the Masters and Past Masters of the Lodges. This board has authority to hear and determine all subjects of Masonic complaints, or irregularity respecting Lodges or individual Freemasons, when regularly brought before it, and generally to take cognizance of all matters relating to the Craft.
BOARD OF RELIEF.
See Relief, Board of.
BOAZ.
The name of the left hand (or north) pillar that stood at the porch of King Solomon's Temple.
It is derived from the Hebrew pronounced bo'-az, and signifies in strength.
Though Strong in his Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary says the root is unused and of uncertain meaning (see Pillars of the Porch).
BOCHIM.
a Hebrew word pronounced bokeem' and meaning the weepers. A password in the Order of Ishmael. An angel spoke to Hagar as she wept at the well when in the wilderness with her son Ishmael.
The angel is looked upon as a spiritual being, possibly the Great Angel of the Covenant, the Michael who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, or the Joshua, the captain of the hosts of Jehovah.
BODE, JOHANN JOACHIM CHRISTOPH.
Born in Brunswick, 16th of January, 1730. One of the most distinguished Freemasous of his time. In his youth he was a professional musician, but in 1757 he established himself at Hamburg as a bookseller, and was initiated into the Masonic Order. He obtained much reputation by the translation of Sterne's Sentimental Journey and Tristram Shandy, of Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield; Smollett's Humphrey Clinker; and of Fielding's Tom Jones, from the English ;and of Montaigne's works from the French. To Masonic literature he made many valuable contributions; among others, he translated from the French Bonneville's celebrated work entitled Les Jésuites chassés de la Maçonnerie et leur poignard bris par les Maçons, meaning The Jesuits driven from Freemasonry and their weapon broken by the Freemasons, which contains a comparison of Scottish Freemasonry with the Templarism of the fourteenth century, and with sundry peculiar practices of the Jesuits themselves.
Bode was at one time a zealous promoter of the Rite of Strict Observance, but afterward became one of its most active opponents. In 1790 he joined the Order of the Illuminati, obtaining the highest Degree in its second class, and at the Congress of Wilhelmsbad he advocated the opinions of Weishaupt,. No man of his day was better versed than he in the history of Freemasonry, or possessed a more valuable and extensive library; no one was more diligent in increasing his stock of Masonic knowledge, or more anxious to avail himself of the rarest sources of learning. Hence, he has always held an exalted position among the Masonic scholars of Germany. The theory which he had conceived on the origin of Freemasonry--a theory, however, which the investigations of subsequent historians have proved to be untenable--was, that the Order was invented by the Jesuits, in the seventeenth century, as an instrument for the re-establishment of the Roman Church in England, covering it for their own pur poses under the mantle of Templarism. Bode died at Weimar on the 13th of December, 1793.
BOEBER, JOHANN.
A Royal Councilor of State and Director of the School of Cadets at St. Petersburg, during the reign of Alexander I. In 1805 he induced the emperor to revoke the edicts made by Paul I and himself against the Freemasons. His representations of the true character of the Institution induced the emperor to seek and obtain initiation.
Boeber may be considered as the reviver of Freemasonry in the Russian dominions, and was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge from 1811 to 1814.
BOEHMEN, JACOB.
The most celebrated of the Mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, born near Gorlitz, in 1575, and died in 1624. His system attracted, and continued to attract long after his death, many disciples in Germany. Among these, in time, were several Freemasons, who sought to incorporate the mystical dogmas of their founder with the teachings of Freemasonry, so as to make the Lodges merely schools of theosophy. Indeed, the Theosophic Rites of Freemasonry, which prevailed to a great extent about the middle of the last century in Germany and France, were indebted for most of their ideas to the mysticism of Jacob Boehmen.
BOHEMANN, KARL ADOLF ANDERSON.
Bom in 1770, at Jönköping in the south of Sweden. He was a very zealous member of the Order of Asiatic Brethren, and was an active promulgator of the advanced Degrees. Invited to Sweden, in 1802, by the Duke of Sudermania, who was an ardent inquirer into Masonic science, he was appointed Court Secretary.
He attempted to introduce his system of advanced Degrees into the kingdom, but having been detected in the effort to intermingle revolutionary schemes with his high Degrees, he was first imprisoned and then banished from the country, his society being interdicted. He returned to Germany, but is not heard of after 1815, when he published at Pyrmont a justification of himself. Findel in his History of Freemasonry (page 560), calls bim an impostor, but he seems rather to have been a Masonic fanatic, who was ignorant of or had forgotten the wide difference between Freemasonry and political intrigue.
BOHEMIA.
A Lodge named The Three Stars is said to have been established at Prague in 1726, and other Lodges were subsequently constituted in Bohemia, but in consequence of the French Revolution they were closed in 1793 by the Austrian Government.
BOHMANN, F. OTTO.
A merchant in Stockholrn, 1695-1767, who left a legacy of 100,000 thalers to the Asylum for the Orphans of Freemasons that was founded in Stockholm in 1753. A medal was struck in his honor in 1768 (see Marvin's Masonic Medals, page 172).
BOLIVIA.
The third largest pofitical division of the continent of South America. A Lodge was chartered in Bobvia in 1875. Three others have since been established and all four pay allegiance to the Grand Lodge of Peru.
Brother Oliver Day Street says in his 1922 Report on Correspondence to the Grand Lodge of Alabama: "So far as we have been able to ascertain this State has never been able to boast a Grand Lodge, Grand Orient or Supreme Council of its own. Its only Masonic organizations have been Lodges chartered by some of the Grand Lodges of the neighboring states.
Indeed, Peru and Chile are the only ones we can ascertain which have even done this. Bofivia can scarcely be said to have a Masonic history.''
BOMBAY.
A seaport on the west coast of India.
The first Lodge to be established in Bombay was opened in 1758 but it disappeared from the register in 1813. In 1763 James Todd was appointed Provincial Grand Master.
A Provincial Grand Master of Western India and its Dependencies, Brother James Burnes was appointed in 1836 by the Grand Lodge of Scotland. None had been appointed by England since the time of Brother Todd. Brother Burnes was a very active Freemason and it is a curious fact that Brethren even left the English Lodges to support the new Scotch Bodies.
English Freemasonry became less and less popular and finally ceased to be practised until 1848 when Saint George Lodge No. 807, was revived.
In 1886 Scotland had issued nineteen Charters to Lodges in Bombay and twelve years previously Captain Morland, successor to Brother Burnes, was raised to the position of Grand Master of all Scottish Freemasonry in India.
The Craft took no firm hold on the natives of India.
Several of the princes were initiated but the Parsees made the first real advance in the Order when Brother Cama, one of their number, was elected Treasurer of the Grand Lodge of England. The first Hindu to hold important office was Brother Dutt who became head of a Lodge in 1874 (see India and Madras).
BONAIM.
Brother Hawkins was of the opinion that the word is really an incorrect transliteration of the Hebrew word for builders, which should be Bonim; the construct form of which Bonai is used in 1 Kings (v, 18), to designate a portion of the workmen on the Temple: "And Solomon's builders and Hiram's builders did hew them." Brother Hawkins continues to the effect that Oliver, in his Dictionary and in his Landmarks (1, 402), gives a mythical account of them as Fellow Crafts, divided into Lodges by King Solomon, but, by a slip in his grammar he calls them Benai, substituting the Hebrew construct for the absolute case, and changing the participial o into e. The Bonaim seem to be distinguished, by the author of the Book of Kings, from the Gibalim, and the translators of the authorized version have called the former builders and the latter stone-squarers. It is probable that the Bonaim were an order of workmen inferior to the Gibalim. Anderson, in both of his editions of the Book of Constitutions, errs like Oliver, and calls them Bonai, saying that they were "setters, layers, or .builders, or light Fellow Crafts, in number 80,000.''
This idea seems to have been perpetuated in the modern rituals. From this construct plural form Bonai some one has formed the slightly incorrect form Bonaim.
BONAPARTE, JEROME.
Brother of Napoleon I. Born November 15, 1784, and died June 24, 1860.
King of Westphalia from 1807 to 1813 and afterwards known as the Duc de Montfort. Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Westphalia. After 1847 he became successively Governor of the Invalides, Marshal of France and President of the Senate (see also Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie, Albert Lantoine, 1925, Paris). Jerome, son of the above, also given as a Freemason.
BONAPARTE, JOSEPH.
Elder brother of Napoleon I. Born January 7, 1768. Sent to Naples as King in 1806 and made King of Spain in 1808. After 1815 known as Comte de Survilliers. He was a Freemason. Appointed by Napoleon I to the office of Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France in 1804. He died July 28, 1844.
BONAPARTE, LOUIS.
Born September 2, 1778; died July 25, 1846. Brother of Napoleon I. King of Holland in 1806. Grand Master Adjoint of the Grand Orient of France in 1804. In 1805 became Governor of Paris.
BONAPARTE, LUCIEN.
Brother of Napoleon I. Born May 21, 1775, and died at Rome, June 29, 1840. November 10, 1799, when Napoleon I overthrew the National Councils of France at the Palace of Saint Cloud, Lucien was President of the Council of Five Hundred and able to turn the scale in favor of his brother. In 1800 was Ambassador at Madrid, Spain. A member of the Grand Orient of France,
BONDMAN.
In the fourth article of the Halliwell or Regius Manuscript, which is the earliest Masonic document known, it is said that the Master shall take good care that he make no bondman an apprentice, or, as it is in the original language :
The fourthe artycul thys moste be,
That the Mayster hymn wel be-se,
That he no bondemon prentys make.
The regulation is repeated in all the subsequent regulations, and is still in force (see Freebom).
BONE.
This word, which is now pronounced in one syllable, is the Hebrew word bo-neh, , builder, from the verb banah, to build. It was peculiarly applied, as an epithet, to Hiram Abif, who superintended the construction of the Temple as its chief builder. Master Masons will recognize it as part of a significant word. Its true pronunciation would be, in English letters, bo-nay; but the corruption into one syllable as bone has become too universal ever to be corrected.
BONE BOX.
In the early lectures of the eighteenth century, now obsolete, we find the following catechism :
Q. Have you any key to the secrets of a Mason?
A. Yes.
Q. Where do you keep it?
A. In a bone box, that neither opens nor shuts but with ivory keys.
The bone box is the mouth, the ivory keys the teeth.
And the key to the secrets is afterward said to be the tongue.
These questions were simply used as tests, and were subsequently varied. In a later lecture it is called the Bone-bone Box.
BONNEVILLE, CHEVALIER DE.
On the 24th of November, 1754, he founded the Chapter of the Advanced Degrees known as the Chapter of Clermont.
A1l the authorities assert this except Rebold, Histoire des Trois Grandes Loges, meaning the History of the Three Grand Lodges, page 46, who says that he was not its founder but only the propagator of its Degrees.
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