PHILIPPIAN ORDER.
Finch gives this as the name of a secret Order instituted by King Philip "for the use only of his first nobility and principal officers, who thus formed a select and secret council in which he could implicitly confide." It has attracted the attention of no other Masonic writer, and was probably no more than the coinage of a charlatan's brain.
PHILIPPINE ISLANDS.
Brother Teodaro M. Kalaw, La Masoneria Filipina, mentions the claim that when the British captured Manila from Spain, 1762-4, a Lodge was established. In 1924 a speaker at the Masonic Temple, Manila, reported his researches at Seville, Spain, into letters from the Archbishop at Manila complaining that the British had at the above period held Masonic meetings in the Cathedral of Intramuros and that this profanation possibly unfitted the building for ecclesiastical uses.
There is therefore a probability of the Brethren among the European officers having constituted a Lodge. Brigadier-General Matthew Horne, second Provincial Grand Master, Coromandel Coast, was also an early visitor to the Philippines (see Proceedings, Grand Lodge, Philippines, Brother E. A. Perkins, 1927, pages 63-72). Documents show that in 1756 the Inquisition, Manila, tried two Irishmen, James O'Eennedy, merchant, and Edward Wigat, physician, OLs the charge that as Freemasons they were violating a Spanish roval decree but being under the protection of England they escaped with a reprimand. January 19, 1812, the Regency prohibited Freemasonry and in 1829 a shipment of Masonic books being discovered on a ship bound to Manila the regulations were made more strict.
Lodge Primera Luz Filipina (First Philippine Light) was established in 1856 by two naval lieutenants, Jose Malcamps y Monge and Casto Mendez Nufiez, chartered by the Gran Oriente Lusitano (Grand Orient of Portugal) and worked at Cavite. One of these lieutenants became Admiral and CaptainGeneral of the Philippines, the other, Nufiez was offered the position of Squadron Commander of the Spanish Fleet.
This Lodge did not admit Filipinos and soon another Lodge, mainly Germans, was organized and a Secretary of the Lodge, Jacobo Zobel y Zangronis, was probably the first Filipino to be initiated in the islands. The British established a Lodge and then the Spaniards organized one also admitting natives. Measures were adopted in 1893 to suppress the Craft and the Katipunan, a seditious secret society borrowing the general forms of Freemasonry, was suppressed severely and Freemasons suffered accordingly, many tortured and slain. December 30, 1896, Dr. Jose Rizal, a prominent Freemason, was shot by a firing squad at Manila. January 11, 1897, eleven other Craftsmen were shot there, one freemason unable to stand because of the dislocation of his limbs by torture.
Other executions occurred in various parts of the islands. After May 1, 1898, the American fleet under Admiral Dewey entered Manila Bay, old Lodges reopened, and Emilio Aguinaldo gave official recognition to the Craft. A Field Lodge of a North Dakota Regiment began work, August 21, 1898, Lieutenant Colonel W. C. Treumann, Worshipful Master. On October 10, 1901, Manila Lodge No. 342, Eugene E. Stafford of New York, as Worshipful Master, was organized by the Grand Lodge of California and in two years Cavite Lodge No. 350, and later Corregidor Lodge No. 386. Then a Lodge Perla del Oriente (Pearl of the East) No. 1043 at Manila and a Lodge at Cebu, were chartered by the Grand Lodge of Scotland. On December 19, 1912, the Grand Lodge was organized by the Californian Bodies and were later joined by others. In 1910 Mount Arayal Lodge of Perfection under the Supreme Council, Southern Jurisdiction, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, was established at Manila, a Lyceum with Judge Charles S. Lobingier as Preceptor being founded there in 1908, and in 1911, Manu Chapter, Confucius Council, and Guatama Consistory came into existence, and were followed by others (see Masonry in the Philippines, in New Age, by Leo Fischer, September, 1927, pages 543-8).
PHILO.
The name among the Illuminati by which Baron von Enigge was known (see Enigge).
PHILOCOREITES, ORDER OF.
An androgynous, both sexes, secret society established in the French army in Spain, in 1808. The members were called Knights and Ladxes Philocoreites, or Lovers of Pleasure. It was not Masonic in character. But Thory has thought it worth a long description in his History of the Foundation of the Grand Orient of France.
PHILO JUDAEUS.
A Jewish philosopher of the school of Alexandria, who was born about thirty years before Christ. Philo adopted to their full extent the mystical doctrines of his school, and taught that the Hebrew Scriptures contained, in a system of allegories, the real source of all religious and philosophical knowledge, the true meaning of which was to be excluded from the vulgar, to whom the literal signification alone was to be made known. Whoever, says he, has meditated on philosophy, has purified himself by virtue, and elevated himself by a contemplative life to God and the intellectual world, receiving their inspiration, thus pierces the gross envelop of the letter, and is initiated into mysteries of which the literal instruction is but a faint image. A fact, a figure, a word, a rite or custom, veils the profoundest truths, to be interpreted only by him who has the true key of science. Such symbolic views were eagerly seized by the early inventors of the advanced, philosophical Degrees of Freemasonry, who have made frequent use of the esoteric philosophy of Philo in the construction of their Masonic system.
PHILO-MUSICAE SOCIETY, ETC.
As stated in the paragraph on page 772 the Philo-Musicae Et Architecturae Apolloni Society was established by a small group of Freemasons who were lovers of music and architecture early in 1725. A copy of the Minutes was presented by John Henderson, of London, to the British Museum in 1859, and is now listed as Add. Its. No. 23202. Quatuor Coronati Lodge published a reprint of it in Quatuor Coronatorum Antigrapha; Vol. IX; 1900; edited by its Secretary, G. W. Speth, and with a critical Introduction by the erudite Bro. W. Harry Rylands. In the Records the Society (or Lodge) describes itself as having been formed Feb. 18, 1725, at the Queen's Head near Temple Barr. Lane's List of Lodges (Revised Edition) gives the Lodge as at Hollis-Street Oxford-Square, and in a foot-note the Grand Lodge's own list is quoted as having added to that entry: "Ditto, [i.e. Queen's Head] Temple Barr, Philo-Musicae et Architecturae Societas. Every other Thursday from St. John Baptist." It is difficult to know whether this was a society within the Lodge; or a separate society meeting in the same room; etc. The founders were members of the Queen's Head, but during the Society's two years of existence it itself, and acting as a Lodge, "made" eighteen Masons. This small Society with its two years of existence would have attracted very little attention from Masonic historians did not its Minutes appear to show that in 1725 it was conferring two Degrees in addition to the Entered Apprentice Degree. If the latter of these two was the Master Mason Degree the Philo-Musicae Minute is one of the two oldest written records of a Third Degree. (Bro. Robert F. Gould discussed the Minute at length in a paper published in Ars Quatuor Coronstorum, in 1903, later included in his CoUected Essatys and Papers Relating to Freemusonry; William Tait; 1913; Ch. XIII.)
PHILO-MUSICAE ET ARCHITECTURAE SOCIETAS.
An organization founded in London, February 18, 1725, and terminating March 23, 1727. A complete Minute-booL: of this society is in the possession of the British Museum, having been reprinted by the Quatuor Coronati Lodge due to the information contained therein as to the Degrees conferred by Freemasons during that period. This was a musical society primarily, but no members were admitted who were not Freemasons, the society itself, as was the praetise before the formation of the English Grand Lodge in 1717, frequently performing Masonic ceremonies, conferring Degrees, etc. Naturally after 1717 this custom was objected to by the Grand Lodge and in 1725 the Duke of Richmond, then Grand Master, protested against this irregularity. In spite of this, however, the society continued to meet until 1727.
PHILOSOPHER, CHRISTIAN.
The French title is Philosophe Chretien. The Fourth Degree of the Order of African Architects.
PHILOSOPHER, GRAND AND SUBLIME HERMETIC.
In Freneh, Grand et Sublime Philosophe Hermetique. A Degree in the manuscript collection of Peuvret. Twelve other Degrees of Philosopher were contained in the same collection, namely, Grand Neapolitan Philosopher, Grand Practical Philosopher, Cabalistic Philosopher, Cabalistic Philosopher to the Number 5, Perfect Mason Philosopher, Perfect Master Philosopher, Petty Neapolitan Philosopher, Petty Practical Philosopher, Sublime Philosopher, Sublime Philosopher to the Number 9, and Sublime Practical Philosopher. They are probably all Cabalistic or Herrnetic Degrees.
PHILOSOPHER OF HERMES.
In French, Philosophe d'Herrnts. A Degree contained in the Archives of the Lodge of Saint Louis des Amis Reunis at Calais.
PHILOSOPHER, SUBLIME.
The French title is Sublime Philosophe and alludes to two grades.
1. The Fifty-third Degree of the Rite of Mizraim.
2. The Tenth Class of the Rite of the Philalethes.
PHILOSOPHER, SUBLIME UNKNOWN.
In French, Sublime Philosophe Inconnu. The Seventyninth Degree of the Metropolitan Chapter of France.
PHILOSOPHER, THE LITTLE.
The title in French is Le petit Philosophe. A Degree in the collection of Pyron.
PHILOSOPHER, UNKNOWN.
In French the title is Philosophe Inconnu. The Ninth Class of the Rite of the Philalethes. It was so called in reference to Saint Martin, who had adopted that title as his pseudonym, or false name and was universally known by it among his disciples.
PHILOSOPHER'S STONE.
It was the doctrine of the Alchemists, that there was a certain mineral, the discovery of which was the object of their art, because, being mixed with the baser metals, it would transmute these into gold. This mineral, known only to the adepts, they called Lapis Philosophorum, or the philosopher's stone.
Hitchcock, who wrote a book in 1857 on Alchemy and the Alchemists, to maintain the proposition that Alchemy was a symbolic science, that its subject was Man, and its object the perfection of rnen, asserts that the philosopher's stone was a symbol of man. He quotes the old Hermetic philosopher, Isaac Holland, as saying that "though a man be poor, yet may he very well attain unto it—the work of perfection—and may be employed in making the philosopher's stone." Hitchcock (on page 76) in commenting on this, says: "That is, every man, no matter how humble his vocation, may do the best he can in his place—may 'love mercy, do justly, and walk humbly with God'; and what more doth God require of any man?" If this interpretation be correct, then the philosopher's stone of the Alchemists, and the spiritual temple of the Freemasons are identical symbols (see Alchemy).
PHILOSOPHIC DEGREES.
All the Degrees of the ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite above the Eighteenth and below the Thirty-third are called Philosophic Degrees, because, abandoning the symbolism based on the Temple, they seek to develop a system of pure theosophy. Some writers have eontended that the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Degrees should be classed with the Philosophic Degrees. But this is not correct, since both of those Degrees have preserved the idea of the Temple system. They ought rather to be called Apocalyptic Degrees, the Seventeenth Degree more especially, because they do not teach the ancient philosophies, but are connected in their symbolism with Saint John's spiritual temple of the New Jerusalem.
PHILOSOPHIC SCOTTISH RITE.
This Rite consists of twelve Degrees, as follows:
1, 2, 3. Knight of the Black Eagle or Rose Croix of Heredom, divided into three parts;
4. Knight of the Phenix;
5. Knight of the Sun;
6. Knight of the Rainbow;
7. True Mason;
8. Knight of the Argonaut;
9. Knight of the Golden Fleece;
10. Perfectly Initiated Grand Inspector;
11. Grand Scottish Inspector;
12. Sublime Master of the Luminous Ring.
The three Degrees of Ancient Craft Masonry form the necessary basis of this system, although they do not constitute a part of the Rite. In its formation it expressly renounced the power to constitute Symbolic Lodges, but reserved the faculty of affiliating regularly constituted Lodges into its high Degrees. Thory (Foundation of the Grand Orient, page 162) seems desirous of tracing the origin of the Rite to the Rosicrucians of the fourteenth century. But the reasons which he assigns for this belief are by no means satisfactory.
The truth is, that the Rite was founded in 1775, in the celebrated Lodge of the Soeial Contract, in French, Contrat Social, and that its principal founder was M. Boileau, a physician of Paris, who had been a disciple of Pernetti, the originator of the Hermetic Rite at Avignon, whose Hermetic principles he introduced into the Philosophic Seottish Rite. Some notion may be formed of the nature of the system which was taught in this Rite, from the name of the Degree which is at its summit. The Luminous Ring is a Pythagorean Degree. In 1780, an Academy of the Sublime Masters of the Luminous Ring was established in Franee, in which the doctrine was taught that Freemasonry was originally founded by Pythagoras, and in which the most important portion of the lectures was engaged in an explanation of the peculiar dogmas of the Sage of Samos.
The chief seat of the Rite had always been in the Lodge of Social Contract until 1792, when, in common with all the other Masonic Bodies of France, it sus~pended its labors. It was resuscitated at the termination of the Revolution, and in 1805 the Lodge of the Social Contract, and that of Saint Alexander of Scotland, assumed the title of the Mother Lodge of the Philosophic Scottish Rite in France. This body was eminently literary in its character, and in 1811 and 1812 possessed a mass of valuable archives, among which were a number of old charters, manuscript rituals, and Masonic works of great interest, in all languages.
PHILOSOPHUS.
The Fourth Grade of the First Order of the Society of Rosicrucians, as practised in Europe and the United States.
PHILOSOPHY SUBLIME.
In French, Philosophie Sublime. The Forty-eighth Degree of the Rite of Mizraim.
PHILOSOPHY OF FREEMASONRY.
lectures on the Philosophy of FreeJnasonry, by Roscoe Pound, former Dean of the Law School, Harvard University, presents the philosophy of Freemasonry in the form of a series of chapters on each of four typical Masonic thinkers: William Preston, Karl C. F. Krause, the Rev. George Oliver, and Albert Pike; and concludes with a chapter in which he develops a theory of his own in the terms of Pragmatism. His method is to reduce the problem to "three fundamental questions . . . What is the end (purpose or goal) of Masonry? How does Masonry seek to achieve its end? What are the fundamental principles by which Masonry is governed in achieving its task?" These four Masonic philosophies, he makes clear, are typical only and not exhaustive of the line of thinkers who belong to the succession of Masonic philosophers, and the list could have included such names as Calcott, Albert G. .NIackey, Simon Greenleaf, H. J. Whymper, Charles Broekwell, William Hutchinson, H. P. Bromwell, Jethre Inwood. A. E. Waite, W. L. Wilmshurst, J. F. Newton, etc.
A work which discusses the contents of Masonic philosophy in non-technical form, entitled The Great Teachings of Masonry, by H. L. Haywood, suggests that to the schools of philosophy expounded by Pound should be added at least two others: the historical school, which holds "that the unfolding story of Masonry is a gradual revelation of the nature of Masonry "; and the school of Masonic mysticism according to which " our Order is an instituted form of mysticism, in the ceremonies and symbols of which men may find, if they care to follow them, the roads that lead to a direct and firsthand experience of God."
One of the difficult questions to answer about Freemasonry is, Where is it? In what particular thing do you find it? It is very old, because as the Old Churges prove present day Lodges have descended in an unbroken line from Fourteenth Century Lodges and those Lodges in turn (their members were very conscious of Masonry's antiquity) had descended from the Twelfth Century. As it spread from one country to another Freemasonry diversified itself, so that the Freemasonry of Sweden differs from that of France which in turn differs from that of America, and so forth. At the end of the Eighteenth Century the Fraternity further diversified itself by expanding from within in the form of four new and independent branches: Capitular Masonry, Cryptic Masonry, Templarism, and the Scottish Rite.
These Rites, in turn, are divided into some forty Degrees, each Degree is divided into sections in each section are rites, symbols, charges, obligations, etc. Meanwhile, there are in the United States forty-nine Grand Lodges, each sovereign and sole within its jurisdiction; each of these has Constitutions and Statutes in the form of a printed Code, and governs itself according to a set of unwritten laws called Ancient Landmarks. In no time or place does this world-wide Fraternity publish or propound a written creed or set of doctrines; Freemasonry does not define itself. The answer to the question, What is Freemasonry? can therefore be found only by grasping the whole of this great complex of men and activities, extending through centuries in time and over many countries in space; to have the ability thus to grasp and to understand it requires that a man shall possess such a mass of knowledge of history, laws, rites, symbols, Landmarks, literature as is possible to a few men only.
The endeavor to answer the question, What is Freemasonry? by the use of those means is Masonic Philosophy.
PHYLACTERIES.
The second fundamental principle of Judaism is the wearing of phylacteries; termed by some writers Tataphoth, or ornaments, and refer to the law and commandments, as "Bind them about thy neck; write them upon the table of thine head" (Proverbs ini, 3; vi, 21, and viii, 3). The phylacteries are worn on the forehead and arm, and are called in Hebrew Tephillin, from Palal, meaning to pray. These consist of two leathern boxes. One contains four compartments, in which are enclosed four portions of the law written on parchment and carefully folded. The box is made of leather pressed upon bloeks of wood specially prepared, the leather being well soaked in water.
The following passages of the Law are sewn into it: Exodus xiii, 1-10, 11-16. Deuteronomy vi, 4-9; xi, 13-21. On this box is the letter if, pronounced shin, with three strokes for the right side, and the same letter with four strokes for the left side of the wearer. The second box has but one compartment, into which the same passages of Scripture are sewed w ith the sinews of animals, specially prepared for this object. The phylacteries are bound on the forehead and arm by long leathern straps.
The straps on the head must be tied in a knot shaped like the letter is, daleth. The straps on the arm must go round it seven times, and three times round the middle finger, with a small surplus over in the form of the letter as, yod. Thus we have the Shaddai, or Almighty. The phylacteries are kept in special bags, with greatest reverence, and the Rabbis assert "that the single precept of the phylacteries is equal to all the commandments."
PHYSICAL QUALIFICATIONS.
The physical qualifications of a candidate for initiation into Freemasonry may be considered under the three heads of Sex, Age, and Bodily Conformation.
1. Sex. It is a landmark that the candidate shall be a man. This, of course, prohibits the initiation of a woman.
2. Age. The candidate must, say the Old Regulations, be of "mature and discreet age." The Masonic instructions forbid the initiation of an "old man in his dotage, or a young man under age." The man who has lost his faculties by an accumulation of vears, or not vet acquired them in their full extent by immaturity of age. is equally incapable of initiation (see Dotage and Mature Age).
3. Bodily Conformation. The Gothic Constitutions of 926, or what is said to be that document, prescribe that the candidate ';must be without blemish, and have the full and proper use of his limbs"; and the Charges of 1722 say "that he must have no maim or defect in his body that may render him incapable of learning the art, of serving his Master's Lord, and of being made a Brother" (see Constitutions, 1723, page 51). And although a fess jurists have been disposed to interpret this law with unauthorized laxity, the general spirit of the Institution, and of all its authorities, is to observe it rigidly (see the subject fully discussed in Doctor Mackey's revised Jurisprudence of Freemasonry)
PICART'S CEREMONIES.
Bernard Picart was a celebrated engraver of Amsterdam, and the author of a voluminous work, which was begun in 1723, and continued after his death, until 1737, by J. F. Bernard, entitled Ceremonies Religieuses de to us les peu pies du monde, Religious Cereinonies of All the People of the World. A second edition was published at Paris, in 1741, by the Abb6s Banier and Le Mascrier, who entirely remodeled the work; and a third in 1783 by a set of free-thinkers, who disfigured, and still further altered the text to suit their own views. Editions, professing to be reprints of the original one, have been subsequently published in 1807-9 and in 1816. The book has been more recently deemed of some importance by the investigators of the Masonic history of the eighteenth century, because it contains an engraved list in two pages of the English Lodges which were in existence in 1735. The plate is, however, of no value as an original authority, since it is merely a copy of the Engraved List of Lodges, published by J. Pine in 1735.
PICKAX.
An instrument used to loosen the soil and prepare it for digging. It is one of the Workingtools of a Roval Areh Mason, and svmbolieallv teaches him to loosen from his heart the hold of evil habits.
PIECE OF ARCHITECTURE.
In French, the title is Morfeau d'Architecture. The French so call a discourse, poem, or other production on the subject of Freemasonry. The definition previously given in this work under the title Architecture, if confined to Lodge Minutes, would not be sufficiently inclusive.
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