THE BUILDER MAGAZINE
may 1926
volume 12 - number 5
What Shall We Say?
WE, the sick Masons of Ft. Bayard Hospital, together with
the personnel who are members of the Sojourners' Club, herewith tender to the
National Masonic Tuberculosis Sanatoria Association our personal and voluntary
contributions, totaling $133.50, for the purpose of helping our brethren who are
also afflicted with tuberculosis.
"Although we are unfortunate in that we are sick with the
great white plague we count ourselves more fortunate than other victims of this
disease, because we are in a hospital receiving the care and treatment necessary
to give us a chance for life. Because we can realize more than any healthy Mason
can understand that hospital care means hope of cure for us and restoration to
our loved ones, we want to help our sick brethren who are trying to get well
with little or no help from our Fraternity.
"Our contribution may seem small, but it is an average of
$1.30 per capita, and if all American Freemasons would contribute an equal
amount, it would mean a speedy beginning to what we, because of our affliction
and suffering, realize is the greatest opportunity for Masonic service today.
"Some of us must die, but many of us will recover and
resume our family and other responsibilities because we have been cared for in
this hospital. We ask our brethren who are enjoying the blessings of health and
some measure of material success to join with its in the effort to give Masonic
aid and comfort to our fellow-victims of tuberculosis. We raise our hands and
make the sign of distress, not for ourselves, but for our brethren in Masonry
who are also on)- brethren in sickness and suffering. Who will answer the call
for aid?"
The sick Masons of Fort Bayard.
A HANDFUL of men in a hospital have contributed towards the
work of assisting their brethren, sufferers like themselves from the “white
plague," but less fortunate in that, ill or dying, they have no place to go
where they might have a chance to recover, or at least to spend their last days
in something like peace and comfort. It rather gives the rest of us something to
think about.
The sum total was only a trifle. Thousands, probably tens
of thousands of Masons could throw away the amount and never miss it at the end
of the year. But these men are not "well fixed." They are not able to support
themselves; had they means of their own, or were their friends able to support
them, they would not be where they are. Yet out of their slender resources they
have given what they could.
New Mexico, one of the smallest and weakest of our Masonic
Jurisdictions - numerically and financially - has raised $10,000 for this work;
an average individual contribution of a dollar and a half. If every Mason in
good standing in the United States were to give as much, or even only a dollar,
the reproach of our past neglect could be removed. With three million dollars
and more the necessary hospitals and sanatoria could be built and equipped.
The great majority of Masons in this country are so
fortunately situated that one dollar, or two, or five would make no difference
whatever to the number of meals they eat, or even the cigars and cigarettes they
smoke. For the price of a meal (and not a specially elaborate one as restaurant
charges go) the Craft in America could do what is required. The price of a meal!
Are there any Masons who would refuse to go without just one to aid a brother in
distress?
But the general experience of humanity shows that there are
very few individuals who will not give a helping hand where help is obviously
and certainly needed. However pressing their business most men would stop to
pick up the victim of an automobile accident, or throw a rope to one who was
drowning. Masons are at least on as high a level as mankind at large. If in this
particular need action has been so slow it is due not to lack of heart or to
disregard of their obligations but to two accidental causes, failure to realize
the facts and lack of organization. It is hard to realize the conditions in
which our sick brethren are dragging out their existence, it is hard to believe.
They are a long way off, and it not only needs putting one's hand into one's
pocket, but some time and trouble and thought as well.
But now the machinery has been organized. It waits only the
accession of the other Grand Lodges. Only the awakening of Masonic public
opinion is required, in the constituent lodges, and by their representatives in
the Grand Lodges, and the thing will be done. Will readers of THE BUILDER do
their part? Will they show that Masonic study has prepared them to take the lead
in the application of Masonic principles? What shall we say?
----o----
The Hiramic Legend and the Mediaeval Stage
A Discussion in Three Parts
BY BRO. ERNEST E. THIEMEYER, Missouri
PART II--THE LIVING LEGEND (Concluded from April)
OUR Legend having suffered in its treatment from the same
errors that other legends have undergone is now ready for scientific treatment.
It can be considered for its manner rather than for its matter and mainly valued
for its evidence of the thoughts of former times. It is not to be wondered that
such treatment has not been given it before, because "this turning of mythology
to account as a means of tracing the history of the laws of the mind, is a
branch of science scarcely discovered before the nineteenth century." (8) If an
understanding of these laws of mind and their development can be attained a
point from which our classification of the Legend as ritual myth can be
developed is reached.
It would be desirable from the point of view of this
article to trace the development of myth from its simplest stages to the present
time. Such a procedure would entail the production of a mass of evidence which
would prolong the length of the discussion beyond the limits of an article and
it would easily assume the length of a fair sized book. A brief outline with
some elaboration of the principal points is all that can be attempted. For most
of the ideas expressed the author is indebted to Tylor's Primitive Culture,
Frazer's Golden Bough and to the Editor of THE BUILDER. There will be no effort
made to attribute a definite idea to any one of these authorities and no other
credit than the above will be given except in the case of direct quotations.
The original sources from which the required material comes
are numerous. Tylor says that there is "evidence of races both ancient and
modern, who so faithfully represent the state of thought to which myth
development belongs, as still to keep up both the consciousness of meaning in
their old myths, and the unstrained unaffected habit of creating new ones." (9)
It is from savage races that a clear idea of the early stages of myth-making can
be shown in relation to the products of later civilization. That the technical
foundation for our Legend is to be found in these ancient myths is comparatively
plain to see. Even a casual reading of Tylor's great work will convince one of
that. Herein lies an important question for Masonic discussion. Is our myth a
survival or a revival of this ancient culture? Independent of all other
considerations, it is undoubtedly true that a satisfactory answer to this
question will do much to solve the riddle which attaches itself to the antiquity
of Masonry. It may in some way account for the evidences of Masonry which some
students believe they see in the Aztecs, Incas, and North American Indian
tribes. A discussion of that phase of the question cannot be attempted here, but
must of necessity be left for some other development.
By comparing the myths found to exist among savage tribes
in various parts of the world it is an easy matter to analyze the mental
processes which promote them. It requires no evidence to prove that there can be
found even today tribes which are far behind the culture of the recognized
ancient civilizations such as Greece, Egypt, Babylon, and Rome. To trace the
reasoning of these primitive tribes through transitional stages until they reach
the cultural level of the classic, civilizations is a difficult and lengthy
process. The connection has been found by long and troublesome research,
suffering many setbacks and traveling the path of error that is common to all
such investigations. The line of descent is fairly well marked and a sketchy
tracing of it will enable us to understand something of the growth of mythical
fiction. With this link established we have arrived at a starting point in our
disscussion, in fact we have gone farther. Myth is developed from its primitive
beginnings to its most complex structure and we can apply these steps in
evolution to our own Legend.
MYTH AND FOLK OBSERVANCES
Even in primitive peoples we find myths taking on certain
characteristics; these apply to the fabrications of one tribe as well as to
another and might well be called the indices for classifying a legendary story
as myth. In its primary stage myth is comparatively simple. It is connected with
nature; it offers the explanation of a natural phenomenon; and expresses the
ideas of a social group rather than of an individual. The main root of myth
being found in the animation of nature, it follows that the sun and stars, trees
and rivers, winds and clouds, become personal animate creatures, leading lives
conformed to human or animal analogies, and performing their special functions
in the universe with the aid of limbs like beasts or artifical instruments like
men. These creatures are not poetic creations, but occupy a place in a broad
philosophy of nature, early and crude indeed, but thoughtful, consistent, and
quite really and seriously meant. The type of myth arising from such a
philosophy is to be found even within recent years among the tribes of New
Zealand who believe that the divine Mauri fished up the island with his
enchanted hook from the bottom of the sea, and applying the comparative method,
the same primitive stage of culture exists with the Indian Vishnu, diving to the
depth of the sea in his avatar of the Boar, to bring up the submerged earth on
his monstrous tusks. There is, in these illustrations, a fulfillment of the
characteristics of primitive myth so plainly marked that there is no need of
pointing out their specific application. But evolution is a queer process and in
looking a little farther afield another in mythical development appears and
those things ch were endued with life become endowed with spiritual essences or
souls. In other words, the doctrine of Animism arises. Man who is alive by
nature has a little man in him who controls his thoughts, words, and actions.
Trees have spirits; animals, plants, the earth, heaven, the stars become merely
the physical and material representatives of guiding influences. All sorts of
magical systems and ceremonies grow out of such a doctrine. Tribes are found who
will not cut trees because they fear injuring the tree spirit. Others will not
kill certain plants and animals for a like reason. As time passes the people
want a reason for such things and another type of myth springs up--stories of
how the spirits became locked up in their respective abodes. The process is not
yet complete and growing out of such doctrines comes the natural development of
a class of spirit beings controlling the forces of nature:
"To the theory of Animism belong those endless tales which
all nations tell of the presiding genii of nature, the spirits of cliffs, wells,
waterfalls, volcanoes, the elves and wood-nymphs seen at times by human eyes
when wandering by moonlight or assembled at their fairy festivals." (10)
Following closely upon the spiritual animation of the
elements of nature comes the personification of these spiritually endowed
plants, etc., and the guardian spirits of waterfalls rush through the lodge as a
raging current. "Or they may be guiding and power-giving spirits of nature, like
the spirit Fugamu, whose work is the cataract of the Nguyai, and who still
wanders night and day around it, though the negroes who tell of him can no
longer see his bodily form." (11) Then comes a further elaboration of the idea
of personification, and spiritual beings controlling the forces of nature and
natural phenomena are developed. The gods of rain and drought, of day and night,
take their places in this category. Night is personified; Day becomes her son
and each in a heavenly chariot drives across the sky. Thus the age of classical
mythology is more nearly reached. By similar stages of mental development the
age of pantheism and the many gods comes to have its place in myth development.
The actions of these deities require explanation in much the same way that the
presence of the world required some reason in the more primitive minds. Those
marvelous fabrics of the ancients come into being, and we have the myths
depicting the lives of the gods.
MYTH RELATED TO RITUAL
There is sufficient evidence in the above to warrant
classifying our Legend as MYTH. It has grown, it is the expression of the ideas
of a social group; and while it is almost certain that it belongs to this
general group, the classification can be carried a step farther. The ceremonies
depicting the lives of the gods, which developed along with their biographical
myths, gave rise to another type of fable, and such myths as the one connected
with the celebrations of the Thesmophoria arise. At the time that Persephone was
carried off by Pluto, the story runs, a swineherd, Eubuleus, chanced to be
herding swine near the spot, and his herd was engulfed in the chasm down which
Pluto vanished with Persephone. This myth grew out of the traditional driving of
pigs into caverns during the celebration of the rites of Demeter and Persephone,
and forms an illustration of Ritual Myth. Nature myth is in the background,
scarcely traceable if worked backward, but perfectly logical when its descent is
shown from the other side. It arose to explain a custom or usage which had
become traditional in the practice of religious rites, but whose original
meaning had been lost in the haze of time. Myth arises out of or rather together
with ritual and not the ritual out of the myth. (12) And so the conclusion is
reached, indicated earlier in this article, that the Hiramic Legend is an
outgrowth of ritual necessity, in other words, a ritual myth.
This is equally true whether our fable is considered as
18th century invention or a fabrication of earlier times. It fulfills all the
necessary characteristics of primitive ritual myth. It arose evidently because
it gave reason to something that needed explanation. The one respect in which it
may not resemble ancient myth is that it is not, on the surface, a nature myth,
though very possibly its foundation is to be found in primitive interpretations
of the phenomena of annual death and resurrection of plant life. It has suffered
all the faults and mistakes of early students in the same manner in which
erroneous lines of thought were applied to older myths. From the above it would
follow that ritual preceded, or was contemporary with, the development of this
myth. Taking the most impossible view of the matter and classing it as 18th
century innovation this would be true unless the myth was invented to support
another innovation. That such is the case is beyond belief; it may as well be
said at once that the whole fabric of Masonry is the invention of Anderson or
Desaguliers.
It has been shown, in brief outline, that ritual is the
immediate ancestor of myth, at least in the later stages of development. It
would appear from this that the evolutionary process is a contemporaneous
development, or that ritual preceded myth, and that they grew from the simplest
beginnings. If we are to search for the origin of our MYTH it will be necessary
to reduce it to its lowest factors before beginning the hunt. It must be born in
mind that both custom and myth are extremely tenacious of life. The action
persists through almost countless ages, but the meaning and details are
completely changed in many instances. In other words, the incident itself
persists, but the motive is entirely changed. There are found eventually
celebrations of the same character practiced in many and diverse localities, but
the reasons assigned for so doing are different in almost every instance. The
Ancient Mysteries provide the most prominent examples of this phenomenon of
ritual myth. Under the names of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis, and Attis the peoples of
Egypt, Western Asia, and the Mediterranean countries represented the yearly
decay and revival of life, especially of vegetable life, which they personified
as a god who annually died and rose again from the dead. In name and detail
these rites varied from place to place; in substance they were the same. Adonis,
for example, is usually said to have been killed by a wild boar; Attis was in
one account similarly slain, in another he unmanned himself and bled to death;
Osiris met his death as the result of a conspiracy and was shut in a coffin and
thrown into the Nile. It cannot be definitely said that these gods were one and
the same character, but they all represent the god of vegetation and their death
and resurrection was in every case annually celebrated as the representation of
the annual death and revival of plant life. Here is discovered the value of the
comparative method in analyzing the ritualistic background of ancient myths. By
cancelling the differences in the various versions the conclusion is reached
that the original for all these forms showed no more than that the god died and
was reborn in annual recurrence. That there was an original version is one
conclusion we are permitted to accept. If there was an early form from which the
others developed there is no means of knowing what it was, or where it was
originally practiced. It may have been some more primitive myth, but it is not
possible to point to a given version and state that it was a source from which
the ancient religious mysteries developed. The same retention of detail with
widely divergent explanation is found in myths of a later period which can
definitely be traced to a common root in one or another of the pagan rituals.
What would, in all probability, be a more satisfactory theory is that the same
process of mental progress was at work in various parts of the world and the
laws of mind which lead to such developments were at practically the same point
of development in all of the Mediterranean countries at approximately the same
period in the world's history.
FURTHER ANALYSIS SUGGESTED
The application of the comparative method to the Hiram Myth
will bring out much that will enable us to ascertain its original form. It is
here that the cancellation process earlier referred to comes into prominence. It
would be interesting to see a compilation of all the versions in use today with
the points of difference eliminated, thus giving the modern basic plot of the
myth. To carry such a method back through the ages eliminating the divergences
would bring us to a form of the story probably representative of a period much
earlier than any known to us. To restate the idea, if all known versions of the
myth are compiled; their points of difference cancelled; the result of this
factoring process will present the simplest possible form of the plot. All of
the evolutionary innovations will have been eliminated, and the remaining plot
will be at least as old as the oldest known point of difference which has been
cancelled. It would be only fair in treating with material of a traditional
nature, in which dates could not be set for all the divergences to presume that
some of the expurgated portions would be earlier than any of known date and the
final result would represent a version older, and probably much older, than any
cancelled factor.
Before arriving at any conclusions concerning the earliest
form of the myth it might be well to point out a few of the more salient
differences. It would appear, for example, that the original story knew nothing
of the pursuit or punishment of criminals. The motive of the crime is widely
different in various versions. Jealousy on the part of K. S. over Baltis, Queen
of Sheba, appears in one wild account. In others professional jealousy is the
cause. These variations might be carried to untold length before reaching the
final result. What is eventually left, however, has been often mentioned; it is
an indefinite, simple, but highly significant story: "Someone was killed by
someone else, who was assisted by two others; fifteen people had something to do
with it; the body was hidden and a green branch was connected with its
discovery." (13) The connection between this myth and such stories as the
Apprentice Pillar at Rosslyn, the Apprentice Window at Lincoln, and the stories
of Continental Europe such as the death of Maitre Jacques at the hands of the
disciples of Maitre Soubise is apparent. Vibert says in this connection:
"Now with regard to the Masters we do seem to find quit
early hints of some story of a murder. The French journeymen have a definite
narrative of a Founder who came from Palestine, and he was murdered in France.
There is in the cycle of stories that centres in Charlemagne and his knights, a
story of Renaud who went to Cologne and helped to build the Cathedral, working
as a common labourer. But because he did four men's work, owing to his enormous
strength, and then refused any wages beyond what was necessary for bare
subsistence, the other workmen conspired and killed him with a mason's hammer as
he was sleeping at mid-day. This story was well-known in England by the
thirteenth century and was one of the first things printed by Caxton, and that
was in 1489." (14)
THE LEGEND WAS ALWAYS A SECRET
The similarity between our Myth and these mythical
narratives of the early journeymen is clear; the myths of "mystery" rituals the
world over also come in for their share of resemblance. It is well to bear in
mind the fact that such plots are not first public and then, through some lapse
of memory enveloped in a veil of secrecy, but that the process works in the
opposite direction and such stories as are now public property can generally be
shown to have been once secret (except, of course, in the case of deliberate
invention such as the "high degrees"). There are several methods by which these
secret rites become public and the Legend has been afflicted with one of them at
least, I refer to illicit publications. There is no method known by which the
opposite takes place. Such a process would be too much like the doctrine of
revival in culture to which scientists object. Although it may later be proven,
it cannot be felt that culture was once at a very high level and then dropped to
nothing, to be built up again by a revival of the type of mind which originally
developed it. The evolutionary processes are evidence to the contrary and
nowhere in geologic or paleontologic evidence is a single example of plant or
animal life having died out to be revived at a later period found. Evidence to
prove set-backs which have weakened development temporarily abounds, but never
is total elimination followed by a general revival of type. That is definitely
what it would be necessary to believe if our Myth is a revival in a secret rite
of what was once public. Even better evidence than this, how ever, is the fact
that there is nothing, so far as is known, in the public property of this class
of material which remotely approaches the content of our Myth. (I speak here, of
course, of material that was originally public.) If the induction of the Myth
into the Masonic ritual was influenced by the Medieval Miracle and Mystery
plays, it would necessarily follow that a plot once existing as public
afterwards became private. This in turn suggests other points: If the Legend was
once public, when did it become private? Where? When? Why? How? Under what
circumstances did it become an integral part of our ritual? What traces of it
exist today? In view of the evidence presented, these questions may be answered
in short form. The Myth never was public, but always private; it came into our
ritual because of some pressing demand; and any traces of it that can be found
will of necessity appear in ancient Masonic manuscripts which were probably of a
secret character, or in illicit publications. Probably the conditions imposed by
lack of knowledge tend to make such a subject as the growth of the Hiramic
Legend entrancing, but the same conditions make it exceedingly difficult to
arrive at any conclusion as to its development that will be beyond question.
Adopting the view that the Legend of Hiram in its present
form is alive and changing, in other words, an object still undergoing the
ceaseless change entailed by evolution, a number of important conclusions are
reached. Because it is ceaselessly varying, it is the product of group
thinking--it is not the child of one man's fancy, but it is the result of the
collected thinking of many individuals. As such it is the natural outgrowth of
some ritualistic requirement; what particular ceremony gave rise to it is of no
importance to our argument. Growing out of these is another, more important than
either, namely, the same type of mind evolved our Myth as developed the more
primitive stories. Whether in survival or revival is nonessential as the only
bearing that phase of the subject would have on this discussion is one of
chronology and it is not proposed to enter into any argument concerning
antiquity of the Order. The question arises-What bearing has all this on the
relation of our Legend to Drama? To answer that question satisfactorily will
require more space than can be commanded at this time. A suggestion of an answer
will be attempted in the final section of this discussion.
NOTES
(1) "The Story of the Craft," by Lionel Vibert in the
Transactions of the Merseyside Association for Masonic Research, 1923-24, p. 47.
(2) Ib., p. 53.
(3) From Funk and Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary.
Compare also Webster's Dictionary, which goes more into detail.
(4) Primitive Culture, Tylor. Vol. 1, p. 273.
(5) Ib. Vol. 1, p. 275.
(6) Vibert, op. cit., p. 43.
(7) Tylor, op. cit., Vol. 2, p. 447.
(8) Ib., Vol. 1, p. 275.
(9) Ib., Vol. 1, p. 283.
(10) Ib., Vol. 1, p. 294
(11) DuChaillu, "Ashango-land," p. 106. I am indebted for
the reference to Tylor. (12) Themis, J. E. Harrison, p. 13.
(13) THE BUILDER, Vol. IX, p. 178.
(14) Vibert, op. cit., p. 52.
----o----
Masonry's National Campaign Against Tuberculosis
By BRO. HERBERT B. HOLT, Grand Master of New Mexico
President, National Masonic Tuberculosis Sanatoria
Association
AT the Annual Communication of the M. W. Grand Lodge, A. F.
& A. M., of New Mexico, I was honored by advancement to the high office of Grand
Master, since which time there has devolved upon me the duties of President of
the National Masonic Tuberculosis Sanatoria Association, which is actively
working for the advancement of the movement for hospitalization of consumptive
American Freemasons, the Association having been incorporated last fall under
authority of our Grand Lodge.
The Presidency of the Association was accepted in deference
to the wishes of my predecessor, R.W. P.G.M. Jaffa Miller, and other associates
in the Grand Lodge and Sanatoria Association, with the understanding that
diligent search should be prosecuted, north, south, east and west, until we
found our "Grand Master" for this greatest of all Masonic enterprises. The
leadership of this national movement for relief and hospitalization of our
consumptive brethren demands the best talent that American Freemasonry has
within its ranks today, and I am confident that the Supreme Architect of the
Universe will raise up the Man, competent, qualified and willing to supervise
the work upon our Temple of Hope and Healing. The magnitude of the task demands
executive ability of the highest order and the selection of a permanent leader
possessed of such qualifications.
The charter of the National Masonic Tuberculosis Sanatoria
Association contains the following provision covering its organization on a
national scale:
"The business and operations of this corporation, and of
the institutions which it may establish and control, shall at all times and for
all purposes, in each and every branch, be under the jurisdiction and control of
a Board of Governors to be composed of members, one for each state, one from the
District of Columbia and from each of the territories of the United States, who
may be appointed by the Grand Master of each Grand Jurisdiction elected by the
Grand. Lodge of each Grand Jurisdiction, or selected by the Board of Governors,
or its Executive Committee; also of members-at-large who may be appointed
respectively by the supreme heads of the General Grand Chapter of Royal Arch
Masons of the United States of America; the General Grand Council of Royal and
Select Masters of the United States of America; the Grand Encampment of Knights
Templar of the United States of America; the Supreme Council of the Thirty-third
and Last Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry for the
Southern Jurisdiction of the United States of America; the Supreme Council of
Sovereign Grand Inspectors-General of the Thirty-third and Last Degree of the
Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry for the Northern Masonic
Jurisdiction of the United States of America; the Imperial Council of the
Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine for North America; and
the General Grand Chapter, Order of the Eastern Star, or elected by the
governing bodies of such organizations, or such members-at-large may be selected
by the Board of Governors, or its Executive Committee."
The urgent invitation extended by my predecessor to all
Grand Masters for service upon the Board of Governors of the Association has
been reiterated. We require, and earnestly desire, the benefit of the
experience, advice and counsel of our brethren from every part of America in
planning and developing this institution for service. I hope that we may soon
number all of the Grand Masters of the United States among the members of this
Board, or have representatives appointed by them to sit with us in council. The
maximum success, so devoutly to be wished, can only be attained through
nationalization of the movement, which can be achieved only by cooperation and
concert of action by all Grand Jurisdictions. Realization of the fact that this
effort is primarily for the benefit of sick men who because of tuberculosis,
seek the milder climate of Colorado, New Mexico, Western Texas, Arizona and
Southern California, or who go to North Carolina or Florida should impel all
Masons of every state, promptly to grasp this opportunity for rendering that
real, actual service which is so imperatively demanded by these afflicted
brethren and their families. The Southwestern states, and doubtless the
Southeastern states mentioned, can easily take care of their own, but cannot
begin adequately to care for the sick from other Grand Jurisdictions who leave
their home states seeking more favorable climatic conditions.
COOPERATION OBTAINED
The Masonic Service Association is cooperating with us, and
has printed some thousands of pieces of literature for distribution among
Masonic bodies and Masons. Sample copies of these have been sent to officers of
Masonic bodies, with the request to use same as enclosures in correspondence,
and for distribution among their membership. These "Short Messages" should
interest and enlist the support of the rank and file.
The National Masonic Research Society has done more than
cooperate; it has inspired us to action. For several years past it has kept this
project before the Fraternity through the columns of THE BUILDER. With the
assurance of its continued support, which support we believed would also be
given us by every other Masonic publication if we launched this enterprise, New
Mexico took definite action and created the agency needed in which all of
American Freemasonry could unite. It gave me great pleasure to read the
following in the March editorial columns of THE BUILDER:
"The executives of the National Masonic Research Society
have definitely taken up the cause of the Masons suffering from tuberculosis. It
is perhaps not properly or specifically a matter for such an organization to
deal with, but it needs no apology. The Society is first of all Masonic, and its
members are Masons, and their interest in the Order naturally leads to a higher
conception of its functions and the obligations it imposes. The membership of
the Society averages a high degree of influence in the Craft, THE BUILDER is
distributed widely and evenly over the whole United States. We do not pretend
that it is our campaign and we do not care whose the credit. We would be
delighted to have every Masonic journal in the country take the matter up, but
our part is to bring home the need to the members of our own Society."
We have also succeeded in securing the cooperation of the
great National Tuberculosis Association, which has directed the campaign against
Tuberculosis in the United States during the last twenty years, and has aided in
the organization of similar work in other countries. That Association has branch
organizations in every state, and in the larger cities and towns of the country,
and through its cooperation with us, some hundreds of competent speakers, both
physicians and laymen, will be available to address open meetings of Masonic
bodies in every state, to throw into thousands of American Masonic homes "more
light" upon the subject of the prevention of tuberculosis and the relief and
hospitalization of our sick brethren. In pursuance of this effort to organize
and carry through a great national campaign of education among American
Freemasons, the following letter has been addressed to all Grand Masters in this
country:
"This Association has succeeded in securing the cooperation
of the National Tuberculosis Association in a plan to carry out a part of the
work for which we were chartered by the Grand Lodge of New Mexico, viz:
"'To disseminate among the Freemasons of America, and their
families and others, scientific knowledge and useful information as to the
causes and methods of treatment for the prevention, relief and cure of
tuberculosis;'
"The National Tuberculosis Association has for more than
twenty years led the organized effort against tuberculosis in the United States
and has aided in the organization of similar work in other countries. As a
direct result of its work of popular education, of securing public health
legislation, and its national campaign for hospitalization of consumptives, the
death-rate from tuberculosis in the United States has been reduced more than
one-half, representing the saving of more than 100,000 lives, annually. The work
of the Association has been financed by the sale of Christmas Seals.
"The National Tuberculosis Association has affiliated state
and local societies in every state, and through them can furnish speakers,
physicians and laymen, thoroughly competent to present the subject of
tuberculosis, its prevention and cure, to popular audiences in an instructive
and entertaining manner.
In many states and cities these lectures may be illustrated
with stereopticon and motion pictures. In many instances, Masonic physicians,
who are active members of tuberculosis societies, will be available as speakers.
Printed matter of various kinds, oft the subject may also be distributed to
audiences at the conclusion of meetings.
"We ask your cooperation, and the cooperation of your Grand
Lodge and constituent lodges, in which we expect will develop into a great
national educational campaign among American Freemasons and their families. By
bringing 'more light' on the subject of tuberculosis and its prevention into
Masonic homes we may be able to save some from contracting this dread disease
and we may be able to guide those now afflicted into ways that may lead to
recovery. We may also enlist many new recruits in the organized fight against
tuberculosis and in turn secure the help of tuberculosis societies and workers
for our afflicted brethren.
"We respectfully ask that you communicate with all
constituent lodges in your Grand Jurisdiction, requesting them to hold an open
meeting for members, families and friends, and to arrange with their state or
local tuberculosis society to send a speaker to discuss 'Masonry's Campaign
Against Tuberculosis.'
"The National Tuberculosis Association is asking its
affiliated state and local Associations to get in touch with you and your
constituent lodges. If, for any reason, you should wish to communicate directly
with the National Tuberculosis Association, they may be addressed at 370 Seventh
Avenue, New York City, New York. They can furnish you with lists of their local
Associations in your jurisdiction."
THE COST OF TUBERCULOSIS
At our request the National Tuberculosis Association has
prepared a new estimate of the mortality and morbidity among the 3,250,000
Masons, and the 1,250,000 women members of the Order of the Eastern Star.
Tuberculosis is an enemy of the American home. It is no
respecter of persons. Accurate estimates are not available as to the number of
members of Masonic families lost to us every year from this one cause. The
figures quoted below furnish some idea of the aggregate of this great annual
toll of death and suffering,. and for that reason should be of interest to all
who realize the gravity of the situation and the importance of prompt relief
measures.
The National Tuberculosis Association prepared an estimate
on Tuberculosis Mortality and Morbidity among Freemasons and female members of
the Eastern Star in 1921 and again in 1924. At your request, we now submit an
estimate for the year 1925, based on a Masonic population of 3,250,000 and upon
a membership of 1,250,000 women in the Order of the Eastern Star.
The Death Registration Area (exclusive of the Territory of
Hawaii) in 1924 comprised 39 states, the District of Columbia and 18 cities in
non-registration states, with a total estimated population on July 1, 1924, of
99,034,494, or 88.4 per cent of the estimated total population of the United
States.
The Tuberculosis death rate (all forms) in the Registration
Area for 1924 was 90.6. The death rate for males over twenty years of age in
1924 would approximate 132.6 per 100,000 living. Therefore the number of deaths
from Tuberculosis among 3,250,000 Freemasons, or any similar number of men would
approximate 4,309 during the year 1925.
The Tuberculosis death rate (all forms) in the Registration
Area for 1924 was 90.6. The death rate for females over twenty years of age in
1924 would approximate 115.0 per 100,000 living women. Therefore the number of
deaths from Tuberculosis among 1,250,000 women members of the Order of the
Easter Star, or any similar number of women, would approximate 1437 during the
year 1925.
The Framingham Demonstration showed a probability of 9
active living cases to every death. This means that if 4309 Freemasons and 1437
Eastern Stars died during the year 1925 there are approximately 51,714 living
active cases, needing treatment in Masonic families in the United States. As
there is no way of determining the entire number of members of Masons’ families
in the country there is no way of estimating the total number of deaths and
cases of Tuberculosis among American Freemasons and the members of their
families.
While these estimates may appear startling to anyone who
has not studied this subject, by comparison with the death rate of twenty years
ago and succeeding years they are moderate. In 1904 the death rate for the
general population was 200 per 100,000 living, over twice the present death
rate. The reduction in the death rate means a saving of 120,000 lives every
year, and is the best possible proof that Tuberculosis is a preventable disease.
Hospitalization of consumptive fathers and mothers may save
their children from infection which often results in Tuberculosis of the bones,
causing "hunch-back" and shortened limbs.
Tuberculosis cuts off two and a half years of life from the
complete expectation of every individual under present mortality conditions. If
such individual were to add only $100 to the community wealth every year,
Tuberculosis would cost the community $250 per person. Among the 3,250,000
Freemasons and the 1,250,000 Eastern Stars in the United States this loss is
$1,125,000,000.
It has been estimated that a tuberculous person is under
care for an average of two and one-third years. Probably for at least one year
he is unable to earn. Considering all occupations, we can place the average
annual earnings of a person at $1,000. Among the 51,714 Masonic tuberculous
cases, $51,714,000 were thus lost through sickness.
BALANCE OF COST OF CARE AGAINST LOSS
The usual length of stay in a sanatorium is about six
months. The cost of such sanatorium care is about $500. While it is not
possible, nor perhaps necessary, to give each patient six months' sanatorium
treatment, the cost of caring for tubercuIous patients must be met, whether in a
sanatorium or not. If all of the 51,714 Masonic cases could receive either
sanatorium care or other adequate treatment, which would cost at least as much,
about $25,857,000 would be the estimated cost of caring for these Masonic
tuberculous.
These estimates of the cost of Tuberculosis to the American
Masonic Fraternity, namely, $1,125,000,000 due to loss of life from
Tuberculosis, $51,714,000 lost in wages, and $25,857,000 for the expense of
caring for Masonic sick, total approximately $1,202,571,000.
The saving of lives through sanatorium care is worth yearly
many millions of dollars to the country. Dr. Louis I. Dublin has shown that
mortality from Tuberculosis is lessened by at least 8,000 deaths annually
because 6f cures effected in sanatoria throughout the country. Since the cost of
keeping a patient in a sanatorium for six months is estimated at $500, the cost
of saving 6,000 lives yearly amounts to $3,000,000.
If, as Irving Fisher says, the economic value of a life cut
off by Tuberculosis, including its future capitalized earning power, is $8,000,
the country is enriched yearly to the extent of $48,000,000 by this saving of
life. This is more than a hundred per cent return on the $45,000,000 spent
yearly in the maintenance of sanatoria in the United States. The saving of 4309
Masonic lives each year would be worth $45,968,000 in dollars and cents and no
one can estimate the value to America of Masonic fathers, mothers and homes that
may be saved by united action for relief and hospitalization of tuberculous
Freemasons.
Fraternally,
National Tuberculosis Association.
The National Tuberculosis Association has also prepared an
"Outline of an Address to American Freemasons, Their Families and Friends," for
use in this educational campaign, which will be used and elaborated upon by the
speakers of that Association in meetings addressed by them, and in many places
the lectures will be illustrated by stereopticon and moving pictures.
To bring home to our brethren the reason why Masons and
Masonry should be interested, the National Masonic Tuberculosis Sanatoria
Association has prepared the following statement, which will be presented to
these open meetings at the conclusion of the address or lecture by the National
Tuberculosis Association's speaker:
WHY MASONS ARE INTERESTED IN THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST
TUBERCULOSIS
Masonry's interest in the great national campaign against
Tuberculosis lies in the fact that, according to estimates prepared by the
National Tuberculosis Association early in 1926, there were approximately 4,309
deaths of Masons from tuberculosis in the United States during the year 1925 and
about 1,437 deaths of women members of the Order of the Eastern Star during the
same year from the same cause. How many other wives, mothers, sisters and
children of Masons also died last year from tuberculosis it is impossible to
estimate.
According to estimates prepared by the same authority, the
National Tuberculosis Association, there are about nine living cases to every
annual death from tuberculosis, in any community or any group of people.
Applying this estimate to the Fraternity in the United States, this would mean
that there are now living approximately 38,781 American Freemasons suffering
from tuberculosis and about 12,933 women members of the Eastern Star afflicted
with this dread disease. How many other members of Masonic families are also
victims of the Great White Plague it is impossible to estimate.
MASONRY'S ECONOMIC LOSS
The National Tuberculosis Association also estimates that
the cost of caring for these sick Masons and Eastern Stars, who died last year
of tuberculosis, totaled $25,857,000, and that the loss in wages due to sickness
and death was not less than $51,714,000. No one can figure the great total loss
to Masonic families due to the untimely death of fathers and mothers from
tuberculosis. The cost of raising and educating the children must be borne by
some one. The difference in the love and care given children by their parents
and that given by relatives, friends or institutions can never be figured in
dollars and cents.
The foregoing figures will give some idea of the magnitude
of the problem confronting American Freemasonry today, in the treatment and care
of the men and women who have a claim upon the Fraternity in their misfortune.
And greater than this is the necessity for work to prevent this disaster falling
upon additional members of the Fraternity and their families.
A COMMON CAUSE AGAINST A COMMON FOE
Blue Lodge Masonry, so-called, is organized by states into
Grand Lodges. There is no national Masonic body to govern the Craft. There are
49 Grand Jurisdictions, one for each state and one for the District of Columbia.
Therefore it has been difficult in the past to secure unity of action in a
common cause for a common friend or against a common foe. If American
Freemasonry ever unites upon a national program it will be for some great work
of charity and benevolence such as this national Masonic Campaign for the relief
and hospitalization of Masonic consumptives and the prevention of tuberculosis
in American Masonic homes.
There are some few Grand Jurisdictions in this country,
large in numbers and financially strong, which have a high death rate and a
large number of living cases of tuberculosis, who might be justified in
establishing their own state Masonic Tuberculosis Sanatorium. But with most
Grand Jurisdictions the burden would be too heavy for them to bear. In this work
the great and wealthy families of Masonry should join with the smaller state
groups for the greater good of Freemasonry as a national entity.
WHY SOUTHWESTERN MASONRY HAS INITIATED THIS CAMPAIGN
The poison of tuberculosis permeates the whole of our
national body, just as in time it affects the whole of the physical body. There
is no state or city free from the ravages of the dread destroyer. But as poison,
or pus, comes to a head in the physical body making a "sore spot" so is there a
"sore spot" in the Southwestern United States where the national problem of
tuberculosis comes to a "head" because of the migration to that part of the
country of many thousands of consumptives who go there seeking climatic cure or
arrest of their disease.
This climatic health belt covers a great triangle, a
familiar symbol in Masonry. If you will draw a line on the map from San Antonio,
Texas, to Denver, Colorado, 815 miles, thence to Los Angeles, California, 850
miles and back to San Antonio, 1220 miles, you will enclose within this triangle
350,000 square miles of mountains and desert, with some fertile, irrigated and
cultivated valleys, small in area as compared with the whole triangle. Within
this territory lived 3,000,000 people when the 1920 Census was taken and some
ten or more years ago the National Tuberculosis Association estimated that 10
per cent of the population of the Southwest was tuberculous. The United States
Public Health Service later declared this estimate to be conservative.
PUBLICITY HAS NOT DECREASED MIGRATION
In 1920 and again in 1925 the National Tuberculosis
Association made an investigation of the problem resulting from large numbers of
sick and indigent migrating to the Southwest and concluded that this migration
was increasing in spite of their national campaign of publicity warning the sick
against leaving home without adequate funds. Publicity was given to the fact
that there were no free hospitals and few charity agencies, and that light work
was difficult to find and that the consumptive was far better off in his home
town where he had friends or at least a legitimate claim upon public charity.
In six cities alone the National Tuberculosis Association
found 7,319 indigent sick who had asked for help and who were accompanied by
9,315 other members of their families of whom 5.437 or 57 per cent were children
under 16. These children living in squalid quarters, under-nourished, and in
close contact with consumptive parents were all in grave danger of infection.
This unhappy group, totaling 16,634 individuals, strangers in a strange land,
were in deep distress, as is evidenced by the fact that 16 per cent applied for
help within one week after arrival; 33 per cent within one month; and 50 per
cent within three months and 90 per cent within a year.
How many additional thousands of men, women and children
there are, in the same tragic condition, no one can estimate. The total number
of sick for the whole of the United States is probably one million with possibly
another million of dependents.
That there are many Masons among these sick is shown by the
experience of Masonic Relief Bureaus and Masonic Lodges of Southwestern cities
and towns. Records of many pitiful cases have been found. Southwestern Lodges
are unable to give adequate financial help to them and few home lodges or even
Grand Lodges can spend the thousand or two dollars necessary to carry the sick
brother for the year or two of hospital care required to secure arrest of the
disease. Consequently many die for lack of that small amount of money and in
some cases the Craft spends more for care and education of their orphaned
children than it would have cost to save the father.
NEW MEXICO GRAND LODGE CREATES RELIEF AGENCY
The Grand Lodges of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico and the
Masonic Service Association investigated this problem and the Southern
Jurisdiction of the Scottish Rite and other Masonic bodies gave it
consideration. Reports were made and the urgent need for action was pointed out
but nothing done until on Nov. 9, 1925, the M. W. Grand Lodge of New Mexico
organized and secured a charter from the state for the National Masonic
Tuberculosis Sanatoria Association, with the following purposes:
"To act as an agency, or trustee, to receive and administer
funds contributed, or acquired for the relief of Freemasons, and members of
their families, suffering from tuberculosis; to secure hospitalization for the
sick; to render service of any kind according to the need and the ability of the
corporation; to acquire, erect, establish, maintain and operate Sanatoria,
Hospitals and other institutions; to do and perform such other and further acts
as may be calculated to aid in the prevention, treatment or cure of tuberculosis
among Masons or their families."
The plan of organization provides for one member of the
governing Board from each Grand Jurisdiction and for membership on the Board of
Representatives of the National Scottish Rite and York Rite bodies and for the
Mystic Shrine and Eastern Star. Thus the Association is national in scope and
not sectional or local.
MASONIC SERVICE ASSOCIATION ENDORSES
The Masonic Service Association at its 1925 meeting in
Chicago, endorsed the Sanatoria Association and its purposes and pledged active
aid and financial support. Similar pledges have been made by other Masonic
bodies.
MASONIC PRESS SUPPORTS MOVEMENT
The National Masonic Research Society has rendered splendid
service during the past few years in giving publicity and editorial support to
this movement through the columns of THE BUILDER, the official publication of
the Society. The Masonic press throughout the country are supporting this
movement and placing the facts as to the need and the effort to meet it before
the rank and file of Freemasonry.
$1.00 A YEAR WILL PROVIDE RELIEF
The Grand Lodge of New Mexico has levied an annual per
capita tax of $1.00 upon New Mexico Freemasonry, and it is hoped that this
example will be followed by all American Grand Jurisdictions. This would in the
course of time provide a fund sufficient to build one or more hospitals and
maintain them. While these institutions will be primarily for Masons, no doubt
provision will also have to be made for the wives and children, when sufficient
funds are available for this additional relief work.
HOSPITALS LOCATED WHERE NEEDED
The location of the hospital, or hospitals, will be
determined by the National Board of Governors of the Masonic Sanatoria
Association, and these institutions will undoubtedly be placed where the need is
greatest and where they can render the greatest service to the brethren of the
country as a whole. In time, perhaps, there may be a chain of such institutions,
similar to the Shrine Hospitals for Crippled Children, so located as to be
easily available from any and all parts of the country.
COMBINATION OF INSURANCE AND PHILANTHROPY
An average contribution of $1 a year will, in a sense,
insure a Freemason and his family against tuberculosis and provide hospital care
for them if they are so unfortunate as to contract this disease. If they never
need such help it will be a great source of pride and gratification to them as
members of the great Masonic family to know that they are helping to care for
Masonic brethren who through no fault of their own are "down and out." They will
have a part in restoring these brethren to wives and children and will also help
to save the Fraternity the cost of providing for the families of the sick, who
have in the past often remained a charge upon Masonic charity for years.
HOSPITALIZATION OF FATHERS SAVES THE CHILDREN
And finally, brethren, by placing Consumptive fathers and
mothers in hospitals, you will save the children from infection with
tuberculosis. In children this disease often attacks the bones, causing the
awful deformity, commonly known as "hunchback", or it shortens the leg, making
the sufferer a cripple for life. The pain and suffering extends over a period of
years and in many cases is only ended when these little ones die of tuberculosis
of the lungs. We can save them by caring for their parents and also reduce the
number of consumptives who will die in the next generation. Tuberculosis claims
an endless chain of victims and when you hospitalize one you save an indefinite
number of people from infection.
RESPONSIBILITY RESTS UPON YOU
Will Freemasonry heed this call for service to God, to
country and to humanity? You can answer for yourself and for your lodge. If you
and your lodge will do its part the rest of the Masonic family can be trusted to
share their part of the burden. Every lodge if it so desires can vote an annual
per capita tax of $1 or more upon its membership and the total sum for the whole
country will mean life and hope for thousands of sick brethren who are now
holding up their hands in a last despairing appeal to you for aid.
If only the members of the Masonic Order, so strong .in
point of numbers, so potentially wealthy, can be made to realize what these
facts really mean there will 'be no question as to the result. The machinery is
ready, the emergency urgent, shall we ask in vain?
NOTE
Further information about the work and purposes of the
National Masonic Tuberculosis Sanatoria Association may be secured by addressing
Francis E. Lester, P. G. M., Executive Secretary, Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Contributions for the work of the Association may be sent to Alpheus A. Keen
(Grand Secretary of the M. W. Grand Lodge of New Mexico), Secretary of the
Sanatoria Association, Masonic Temple, Albuquerque, New Mexico.
----o----
The Craft in the 18th Century The "Moderns," 1717, and the
" Antients," 1751
BY BRO. ARTHUR HEIRON, England
AS most readers of The Builder are aware, Bro. Heiron is
the author of Ancient Freemasonry and the Old Dundee Lodge, No. 18 [1722-1920],
a most interesting account of lodge life two hundred years ago. They will also
recall his articles in The Builder for 1923 under the title "Was Dr. Johnson a
Mason?"
The present paper was read before the Manchester
Association for Masonic Research in May, 1924, and in view of the very valuable
information collected therein The Builder has obtained Bro. Heiron's permission
to reproduce it for the benefit of American students.
IT is common knowledge that prior to 1813 the Craft had for
many years been divided into two great sections--the Moderns and the Antients--and
for the benefit of those brethren who have had no opportunity to study the
matter on their own account, the following rough epitome by way of general
information is given.
In 1716 four old Lodges in London--the author of Multa
Paucis (an anonymous work of about 1764) gives the number as six--"finding
themselves neglected by Sir Christopher Wren"--with the assistance "of some old
Brothers"--met together at the Apple-Tree Tavern in Charles Street, Covent
Garden, and "constituted themselves a Grand Lodge pro Tempore in Due Form"; and
on "St. John Baptist's Day, A.D. 1717, the Assembly and Feast of the Free and
Accepted Masons was held at the Goose and Gridiron Ale-house in St. Paul's
Church-Yard."
In this humble fashion--without show or pretense-in a room
at a Tavern about 22 feet long by 16 feet wide --the First Grand Lodge of the
world was--according to the account given by Dr. Anderson in his "New Book of
Constitutions" [1738]--thus formally "Constituted." Whilst it is now recognized
that Dr. Anderson's 'Story of the Craft'--based on mythical tales and legendary
traditions--is quite untrustworthy, yet his version of the actual origin of
Grand Lodge deserves some credence, for--after all--it is the only one available
for our consideration.
Anderson was a Doctor of Divinity, a Presbyterian minister,
a "dissenting teacher," a man of good standing and character. In 1738 he assures
us that having-in 1721--been ordered [by Grand Lodge] to digest the old Gothic
Constitutions in a new and better method, . . . "Montagu, Grand Master, at the
desire of the Lodge, appointed fourteen learned Brothers to examine Brother
Anderson's Manuscript and to make report," . . . which "said Committee of 14" .
. . reported [in 1722] that they had perused same "and after some Amendments had
approv'd of it: Upon which the Lodge desir'd the Grand Master to order it to be
printed." The above refers to his First Book of Constitutions of 1723.--The
following extracts from the actual minutes of Grand Lodge relate to his 1738
edition.
1735, Feb. 24. Dr. Anderson reported to Grand Lodge "that
he had spent some Thoughts upon some Alterations and Additions" to his First
Edition of 1723--then "all sold off"--and G. L. "appointed a Committee to revise
and compare the same &c."
1738, Jan. 25. "Bro. Anderson informed the [Grand] Lodge
that he had sometime since Prepared a New Edition of the Book of Constitutions
with several Additions and Amendmts which having been perused & (after some
alterations made therein) Approved off by several Grand Officers was now ready
for the Press and he therefore desired the Grand Master's Commands & the
approbation of this Lodge for printing the same, which request was granted him."
His work having been thus checked and revised by his
colleagues and contemporaries and approved by Grand Lodge, each student must now
therefore form his own conclusions as to the credibility or otherwise that
should be given to Dr. Anderson's statements relating to the above mentioned
meetings of "the four old Lodges" in 1716 and 1717.
The members of this Grand Lodge of 1717 before long--for
reasons hereinafter mentioned--became known as the 'Moderns,' whilst their
subsequent rivals --who described themselves as the 'Antients' did not
constitute their Grand Lodge before 1753 (although they first assembled as a
Grand Committee in 1751); thus in point of time the 'Moderns' were as a body,
thirty-four years older than the 'Antients,' it is therefore quite clear that
both these titles are-colloquially speaking--misnomers. It is not very easy to
explain in detail the exact reasons for the founding of this opposition Grand
Lodge but some of the contributory causes appear to be as follows:
'OPERATIVE MASONS'
Prior to the formation of Grand Lodge in 1717, most of the
Lodges were of humble rank, having as members many men of the working
classes--including of course real 'Operative' Masons, although there were also
some 'Speculatives' in their midst--for in those early days a Lodge almost
invariably met at a Tavern or Inn, and was very much like a benefit society,
members who were ill or in distress coming 'On the Box' for small payments in
cash--pecuniary 'Relief' to brethren in need being then a constant feature. It
was also quite usual for members not only to attend at the funeral of a deceased
brother, but also to pay for the cost of interment when need required. This
presence of the 'Operatives' in Lodges is made manifest from the fact that Grand
Lodge in 1722 selected as their Grand Wardens, two working men, viz.:--'Mr.
Joshua Timson,' a Blacksmith, and 'Mr. William Hawkins,' a 'Mason,' whilst the
following mechanics were also appointed Grand Wardens, viz.:-'Jacob Lamball,' a
'Carpenter' in 1717; 'John Cordwell,' a 'City Carpenter' and 'Thomas Morrice," a
'Stone Cutter' in 1718; and 'Thomas Hobby,' also a 'Stone Cutter' in 1720.
The first Grand Master who was installed in 1717-one
Anthony Sayer--was also apparently a man of limited means, for later in life he
became Tyler to at least four lodges, and on two occasions applied to Grand
Lodge for relief, in 1730 when 15 pounds were voted to him also 2.2.0 in 1741
from the 'General Charity,' whilst he also received assistance from various
private Lodges. Bro. J. Walter Hobbs, L.R., in an exhaustive and valued paper
read in 1924 before the Quatuor Coronati Lodge (entitled "Mr. Anthony Sayer")
attempts to prove that Sayer was not only a "Gentleman" but also a person of
some social standing--who might later on have lost his fortune in the "South Sea
Bubble"; he however frankly admits that the evidence is not conclusive.
"NOBLEMEN AND GENTLEMEN" [1723]
Before long however a higher status was ruling amongst the
so-called 'Moderns,' for Dr. Anderson in his Constitutions of the Freemasons
[1723] tells us that "several Noblemen and Gentlemen of the best Rank with
Clergymen and learned Scholars of most Professions and Denominations . . .
frankly joined and submitted to take the Charges, and to wear the Badges of a
Free and Accepted Mason, under our present worthy Grand Master, the most noble
Prince, John, Duke of Montagu."
In 1738 Anderson expatiates further by stating "Now Masonry
flourished in Harmony, Reputation, and Numbers, many Noblemen and Gentlemen of
the first Rank desir'd to be admitted to the Fraternity, besides other Learned
Men, Merchants, Clergymen and Tradesmen who found a Lodge to be a safe and
pleasant Relaxation from Intense Study or the Hurry of Business, without
Politicks or Party."
"UNATTACHED LODGES"
Human nature in 1724 was very like what we find it today
and it is not only possible but quite probable that many of the "Operatives" and
humbler members of a Lodge felt rather jealous of these richer men and their
influence and desire for new methods of working. So glowing out of harmony with
this changed condition of affairs they gradually left their Mother Lodges to
form others more congenial to themselves. Some would also join Unattached or
Independent Lodges which went by the name of St. John's Masons--St. John being
the Patron Saint of the Craft--for we find that many visitors to the old Lodges
often signed the attendance book or were entered by the Secretary as St. John's
Men--they paying generally an extra visiting fee.
"IRISH MASONS"
Now from (a) these groups of poor Masons--discontented with
the advent into the Craft of these so called "Noblemen and Gentlemen," also (b)
from those brethren who objected to any alteration being made in their ancient
Ritual, but more especially (c) from a band of Irish Freemasons who had settled
in London -mostly in poor circumstances--came into being a new organization that
in 1751 first worked by means of a Grand Committee, and in 1753 blossomed out
into a new Grand Lodge whose members soon described themselves as Antient Masons
holding out that they alone deserved that title because they practiced Masonry
according to the 'Old Constitutions.' The late Bro. Henry Sadler, Librarian to
Grand Lodge in his Masonic Facts and Fictions [1887] confirms the statement that
the early members of the Lodges of the 'Antients' consisted mostly of Irish
Masons, who were chiefly of the working class type. It is therefore obvious that
speaking generally--the personnel of the Modern Lodges, was on a higher grade
than that of the Antients. Quite apart, however, from the different social
status of these brethren there were other important reasons which helped to
cause a division of the Craft into two bodies.
ANDERSON'S FIRST CHARGE [1723]
The Old Charges make it clear that prior to 1717 the Craft
had definitely accepted the Christian Faith as its first and abiding Land Mark;
the constant and repeated 'Invocations to the Trinity' prove this to a
certainty.--Perhaps in order to make 'Masonry Universal,' thereby allowing Jews
to enter the Order-Anderson's 'First Charge' in his Constitutions of 1723 stated
that a Mason, was "now" only required to be of that religion "in which all men
agree, leaving their particular opinions to themselves; that is to be good Men
and true, etc." [This subject has been most ably elucidated and explained by
Bro. J. E. Shum Tuckett in a paper read before this Society in 1922.] This
serious alteration in our creed [as Bro. Vibert tells us in his excellent Story
of the Craft] virtually deChristianized the tenets of Freemasonry, thereby
making the Craft eligible to a professor of any faith-provided always that the
candidate recognized the existence of a Supreme Being. It is clear that this
startling innovation became a serious stumbling block to many of the old
fashioned Operatives who had been accustomed to hear read in open Lodge the 'Old
Charges,' constantly reminding them that the first and chief duty of a Mason was
to be a True Man to God and the Holy Church. These men had also lived in the
days when a regular and punctual attendance at their parish church was not only
a duty, but an absentee--without valid excuse-became liable to fines or other
penalties. In 1552 it was enacted by 5 & 6 Edward 6, c. 1., that if anyone
without lawful or reasonable excuse absented himself from public worship ( i.e.,
at the Parish Church) he became liable "on pain of punishment by the censures of
the Church." This Act--though now obsolete -is still on the Statute Book, but
was repealed --about 1846--as regards 'Dissenters.'
PRICHARD'S 'MASONRY DISSECTED' [1730]
It is also obvious that the authority of the Grand Lodge of
1717 was not recognized universally. Certain old Lodges retained a position of
independence and refused to accept what they considered was a new
Constitution--keeping to certain ancient customs peculiar to themselves--and
certain societies also arose professing to be Masons, but often merely using the
name of the Craft as a cloak for political or even less worthy purposes. Enemies
were also at work, various exposures of the Ritual being printed, purporting to
tell the outside world the real secrets of the Craft--the most important being
Masonry Dissected, written by one Samuel Prichard, described as "late member of
a Constituted Lodge," which first appeared in 1730.
At length in the same year [viz., 1730], in order to meet
these various difficulties and with a laudable desire to prevent 'cowans' and
'impostors' being 'Made Masons,' the Grand Lodge of 1717 allowed--or perhaps
even advised--the Lodges under its jurisdiction to make certain variations in
the Ritual. The following extracts from the Grand Lodge minutes of 1730 and 1739
refer to this matter:--
1730, Aug. 28. Dr. Desaguliers "recommended several things
to the consideration of the Grand Lodge" . . . "for preventing any false
Brethren being admitted into regular Lodges and such as call themselves Honorary
Masons." "The D.G.M. Nathaniel Blakerby proposed several Rules to the Grand
Lodge to be observed in their respective Lodges for their Security against all
open and Secret Enemies to the Craft."
1730, Dec. 15. In order "to prevent the Lodges being
imposed upon by false Brethren or Impostors," a member had to vouch for a
visiting Brother "and the Member's name had to be entered against the Visitor's
name in the Lodge Book."
1739, June 30. "The Complaint referred to by the last
Committee of Charity concerning the irregular making of Masons was taken into
Consideration."
1739, Dec. 12. "Ordered that the Laws be strictly put in
Execution against all such Brethren as shall for the future countenance, connive
or assist at any such irregular Makings."
It is generally believed that the principal changes
effected by the Moderns were that they:--
1 Transposed the Word s in the first and second Degrees.
2 Gave up the use of Deacons, or at any rate did not
appoint them.
3 Omitted the Ceremony of Installation; (and later on)
4 Did not officially perform or even recognise the rite of
Holy Royal Arch--said to be the completion or perfection of the third Degree.
5 Possibly also changed the steps, and generally curtailed
the Ceremonies, relying chiefly on teaching the tenets of the Craft by means of
Masonic Lectures, at least in certain old Modern Lodges the latter were always
the chief and most essential feature of the work.
Unfortunately hostility soon arose between the Moderns and
the Antients and increased as time went on, and for about seventy years they
opposed each other bitterly. The dissenting and dissatisfied Lodges-which
according to Sadler gradually became known as Irish. Lodges--insisted on
retaining the established Ritual in all its details and soon began openly to
state that those who had thus varied the ancient forms and ceremonies were
scarcely worthy to be regarded as Masons. and so they dubbed them Modern Masons
and claimed for themselves the title of Antient Masons, meaning thereby that
they--and they alone--practiced Masonry according to the proper rites.
MODERNS AND ANTIENTS RE-MADE
To such an extent did this spirit prevail that if a Modern
desired to visit an Antient Lodge, he had first to be Re-Made so as to become an
Antient; similarly the Moderns were quite as strict on their part and would not
allow an Antient to visit their Lodge unless he were first Re-Made so as to
become a Modern.
Now, although the motive of the Moderns in thus varying the
Ritual was perfectly honest and sincere-their desire merely being to prevent
irregular Masons being made--yet in time they saw the error of their ways and
practically admitted that their rivals--the Antients--had acted more wisely in
retaining the Ritual in its fuller and original form.
REVERSION TO THE ANCIENT LAND MARKS [1809]
This is made clear from the fact that in 1809 the Grand
Lodge of the Moderns officially passed the following resolution, viz.:--
"That the Grand Lodge do agree in opinion with the
Committee of Charity that it is not necessary any longer to continue in force
those Measures which were resorted to in or about the year 1739 respecting
Irregular Masons, and therefore enjoin the Several Lodges to Revert to the
Ancient Land Marks of the Society." (1)
This clear and important admission on the part of the
Moderns that they had omitted to practice certain of the 'Land Marks' was the
first serious step taken towards reconciliation. The next naturally was to try
and discover what the true 'Land Marks' were and for this purpose a Lodge was
formed for the express purpose of "Ascertaining and Promulgating the Ancient
Land Marks of the Society," which became known a "The Lodge of Promulgation"
[1809-11]. The result of their labors proving quite satisfactory, the Lodge of
Reconciliation was then formed in 1813 which definitely agreed in 1816 upon a
Ritual satisfactory to both sides.
THE "UNITED GRAND LODGE" [ 1813]
All difficulties being now removed, after much discussion
and certain mutual concessions--of which it is only fair to state that the most
important were mad by the Moderns--a "Glorious Union" of these two sections of
the Craft was effected, and on the 27th December, 1813, both Moderns and
Antients ceased to exit and there arose instead The United Grand Lodge of
Antient Freemasons of England, the Duke of Sussex being elected and enthroned as
the first Grand Master. (2)
After this somewhat rambling--and admitted quite
incomplete-version of the origin of the Modern and Antients, let us turn our
attention to the real purpose of this paper, viz.:--to discuss and inquire into
the reasons why the Antients so persistently and continuously--from 1764 to say
1809-vilified an ridiculed the ceremonies and ritual of the Craft a practised by
their opponents.
THE MODERNS
In the 2nd Edition (published in 1764) of Ahiman Rezon--which
was the official text book of the Antient for half a century,--Bro. Laurence
Dermott, the Grand Secretary of that section of the Craft, indulged in some
rather severe criticisms when discussing certain items of the Ritual as
practiced by the Moderns, and by way of an awful example (to prove some of his
stories) actually singled out and especially referred to--though not by name--my
own Mother Lodge, the Dunde Lodge, No. 9, at Wapping, London, E., now known as
the Old Dundee Lodge, No. 18. It perhaps, therefor is not very unreasonable that
the present writer--who has for over thirty years been a member of that Lodge,
and is now its second oldest Past Master--should endeavor in a very humble way
to investigate such allegations and put in some sort of defense to Dermott's
charges, although as these were made 160 years ago, he fully realizes that the
case is quite statute barred and the matter now but ancient history. This
article is, however, written in the hope that other members of the Craft may
derive some useful information on these interesting subjects that were evidently
often discussed in the Society of the Antients. We shall commence by first
making a few enquiries as to the author of these stories.
LAURENCE DERMOTT [1720--1791]
Dermott was an Irishman, born in 1720; he was made a Mason
in Ireland in 1740 and working his way through the various offices was installed
as W. M. of Lodge No. 26, in Dublin on 24th June, 1746. Leaving Ireland he came
to London about 1747 and for some time was a comparatively poor man, for he told
his own Grand Lodge on the 13th July, 1753, that "he was obliged to work 12
hours in the day for the Master Painter who employed him," and that therefore he
would have no leisure time for the future in which to deliver the Summonses
which up to that date had been his practice. His occupation of a Journeyman
Painter betokens a very moderate income, but later on we learn that he improved
in social status and carried on the business of a Wine Merchant at King Street,
Tower Hill, London, E. He was a man of fairly good education, and his firm and
distinctive signature reveals to some extent the bold and determined character
which he undoubtedly possessed. He informs us that originally he joined a Modern
Lodge in London [in 1748 -unfortunately up to now its identity is unknown,-but
he soon threw in his lot (heart and soul) with the Antients and became their
chief protagonist and sponsor for over thirty years. In 1752 he was appointed
Grand Secretary of that body and retained that exalted position until his
resignation in 1770,--in the next year [1771] he was elevated to the rank of
Deputy Grand Master, acting in that capacity until 1787 when increasing ill
health caused his retirement; a few years later, viz., in June, 1791, he passed
to the Grand Lodge above, having devoted forty-seven years of a very active life
to the services of the Craft for which he always had a great affection and
regard.
His life in London was almost entirely spent in the Eastern
portion of the great metropolis, for he reside for some years in King Street,
Tower Hill, E., and his will dated 5th June, 1770, commences thus "In the name
of God, Amen. I, Laurence Dermott of the Parish of Saint Botolph, Aldgate in the
County of Middlesex, Wine Merchant, etc., etc."; he later on removed to Mile End
with his wife where he remained until his death in 1791. (3)
HIS ACQUAINTANCE WITH WAPPING
Dermott's residence in the East End of London would make
him very familiar with the locality of Wapping--then the busy and active Port of
London--where the Dundee Lodge had met from 1739.
This Lodge--one of the oldest Modern Lodges in the world,
having been Constituted 1722-23--was allotted in 1753, the Number 9 on the
Register of the Grand Lodge of England, which number it held right up to the
Union in 1813, when in compliance with the compromise then arrived at with the
Antients it had to surrender its old number and from 1814 became No. 18 which
distinction it still holds in 1924.
( To be continued )
NOTES
(1) The Committee of Charity fulfilled in those days the
duties of the present Board of General Purposes of the United Grand Lodge of
England.
(2) This present article is written from the point of view
of the Moderns, but it is only right to at once make the fullest admission as to
the great debt the Moderns owe to the Antients for preserving intact--against
great opposition--much of the old (and perhaps original) working of the Masonic
degree which otherwise might have been entirely lost.
(3) This information has been chiefly derived from an
excellent pamphlet entitled Notes on Laurence Dermott, G.S., and His Work,
written in 1884 by the late Bro. W. M. Bywater, who with Bro. Henry Sadler are
the chief exponents of Bro. Dermott's Masonic career.
----o----
Do you ask what building this
That can show both pain and bliss,
That can be both dark and fair?
Lo, its name is character.
----o----
The Quaker General
By BRO. WILLIAM M. STUART
THE most noted of Washington's "Masonic Generals" was
Nathaniel Greene, rated by Lord Cornwallis as dangerous as His Excellency. As
the historian, C. T. Brady, observes:
"Indeed, we have come down to the Civil War to find his
equal and even then the search must be made with some care. General Scott, for
instance, who gained a much greater reputation in the war of 1812 and in the
Mexican War, is not to be mentioned in the same breath with the Rhode Island
blacksmith, either for ability or achievement; he does not compare with the
plain man who so highly educated himself by his own unaided efforts, that, for
relaxation in the midst of desperate campaigns, he read the Latin poets in the
original by the light of the campfire, and annotated, for the use of the army,
Vattel's famous treatise called Droit des Gens'!"
Here, surely, is a mark for the poor but ambitious youth to
shoot at.
Washington and Greene were the only general officers who
served continuously throughout the war from the siege of Boston to the end.
Although it is an undisputed fact that Greene was a
Freemason, it has not been determined just when and where he was raised. Says
R.W.Bro. S. Penrose Williams, Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Rhode
Island, in a letter dated Oct. 21, 1925:
In answer to your letter of the 19th instant, I beg to
state that there is no record in the archives of the Grand Lodge of Rhode
Island, so far as I have been able to learn, to show that General Nathaniel
Greene was a member of any Lodge in Rhode Island.
"We have cards showing the membership of all our Lodges
from 1749 to the present time, but General Greene's name is not among them. He
was undoubtedly a Mason somewhere.
"The Grand Lodge of Rhode Island has a medal which it is
claimed was the property of General Greene, given him by General Lafayette."
It is extremely probable that General Greene was made a
Mason in one of the ten military lodges of the Continental Army. In fact, some
Masonic writers have definitely claimed this. That he was a Mason there can be
little doubt.
Nathaniel Greene was born of Quaker parents at Warwick,
Rhode Island, in 1746, and was trained to follow the vocation of his father, a
blacksmith. His schooling was very limited, but, possessing a thirst for
knowledge, he started to collect a library, and while yet a mere child learned
the Latin language. After all, education is more a frame of mind than anything
else. The youthful Greene had the will to acquire knowledge and nothing could
keep him from it. Military history was his forte; he studied the campaigns of
all great captains, from Alexander to Frederick, the Prussian genius.
Shortly after becoming of age he was elected to the
Legislature of his native colony. When the news of Lexington came he promptly
resolved to take up arms. Shortly he was appointed to the command of a Rhode
Island brigade. His scandalized church promptly kicked him out. However, at the
instance of Washington, who had quickly perceived his worth, he was promoted by
Congress to the command of a division in the Continental Army.
When Howe's force threatened New York Greene was placed in
charge of the American troops on Long Island. Illness soon incapacitated him for
a time and Bro. Israel Putnam succeeded to the command. The disastrous battle of
Long Island followed. Had Greene been able to continue in command it is probable
that the story of that conflict would have been far different. Although Putnam
was a great partisan, he was no strategist. Greene was.
General Greene was one of the "Masonic Forlorn Hope" that
led the march to Trenton on Christmas night, 1776. He participated in the battle
of Princeton. At Brandywine, after the brigade of Bro. John Sullivan had been
crushed at Birmingham Meeting-House, Greene brought his division on a run from a
point four miles in the rear, covering the distance in the incredible time of
forty minutes. Stationing his veterans in a narrow pass, he planted his
artillery and repulsed charge after charge made by the enemy, holding the
position until darkness fell, and effectually covering the retreat of the army.
He was active in the battle of Germantown, and at Monrnouth rendered good
service. He was president of the military court that tried Major Andre.
On Dec. 3, 1780, following the fiasco of Gates at Camden,
General Greene was appointed to the command of the Army of the South. Among his
prominent officers were Colonel Henry Lee (Light Horse Harry), Daniel Morgan,
Colonel William Washington, Colonel Otho Williams-all brother Masons.
The first great success won by the army under the command
of Greene at this time was compassed by General Morgan at Cowpens, where a
vastly superior pursuing force under Tarleton was practically annihilated.
Then followed the famous retreat across North Carolina with
the pursuing army of Lord Cornwallis often in sight, but never quite near enough
to attack. Swamps, muddy roads, swollen rivers, tangled forests, made difficult
the retreat, but also retarded pursuit. Greene's barefoot men often marched
thirty-five miles in a single day.
So far Greene had not felt himself strong enough to warrant
risking a general engagement. But at length, while encamped on Troublesome
Creek, near Guilford, North Carolina, he was reinforced by three brigades of
militia from Virginia and North Carolina, together with 400 newly-recruited
regulars. These reinforcements raised his army to a total of 4404, horse and
foot. He had temporarily shaken off the pursuit of Cornwallis, but he was now
emboldened to throw down the gage of battle and wait for his Lordship to take it
up. He accordingly advanced to Guilford Court House and, on March 15, 1781,
formed his army in three lines, as was his custom when forced to depend largely
on militia. The militia of the Revolution constituted a very uncertain
proposition at best, and at the worst incipient disaster.
Lord Cornwallis had but 2400 troops. They were, however,
veterans to a man, and comprised some of the best regiments in the British
service: Guards, Grenadiers, Highlanders, Hessians. Of Greene's total force,
2753 were raw militia. He had 1490 regular infantry and 161 regular cavalry; the
latter being commanded by two most excellent officers--Colonels Harry Lee and
William Washington. There were four pieces of artillery. Two-thirds of the
regulars were recruits, too recently brought under discipline to be thoroughly
dependable. Other than the First Maryland regiment, the dragoons, and the
infantry of Lee's Legion, possibly 600 men in all, the Continentals were far
from being veteran troops. It will therefore be seen that the advantage in
personnel was with Lord Cornwallis.
Greene had the choosing of position; a fact of which he
took full advantage. The North Carolina militia, posted at the edge of a forest,
constituted the first line, which extended both sides of the Salisbury road. In
the road were two pieces of artillery under Captain Singleton. The second line,
composed of Virginia militia, was also located in the oak woods; while the third
line--regulars-was near the courthouse in the open. Two guns were stationed at
this point. Lee's Legion supported the first line. To make the attack the
British must necessarily cross open fields in front of the North Carolina
militia. So far the advantage was with Greene. If only the militia would stand
and fight, the prospects were good for a victory. At any rate Greene had tired
of retreating and purposed to do it no more, at least for the present.
Cornwallis was equally desirous of battle. Up to this time it is doubtful
whether either leader had properly estimated the ability of his opponent.
It was about noon when the army of Cornwallis was observed
approaching along the Salisbury road, but as yet nearly a mile distant. The air
was cool and invigorating; not a cloud was in the sky. The scarlet uniforms and
burnished arms of the British regulars, glittering in the rays of the sun,
afforded a sharp contrast with the dead appearance of the landscape. Not yet had
the buds and grass started; the trees, devoid of foliage, stood silhouetted like
somber skeletons against a background of lifeless turf.
In the van of the approaching force trotted the dragoons of
the redoubtable Tarleton. The latter only that morning had been roughly handled
in skirmish with Light Horse Harry's men; but ever ready for battle, he now led
the way to renew the contest.
Crouching behind a fence running along the southern margin
of the woods, the raw North Carolina militia nervously handled their flint-locks
and noted with ill-concealed anxiety the steady approach of the foe. From their
position in the road the two six-pounder guns of Captain Singleton leaped,
vomited flame and smoke and rolled back a pace. Down where the British were
defiling into the open fields some confusion ensued. Then came a swirl of
plunging horses, flaying lashes and gesticulating drivers. Two of the enemy's
gun were unlimbered and opened a return fire.
The British army deployed in three heavy columns and
advanced straight toward the first line of Greene's force. In perfect time moved
the bare legs of the fierce Highlanders; stolidly marched the Hessians; smartly
came the picked men of the Guard. There was no cheering; but steadily,
apparently as irresistible as the march of doom, they came.
A gruff command. The line halted. Heavy muskets came up in
an ominous row. There came a dancing blaze, a burst of smoke, rolling away on
the breeze a stunning roar. Then inflamed faces, behind a hedge of glittering
bayonets, burst out of the battle haze.
It was too much for the raw North Carolina militia. From
their line ripped out one scattering volley, then they fled, all unharmed, fled
like rabbits before the baying of the hunter's dog. Through the forest they
crashed, flinging from them in wild panic musket knapsack, canteen--anything and
everything to lessen their burden and increase their speed. Greene's first line
of defense had vanished like dew before the morning's sun.
But now Lee's Legion, fighters to a man, strove valiantly
Shouting, the exultant foe pressed Lee's men back upon the second line. Here the
militia from Virginia stood firm and a desperate contest resulted. Red coats
spotted thickly the drab turf. Among the scattered oak trees the acrid powder
spoke hung sluggishly near the ground. But eventually the right of the second
line was crushed. The militiamen fell back on their left, finally to take refuge
behind the regulars.
Colonel Webster with the 23rd and 33rd regiments now
attacked the right of the shortened wing, while Leslie and Bose, leading the
Highlanders and Hessians, rushed toward the left. O'Hara with the Grenadiers and
the second battalion of the crack Guards supported the British left. Before this
assault the remainder of Greene's second line gave way. Only the Continental
regulars stood between the foe and disaster.
The battle now took on a character of the utmost ferocity.
Webster pressed forward and attacked the famous First Maryland regiment, than
which no better troops walked the earth. Greene rode behind this line and
encouraged the men. The hardy veterans did not need it. Webster's men drew near,
but now, before the steady and rapid volleys of the Marylanders, the advance was
stopped. For a few fateful moment alternate volleys ripped and blazed from the
opposing lines. Then Webster, after suffering terrible loss, fell back across a
little ravine and upon an elevation sought to rally his shattered brigade.
Lieutenant-colonel Stuart led the first battalion of the
Guards in an assault upon the Second Maryland regiment, unlike the first, mostly
raw recruits. It did not bide the onset, but fled at once in panic, abandoning
two field-pieces. Stuart pursued furiously, and once more a crisis in the battle
was precipitated.
Colonel Gunby of the First Maryland, temporarily relieved
from pressure by Webster's retreat, now called to his men and ordered a charge
against Stuart's flank. This regiment had often tasted victory; it was highly
disciplined, even though the uniforms of buff and blue were in tatters. In
bayonet practice it had no peer on the continent. With a loud shout it sprang
forward, delivered a heavy volley, and under cover of the smoke of the
discharge, struck Colonel Stuart's battalion with a crash heard all over the
field. And at the same moment Lieutenant-colonel Washington spurred into the
ruck with his Continental dragoons.
The dead grass of the sloping field was trampled into the
soil, now made soft by the blood of men. Through the eddying smoke flashed
bayonet and saber. Cheers, groans and screams mingled with the harsh grating of
steel meeting steel. The co-ordination of the Maryland infantry and Washington's
horsemen was perfect. The abandoned cannon were recovered. Stuart was slain, the
Guards routed, great slaughter resulted. It is recorded that at this time one of
Washington's troopers cut down in succession eleven of the fleeing enemy.
Pell-mell the Guards fled, discipline forgotten for the
time. And ever at the heels of the demoralized Britons raced the lean infantry
of Maryland and hacked the dragoons of Washington. The star of victory had
suddenly shifted.
Cornwallis looked upon the rout of his men and realized
that all was lost unless he adopted extreme measures. Extreme measures were what
he did adopt, and those most promptly. So extreme were they that the recital
makes one shudder. He drew up his artillery and ordered it to sweep with
grapeshot his own retreating column and the pursuing Americans !
And so, while the ground fairly rocked under the rapid
discharges of the British cannon, grapeshot whistled and whined among the
struggling men, exacting impartially its toll from friend and foe. Right into
the blaze of their own guns rushed the panic-stricken Guards in an effort to
escape from their vengeful pursuers. The Americans fell back.
Greene had yet one regiment of Continental infantry which
had been but slightly engaged. However, the defection of the militia and his own
heavy loss had so weakened his army that he felt it unwise to abide the renewed
attack that Cornwallis was now about to make. Hence, ordering Colonel Greene to
cover the retreat with his Virginia regiment, the American commander abandoned
the field to his foe and fell back to Troublesome Creek, ten miles in the rear.
The retrograde movement was made in good order and Cornwallis did not think it
prudent to pursue. Indeed, he could not, for he had lost about a quarter of his
entire force.
In this fierce two-hour action the British lost over 600
men, killed and wounded, including many of the best officers. Greene's
casualties were 400, besides nearly 900 militia missing. Considering the speed
with which these men left the field, it seems likely that a majority of them had
attained the sanctuary of their own firesides before the echo of the final
volley had died away. Such was the battle of Guilford Court House, a fight so
fell that men still speak of it when tales of valor are toward. Says the popular
American historian, Brady:
"We have to look along the pages of history for a hundred
years to find such fighting as the whole British army did on one side, and as
the famous First Maryland did on the other, on that day, and we do not find it
until we come to the old Thomas at Chicamauga."
Cornwallis claimed the victory because he spent the night
on the field, amid the thousand bodies in scarlet and blue that marked the place
of strife. The British army was so shattered that Greene was relieved of the
danger of further pursuit. Cornwallis gave up the campaign and retired to the
coast within four days after the battle. Greene pursued for a time, then turned
and marched to South Carolina, where in due season he recovered that state for
the patriot cause.
News of the battle of Guilford produced a sensation in the
British Parliament. Fox declared that "Another such victory will ruin the
British army." In fact it did remove Cornwallis as a factor in the campaign for
the recovery of the Carolinas. Although bloody battles were to be fought, such
as Hobkirk's Hill and Eutaw, Greene was never again called upon to hazard what
he did at Guilford. By alternately fighting and maneuvering he worsted Lord
Rawdon and Colonel Stuart and shut the British army in Charleston. Before the
end came he had won back all that Gates lost at Camden--that and more. And he
achieved for himself a name that will live as long as the story of the Republic.
----o----
The Roberts Constitutions of 1722
By BRO. J. HUGO TATSCH, Associate Editor, Iowa
CONSIDERABLE interest has been aroused by an article making
the rounds of the Masonic press regarding a very rare Masonic book offered for
sale in England for 1650 pounds, or $7600--the equivalent of the English figures
at the time the story originated. The volume is The Old Constitution Belonging
to the Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons; credit is
given to the Iowa Masonic Library for having the only other copy heretofore
available.
As is generally known to Masonic students, the premier Book
of Constitutions authorized by the Grand Lodge of England was the one brought
out by the Rev. James Anderson, D.D., in 1723. Bro. Lionel Vibert of England, a
Past Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge of London, has written an introduction to
the 1923 Quaritch reprint of the 1723 volume which is the most scholarly
treatment of the subject in print. Bro. Vibert also wrote a shorter article on
the same theme which appeared in THE BUILDER, August, 1923.
The Minutes of the Grand Lodge of England begin with the
entry of June 24, 1723; we are therefore dependent upon The New Book of
Constitutions for the historical account of what transpired in Grand Lodge
between 1717 and 1723. We read therein, as of Sept. 28, 1721, that
His Grace's Worship and the Lodge finding fault with all
the Copies of the Old Gothic Constitutions, order'd Brother James Anderson, A.
M. to digest the same in a new and better method.
On Dec. 27, 1721, Montagu, Grand Master, appointed a
committee of fourteen to examine Bro. Anderson's manuscript, who reported on
March 25 following that they had approved of it, after some amendments.
According to Anderson's account in the 1738 volume of the Constitutions, the
book was in print Jan. 17, 1723. So far as I know, there is no record anywhere
indicating that the Roberts Constitutions of 1722 was authorized by the Grand
Lodge of England. As its title page indicates (see illustration) it is "Taken
from a Manuscript wrote about Five Hundred Years since," and doubtless the
printer or the transcriber had access to one of the old manuscript charges of
which ninety have been found up to the present time. (1) This document, now lost
to the Craft, apparently escaped destruction in 1720, when
This Year, at some private Lodges, several very valuable
Manuscripts (for they had nothing yet in Print) concerning the Fraternity, their
Lodges, Regulations, Charges, Secrets, and Usages (particularly one writ by Mr.
Nicholas Stone the Warden of Inigo Jones) were too hastily burnt by some
scrupulous Brothers, that those Papers might not fall into strange Hands.
Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. 22, contains an able article
by Sir Alfred Robbins, P.G.W., United Grand Lodge of England, on "The Earliest
Years of English Organized Freemasonry," and in a subsequent reference to the
same subject, entitled "A Newly Discovered Print of the 'Roberts MS.'," he
points out that The Post Man and the Historical Account, etc., for July 31 Aug.
2, 1722 (No. 60015), contains a letter alluding to an old Masonic document, in
which is reprinted the text of the Roberts Constitutions, practically verbatim,
as we know it from the pamphlet version so extremely rare. R. W. Bro. Robbins
states:
I am of the opinion that Roberts did not make his copy from
the Post Man but that both prints were copies direct from the original MS., as
in a few instances blanks in the newspaper are filled up in the pamphlet. It is
very remarkable that all other copies of the Post Man, as well as of the
Roberts' print should have so completely disappeared.
It has not been determined which of the two printed
versions of 1722 had priority; one can only guess at the circumstances in
connection with it. Anderson makes no mention of it; and venturing an opinion
upon the indignation which Anderson expressed in 1735, when one Smith of London
"pyrated" the 1723 Anderson work, it may be that Anderson willfully ignored the
Roberts pamphlet of 1722, and did not leave us any record of Grand Lodge
mention, if there were any, of the Roberts work in 1722 and 1723. On the other
hand --and it is a more charitable and fraternal supposition --it must be
remembered that the Roberts pamphlet does not include the General Regulations
first compiled by Grand Master George Payne in 1720, and approved by Grand Lodge
on St. John the Baptist's Day, 1721, and for this reason it is rather unlikely
that the pamphlet by Roberts was an official or authorized publication. The
manuscript, as a whole, in fact, is in no way comparable to the compilation by
Anderson, and would be as unsatisfactory for the regulation of a Grand Lodge as
were all the other manuscript ("Gothic") constitutions then known. Why the
Roberts pamphlet was printed at all is something difficult to conjecture; but I
incline to the opinion that the original Post Man article, in which the Craft
was maligned (together with other probable attacks of the day against
Freemasonry), was responsible for the printed version of this old manuscript.
This is borne out, I believe, in the following paragraph, appearing as a part of
the introduction:
Nor is their Value lessen'd or abated at all by the Dust
and Scandal rais'd by any men against them, or by the Freedom they have taken to
banter and rally them. The Dirt thrown at them flyes back at those that cast it,
and the Honour of the Society of Free-Masons remains entire. So that none of the
Persons of Honour who have lately grac'd the Society with their Presence, have
yet seem any reason to be asham'd of them, or to withdraw their Protection from
them.
[Since the foregoing was written, Bro. N.W.J. Haydon of
Toronto has called my attention to the Inaugural Address of W. Bro. Edward
Conder, Jr., Worshipful Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No 2076, for the year
1901. He says in part:
. . . We know that for the first few years after the
foundation of Grand Lodge, there was absolutely nothing in print beyond slight
notices of the existence of the Fraternity.
As the number of Lodges became augmented by the foundation
of new ones, so did the increase of copies of the Old Constitutions become a
necessity, consequently it is not surprising to find this demand supplied by
printed copies. In 1722 a London printer issued an authorised edition with the
following title page. (Here follows the text.)
This printed copy of the MS. Constitutions was quickly
followed by the Constitutions of the Free-masons, &c., for the use of Lodges,
drawn up by Dr. James Anderson, and published with the authority of Grand Lodge
in 1723. (2)
Bro. Conder, in a footnote, says: "This first edition is
extremely scarce, only one copy is known to exist, it is a faulty copy of
Haileian MS., 1942." I gladly defer to such an eminent authority as Bro. Conder,
but nevertheless will let my opinion stand regarding the publication of the
Roberts Constitution as having been probably brought out in connection with the
attacks the Fraternity.] (3)
The increasing popularity of the Craft, and its appearance
in the public eye, would warrant a printer in believing that a pamphlet on the
subject was readily salable. However, this may not have been true, for one is
justified in believing that more than two copies would have otherwise survived
the years. It may also be that the pamphlet came out so late in 1722 that it was
overshadowed by the more useful Anderson compilation, available by Jan. 17,
1723.
No serious attention was paid, so far as I can discover, to
the Roberts pamphlet until 1871, when the work of William James Hughan on the
Old Charges revived an interest in the early documents of the Craft. The
researches instituted at the time warranted a reproduction of some of the early
issued of the Book of Constitutions. Richard Spencer, a noted Mason of his day
and a publisher of Masonic books, brought out a volume entitled The
Constitutions of the Freemasons, 1722 3 6 30, London, 1871, in which the Roberts
item of 1722 has leading place.
Bro. Spencer states in the preface to his book that the
1722 Constitutions came into his possession "about a quarter of a century ago"
(about 1845), bound up in the end of a 1723 Constitutions. "The Freemasons'
Magazine and Masonic Mirror," September, 1857, page 721, contains this
statement:
Brother Spencer has called at our office and shown us a
specimen of Brother Harris's skill in a facsimile executed for him a few years
back, in restoring a portion of the O.B. printed in black letter to copy of the
Book of Constitutions printed in 1722, now in his possession, and supposed to be
unique; and which Brother Spencer will be most happy to show to any member of
the Craft.
Lionel Vibert, mentioned above, is also the editor of
"Miscellanea Latomorum," a valuable periodical of Notes and Queries on matters
relating to the Craft. In the October, 1923, issue, he comments upon the
discovery of the second copy of the Roberts pamphlet, now in the collection of
Bro. W. J. Williams, of England, and, and says:
A comparison of the new copy of the Roberts print with the
Iowa copy shows that the alignment of the Obligation in black letter is quite
different on p. 23 (really 25) and that in the Iowa copy the word here occurs in
the first line, and is not in the original. Furthermore the signature letter D
occurs in the new copy (as it should for this is really page 25, and C occurs on
p. 17), but it is absent from the Iowa copy. The word here appears in the
Obligation on p. 18, which is from this point word for word identical with that
on pp. 23 and 24. The Obligation is half at the bottom of p. 23, and the rest on
the upper portion of p. 24. On p. 24 the finial is an ornament of a basket with
fruit and flowers carried by a cherub. The identical ornament occurs again on p.
19. In the new copy the ornament is there in full; in the Iowa copy there is
only the basket and its contents; the supporter and all ornaments below the
actual basket are absent. A careful examination of the photograph reveals on
both sides of the leaf indications of a junction in the paper which would mean
that if at any time the portion below the line were missing the whole of the
Obligation text on the first page, 23, will have been absent, and all the
ornament except just the top on p. 24....
There is no other Book of Constitutions printed in 1722, so
there can be no doubt, I fear, that the Iowa pamphlet is the work, the last page
of which was restored by Harris. Accordingly the position now is that the only
perfect copy of the Roberts print is in this country, for I understand that the
copy recently discovered is complete. It may be observed that the error in the
pagination, by which the two last pages are numbered 23 and 24 instead of 25 and
26, is a feature of the original; as already stated, the only details in which
the Iowa copy does not exactly reproduce the original are that it adds the word
here in the first line of the Obligation and omits part of the finial ornament,
that the signature letter is omitted, and that the obligation is not printed
line for line as the original on p. 23. Naturally at the time of the sale of the
library the fact that this restoration had been carried out was lost sight of;
it had been done for Brother Spencer more than twenty years previously.
One of the outstanding book sales in the Craft was that of
Richard Spencer's private library in London, July, 1875. It came to the
attention of Bro. Robert Farmer Bower, of Keokuk, Iowa, a merchant whose success
in business enabled him to indulge his hobby of Masonic book collecting rather
freely. He promptly cabled Richard Spencer an offer to buy the entire
collection; but this was declined. Bro. Bower then communicated with Bro. Hughan,
who consented to act for him at the sale, and among the treasures secured for
America was the Roberts Constitutions, which was sold for eight pounds ten
shillings, or about forty dollars. Much to Bro. Spencer's disappointment, the
entire sale yielded considerably less than what Bro. Bower had offered for the
collection intact.
Bro. Bower died May 19, 1882. Theodore Sutton Parvin, ever
watchful of opportunities to enrich the library which he had founded, took steps
to secure the Bower Library, which was bought for four thousand dollars in the
same year. This collection, more than any other single purchase, has made the
Iowa Masonic Library what it is today, and the plaudits of the Iowa Craft, and
the Craft as a whole in America, are due Bro. Parvin for his foresight, skill
and assiduity in securing rare books whenever obtainable. The Roberts
Constitutions is now carefully protected in a steel vault with other rare books,
and is only displayed to the serious students of the Craft.
The Research Committee of the Grand Lodge of Iowa consented
to the reprinting of the Roberts Constitutions by the Masonic Research Society
in 1915. An edition of two thousand was printed from copper halftone plates,
photographed direct from the original volume. Copies of the reprint are still
available, I believe, through the National Masonic Research Society.
NOTES
(1) The Old Charges. Rev. Herbert Poole, London, 1924. The
table prepared by Bro. Lionel Libert and published in THE BUILDER, Vol. IX
(1923), page 368, gives a classification of these old documents.
(2) A.Q.C., Vol. XIII, page 180.
(3) It has also been suggested that this printed version of
the Old Charges was put out on behalf of a conservative element who were opposed
to the determination of the majority to recast the Constitutions, with the
intention of detracting from the effect of the official work. Such an opposition
might explain the rarity of the work, as it may have been suppressed as A
Defense of Free-Masonry is supposed to have been at a later date. [Ed.]
----o----
Great Men Who Were Masons - Nathaniel Prentiss Banks
By BRO. GEORGE W. BAIRD, P.G. M., District of Columbia
KNOWN to Massachusetts as Governor, to the rest of the
Union he was General Banks. Statesman, soldier, executive, editor, lawyer and
machinist, his career is typical of America, the land of opportunity. He was
born at the town of Waltham in the beginning of the year 1816. His parents were,
if not poor, at least of very limited means; his education was gained at the
common school, and at an early age he went to work in a cotton mill. Whether on
his own motion, or that of his parents, he was later apprenticed to the trade of
machinist, which then as now was of great importance in the industrial world. A
studious young man with great ambitions, Nathaniel Banks attended the local
political caucuses and took part in the debates at every opportunity, and thus
became a fluent and forceful speaker. He lectured before the Lyceum, political
clubs and Temperance Societies - not prohibition, by the way, which was then
undreamed of, and it was at this time that he became a member of the Masonic
Order.
President Polk gave him an appointment in the Boston Custom
House, and during the incumbency of this office he studied law and was admitted
to the bar. In 1869 he was chosen as Speaker of the House and was one of the
chief advocates of the coalition between the Democrats and the "Free-soilers" by
which the time-honored rule of the Whigs was over-thrown in his state. In 1853
he was elected to Congress and in the summer of that year was chosen as
president of the Convention called to revise the State Constitution. During his
first term in Congress he withdrew from the Democratic Party on the issue of
slavery, and in 1854 was re-elected by the aid of the "American Party"
(originally called the Know-nothings), which was organized when President Pierce
was making wholesale appointments to federal offices of members of the Roman
Church. After a long contest the House of Representatives chose him as its
Speaker in 1855. There were a hundred and thirty-three ballots taken before a
decision was reached.
Banks served that Congress two years and was re-elected at
the next, the thirty-fifth, but resigned in December, 1857, to become Governor
of the State of Massachusetts. This office he held until 1861, when he became
President of the Illinois Central Railroad.
When the Civil War broke out he was given the commission of
a Major General, having been an act member of the State Militia as a young man.
Notwithstanding this very limited military experience the President had great
confidence in him. He was at the first battle of Winchester, in which he did
surprisingly well; and next morning crossed the Shenandoah near Fort Royal, thus
foiling an attempt on the part of Stonewall Jackson to capture the force under
his command. During Banks’ operations in the Valley of Virginia, Jackson not
only blocked Banks' movements, but captured many of his supply trains, which was
the cause of much adverse criticism in the newspapers. But no notice was taken
of the fact that every inhabitant of that region was a spy for Jackson and an
enemy of the "Yanks." It is not too much to say that Jackson was perhaps the
greatest leader that the Civil War produced, but while showing marked ability in
military affairs, he was not a success at anything else.
General Banks relieved General Butler at New Orleans early
in 1863, and made a successful march through the Teche country, reaching
Alexandria with very little loss, and thus ended the receipt of supplies by the
Confederates through that channel. Rear Admiral Farragut with two vessels had
patrolled the river from Port Hudson to Vicksburg to prevent the passage of
material across the river. It was a plan, ably conceived and well executed and
made the work of General Grant much easier.
After the war, Banks was again elected to Congress as a
Republican, and later was also re-elected in succession to the fortieth,
forty-first and forty-second Congresses. He then dropped out but was once more
re-elected as a Liberal Republican to the forty-third Congress.
In 1879 he was appointed United States Marshal, an office
he held until 1888. He was then elected to the fifty-first Congress on the
Republican ticket. He was later, in 1891, voted an annual pension of $1200. He
died at Waltham, Mass., Sept. 1, 1894.
Only one Masonic action of General Banks has been
discovered by the writer. There were a number of Military Lodges in the
Confederate Armies, and they were admitting some improper material. These lodges
were so numerous that they even talked of forming a Grand Lodge. A number of
Past Masters asked permission from Banks to pass through the lines to attend the
meeting of the Grand Lodge at New Orleans, and he gave them an escort composed
of Masons. Through their influence the Grand Lodge of Louisiana was preserved.
The monument to his memory shown in the accompanying
illustration is of bronze, and is erected in the State House grounds at Boston.
The sculptor who did the work was Mr. Henry H. Kitson. It was unveiled in
September, 1908.
----o----
The Comacines and Masonry
By BROS. A. L. KRESS AND R. J. MEEKREN
The title of our article published in the January number of
THE BUILDER was perhaps rather misleading in that there was very little said in
it about the Comacines. Confession is good for the soul, even the soul of a
literary partnership, and it is possible that the alliterative jingle had more
weight than it should have had. Bro. Ravenscroft in the kindly and fraternal
rejoinder that appeared in THE BUILDER for April took up the defense of the
theory of which he is perhaps the most widely known exponent. He says, and we
can fully sympathize with his feelings, that a "bit of flat denial" would be
welcome "as something tangible with which to deal." The difficulty is, and we
are glad to make the admission, that one cannot definitely deny that there was a
continuity of organization bridging the gap between Roman and Medieval times
localized especially in the district about Lake Como. In fact, we go further
than admission, and will say that we believe that the evidence goes to show that
there was a real continuity in culture, in the arts and crafts and in social
organization, both in the North of Italy and the South of France; and that if
such a general continuity be supposed, the special continuity of architecture as
an art, and of the organization of the Mason's craft, must also be granted,
unless there were special reasons to the contrary, and no such reasons appear.
It would seem then that what we hold does not contradict the supposition of
continuity between collegium and gild at Como, but rather includes it. Bro.
Ravenscroft has further elucidated his position in a recent letter. He says:
I make no claim for the Comacine Gild to be the only link
between Roman and Medieval times, or even the chief one. On the contrary, I
cannot but think the Byzantine influence was in its district as great, and after
what Rivorra claims for the Ravenna School it is impossible to ignore its
influence. What I do claim is that the Comacines were the link between Roman
times and Western Europe-especially Britain, and indeed I know of no other
influence so well defined as theirs in the pre-Norman remains of this country.
But we do not want to discuss Bro. Ravenscroft's article in
detail as our original purpose was not especially concerned with the Comacine
Theory as such, in spite of the heading of the article, our object was rather to
make a positive suggestion (which we hope may be discussed by Masonic scholars)
as to the real nature of the link--if one there was--through which a chain of
continuity in the organization of the Mason's craft might have subsisted. It
would have been possible to set the hypothesis out in greater detail, but that
may be more usefully done if it first have the benefit of the criticism of
others. It would seem that if the lodge were normally, in Medieval times, a
distinct type of organization--forming, dissolving and reforming, here
semi-permanent, there quite ephemeral but always sufficient for its purpose--its
work (1) -which was the making of masons--or rather builders, then many of the
difficulties which beset the student in seeking to connect Speculative,
post-Grand Lodge Masonry with the Operative Masonic Gilds will vanish for if
this be the case the connection of the gilds with the system from which ours is
descended was always an accidental one. The immobile, local, exclusive
organization of the gild, frequently exercising semi public and municipal
functions was connected with the mysterious and (in the literal sense of the
word) occult or hidden organization behind it solely through the fact that the
members of the one were largely, or wholly as the case might have been, also
members of the other. And if this hypothesis be accepted as solving the problems
raised by the remaining records left to us of Medieval gilds and pre-Grand Lodge
Masonry it would then appear to be possible to argue that the lodge, like the
traditions of craftsmanship, of handi work and technical manipulation, was not
originated in the Middle Ages but also existed behind and under cover of such of
the Roman Collegia as were connected with building. We would suggest, as others
also have thought, that this organization was not exclusively confined to
skilled stone cutters, sculptors and architects, but was common to all building
crafts who used square and compass. And as Gould remarked in a different
connection, there would seem to be no limit set to its possible antiquity. It
could have come from Etruria and Magna Graecia to Rome, from Greece to Italy,
from the Mycenaean and Minoan Cultures to Classical Greece--or from Egypt, Asia
Minor or Babylon. There is no limit, and equally no facts--it is rather like
looking out into empty space. But between the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages
in Europe we have got something to go upon. We know that the later culture was
evolved out of the former, rested on it as a foundation, used it for material.
We know that over large areas and in many special localities there was
continuity, and one of these centres certainly appears to have been about Lake
Como, and its island city. It also seems, once one is freed of the idea that the
Masonic organization which existed in England in the 17th and at the beginning
of the 18th century must have been derived from broken down gilds, that the
ceremonies and mysteries that Modern Freemasonry inherited (and expanded and
"moralized" and "illustrated") were traditions of just the same kind as those
that were passed down from generation to generation practically everywhere in
Europe in the form of annual ritual observances, mumming dances and plays,
fertility rites, collective sun and weather magic and the rest of what has in
late years been so diligently collected and set forth by anthropologists and
folklorists. It was passed down in the same kind of way, though in a close and
secret fraternity, which included not only the architect, capable of designing
and superintending the erection of a cathedral and accustomed to the society of
great and rich men, but also of the village carpenter and stone mason who never
built anything more important than a cottage or a barn-and the strength and
continuity of the tradition probably lay much more with the latter than with the
former.
NOTE
(1) When the lodge first emerges into the light of history
it certainly seems to have been very largely a convivial organization. The
actual records confirm contemporary outside opinion on this point. On this
account the statement in the text may be too sweeping. The position may be made
clearer by reference to the traditional May Day, Midsummer and Harvest
observances. These all partook of a markedly festive character, and doubtless
this character kept them alive long after any real belief in their efficacy as
promoting the prosperity of the community had disappeared, beyond perhaps a
vague feeling that it would be "unlucky" to omit them. Nevertheless it would be
proper to say that their purpose was to promote magically the fertility of the
fields and the increase of flocks and herds; and in the same way the lodge
meeting may have been the welcome occasion of a simple feast and much drinking
of ale or wine, while yet it would be accurate to say, as in the text of the
article, that its work was the making of Masons.
----o----
SELECTION OF OFFICERS
THE selection of officers is a matter of primary importance
to the prosperity of a lodge. Merit should always be the passport to your
support, and it is generally modest and unobtrusive. Wherever you find intrigue,
depend upon it, there is more or less a lack of real worth. When management is
resorted to for the purpose of elevation, the office thus attained will
generally be held more for the sake of the honor it confers than from any
disposition to fill it usefully to the Craft. Stations, in our noble
Institution, should follow good works and be regarded as the fitting reward of
zeal and devotion to its principles, and not for the sake of distinction. I do
not mean by this to condemn that ambition which is part of our common nature,
and which when well directed is an honor to us; but I do mean to condemn the
elevation to high positions of such as are neither attentive to, nor competent
for, the due discharge of their duties.
Be sure, before you open the South door to a brother, that
he is, or in due time will be, qualified to preside in the East; for after you
have once put him in the road to promotion, you are disinclined, even when his
unfitness becomes apparent, to check his further elevation from a feeling of
kindness and forbearance. Brethren who aspire to the high stations should take
them with a consciousness of capacity and a fixed determination to be, in fact
as well as in name, officers of the lodge. Without an efficient head no
institution can hope to prosper. The mere possession of ability is nothing, it
must be properly and vigorously exerted to be useful, and culpable indeed is
that brother who, with the responsibility of station upon him, and with a mind
fitted for the profitable discharge of duty, thinks not of the one, and refuses
the benefits of the other, to the Craft who have confided in and promoted him.
The obligations are deep and responsible so far as the
Master is concerned, and not the less grave and imposing upon the Wardens. These
hold, as it were, the destinies of the lodge in their hands; and it will prosper
or languish as they are faithful or negligent. No brother, therefore, will feel
hurt--unless he prefers the gratification of his own pride to the good of the
Order--if one younger than himself, in years or in Masonry, is promoted because
of his greater fitness. No lodge can hope to prosper if indifference prevails in
respect to the selection of its officers.
----o----
EDITORIAL
R. J. MEEKREN Editor‑in‑Charge
BOARD OF EDITORS
LOUIS BLOCK, Iowa
ROBERT L. CLEGG, Ohio
GILBERT W. DAYNES, England
RAY V. DENSLOW, Missouri
GEORGE H. DERN, Utah
N.W.J. HAYDON, Canada
R.V. Harris, Canada
C. C. HUNT, Iowa
CHARLES F. IRWIN. Ohio
A.L. KRESS, Pennsylvania
F.H. LITTKLEFIELD, Missouri
JOSEPH E. MORCOMBE, California
JOSEPH FORT NEWTON, New York
ARTHUR C. PARKER, New York
JESSE M. WHITED, California
DAVID E. W. WILLIAMSON, Nevada
THE COST ACCOUNT
FOR which of you," said the Man of Nazareth, "intending to
build a tower, sitteth not down first and counteth the cost?" It is just the
common sense of every-day life. But there is a calculation that precedes
counting the cost of building, that precedes the intention to build, and that is
whether it will pay not to build. No one who is not acting on mere impulse, does
begin any fresh undertaking without more or less carefully considering whether
he can carry it through. It may need no more than a passing thought, it may
require prolonged consideration, but in any case it is a comparatively simple
and straightforward task. The would-be builder counts the cost of the tower - a
tower in those days was an obvious and fairly efficient means of insurance of
life and property - and sees "whether he have sufficient to finish it!" there
are two elements only to estimate and to compare. But when the cost of not
building is taken in hand the problem becomes more complex, sometimes so complex
that we are afraid to tackle it, put it off, find we are too busy, or simply
ignore it, forgetting that we are thus practically making a negative decision
without counting the possible price we may have to pay. To illustrate, it would
have been absurd for a peasant in Palestine two thousand years ago to dream of
building a tower, absurd as for a day laborer now to take out a five hundred
thousand dollar life insurance policy. On the other hand a millionaire does not
need to consider long whether he can buy another automobile. The earlier
calculation of the two needs at least an approximate solution of the later as
one of its factors. It is no use to give thought to a project obviously out of
our power.
It is a feature of Occidental civilization, especially in
America, that there should be a tendency to estimate all values in terms of
cash. Economically money is no more than a convenient counter for the purpose of
the exchange of commodities of real value-its own value is fictitious and
depends entirely on a general agreement that it will be taken in return for
goods or labor. The question is confused by the fact that this fictitious value
is based upon the commodity value of a rare metal whose chief use aside from
this lies in its adaptability to ornament, an ironic comment by the way, on the
Gradgrind philosophy of life, which is, we fear, by no means extinct. It thus
happens that money, like fire, from a good servant has become a bad master. It
is necessary in the market place, but we have allowed it to go far beyond its
proper and limited function, till it has become a veil, a hoodwink, to blind us
to the real value of things. These real values are relative and personal. A
crust of bread is a Godsend beyond price to the starving man, an elaborate
dinner causes only disgust to the sufferer from sea sickness. We cannot properly
compare kilometers and fluid ounces, they are obviously incommensurable as they
stand, nor even can we put a thousand feet of lumber against a square yard of
canvas painted by a master hand. Who will set money against the lives of those
he loves? It may cost a thousand or ten thousand dollars to restore health to
his sick wife or child - is that therefore the price he sets on them? If he can
beg, borrow or steal it, it will be forthcoming, but the money does not express
a market value. Yet somehow it has come about that it is only in terms of
dollars and cents that we can convey to others the value of a thing to us. "I
would not take a million dollars for it," says one of some trifle of value to
him. It is probably not true, but all he is trying to do is to convey through an
alien language the satisfaction it gives him The "cash nexus," to use Carlyle's
phrase, is foreign to such values, and the incompatibility is shown by
hyperbolical exaggeration.
The building of a tower of defense is an appropriate
allegory for Masons; the Craft in America is faced with a problem, a duty, as
urgent as that which emerged during the war. Then, though the greatest and most
powerful in point of wealth and numbers of any fraternal society in the country,
it found itself impotent through lack of any organization fitted to cope with
the emergency. In this case the machinery is in existence, ready to be set to
work. We are called on to build a house of refuge for our smitten brethren
against an insidious and deadly foe. They are our brothers who need this aid,
this protection. By our own act, of our own free will and accord, we assumed
obligations toward them, and these obligations come next after those elemental
ones that a man owes to himself and his own family. The Grand Master of New
Mexico, in his article earlier in these pages, once more sets forth the need,
and the way in which it can be met. We hope that no one will skip the facts and
figures therein quoted and collected, they are necessary to counting the cost.
It is true that the value of a brother's life to himself, to his family or to
his brethren is not to be expressed in any figures representing money. Of
course, the abstract value of the additional wealth in the country that may be
created if the lives of a group of men be prolonged a given time can be
calculated on the basis of statistical averages, but in and by itself the
calculation will leave us cold. That is not the use of friendship and brotherly
love, or the obligation of the fraternal tie. And yet it has its place in
comparing the cost to us of the tower we should build to the loss in the
lowering of ideals, the deterioration of the meaning of Masonry to members of
the Order, and on a much lower level still of the loss of prestige in the eyes
of the world. Admitted that the figures do no more than tell us of the most
superficial aspect, yet even on this ground alone we can see at how small a cost
we can do so much. Can we do it? Can the Masons of this country raise the sums
required? Not much greater than the Masonic bodies in many of our larger cities
have spent on a Temple for their own convenience? Can we do it is not the
question at all, it is this; can we afford not to do it?
* * *
ROSE CROIX
UNDOUBTEDLY, were a census taken, it would be found that a
very large majority of Masons the world over are at least nominal adherents of
the Christian faith, yet it certainly is not a Christian institution. The
declaration in the Constitutions of 1723 made that point sufficiently clear. But
it may be argued that this was no very revolutionary step, that though in the
old MS. records mention is made of the Trinity and of the church, and Masons are
exhorted to keep clear of heresy in the same breath as they are enjoined to be
loyal to the King, it meant no more than that to them the church and religion,
like King and parliament, lodging houses, taverns, rough layers and employers
were all part of their world which it never occurred to them to question.
Yet it was inevitable that reflection should lead to a
comparison being made between the two, just as in the Compagnonage in France,
there was a strong tendency towards symbolizing in the ceremonies of admission
the details of the death of Jesus Christ. There is no doubt that in the Royal
Arch, for example, are veiled references to the doctrine of the Trinity, and
these are far more obvious in the English ritual of -the degree. The chivalric
orders also had a Christian ,character; it could hardly have been otherwise,
seeing they assumed to be survivals or revivals of definitely Christian orders
of men who were monks as well as soldiers. But it was in that degree, or order,
which in most rites is numbered eighteen, that the most thoroughgoing essay was
made to interpret Masonry in a Christian sense. So far as can be judged this was
the original idea. It was the third degree over again, regarded as a Christian
allegory, stripped of the veils that hid its meaning so that none could mistake.
So deeply was this character stamped upon it that it has remained in spite of
many modifications; neither those of the Grand Orient nor those of Albert Pike
have been able to efface it. But these changes were not the first, the name Rose
Croix was from the beginning confused with that of the Rosicrucians, and occult
and mystical elements were attached to it. In the latter part of the eighteenth
century men were seeking in Freemasonry wondrous secrets, words of magical
power, recipes for making gold, the philosopher's stone, the elixir of life, the
foretelling the future, communication with spirits, the control of fate, and all
the rest of the fantastic expectations men had from knowledge before scientific
knowledge had come to birth. We may smile today at those who traveled long
distances to obtain some new degree they had heard of in the hope that at last
they would come at the real secrets of Masonry, at the ease with which
charlatans and impostors duped men, educated, and no fools. Men were seeking for
what was not there, but this they did not know, and like prospectors for gold
they went here and there and everywhere, always seeking.
Physical science since then has produced wonders even
greater than those then looked for though not perhaps of the same kind, or
produced in the way expected. Yet it is not clear that the seeking has been
ended. Men no longer invent new degrees, but they write books instead, and
curiously enough the books are bought and read. In them the same kind of visions
are set forth, though now less concerned with the ability to produce physical
marvels; but instead stress is laid on the mystical and occult. Some mysterious
secret behind the veils, through which if we can once attain it the riddle of
the universe will be solved, a word, a formula that will explain and make clear
all the mysteries of life and death. And these Mosaic writers, like the founders
of new rites and degrees before them, are at one in despising the trite
moralities of symbolical Masonry, of the simple straightforward charges of the
three first degrees. The tendency is not unnatural-the young man who came by
night to Jesus did not like the advice to sell all he had and give to the poor;
neither did he understand how he could be born again. The Scribes and Pharisees
asked for a sign, but none was given them. So certain men expect to find
something in Masonry, they know not what, but at least something different and
above the commonplaces of every-day life. Two things happen with such
initiates-either they lose interest at once and drop out, or they go seeking
further, and speak of the wisdom and knowledge of past ages, enshrined in a
symbolic system the meaning of which its possessors have forgotten.
It is a constant tendency in humanity. The people of
ancient Greece ascribed the Cyclopean walls of Tyryns and Mycenae to the Titans.
Here and there were tales of how this or that city or temple were magically
built, by the power of divine music, the lyre of Apollo, or Orpheus, which could
move men and mountains. Music in Greek thought came near to being an exact
equivalent to the Word of Power in the Kabbalah and elsewhere. A Rabbinical
tale, quite well known, tells how Solomon built the temple by magical means. Yet
nothing is more certain that all these wonders were built by patient toil and
good craftsmanship. Blow by blow the stones were wrought, in sweat and weariness
from day to day. Magic there was, the magic of genius, of skill, of human
persistence in striving to realize an end long imagined and desired. Is not this
itself a parable?
We despise the simple moralities of the Craft - they are no
secrets, we knew them before. Brotherhood? We had friends before we were Masons.
Relief and Truth? What of that, Masonry has no monopoly. So we look for
something else - and do not find it. We look for some great thing to do, and
despise the little things at hand.
What of all the wonders of our age? To another generation
they would have been miracles-we pride ourselves on them, we are at the summit
of knowledge, all who went before and the things they were and did are out of
date - "back numbers." Yet what are these things? Merely modes and methods of
doing what men have done from the first. Automobiles, wireless, moving pictures,
poison gas, high explosives, aeroplanes, do nothing especially new; we
communicate, travel, kill with greater expedition, that is all. Viewed
dispassionately from the outside, such things only affect our lives with less or
more of what has always been in the life of mankind. And so it remains that the
fundamentals, truth and justice, friendship and morality are still the great
things in the world as they have been from the beginning.
Thus it seems that the great secret is open before us, only
we overlook it; the treasure is at our feet ' and not in some far field at the
foot of the rainbow, Every day we have to do with the little things – in our own
symbolism the use of gavel and gauge, of square and level - and in the end a
temple is built. Will it happen that those who come after will say of our work
that the builders had the true word and no substituted secrets ?
----o----
The Form of the Lodge
By BROS. A. L. KRESS AND R. J. MEEKREN
WHAT then was this "lodge," the form of which was so
carefully concealed from the profane, and whose "discovery" marked such an
important stage in the initiation or "making" of the newly entered Mason?
We have already been informed that it was a "long square,"
but this somehow does not seem adequate to account for the mystery. In the
English "Tracing Boards" mentioned in the first part of this article (page 119)
the emblems and concrete symbols of each degree are represented within an oblong
marked with a definite border. In the old "Master's Carpet" designs the earliest
prototype of which is to be found in the Masonic Chart or Hieroglyphic Monitor
of Jeremy Cross (reproduced on page 120) we have an oblong pavement depicted in
perspective, with the emblems of all degrees disposed on or about it. In the
earlier English charts the first and second degrees are combined, and this
arrangement carries us back to the time when the "lodge" was still being drawn
on the floor in chalk and charcoal, and afterwards washed out by means of the
"mop and pail," about which early detractors of the Craft used to be so
facetious. This all at first sight very puzzling. We are so accustomed to regard
the tiled chamber in which we meet as being itself the lodge that it appears
strange to learn that originally it only contained and concealed it from the
outside world. If, however, we take the tradition of the outdoor assembly as
witness to an actual custom, and suppose that when (at first occasionally and
only later habitually) Masons began to meet between four walls and under a roof
they continued to do in the chamber just as nearly as possible what they had
previously done on a hilltop under the open sky, a clue is given that may lead
to a solution. We are told today that the lodge represents the world, and its
description has been elaborated with this symbolism in view, but that this was a
primary conception is hardly to be believed; actually it would have appeared to
have been merely the enclosure within which a new Mason was entered and made.
The qualification "merely" is used to express our modern
point of view from which it is not easy to see any great significance in the
marking out of a certain particular piece of ground. When Masons today think of
an outdoor lodge meeting, such as occasionally occur, they consider only the
possibility of guarding against intrusion and the presence of necessary jewels
and furniture. It is true that the idea of a sacred place is not wholly absent
from modern thought. We can understand the sanctity of a church or a temple; we
loosely describe certain places as holy ground as being in a sense sanctified by
associations, the home of childhood may be regarded with such a feeling, or the
battlefield on which the liberties of a people are won; but the primitive
conception of sanctity we have lost entirely. Moses was told to put off his
shoes because he stood on holy ground, made so by the presence of God. In other
cases, however, men put on shoes in order not to touch it directly (with very
much the same feeling as we would put on rubber gloves when handling an electric
wire), such shoes being afterwards destroyed or left behind, as they, too, had
become charged with sanctity. In a sense we regard a cemetery as consecrated
ground even if it has not been actually consecrated by religious rites, but we
no longer think that to be buried outside such an enclosure will lessen an
individual's chance of attaining Heaven as people in the Middle Ages undoubtedly
did.
When we consider it the building of a temple with walls and
roof is but to carry this underlying motif of delimitation and separation a
stage further by interposing an actual physical barrier instead of a moral or
imaginary one. And to some extent all buildings once had something of this
sacred aspect, for in primitive life every dwelling had its household
sanctities. The threshold, the hearth, the ridge pole, the posts and lintel of
the doorway, as well as the ancestral spirits, and the gods of the store room.
To go a long way afield the houses of the Ainu in Japan are placed East and
West, the hearth-is oblong in the center, the place of honor is the East. The
entrance is in the West, while there is a window opposite, outside is the Nusa,
a sacred fence of willow rods, shaved at the upper end into a bunch of curling
shreds. Between this and the window is sacred ground on which no one should
trespass. All this is only a curious coincidence of course but it illustrates
how men continually reproduce the same kind of ideas by a sort of psychological
necessity, with variations due to circumstances.
THE MAGIC CIRCLE
In books on magic we find great emphasis laid on certain
diagrams which are to be drawn on the ground with incantations and mysterious
ceremonies. In a few cases they are said to be drawn on paper or silk, thus
apparently following the same course of development as the Masonic charts. It
saves time and trouble to have your diagram in a permanent and portable form.
The most common figure used in magic is the circle, but the pentagon is also
employed, which figure, like the circle, is formed with a single line, only
interlaced with itself. Such diagrams were drawn "with the finger in the dust"
or "with consecrated chalk," but perhaps the most efficacious method is with the
point of a sword or a knife, the latter being essentially the same thing as a
sword, a cutting and piercing implement or weapon made of iron or steel. In
Scotland the procedure of ridding a haunted house of its uneasy spiritual
occupant required the use of a candle, compass, a Bible and, if possible, a
crucifix. With the compass a circle was drawn within which the exorcist was to
remain. The crucifix was laid on the Bible, or if none was available a cross was
to be drawn inside the circle. We may guess that the Bible is a post Reformation
addition to this ritual, and that the cross drawn in the diagram is more
primitive than the crucifix. Be this as it may, the circle fortified by the
cross and Bible evidently formed a protecting barrier against the spiritual
forces.
In some accounts the evoked demon is confined within the
circle, and with this agrees the Devonshire superstition that if a circle be
drawn around a snake with an ash stick (the ash is a tree with magic qualities)
it cannot or will not pass out of it. Of course a barrier will work either way,
to keep the dangerous power in or to keep it out. But by far the more general
use was the latter.
This protective use of the figure is, however, probably
secondary and derived from a symbolic use. The Hallowe'en bonfires lit on
Scottish hills were formerly enclosed within a circular trench, which was said
to represent the sun. In a 1771 account of the Bealtine fires of May Day, it is
said that "they cut a square trench with a turf in the middle." It is not clear,
however, if the fire was lighted within this, but in a later description of the
custom it is said "they cut a table in the green sod, of a round figure, by
casting a trench in the ground of such a circumference as to hold the whole
company." Again the position of the fire is not mentioned but it seems probable
it was within the circle. Another account of a similar observance says the
trench was dug in the form of a circle large enough to enclose all those
present.
THE BROOM AND MOP
In the sword dances and mummer's plays, which even yet
survive in some places in Great Britain, the preliminary to the performance
appears to have normally been a preparation of the place by one of the actors.
This preparation is said in some variants to have been the marking out of a
circle with a sword, and in others the sweeping of the space required with a
broom, and, in some instances at least, we are told that this swept area was
circular. The broom may perhaps here have only been a substitute for a sword,
but a wider survey of analogous customs reveals the fact that the broom was a
piece of magical apparatus in its own right. In oriental magic, in crystal
gazing and the use of the ink pool, the vision always begins by the appearance
of two men with brooms who sweep the place and make it ready. Some castes in
India actually worship and make offerings to a broom. This homely domestic
implement apparently had properties useful in purification. In the Vedic ritual
of sacrifice the first thing was to make the ground where it was to be offered
pure, or in the primitive sense, holy. All evil spirits and influences had to be
removed, and it is perhaps possible in the light of the above mentioned belief,
that sweeping the ground first took place, after which a rectangular portion was
marked out and purified by four fires. Inside these a circle was drawn and
within that again the sacrificial pit or trench was dug. As is well known the
broom played a very prominent part in medieval witchcraft. Essentially a bundle
of twigs tied to a stick, it could be regarded very much in the same light as
the boughs, green sprigs and garlands and wreaths of the whole group of spring
and autumn festivals. Stood upright it could be classed with the May poles and
Christmas trees and pillar and tree sanctities. The broom w as supposed to sweep
out ghosts and spirits and other invisible but dangerous influences just as it
swept out dust and dirt. Traces of this are to be seen in European funeral
customs. Among others designed to purify the house from the miasma of death, the
room had to be swept as soon as the corpse was carried out. The reason for this
apparent digression is that it may be possible that the mop and pail about which
eighteen century detractors of Freemasonry used to make so merry had originally
been a besom or broom used to prepare the ground for the lodge as in the
beginning of the mummer's play.
Returning to the magical circle there is a curious
half-drawn picture in an account of a gathering of witches in Northumberland in
1673. One of them declared in her confession that
"she and the rest had drawne their compasse nigh to a bridg
end, and the devil placed a stone in the middle of the compasse, they sett
themselves downe and repeated the Lord's prayer backward ."
It is evident from this that the "compasse" spoken of here
was a ring or circle marked out in the center of which the sacred stone was
placed, presumably as an object of worship.
THE ENTRANCES
In the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini there is a very
interesting account of some magical operations in which he took part. The place
was within the Coliseum at Rome, the narrative is too long to quote in full, but
one point may be noticed here. The priest, who was the magician,
. . . according to the custom of necromancers began to draw
circles on the ground with the most impressive ceremonies imaginable . . . as
soon as he was in readiness he made an opening in the circle and took us by the
hand . . .
apparently to lead them into it, as from what follows it is
evident all present were within it. The "circles" spoken of in the plural were
probably concentric, as shown in Fig. 1 and the illustration of Kelly invoking a
spirit. In other cases the circle is said to have been left incomplete until all
those assisting had entered, when it was closed.
As a curious parallel to this, and to the lodge diagram
also, is the use of a symbolic circle by a smith's gild in Germany (Fig. 6).
Gould quotes the formula thus in his history:
The mark is made by the Elder of the Magdeburg Smiths in
opening their meetings. Having knocked three times on the table with a hammer he
commands "By your favour, fellowcrafts be still." The proper official then
brings in the chest which is opened with proper dialogue. The Elder then places
his finger and thumb on the open ends of the outside circle in saying "By your
favour I thus draw the fellow circle--be it as round or large as it may I span
it, I write herein all the fellows that are at work here." Knocks with the
hammer "With your favour I have might and right and close the fellow circle." He
then completes the circle with chalk . . . at the end of the ceremony he closed
the meeting and rubbed the chalk ring out with his hand.
This leaving an entrance to the enclosure also recalls the
ancient Etruscan ritual for marking out the site of a fortress or city by means
of a plough drawn by consecrated oxen, or a white bull and a cow. Where the
gates were to be built the plough was lifted and a gap left in the furrow. The
American Indians of the plains, in celebrating the Sun Dance, apparently marked
out the ground with a large circle having an opening towards the east. It does
not, however, appear in the accounts available whether the circle could only be
entered through this opening or not, but from analogy this might be expected.
The description of the ground prepared for the Vedic
sacrifice, rectangular with a circle within it is curiously reflected in the
Hindoo talisman (Fig. 2). In a curious plate that serves as a frontispiece to
Batty Langley's "Practical Geometry" (published 1726), which is certainly
Masonic in character though the work itself has nothing in it about Freemasonry,
there appears a drawing or "tracing" board suspended to a pillar upon which is
the plan of an oblong building with an entrance on the north side (the points of
the compass being marked) and two pillars before it marked I and B. In a variant
of the same design taken from an engraved silver jewel of unknown date, though
undoubtedly considerably later, the plan of the building is square with an
entrance on each side. It is possible that in these designs we have an echo of
the original "form" of the lodge on the hilltop. Three versions of the old
Catechisms mention an "Eastern passage" of which the Examination may be quoted
for an example:
Q. How do Masons take place in work? A. The Master
Southeast, the Wardens Northeast and the Fellows the Eastern passage.
From this we may infer that the lodge had at least two
entrances, as this one is designated as the eastern one in distinction, and if
we may judge from later indications the other entrance was at the west end. But
it is possible, in some places at least, that originally it had openings to the
four points of the compass.
ORIENTATION AND THE CARDINAL POINTS
The four quarters of the heavens and the cardinal points
seem everywhere to have been regarded as significant. Churchward gives square
diagrams made of sticks from Africa, America and Korea that seem almost
identical, though unfortunately he cites no authorities. Within the square are
four shorter sticks arranged as a cross. The one pointing east is peeled, the
one to the west has all the bark on while those marking north and south are
partly peeled. We have already seen the cross in the magic circle which lies
east and west and north and south. The Roman Augur when seeking an omen marked
out the templum with the lituus or crooked staff that was his badge of office.
Originally (though the descriptions are somewhat obscure) he first marked out an
oblong space with sides and ends parallel to the two first lines, and then sat
down facing south, so as to have the east on his left hand, to watch the flight
of birds by which he drew his conclusions as to the future. The templum in this
primitive form being a sacred area, which later was enclosed, and the building
thus erected took the same name and became a temple in the usual sense of the
term.
Roman military camps were laid out on the same lines and
one may guess that originally similar ceremonies took place when they were laid
out. They had entrances on each side, with two thoroughfares crossing from side
to side. The altars were erected in the northeast quarter. The so-called
terramare or prehistoric settlements of north Italy were laid out on the same
plan, and it has not unnaturally been suggested that the Etruscans inherited it
from them--Rome having been an Etruscan city at one stage in its history.
However this may have been the Romans were too practical and too good engineers
to allow even an ancient and sacred religious tradition bind them too closely,
and they adapted (as all builders have done) their camps and cities to the lay
of the ground. Nevertheless the typical camp and military post was an oblong
square.
Rome itself had a mysterious sacred area called the Lapis
niger, the "black stone." It seems to have been a square pavement, or oblong
rather, of black and white stones. An archaic stele or pillar stone was found
here with a defaced inscription. Traditionally it was the place where Romulus,
the mythical founder of Rome, was buried, and the mundus was also here. Mundus
as a substantive is usually translated by "world" or "universe" but it also
meant "provisions," food in bulk. As an adjective it meant "clean," not a far
step from "purified" or "holy." The Mundus, how ever, was apparently an
underground vault or chamber in which very sacred things were kept; just what
they were no one knows. It was a secret of the Collegium of priests and died
with them. There are allusions, however, to an underground altar. This chamber
was opened at certain festivals connected with agriculture, spring and harvest,
and some scholars have thought that it was originally an underground granary or
store house in which the seed corn of the community was preserved. Into this we
need not go but it all seems a very curious parallel to certain features in the
present day Masonic systems, especially to the Royal Arch in its various forms.
THE SQUARE FORM
In general, a circular or round enclosure is the easiest
and most natural to make. Practically all primitive dwellings are circular in
plan. Fort in his Antiquities quotes Grimm as saying that the earliest form of
Teutonic court was circular, the natural form a crowd will take in gathering
round a street fakir, a "soap-box" orator or a dog fight. "Subsequently this
shape gradually changed to an oval and finally to an oblong square." [ein
langlichs viereck is Grimm's own expression.] Fort gives no reason for this
development, but it is fairly evident how it came about. In a court of justice
there are two foci, the judges, and the plaintiff and defendant. These
necessarily face each other and thus make one axis of the ring longer than the
other. This would be the natural form, but when it came to be marked out, as was
customary, by peeled hazel sticks and white cords it is again obvious that a
boundary with straight sides would become almost inevitable, and the oval would
become a rectangle. Incidentally it may be noted that the change from the
circular to the square plan for dwellings and other buildings probably came
through a parallel necessity. When huts are built of reeds, or wickerwork and
the like it is easier and more natural to use the material perpendicularly, and
the curved outline is as easy to build and gives the greater area for the
perimeter of the walls. But as soon as more solid construction is attempted with
logs or hewn planks it is obvious (once it is pointed out) that it can be used
more conveniently horizontally, but this change in construction necessitates
straight sides to the building. As in most places stone erections followed wood,
these, too, were built on a square plan; but in a few cases, such as South
Africa, both in the modern Kaffir kraals and the ancient ruins of Zimbabwe,
stone building seems to have directly followed primitive hut construction, and
the plan is invariably curved and usually oval. Another form of primitive
erection is the circle of upright stones, of which Stonehenge in England is
perhaps the most familiar example, but such circles are hardly buildings, but
merely an exceedingly conspicuous and enduring mode of marking out a space. Some
such enclosures are made with small round stones placed close together like an
ornamental border to a flower bed, others are of intermediate size from two to
four feet high. Dudley Wright in his Diuidism quotes a Welsh writer, Meyryg of
Glamorgan, with regard to such an enclosure:
"A Gorsedd of the Bards of the Isle of Britain must be held
in a conspicuous place, in full view of hearing of country and aristocracy and
in the face of the sun and in the eye of light; it being lawful to hold such
meetings under cover, at night, or under any circumstances otherwise than while
the sun shall be visible in the sky.... It is an institutional usage to form a
conventional circle of stones on the summit of some conspicuous ground, so as to
enclose any requisite area of greensward; the stones being so placed as to allow
sufficient space for a man to stand between two of them, except that the two
stones of the circle which most directly confront the eastern sun should be
sufficiently apart to allow at least ample space for three men between them;
thus affording an easy ingress to the circle."
Here again we must note the entrance towards the East
undoubtedly to observe the rising sun. As the traditional courts of the Teutonic
peoples opened at sunrise it is probable that the enclosure was oriented for the
same reason; and here it may be noted that many of the mystical diagrams given
in books on magic have references to the cardinal points of the compass. In a
medieval fairy tale a certain spring was known by the hero to have magical
properties because it "flowed east and west."
Another kind of enclosure of a ceremonial kind (under one
aspect at least, and it may possibly have a debased descendant in the modern
boxing ring) was employed by Scandinavian peoples for legal duels, the holmgang.
This was sometimes enclosed by cords and stakes, but more often by a ditch
filled with water. The combatant forced over the boundary was regarded as
disgraced, as one who had fled from battle. As there was a religious ritual in
connection with such duels, and the enclosure was ceremonially prepared, the
latter is not to be regarded as a mere practical convenience. The proceeding
partook of the nature of an ordeal for determining the rights of a quarrel,
which relates it closely to methods of divination and magic.
SHIP MARKINGS
In Denmark and Sweden there are a number of enclosures
called "ships." The outline of a boat is marked in smaller or larger stones,
seldom more than two feet high and more often only comparatively small boulders.
In the middle is usually a larger stone set upright where the mast would be.
What they were used for is quite uncertain, unless a primitive ritual custom
from Ireland may be held to throw some light on the question. This observance
used to be carried out at a "wake." It seems to have become an occasion for a
lot of horse play, but that originally a more serious intent lay behind it is at
least probable. It may be added, too, that it had become almost obsolete by the
middle of last century. It was called "building the ship." A number of men were
laid on their backs head to heel, down the room. This made the keel. Then others
were laid down with their feet against the keel and heads outwards to make the
ribs, the tallest men in the middle and boys at the stern and prow. There was
much business of fitting the timbers and driving them into place, and their
soundness was tested by hitting them on the head with a stick. Finally a boy was
taken for the ceremony of stepping the mast. It was doubtless originally the
climax of the whole ritual, and also undoubtedly the reason for the disuse of
this particular "wake game," for it brings it very obviously into the class of
fertility rites, and that phallicism which certain writers are able to discover
so many traces in all sorts of unexpected corners in Masonic symbolism.
The conclusions that may be drawn from the instances of
enclosures more or less sacred, here gathered together, must be deferred to a
later occasion. But it may be noted now that in the first place the marked out
area is the important thing, and that its form, entrances and orientation and so
on are secondary. The first is purely practical, but the secondary features
bring us at once to the realm of symbolism.
NOTES
The following works are among those consulted in the
preparation of this article:
A.Q.C., Vol. XXIX. E. H. Dring on the "Evolution of the
Tracing Boards."
The Arcana of Freemasonry, by Dr. A. Churchward.
The Medieval Stage, by E. K. Chambers.
Zeus, by A. B. Cook.
Ancient Legends of Roman History, by Eltore Pais.
The Mummer's Play, by R.J.E. Tiddy.
The American Indian, by Clark Wissler.
The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, by W. Y. Evans Wentz.
The Witch-Cult in Western Europe, by M. Murray.
The Folklore of Bombay, by R. E. Enthoven.
The Swastika, by Thomas Wilson.
The Drama of Savage Peoples, by Loomis Havemeyer.
Field Columbian Museum Anthropological Series.
The Golden Bough, by J. G. Frazer.
Pausanias Description of Greece, by J.G. Frazer.
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1. Is the tradition of lodges held on hill tops and in
valleys an ancient one? If so, what bearing does it have on the antiquity of the
Masonic ritual?
2. What is implied in the conception of "holy ground," or a
"sacred precinct" (a) historically? (b) psychologically?
3. What was the underlying meaning of consecration, and how
has it been expressed in ritual?
4. Is there any relation between the form of sacred
enclosures and mystical or magical diagrams and other figures?
----o----
THE LIBRARY
WHO WAS HIRAM ABIFF? By J. S. M. Ward. Published by the
Baskerville Press, Limited, London, England. May be purchased through the Book
Department of the National Masonic Research Society, 1950 Railway Exchange
Building, St. Louis, Mo. Cloth, table of contents, illustrated, 244 pages.
Price, postpaid, $4.50.
IN the search for more light on the subject of the origin
of the Hiramic Legend, which for many years has been occupying, a prominent
place in the endeavors of Masonic students the world over, many discoveries have
been made. With almost startling rapidity new theories have been replacing old
ones, and, in many instances, the work of early scholars has been relegated to
the discard. Its eighteenth century invention, its acceptance as actual history
and many other interpretations have either disappeared entirely from the
category of accepted Masonic theory, or been shunted to one side for spasmodic
revival. It can be truthfully stated that no discredit is reflected on those
scholars who have advanced discarded theories, but much new evidence has come to
light in recent years which has necessitated either a total discard -of the
older hypotheses or a modification of them, sufficient to change, in important
features, the outward aspect of the subject.
One theory which still has its adherents, and which among
many students has fallen into a state of disrepute, is that connecting modern
Speculative Freemasonry with the ancient Mysteries. It will, in all probability,
be not very inaccurate to state that Bro. J. S. M. Ward is the strongest
advocate of such a connection among Masonic scholars today. The opinion may be
advanced, with much more certainty than the preceding statement, that it is just
such a misapplication of evidence as Bro. Ward promulgates in his latest
addition to Masonic writings that accounts for the lowly state into which this
particular theory has fallen. It seems that Bro. Ward has started his
investigation with a preconceived idea of what the result will be, and in
assembling his material has viewed the beginning in the terms of the end. One is
reminded again and again of the small child who is delighted with the changed
aspect of the world in general when viewed through a bit of colored glass. In
the case of Bro. Ward, the intangible nature of the screen makes the realization
of its existence less probable. It becomes evident as one reads through the book
that the Emulation working occupies in Bro. Ward's mind much the position that
the bit of glass did in the case of the child. The truth of this statement is
admitted, perhaps unconsciously, by Bro. Ward early in his work when he says:
"In considering who Hiram was I shall assume that my
readers know by heart the form of the legend given in Emulation working, and
shall only, from time to time, add thereto such variations or additions to the
ceremony as survive in the Provinces or overseas, and form important links in
the evolution of our ceremony."
The basis is specifically mentioned as Emulation, the
variants mentioned as forming "important links in the evolution of our ceremony"
will, in most cases, be found to be products of the last two centuries and not
survivals of primitive ceremonials, to fall into the same bad habits as are
being criticised by the writer in the case of Bro. Ward.
Although Bro. Ward styles himself "Fellow of the Royal
Anthropological Institute," he displays throughout his book either the grossest
ignorance, or what is worse, he deliberately violates the first canons of
anthropological criticism. He either ignores or is ignorant of the uses to which
the comparative method may be put, and the limit to which those uses may be
carried. The comparative method teaches us that because we find certain
conditions existing in many and various cases it is logical to assume they
probably existed in another parallel case in which definite evidence on the
subject is lacking. The utmost that can be accomplished through this method is
to arrive at a probable existence, not a definite one. An example of Bro. Ward's
violation of this cardinal rule of anthropological research is to be found
throughout the last chapter of his work, of which I cite only a typical portion.
"Firstly, we see that Hiram Abiff was a Consecration
Sacrifice at the completion of the Temple, and was offered up because he was a
priest-king, who was supposed to enshrine the Divine Soul of the fertility of
corn god, Tammuz.
"Secondly, this cult of the Dying God threw out off shoots.
One Branch, that of Cybele and Attis, migrated to Rome 200 years B. C . Another
early off shoot gave the name of Diony sius to the fertility god, and reached
Greece quite early, passing to Rome in due course, where the god was known as
Bacchus. Bothof these cults had a secret mystery Rite as well as popular
ceremonies."
Such statements as this, and the one to follow, can do much
to throw the proverbial cold water on the work that really intelligent students
are trying to do on this problem. It cannot, in the writer's opinion, be
reasonably doubted that there is some singular connection between the Mystery
Cults and the Hiramic Legend, but it certainly is beyond the pale of
conservative scholarship to state that because the story of Hiram resembles the
story of Attis, Adonis, Osiris, Bacchus, or any of the standard classic
mysteries that it is one of them. Especially is this true when, as in our
particular case, nothing can be found to connect the two in a direct chain, that
is, nothing that would stand the searching tests of historical criticism.
Here is another example -of the laughable parallels to be
found in Who was Hiram Abiff?
"The Coast Murring tribe of New South Wales performed the
following ceremony. First of all the medicine man knocks out a tooth of each
initiate, using for that purpose a chisel and hammer. Perhaps, therefore, the
use of these instruments in a masonic lodge was not, originally, because they
were tools used by operative masons, but, like the 24-inch gauge, because they
had a definite part in the ceremony. An eye-witness described those rites as
follows:
"At about 11 a. m. the initiated man prepared the ground by
digging a grave. Then sheets of bark were beaten out into fibre and from this
cloaks were made for six men who were entirely enveloped in them from the crowns
of their heads to the soles of their feet, thus completely covering their faces.
Four of them were tied to a rope, which was fastened to the
backs of their heads, and each man carried two pieces of bark in his hands. The
other two men were not fastened to the first four, but hobbled along leaning on
sticks as if bent and old.
"Then another man lay down in the grave on his back with
his hands crossed on -his chest and held upright thereon a small tree "
And then, in a note to the last sentence he has this
extraordinary comment, "Thus making Seven in all. A perfect lodge."
In this quotation we see a typical example of the use Bro.
Ward makes of evidence. What would be a more logical instrument for knocking out
teeth than a hammer and a chisel, especially among primitives where such things
as forceps are usually unknown, or at least quite uncommon? I should hesitate to
venture an opinion of what conclusions would have been reached by Bro. Ward if
the eye-witness had described the instrument as a setting maul. The results are
sufficiently appalling as it is. The final touch, however, is the analogy
between seven in the primitive ceremony and seven in a perfect lodge. Such a
slender shred of evidence as the coincidental agreement of numbers is too much
for any but the most uninformed to swallow.
There is much of what might be called valuable material
contained between the covers of Bro. Ward's book. If one can read it and draw
his own conclusions, totally ignoring any of the author's own opinions it might
be worth while. The difficulty with such procedure is that those to whom the
material would have value would be sufficiently uninformed to swallow all the
absurdities Bro. Ward propounds. One of the most sacred duties of Masonic
scholars, and one which all students should have constantly before them, is to
be exceedingly careful not to advance any opinions which when placed in the
hands of the uninformed might be misleading. The abysmal ignorance of the vast
majority of Masons on subjects pertaining to the origins of the Institution
should be taken into consideration by all who write on the subject. The constant
endeavor of all engaged in Masonic research should be to throw more light on
their particular field, not only among students, who generally have sufficient
critical powers to discriminate between the good and the bad, but among the
laity (if I may call them such) who are interested, but do not have either the
time or the inclination to delve into the material at hand and form their own
conclusions. Such a book as Who was Hiram Abiff? is the greatest possible breach
of the confidence placed by non-students in the scholars of our Order.
* * *
RECENT PROCEEDINGS AND TRANSACTIONS
ARS QUATUOR CORONATORUM Vol. XXXVI Part 3
THIS number of the Transactions of the well known Quatuor
Coronati Lodge of Research has an exceedingly interesting paper on the "Beehive
and Freemasonry" by Bro. Geo. W. Bullamore. The author, it appears, is an expert
apiarist, so that his interest in this symbol is very natural. He brings
together evidence that the hive, or in some cases the representation of a bee,
was used on jewels, medals, aprons and charts from early in the eighteenth
century till the Union between the Ancients and Moderns in 1813, when for some
reason or other it was entirely discarded in the usual workings in England,
although it lingered on in some places, at least in representation. It was also
of frequent occurrence on the continent of Europe as well as in America. The
author and most of those taking part in the discussion seem to be rather vague
about American forms, and though not exactly falling into any errors yet seemed
uncertain how far the beehive remained an emblem in this country.
Bro. Bullamore also made a number of quotations from
nonMasonic sources, both classical and recent authors, and gave a number of
instances of the bee as a symbol from Mithraic reliefs to the Napoleonic device.
He is inclined to the conclusion that the use of the bee
and beehive in Masonic symbolism must have originally had a deeper meaning than
the trite one of industry. The one suggested is that it was a symbol of
resurrection or immortality, rather like the butterfly. Other possibilities
appear in the quotations given that made the beehive a fit representation of the
Masonic Fraternity. Bees live in a community, they are decidedly clannish and at
least defend the hive, if not individuals, and also they are expert builders-of
honeycomb-the mathematical exactness of which has frequently excited admiring
comment and remark.
It was further suggested that a possible reason for the
emblem having been dropped in 1813 was the fact that it had been used by
Jacobite partizans and so had come to have political associations.
In the discussion Bro. Gilbert Daynes (Associate Editor of
THE BUILDER for England) drew attention to the fact that the trowel had
disappeared also from the English rituals. He also remarked the uncertainty
existing as to the proper place of these two emblems; in some cases (and the
earlier) they appear to have pertained to the First Degree, in others (as in
America today) they both belong to the Third. Bro. Daynes also thought that the
beehive belonged more especially to the "Modern" ritual, and is inclined to
think that this was the reason of its having been dropped at the Union, on the
ground, we suppose, of the opinion so strongly advanced by Gould, that the
Ancient ritual was the basis of the post-Union English work. With this Bro.
Bullamore does not agree, and we are inclined to think he is right.
Bro. Tuckett gave some valuable information regarding the
use of the Bee emblem by the Jacobites and quotes a MS. ritual in the possession
of Bro. Dring which apparently belonged to a rite claiming Charles Edward Stuart
as Grand Master. In this ritual the beehive is twice represented.
Bro. W. J. Williams gives some further reference to bees,
both Masonic and other, and some of the latter have a very Masonic sound, and if
such ideas were current it might easily account for the adoption of the emblem.
There is also a paper on "Bath and Neighborhood," by Bro.
J. Walter Hobbs. A special feature of interest in this is the description of a
re-discovered Saxon church dating possibly from the eighth century. The strange
thing about this discovery is that the building had been and was in use for
secular purposes, but it had been so altered inside and masked outside by later
additions that no one knew what it originally was.
In Notes and Queries are two letters on the subject of the
name of the Master Builder as it appears in the Old Charges, by Bros.
Covey-Crump and H. Poole respectively, continuing a previous discussion on a
paper by Bro. Tuckett, and another by Bros. J. Heron Lepper and Philip Crossle
on old Masonic dress and the origin of the adoption of blue as a Masonic color.
* * *
TRANSACTIONS OF THE SOMERSET MASTERS LODGE, No. 3746
THIS volume is for the year 1925, and the first paper is
one by Bro. Cart de la Fontaine, who is well known to readers of THE BUILDER as
an occasional contributor to its pages. His subject was "Dante's Divine Comedy
and Freemasonry." He briefly discusses the opinion advanced by certain writers
that Dante was a Freemason, and alluded to its ceremonies in his great poem.
While not definitely stating any opinion it is easy to see that Bro. de la
Fontaine does -not, to say the least, hold the theory proven.
Bro. Vibert delivered his Prestonian Lecture before this
lodge in June. The subject is the development of the tri-gradal system in
Freemasonry, and it must be regarded as one of the most important recent
contributions to the subject of the origin of the Masonic ritual. There is no
new evidence adduced, it is hardly likely that there will be much more
discovered; but it so happens that a great deal of what does exist is very
inaccessible to the would-be investigator. Bro. Vibert starts with the
hypothesis now very generally accepted of a primitive series of two degrees
inherited by the Grand Lodge of 1717. The most novel point in his reconstruction
of the stages of evolution is his hypothesis as to the reason for the invention
of our present Second Degree. Assuming that "entering" or "making" was
equivalent to the initiation of an Entered Apprentice, the original "superior
degree" was that of "Master or Fellow," in essentials the same as our Master
Mason.
Now the Grand Lodge, very soon in its career, passed a law,
so Anderson tells us, that "Apprentices must be admitted Masters and Fellowcraft
only here [that is in Grand Lodge] unless by a dispensation." In the second
edition the phraseology was significantly changed to read "Fellowcrafts and
Masters." But when the second edition came out the law had been repealed and is
only given in order to compare it with the New Regulation admitting the right of
(or, as one prefers, granting the power to) the lodges to "make Masters and
Fellows" at discretion. Bro. Vibert points out that the restrictive rule was in
force during the very period when the Second Degree came into being. He
supposes, very ingeniously, that this Regulation XIII would operate in such a
way as to give the new Grand Lodge a considerable measure of control over the
subordinate lodges, in that it was necessary that the Master elect, according to
the fourth charge, should have received the "superior" degree -that is, they had
to be Fellows. The inference is, according to Bro. Vibert, that the new degree,
our present Fellowcraft, was made up out of parts of the First Degree, and that
this was in order to evade the effect of Regulation XIII and to enable the
lodges to choose their own Masters as they would without asking Grand Lodge to
endorse their choice by first giving them the old "Master and Fellowcraft" grade
(the original of our present Third) as a qualification parallel to the modern
Past or Installed Master's Degree, which has (except in some American
jurisdictions where the rule has been abrogated) to be given to the Worshipful
Master-elect before he can rule his lodge.
Bro. Vibert's theory is attractive, but there seems to be
some gaps to stop up before it can be accepted. We must remember that at this
same period the Grand Lodge was not a representative body, but a general
assembly of the Craft. It hardly seems likely that a body composed of all the
members of all the lodges acting together would go against the wishes of the
majority of those lodges in their separate capacity. It would seem more in
accordance with Masonic psychology to suppose that in forming a Grand Lodge the
lodges in London intended only to revive the General Assemblies of the old
Charges and that this Regulation XIII was merely an academic attempt to revive
what we might guess was a traditional rule of operative times, of very practical
importance, that the fitness of the apprentices to become free of their trade,
and Fellows and Masters of it, should be, judged in the Assembly of the whole
Craft in the district. Bro. Vibert says that the fact that there is no record
that the "Master and Fellow" grade was ever worked in Grand Lodge prove nothing.
And this is exactly true, for at best it is only negative evidence, which in
such a case could never be conclusive of anything by itself. But on the other
hand it quite fits in with the supposition that the Regulation was, as we have
said, academic, and a dead letter from the start. On the other hand, Bro.
Vibert's is the only theory so far advanced that attempts to assign a definite
reason for turning a two into a three-grade system by duplicating the first and
giving it second place.
Bro. J. Heron Lepper has a valuable paper on the "Early
History of Kilwinning High Knight Templars Lodge, Dublin," which throws light on
the vexed question of the early working of the "high" degrees, and their
relationship to the first three. The lodge applied to Kilwinning for a warrant,
which was granted. This only gave authority to work the Craft degrees. The lodge
also held an ordinary Craft warrant from the Grand Lodge of Ireland under which
it worked the first three degrees while it used the second one as authority to
work the Excellent, Super-Excellent and Royal Arch grades, and as the climax the
"High Knights Templar." A candidate in one minute is said to have "Royally
descended and ascended the Arch."
Bro. George Norman has an article on the "Masonic Lodges of
Bath," and the information he has laboriously collected throws, as he says, "a
curious sidelight on the relations, not always of the pleasantest, between
private lodges and the Grand Lodge of those days." The article itself, however,
is too long and too detailed to be discussed here.
* * *
TRANSACTIONS OF THE HUMBER INSTALLED MASTERS LODGE, No.
2494
THIS volume covers the period from February, 1922, to
December, 1925, and contains a number of valuable papers and lectures. Bro.
Harmer gave two on Egyptian Rites and the Book of the Dead. Bro. Tate has one on
the Pyramids and the Tombs of Sakkara and Memphis; Bro. Oldroyd points out some
analogies between ancient Egyptian practices and Masonic ritual, and Bro. Harmer
has a third lecture on the Ancient Mysteries. All of these are interesting and
contain many points of value, especially Bro. Harmer's first two papers. Bro.
Dr. Albert Churchward gave an address on "Signs and Symbols" along lines that
will be familiar to those who have read his books. Bro. Lionel Vibert also gave
a lecture on "French Master's Gilds," which is, perhaps, from the student's
point of view, the most valuable in the whole volume. He starts from the
position reached by Gould, and notes that since then M. Martin St. Leon had
published a special work on the Compagnonage in 1901. This, neither Gould in his
"Concise History," nor Bro. Crowe, in his revision, seem to have taken into
account. Bro. Vibert shows the possibility of a survival of at least a tradition
of the Collegia in the south of France, and a probability of
interchange of ideas between southwest France and England for a period of three
centuries, right up to the time, in fact, when our earliest Masonic records
begin. But his general conclusion is that the French Master's Gilds as such,
bore no resemblance to Freemasonry, though the Compagnonage did, having
initiation ceremonies and a legend of a master architect.
Bro. Walter J. Bunney addressed the lodge on the
significance of Mozart's opera, "The Magic Flute." The plot is allegorical and
the characters represent actual personages of the period. As the "Queen of
Night" is taken to he Maria Theresa, who opposed the Freemasons. Bro. Sir Alfred
Robbins gave an address on the Masonic Million Memorial Fund, its proposal and
prospects, and among a number of other speakers and lecturers, too many to
mention in detail, Bro. the Rev. Canon Berry addressed the lodge on the "Ideal
of the League of Nations." Such a subject may seem a curious one to some members
of the Craft in this country, where it has been alleged as a count against the
International Masonic Association that it entered into the field of politics
because it had passed a resolution endorsing the aims of the League. But what is
a political question in one country is not necessarily so in another.
Bro. J. G. Wallis, the Secretary, and also one of the
oldest members of the lodge, is to be highly congratulated upon this last volume
of Transactions.
* * *
SYMBOLISM OF FREEMASONRY, OR MYSTIC MASONRY AND THE GREATER
MYSTERIES OF ANTIQUITY. By J. M. Buck. Published by Ezra A. Cook, Inc., Chicago,
Ill. Table of contents, illustrated with a number of diagrams, cloth, 146 pages.
THE title page of this reprint states that it is the third
edition. This is a little puzzling as in 1913 the sixth edition was put out by
the R. Clarke Company of Cincinnati, the preceding editions, excepting only the
first, being also from their press. Yet this is dated 1925. We can only suppose
that it is taken from the original third edition. In any case it is curious that
a firm founded by a bitter antiMason for the especial purpose of publishing and
distributing all kinds of "literature" opposing, criticizing, denouncing and
condemning Freemasonry, should find it to their interest to present to the
Masonic public (for few outside would be interested) yet another edition of this
well known work. It is a rather, extraordinary example of the irony of
circumstances if not of fate-or else a case of demand and supply and profit and
loss. The book itself has now been in the hands of the Craft since 1896, and it
is hardly necessary to say much about it. It must appeal fairly strongly to a
large number of brethren or it would not have run through so many editions. Its
title gives a fair indication of its contents. Bro. Buck (like many others) saw
in Masonry a form of organization for the teaching of occult mysteries. There is
just one thing to be said about this theory. Suppose there is a grand occult
secret, or body of teaching, and that Freemasonry was devised as one of the
entrances thereto, for if we understand this school of writers correctly, it is
not the only path of admission to the inner, circle; suppose all this, and that
the system of degrees is intended to act as a means of selection of fit subjects
for final initiation, why should so many books have to be written to tell us so?
Surely the great Lodge of Adepts at the back of it all can pull the strings to
suit themselves-the qualified candidates will filter through, the unfit will
remain content with forms and ceremonies and high sounding titles, and all will
be as it was intended. If true, such books as this merely let the cat out of the
bag. Even if Masonry is formalist and dead to its high ideals and to the mystic
quest, this is only to be expected of a strainer-it naturally collects the dead
leaves and other refuse, and if this was the real purpose of the Masonic Order
it could not well be anything else. However everyone to his own taste.
S. J. C.
----o----
Moral Influence-it is a rill-a rivulet-a river-an
oceanbroad, boundless, and fathomless as eternity itself. The small beginning is
made; it continues to deepen and widen, and spread, until like the stone cut out
of the mountain without hands, it fills the whole earth.
----o----
THE QUESTION BOX and CORRESPONDENCE
THE CONSTITUTIONS OF FREDERICK THE GREAT
In "The Missouri Freemason" for Feb. 6, it is said that
Frederick Dalcho was one of the founders of the Supreme Council, being in
possession of the Grand Constitution formulated by Frederick the Great of
Prussia.
May I ask if you know anyone that has ever seen this
document, or do you know if there has been ever printed an "authenticated" copy
of this Constitution?
I am given to understand that this is a "myth" and want to
clear up the question, if possible, for the information of some of my Masonic
friends.
M. A. L., Mexico.
It is said that Albert Pike in his Historical Inquiry in
Regard to the Grand Constitutions of 1786 published in 1782, and reprinted by
the Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction of the U. S. A. in 1883,
definitely states that he had seen the original document, but that the signature
of Frederick had been completely effaced by the action of sea water to which it
had been unfortunately exposed, and that still more unfortunately this precious
document had after that been completely lost. As this work of Pike's is not at
hand this statement cannot at the moment be verified.
In Mackey's History (Revised Edition, p. 1829) there is a
note which quotes from the preface of the above work the following very guarded
statement:
I do not assert, and our Supreme Council does not assert,
that they [the Constitutions] are, as a known, proven and established fact,
genuine, but I do say that they have long been reputed to be so: that there is
sufficient evidence to make their authenticity probable, that there is nothing
in the grounds on which they have been impeached, and it is not shown that they
are not authentic, nor that they ought to be suspected and doubted.
In this quotation we have a definite admission that they
cannot be proved authentic, which is sufficiently damaging, though the following
expression of opinion seems to be an attempt to nullify its effect.
The same note quotes Begemann, a most careful and accurate
scholar, as definitely saying "that the so-called Constitutions of May 1, 1786,
cannot be genuine." Albert Lantoine in his recent "History of French
Freemasonry" discusses the matter at some length and reaches the same
conclusion. He not only points out the fact that in the only definite statement
from one who claimed to have seen the original, that of Albert Pike, the latter
admits that he never saw the signature. He then goes on to consider the
witnesses, whose names were legible, Denina, Stark, Woellner, Willelm, and
d'Esterno, and points out that the first, Denina, wrote an essay on the life and
reign of Frederick in which he mentions in a few words the latter's initiation
into Freemasonry, a "society well known today, which was then commencing to make
some noise in the world," and later states that Frederick did not especially
favor the Freemasons though he had joined them two years before coming to the
throne, but that he tolerated the existence of the lodges. Secondly, that in
1787 Stark confesses in his Justification to having taken little part in Masonic
work, and more that he had lost interest in it. Thirdly, a careful search in the
papers left by Woellner who was in 1786 Maitre Ecossais Supreme gives not the
least hint of his knowledge of such an important event. And finally Lantoine
adduces the fact that Frederick died in August, 1786, and that the Constitutions
are supposed to have been revised in May of the same year, three months and a
half before his death. Although he was ill for eleven months before this and
suffered "without interruption" during that time. It would seem, then, that
however Pike may have arrived at his opinion that there is "sufficient evidence
to make their authenticity probable, and nothing in the grounds on which they
have been impeached," it is hardly possible to agree with him.
It may be added that these claims have been examined and
rejected by Lenning, Clavel, Ragon, Rebold, Findel and Gould, and that we do not
know of a single Masonic scholar today whose opinion carries any real weight
outside his own immediate circle who would support them. Even Bro. J. S. M. Ward
whose works are widely known, and whom we might suspect of a desire to believe
it if he were able to, can only say (Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods, p. 226):
"This degree [the thirty-third] is stated to have been organized by King
Frederick in 1786, but there is little reliable evidence of this."
* * *
SOME DIFFICULT QUESTIONS
In the course of the work of our Study Club I have been
asked a number of questions that I cannot answer. Our local library is small and
does not cover the items mentioned. I am listing the questions and if you can
help me in this connection I would appreciate it very much.
Why does Masonry take two Patron Saints, St. John the
Baptist and St. John the Evangelist?
How and when did the Masonic ritual originate?
Whence originated the ancient charges?
What is the significance of the letter G and why is it
placed over the Master's chair? The information on this last question would be
in addition to that supplied in the Look to the East Ritual.
T. J. W., Canada.
These questions to be fully discussed would take enough
space to make a book. It is not known definitely when or how St. John came to be
associated with Freemasonry. A suggestion will be found in THE BUILDER last
month on page 58, though by a slip it is there said that Midsummer Day is that
of St. John the Evangelist, which should of course be St. John the Baptist.
There is a note to this month's Study Club article on the subject. The only
connection that has found favor is that the two Saints John mark respectively
the longest and shortest days.
The Study Club article last month may also help to answer
your second question. Many opinions are held on the subject. The extreme
iconoclasts hold it was all invented at or just before 1717; the extreme
traditionalists that it was all devised (as we have it now) by King Solomon. The
latter opinion certainly is not true, nor is the former accepted now by many
students. Parts of it (the essentials) seem to have been inherited from a remote
past, the remainder has been (and is being) developed since.
If by the charges you mean those given to the candidate in
the course of the three degrees they deem to have been composed some time in the
18th century, and to have been based on the Charges of a Freemason that first
appeared in Anderson's Constitutions and were themselves based on those in the
old Manuscript Constitutions.
The letter G was probably in the first place merely
regarded as the initial of Geometry. Later the significance given to it in our
present day rituals was naturally added. A great deal has been written on the
subject, most of it worthless.
* * *
THE DIMENSIONS OF THE TEMPLE
Will you kindly answer the following questions through the
columns of THE BUILDER?
How high was the wall that was built around the temple and
its courts?
How many acres did it enclose?
How high was the wall around the city?
The Penalties of the three Obligations - E. A., F. C., and
M. M. Degrees - from what did they spring or to what do they allude?
On which side of the candidate should the Senior Deacon
walk when entering the lodge?
E. E. G., Ohio.
There is no direct statement of the height of the walls and
porticos surrounding the courts of the temple. As they were said to be over a
half a mile in circumference we may suppose that they enclosed a space of
something like 47,000 square yards. The actual site on which the temple and its
courts stood is about fifteen acres, but this may have included also Solomon's
palace.
With regard to the penalties it is not possible to say
much. Bodily punishments until recent times were very cruel, and analogous modes
to those invoked by each Mason on himself should he betray his trust can be
found. The latter are obviously symbolic and appropriate, the first for
revealing secrets, the others for betraying a trust.
There is some variation in the conducting of the candidate,
the Senior Deacon usually takes him by the left hand, but you should adhere to
the custom in your own lodge. There is nothing essential about it one way or the
other.
* * *
THE LAST RITES
The following question has been raised in a discussion and
I am taking the liberty to inquire from you what information you may have on the
subject.
Why does the Masonic Order have the last rites at a grave?
Mackey's Encyclopaedia states that the Ancient
Constitutions have nothing to say on the subject. He does not go into detail nor
have I been able to find any authorities to quote. I would like to have your
opinion regarding both a Blue Lodge and a Commandery funeral.
L. R. M., Michigan.
Your question is not quite clear, and it may be that we do
not apprehend the point you have in mind. If the members of any society wish to
show respect to a deceased member we do not quite see what else they could do
but attend at the interment of his remains. The present forms of funeral
ceremony used by the various Masonic bodies are not very old, but that Masons,
from time immemorial, accompanied a departed brother to the grave is hardly to
be doubted. Prichard's Masonry Dissected notes that "fifteen Fellowcrafts with
white gloves and aprons" should attend, and as the date of this work is only
thirteen years later than the formation of the first Grand Lodge in 1717, we can
hardly believe that this was an innovation.
Mackey is correct in saying none of the old Constitutions
have anything to say on the subject, but this proves nothing. And it is well
known that it was customary for the members of the mediaeval gilds to bury a
deceased gildsman. Most of them indeed had elaborate and expensive "palls" to
use on such occasions. In England the custom of Masonic funerals has practically
disappeared, so far as formal attendance as a lodge is concerned. The members of
the lodge of the deceased, however, invariably attend as individuals. This
change in custom is directly due to the general tendency there to avoid all
public display of a Masonic character.
We think that Masonic funerals are most appropriate. They
express the reality of the fraternal tie, and to omit them would be a distinct
loss, but the ceremonies in use might be revised with profit; such revision,
however, should be in the direction of a return to older and traditional
practice from which the present forms have widely departed.
* * *
THE DATE OF KING SOLOMON'S TEMPLE
One of the questions I have many times wanted to write you
about is as follows: According to Chronicles the building of King Solomon's
Temple was started on the 2nd day of the 2nd month in the 4th year of the reign
of Solomon. You have published articles at different times giving this as 958 B.
C. and also 1012 B. C. Can you tell me which is correct?
G. W. H., Florida.
There is no absolute certainty about the chronology of the
events related in the earlier part of the Old Testament. The date 1012 B. C. is
the one that is now favored by most authorities. That of 958 was an older
approximation. There is really only 54 years difference between the two, which
is not a very large discrepancy considering how long ago the event was. To a
certain extent dates in the Old Testament have been checked up by monuments
discovered in Babylon and Egypt, but such discoveries are, of course,
comparatively rare and can only give certainty to a few points in Biblical
history. From these the dates have to be calculated by what the Old Testament
itself tells us about the number of years between different events or the number
of years between different kings' reigns. When you have to add a number of small
periods like this it is difficult to get the total right, as what is called two
years or five years may really be 4 3/4 or 5 1/4. But in this particular case
the best opinion now is that the 1012 B. C. is the nearest approximation that we
can get for the foundation of King Solomon's Temple.
* * *
A VOICE FROM THE GRAVE
When Newton R. Parvin, of Iowa, passed to the Grand Lodge
above, Masonry lost a leader with vision and understanding of what "Applied
Masonry" is and should be. In going through some of my correspondence of several
years past I came upon a letter from him, which seemed to me like a voice from
the grave, urging the living to do their Masonic duty. He has laid down his
tools but he seems to bid us to take them up and build a new kind of Temple, a
refuge for our sick and consumptive brethren:
I feel that the Grand Lodge should be interested in this
matter and that all of our Grand Lodges should contribute toward the upkeep of
an institution of that kind in the South, as we are constantly sending our
members who are suffering from tuberculosis to that part of the country in the
hope that the change of climate will help them. I know that it is a great tax
upon the people of the South to look after these parties. One of our lodges here
in the city spent not far from $1,000 in taking care of one of their members who
was afflicted in this respect, and I presume other lodges have had this same
experience.
I feel that there is great need for the construction of a
number of buildings to look after consumptive Masons and I hope the Grand Lodges
of America will join you in raising a fund which will enable the Southern States
to carry out their plans regarding such buildings with hospital care for our
brothers so afflicted. I am in hopes that when the time comes the lowa Grand
Lodge will be able to join you in the good work you have proposed.
Will the Grand Lodge of Iowa harken to this voice from the
grave? We have built monuments and statues to our noble dead. Would it not be
more appropriate to build memorial buildings which will also be of service to
the living? What greater tribute could Iowa pay to a departed leader than to
erect a Newton R. Parvin Memorial Cottage in connection with the proposed
National Masonic Tuberculosis Sanatorium?
FRANCIS E. LESTER New Mexico.
* * *
BOOKS WANTED
I would like to obtain the first three volumes of The
Harmonic Series, The Great Work, The Great Psychological Crime, by T.K. and The
Harmonies of Evolution, by Florence Huntley.
H. A. H.
Could you obtain for me a copy of Folger's History of the
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite?
G. L.
Copies of Lawrie's History of Freemasonry, The History of
the Lodge of Edinburg, by David Murray Lyon and Caementaria Hibernica, by
Chetwode Crawley, are desired for our lodge library.
W. H. M.
Could you find for me a copy of Gilliam's Rose Croix? I
shall appreciate it if you can obtain for me a copy of The Light of Egypt,
published by the Astro-Philosophical Publishing Co., Denver, 1894.
J. H. P.
Address all communications in care of the Editor.
back to top |
