PETERS, WILLIAM.
The Rev. William Peters was appointed Grand Portrait Painter to the Grand Lodge of England in 1813.
PETION FOR A CHARTER.
The next step in the process of organizing a Lodge, after the Dispensation has been granted by the Grand Master, is an application for a Charter or Warrant of Constitution. The application may be, but not necessarily, in the form of a Petition. On the report of the Grand Master, that he had granted a Dispensation, the Grand Lodge, if the new Lodge is recommended by some other, generally the nearest Lodge, will confirm the Grand Master's action and grant a Charter; although it may refuse to do so, and then the Lodge will cease to exist. Charters or Warrants for Lodges are granted only by the Grand Lodges in America, Ireland and Scotland. In England this great power is vested in the Grand Master. The Constitutions of the Grand Lodge of England say that "every application for a Warrant to hold a nest Lodge must be, by Petition to the Grand Master, signed by at least seven regularly registered Masons."
Although, in the United States, it is the general usage that a Warrant must be preceded by a Dispensation, yet there is no general law which would forbid the Grand Lodge to issue a Charter in the first place, no Dispensation having been previously granted. The rule for issuing Charters to Lodges prevails, with no modification in relation to granting them by Grand Chapters, Grand Councils, or Grand commanderies for the Bodies subordinate to them.
PETIT PALAIS.
Before the occupation of France by the Germans in World War II a number of French Anti-Masonic groups perfected a more or less unified organization for the express purpose of nullifying the influence of French Masonry before the invasion, and of preparing it for a quick destruction once their friends, the Germans, had arrived. One of the employed leaders of this organization was Bernard Fad, a gentleman who had published two books about Masonry for the American market. The scheme went forward like clockwork, and reached what was expected to be its grand climax in October, 1940, when the German and French Nazis working together opened a "vast" exposition of the "horrors and treacheries of Freemasonry" in the Petit Palace, Paris.
They first had sealed the entrances to the temple of the Grand Orient of France at 16 Cadet St., of the Grand Lodge of France at 8 Puteaux Street, and of the National Grand Lodge of France, at 42 Rochechouart Street. Some 200 laborers were forcibly impressed to remodel the Petit Palais, remove the regalia, furniture, records, pictures, etc., from the temples of the three Grand Bodies, and to reassemble them in the quarters for the exposition. The exposition was open for two months.
A number of persons were commandeered into going through an imitation of Masonic ceremonies, attired in regalia, though not with much enjoyment. It would be easy to state at a distance that the thing boomeranged and that the rank and nle of Frenchmen showed no interest or were bored when they attended, and it would be taken as an expression of resentment; but it happens in this case to have been literally true. To make up a show of interest the Boches took their own troops to the Palais by the lorry load; these looked, grinned, and gossiped among themselves, and were glad to get away. Any costume, even one of Mr. Goering's uniforms, or Mr. Hitler's trench coat, would look absurd if set up in a case, and was empty; Lodge costumes were even more ridiculous, and even less interesting.
PETITION FOR A DISPENSATION.
When it is desired to establish a new Lodge, application by Petition must be made to the Grand Master. This petition ought to be signed by at least seven Master Masons, and be recommended by the nearest Lodge; and it should contain the proposed name of the Lodge and the names of the three principal officers. This is the usage in the United States; but it must be remembered that the Grand Master's prerogative of granting Dispensations cannot be rightfully restricted by any law. Only should the Grand Master grant a Dispensation for a Lodge which, in its petition, had not complied with these prerequisites, it is not probable that, on subsequent application to the Grand Lodge, a Warrant of Constitution would be issued.
PETITION FOR INITIATION.
According to American usage any person who is desirous of initiation into the mysteries of Freemasonry must apply to the Lodge nearest to his place of residence, by means of a petition signed by himself, and recommended by at least two members of the Lodge to which he applies. The application of a Freemason to a Chapter, Council, or Commandery for advancement to higher Degrees, or of an unaffiliated Freemason for membership in a Lodge, is also called a Petition. For the rules that govern the disposition of these petitions, see Doctor Mackey's revised Jurisprudence of Freemasonry.
PETRE, LORD.
Lord Petre was elected Grand Master of the (1717) Grand Lodge of England in 1772, and was reselected for three other terms. Because he was a remarkable man himself, entitled for his own sake to be remembered, and because his tenure in office fell at a critical period in the Grand Lodge's affairs, his administration is a landmark in Masonic history, for American Masons as much as for British, because at least one of his actions (re. Preston) was to have in the not distant future consequences for American Masonry of the first importance.
Brother Petre was one of three Grand Masters who were Roman Catholics while in office—Grand Master Lord Ripon resigned the office when he became a convert. But it appears never to have occurred to him that his religion interfered, or could interfere, with his Freemasonry.
In 1772 he took the unprecedented step of giving Grand Lodge approval to a book not of an official kind, when in 1772 he officially sanctioned the publi cation of William Preston's Illustrations of Masonry —and the fact ought to have been kept in mind by R. F. Gould in those many pages of his History when he sought to discredit the book and to write domn its author. Had not Lord Petre thus approved the publication, Thomas Smith Webb would not have made use of it, and American Lodges very probably would not now be using the Webb-Preston Work. Lord Petre similarly officially approved a second edition in l 775. He also gave approval to William Hutchinson's Smrxt of Masonry, a book which Mackey introduced to a wide public in America in later years. Both books were advertised for sale in the Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of England in 1776.
Lord Petre appointed the first Grand Chaplain— the ill-fated and self-fated Rev. William Dodd. Ele laid the foundation-stone of the new Freemasons' Hall in 1775. He created the new office—to be short lived—of Grand Architect. Under him, the Grand Lodge ordained that no keeper of a public house could be a member of a Lodge meeting on his premises. The Grand Lodge established correspondence with the Grand Lodge of Germany. At the very end of his last term the Grand Lodge took its first official step against the Antient Grand Lodge, which had been established in London for twenty-five years, by forbidding Masons to visit its Lodges or receiving its members as visitors. The Resolution was harshly worded and presented by the then Grand Secretary, and was probably written by the latter; Antient Masons are described as " Persons " (an insulting word at the time) who are " calling themselves Antient Masons," of a "pretended" authority, "and at present said to be under the patronage of the Duke of Athol." (Why "said to be" when every Mason knew that it was?)
Lord Petre appeared in Grand Lodge for the last time in 1791. He died July 3, 1801; after his death it was discovered that he had expended each year in benevolence £5,000, a sum roughly equivalent at the present time to $75,000.
Notes. The Grand Seeretary's Bull of Eseommunication of 1777 against the Antients was destined to have its thunders proved as hollow as other Bulls of other vatieans; in only five years (1792) H. R. H. the Duke of Kent had himself made an Antient Mason in Canada, and had an Antient Provineial Grand Lodge set up there, although at the time he was a member of Modern Lodges in England; and did so as the first step in a plan he had made with his brother H. R. H. Duke of Sussex, to put an end to the unneeessary division in English Freemasonry, a project accomplished by them in 1813 at which time Kent was Antient Grand Master and Susses was Modern Grand Master. It is interesting to observe—if the digression is allowable—that during his four years, Lord Petre was our Grand Master, as much so as he was of Lodges in England so that the history of his and of preceding adrninistrations is our history; it is therefore extraordinarily difficult to explain why English historians, and almost with no exceptions omit so much as a reference to Provincial Grand Lodges and Lodges in Canada and America when writing their histories of the Grand Lodge and of the Craft!
PEUVRET, JEAN EUSTACHE.
An usher of the Parliament of Paris, and Past Master of the Lodge of Saint Pierre in Martinico, and afterward a dignitary of the Grand Orient at Franee. Peuvret was devoted to Hermetic Freemasonry, and acquired some reputation by numerous compilations on Masonic subjects. During his life he amassed a valuable library of mystical, alehemical, and Masonic bool;s, and a manuseript collection of eighty-one Degrees of Hermetic Freemasonry in six quarto volumes. He asserts in this work that the Degrees were brought from England and Scotland; but this Thory (Acta Latomorum 1, page 205) denies, and says that they were manufaetured in Paris. Peuvret's exceeding zeal without knowledge made him the victim of every charlatan who approached him. He died at Paris in 1800.
PFUSCHER.
German word meaning cowan.
PHAINOTELETIAN SOCIETY.
The French title is Societd Phaxnotelete. A Society founded at Paris, in 1840, by Louis Theordore Juge, the editor of the Globe, composed of members of all rites and Degrees, for the investigation of all non-political seeret associations of ancient and modern times. The title is taken from the Greek, and signifies literally the Society of the Explainers of the Mysteries of Initiation.
PHALLIC WORSHIP.
The Phallus was a sculptured representation of the membrum uirile, or male organ of generation. The worship of it is said to have originated in Egypt, where, after the murder of Osiris by Typhon, which is symbolically to be explained as the destruction or deprivation of the sun's light by night, Isis, his wife, or the symbol of nature, in the search for his mutilated body, is said to have found all the parts except the organs of generation. This myth is simply symbolic of the fact that the sun having set, its fecundating and invigorating power had ceased. The Phallus, therefore, as the symbol of the male generative principle, was very universally venerated among the ancients, and that, too, as a religious rite, without the slightest reference to any impure or lascivious application.
As a symbol of the generative principle of nature, the worship of the Phallus appears to have been very nearly universal. In the mysteries it was carried in solemn procession. The Jews, in their numerous deflections into idolatry, fell readily into that of this symbol. And they did this at a very early period of their history, for we are told that even in the time of the Judges (see Judges in, 7), they "served Baalim and the groves." Now the word translated, here and elsewhere, as groves, is in the original Asherah, and is by all modern interpreters supposed to mean a species of Phallus. Thus Movers (Die Phonizier, page 56) says that Asherah is a sort of Phallus erected to the telluric goddess Baaltes, and the learned Holloway (Originals i, page 18) had long before come to the same conclusion.
But the Phallus, or, as it was called among the Orientalists, the Lingam, the symbol under which, for example, the god Siva is worshiped in India, was a representation of the male principle only. To perfect the circle of generation, it is necessary to advance one step farther. Accordingly we find in the Cteis of the Greeks, and the Yoni of the Indians, a symbol of the female generative principle of coextensive prevalence with the Phallus. The Cteis was a circular and concave pedestal, or receptacle, on which the Phallus or column rested, and from the center of which it sprang.
The union of these two, as the generative and the producing principles of nature, in one compound figure, was the most usual mode of representation. Here we undoubtedly find the remote origin of the point within a circle, an ancient symbol which was first adopted by the old sun-worshipers, and then by the ancient astronomers, as a symbol of the sun surrounded by the earth or the universe—the sun as the generator and the earth as the producer—and afterward modified in its signification and incorporated as part of the symbolism of Freemasonry (see Point within a Circle).
PHALLUS.
Donegan says this word comes from an Egyptian or Indian root. More directly it comes from the Greek by way of Latin (see Phallic Worship) .
PHARAXAL.
A significant word in the advanced Degrees, and there said, in the old instructions to signify we shall all be united. Delaunay gives it as Pharas Rol, and says it means All is ezplained. If it is derived from w7g, and the adverbial i:, kol, meaning altogether, it certainly means not to be united, but to be separated, and has the same meaning as its cognate polkas This incongruity in the words and their accepted explanation has led Brother Pike to reject them both from the Degree in which they were originally found. And it is certain that the radical pal and phar both have everywhere in Hebrew the idea of separation. But Doctor Mackey's reading of the old rituals compelled him to believe that the Degree in which these words are found always contained an idea of separation and subsequent reunion. It is evident that there was either a blunder in the original adoption of the word pharazal, or more probably a corruption by subsequent copyists. He was satisfied that the ideas of division, disunion, or separation, and of subsequent reunion, are correct;' but he was also satisfied that the Hebrew form of this word is wrong.
PHARISEES.
A school among the Jews at the time of Christ, so called from the Aramaic Perushim, Separated, because they held themselves apart from the rest of the nation. They claimed to have a mysterious knowledge unknown to the mass of the people, and pretended to the exclusive possession of the true meaning of the Scriptures, by virtue of the oral law and the secret traditions which, having been received by Moses on Mount Sinai, had been transmitted to successive generations of initiates. They are supposed to have been essentially the same as the Assideans or Chasidim. The character of their organization is interesting to the Masonic student. They held a secret doctrine, of which the dogma of the resurrection was an important feature; they met in sodalities or societies, the members of which called themselves Chabirim, meaning fellows or associates; and they styled all who were outside of their mystical association, Yom Haharetz, or people of the land.
PHENICIA.
The Latinized form of the Greek word Phoinikia, from sooLvtt, a palm, because of the number of palms anciently, but not now, found in the country. A tract of country on the north of Palestine, along the shores of the Mediterranean, of which Tyre and Sidon were the principal cities. The researches of Gesenius and other modern philologers have confirmed the assertions of Jerome and Augustine, that the language spoken by the Sews and the Phenicians was almost identical; a statement interesting to the Masonic student as giving another reason for the bond which existed between Solomon and Hiram, and between the Jewish workmen and their fellow-laborers of Tyre, in the construction of the Temple (see Tyre).
Phenicia is in Syria, literally the land of the Surians or Tvrians, bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the west; Mount Lebanon on the east, a strip of land forming Phenicia proper being only some twentyeight miles long by a mile wide, with the famous cities of antiquit,v, Tyre and Sidon, the former at the north and the latter at the south of tips region. Phenicia in some estimates is given a larger territory, about 120 miles by 20. In any case the outstretched foreign importance of the people far exceeds the limited domestic area of their country Both Tyre, meaning frock, and Sidon, Fishery, are mentioned in Joshua (xix, 28, 29) as prominent places. There are several other allusions to them in the Bible.
The people were adventurous, their ships were on the Indian Ocean and the broad Atlantic, their energies extended to British coasts, Ceylon shores; for Xerxes at Salamis they furnished 300 ships; they earned the praise of Nenophon for naval architecture; Tyrian purple was the royal color, in mining and manufacturing they were accomplished pioneers. Their intercourse with the Israelites was typical and in the service of Solomon they were but exhibiting their customary zeal in commerce and founding further international goodvnill. Of their labors for David and Solomon in building the House of the Lord at Jerusalem we read in Second Samuel (v, 11) and First Kings (v, 1; vii, 13; iv, 11, 12). of the scope of their trade read Ezekiel (chapters xxvi, xxvii and xxviii). on the coast of Tyre and Sidon our Lord healed the woman of Canaan (Matthew xv, 21-8). Among many interesting items read "The ruined cities of Palestine east and west of the Jordan," Arthur W. Sutton, Journal, Victoria Institute (volume lii), also Smithsonuzn Report, 1923 (pages 509-11):
Sidon is not only the most aneient city of Phenicia but one of the oldest of the known cities of the world and is said by Josephus to have been built by Sidon, the eldest son of Canaan, and is mentioned with high praise by Homer in the Iliad, where he says that as early as in the Trojan war, the Sidonian mariners, having provoked the enmity of the Trojans, were by them despoiled of the gorgeous robes manufactured by Sidon's daughters, these being considered so valuable and precious as to propitiate the goddess of war in their favor. Sidon was renowned for its skill in arts, science, and literature, maritime commerce and arehiteeture; and according to Strabo, the Sidonians were celebrated for astronomy geometry, navigation, and philosophy.
Sidon was captured by Shalmaneser in 720 B.C., and it was again taken in 350 B.C. by Artaxerxes Ochus. It fell to Alexander the Great without a struggle, and afterwards came into possession successively of the Seleucidae and the Ptolemies. During the time of the Crusaders Sidon was four times taken, plundered, and dismantled. Excavations have revealed several rock-hewn tombs, with elaborately carved sarcophagi. The most celebrated is the sarcophagus of Alexander, which before the war was. in the mosque at Constantinople. He was certainly never buried in it. A sarcophagus was opened the other day at Sidon, full of fluid and containing a beautiful body in perfect preservation, but immediately it was lifted from the fluid it lost all shape.
The origin of Tyre is lost in the mist of centuries, and Isaiah says its "antiquity is of ancient days" (xxii, 7). Herodotus states it was founded about 2,300 years before his time, i.e., 2750 8.C. William of Tyre declares it was called after the name of its founder, "Tyrus, who was the seventh son of Japhet, the son of Noah." Strabo spoke of it as the most considerable city of all Phenicia. Sidon was certainly the more ancient city of the two, but Tyre by far the more celebrated and one of the greatest cities of antiquity. It was besieged by Nebuchadnezzar for 30 years. The siege of the eity by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. was the most remarkable and disastrous episode in the history of Tyre. The island city held out for seven months, but was finally captured by being united to the mainland by a mole formed of the stones, timber, and rubbish of old Tyre on the shore which were conveyed into position by the Grecian army.
In more modern times the city was taken by the Mohammedans, the lives and property of the inhabitants being spared on condition that there should be " no building of new ehurehes, no ringing of bells, no riding on horseback, and no insults to the Moslem religion." Tyre was retaken by the Christians in 1124, but once more fell into Moslem hands at the final collapse of the Crusades in 1291. It was then almost entirely destroyed and the plaee has never since recovered, though of late years there have been signs of a slight revival of eommeree, and the city is gradually becoming more populous. In the middle of the last century it had fallen so low that Hasselquist, a traveler, found but ten inhabitants in the place.
The ruins which are now found in the peninsula are those of Crusaders' or Saraeenic work. The city of the Crusaders lies several feet beneath the debris, and belovw that are the remains of the Mohammedan and early Christian Tvre. The aneient capital of the Phenicians lies far, far down beneath the superincumbent ruins.
PHENIX.
The old mythological legend of the phenir is a familiar one. The bird was described as of the size of an eagle, with a head finely crested, a body covered with beautiful plumage, and eyes sparkling like stars.
She was said to live six hundred years in the wilderness, when she built for herself a funereal pile of aromatic woods, which she ignited with the fanning of her wings, and emerged from the flames with a new life. Hence the phenix has been adopted universally as a symbol of immortality.
Godfrey Higgins (Anacalypsis ii, page 441) says that the phenix is the symbol of an ever-revolving solar cycle of six hundred and eight years, and refers to the Phenieian word phen, which signifies a cycle. Aumont, the first Grand Master of the Templars after the martyrdom of De Molay, and called the Restorer of the Order, took, it is said, for his seal, a phenix brooding on the flames, with the Latin motto, Ardet ut sivat, meaning She burns that she may live. The phenix was adopted at a very early period as a Christian symbol, and several representations of it have been found in the catacombs. Its ancient legend, doubtless, caused it to be accepted as a symbol of the resurrection.
PHILADELPHES, LODGE OF THE.
The name of a Lodge at Narbonne, in France, in which the Primitive Rite was first instituted; whence it is sometimes called the Rite of the Philadelphians (see Primitive Rite).
PHILADELPHES, RITE OF THE GRAND LODGE OF.
See Memphis, Rite of.
PHILADELPHIA.
Placed on the imprint of some Masonic works of the eighteenth century as a pseudonym or false name of Paris.
PHILADELPHIANS, RITE OF THE.
See Primitive Rite.
PHILALETHES, RITE OF THE.
Called also the Seekers of Truth, although the word literally means Friends of Truth. It was a Rite founded in 1773 at Paris, in the Lodge of Amis Reunis, by Savalette de Langes, Keeper of the Royal Treasury, with whom were associated the Vicomte de Tavannes, Court de Gebelin, M. de Sainte-Jamos, the President d'Hericourt, and the Prince of Hesse. The Rite, which was principally founded on the system of Martinism, did not confine itself to any particular mode of instruction, but in its reunions, called Contents, the members devoted themselves to the study of all kinds of knowledge that were connected with the occult sciences, and thus they welcomed to their association all who had made themselves remarkable by the singularity or the novelty of their opinions, such as Cagliostro, Mesmer, and Saint Martin. It was divided into twelve classes or chambers of instruction. The names of these classes or Degrees were as follows:
1. Apprentice;
2. Fellow Craft;
3. Master;
4. Elect;
5. Scottish Master;
6. Knight of the East;
7. Rose Croix;
8. Knight of the Temple;
9. Unknown Philosopher;
10. Sublime Philosopher;
11. Initiate;
12. Philalethes, or Searcher after Truth.
The first six Degrees were called Petty Masonry, and the last six High Masonry. The Rite did not increase very rapidly; nine years after its institution, it counted only twenty Lodges in France and in foreign countries which were of its obedience. In 1785 it attempted a radical reform in Freemasonry, and for this purpose invited the most distinguished Freemasons of all countries to a Congress at Paris. But the project failed, and Savalette de Langes dying in 1788, the Rite. of which he alone was the soul, ceased to exist, and the Lodge of Amis Reunis was dissolved.
PHILIP, DUKE OF WHARTON.
Born in England, 1698, of an illustrious family; received a splendid education and on June 25, 1722, was elected to succeed the Duke of Montague as Grand Master of Freemasons, Doetor Desaguliers acting as Deputy Grand Master. The Constitutions, 1723, has a frontispiece showing two figures understood to be the respective dukes, Montague presenting the Roll of Constitutions and the Compasses to Wharton. A year later he waived the custom of naming his sueeessor and left it to the Grand Lodge to make its own choice, the Earl of Dalkeith. The Earl named Doctor Desaguliers for his Deputy. On the question "that the Deputy nominated by the Earl of Dalkeith be approved," the motion was declared carried by a vote of forty-three to forty-two. Later in the proceedings, the Grand Master said he had some doubt upon this decision but was overruled. As a result the Duke of Wharton departed from the Hall without ceremony.
His interest in Freemasonry did not cease with the above experience. According to Lane's Masonic Records the Duke of Wharton in "his own Apartments in Madrid" founded the first "Warranted or constituted Lodge in Foreign Parts by the Grand Lodge of England." He pursued an inconsistent political career, in 1798 he joined the Roman Catholic Church, although he once wrote a poem with the lines "And give us grace for to defy the Devil and the Pope," made several attempts to assume active work for the Pretender, tried to reinstate himself with his Government, and, failing that, he again directed his pen against the English Parliament, which retaliated by outlawing him. Eventually reduced to poverty, having spent his large fortune recklessly, he died in the garb of a Franciscan monk in 1731, when but thirty-three years of age. Perhaps the most notable peculiarities of this able yet unstable exemplar of flieliering brilliance are best cataloged in the following suggestive lines from Alexander Pope's Moral Essays, Epistle 1:
- Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days,
- Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise;
- Born with whatever could win it from the wise,
- Women and fools must like him, or he dies
- Though wondering senates hung on all he spoke
- The club must hail him master of the joke....
- His passion still, to covet general praise,
- His life, to forfeit it a thousand ways;
- A constant bounty which no friend has made;
- An angel tongue, which no man can persuade
- A fool, with more of wit than half mankind,
- Too rash for thought, for action too refined;
- A tyrant to the wife his heart approves:
- A rebel to the king he loves
- He dies, sad outcast of each church and state,
- And, harder still! flagitious, yet not great,
- Ask you why Wharton broke through every rule?
- 'Twas all for fear the knaves should call him fool.
(See Lewis Melville's Philip, Duke of Wharton, 1913, John Lane; also R. F. Gould's Masonic Celebw rities, and an article by R I. Clegg, American Freemason, 1914, page 282.)
PHILIP IV.
Surnamed Le Bel, or the Fair, who ascended the throne of France in 1285. He is principally distinguished in history on account of his persecution of the Knights Templar. With the aid of his willing instrument, Pope Clement V, he succeeded in accomplishing the overthrow of the Order. He died in 1314, execrated by his subjects, whose hearts he had alienated by the cruelty, avarice, and despotism of his administration.
|
