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ZETLAND, THOMAS DUNDAS, EARL OF.
One of the most noted of the noblemen of England, born in 1795, and initiated in the Prince of Wales Lodge, No. 259, on June 18, 1830. Appointed Junior Grand Warden in 1832, Deputy in 1839, Pro Grand Master in 1840. Upon the decease of the Duke of Sussex, in 1843, the Earl became the chief ruler of the Craft, until March, 1844, when he was elected Most Worshipful Grand Master, which office he held until 1870. He was Provincial Grand Master of North and East Yorkshire from 1839 until he died, in 1873.
ZEUS.
Greatest of the national deities of Greece, son of Chronos and Rhea, brother of Poseidon and Hera, and husband of the latter. Mostly worshiped in CreteJ Arcadia, and Dodona. Finally the great Hellenic Divinity, identified with Jupiter of the Romans and Amon of the Libyans. Zeus was represented as of majestic form, holding in one hand a scepter, and in the other a thunderbolt, signified by the accompanying symbol.
ZI.
In the Izdubar legends, a kind of spiritual essence residing in every organic thing, each created object having its special Zi, of which the Supreme Being was a more exalted genus. Zi was also by a parity of reasoning regarded as the soul of man, and even man himself.
ZICU
or ZIGGARA. The Accadian name for primeval matter.
ZIF.
Hastings Dictionary of the Bible says, "seemingly the bright month," referring to Zif, and that this was later called Iyyar . The eighth month of the civil and the second of the sacred year of the Hebrews, commencing on the first of the new moon in the month of April. The name of this month is mentioned but once in the Scriptures, and then refers to the date of the commencement of Solomon's Temple (see First Isings vi, 1). The month Bul, or Marchesvan, is mentioned as the date of the completion of the Temple. (Reference to this is also in First Kings vi, 38.)
ZILLAH.
Wife of Lamech, and mother of Tubal Cain and Naamah. One of the few females mentioned as of the antediluvian or before the Deluge period.
ZINNENDORF, JOHANN WILHELM VON.
Few men made more noise in German Freemasonry, or had warmer friends or more bitter enemies, than Johann Wilhelm Ellenberger, who, in consequence of his adoption by his mother's brother, took subsequently the title of Von Zinnendorf, by which he is universally known. He was born at Halle, August 10, 1731.
He was initiated into Freemasonry at the place of his birth. He afterward removed to Berlin, where he received the appointment of General Staff Sturgeon and chief of the medical corps of the army. There he joined the Lodge of the Three Globes, and became an ardent disciple of the Rite of Strict Observance, in which he took the Order name of Eques à lapide nigro or Knight of the Black Stonc. He was elected Master of the Scottish Lodge. He had the absolute control of the funds of the Order, but refusing to render any account of the disposition which he had made of them, an investigation was commenced. Upon this, Zinnendorf withdrew from the Rite, and sentence of excommunication was immediately afterward pronounced against him. Zinnendorf in return declared the Strict Observanee afn imposture, and denounced its theory of the Templar origin of Freemasonry as false.
In the meantime, Zinnendorf sent his friend Hans Carl Baumann to Stockholm, that he might receive manuscripts of the Degrees of the Swedish system, which had been promised him by Carl Friederich von Eckleff, Scottish Grand Master of the Chapter in that city. Baumann returned with the manuseripts, which, however, it appears from a subsequent declaration made by the Duke of Sudermania, were very imperfect.

But, imperfect as they were, out of them Zinnendorf constructed a new Rite in opposition to the Strict Observance. Possessed of great talent and energy, and his enemies said, of but little scrupulousness as to means, he succeeded in attracting to him many friends and followers. In 1766, he established at Potsdam the Lodge Minerval, and in 1767, at Berlin, the Lodge of the Three Golden Keys, Freemasons were found to give him countenance and assistance in other places, so that on June 24, 1770, twelve Lodges of his system were enabled to unite in the formation of a Body which they called the Grand Lodge of all the Freemasons of Germany. The success of this Body, under the adverse circumstances by which it was surrounded, can only be attributed to the ability and energy of its founder, as well as to the freedom with which he made use of every means for its advancement without any reference to their want of firmness.
Having induced the Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt to accept the Grand Mastership, he succeeded, through his influence, in obtaining the recognition and Chance of the Grand Lodge of England in 1773; but that Body seven y ears after withdrew from the connection. In 1774, Zinnendorf secured the Protectorshipof the King' of Prussia for his Grand Lodge. Thus patronized, the Grand Lodge of Germany rapidly extended its influence and increased in growth, so that in 1778 it had thirtyfour Lodges under its immediate jurisdiction, and Provincial Lodges were established in Austria, Silesia, Pomerania, Lower Saxony, and Russia. Findel explains this great accession of strength by supposing that it could only have been the consequence of an ardent desire of the Gertnan Freemasons to obtain the promised revelations of the advanced Degrees of this system of Zinnendorf.

Zinnendorf had been elected Grand Master in 1774, an office he held until his death. But he had various difficulties to encounter in that period of authority. He found an active and powerful antagonist in the Lodge Royal York, at Berlin. The Duke of Sudermania, Grand Master of Sweden, issued an official document in 1777 and declared that the Warrant which had been granted by Eckleff to Zinnendorf, and on the strength of which he had founded his Grand Lodge, was spurious and unauthorized; the Grand Lodge of Sweden pronounced him to be a fomenter of disturbanees and an insolent calumniator of the Swedish Grand Master, and in 1780 the Grand Lodge of England withdrew from its alliance.
But Zinnendorf was undismayed. Having quit the service of the government in 1779, he made a journey to Sweden in an unsuccessful effort to secure all the documents connected with the Swedish system. Returning hence he continued to preside over the Grand Lodge with unabated zeal and undiminished vigor until his death, which took place June 6, 1782. Von Zinnendorf undoubtedly committed many errors, but we cannot withhold from him the praise of having earnestly sought to introduce into German Freemasonry a better system than the one which was prevailing in the last quarter of the eighteenth century.
ZINNENDORF, RITE OF.
A Rite invented by Count Von Zinnendorf, and fabricated out of some imperfect copies of the Swedish system, with additions from the Illuminism of Avignon and the reveries of Svedenborg. It consisted of seven Degrees, divided into three sections as follows:
  • I. Blue Freemasonry.
  • 1. Apprentice.
  • 2. Fellow Crait.
  • 3. Master.
  • II. Red Freemasonry.
  • 4. Scottish Apprentice and Fellow Craft.
  • 5. Scottish Master.
  • III. Capitular Freemasonry.
  • 6. Favorite of Saint John.
  • 7. Chapter of the Elect.
This system was practised by the Grand Lodge of Germany, which had been established by Zinnendorf, and by the Lodges of its Obedience.
ZINZENDORF, COUNT VON, NICOLAUS LUDWIG.
v Founder of the existing sect of Moravian Brethren; also of a religious society which he called the Order of the Grain of Mustard-Seed. He was ordained Bishop of the Moravians in 1737, and at request of King Frederiek William I of Prussia, went to London, and was received by Wesley. In 1741 he proceeded to Bethlehem, in Ameriea, and founded the Moravian Settlements. The prolific author of a hundred volumes. He was born at Dresden in 1700, and died in 1760.
ZION.
Mount Zion was the southwestern of the three hills which constituted the high table-land on which Jerusalem was built. It was the royal residence and hence it is often called the City of David. The name is sometimes used as synonymous with Jerusalem.
ZITHERN
An instrument of music of twentyeight strings drawn over a shallow box; both hands are employed in playing on it.
ZIZON.
This is said, in one of the Ineffable Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, to be the name of the balustrade before the Sanctum Sanctorum. There is no such word in Hebrew, but it may be a corruption of the Talmudic , which Buxtorf (Talmudic Lexicon) defines as a beam, a little beam, a small rafter.
ZOAN.
An Egyptian town, known to the Greeks as Tanais, presumed to have been founded 3700 B.C., and probably the residence of the Pharaohs of the Exodus.
ZODIAC.
Many of the Egyptian temples contain astronomical representations; notably those of Esneh, Contra Latopolis, and Denderah, which were famous for their zodiacal ceilings. Antiquity was accorded to the records of the Egyptian Empire by calculations made from the positions of the stars on the monuments and on these ceilings. Closer criticism now reveals these positions to be fanciful and the data unreliable. The Zodiac of Denderah has been removed to Paris, where it forms the chief ornament of the nuseum of the Louvre. Those remaining in Egypt are suffering from deterioration. Crosses will be found to be a portion of five of the signs of the Zodiac.
ZODIAC, MASONIC.
ZODIAC.
The French name is Zodiaquz Maçonnique, a series of twelve Degrees, named after the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the first being the Ram. It was in the series of the Metropolitan Chapter of France, and in the manuseript collection of Peuvret.
ZOHAR.
The Hebrew word, meaning Splendor. After the surrender of Jerusalem, through the victory of Vespasian, among the fugitives was Rabbi Simon Ben Jochai, who remained an Anehorite for twelve years, became visionary, and believed he was visited by the prophet Elias. His son, Rabbi Eliezer, and his clerk, Ptabbi Abba, when visiting him, took down his pronounced divine precepts, which were in time gathered and formed into the famous Sohar or Zohar. From this work, the Sepher Jetzirah, and the Commentary of the TenSephiroth was formed the Cabala. The Zohar, its history, and as well that of its author, overflow with beautiful yet ideal mysticism.
ZOHARITI.
A Hebrew word meaning the I Iluminated. At Society founded by Jacob Franck at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
ZONAR.
The symbolic girdle of the Christians and Jews worn in the Levant, as a mark of distinction, that they may be known from the Mohammedans.
ZOROASTER.
More correctly, Zarathustra. He was the Legislator and Prophet of the ancient Baetrians, out of whose doctrines the modern religion of the Parsees has been developed. As to the age in which Zoroaster flourished, there have been the greatest discrepancies among the ancient authorities. The earliest of the Greek writers who mentions his name is Xanthus of Lydia, and he places his era at about 600 years before the Trojan war, which would be about 1800 years before Christ. Aristotle and Eudoxus say that he lived 6,000 years before Plato; while Berosus, the Babylonian historian, makes him a king of Babylon, and the founder of a dynasty which reigned over Babylon between 2200 and 2000 B.C.
The Parsees are more moderate in their ealelllations, and say that their Prophet was a contemporary of Hystaspes, the father of Darius, and accordingly place his era at 550 B.C. Haug, however, in his Essays on the Sacred Language of the Parsees, declares that this supposition is utterly groundless. He thinks that we can, under no circumstances, assign him a later date than 1000 B.C., and is not even disinclined to place his era much earlier, and make him a contemporary of Moses. Brother Albert Pike, who has devoted much labor to the investigation of this confused subject of the Zoroastrian era, says, in an able article in Doctor Mackey's National Freemason (volume iii, No. 3):

In the year 1903 before Alexander, or 2234 B.C., a Xarathustrian King of Media conquered Babylon. The religion even then had degenerated into Magism, and was of unknown age. The unfortunate theory that Vitagpa, one of the most efficient allies of Zarathustra, was the father of Darius Hystaspes, has long ago been set at rest. In the Chaldean lists of Berosus, as found in the Armenian edition of Eusebius, the name Zoroasfer appears as that of the Median conqueror of Babylon; but he can only have received this title from being a follower of Zarathustra and professing has religion. He was preceded by a series of eighty-four Median Kings- and the real Zarathustra lived in Baetria long before the tide of emigration had flowed thence into Media. Aristotle and Eudoxus, according to Pliny, place Zarathustra 6000 years before the death of Plato, Hermippus, 5000 years before the Trojan war. Plato died 348 B.C.- SO that the two dates substantially agree, making the date of Zarathustra's reign 6300 or 6350 B.C., and I have no doubt that this is not far from the truth.
Bunsen, however (God in History, volume i, book iii, chapter vi, page 276), speaks of Zarathustra Spitama as living under the reign of Vistaspa toward the year 300() B.C., certainly not later than toward 2500 B.C. He calls him "one of the mightiest intellects and one of the greatest men of all time"; and he says of him: "Accounted by his contemporaries a blasphemer, atheist, and firebrand worthy of death; regarded even by his own adherents, after some centuries, as the founder of magic, by others as a sorcerer and deceiver, he was, nevertheless, recognized already by Hippocrates as a great spiritual hero, and esteemed the earliest sage of a primeval epoch—reaching back to 5000 years before their date—by Eudoxus, Plato, and Aristotle."

The name of this great reformer is always spelled in the Zendavesta as Zarathustra, with which is often coupled Spitama; this, Haug says, was the family name, while the former was his surname, and hence both he and Bunsen designate him as Zarathustra Spitama. The Greeks corrupted Zarathustra into Zarastrades and Zoroastres, and the Romans into Zoroaster, by which name he has always, until recently, been known to Europeans. His home was in Bactria, an ancient country of Asia between the Oxus River on the North and the Caucasian range of mountains on the South, and in the immediate vicinity, therefore, of the primal seat of the Aryan race, one of whose first emigrations, indeed, was into Bactria.
The religion of Zoroaster finds its origin in a social, political, and religious schism of the Bactrian Iranians from the primitive Aryans. These latter led a nomadic and pastoral life in their native home, and continued the same habits after their emigration. But a portion of these tribes, whom Haug calls the proper Iranians, becoming weary of these wanderings, after they had reached the highlands of Bactria abandoned the pastoral and wandering life of their ancestors, and directed their attention to agriculture. This political secession was soon followed by wars, principally of a predatory kind, waged, for the purpose of booty, by the nomadic Aryans on the agricultural settlements of the Iranians, whose rich fields were tempting objects to the spoiler.
The political estrangement was speedily and naturally followed by a religious one. It was at this time that Zoroaster appeared, and, denouncing the natureworship of the old Aryan faith, established his spiritual religion, in which, says Bunsen, "the antagonisms of light and darkness, of sunshine and storm, become transformed into antagonisms of good and evil, of powers exerting a beneficent or corrupting inHuenee on the mind."

The doctrine of pure Zoroastrianism was monotheistic. The Supreme Being was called Ahuramazda, and Haug says that Zoroaster's conception of him was perfectly identical with the Jewish notion of Jehovah. He is referred to as "the Creator of the earthly and spiritual life, the Lord of the whole universe, at whose hands are all the creatures." IIe is wisdom and intellect; the light itself, and the source of light; the rewarder of the virtuous and the punisher of the wicked.
The dualistic doctrine of Ormuzd and Ahrimanes, which has falsely been attributed to Zoroaster, was in reality the development of a later corruption of the Zoroasteric teaching. But the great reformer sought to solve the puzzling question of the origin of evil in the world, by supposing that there existed in Ahuramazda two spirits, inherent in his nature, the one positive and the other negative. All that was good was real, existent; while the absence of that reality was a non-existence or evil. Evil was the absence of good as darkness was the absence of light.
Zoroaster taught the idea of a future life and the immortality of the soul. The doctrine of the resurrection is one of the principal dogmas of the Zendavesta. He also clearly inculcated the belief of a heaven and a hell. The former was called the House of Hymns, because the angels were supposed to sing hymns there; the latter the house of destruction, and to it were relentlessly consigned the poets and Priests of the old Aryan religion.
The doctrine of sacred names, so familiar to the Hebrews, was also taught by Zoroaster. In one of the Yashts, a portion of the Zendavesta, Ahuramazda tells Zarathustra that the utterance of one of his sacred names, of which he enumerates twenty, is the best protection from evil. Of these names, one is ahmi, meaning I am, and another, ahmi vat ahmi, I am who I am. The reader will be reminded here of the Holy Name in Exodus, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, or Iam that I am.

The doctrine of Zoroaster was not forever confined to Bactria, but passed over into other countries; nor in the transmission did it fail to suffer some corruption. From its original seat it spread into Media, and under the name Magism, or the doctrine of the Magavas, that is, the mighty ones, was incorporated at Babylon with the Chaldean philosophy, whence we find its traces in the Rabbinism and the Cabalism of the Hebrews. It was carried, too, into Persia, where it has lJeell developed into the awoderll and still existing sect of the Parsees, of whom we now find two divisions, the conservatives and liberals; the former cultivating the whole modified doctrine of Zoroaster, and the latter retaining much of the doctrine, but rejecting to a very great extent the ceremonial instructions.
ZSCHOKKE, J. H. D.
One of the most eminent Freemasons and German authors known. Born at Magdeburg, 1771, died 1848.
ZUNI INDIANS.
A tribe inhabiting New Mexico, United States of America, whose mystic services have attracted the attention of Masonic scholars in conse quence of their similarity to those in vogue by the Masonic Fraternity. These Indians have a formal religious initiation, in which the suppliant kneels at the altar to take his vows, after being received upon the point of an instrument of torture to the flesh. Among their forms and ceremonies are facing the East, circumambulation, tests of endurance, and being peculiarly clothed. Incense is burned, and the sun worshiped at its rising (see Indian Freemasonry).
ZURTHOST.
The name given by the modern Parsees to Zarathustra or Zoroaster. They call him their prophet, and their religious sect the Zarthosti Community

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