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ORPHANS.
A brief paragraph in the Book of Constitutions edited by John Entick, M. A., 1756, announces January 31, 1738-9, the rejection of "a scheme for the placing out Mason's sons apprentices." This was proposed by John Boaman. His proposal is in the Rawlinson Manuscript C. 136, in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The proposition was to raise yearly three hundred and ten pounds for the carrying on and providing for twenty children of Masons and binding four to trades every year. Brother Boaman prepared a careful statement and asserted that "security given for the performance, if the Brethren cheerfully agree to pay only one-half penny a week each." The Royal Masonic Institution for Girls was proposed in 1788 by the Chevalier Bartholomew Ruspini, initiated at Bristol, April 7, 1762, in the Bush Lodge. Formal recogrution was extended to the School at the Quarterly Communication in February, 1790, by the Grand Lodge of the Moderns.

Freemasonry was introduced into Sweden from England about 1735 and seems to have taken great hold of the wealthy classes. In 1753 Swedish Lodges were anxious to commemorate the birth of a Princess of the royal house that sheltered them. They hit upon the plan of establishing an orphan asylum at Stockholm. An annual concert was organized for the benefit of this institution, and proved no less successful as a source of revenue than the great festival of the English School. In 1767 a great accession to the resources of the Swedish institution took place. In that year a wealthy merchant of Stoekholm, Johann Bohmann, a member of the Grand Lodge of Sweden, endowed it with three hundred thousand copper dollars. This sum is not quite as formidable as it seems. Thory, from whom we borrow the account, is careful to indicate that it represented only one hundred and thirty thousand francs, or about fiftytwo hundred pounds sterling (over twenty-five thousand dollars). There is an odd similarity between the names of the English Brother Boaman and the Swedish Brother Bohmann or Boman. The one sounds like an attempt to reproduce the other.

In 1778 the Queen of Sweden gave the Asylum an endowment of sixty dollars a year and the Burgomaster in Stockholm a like sum. The news of this patronage incited the Brethren of Gottemburg to emulate the beneficence of their Brethren at Stockholm and they too founded in 1756 a benevolent institution for children. This institution has adopted the plan of boarding out the children in selected families under proper supervision; a plan which has many advantages and which has worked satisfactorily under their painstaking-administration. Nor did this close the tale of Swedish benevolence towards the orphans of the Craft in those early days. In 1762 the Lodge Gustaf in Karlskrona founded there an orphanage with a section for Freemasons' children.
The Brethren of Stockholm have provided a magnificent home at Cnstineberg where they maintain an average of one hundred and forty orphans of the Craft.
"Sundry Brethren" in Dublin in 1792 formed themselves into a "Society for the schooling of the orphaned female children of distressed Masons." This received the recognition and the sanction of the Grand Lodge in 1795 and at the Communication of February, 1796, thanks were voted to the "worthy Brethren with whom the idea originated."

The Royal Masonic Institution for Boys was in 1798 projected by some English Brethren, members of the Grand Lodge of the Antients who planned a scheme "for clothing and educating the sons of indigent Freemasons."
The above information by Brother W. J. Chetwode Crawley is in the Christmas number of the Freemason, 1897, and is also in the Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge (pages 167 to 186, volume xxviii, 1910; see also Charity and Benevolence).
ORPHEUS.
There are no less than four persons to whom the ancients gave the name of Orpheus, but of these only one is worthy of notice as the inventor of the Mysteries, or, at least, as the introducer of them into Greece. The genuine Orpheus is said to have been a Thracian, and a disciple of Linus, who flourished when the kingdom of the Athenians was dissolved. From him the Thracian or Orphic Mysteries derived their name, because he first introduced the sacred rites of initiation and mystical doctrines into Greece. He was, according to fabulous tradition, torn to pieces by Ciconian women, and after his death he was deified by the Greeks.
The story, that by the power of his harmony he drew wild beasts and trees to him, has been symbolically interpreted, that by his sacred doctrines he tamed men of rustic and savage disposition. An abundance of fables has clustered around the name of Orpheus; but it is at least generally admitted by the learned, that he was the founder of the system of initiation into the sacred Mysteries as practised in Greece. The Grecian theology, says Thomas Taylor—himself the most Grecian of all moderns—originated from Orpheus, and was promulgated by him, by Pythagoras, and by Plato; by the first, mystically and symbolically; by the second, enigmatically and through images; and by the last, scientifically. The mysticism of Orpheus should certainly have given him as high a place in the esteem of the founders of the present system of Speculative Freemasonry as has been bestowed upon Pythagoras. But it is strange that, while thev delighted to call Pythagoras an "ancient friend and Brother," they have been utterly silent as to Orpheus.
ORPHIC MYSTERIES.
These rites were practised in Greece, and were a modification of the WIvstelies of Bacchus or Dionysus, and they were so called because their institution was falsely attributed to Orpheus. They were, however, established at a much later period than his era. Indeed, M. Freret, who has investigated this subject with much learning in the Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions (tome xxiii), regards the Orphics as a degenerate branch of the school of Pythagoras, formed, after the destruction of that school, by some of its disciples, who, seeking to establish a religious association, devoted themselves to the worship of Bacchus, with which they mingled certain Egyptian practices, and out of this mixture made up a species of life which they called the Orphic life, and the origin of which, to secure greater consideration, they attributed to Orpheus, publishing under his name many apocryphal works.

The Orphic rites differed from the other Pagau rites, in not being connected with the priesthood, but in being practised by a fraternity which did not pos sess the sacerdotal functions. The initiated eom memorated in their ceremonies, which were performed at night, the murder of Bacchus by the Titans and his final restoration to the supreme government of the universe, under the name of Phanes. Demos thenes, while reproaching Aeschines for having engaged with his mother in these Mysteries, gives us some notion of their nature.
In the day, the initiates were crowned with fennel and poplar, and carried serpents in their hands, or twined them around their heads, crying with a loud voice, Enos, Sabos, and danced to the sound of the mystic words, Hazes, Attes, Attes, Hyes. At night the mystes was bathed in the lustral water, and having been rubbed over with clay and bran, he was clothed in the skin of a fawn, and having risen from the bath, he exclaimed, "I have departed from evil and have found the good."

The Orphic poems made Bacchus identical with Osiris, and celebrated the mutilation and palingenesis, or second birth into a higher or better life, of that deity as a symbol teaching the resurrection to eternal life, so that their design was similar to that of the other Pagan Mysteries. The Orphic initiation, because it was not sacerdotal or priestly in its character, was not so celebrated among the ancients as the other Mysteries. Plato, even, calls its disciples charlatans. It nevertheless existed until the first ages of the Christian religion, being at that time adopted by the philosophers as a means of opposing the progress of the new revelation. It fell, however, at last, with the other rites of Paganism, a victim to the rapid and triumphant progress of the Gospel.
OSIRIS.
He was the chief god of the old Egyptian mythology, the husband of Isis, and the father of Horus. Jabloniski says that Osiris represented the sun only, but Plutarch, whose opportunity of knowing was better, asserts that, while generally considered as a symbol of the solar orb, some of the Egyptian philosophers ret arded him as a river god, and called him Nilus. But the truth is, that Osiris represented the male, active or generative, powers of nature; while Isis represented its female, passive or prolific, powers. Thus, when Osiris was the sun, Isis was the earth, to be vivified by his reys; when he was the Nile, Isis was the land of Egypt, fertilized by his overflow. Such is the mythological or mystical sense in which Osiris was received. Historically, he is said to have been a great and powerful king, who, leaving Egypt, traversed the world, leading a host of fauns or satyrs, and other fabulous beings in his train, actually an army of followers. He civilized the whole earth, and taught mankind to fertilize the soil and to perform the works of agriculture. We see here the idea which was subsequently expressed by the Greeks in their travels of Dionysus, and the wanderings of Ceres; and it is not improbable that the old Freemasons had some dim perception of this story, which they have incorporated, under the figure of Euclid, in their Legend of the Craft.
OSIRIS. MYSTERIES OF.
The Osirian Mysteries consisted in a scenic representation of the murder of Osiris by Typhon, the subsequent recovery of his mutilated body by Isis, and his deification, or restoration to immortal life. Julius Firmicus, in his treatise on the Falsity of the Pagan Religions, thus describes the object of the Osirian Mysteries: "But in those funerals and lamentations which are annually celebrated in honor of Osiris, the defenders of the Pagan rites pretend a physical reason. They call the seeds of fruit, Osiris; the earth, Isis; the natural heat, Typhon; and because the fruits are ripened bv the natural heat and collected for the life of man, and are separated from their natural tie to the earth, and are sown again when winter approaches, this they consider is the death of Osiris; but when the fruits, by the genial fostering of the earth, begin again to be generated by a new procreation, this is the finding of Osiris." This explanation does not essentially differ from that already given in the article on Egyptian Mysteries. The symbolism is indeed preeisely the same—that of a restoration or resurrection from death to life (see Egyptian Mysteries).
OTERFUT.
The name of the assassin at the west gate in the legend of the Third Degree, according to some of the advanced Degrees. Doctor Mackey said he had vainly sought the true meaning or derivation of this word, which is most probably an anagram of a name. It was, in his opinion, invented by the Stuart Freemasons, and refers to some person who was inimical to that party. Brother Mackenzie (Royal Masonic Cyclopedia) spells the word Oterpet but affords no further light upon its meaning. Another suggestion would be the Hebrew words Aw-tare, meaning maimed, and peh, -thah, meaning instantly.
OTIS, JAMES.
American statesman, born February 5, 1725; graduate of Harvard, 1743; inaugurated patriotic movement by famous trade relations speech in 1760; died May 23, 1783. Made a Freemason in Saint John's Lodge, March 11, 1752; Raised January 4, 1754, at Boston (see New Age, March, 1925; Beginnings of Freemuson7~y in America, Melvin M. Johnson, page 329; Builder, volume xi, page 51).
OTREB.
The pseudonym of the celebrated Rosicrucian Michael Maier, under which he wrote his book on Death and the Resurrection (see Maier).
OURIEL.
See Uriel.
OUT OF THE LODGE.
The Charges of a Freemason, compiled by Anderson from the Ancient Records, contain the regulations for the behavior of Freemasons out of the Lodge under several heads; as, behavior after the Lodge is over, when Brethren meet without strangers, in the presence of strangers, at home, and toward a strange Brother. Gädicke gives the same directions in the following words:

A Brother Freemason shall not only conduct himself in the Lodge, but also out of the Lodge, as a brother towards his brethren; and happy are they who are eonvinced that they have in this respect ever obeyed the laws of the Order.
OVAL TEMPLES.
The temple in the Druidical Mysteries was often of an oval form. As the oblong temple was a representation of the inhabited world, whence is derived the form of the Lodge, so the oval temple was a representation of the mundane egg, which was also a symbol of the world. The symbolic idea in both was the same.
OVERSEER.
The title of three officers in a Mark Lodge, who are distinguished as the Master, Senior, and Junior Overseer. The jewel of their office is a square. In Mark Lodges attached to Chapters, the duties of these officers are performed by the three Grand Masters of the Veils.
OX.
The 0x was the device on the banner of the Tribe of Ephraim. The ox on a scarlet field is one of the Royal Arch banners, and is borne by the Grand Master of the Third Veil.
OXNARD, THOMAS.
A prominent Freemason, Provincial Grand Master for North America, March 6, 1744 to June 25, 1754. Born 1703 in the Bishopric of Durham, England, and died in Boston, June 25, 1754. Brother Oxnard became a member of the First Lodge, Boston, on January 21, 1736, of which Lodge he was elected Master in 1736. He was one of the foremost founders of the Masters Lodge which came into existence January 2, 1739. Brother Oxnard was appointed Deputy Grand Master in 1739, succeeding Tomlinson as Grand Master. His Commission, dated September 23, 1743, was received in Boston March 6, 1744. His original Warrant specifically appoints Thomas Oxnard as Provincial Grand Master of North America and gives him full power to constitute Lodges in North America. Brother Oxnard was a most enthusiastic and energetic member of the Fraternity and constituted numerous Masonic Lodges in and around Boston Newfoundland, Rhode Island, Maryland, Connecticut, and elsewhere.
OYRES DE ORNELLAS, PRACAO.
A Portuguese gentleman, who was arrested as a Freemason, at Lisbon, in 1776, was thrown into a dungeon, where he remained fourteen months (see Alincourt).
OZEE.
Sometimes Osee. The acclamation of the Scottish Rite is so spelled in many French Cahiers. Properly Hoschea, which Delaunay (T'huileur, page 141) derives from the Hebrew word yfln, hossheah, deliverance, safety, or, as he says, a savior (but see Hoschea, where another derivation is suggested).
OZIAH.
The Hebrew word any; Latin, Fortitudo doming courage from above. A Prince of Judah, and the name of the Senior Warden in the Fifth Degree of the French Rite of Adoption.

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