WHARTON, PHILIP, DUKE OF.
See Philip, Duke of Wharton.
WHEAT.
An emblem of plenty under the name of Corn (see Corn, Wine, and Oil).
WHITE BALL.
In Freemasonry, equivalent to a favorable or affirmative vote. The custom of using white and black balls seems to have been derived from the Romans, who in the earlier days of the Republic used white and black balls in the judicial trials; the balls were cast into an urn, the former acquitting and the latter condemning the accused.
WHITE CROSS KNIGHTS.
A title sometimes applied to the Knights Hospitaler of Saint John, from the color of their cross. Porter (History of the Knighis of Malta i, page 166) says: "Villiers hastily assembled a troop of White Cross Knights, and, issuing from the city by a side gate, made a circuit so as, if possible, to fall upon the flank of the foe unperceived."
WHITE MANTLE, ORDER OF THE.
The Teutonic Knights were so denominated in allusion to the color of their cloaks, on which they bore a black cross.
WHITE MASONRY.
The French term is Mançonnerie blanches A title given by French writers to Female Freemasonry, or the Freemasonry of Adoption.
WHITE SHRINE OF JERUSALEM, ORDER OF.
Founded by Charles D. Magee, at Chicago, Illinois, in 1894. The Order comprises both men and women, who must be members in good standing of the Order of the Eastern Star. The White Shrine was not recognized, however, as a branch of the l)rder of the Eastern Star. During the term of her office as Most Worthy Grand Matron of the Order of the Eastern Star, 1892 to 1895, Mrs. Mary C. Snedden refused her approval and this position was endorsed by the General Grand Chapter in 1895 and in 1898 Resolutions were adopted as follows:
Resolved, that there are no Degrees connected in any way or manner with our Order other than those provided for and taught in our Ritual. Any member vfilfully representing to any one that there are Side Degreesj or Higher Degrees, or any Degrees other than those taught and provided for by our Ritual, shall he guilty of conduct unbecoming a member of the Order, and upon conviction thereof, shall be suspended or expelled from the Order.
WHITE STONE.
A symbol in the Mark Degree referring to the passage in the Apocalypse (ii 17)
"To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it." In this passage it is supposed that the Evangelist alluded to the stones or tesserae which, among the ancients and the early Christians, were used as tokens of alliance and friendship. Hence in the Mark Degree, the white stone and the new name inscribed upon it is a symbol of the Covenant made between the possessors of the degree, which will in all future time, and under every circumstance of danger or distress, secure the kind and fraternal assistance of all upon whom the same token has been bestowed. In the symbolism of the degree the candidate represents that white stone upon whom the new name as a Mark Master is to be inscribed (see Mark and Tessera Hospitalis).
WHITE, WILLIAM.
Father of William Henry White, which see. He was Grand Secretary of the Moderns, with James Heseltine, from November 1, 1780, and was sole Grand Secretary for many years following 1784. May 9, 1810, his son was appointed Junior or Adjoint Grand Secretary, father and son working together for several years. William White, Senior, was initiated in the Royal Somerset House and Iverness Lodge, Mareh 8, 1770, and was Senior Warden of the Emulation Lodge, December 21, 1770, and Master of Lodges, 1771, 72, 74 and 77, founding a Lodge of Instruction in Emulation Lodge during the term of his office. He was Worshipful Master of the Grand Stewards Lodge in 1780, and previously, 1775, Seeretary of the Board of Grand Stewards.
WHITE, WILLIAM HENRY.
Distinguished for his services to the Craft of England, whom he served as Grand Seeretary for the long period of forty-seven years. He was the son of William White, who was also Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of England for thirty-two years, the office having thus been held by father and son for seventy-nine years. William Henry White was born in 1778. On April 15, 1799, he was initiated in Emulation Lodge, No. 12, now called the Lodge of Emulation, No. 21, having been nominated by his father. December 15, 1800, he was elected Master of the Lodge, and presided until 1809. In 1805 he was appointed a Grand Steward, and in 1810 Grand Secretary, as the assistant of his father.
The office was held by them conjointly for three years. In 1813, at the union of the two Grand Lodges, he was appointed, with Edwards Harper, Joint Grand Seeretary of the United Grand Lodge of England, and in 1838 sole Grand Secretary. In 1857, af ter a service of nearly half a century, he retired from the office, the Grand Lodge unanimously voting him a retiring pension equal in amount to his salary. On that occasion the Earl of Zetland, Grand Master, said, "I know of no one, and I believe there never was anyone who has done more, who has rendered more valuable services to Masonry than our worthy Brother White."
In view of the great names in Masonic literature and labor which preceded him, the eulogium will be deemed exaggerated; but the devotion of the Grand Seeretary to the Order. and his valuable services during his long and active life, cannot be denied. During the latter years of his official term, he was charged with inactivity and neglect of duty, but the fault has been properly attributed to the increasing infirmities of age. A service of plate was presented to him by the Craft, June 20, 1850, as a testimonial of esteem. He died April 5, 1866.
WIDE AWAKES.
See Free and Accepted Americans.
WIDOW, SONS OF THE.
A Society founded in the third century, by a Persian slave, Manes, who had been purchased and adopted by a widow. It consisted of two Degrees, Auditor and Elut. The expression is also frequent in some countries, as in France, to mean Freemasons, Hiram Abif being the Son of a Widow.
WIDOW'S SON.
In Ancient Craft Masonry, the title applied to Hiram, the architect of the Temple, because he is said, in the first Book of Kings (vu, 14) to have been "a widow's son of the tribe of Naphtali." The Adonhiramite Freemasons have a tradition which Chapron gives (Nécessaire Maçonnique, page 101) in the following words: "The Freemasons call themselves the widow's sons, because, afte the death of our respectable Master, the Freemasons took care of his mother, whose children they called themselves, because Adonhiram had always considered them as his Brethren. But the French Freemasons subsequently changed the myth and called themselves Sons of the Widow, and for this reason.
'As the wife of Hiram remained a widow after her husband was murdered, the Freemasons, who regard themselves as the descendants of Hiram, called themselves Sons of the Widow."' But this myth is a pure invention, and is without the Seriptural foundation of the York myth, which makes Hiram himself the widow's son. But in Freneh Freemasonry the term Son of the Widow is synonymous with Freemason.
The claim has often been made that the adherents of the exiled House of Stuart, seeking to organize a system of political Freemasonry by which they hoped to secure the restoration of the family to the throne of
England, transferred to Charles II the tradition of Hiram Abif betrayed by his followers, and called him the Widow's Son, because he was the son of Henrietta Maria, the widow of Charles I. For the same reason they presumably subsequently applied the phrase to his brother, James II.
WIFE AND DAUGHTER, FREEMASON'S.
See Freemason's Wife and Daughter.
WILHELMSBAD, CONGRESS OF.
At Wilhelmsbad, near the city of Hanau in Hesse-Cassel, was held the most important Masonic Gongress of the eighteenth century. It was convoked by Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, Grand Master of the Order of Strict Observance, and was opened July 16, 1782. Its duration extended to thirty sessions, and in its discussions the most distinguished Freemasons of Germany were engaged. Neither the Grand Lodge of Germany, nor that of Sweden, was represented; and the Grand Lodge of the Three Globes, at Berlin, sent only a letter: but there were delegates from Upper and Lower Germany, from Holland, Russia, Italy, France, and Austria; and the Order of the Illuminati was represented by the Baron von Knigge.
It is not therefore surprising that the most heterogeneous opinions were expressed. Its avowed object was the reform of the Masonic system, and its disentanglement from the confused mass of Rites and advanced Degrees with which Freneh and German pretenders or enthusiasts had been for years past overwhelming it. Important topics were proposed, such as the true origin of Speeulative Freemasonry, whether it was merely conventional and the result of modern thought, or whether it was the offspring of a more ancient order, and, if so, what was that order; whether there were any Superiors General then existing and who these unknown Superiors were, etc.
These and kindred questions were thoroughly discussed, but not defined, and the Congress was eventually closed without coming to any other positive determination than that Freemasonry was not essentially connected with Templarism, and that, contrary to the doctrine of the Rite of Striet Observance, the Freemasons were not the successors of the Knights Templar. The real effect of the Congress of Wilhelmsbad was the abolition of that Rite, which soon after drooped and died.
WILL.
In some of the Continental Rites, and in certain advanced Degrees, it is a custom to require the recipiendary to make, before his initiation, a will and testament, exhibiting what are his desires as to the distribution of his property at his decease. The object seems to be to add solemnity to the ceremony, and to impress the candidate with the thought of death. But in the opinion of Brother Mackey it would seem to be a custom which would be "more honored in the breach than the observance." It is not practised in the York and American Rites.
WILLIAM I, EMPEROR OF GERMANY.
Born 1797, died 1888. An honorary member of the Grand Lodge of Scotland and Protector of Freemasonry in Germany, his son, the Crown Prince, later Emperor Frederick III, being Deputy-Protector.
WILLIAM IV, KING OF ENGLAND.
Raised a Freemason on March 9, 1786, in Lodge No. 86, Plymouth, England (see New Age, March, 1925).
WILLIAM OF WYKEHAM.
See Wykeham, William of.
WILSON, GAVIN.
Poet, published some Masonic songs in 1788.
WILSON MANUSCRIPT.
In the marginal notes to the ManiJesto of the Lodge of Antiquity, published in 1778, there is reference to an "O. (probably meaning old or original) Manuscript in the hands of Mr. Wilson of Broomhead, near Sheffield, Yorkshire written in the reign of King Henry VIII." It seems, from the context, to have been cited as authority for the existence of a General Assembly of the Craft at the city of york.
WILSON, STEPHEN BARTON.
Masonic Ritualist. Head of Emulation Lodge of Improvement, London, thirty years; Junior Grand Deacon in 1857; died, 1866.
WINDING STAIRS.
In the First Book of Kings (vi, 8) it is said: "The door for the Middle Chamber was in the right side of the house; and they went up with winding stairs into the Middle Chamber, and out of the middle into the third." From this passage the Freemasons of the eighteenth century adopted the symbol of the Winding Stairs, and introduced it into the Fellow Craft's Degree, where it has ever since remained, in the American Rite. In one of the higher Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite the Winding Stairs are called cochleus, which is a corruption of cochlis, a spiral staircase.
The Hebrew word is lulim, from the obsolete root lug, to roll or wind. The whole story of the Winding Stairs in the Second Degree of Freemasonry is a mere myth, without ansr other foundation than the slight allusion in the Book of Kings which has been just cited, and it derives its only value from the symbolism taught in its legend (see Middle Chamber and Winding Stairs, Legend of the).
WINDING STAIRS, LEGEND OF THE.
Doctor Mackey says that he formerly so fully investigated the true menmllg of the Legend of the Winding Stairs, as taught in the Degree of Fellow Craft, that he could later find nothing to add to what he had already said in his work on The Symbolism of Freemasonry. He might, in writing a new article, change the language, but he could furnish no new idea. He did not, therefore, hesitate to transfer much of what he had said on this subject in that work to the present article. It is an enlargement and development of the meager explanations given in the ordinary lecture of Webb.
In an investigation of the symbolism of the Winding Stairs, we shall be directed to the true explanation by a reference to their origin, their number, the objects which they recall, and their termination, but above all by a consideration of the great design which an ascent upon them was intended to accomplish. The steps of this winding staircase commenced, we are informed, at the porch of the Temple; that is to say, at its very entrance. But nothing is more undoubted in the science of Masonic symbolism than that the Temple was the representative of the world purified by the Shekinah, or the Divine Presence. The world of the profane is without the Temple; the world of the initiated is within its sacred walls. Hence to enter the Temple, to pass within the porch, to be made a Freemason, and to be born into the world of Masonic light are all synonymous and convertible terms. Here then, the symbolism of the Winding Stairs begins.
The Apprentice, having entered within the porch of the Temple, has begun his Masonic life. But the First Degree in Freemasonry, like the lesser mysteries of the ancient systems of initiation, is only a preparation and purification for something higher. The Entered Apprentice is the child in Freemasonry. The lessons which he receives are simply intended to cleanse the heart and prepare the recipient for that mental illumination which is to be given in the succeeding Degrees.
As a Fellow Craft, he has advanced another step, and as the Degree is emblematic of youth, so it is here that the intellectual education of the candidate begins.
And therefore, here, at the very spot which separates the porch from the sanctuary, where childhood ends and manhood begins, he finds stretching out before him a Winding Stair which invites him, as it were, to ascend, and which, and the symbol of discipline and instruction, teaches him that here must commence his Masonic labor—here he must enter upon those glorious though difficult researches, the end of which is to be the possession of Divine Truth.
The Winding Stairs begin after the candidate has passed within the porch and between the pillars of strength and establishment, as a significant symbol to teach him that as soon as he has passed beyond the years of irrational childhood, and commenced his entrance upon manly life, the laborious task of self-improvement is the first duty that is placed before him. He cannot stand still, if he would be worthy of his vocation; his destiny as an immortal being requires him to ascend, step by step, until he has reached the summit, where the treasures of knowledge await him.
The number of these steps in all the systems has been odd. Vitruvius remarks—and the coincidence is at least curious—that the ancient Temples were always ascended by an odd number of steps; and he assigns as the reason, that, commencing with the right foot at the bottom, the worshiper would find the same foot foremost when he entered the Temple, which Palladio considers a fortunate omen.
But the fact is, that the symbolism of numbers was borrowed by the Freemasons from Pythagoras, in whose system of philosophy it plays an important part, and in which odd slumbers were considered as more perfect than even ones. Hence, throughout the Masonic system we find a predominance of odd numbers; and while three, five, seven, nine, fifteen, and twenty-seven, are all-important symbols, we seldom find a reference to two, four, six, eight, or ten. The odd number of the stairs was therefore intended to symbolize the idea of perfection, to which it was the object of the aspirant to attain.
As to the particular number of the stairs, this has varied at different periods. Tracing-Boards of the eighteenth century have been found, in which only live steps are delineated, and others in which they amount to seven. The Prestonian lectures, used in England in the beginning of the nineteenth century, gave the whole nun ber as thirty-six, dividing them into series of one, three, five, seven, nine and eleven.
The error of making an even number, which was a violation of the Pythagorean principle of odd numbers as the symbol of perfection, was corrected in the Hemming lectures, adopted at the Union of the two Grand Lodges of England, by striking out the eleven, which was also objectionable as receiving a sectarian explanation. In the United States the number was still further reduced to fifteen, divided into three series of three, five, and seven. Doctor Mackey adopted this American division in explaining the symbolism; although, after all, the particular number of the steps, or the peculiar method of their division into series, will not in any way affect the general symbolism of the whole legend.
The candidate, then, in the Second Degree of Freemasonry, represents a man starting forth on the journey of life, with the great task before him of selfimprovement. For the faithful performance of this task, a reward is promised, which reward consists in the development of all his intellectual faculties, the moral and spiritual elevation of his character, and the acquisition of Truth and knowledge. Now, the attainment of this moral and intellectual condition supposes an elevation of character, an ascent from a lower to a higher life, and a passage of toil and diffieulty, through rudimentary instruction, to the full fruition of wisdom.
This is therefore beautifully symbolized by the Winding Stairs, at whose foot the aspirant stands ready to climb the toilsome steep while at its top is placed "that hieroglyphic bright which none but Craftsmen ever saw," as the emblem of Divine Truth. And hence a distinguished writer has said that "these steps, like all the Masonic symbols, are illustrative of discipline and doctrine, as well as of natural, mathematical, and metaphysical science and open to us an extensive range of moral and speculative inquiry."
The candidate, incited by the love of virtue and the desire of knowledge, and withal eager for the reward of Truth which is set before him, begins at onee the toilsome ascent. At each division he pauses to gather instruction from the symbolism which these divisions present to his attention. At the first pause which he makes he is instructed in the peculiar organization of the Order of which he has become a disciple. But the information here given, if taken in its naked, literal sense, is barren, and unworthy of his labor. The rank of the officers who govern, and the names of the Degrees which constitute the Institution, can give him no knowledge whieh he has not before poeseeeed we must look therefore to the symbolic meaning of these allusions for any value which may be attached to this part of the ceremony.
The reference to the organization of the Masonic Institution is intended to remind the aspirant of the union of men in society, and the development of the social state out of the state of nature. He is thus reminded, in the very outset of his journey, of the blessings which arise from civilization, and of the fruits of virtue and knowledge which are derived from that condition. Freemasonry itself is the result of civilization; while, in grateful return, it has been one of the most important means of extending that condition of mankind.
All the monuments of antiquity that the ravages of time have left, combine to prove that man had no sooner emerged from the savage into the social state, than he commenced the organization of religious mysteries, and the separation, by a sort of divine instinct, of the sacred from the profane.
Then occurred the invention of architecture as a means of providing convenient houses, the necessary shelter from the in~elemencies and vicissitudes of the seasons, with all the mechanical arts connected with it; and lastly, geometry, as a necessary science to enable the cultivators of land to measure and designate the limits of their possessions. All these are claimed as peculiar eharaeteristies of Speculative Freemasonry, which may be considered as the type of civilization, the former bearing the same relation to the profane world as the latter does to the savage state.
Hence we at once see the fitness of the symbolism which commences the aspirant's upward progress in the cultivation of knolvledge and the search after Truth, by recalling to his mind the condition of civilization and the social union of mankind as necessary preparations for the attainment of these objects.
In the allusions to the officers of a Lodge, and the Degrees of Freemasonry as explanatory of the organization of our own Society, we clothe in our symbolic language the history of the organization of society.
Advancing in his progress, the candidate is invited to contemplate another series of instructions. The human senses, as the appropriate channels through which we receive all our ideas of perception, and which therefore, constitute the most important sources of our knowledge, are here referred to as a symbol of intellectual cultivation. Architecture, as the most important of the arts which conduce to the comfort of mankind, is also alluded to here, not simply because it is so closely connected with the Operative Institution of Freemasonry, but also as the type of all the other useful arts.
In his second pause, in the ascent of the Winding Stairs, the aspirant is therefore reminded of the necessity of cultivating practical knolvledge. So far, then, the instructions he has received relate to his own condition in society as a member of the great social compact, and to his means of becoming, by a knowledge of the arts of practical life, a necessary and useful member of that society.
But his motto will be, Excelsior. Still must he go onward and forward.
The stair is still before him; its summit is not yet reached, and still further treasures Wisdom are to be sought for, or the reward will not be gained, nor the Middle Chamber, the abiding-place of Truth, be reached. In his third pause, he therefore arrives at that point in which the whole circle of human science is to be explained.
Symbols, we know, are in themselves arbitrary and of conventional signification, and the complete circle of human science might have been as well symbolized by any other sign or series of daetrine.s pus hy the seven liberal arts and sciences. But Freemasonry is an institution of the olden time; and this selection of the liberal arts and sciences as a symbol of the completion of human learning is one of the most pregnant evidences that five have of its antiquity.
In the seventh century, and for a long time afterward, the circle of instruction to which all the learning of the most eminent schools and most distinguished philosophers was confined, was limited to what were then called the liberal arts and sciences, and consisted of two branches, the trivium and the quadrivium. The trivium included grammar, rhetoric, and logic; the quadrivium comprehended arithmetic, geometry, Music, and astronomy.
"These seven heads," says Enfield, "were supposed to include universal knowledge. He who was master of these was thought to have no need of a preceptor to explain any books or to solve any questions which lay within the compass of human reason, the knowledge of the trivium having furnished him with the key to all language, and that of the quadrivium having opened to him the secret laws of nature."
At a period, says the same writer, when few were instructed in the trivium, and very few studied the quadrivium, to be master of both was sufficient to complete the character of a philosopher. The propriety, therefore, of adopting the seven liberal arts and sciences as a symbol of the completion of human learning is apparent (see Seven Iiberal Arts and Sciences). The candidate having reached this point, is now supposed to have accomplished the task upon which he had entered—he has reached the last step, and is now ready to receive the full fruition of human learning. So far, then, we are able to comprehend the true symbolism of the Winding Stairs. They represent the progress of an inquiring mind with the toils and labors of intellectual cultivation and study, and the preparatory acquisition of all human science, as a preliminary step to the attainment of Divine Truth, which, it must be remembered, is always symbolized in Freemasonry by the Word.
Here let us again allude to the symbolism of numbers, which is for the first time presented to the consideration of the Masonic student in the legend of the Winding Stairs. The theory of numbers as the symbols of certain qualities was originally borrowed by the Freemasons from the school of Pythagoras. It will be impossible, however, to develop this doctrine in its entire extent, in the present article, for the numeral symbolism of Freemasonry would itself constitute materials for an ample essay. It will be sufficient to advert to the fact, that the total number of the steps, amounting in all to fifteen in the American system, is a significant symbol.
For Afteen was a sacred number among the Orientals, because the letters of the holy name Jah, no, were, in their numerical value, equivalent to fifteen; and hence a figure in which the nine digits were so disposed as to make fifteen either way when added together perpendicularly, horizontally, or diagonally, constituted one of their most sacred talismans. The fifteen steps in the Winding Stairs are therefore symbolic of the name of God.
But we are not yet done. It will be remembered that a reward was promised for all this toilsome ascent of the Winding Sta . Now, what are the wages of a Speculative Freemason? Not money, nor corn, nor wine, nor oil. All these are but symbols. His wages arc Truth, or that approximation to it which will be most appropriate to the Degree into which he has been initiated. It is one of the most beautiful, but at the same time most abstruse, doctrines of the science of Masonic symbolism that the Freemason is ever to be in search of Truth, but is never to find it. This Divine Truth, the object of all his labors, is symbolized by the Word, for which we all know he can only obtain a Substitute; and this is intended to teach the humiliating but necessary lesson that the knowledge of the nature of God and of man's relation to him, which knowledge constitutes Divine Truth, can never be acquired in this life.
It is only when the portals of the grave open to us, and give us an entrance into a. more perfect life, that this knowledge is to be attained. "Happy is the man," says the father of Iyric poetry, "who descends beneath the hollow earth, having be held these Mysteries: he knows the end, he knows the origin of life."
The Middle Chamber is therefore symbolic of this life, where the symbol only of the Word can be given, where the truth is to be reached by approximation only, and yet where we are to learn that that Truth will consist in a perfect knowledge of the G. A. O. T. U.
This is the reward of the inquiring Freemason; in this consist the wages of a Fellow Craft; he is directed to the Truth, but must travel farther and ascend still higher to attain it. It is, then, as a symbol and a symbol only, that we must study this beautiful legend of the Winding Stairs. If we attempt to adopt it as an historical fact, the absurdity of its details stares us in the face, and wise men will wonder at our credulity. Its inventors had no desire thus to impose upon our folly; but offering it to us as a great
philosophical myth, they did not for a moment suppose that we would pass over its sublime moral teachings to accept the allegory as an hstorical narrative without meaning, and wholly irreconcilable with the records of Scripture, and opposed by all the principles of probability. To suppose that eighty thousand Craftsmen were weekly paid in the narrow precincts of the Temple chambers, is simply to suppose an absurdity.
But to believe that all this pictorial representation of an ascent by a Winding Staircase to the plaec where the wages of labor were to be received, was an allegory to teach us the ascent of the mind from ignorance, through all the toils of study and the difficulties of obtaining knowledge, receiving here a little and there a little, adding something to the stock of our ideas at each step, until, in the Middle Chamber of life—in the full fruition of manhood—the reward is attained, and the purified and elevated intellect is invested with the reward in the direction how to seek God and
God's Truth. To believe this, is to believe and to know the true design of Speculative Freemasonry, the only design which makes it worthy of a good or a wise man's study. Of the legend we may admit its historical details are barren, but its symbols and alle gories are fertile with instruction.
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