OIL.
The Hebrews anointed their Kings, Prophets, and High Priests with oil mingled with the richest spices. They also anointed themselves with oil on all festive occasions, whence the expression in Psalm xlv, 7, "God hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness (see Corn, ravine and Oil).
OKLAHOMA.
The history of Freemasonry in what is now the State of Oklahoma is the history of the Craft in Indian and Oklahoma Territories which were originally separate from each other. The pioneer Lodge in Indian Territory was Flint Lodge which received a Charter from the Grand Lodge of Arkansas dated November 9, 1853. On October 5, 1874, Muskogee, Doaksville and Caddo Lodges met in Convention and the following day the Grand Lodge of Indian Territory was constituted Oklahoma Lodge joined soon after, but the other two existing Lodges Flint and Alpha held back until 1878. The Lodges loeated in Oklahoma for a long time held Warrants from the Grand Lodge of Indian Territory, hut Oll August 16, 1892. three Lodges, namely Guthrie No. 35; North Canadian, No. 3d, and Redmond, No. :37. signed a petition for the formation of a Grand Lodge of Oklahoma. Representatives of all the Lodges ill this Territory met on November 10, 1892; the Grand Master presided, he installed the Grand Officers, and the Grand Lodge was declared open. The Grand Lodge of Indian Territory and the Grand Lodge of Oklahoma Territory united in the Grand Lodge of the State of Oklahoma, at a Convention held at Guthrie, February 10, 1909.
Indian Chapter was organized at McAlester, Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory, on March 15, 1878, by Dispensation issued by Most Excellent General Grand High Priest John Frizzell. A meeting was held in the same town on October 92, 1889, of Companions representing the several Chapters in Indian Territory, namelv, Indian Chapter, No. 1; Oklahoma Chapter, No. if; Savanna Chapter, No. 4, and Tahlequah Chapter, U. D. .& Constitution was adopted and the Grand Chapter duly established on February 15, 1890. On April 21, 1908, it was resolved that the name should be changed to Grand Roval .&reh Chapter of Oklahoma to correspond with the ehauge from Territory to State.
By Charter dated September 29, 1886, Oklahoma Council, No. 1, was organized at Atoka on September 29, 1886. Two other Couneils were chartered in 1894 and representatives of the three met on November 5, 1894, to organize a Grand Council. Companion Robert W. Hills presided, a Constitution was adopted and officers elected. The name was changed from Indian Territory to Oklahoma at the Grand Assembly held on April 22, 1908.
On October 1, 1891, WIuskogee Commandery, No. 1, was organized by Dispensation and was chartered on August 11, 1X92. SIuskogee, No. 1; Chickasaw, No. 2, and bIcAlester, No. 3, formed the Grand Commandery of Indian Territory by authority of the Grand Encampment on December 17, 1895. The Grand Commandery of Oklahoma was constituted under the same authority on February 10, 1896, by the following subordinate Commanderies: Guthrie, No. 1; Oklahoma, No. '; Ascension, No. 3. It amalgamated with the Grand Commandery of Indian Territory on October 6, 1911.
The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, was first introduced on October 20, 1899, when a Lodge of Perfection and a Chapter of Rose Croix, as Guthrie, No. 1; a council of Kadosh, Desonnac, No. 1, and a Consistory, Oklahoma, No. 1, were established at Guthrie.
OLD CHARGES.
See Manuscripts, Old.
OLD MAN. AN.
Old men in their dotage are by the laws of Freemasonry disqualified for initiation. For the reason of this law see Dotage.
OLD MASONIC CEREMONIES.
"We are accustomed to flatter ourselves that Freemasonry has never obtained such eminence of culture as in the present day, yet we find that even in the middle of the eighteenth century, our ancient Brethren, possessed of elegant manners and in intimate knowledge Of the liberal arts and sciences, adorned the Craft with a more elaborate ceremony than now prevails; on one occasion I have noted it took three hours to stork the first Degree, and it is common knowledge, that the Lectures and Tracing Boards now so seldom worked in our Lodges, were up to forty years ago generally included in the ritual" (W. H. Griffiths, page 142, Transactions, 1902-3, Lodge of Research No. 9429, Leicester, England).
OLD REGULATIONS.
The Regulations for the Government of the Craft, which were first compiled by Grand Mastet Payne in 1720, and approved by the Grand Lodge in 1721 were published by Anderson in 1723, in the first edition of the Book of Constitutions, under the name of General Regulations. In 1738 Anderson published a second edition of the Book of Constitutions, and inserted these regulations under the name of Old Regulations, placing in an opposite column the alterations which had been made in them by the Grand Lodge at various times between 1723 and 1737, and called these New Regulations. When Dermott published his Ahiman Rezon, or Book of Constitutions of the rival Grand Lodge, he adopted Anderson's plan, publishing in two colums the Old and the New Regulations. But he made some important changes in the latter to accommodate the policy of his own Grand Lodge. The Old Regulations, more properly known as the General Regulations of 1722, are recognized as the better authority in questions of Masonic law.
OLIVE.
In a secondary sense, the olive plant is a symbol of peace and victory; but in its primary sense, like all the other sacred plants of antiquity, it was a symbol of resurrection and immortality. Hence in the Ancient Mysteries it was the analogue of the Acacia of Freemasonry.
OLIVE BRANCH IN THE EAST, BROTHERHOOD OF THE.
An Order, which was proposed at Bombay, in 1845, by Dr. James Burnes, the author of a History of the Knights Templar, who was then the Provincial Grand Master of India for Scotland. It was intended to provide a substitute for native Freemasons for the Chivalric Degrees, from which, on account of their religious faith, they were excluded. It consisted of three classes, Novice, Companion, and Officer. For the first, it was requisite that the candidate should have been initiated into Freemasonry; for the second, that he should be a Master Mason; and for the third it was recommended, but not imperatively required, that he should have attained the Royal Arch Degree. The badge of the Order was a dove descending with a green olivebraneh in its mouth. The new Order was received with much enthusiasm by the most distinguished Preemasons of India, but it did not secure a permanent existence.
OLIVER, GEORGE.
The Rev. George Oliver, D.D., one of the most distinguished and learned of English Freemasons, was descended from an ancient Scottish family of that name, some of whom came into England in the time of James I, and settled at Clipstone Park, Nottinghamshire.
He was the eldest son of the Rev. Samuel Oliver, rector of Lambley, Nottinghamshire, and Elizabeth, daughter of George Whitehead. He was born at Pepplewick, November 5, 1782, and received a liberal education at Nottingham. In 1803, when but twenty-one years of age, he was elected second master of the Grammar School at Caiston, Lincoln. In 1809 he was appointed to the head mastership of King Edward's Grammar School at Great Grimsby. In 1813 he entered Holy Orders in the Church of England, and was ordained a Deacon. The subsequent year he was made a Priest. In the spring of 1815, Bishop Tomline collated him to the living of Clee, his name being at the time placed on the boards of Trinity College, Cambridge, as a ten-year man by Doctor Bayley, Sub-dean of Lincoln and examining Chaplain to the Bishop. In the same year he was admitted as Surrogate and a Steward of the Clerical Fund. In 1831, Bishop Kaye gave him the living of Scopwick, which he held to the time of his death.
He graduated as Doctor of Divinity in 1836, being then Rector of Wolverhampton, and a Prebendary of the Collegiate Church at that place, both of which positions had been presented to him by Doctor Hobart, Dean of Westminster. In 1846 the Lord Chancellor conferred on him the rectory of South Hykeham, which vacated the incumbency of Wolverhampton. At the age of seventy-two Doctor Oliver's physical powers began to fail, and he was obliged to confine the charge of his parishes to the care of curates, and he passed the remaining years of his life in retirement at Lincoln. In 1805 he had married Mary Ann, the youngest daughter of Thomas Beverley, by whom he left five children. He died March 3, 1867, at Eastgate, Lincoln.
To the literary world Doctor Oliver was well known as a laborious antiquary, and his works on ecclesiastical antiquities during fifty years of his life, from twenty-five, earned for him a high reputation. Of these works the most important were, History and Antiquities of the Collegiate Church of Beverley, History and Antiquities of the Collegiate Church of Wolverhampton, History of the Conventual Church of Grimsby, Monumental Antiquities of Grimsby, History of the Gild of the Holy Trinity, Sleaford, Letters on the Druidical Remains near Lincoln, Guide to the Druidical Temple at Nottingham and Remains of Ancient Britons between Lincoln and Sleaford.
But it is as the most learned Freemason and the most indefatigable and copious Masonic author of his age that Doctor Oliver principally claims our attention. He had inherited a love of Freemasonry from his father, the Rev. Samuel Oliver, who was an expert Master of the work, the Chaplain of his Lodge, and who contributed during a whole year, from 1797 to 1798, an original Masonic song to be sung on every Lodge night. His son has repeatedly acknowledged his indebtedness to him fbr valuable information in relation to Masonic usages. Doctor Oliver was initiated by his father, in the year 1801, in Saint Peter's Lodge, in the city of Peterborough. He was at that time but nineteen years of age, and was admitted by Dispensation during his minority, according to the practice then prevailing, as a Lewis. Or the son of a Freemason. Under the tuition of his father, he made muffin progress in the rites and ceremonies then in use among the Lodges. He read with great attention every Masonic book within his reach, and began to collect that store of knowledge which he afterward used with so much advantage to the Craft.
Soon after his appointment as Head Master of King Edward's Grammar School at Grimsby, he established a Lodge in the borough, the chair of which he occupied for fourteen years. So strenuous were his exertions for the advancement of Freemasonry, that in 1812 he was enabled to lay the first stone of a Masonic hall in the town, where, three years before, there had been scarcely a Freemason residing. About this time he was exalted as a Roval Arch Mason in the Chapter attached to the Rodney Lodge at Kingston-on-Hull. In Chapters and Consistories connected with the same Lodge he also received the advanced Degrees and those of Masonic Knighthood. In 1813, he was appointed a Provincial Grand Steward; in 1816, Provincial Grand Chaplain; and in 1832, Provincial Deputy Grand Master of the Province of Lincolnshire. These are all the official honors that he received, except that of Past Deputv Grand Master, conferred, as an honorary title, by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts.
In the year 1840, Doctor Crucefix had undeservedly incurred the displeasure of the Grand Master, the Duke of Sussex. Doctor Oliver, between whom and Doctor Crucefix there had always been a warm personal friendship, assisted in a public demonstration of the Fraternity in honor of his friend and brother.
This involved him in the odium, and caused the Provincial Grand Master of Lincolnshire, Brother Charles Tennyson D'Eyncourt, to request the resignation of Doctor Oliver as his Deputy. He complied with the resignation, and after that time withdrew from all active participation in the labors of the Lodge. The transaction was not considered by any means as creditable to the independence of character or sense of justice of the Provincial Grand Master, and the Craft vera generally expressed their indignation of the course which he had pursued, and their warm appreciation of the Masonic services of Doctor Oliver. In 1844, this appreciation was marked by the presentation of an offering of plate, which had been very generally subscribed for by the Craft throughout the kingdom.
Doctor Oliver's first contribution to the literature of Freemasonry, except a few Masonic sermons, was a work entitled The Antiquities of Freemasonry corlzprisiny illustrations of the fitXe Grand Periods of Masonry, from the Creation of the OFF orld to the Dedication of Ering Solomons Temple, which was published in 1893. His next production was a little work entitled The Star in the East, intended to show, from the testimonv of Masonic writers, the connection between Freemasonry and religion.
In 1841 he published twelve lectures on the Sipns and Symbols of Freemasonry, in which he went into a learned detail of the history and signification of all the recognized symbols of the Order. His next important contribution to Freemasonry was The History of Initiation in twelve lectures, comprising a detailed account of the Rites and Ceremonies, Doctrines and Discipline, of all the Secret and Mysterious Institutions of the Ancient World, published in 1840. The professed object of the author was to show the resemblances between these ancient systems of initiation and the Masonic, and to trace them to a common origin; a theory which, under some modification, has been very generally accepted
by Masonic scholars.
Following this was The Theocratic Philosophy of Freemasonry, a highly interesting work, in which he discusses the speculative character of the Institution.
A History of Freemasonry from 1829 to !840 has proved a valuable appendix to the work of Preston, an edition of which he had edited in the former year. His next and most important, most interesting, and most learned production was his Historical Landmarks and other Evidences of Freemasonry Explained. No work with such an amount of facts in reference to the Masonic system had ever before been published by any author. It will forever remain as a monument of his vast research and his extensive reading.
But it would be no brief task to enumerate merely the titles of the many works which he produced for the instruction of the Craft. A few of them must suffice. These are the Revelations of a Square, a sort of Masonic romance, detailing, in a fictitious form, many of the usages of the last centuries, with anecdotes of the principal Freemasons of that period;
The
Golden Remains of the Early Masonic Writers, in five volumes, each of which contains an interesting introduction by the editor; The Book of the Lodge, a useful manual, intended as a guide to the ceremonies of the Order; TheSyxnbol of Glory, intended to show the object and end of Freemasonry; A Mirror for the Johannite Masons, in which he discusses the question
of the dedication of Lodges to the two Saints John; The Origin and Insignia of the Royal Arch Degree! a title which explains itself; A Dictionary of Symbolic Masonry, by no means the best of his works.
Almost his last contribution to Freemasonry was his Institutes of Masonic Jurisprudence, a book in which he expressed views of law that did not meet with the universal concurrence of his English readers. Besides these elaborate works, Doctor Oliver was a constant contributor to the early volumes of the London Freemasons Quarterly Review, and published a valuable article, on the Gothic Constitutions, in the American Quarterly Review of Freemasonry.
The great error of Doctor Oliver, as a Masonic teacher, was a too easy credulity or a too great
warmth of imagination, which led him to accept without hesitation the crude theories of previous writers, and to recognize documents and legends as unquestionably authentic whose truthfulness subsequent researches have led most Masonic scholars to doubt or to deny.
His statements, therefore, as to the origin or the history of the Order, have to be received with many grains of allowance. Yet it must be acknowledged that no writer in the English language has ever done so much to elevate the scientific character of Freemasonry.
Doctor Oliver was in fact the founder of what may well be called the Literary School of Freemasonry. Bringing to the study of the Institution an amount of archeological learning but seldom surpassed, an inexhaustible fund of multifarious reading, and all the laborious researches of a genuine scholar, he gave to Freemasonry a literary and philosophic character which has induced many succeeding scholars to devote themselves to those studies which he had made so attractive.
While his erroneous theories and his fanciful speculations will be rejected, the form and direction that he has given to Masonic speculations will remain, and to him must be accredited the enviable title of the Father of Anglo-Sazon Masonic Literature. In reference to the personal character of Doctor Oliver, a contemporary journalist, Stanford Mercury has said that he was of a kind and genial dispositions charitable in the highest sense of the words courteous, affable, self-denying, and beneficent; humbles unassuming, and unaffected; ever ready to obliges easy of approach, and amiable, yet firm in the right.
Doctor Oliver's theory of the system of Freemasonry mav be briefly stated in these words:
He believed that the Order was to be found in the earliest periods of recorded history. It was taught by Seth to his descendants, and practiced by them under the name of Primititle or Pure Freemasonry. It passed over to Noah, and at the dispersion of mankind suffered a division into Pure and Spurious. Pure Freemasonry descended through the Patriarchs to Solomon, and thence on to the present day.
The Pagans, although they had slight glimmerings of the Masonic truths which had been taught by Noah, greatly corrupted them, and presented in their mysteries a system of initiation to which he gave the name of the Spurious Freemasonry of Antiquity. These views he had developed and enlarged and adorned out of the similar hut less definitely expressed teachings of Hutchinson. Like that writer also, while freely admitting the principle of religious tolerance, he contended for the strietlv Christian character of the Institution, and that, too, in the narrowest sectarian view, since he l)elieved that the earliest symbols taught the dogma of the Trinity, and that Christ was meant by the Masonic reference to the Deity under the title of Grand Architect of the Universe.
OM.
From the Sanskrit language and of an especial importance as a sacred word in the religion of the Hindus. We are told in the Katha-Upanishad, one of the Hindu treatises on philosophy, that whoever knows this word can get all he wishes. Brahma hiraself is eredited in the Manu Laws with inventing the word and that he took the letters of this sound one from each of the Vedas, the four holy books of Hindu lsnowledge, the word Veda in the Sanskrit meaning to know. Om is the first word in the Puranas, the traditional Hindu histories of the universe, and is also to be said at the start and finish of all of the Veda instructions.
From whence originally came the word is a matter of much speculation, East and West, both past and present; Lewis Spence, in his Encyclopea'ia of Occultism, suggests it is an old and contracted form of the Sanskrit word eva7n, meaning thus. Another explanation is that the syllable is the expression of consent used by the gods themselves, a creative utterance meaning Thas may it be. Somers times the word is spelled Aum, but probably all that this difference may be is a matter of pronunciation, though the three letters have been credited in their selection and use with a potent and mysterious power and sanctity Om is also given by the Hindus as a name for the spiritual Sun. or Source of Inner Light, to distinguish this from the Sooruj or material sun, a physical center of illumination and warmth (see Aum andOn).
OMEGA.
See Alpha and Omega.
OMNIFIC WORD.
The Tetragrammaton is so called because of the omnific powers attributed by the Cabalists to its possession and true pronunciation (see Tetragrammaton). The term is also applied to the most significant vord in the Royal Arch system.
ON.
This is a significant word in Royal Arch Masonry, and has been generally explained as being the name by which Jehovah was worshiped among t he Egyptians. As this has been denied and the word asserted to be only the name of a city in Egypt, it is proper that some inquiry should be made into the authorities on the subject. The first mention of On in the Bible is in the history of Joseph, to whom Pharoah gave "to wife Asenath, the daughter of Potipherah, priest of On." The city of On was in Lower Egypt, between the Nile and the Red Sea, and "adorned," says Philippson, "by a gorgeous temple of the sun, in which a numerous priesthood officiated." The investigations of modern Egyptologists have shown that this is an error. On was the name of a city where the sun-god was worshiped, but On was not the name of that god. Champollion, in his Dictionnaire Egyptien, gives the phonetic characters, with the figurative symbols of a serpent and disk, and a seated figure, as the name of the sun-god. Now, of these two characters, the upper one has the power of R. and the lower of A, and hence the name of the god is Ra. This is the concurrent testimony ot Bunsen, Lepsius, Gliddon, and all later authorities.
But although on was really the name of a city, the founders of the Royai Areh had, with the lights then before them, assumed that it svas the name of a god, and had so incorporated it with their system. With better light than theirs, we can no longer accept their definition; yet the word may still be retained as a symbol of the Egyptian god. We know not who has power to reject it; and if scholars preserve, outside of the symbolism, the true interpretation, no harm will be done. It is not the only significant word in Freemasonry whose old and received meaning has been shown to be incorrect, and sometimes even absurd.
Referring to the expressions by Doctor Mackey. "This is a significant word in Royal Arch Masonry and has generally been explained, as being the name by which Jehovah was worshiped among the Egyptians." . . . "But although on was really the name of a city, the founders of the Royal Arch had, with the lights then before them, assumed that it was the name of a god and had so incorporated it with their system," Brother David E. W. Williamson writes as follows:
This, it seems to me, gives a wrong impression of the Royal Arch use of the word. " on " is certainly one of the names of the deity of Israel, and it will be found by reference to the Septuagint that, which the Authonzed Version renders "I am that I am," is actually translated into Greek as "I am the Being." For several centuries in the earlier part of the Christian era, the Septuagint was Considered to be co-ordinate with, if not superior to, the Hebrew text as authority and by the vast number of worshippers under the Orthodox rite the Greek Version is and always has been regarded with the same veneration as Englishspeaking people regard the Authorized Version. To these avorshippers, therefore, ON is one of the names of the Almighty.
The effect of the word; if I may make the suggestion, merely intensifies the meaning of THE Being, so that, as nearly as we can translate the sense into English, the original Biblical expression would be "I AM—there, you see, I AM." If you have Westcott and Hort handy and will refer to Revelations i 4, you will see that the phrase which the Authorized Version renders " Grace be unto you, and peace from him which is and which was and which is to come" is literally "From the being and the was and the coming "From the On." And see especially verse 8 in the same chapter: etc. It seems to me that when we say Supreme Being, referring to the Almighty, we are exactly expressing the word that meant to the Yahwist redactor of the Pentateuch and On to the Septuagint translators, as well as to the Hebrew Christian who wrote the Apocalypse.
Godfrey Higgins (Celtic Druids, page 171) quotes an Irish commentator as showing that the name Ain or on was the name of a triad of gods in the Irish language. "All etymologists, " Higgins continues, "have supposed the word on to mean the sun; but how the name arose has not before been explained."
In another work (Anacalypsis, volume i, page 109), Higgins makes the following important remarks: "various definitions are given of the word on; but they are all unsatisfactory. It is written in the Old Testament in two ways, : aun, and an. It is usually rendered in English by the word on. This word is supposed to mean the sun, and the Greeks translated it by the word On, or Sol. But I think it only stood for the sun, as the emblem of the procreative power of nature." Bryan says (Mythological Antiquity, volume i, page 19), when speaking of this word: "On, Eon or Aon, was another title of the sun among the Amonians. The Seventy, where the word occurs in the Scriptures, interpret it the sun, and call the City of on, Heliopolis; and the Coptic Pentateuch renders the City on by the City of the Sun."
Plato, in his Timoeus, says: "Tell me of the god ON, which is and never knew beginning." And, although Plato may have been here thinking of the Greek word QN, which means Being, it is not improbable that he may have referred to the god worshiped at on, or Heliopolis, as it was thence that the Greeks derived so much of their learning. It would be vain to attempt to make an analogy between the Hindu sacred word Aum and the Egyptian on. The fact that the m in the former word is the initial of some secret word, renders the conversion of it into n impossible, because it would thereby lose its signification.
The old Freemasons, misled by the authority of Saint Cyril, and by the translation of the name of the city into City of the Sun bv the Hebrews and the Greeks, very naturally supposed that on was the Egyptian sun-god, their supreme deity, as the sun always was, wherever he was worshiped. Hence, they appropriated that name as a sacred word explanatory of the Jewish Tetragrammaton. Brother Williamson points out here that "As to the Egyptian city of that name, the Egyptian name was used by the Jews (see Brown-Driver-Briggs Lezicon). The Greeks knew it as Heliopolis and could not have mistaken the city for a god" (see also Aum and Om).
ONECH.
The Hebrew word play The bird Phenix, named after Enoch or Phenoch. Enoch sig nifies initiation. The Phenix, in Egyptian mytho]Og; cal sculptures, as a bird, is placed in the mystical palm-tree. The Phenix is the representative of eternal and continual regeneration, and is the Holy Spirit which brooded as a dove over the face of the waters the dove of Noah and of Hasisatra or Nysuthrus (which see), which bore a sprig in its mouth.
ONTARIO.
The first Masonic meetings in Ontario were probably held by Lodge No. 156 attached to the Eighth Regiment of Foot at Fort Niagara between 1775 and 1780. On March 7, 1792, Brother William Jarvis was appointed Provincial Grand Master of Upper Canada by the "Antient" Grand Lodge of Canada. He angered the Brethren, however, by refusing to assemble the Grand Lodge at Niagara, and they met together in 1803 and elected Brother Forsyth Provincial Grand Master. The other Lodges in Ontario attended meetings of a Grand Convention under Brother Ziba M. Phillips during the years 1817 to 1822.
Harmony seemed in sight when Brother Simon McGillivray arrived in September of 1822 with authority to reorganize the Craft in Upper Canada. A second Provincial Grand Lodge was formed and met regularly from 1822 to 1830 when it became dormant owing to the Morgan excitement which even here had a widespread influence. In 1845 a Third Provincial Grand Lodge was organized and continued work until 1858.
A Grand Lodge was formed by Irish Lodges in 1853. After all these attempts at creating a governing body, finally, on October 10, 1855, the Grand Lodge of Canada was established at Hamilton by representatives of forty-one Lodges. Brother William Mercer Wilson was elected Grand Master. The Provincial Grand Lodge of England met and became an independent Grand Lodge in 1857. Next year, however, it united with the Grand Lodge of Canada. The Quebec Lodges withdrew in 1869 to form the Grand Lodge of Quebec and in 1886 the Grand Lodge of Canada added the words "in the Province of Ontario" to its title.
ONYX.
The word for this in Hebrew, Oaf, is pronounced Shohem. The second stone in the fourth row of the high priest's breastplate. It is of a bluish-black color, and represented the Tribe of Joseph.
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