MATERIALS OF THE TEMPLE.
Masonic tradition tells us that the trees out of which the timbers were made for the Temple were felled and prepared in the forest of Lebanon, and that the stones were hewn, cut, and squared in the quarries of Tyre. But both the Book of Kings and Josephus concur in the statement that Hiram of Tyre furnished only cedar and fir trees for the Temple. The stones were most probably (and the explorations of modern travelers confirm the opinion) taken from the quarries which abound in and around Jerusalem. The tradition, therefore, which derives these stones from the Quarries of Tyre, is incorrect.
MATERS.
In the Cooke Manuscript (line 825)— and it is the only Old Constitution in which it occurs— we find the word maters: "Hit is seyd in ye art of Masonry yt no man scholde make ende so well of worke begonne bi another to ye profite of his lorde as he began hit for to end hit bi his maters or to whom he scheweth his maters," where evidently, maters is a corruption of the Latin matrix, a mold; this latter being the word used in all the other Old Constitutions in the same connection (see Mold).
MATHOC.
The Hebrew word em: meaning amiability, sweetness. The name of the Third Step of the Mystic Ladder of the Kadosh of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
MATRICULATION BOOK.
In the Rite of Strict Observance, the Register which contained the lists of the Provinces, Lodges, and members of the Rite was called the Matriculation Book. The term was borrowed from the usage of the Middle Ages, where matricula meant a catalogue. It was applied by the ecclesiastical writers of that period to lists of the clergy, and also of the poor, who were to be provided for by the churches, whence we have matricula clericorum and matricula pauperum.
MATTER.
A subject deemed of important study to the alchemical and hermetical devotee. It holds a valued position for instruction in the Society of the Rosicrucians, who hold that matter is subject to change, transformation, and apparent dissolution; but, in obedience to God's great laws of economy, nothing is lost, but is simply transferred.
MATTIO.
See Macio.
MATURE AGE.
The Charges of 1722 prescribe that a candidate for initiation must be of "mature and discreet age"; but the usage of the Craft has differed in various countries as to the time when maturity of age is supposed to have arrived.
In the Regulations of 1663, it is set down at twentyone years (Constitutions, 1738, page 102); and this continues to be the construction of maturity in all English Lodges both in Great Britain and the United States of America. France and Switzerland have adopted the same period. At Frankfort-on-the-Main it is fixed at twenty, and in Prussia and Hanover at twenty-five. The Grand Lodge of Hamburg has decreed that the age of Masonic maturity shall be that which is determined by the laws of the land to be the age of legal majority.
Under the Scotch Constitution the age was eighteen until 1891, when it was raised to twenty-one; and under the Irish Constitution it was twenty-one until 1741, when it was raised to twenty-five and so remained until 1817, when it was again lowered to twenty-one.
MAUL- (- SETTING)
See Mallet
MAUNDY-THURSDAY.
The Thursday before Easter. Maundy is derived from the Latin word mandulatum (meaning commandment), the first word of a religious chant sung by pilgrims on that day at the time of the washing of feet. It also refers to Christ's words after he had washed the feet of the disciples at the Last Supper (John xiii, 34), "A new commandment I give unto you." Maundy-Thursday is sometimes called Shear Thursday, alluding evidently to the shearing of beards and heads in preparation for Easter. Foot washing before Easter was part of the rites of the Roman Catholic Church from about the fourth century, and the act itself was performed by Pope, prelates, priests and nobles. Doles or alms were then given the poor and these gifts were called maunds. In England the King washed the feet of as many poor men as he himself was years old. Wolsey made "his maund in Our Lady's Chapel, having fifty-nine poor men whose feet he washed and kissed; and after he had wiped them he gave every of the said poor men twelve pence in money, three ells of good canvas to make them shirts, a pair of new shoes, a cast of red herrings and three white herrings." This was in 1530 at Peterborough Abbey. Paupers' feet were washed by the yeomen of the laundry of Queen Elizabeth and she distributed doles. The last English monarch to do this was James II. From then to the eighteenth century this ceremony was by the King's Almoner. Since then the rite of washing the feet by the King's Almoner has been abandoned although the giving of the Maundy Pennies persists. These Maundly Pennies, in the time of Charles II, were especially prepared and came directly from the Mint with the edges of the coins unmilled. The present-day ceremony occurs at Westminster abbey, London, where a procession is headed by the Lord Leigh Almoner and the clergy and yeomen of the guard come next carrving small purses colored white and red containing the doles. The Roman Catholic Arehbishop also goes through with the entire ritual in England and on the Continent. This formerly was done by the Austrian Emperor, and also practiced in the Greek Church of Russia. From the fourth century in Spain, Italy and other Latin countries, washing of the feet was commonly performed towards the end of Lent and before baptism. Maundy-Thursday is given more than ordinary observance by Seottish Rite Freemasons. The Chapter of Rose Croix, or Eighteenth Degree, provides for the extinguishing of lights from Maundy-Thursday until Easter Sunday, on which day the Chapter is reassembled. The Supreme Couneil of the Southern Jurisdietion of the United States of America, Aneient and Accepted Scottish Rite, has a regulation commanding every member within hail of one of its Chapters to appear at these meetings or to present his excuses to the Body in case of inability to attend.
MAURER.
MAURER, GRUSS.
German for Mason, as Maurerei is for Masonry, and Freimaurer for Freemason.
MAURER, GRUSS.
A German Masonic Operative expression, divided by some into Gruss Maurer, Wort SIaurer, Sehrift Maurer, and Brieftrager—that is, those who claimed aid and recognition through signs and proving, and those who carried written documents.
MAURITIUS.
Freemasonry was introduced in this island, a British possession, formerly the Ile de France, in the Indian Ocean, as early as 1816 when a Lodge, Truth and Loyalty, was chartered by the Grand Lodge of England at Port Louis. Its Warrant was cancelled, however, twelve years after. Laterthere were English, Scotch, and Irish Lodges at work here.
MAUT.
The consort of the god Simon, usually crowned with a pschent or double diadem, emblem of the sovereignty of the two regions. Sometimes a vulture, the symbol of maternity, of heaven, and knowledge of the future, shows its head on the forehead of the goddess, its wings forming the head-dress. Horapollo says the vulture designates maternal love because it feeds its young with its own blood; and, according to Pliny, it represents heaven because no one can reach its nest, built on the highest rocks, and, therefore, that it is begotten of the winds. Maut is clothed in a long, close-fitting robe, and holds in her hand the sacred Anch, or Sign of Life.
MAXIMILIAN, JOSEPH I.
King of Bavaria, who, becoming incensed against the Fraternity, issued Edicts against Freemasons in 1799 and 1804, which he renewed in 1814.
MAXIMUS OF TYRE
(Cassius Maxirnus Tyrius). Greek rhetorician and philosopher in the time of Antonines and Commodus (second century A.D.). lIe travelled extensively, delivering lectures. There are still extant by him forty-one essays. With him God is the Supreme Being, one and indivisible though called by many names, accessible to reason alone. The soul in many ways bears a great resemblance to the divinity; it is partly mortal, partly immortal, and when freed from the fetters of the body, becomes aD intermediary on the confines of heaven and earth. Life is the sleep of the soul, from which it awakes at death. Maximus of Tyre must be distinguished from the Stoic Maximus, tutor of Marcus Aurelius. Thomas Taylor translated from the Greek and published in London 1804, The Dissertations of Maximus Tyrius, and in the preface Taylor says:
Of Maximus the author of the following Dissertations, nothing more is known, than that he was a Tyrian; that he lived under the Antonines and Commodus, that he for some time resided in Rome but probably for the most part in Greece; that he cultivated philosophy and particularly that of Plato; and that he was one of those sophists who, like Dio Chrysostom, united philosophy with the study of rhetoric, and combined sublimity and depth of conception with magnificence and elegance of diction.
There is a curious statement by the Tyrian, in the above translation (volume in, pages 2, 3), having in part a resemblance to the familiar Masonic monitorial instruction to Fellow Crafts:
What then do you say, O Attic Guest? Is good so narrow, groveling, difficult to be obtained, mmanifest and replete with molestation, that we cannot obtain it without sinning, redrawing geometrical lines, and consuming our time in these, as if it were our intention to become something else, and not to be good men? Though divine virtue, indeed, according to its use, is sublime and great, and near to every one, but according to its position, is not difficult to him who but once wishes to be obedient to be beautiful in conduct, and to oppose whatever is base. The Athenian guest, however, will answer, that this, which is called the law of the city, without the obedience of those that use it, is promulgated in vain, and that it is necessary the people should submit to it voluntarily; but the people in the soul— desires. senses, imagination, opinions—are numerous and foolish who, nevertheless, when they once yield their assent to the law, and follow where it commands produce the most excellent polity in the soul, and which men denominate philosophy. Come then, let philosophy approach after the manner of a legislator, adorning the disorderly and wandering soul as if it were the people in a city. Let her also call as her coadjutors other acts not such as are sordid, by Jupiter! nor such as require manual operation, nor such as contribute to procure us things little and vile, but let one of these be that art which prepares the body to be subservient, as a prompt and robust vehicle, to the mandates of the soul, and which is called gymnastic. Let another art be that which is the angel of the conceptions of the soul, and which is caned rhetoric; another, that which is the nurse and tutor of the juvenile mind, and which is geometry, poetry; another that which is the leader of the nature of numbers, and which is called arithmetic- and another that which is the teacher of computation and is called logistic. Let geometry, also, and music follow, who are the associates of philosophy and conscious of her arcana, and to each of which she distributes a portion of her labor.
MAZZINI, GIUSEPPE.
Italian liberator, born June 22, 1805; died March 10, 1872. He was Grand Master of Freemasons of Italy (see New Age, June, 1924).
MECKLENBURG.
Freemasonry was introduced here in 1754, but not firmly rooted until 1799. There were in due time two Provincial Grand Lodges.
MEDAL FOR DISTINGUISHED SERVICE TO FREEMASONRY.
See Price, Henry.
MEDALS.
A medal is defined to be a piece of metal in the shape of a coin, bearing figures or devices and mottoes, struck and distributed in memory of some person or event. When Freemasonry was in its operative stage, no medals were issued. The medals of the Operative Masons were the monuments which thev erected in the form of massive buildings, adorned with all the beauties of architectural art. But it was not long after its transformation into a Speculative Order before it began to issue medals. Medals are now struck every year by Lodges to commemorate some distinguished member or some remarkable event in the annals of the Lodge. Many Lodges in Europe have cabinets of medals, of which the Lodge Minerva of the Three Palms at Leipsic is especially valuable.
In America sueh a collection has been made by Pythagoras Lodge at New York.
No Masonic medal appears to have been found earlier than that of 1733, commemorative of a Lodge being established at Florence, by Lord Charles Saclville. The Lodge appears not to have been founded by regular authority; but, however that may be, the event was commemorated bit a medal, a copy of which exists in the collection in possession of the Lodge Minerva of the Three Palms, at Leipsic. The obverse contains a bust representation of Lord Sackville, with
the inscription—"Curolvs Sackville, Magister, F1."
The reverse represents Harpocrates in the attitude of silence, leaning upon a broken column, and holding in his left awn the cornucopia filled with rich fruits, also the implements of Freemasonry, with a thyrsus, staff, and serpent, resting upon the fore and back ground. The thyrsus, by the way, being a staff wreathed in ivy or vine leaves and crowned with a pine cone or a bunch of ivy leaves, the Bacchic wand or rod, borne by the Bacchants, priests or votaries
of the Rites of Bacchus.
The minimum of charity found among Mark Masters is the Roman penny, the denarius, meighing 60 grains silver, worth fifteen cents (see Mark Master's Wages). The coin shown in Figure 1 was struck at Rome, under Tiberius, 18 A.D. The portrait is Tiberius: the reverse the Goddess Clemency. The Latin inscription reads in English: "Tiberius Caesar Augustus, the son of the Deified Augustus, the High Priest."
Two medals, weighing 120 grains each. of silver, about thirty cents, were struck off at Jerusalem, under Simon Maccabee, the Jewish ruler, 13S, 139 B.C.
They are the oldest monev coined bv the Jews. The devices are the brazen laver that stood before the Temple, and three lilies springing from one stem.
The inscriptions, translated from the Hebrew of the oldest style, Sail, "Half-shekel; Jerusalem the Holy."
Brother Roh Morris and Brother Coleman, in their Calendar, furnish much valuable information on this subject.
The earliest work on Masonic Medals is by Ernest Zacharias, entitled Numotheca Numismatica Latomorum. It was issued at Dresden in parts, the first appearing on September 13, 1840, the eighth and last on January 29, 1846. It gave 48 medals in all. Then came Die Denkmünzen der Freimaurerbruderschaft, by Dr. J. Y. L. Theodor Merzdorf, published at Oldenburg in 1851, and describing 334 medals.
A standard work on the subjeet is The Medalts of the Masonic Fraternity, by W. T. R. Marvin, privately printed at Boston in 1880, in which over 700 medals are described.
MEDITERRANEAN PASS.
A side Degree sometimes conferred in the United States on Royal Arch Masons. It has no lecture or legend, and should not be confounded, as it sometimes is, with the very different Degree of Knight of the Mediterranean Pass. It is, however, now nearlv obsolete.
MEDITERRANEAN PASS, KNIGHT OF.
See Knight of the Mediterranean Pass, also Babylonish Pass.
MEETING OF A CHAPTER.
See Convocation.
MEETING OF A LODGE.
See Communication.
MEET ON THE LEVEL.
In the Prestonian Lectures as practiced in the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was said that Masons met on the Square and hoped to part on the Level. In the Ameriean System of Webb a change was made, and we were instructed that they meet on the Level and part on the
Square. And in 1843 the Baltimore Convention made a still further change, by adding that they act by the Plumb; and this formula is nova although quite modern, generally adopted by the Lodges in the United States of America.
MEGACOSM.
An intermediate world, great but not equal to the Macrocosm, the universe, and yet greater than the Microcosm, or little world, man.
MEHEN.
An Egyptian mythological serpent, the winding of Whose body represented the tortuous course of the sun in the nocturnal regions. The serpentine course taken when traveling through dark
ness. The direction metaphorically represented by the initiate in his first Symbolic journey as Practicus b in the Society of the Rosicrucians
MEHOUR.
Space, the name given to the feminine principle of the Deity by the Egyptians.
MEISTER.
German for Master; in French, Maître, in Dutch, Meester; in Swedish, Mastar; in Italian. Maestro; in Portuguese, Mestre. The old French word appears to have been Meistrier. In old French Operative Laws, Le Mestre was frequently used.
MEISTER IM STUHL.
Meaning Master in the Chair. The Germans so call the Master of a Lodge.
MELANCTHON PHILIP.
The name of this celebrated reformer is signed to the Charter of Cologne as the representative of Dantzic. The evidence of his connection With Freemasonry depends entirely on the authenticity of that document.
MELCHIZEDEK.
King of Salem, and a Priest of the Most High God, of whom all that we know is to be found in the passages of Scripture read at the conferring of the Degree of High Priesthood. Some theologians have supposed him to have been Shem, the son of Noah. The Sacrifice of offering bread and wine is first attributed to Melchizedek; and hence, looking to the similar Mithraic sacrifice, Godfrey Higgins is inclined to believe that he professed the religion of Mithras. He abandoned the sacrifice of slaughtered animals, and, to quote the words of Saint Jerome, "offered bread and wine as a type of Christ." Hence, in the New Testament, Christ is represented as a Priest after the Order of Melchizedek. In Freemasonry, Melchizedel; is connected with the Order or Degree of High Priesthood, and some of the advanced Degrees (see High Priesthood, Order of).
MELCHIZEDEK, DEGREE OF.
The Sixth Degree of the Order of Brothers of Asia.
MELECH.
Properly, Malach, a messenger, and hence an angel, because the angels were supposed to be the messengers of God. In the ritual of one of the advanced Degrees we meet with the sentence hamelech Gebalim, which has been variously translated. The French ritualists handle Hebrew words with but little attention to Hebrew grammar, and hence they translate this sentence as Jabulum est an bon Maçon. The former American ritualists gave it as meaning "Guibulum is a good man." Guibulum is undoubtedly used as a proper name, and is a corrupt derivation from the Hebrew Masonic Giblim, which means stonesquarers or masons, and melach for malach means a messenger, one sent to accomplish a certain task. Brothers Pike and Rockwell make the first word hamalek. the king or chief. If the words were reversed, we should have the Hebrew vocative, "O! Gibulum the messenger." As it is, Brother Pike makes it vocatives and interprets it, "Oh! thou glory of the Builders." Probably, however, the inventor of the Degree meant simply to say that Gibulum was a messenger, or one who had been sent to make a discovery, but that he did not perfectly express the idea according to the Hebrew idiom, or that his expression has since been corrupted by the copyists.
MELESINO, RITE OF.
This is a Rite scarcely known out of Russia, where it was founded about the year 1765, by Melesino, a very learned man and Freemason, a Greel; by birth, but high in the military service of Russia. It consisted of seven Degrees, namely,
l. Apprentice;
2. Fellow Craft;
3. Master Mason;
4. The Mystic Arch;
5. Scottish Master and Knight;
6. The Philosopher;
7. The Priest or High Priest of the Templars.
The four higher Degrees abounded in novel traditions and myths unknown to any of the other Rites, and undoubtedly invented by the founder. The whole Rite was a mixture of Cabalism, magic, Gnosticism, and the Hermetic philosophy mixed in almost inextricable confusion. The Seventh or final Degree was distinctly Rosicrucian, and the religion of the Rite was Christian, recognizing and teaching the belief in the Messiah and the dogma of the Trinity.
MELESINO, RITE OF.
See Russia.
MELEWI.
See Turkey.
MELITA.
The ancient name of the island of Malta.
MEMBER, HONORARY.
See Honorary Members.
MEMBER, LIFE.
See Life Member.
MEMBER OF A LODGE.
As soon as permanent Lodges became a part of Masonic organization, it seems to have been required that every Freemason should belong to one, and this demand is explicitly stated in the Charges approved in 1722 (see Affiliated freemason).
MEMBERSHIP, RIGHT OF.
The first right which a Freemason acquires, after the reception of the Third Degree, is that of claiming membership in the Lodge in which he has been initiated. The very fact of his having received that Degree makes him at once an inchoate member of the Lodgethat is to say, no further application is necessary, and no new ballot is required; but the candidate, having now become a Master Mason, upon signifying his submission to the Regulations of the Soeiety by affixing his signature to the book of by-laws, is constituted, by virtue of that act, a full member of the Loclge, and entitled to all the rights and prerogatives aceruing to that position. IJ'nder the English Constitution (Rule 191) initiation is sufficient for membership.
MEMPHIS.
For many generations Memphis was the royal eity of Egypt and here also were gathered the fraternity of priests and the great sehool ot the wisdom and the mysteries of the Egyptians. The name has therefore had a lively interest to various founders of Degree systems (see Memphis, Rite of, and .Marconis, Gabriel Mathieu, and Marconis, Jacques Etienne).
|
