The Masonic Trowel

... to spread the cement of brotherly love and affection, that cement which unites us into one sacred band or society of brothers, among whom no contention should ever exist, but that noble emulation of who can best work or best agree ...


[What is Freemasonry] [Leadership Development] [Education] [Masonic Talks] [Masonic Magazines Online]
[
Articles] [Masonic Books Online] [E-Books] [Library Of All Articles] [Masonic Blogs] [Links]
 [
What is New] [Feedback]

 Masonic quotes by Brothers



Search Website For


Add To Favorites

Help Me Maintain OUR Website!!!!!!


List of Contributors


PDF This File


Print This Page


Email This Site To ...


BUILDERS' RITES AND CEREMONIES.
These have been summarized in two lectures published at Margate, England, 1894, by Brother George lV. Speth on October 30, and November 13, 1893, in discussing the Folklore of Freemasonry. Brother Speth says that for those of his Brethren who wnl take the trouble to read between the lines, a matter by no means difficult, he ventures to hope that the facts may not prove dumb guides, but direct their thoughts to the true significance of our ceremonial customs, and confirm in their minds the certainty of the marvellous antiquity, in its essence, although perhaps not in its exact outward form, of the solemn climax of our beloved ritual. Many of us have seen a foundation-stone laid, and more have read of the proceedings. When conducted by Freemasons the ceremony includes much beautiful symbolism, such as trying and pronouncing the stone well laid, pouring wine and on and corn over it, and other simnar rites: but in almost all cases, whether the ancient Craft be concerned in the operation or not, there are placed in a cavity beneath the stone several objects, such as a list of contributors to the funds, a copy of the newspaper of the day, and above all, one or more coins of the realm. Should you ask the reason for this deposit, you wnl probably hear that these objects were placed there for a future witness and reference.
Although this alleged motive is apparently reasonable, yet it is obviously absurd for surely the hope of all concerned is that the foundation-stone never wnl be removed and that the witness wnl for ever remain dumb.
Grimm puts it in this way. " It was often though necessary to immure live animals and even men in thr foundation on which the structure was to be raised, as if they were a sacrifice offered to the earth, who had to bear the load upon her: by this inhuman rite they hoped to secure immovable stabnity or other advantages." (See Teutonic Mythology, 1884, translated, Stalleybrass, 1883 page l141.) Baring-Gould says, "When the primeval savage began to build he considered himself engaged on a serious undertaking. He was disturbing the face of Mother Earth, he was securing to himself in permanency of portion of that surface which had been given by her to all her chndren in common. Partly with the notion of offering a propitiatory sacrifice to the Earth, and partly also with the idea of securing to himself for ever a portion of son by some sacramental act, the old pagan laid the foundation of his house and fortress in blood." (See On Foundations, Murray's Magazine, l887)
In Bomeo, among the Mnanau Dyaks, at the erection of a house, a deep hole was dug to receive the first post, which was then suspended over it ; a slave girl was placed in the excavation; at a signal the lashings were cut, and the enormous timber descended, crushin the girl to death (see E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1871, page 96).
The following accounts wnl show how widespread was this sacrificial rite. It was, in fact, universal: a rite practised apparently by all men at all times in all places.
King Dako bunt his palace on the body of Danh. The name of his chief town, Dahomey, means on the body of Danh (see F. Liebrecht, Zur Folkskunde, 1879, page 287).
In Polynesia, the central pnlar of one of the temples at Maeva was planted on the body of a human victim (see G. L. Gomme, Folklore Relics of Early Vnlage Life, 1883, page 27).
A seventeenth century account of Japan mentions the belief there that a wall laid upon the body of a wnling human victim would be secure from accident : accordingly when a great wall was to be bunt, some wretched slave would offer himself as a foundation, lying down in the trench to be crushed by the heavy stones lowered upon him (see Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1871, page 87).
Formerly in Siam, when a new city gate was being erected, it was customary for a number of offieers to lie in wait and seize the first four or eight persons who happened to pass by, and who were then buried alive under the gate posts to serve as guardian angels (see Folk-lore Relics, page 28).
In the year 1876, the old church at Brownsover, about two mnes from Rugby, England, was restored: The earlier parts of the building were of Norman, the later of early 13th century architecture. It was found necessary to lower the foundations of the north and south walls of the church, and in doing so, two skeletons were discovered, one under each wall, about one foot below the original foundations, exactly opposite each other and about six feet from the chancel wall which crosses the north and south walls at right angles. Each skeleton was covered with an oak slab about six feet in length by ten inches wide and two inches thick of the colour of bog-oak. These pieces of plank had evidently been used as carpenters' benches, from the fact that each of them had four mortice holes cut in such a form as to throw the legs outwards, and from the cuts madein them by edged tools. The skeletons were found in a space cut out of the solid clay which had not been moved on either side, just large enough to take the bodies placed in them. The skeletons were seen in situ: they could not have been placed there after the original walls were bunt (see Antiquary iii, page 93).
Some substitutions are curious. Animals are to be met with of many kinds. In Denmark a lamb used to be bunt in under the altar, that the church might stand.
Even under other houses swine and fowls are buried alive. (See Grimm page 1142.) The lamb was of course very appropriate in a Christian Church, as an allusion to " the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world."
In the Book of Revelation this epithet is only a metaphor, yet Brother Speth says it would scarcely have been understood unless the rite we are treating of had been known to the Jews. That it was known, the curse pronounced by Joshua upon the man who should adventure to rebuild Jericho, proves to demonstration. "And Joshua adjured them at that time, saying, Cursed be the man before the Lord, that riseth up and buildeth this city of Jericho ; he shall lay the foundation thereof in his first-born, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates thereof,'' (See Joshua vi, 26, also First Kings xvi, 34.)
The populationof India believe at the present day that to give stability to new construction, a human being should be sacrificed and buried in the foundations (see Folk-lore Journal, 1, page 23). All the great engineering works are believed by the common people to be protected against the angry gods of winds and rivers by animal and human sacrifices being performed under the direction of English officers at the beginning or conclusion of the undertaking (see Folk-lore Journal 1, page 92). A correspondent of the Times, dating from Calcutta, August 1, 1880, writes : "A mmour has got abroad and is firmly believed by the lower classes of the natives, that the government is about to sacrifice a number of human beings in order to ensure the safety of the new harbour works, and has ordered the police to seize victims in the streets. So thoroughly is the idea implanted, that people are afraid to venture out after nightfall.
There was a similar scare in Calcutta some seven or eight years ago, when the Hooghly bridge was being constructed. The natives then got hold of the idea that Mother Ganges, indignant at being bridged, had at last consented to submit to the insult on the condition that each pier of the structure was founded on a layer of children's heads''
(see Folk-lore Record iii, page 283).
But we need not go to India for such accusations. In Nature, under date June 15, 1871, we find: " It is not many years since the present Lord Leigh was accused of having built an obnoxious person-one account, if we remember right, said eight obnoxious persons-into the foundation of a bridge at Stoneleigh."
In Scotland there is a current belief that the Picts, to whom local legend attributes building of prehistoric antiquity, bathed their foundation stones with blood (see Folk-lore Relics, page 29).
Brother Speth heard people in Kent, of certainly not the least educated classes, assert that both the strength and the peculiar pink tinge which may sometimes be detected in Roman cement, is owing to the alleged practice of the Romans mixing their cement with blood. Did Shakespeare speak only metaphorically, or was he aware of the custom when he makes Clarence say,
I will not ruinate my father's house,
Who gave his blood to lime the stones together,
And set up Lancaster.
Henry vi, part iii, act v, scene 1.

Note the words of King John as given by Shakespeare,
There is no sure foundation set in blood,
No certain life achieved by others' death.
King John iv, 2.

Brother Speth gives an experience of the Rev. Baring-Gould. " It is said in Yorkshire," he writes, " that the first child baptised in a new font is sure to die---a reminiscence of the sacrifice which was used at the consecration of every dwelling and temple in heathen times, and of the pig or sheep killed and laid at the foundation of churches. When I was incumbent at Dalton a new church was built. A blacksmith in the village had seven daughters, after which a son was born, and he came to me a few days before the consecrationof the new church to ask me to baptise his boy in the old temporary church and font. 'Why, Joseph,' said I, 'if you will only wait till Thursday the boy can be baptised in the new font on the opening of the new church.' 'Thank you, Sir,' said the blacksmith, with a wriggle,'but you see it's a lad, and we shu'd be sorry if he were to dee; na, if t'had been a lass inatead, why then you were welcome, for 'twouldn't ha' mattered a ha'penny. Lasses are ower mony and lads ower few wi' us'."
Now, it is surely unnecessary, continues Brother Speth, to explain why we bury coins of the real under orum foundation stones. ''Our forefathers, ages ago, buried a living human sacrifice in the same place to ensure the stability of the structure: their sons substituted an animal: their sons again a mere effigy or other symbol: and we, their children, still immure a substitute, coins bearing the effigy, impressed upon the noblest of metals, the pure red gold, of the one person to whom we all are most loyal, and whom we all most love, our gracious Queen. I do not assert that one in a hundred is conscious of what he is doing: if you ask him, he will give some different reason: but the fact remains that uncousciously, we are following the customs of our fathers, and symbolically providing a soul for the structure. 'Men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have been long forgotten.'
A ship could not be launched in the olden times without .a human sacrifice: the neck of the victim was broken across the prow, and his blood besprinkled the sides, while his soul entered the new home provided for it to ensure its safety amid storm and tempest: to-day we symbolise unconsciously the same ceremony, but we content ourselves with a bottle of the good red wine, slung from the dainty fingers of Engfish womanhood."
Brother Speth gives numerous facts from various parts of the world and of widely separated times.
Perhaps as signifieant as any and certainly as interesting are the particulars brought to bis attention by Brother William Simpson and dealing with Old Testament days. Referring to Assyrian foundation stones in the reign of Sennacherib who was on the throne 705-681 B.c., we have the roya1 message from Records of the Past (new series, volume vi, page 101), the words "my inscription" relating in Brother Simpson's note to the foundation stone, the 1atter probably being a brick or clay cylinder:
I bunt that palace from foundation to roof
and finished it. My inscription
I brought into it. For future days,
whoever-among the kings, my successors, whom
. ASSUR and ISTAR
Shall call to the rule over the land and the people--
the prince may he, if this palace
becomes old and mined, who builds it anew
May he preserve my inscription,
anoint it with oil, offer sacrifices, return it to its place ;
then will Assur and Istar hear his prayer.

The same work (Records of the Past, new series, volume v, page 171) contains an inscription of Cyrus the Persian King mentioning his discovery of the foundation stone of the Assyrian Assurbanipal, 668-626 B.c., usually identified with the Asnapper of Ezra iv, 10. Here we find a foundation stone instead of the "inscription" and a significant ceremony is described that agrees with that of Sennacherib's and is truly very like the modern Masonic Rite when dedicating hall or temple or laying a corner-stone:
. . . . the foundation-stone of Assur-bani-pal King of Assyria,
who had discovered the foundationstone of Shalmaneser son of Assur-natsir-pal,
I laid its foundation and made firm its bricks. With beer, wine, on (and) honey.

A simnar announcement by Cyrus is also given on page 173 of the above work :
. . . . the inscription containing the name of Assan-bani-pal I discovered and
did not change ; with oil I annointed (it) ; sheep I sacrificed ;
with my own inscription I placed (it) and restored (it) to its place.

Foundation sacrifices and the substitution of various kinds used for them are considered freely by several authorities and there is a bibliography. of them to be found in Burdick's F'oundation Rites, 1901. We may note that in folklore customs persist and explanations change or as Sir J. G. Frazer (Golden Bough, 1890, ii, page 62) says "Myth changes while custom remains constant; men continue to do what their fathers did before them, though the reasons on which their fathers acted have long been forgotten." That so many legends contain allusions to foundation sacrifices is ample proof that such existed. Brother Speth says further "Had we never found one single instance of the rite actually in practice, we might still have inferred it with absolute certainty from the legends, although these do not always give us the true motive."
When it may have become unlawful or otherwise impracticable to bury a body, then an image, a symbol of the living or the dead, was laid in the walls or under them. The figure of Christ crucified has been found built into an old church wall. Representations of children, candles-the flame being a symbol of life even as a reversed torch is a type of death, empty coffins, bones of men and animals, and so on, have been discovered in or under the masonry when taking down important structures. Freemasons will understand the significance of these old customs. Every laying of a corner-stone with Masonic ceremonies is a reminder of them, and every completed initiation a confirmation.
The subject may be studied further in Jew and Human Sacrifice, Herman L. Strack, English translation of eighth edition, page 138, with bibliographical notes on page 31; Blood Covenant, H. Clay Trumbull, and particularly pages 45-57 of his other book the Threshold Covenant, the first of these works discussing the origin of sacrifice and the significance of transferred or proffered blood or life, and the second treating of the beginning of religious rites and their gradual development ; Foundation Rites, Louis Dayton Burdick ; Bible Sidelights, Dr. R. A. Stewart Macalister, Director of Excavations for the Palestine Exploration Fund; James Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, page 368, and in Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry, page 1072.


BUL.
The primitive designation of the month Marchesvan (see Zif). Doctor Oliver says in his Landmarks (11, 551), that this is one of the names of God among the ancients. It is also said to be an Assyrian word signifying Lord or Powerful.

BULL, OLE BORNEMANN.
Famous Norwegian violinist. Born at Bergen, February 5, 1810, and died near there on August 17, 1880. After brilliant concert tours in Europe, was in the United States, 1843-5, and again, 1852-7. James Herring, formerly Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of New York, gave an address at the celebration of the centennial anniversary of Saint John's Lodge No. 1, New York, December 7, 1857, showing that Ole Bull was a Freemason. He gave his farewell coneert in New York, October 30, 1845, for Masonic charitable purposes, the Grand Lodge Widows' and Orphans' Fund, which netted the Craft $1,427.55.

BULL, PAPAL.
An edict or proclamation issued from the Apostolic Chancery, with the seal and signature of the Pope, written in Gothic letters and upon coarse parchment. This derives its name from the leaden seal which is attached to it by a cord of hemp or silk, and which in medieval Latin is called bulla.
Several of these Bu1ls have from time to time been aimed against Freemasonry and other secret socicties, subjecting them to the heaviest ecclesiastical punishments, even to the greater excommunication. According to these Bulls, a Freemason is by reason of that fact excommunicated by continuing his membership in the Society, and is thus deprived of all spiritual privileges while living, and the rites of burial when dead.
The several important Bulls which have been issued by the Popes of Rome intended to affect the Fraternity of Freemasons are as follows: the Bull In Eminenti of Clement XII, dated 24th of April, 1738. This Bull was confirmed and renewed by that beginning Providas, of Benedict XIV, 18th of May, 1751; then followed the edict of Pius VII, 13th of September, 1821; the apostolic edict Quo Graviora of Leo XII, 13th of March, 1825 ; that of Pius VIII, 21st of May, 1829 ; that of Gregory XVI, 15th of August, 1832; Pius IX in 1846 and 1865; and finally that of Leo XIII, who ascended to the papacy in 1878, and issued his Bull, or encyclical letter, Humanum Genus, on April 20, 1884. Whatever may have been the severity of the Bulls issued by the predecessors of Leo XIII, he with great clearness ratifies and confirms them all in the following language: "Therefore, whatsoever the popes our predecessors have decreed to hinder the designs and attempts of the sect of Freemasons ; whatsoever they have ordained to deter or recall persons from societies of this kind, each and all do we ratify and conform by our Apostolic authority," at the same time acknowledging that this "society of men are most widely spread and firmly established."
This letter of the Romlan hierarchy thus commences : "The human race, after its most miserable defection, through the wiles of the devil, from its Creator, God, the giver of celestial gifts, has divided into two different and opposite factions, of which one fights ever for truth and virtue, the other for their opposites.
One is the kingdom of God on earth . . , the other is the kingdom of Satan."
That, "by accepting any that present themselves, no matter of what religion, they (the Freemasons) gain their purpose of urging that great error of the present day, viz., that questions of religion ought to be left undetermined, and that there should be no distinction made between varieties. And this policy aims at the destruction of all religions, especially at that of the Catholic religion, which, since it is the only true one, cannot be reduced to equality with the rest without the greatest injury."
"But, in truth, the sect grants great license to its initiates, allowing them to defend either position, that there is a God, or that there is no God."
Thus might we quote continuous passages, which need only to be stated to proclaim their falsity, and yet there are those who hold to the doctrine of the infallibility of the Pope.

[What is Freemasonry] [Leadership Development] [Education] [Masonic Talks] [Masonic Magazines Online]
[
Articles] [Masonic Books Online] [E-Books] [Library Of All Articles] [Masonic Blogs] [Links]
 [
What is New] [Feedback]


This site is not an official site of any recognized Masonic body in the United States or elsewhere.
It is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinion
of Freemasonry, nor webmaster nor those of any other regular Masonic body other than those stated.

DEAD LINKS & Reproduction | Legal Disclaimer | Regarding Copyrights

Last modified: March 22, 2014