FONTANES, MARQUIS LOUIS DE.
Born at Niort, France, March 6, 1757; he died at Paris, March 17, 1821. Poet and statesman; President of the Corps Legislatif, head of the Imperial University and Senator under Napoleon I; a member of the famous Lodge of Sine Sisters, his name appears on the lists of members for 1783, 1784, and 1806 (see Une Loge Maçonnique, Louis Amiable, 1897, page 308). Created a marquis and a peer by Louis XVIII.
FOOL.
A fool, as one not in possession of sound reason, a natural or idiot, is intellectually unfit for
initiation into the mysteries of Freemasonry, because he is incapable of comprehending the principles of the Institution, and is without any moral responsibility for a violation or neglect of its duties.
FOOTSTONE.
The Corner-stone. To level the Footstone means to lay the Corner-stone. Thus, Dr. George Oliver says "Solomon was enabled to level the footstone of the Temple in the fourth year of his reign."
FOOT TO FOOT.
The old lectures of the eighteenth century descanted on the symbolism of foot to foot as teaching us "that indolence should not permit the foot to halt or wrath to turn our steps out of the way; but forgetting injuries and selfish feelings, and remembering that man was born for the aid of his fellow-creatures, not for his own enjoyments only, but to do that which is good, we should be swift to extend our mercy and benevolence to all, but more particularly to a Brother Mason." The later lecture on the same subject gives the same lesson more briefly and more emphatically, when it says, owe should never halt nor grow weary in the service of a Brother Mason. "
FORDS OF THE JORDAN.
The slaughter of the Ephraimites at the passages or fords of the River Jordan, which is described in the twelfth chapter of the Book of Judges, is referred to in the Fellow Craft's Degree. Brother Rob Morris, in his Freemasonry in the Holy Land (page 316) says:
The exact locality of these fords or "passages " as the Bible terms them, cannot now be designated, but most likely they were those nearly due east of Seikoot and opposite Mizpah. At these fords, in summer time, the water is not more than three or four feet deep. the bottom being composed of a hard limestone rock. If, as some think the fords, thirty miles higher up, are those referred to the same description will apply. At either place, the Jordan is about eighty feet wide, its banks encumbered by a dense growth of tamarisks, cane, willows thorn-bushes, and other low vegetation of the shrubby and thorny sorts, which make it difficult even to approach the margin of the stream. The Arabs cross the river at the present day, at stages of low water, at a number of fords, from the one near the point where the Jordan leaves the Sea of Galilee down to the Pilgrims' Ford, six miles above the Dead Sea.
FOREIGN COUNTRY.
A certain Degree lecture begins by declaring that the recipient was induced to seek that sublime Degree "that he might perfect himself in Masonry, so as to travel into foreign countries, and work and receive wages as a Master Mason."
Thousands have often heard this expression in connection with a Master's Lodge, without dreaming for a moment of its hidden and spiritual meaning, or, if they think of any meaning at all, they content themselves by interpreting it as referring to the actual travels of the Freemasons, after the completion of the Temple, into the surrounding countries in search of employment, whose wages were to be the gold and silver which they could earn by the exercise of their skill in the operative art.
But the true symbolic meaning of the foreign country into which the Master Mason travels in search of wages is far different. The symbolism of this life terminates with the Master's Degree. The completion of that degree is the lesson of death and the resurrection to a future life, where the True Word, or Divine Truth, not given in this, is to be received as the reward of a life worthily spent in its search Heaven, the future life, the higher state of existence b after death, is the foreign country in which the Master Mason i8 to enter, and there he is to receive his wages in the reception of that Truth which can be imparted only in that better land.
FORESTERS DEGREES.
This title has been given to certain secret associations which derive their symbols and ceremonies from trades practiced in forests, such as the Carbonari, or Charcoal-burners; the Fendeurs. or Woodcutters; the Sawyers, etc. They are all imitative of Freemasonry.
FOREST MASONS.
See Fendeurs, Order of.
FOREST OF LEBANON.
See Lebanon.
FORFEITURE OF CHARTER.
A Lodge may forfeit its Charter for misconduct, and when forfeited, the Warrant or Charter is revoked by the Grand Lodge.
FORM.
In Freemasonry, an official act is said to be done, according to the rank of the person who does it, either in ample form, in due form, or simply in form. Thus, when the Grand Lodge is opened by the Grand Master in person, it is said to be opened in ample form; when by the Deputy Grand Master, it is said to be in due form; when by any other qualified officer, it is said to be in form. The legality of the act is the same whether it be done in form or in ample form; and the expression refers only to the dignity of the officer by whom the act is performed The terms Ample and Due Form appear to have been introduced by Anderson in the 1738 edition of the Constitutions (page 110).
FORM OF THE LODGE.
The form of a Freemason's Lodge is said to be an oblong square, having its greatest length from east to west, and its greatest breadth from north to south. This oblong form of the Lodge, has, as Brother Mackey thought, a symbolic illusion that has not been adverted to by any other writer.
If, on a map of the world, we draw lines which shall circumscribe just that portion which was known and inhabited at the time of the building of Solomon's Temple, these lines, running a short distance north and south of the Mediterranean Sea, and extending from Spain to Asia Minor, will form an oblong square, whose greatest length will be from east to west, and whose greatest breadth will be from north to south, as is shown in the annexed diagram.
There is a peculiar fitness in this theory, which is really only making the Masonic Lodge a symbol of the world. It must be remembered that, at the era of the Temple, the earth was supposed to have the form of a parallelogram, or oblong square. Such a figure inscribed upon a map of the world, and including only that part of it which was known in the days of Solomon, would present just such a square, embracing the Mediterranean Sea and the countries lying immediately on its northern, southern, and eastern borders. Beyond, far in the north, would be Cimmerian deserts as a place of darkness, while the pillars of Hercules in the west, on each side of the Straits of Gades now Gibraltar might appropriately be referred to the two pillars that stood at the porch of the Temple. Thus the world itself would be the true Freemason's Lodge, in which he was to live and labor. Again: the solid contents of the earth below, "from the surface to the centre," and the profound expanse above, "from the earth to the highest heavens," would give to this parallelogram definition which says that "the form of the Lodge ought to be a double cube, as an expressive emblem of the powers of light and darkness in the creation."
FORMULA.
A prescribed mode or form of doing or saving anything. The word is derived from the technical language of the Roman law, where, after the old legal actions had been abolished, suits were practiced according to certain prescribed forms called formulae. Formulas in Freemasonry are very frequent. They are either oral or monitorial. Oral formulas are those that are employed in various parts of the ritual, such as the opening and closing of a Lodge, the investiture of a candidate, etc. From the fact of their oral transmission they are frequently corrupted or altered, which is one of the most prolific sources of nonconformity so often complained of by Masonic teachers. Monitorial formulas are those that are committed to writing, and are to be found in the various Monitors and Manuals. They are such as relate to public installations, to laying foundationstones, to dedications of halls, to funerals! etc. Their monitorial character ought to preserve them from change; but uniformity is not even here always attained, owing to the whims of the compilers of manuals or of monitors, who have often unnecessarily changed the form of words from the original standard.
FORT, GEORGE FRANKLIN.
Masonic author. Born at Absecon, New Jersey, November 20, 1848, and died at Atlantic City, March 30, 1909. Edited the Keystone, Philadelphia, and wrote Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry, A Historical Treatise on Early Builders' Marks, Medieval Builders, and other works of Masonic worth. Initiated in Camden Lodge No. 15, Camden, New Jersey, a founder member and second Master, 1871, of Trumble Lodge No. 117, also of Camden, New Jersey (see Builder, 1918, pages 171 and 210).
FORT HIRAM.
An earthwork erected on October 3, 1814, at Fox Point, Rhode Island, by the Grand Lodge, with the members of the subordinate Lodges, about two hundred and thirty in number. The object was to build a fortification for the defense of the harbor of Providence, and the Grand Lodge, of which Thomas Smith Webb was Grand Master, through its Deputy, Senior Grand Warden, and Worshipful Brother Carlisle, were authorized to work on the defenses. They formed a procession, marched in the early morning to the Point, and by sunset had completed their labors, consisting of a breastwork four hundred and thirty feet in length, ten wide, and five high. They then marched and countermarched upon the parapet from one extremity to the other, when the Grand Master gave the work the appellation of Fort Hiram, which was approved and sanctioned by the Governor.
FORTITUDE.
One of the four cardinal virtues, whose excellencies are dilated on in the First Degree. It not only instructs the worthy Freemason to bear the ills of life with becoming resignation, "taking up arms against a sea of trouble," but, bv its intimate connection with a portion of our ceremonies, it teaches him to let no dangers shake, no pains dissolve the inviolable fidelity he owes to the trusts reposed in him. Or, in the words of the old Prestonian lecture, it is "a fence or security against any attack that might be made upon him bw force or otherwise, to extort from him anwr of our Royal Secrets."
Spence, in his Polymetis (page 139), when describing the moral virtues! savs of Fortitude: "She may be easily known by her erect air and military dress, the spear she rests on vvrith one hand, and the sword which she holds in the other. She has a globe under her feet; I suppose to shows that the Romans, by means of this virtue, were to subdue the whole world."
FORT MASONIC.
A redoubt of the fortifications on what was known as the Heights of Brooklyn, located between, what was later, Bond and Nevins Streets, Brooklyn, the south point of the quadrangle resting on State Street and extending north nearly to Schermerhorn Street. This Fort Masonic was built by members of the fourteen Lodges located in New York City, who, agreeable to a resolution of the Grand Lodge, of which Brother De Witt Clinton was Grand Master, adopted August 22, 1814, assembled at sunrise on the morning of Thursday, September
1. Accompanied by the officers of the Grand Lodge, they proceeded to Brooklyn where they were joined by the members of Fortitude and Newton Union Lodges, marched to the Height and performed one day's work on the fortifications.
The redoubt not completed, however, until September 17, when another day's labor w as performed.
FORTY.-.
FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM
FORTY TWO.
FORTY TWO LETTERED NAME.
FORTY.
The multiple of two perfect numbers four and ten. This was deemed a sacred number, as commemorating many events of religious signification, some of which are as follows:
The alleged period of probation of our first parents in Eden; the continuous deluge of forty days and nights, and the same number of days in which the maters remained upon the face of the earth; the Lenten season of forty days' fast observed by Christians with reference to the fast of Jesus in the Wilderness, and by the Hebrews to the earlier desert fast for a similar period; of the forty years spent in the Desert by Moses and Elijah and the Israelites, which succeeded the concealment of Moses the same number of years in the land of Midian. Moses was forty days and nights on the Mount. The days for embalming the dead were forty.
The forty years of the reign of Saul, of David, and of Solomon; the forty days of grace allotted to
Nineveh for repentance; the forty days' fast before Christmas in the Greek Church; as well as its being the number of days of mourning in Assyria, Phenicia, and Egypt, to commemorate the death and burial of their Sun God; and as well the period in the festivals of the resurrection of Adonis and Osiris; the period of forty days thus being a bond by which the whole world, ancient and modern, Pagan, Jewish, and Christian, is united in religious sympathy. Hence, it was determined as the period of mourning by the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of the Northern Jurisdiction, United States of America.
FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM.
The forty-seventh problem of Euclid's first book, which has been adopted as a symbol in the Master's Degree, is thus enunciated: "In any right-angled triangle, the square which is described upon the side subtending the right angle is equal to the squares described upon the sides which contain the right angle." Thus, in a triangle whose perpendicular is three feet, the square of which is nine, and whose base is four feet, the square of which is sixteen, the hypothenuse, or subtending side, will be five feet, the square of which will be twenty-five, which is the sum of nine and sixteen. This interesting problem, on account of its great utility in making calculations and drawing plans for buildings, is sometimes called the Carpenter's Theorem.
For the demonstration of this problem the world is indebted to Pythagoras, who, it is said, was so elated after making the discovery, that he made an offering of a hecatomb, or a sacrifice of a hundred oxen, to the gods. The devotion to learning which this religious act indicated in the mind of the ancient philosopher has induced Freemasons to adopt the problem as a memento, instructing them to be lovers of the arts and sciences.
The triangle, whose base is four parts, whose perpendicular is three, and whose hypothenuse is five, and which would exactly serve for a demonstration of this problem, was, according to Plutarch, a symbol frequently employed by the Egyptian priests, and hence it is called by M. Jomard, in his Exposition du Systeme Métrique des Amperes Egyptians, Exposition of the Ancient Egyptians System of Measurements, the Egyptian triangle. It was, with the Egyptians, the symbol of universal nature, the base representing Osiris, or the male principle; the perpendicular, Isis, or the female principle; and the hypothenuse, Horus, their son, or the produce of the two principles. They added that three was the first perfect odd number, that four was the square of two, the first even number, and that five was the result of three and two.
But the Egyptians made a still more important use of this triangle. It was the standard of all their measures of extent, and was applied by them to the building of the pyramids. The researches of M. Jomard, on the Egyptian system of measures, published in the magnificent work of the French savants on Egypt, has placed us completely in possession of the uses made by the Egyptians of this forty-seventh problem of Euclid, and of the triangle which formed the diagram by which it was demonstrated.
If we inscribe within a circle a triangle, whose perpendicular shall be 300 parts, whose base shall be 400 parts, and whose hypotenuse shall be 500 parts, which, of course, bear the same proportion to each other as three, four, and five; then if we let a perpendicular fall from the angle of the perpendicular and base to the hypothenuse, and extend it through the hypothenuse to the circumference of the circle, this chord or lane will be equal to 480 parts, and the two segments of the hypothenuse, on each side of it, will be found equal, respectively, to 180 and 320. From the point where this chord intersects the hypothenuse let another lane fall perpend cularly to the shortest side of the triangle, and this line will be equal to 144 parts, while the shorter segment, formed by its junction with the perpendicular side of the triangle, will be equal to 108 parts.
Hence, we may derive the following measures from the diagram: 500, 480, 400, 320, 180, 144, and 108, and all these without the slightest fraction. Supposing, then, the 500 to be cubits, we have the measure of the base of the great pyramid of Memphis. In the 400 cubits of the base of the triangle we have the exact length of the Egyptian stadium.
The 320 gives us the exact number of Egyptian cubits contained in the Hcbrew and Babylonian stadium. The stadium of Ptolemy is represented by the 480 cubits, or length of the line falling from the right angle to the circumference of the circle, through the hypothenuse. The number 180, which expresses the smaller segment of the hypothenuse being doubled, will give 360 cubits, which will be the stad urn of Cleomedes. By doubling the 144, the result will be 288 cubits, or the length of the stadium of Archamedes; and by doublang the 108, we produce 216 cubits, or the precise value of the lesser Egyptian stadium.
Thus we get all the length measures used by the Egyptians; and since this triangle, whose sides are equal to three, four, and five, was the very one that most naturally would be used in demonstrating the forty-seventh problem of Euclid; and since by these three sides the Egyptians symbolized Osiris, Isis, and Horus, or the two producers and the product, the very principle, expressed in symbolic language, which constitutes the terms of the problem as enunciated bv Pythagoras, that the sum of the squares of the two sides will produce the square of the third, we have no reason to doubt that the forty-seventh problem was well known to the Egyptian Priests, and by them communicated to Pythagoras.
Doctor Lardner, in his edition of Euclid, says:
Whether we consider the forty-seventh proposition with reference to the peculiar and beautiful relation established in it, or to its innumerable uses in every department of mathematical science, or to its fertility in the consequences derivable from it, it must certainly be esteemed the most celebrated and important in the whole of the elements, if not in the whole range, of mathematical science. It is by the influence of this proposition, and that which establishes the similitude of equiangular triangles, in the sixth book, that geometry has been brought under the dominion of algebra, and it is upon the same principles that the whole science of trigonometry is founded.
The thirty-second and forty-seventh propositions are said to have been discovered by Pythagoras, and extraordinary accounts are given of his exultation upon his first perception of their truth. It is however, supposed by some that Pythagoras acquired a knowledge of them in Egypt, and was the first to make them known in Greece.
FORTY TWO.
The number of judges required to sit by the body of the Egyptian dead pending the examination and without which the deceased had no portion in Amenti (see Truth).
FORTY TWO LETTERED NAME.
See Twelve Lettered Name.
FOUL.
The ballot-box is said to he foul when, in the ballot for the initiation or advancement of a candidate, one or more black balls are found in it.
FOUNDATION-STONE.
This term has been repeatedly used by Doctor Oliver, and after him by some other writers, to designate the chief stone or corner-stone of the Temple or any other building. Thus, Oliver says, "the Masonic days proper for laying the Foundation-stone of a Mason's Lodge are from the 15th of April to the 15th of May"; evidently meaning the corner-stone. The usage is an incorrect one. The foundation-stone, more properly the stone of foundations, is very different from the corner-stone (see Corner-stone).
FOUNDATION, STONE OF.
See Stone of Foundation.
FOUNTAIN.
In some of the advanced Degrees a fountain constitutes a part of the furniture of the initiation. In the science of symbology, the fountain, as representing a stream of continually flowing water, is a symbol of refreshment to the weary; and so it might be applied in the Degrees in which it is found, although there is no explicit interpretation of it in the Masonic instructions, where it seems to have been introduced rather as an exponent of the dampness and darkness of the place which was a refuge for criminals and a spot fit for crime.
Brother Albert Pike refers to the fountain as "tradition, a slender stream flowing from the Past into the Present, which, even in the thickest darkness of barbarism, keeps alive some memory of the Old Truth in the human heart." But this beautiful idea is not found in the symbolism as interpreted in the old ceremonies.
FOUR. .-.
FOUR.
FOUR CROWNED MARTYRS.
FOURFOLD CORD.
FOUR NEW YEARS.
FOUR OLD LODGES.
FOURTEEN.
FOUR.
Four is the tetrad or Quarternary of the Pythagoreans! and it is a sacred number in the advanced Degrees. The Pythagoreans called it a perfect number, and hence it has been adopted as a sacred number in the Degree of Perfect Master. In many nations of antiquity the name of God consists of four letters, as the Adad, of the Syrians, the Amum of the Egyptians, the efos of the Greeks, the Deus of the Romans, and pre-eminently the Tetragrammaton or four-lettered name of the Jews. But in Symbolic Freemasonry this number has no special significance.
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