The Builder Magazine 

October 1918 - Volume IV - Number 10 


THE HOUSE OF THE TEMPLE 

BY BRO. H. L. HAYWOOD, IOWA 

MORE than a year has passed since I paid my first visit to the House of the Temple, 
headquarters for the Scottish Rite for the Southern Jurisdiction, which stands in 
Washington, but the impressions remain as vividly as though I had seen it yesterday. 
There are many remarkable buildings in our Capital City, some of them historic, a few 
of them beautiful; but, with the possible exception of the Capitol building itself, the 
House of the Temple is the most wonderful and beautiful of them all. He who has 
seen the building, outside and inside, will say this whether he be a Mason or not. 


I shall never forget my first view of it. On a misty April morning it stood amid the fog 
as something almost eerie and unearthly, like that palace which Coleridge saw in his 
vision of Kubla Khan; there was that about it which seemed to speak of antiquity, as 
though the genius of the ancient East had wandered into the Capital City of the new 
West; it had an air of timelessness about it which made it hard to believe that it had 
not yet been completed five years. 


In general shape it is patterned after the original Mausoleum which Queen Artemisia 
erected to contain the ashes of her husband three hundred and fifty- three years before 
the birth of Christ. The body of the building is cubical, as is appropriate in a structure 
which is to serve as an altar of Freemasonry. The roof is a series of stone terraces 
which rise to an apex. The decorative work around the cornice is as beautiful as was 
ever seen on a Grecian Temple. 


The building is much larger than it first appears, especially when seen from a distance. 
One approaches it up a series of three, five, seven and nine steps; the platforms 
between these series are so wide that one could set a large building on each one. At 



either side stands a huge sphinx, dreaming and brooding with level eyes, as though it 
were still standing on the banks of Mother Nile. 


My mind still lay under the hush of these eternal watchers when I knocked at the door 
and was received by a guide who is there to take care of the hundred or more visitors 
who enter the portals every day. He stowed my umbrella away in a safe place and told 
me to feel at home. But one couldn't very well feel at home home in that magnificent, 
but subdued, atrium in which I found myself. Far overhead was a carved and gilded 
ceiling, like a dream of beauty in the upper twilight; on either side was a row of giant 
monoliths, pillars of the house, of green Vermont granite, their sides fluted. Behind 
each of these stood a seat, also of granite; in the center was a table of Cavanazza 
marble. At the further end was the curving stairway which leads to the council 
chamber of the Supreme Council; to break the coldness of its white marble, John 
Russell Pope had set in a band of dark marble; it is one of the boldest strokes of 
architectural genius about the entire building. Keeping watch at the foot of this 
stairway were two Egyptian figures, a further reminder, were one needed, that 
Masonry is as old as the world. 


On both sides of this atrium, or lobby, are the doors leading into the offices of Grand 
Commander, the Secretary General and the library; at the left side is the entrance into 
the executive chamber of the Supreme Council; these walnut doors are so hidden 
away in the shadows at the side that they do not disturb the unity or serenity of the 
great chamber itself. 


From Secretary General Brother John H. Cowles I received a welcome as warm as the 
cheerful fire which blazed in the wide fireplace near his desk. He introduced me to the 
Librarian, Brother William L. Boyden, who "showed me around" the library. Being 
something of a bibliomaniac I have been privileged to see many libraries but none that 
I have ever entered has left quite the same impression. It is dignified but homelike and 
the atmosphere about it was almost as conducive to prayer as to study. The library 
room proper lies in a comer of the building; it opens into a semi-circular series of 
stack-rooms which stretch across the end of the building that lies opposite to the 
entrance. 



The center of interest in the library (stack-rooms) is the collection of mementoes of 
Albert Pike. Here were several photographs, one of his body lying in a casket; here 
was one of the quill pens with which he wrote; the scrap of paper containing his last 
words before death; badges and ribbons which once decorated his breast; family 
albums; his family Bible, and a ritual which he wrote. There was also a collection of 
pipes, one of them valued at $600, a prize winner at the Paris Exposition. Brother 
Boyden told me that the General had used every one of them; the size of two or three 
gave me an added respect for the General's powers. One of them looked as though it 
would have held enough tobacco for a week's smoke. 


The center of the Pike collection, it needs not be said, was in the cases full of his 
original manuscripts. He had written all of these by hand, with meticulous care, so 
that one might look through several pages without seeing so much as one misformed 
letter; the writing was not in the usual flowing script but more like a page of 
copperplate, the letters being shaped like print. Of these manuscripts, all of them 
bound like books, there were, I believe, about eighty: "Maxims of Roman Law" in 
thirteen volumes; "Maxims of Military Science and Art" in six volumes; "Vocabulary 
of Indian Language" in one volume; materials for a history of Prance in six volumes 
(part of this has been published); "Commentaries of the Kabbala" in two volumes; 
Masonic Rituals in twelve volumes; moreover there was also a volume of biography 
written by his secretary from notes dictated by Pike himself. There were many 
volumes of Eastern Philosophy which he had translated. These evidences of the man's 
titantic intellect impress one almost more than the size and grandeur of the building in 
which they are preserved. 


In addition to all this there was a compass which he had used in the Southwest; his set 
of chess men; a chair which he had constructed for himself, with a patent, spring in it 
for raising and lowering the back; his ring for the fourteenth degree, and much of his 
Masonic Regalia. It may be added that the last words before mentioned were 
addressed to Brother Prederick Webber, Secretary General at that time, and read as 
follows: 


"Shalom: Peace —that comes with blessing to carefretted men, when death's dreamless 
sleep ends all suffering and sorrow." 



One of the rare mementoes in the library is a signature of Albert Mackey made in 
January, 1859. Among the 85,000 volumes in the library, 40,000 are on Masonic 
subjects. There is also a collection of rare old Scottish Rite patents and many other 
documents of almost priceless value. About the room stand some six busts, one of 
them of Pike; these faces of past leaders, and the thousands of volumes ranged about 
them, brought home to one's mind how vast has been the intellectual labor devoted to 
Masonry. 


On the same floor with the library is the executive chamber of the Supreme Council. 
Honorary members of the Council are permitted to attend when meetings are held in 
the great chamber on the second floor but only "active Thirty- Thirds" are ever 
admitted to the executive chamber while the Supreme Council is in session there. The 
room is so beautiful as to defy description. It is the most beautiful room that I ever 
saw. An altar stands in the center; seats for the members are built against the wall, and 
each seat is furnished with an accoustic apparatus which enables the hard-of-hearing 
to catch every word that is uttered. Needless to say, there is a complete telephone 
service in this and in every room in the building. It would be hard to find anything that 
is lacking in that marvelous structure. 


The floor immediately beneath this is mainly devoted to the banquet room, albeit there 
are a number of committee rooms around the side. In the banquet room are twelve 
tables which will seat ninety-six men; chairs and tables are in fumed quartered oak, 
ivory finish; caipets, hangings and walls would make a king proud. Behind the 
banquet room is a serving room, completely tiled, and furnished with every 
imaginable convenience. 


Immediately underneath is a kitchen that would make any housewife green with envy. 
I shall not describe that kitchen lest every woman who chances to read this will apply 
for a position there the next time the Supreme Council meets. It is a dream of a- 
kitchen. On this same floor is a heating plant, with capacity for four hundred tons of 
coal; also a ventilating plant that cost $80,000.00, and actually ventilates. 


Somewhere on one or the other of these two lower floors (I do not remember just 
where) I ran across the office of that genial and well-read Mason, Brother Horace P. 



McIntosh, the editor of The New Age. He told me many strange things about Masonry 
in foreign parts, all of which were true, for, though Brother McIntosh was once a 
sailor, he is also a Scotchman. He showed me a complete file of The New Age with a 
great deal of pride, as was fitting, because The New Age is the best Masonic 
magazine in the world with the exception of one; what that one is I am too modest to 
say. 


The heart and soul of the House of the Temple is the Supreme Council Chamber 
which occupies the floor just above the entrance floor. The door leading into the 
chamber is itself a supreme work of art; it is of oak covered with leather. Just inside is 
a high wooden screen which shuts off the view of the interior when the door is 
opened; in a concealed room above this door is the pipe organ, not a sign of which is 
anywhere visible in the chamber itself. I shall not attempt to describe the chamber 
itself; I don't know how. 


At the center stands an altar of black marble, round the bottom of which runs this 
legend: 


"From the light of the Divine Word, the Logos, comes the wisdom of life and the goal 
of initiation." 


As a frieze about the room runs another sentence, also selected by Brother George F. 
Moore, Grand Commander: 


"Unto the Divine Light of the Holy Altar, from the outer darkness of ignorance, 
through the shadow of our earth life, runs the beautiful path of initiation." 


Above the Grand Commander's station is a vast window, round which coils a huge 
seipent which symbolizes, one may suppose, wisdom. Along the two sides of the 
room are twenty-six desks for the active members; behind these are seats for the 



honorary members. There are great windows at the side hung with massive curtains, 
and at the top are sky-light windows, the shades over which are operated electrically. 
The furniture is in Circassian walnut. This sounds as if the room might appear 
luxurious, but it is not so; the effect is one of quiet dignity and grace, as befits the 
council chamber of a Scottish Rite. 


At one corner of the room, behind a small door, is a spiral stairway leading down to 
the bottommost floor. One look down that dizzy well of space helps one to understand 
the total height of the building, which is more than four stories, though it does not 
appear so high from the street. 


Everything about the building was especially designed for it; nothing was used out of 
stock. The entire structure, it may be said for those who are curious about such 
matters, cost more than two million dollars. Some fifteen or more employed in the 
building all of the time. 


The erection of the House of the Temple was under the direction of an executive 
committee of five, the chairman of which was Brother Charles E. Rosenbaum, of 
Little Rock, Arkansas, General Pike's old home. The architect was John Ruessell 
Pope, whose design for the building won the national architectural prize in 1916. 


The House of the Temple is the Headquarters of the Southern Jurisdiction of the 
Scottish Rite; it is also a monument to the memory of General Albert Pike whose 
genius made the Scottish Rite what it is. As one walks through it he feels as if the 
heroic, scholarly, eloquent spirit of that great character were hovering about him. 


— o — 


THE MASON'S HOLY HOUSE 



(By Albert Pike) 


We have a Holy House to build, 

A Temple splendid and divine 
To be with glorious memories filled; 

Of Right and Truth to be the Shrine; 

How shall we build it strong and fair— 
This Holy House of praise and prayer 
Firm set and solid, grandly great? 

How shall we all its rooms prepare 
For use, for ornament, for State? 

Our God hath given the wood and stone 
And we must fashion them aright, 

Like those who toiled on Lebanon, 
Making the labor their delight; 

This House, this palace, this God's Home, 
This Temple with its lofty dome, 

Must be in all proportions fit 
That heavenly messengers may come 
To lodge with those who tenant it. 



Build squarely upon the stately walls 
The two symbolic columns raise, 

And let the lofty courts and halls 
With all their golden glories blaze 
There, in the Kadosh Kadoshim 
Between the broad-winged cherubim, 

Where the Shekinah once abode 
The heart shall raise its daily hymns 
Of gratitude and love to God. 

SPECULATIVE MASONRY IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 

BY BRO. OS SIAN LANG. GRAND HISTORIAN. GRAND LODGE OF NEW 
YORK 

PART II 

CENTRAL TENETS OF THE BRETHREN OF THE ROSY CROSS 


FLUDD and Frisius agree in essential points. As the "Summum Bonum" supplies all 
we need for our present purpose, we may gather from this work whatever information 



is desired for our inquiry. The central symbolism turns around the stone, Aben, (1) 
and the building of the House of Wisdom. There is an abundance of allegorical uses of 
the word stone or stones, in the Old and New Testaments, which are made use of by 
Frisius to justify the philosophy of the Brethren of the Rosy Cross. 


"Thus saith the Lord of hosts: Consider your ways Go up to the hill-country and bring 
wood and build the house." — Haggai I, 78. 


"They that are far off shall come and build in the temple of the Lord." — Zechariah VI, 
15. 


"Wisdom hath builded a house, She hath hewn out her seven pillars." —Proverbs IX, 

1. 


"Through wisdom is a house builded, "And by understanding it is established; "And 
by knowledge are the chambers filled "With all precious and pleasant riches." 
—Proverbs XXIV, 3-4. 


"The wise man buildeth his house upon a rock. The rains may descend and the floods 
come; the winds may blow and beat upon that house: it will not fall; for it is founded 
upon a rock." —St. Matthew VII, 24-25. 


Aben, Frisius argues, is the cabalistic stone. In it, we have the Holy Trinity. For in 
Hebrew, Ab means Father and Ben Son; but where the Father and the Son are present 
there the Holy Ghost must also be. 


Aben is then explained as the foundation stone of the universe, the macrocosm. ("The 
Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind and said, Where wast thou when I laid the 
foundations of the earth? Declare if thou hast understanding. Whereupon are the 



foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the cornerstone thereof ?"— Job XXXVIII, 1, 
4, 6.) 


The macrocosmic Aben, then, is the foundation stone of all and for all. It was laid in 
Zion, and all the prophets and apostles built upon it, though the ignorant and wicked 
builders rejected it as a stumbling block and stone of contention: 


"Thus saith the Lord God: "Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, "A tried 
stone, a costly corner-stone of sure foundation. "He that believeth shall not make 
haste. "And I will make justice the line, "And righteousness the plummet." —Isaiah 
XXVIII, 16-17. 


"According to the grace of God which is given unto me as a wise Master builder, I 
have laid the foundation, and another buildeth thereon. But let every man take heed 
how he buildeth thereupon.... For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, 
which is Jesus Christ." -St. Paul, 1; Cor. Ill, 10-11. 


"The stone which the builders rejected "Is become the chief comer-stone." —Psalm 
CXVIII, 22. 


"As it is written in the scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief comer stone, elect, 
precious: and he that believeth in him shall not be confounded. 


"Unto you, therefore, which believe, he is precious: but unto them which be 
disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the 
comer, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at 
the word, being disobedient." —I Peter II, 6-7-8. 



If we consider the significance of Aben for the individual man (the microcosm, or the 
universe on a small scale), we find we are parts of the same spiritual stone, "cut out of 
that catholic (universal) rock": 


"Coming to Christ, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of 
God and precious: Ye also, as living stones, be ye built up a spiritual house." —I Peter 
11,4-6. 


In other words: Build yourselves upon Christ, as the foundation stone, as living 
stones, to a house of God. 


"We are labourers together with God: Ye are God's husbandry, Ye are God's 
building." —I Cor. Ill, 9. 


"Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in 
you? If any man defile this temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of 
God is holy which temple ye are." —I Cor. Ill, 16-17. 


Nor are those excluded who are-not of our faith. The temple of God is built up of all 
men who seek Him and strive to know Him. Quoting John, the Baptist: "Say not 
within yourselves, 'We have Abraham for our father': for I say unto you, That God is 
able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham." 


The plan of the building which the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross is seeking to establish 
is given in the words of Hebrews XIII, 1 : "Let brotherly love continue." 


"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity." 
-Psalm CXXXIII, 1. 



An example of the mystic, allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures, met with 
everywhere in Rosy Cross literature, is the following: 


As Christ was hidden in that Rock or Stone, before the days of Moses, since the 
spiritual is usually concealed in the physical, so also does Moses conceal in his 
writings the spiritual Aben; that is why we say he wrote under a veil, i. e. mystically. 
That is why the Apostle Paul says (II Cor. Ill, 6) "The letter killeth, but the spirit 
giveth life." 


"The Lord said unto Moses, Behold, I will stand before thee, there upon the rock in 
Horeb; and thou shall smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the 
people may drink." —Exodus XVII, 6. 


"Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers 
were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; "And were all baptized unto 
Moses in the cloud and in the sea; "And did all eat the same spiritual meal; "And did 
all drink the same spiritual drink; for they drank of that spiritual Rock that went with 
them: and that Rock was Christ." —I Cor. X, 1-4. 


Alchemistically expressed, the water which sprang from the Rock was potable gold, 
the word of God, words of Wisdom. 


That suggests also what we Alchemists mean when we speak of producing gold. It is 
not the gold the multitude hankers for. Ours is living gold, the gold of God, that which 
the Psalmist calls silver: 


"The words of the Lord are pure words, "As silver tried in a crucible on the earth, 
refined seven times." —Psalm XII, 7. 



The Rosy Cross alchemy in the transmutation of base metals into gold, is not that of 
the spurious Rosicmcians who deceive the avaricious by false promises; it takes the 
base, natural man and turns him by its art into a new, spiritual man, through the Word 
of God and the practice of charity. 


In the same manner the rough ashlar is turned into a perfect ashlar. 


As God has promised to dwell among men, to have his tabernacle among them, we 
must with all our strength and with spiritual tools strive for Aben. As the prophet 
Isaiah says: "Ye that seek the Lord, Look unto the rock whence ye were hewn." 
(Isaiah LI, 1.) 


The first step toward finding this Rock (the Philosopher's Stone) is to look for it 
within yourself; hence begin to know thyself. If you desire help from the writings of 
the Alchemists, remember that these wrote them in a veiled, mystic manner. Thus 
Darnaeus says "Change— oh! change yourselves from dead stones into living 
philosophical stones !" 


In order to realize the chemical steps of progression, we must first seek to discover the 
true sense of the Alchemists through careful insight. Then it will be found that they 
wrote differently and wanted to be understood differently. (Masonically speaking, one 
must first possess "the key of a fellowcraff ' to interpret correctly.) 


We summarize, as follows; always following the "Summum Bonum": 


The human body is a temple. Christ is its cornerstone. When we raise this corner- 
stone, His temple is also raised, as was the Temple of Solomon, when his players were 
fulfilled and the glory of the Lord descended. 



"Similarly, Kephas and Aben were at one time only dead stones, now become living 
stones through an actual transmutation, in that from the condition of Adam after his 
fall from grace they transformed themselves into Adam's original state of innocence 
and perfection; just as if there had been effected a transmutation from ordinary dirty 
lead into the purest gold. And this transmutation took place by the intermediation of 
that living gold as of the mystic stone of the Philosophers, which to us represents the 
divine emanation of wisdom. This wisdom, however, is the gift of God, and nothing 
else." 


MORE LIGHT FROM THE "SUMMUM BONUM" 


The study of true Magic, the Cabala and chemistry are the sciences called the three 
principal columns of the house of wisdom. By Magic is meant the art of wisdom 
practised by the Magi who came to worship the new bom Christ. Cabala stands for 
mystic mathematics (or strength). Chemistry is explained as the study of nature 
(beauty). The tme Brethren of the Rosy Cross are called architects who build the 
house of God, after the manner already explained. 


Why did the Brethren adopt the name of the Rosy Cross? There is an order of the 
Holy Cross. The Knights who went to war against the Saracens bore on their cloaks 
the emblem of a deep red cross. The Brethren have chosen the tme and living cross of 
Christ as the emblem of wisdom, that mystic wisdom which the Bible calls the Tree of 
Life whose root is the Word of Light. 


The color of the cross is that of blood or as that of red roses mixed with lilies. 


(We omit all mystic elaboration of the ideas here briefly indicated nor do we include 
other matters which have no bearing on the development of the Freemasonry of the 
Symbolic Lodge.) 



R. C. BRETHREN AS MASTER BUILDERS AND FORM OF THE LODGE 


Finally, the Brother is to labor at the perfecting of this work in the character of an 
architect, or master builder. (I Cor. Ill, 10-11). 


In order that the structure may be firmly established, in order that we may arrive at the 
rosy blood of the cross hidden within the foundation stone, we must dig from the 
surface to the center, we must seek and knock; unless we pursue our work with zeal, 
all our efforts will be wasted. All bodies have manifest height, occult depth and 
intermediate breadth. From the manifest form of a body we can only conjecture what 
its occult form must be, when we destroy the manifest to advance to the revelation of 
its occult form. The truth of this is found when we contemplate the depth of the 
geometric cube. 


The wise artist and the true religious philosopher must penetrate the earth and labor in 
every particle of the threefold dimension, if he wants to find the true rectangular 
foundation stone which God has laid in the foundation of the earth (Job 38, 4-6). Then 
he will know that "the love of Christ passeth knowledge, and that ye might be filled 
with all the fullness of God." (Eph. Ill, 19). 


Then knock and strike zealously and strenuously, for "Ye have not yet resisted unto 
blood, striving against sin." (Heb. XII, 4). Here the Apostle teaches us occultly that a 
transgression here, something foreign there, not emanating from the pure truth which 
is Christ Jesus, is present, which must be broken off and gotten rid of, from the human 
or soul-endowed stone; then truth will illumine the master builder and true Brother, 
and it will gleam in a rose-red or blood-colored glow, and he will see in this divine 
light his own light and receive and enjoy at last the wages of his labors. Then he shall 
be justly called a Brother of the Rosy Cross and he shall be called a member of the 
true Fraternity. 



THE ROYAL ART 


Everything thus far has been gathered from the "Summum Bonum," arranged so as to 
serve best our present purpose and in language more suitable to our times, without 
however changing the essence and the spirit. I shall add no extended comment. The 
brethren who are at home in the language, the symbols and the spirit of Freemasonry 
can gather their own conclusions. What has been gleaned from the work of Frisius, 
together with the notes on the symbolism of the Alchemists, would seem to be quite 
sufficient to explain why the Brethren of the Rosy Cross should have been considered 
the forebears of the Accepted Free Masons. Before offering a brief concluding 
summary, we must give a moment's attention to the development of the idea of the 
Royal Art which is the true name of Freemasonry. 


First let us take another word from the "Summum Bonum," which describes the Rosy 
Cross view of the Royal Art: 


There were in antiquity, four renowned schools of natural Magic, to-wit, the Hindoo, 
the Persian, the Chaldaic and the Egyptian. From the Persians came those three Kings 
(Magi, Wise Men) who were seeking the new born "King of the Jews," to present gifts 
unto Him and to worship Him. The sons of Persian Kings, as Plato has related in his 
"Alcibiades," were initiated into Magic that they might learn from the study of the 
pattern of the universe how best to govern their own dominions and to preserve order 
and administer justice therein. Cicero, too, speaks of this, in his "De Divinatione," 
saying that no one was crowned among the Persians with the royal diadem until after 
he had been fully instructed in Magic. That is why Oriental kings were so well 
grounded in wisdom and coveted the name of Magi or Wise Men. Hence those who 
came from the far East to worship the Christ child, were called by the Holy Spirit 
"Magi." 


Recalling that in the early days of the Grand Lodge of England we met repeatedly 
with the declaration, "There have been Kings that have been of this sodality," we shall 
have another clue to the genealogy of Freemasonry, as it was conceived by the 
organizers of the speculative craft. 



Or take this quotation from "The Master's Song" of the premier Grand Lodge: 


Thus mighty Eastern Kings, and some Of Abram's Race, and Monarchs good Of 
Egypt, Syria, Greece and Rome. True Architecture understood. 


Who can unfold the ROYAL Art? Or sing its Secrets in a Song? They're safely kept 
in Mason's heart And to the ancient Lodge belong. 


Those familiar with the Constitutions of 1 723 know what changes were made to make 
the ancient "Charges" conform to the newly established ideals of the Fraternity. What 
was there said regarding the attitude toward the "old Gothic Constitutions," applies 
also to the religious tenets of the Brethren of the Rosy Cross. The changes gave a 
simplified definition of the "Royal Art," though the spirit remained what it had been 
in the "Summum Bonum." Indicating the new meaning in the briefest form, I would 
answer: 


What is the Royal Art? The practice of the Royal Law. And the Royal Law? 


"If ye fulfill the Royal Law according to the Scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbor 
as thyself, ye do well." So wrote St. James, the first Bishop of Jerusalem, the same 
who declared that "Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this; to 
visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from 
the world." 


CONCLUSIONS 



In conclusion, I beg to submit a summary statement embodying findings based on 
many years of search to arrive at some sort of satisfactory solution of the puzzling 
question as to the derivation of the substance of Freemasonry. This summary is not 
complete and is intended to serve merely as a supplement to my paper on 
"Freemasonry and the Medieval Craft Gilds." 


The establishment of Christianity was accomplished chiefly by the marvelous rise of 
the power of the Church and the rigid application of this power. The first need and 
therefore the first care was to establish catholic unity in the faith. 


The disintegration of that which had been the Roman Empire had sounded the death 
knell for pagan civilization. An era of confusion followed. The most extravagant 
teachings were in circulation. Passions and vices ran riot because of the prevailing 
anarchy. A cult of a thousand years had been dispossessed by a young cult which had 
the promise of eternity but had not then been established firmly enough to compel 
respect. People hesitated between the creed of the yesterday and the creed of the 
tomorrow. There was one giant among men, who had the courage to choose, and 
having chosen, to battle for his creed without weakening. That was St. Augustin, the 
great Doctor of the Church, mystic and man of action, philosopher and master 
organizer and administrator. He united in himself the genius of the Semitic race with 
the wisdom of the Latins, the Greeks and the Alexandrians. He may well be called the 
establisher of the Roman Church which became, and for a thousand years thereafter 
remained, the supreme ruler of Western Europe. (2) 


One indirect but quite logical effect of St. Augustin's war upon heresies was the 
suppression of every form of free speculation in philosophy. Unity of creed must be 
established at any cost. The apostasy of the Emperor Julian had convinced doubting 
ecclesiastics of the danger lurking in an unbridled freedom of study. Three years after 
the death of St. Augustin, the Fourth Council of Carthage (in 398) formally prohibited 
the reading of secular books even by the bishops. In 529, the philosophical schools 
were abolished by decree of Emperor Julian. (3) 


Freedom of thought cannot be suppressed by decrees. But a check may be put on the 
expression of thought. And it was put on. Then there sprang up secret ("invisible") 



Colleges, Academies, Lodges, etc., for meetings of independent seekers after truth. In 
Italy, particularly, these secret associations-displayed great activity, hiding their real 
purposes under names, auspices and forms selected to mislead the watchful spies of 
the hierarchy. (4) 


Members of the Academy of the Trowel, for example, would wear builders' aprons 
and display builders' tools, presenting the appearance of a gild of operative Masons. 
By giving mystic meanings to emblems of a seemingly operative character, they could 
freely discuss prohibited topics in a manner only understood by trusted initiates. If 
they wished to be regarded as men engaged in architectural subjects, they would try to 
have those present who were generally reputed to be interested in such matters. The 
membership was made up largely of scientists, philosophers, architects, musicians, 
painters, sculptors and poets. 


In spite of their camouflage, the brethren of these "invisible" lodges were occasionally 
discovered. Yet so well were their secrets guarded that practically no first hand 
knowledge of them has come down to us, though we can obtain information enough 
from Roman Catholic sources, if we make proper allowances for always unmistakable 
prejudices. Thus Pastor in his famous "History of the Popes" refers to the "invisible" 
Roman Academy founded by Julius Pomponius Laetus, professor in the University of 
Rome, in the fifteenth century, as "the center of meetings for all discontented and 
pagan Humanists." We are told that the initiates adopted religious usages, regarded 
themselves as a college of priests, with Pomponius as Grand High Priest. Gregovorius 
who is quoted with approval, calls the Academy "a classical Freemasons Lodge." 


The Brethren of the Academy of Pomponius were accused, under Pope Paul II (1464- 
1471), as having conspired to kill the Holy Father, that they were pagans and 
materialists, etc. Imprisonment and death threatened the Brethren. "Safety first" in 
those days meant punishing the accused first and investigating afterward. Most of the 
Academicians fled. Ultimately all were, on the principle of Scotch verdict, absolved 
from the charge of heresy. Owing to the intervention of the scholarly and liberal 
Cardinal Bessarion, Pomponius and the others were allowed the freedom of the city, 
under close surveillance. 



The Academicians were predominantly Platonists. So were the members of most of 
the other forbidden secret societies (or occasional gatherings), while the Church 
officially upheld Aristotle and for a long time sought to suppress Plato to whom 
religion consisted essentially in the practice of justice. 


In the Teutonic countries, speculative philosophers were to be found largely among 
the mystic Alchemists who are often spoken of as "Hermetic Philosophers," in 
Masonic writings. They had no central organization. Wherever two or three of them 
met together, they formed a lodge for mutual intercourse and the initiation of worthy 
candidates who, after a period of probation more or less extended, would be put in 
possession of the secret symbols and traditions whereby they might obtain a key to the 
literature of all the mystics. 


In Great Britain, the Rosicmcian Alchemists were, as has been indicated, essentially 
Christian theosophists. They studied nature, but not for purely scientific purposes; 
they sought rather to discover in nature the traces of the mystic Supreme Architect of 
the Universe, revealed as well as concealed in and by the visible and discoverable 
phenomena. 


The predominance of religious speculation led to the separation from the mystic 
Alchemists of those who preferred to specialize in the experimental study of nature. 
The philosophical reform work of Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was probably the chief 
cause of the change. 


At the beginning of the seventeenth century, through the influence of Robert Fludd 
(1574-1671), the Fraternity of the Rosy Cross arose in Great Britain. This Fraternity 
represented the mystic portion of the Alchemists whose practices they followed. 
"Heresy" had been no safer under the Protestant "Bloody Bess" than it had been in 
Pre-Reformation times; the only difference being in the kind of "heresy" for which 
men were hanged or burned by the executioner of the power which happened to be in 
control at the time. That, together with the predilection for symbols having to do with 
house and temple building, no doubt accounts for the appearance of the names of 
reputed Rosicrucianism the membership lists of the operative gild of Masons. The 
Alchemists of an earlier day are supposed also to have been identified with this 



particular gild. The inference is that they formed occasional lodges of their own and 
were the "secret brotherhood" in the bosom of the Masons Company referred to in the 
records of that Company. This would account for the presence among the "Accepted" 
Masons of Elias Ashmole, Sir Robert Moray, Dr. Thomas Wharton, Sir George 
Wharton, William Oughtred, Dr. John Hewitt, the astronomer and astrologist, William 
Lily and Sir Christopher Wren, all of them distinguished scientists interested in the 
Rosy Cross program. 


And now a word to account for the statement in the Constitutions of 1738, at a time 
when there were many alive who would have objected to it if it had not been true, that 
the decay of the lodges of Accepted Freemasons, shortly after 1708, was due to Sir 
Christopher Wren's neglect of the office of Grand Master. Gould's insistence that 
Wren was not a Freemason and never could have been Grand Master, in spite of 
trustworthy evidence which should have caused him not to be so positive, is easily 
explained. Gould is usually very careful, content with nothing but the original sources 
but it is quite evident here that he had never given serious consideration to the 
possibility of Rosy Cross relationships. 


Sir Christopher Wren was a speculative Mason, nevertheless, and may have been 
known as Grand Master of the "Accepted" circle. His "neglect of the office" shortly 
after 1708 appears quite natural to me. That which had attracted him into the 
"Acceptation" was no doubt the calibre of the men who were associated with it and 
who were active in it. But, in 1662, there had been incorporated in London the Royal 
Society, which as time went on, absorbed more and more the spare time of the men 
more directly interested in scientific progress. After the close of the seventeenth 
century, "acceptation" of men of this stamp in the Masonic fraternity ceased 
altogether. The lodges became mere convivial clubs and for these Sir Christopher had 
no time. 


This leads me to advance a conclusion for which I hope to have prepared the ground. I 
believe that the Royal Society and Freemasonry both sprang from the same original 


source or sources. 



"Alchemy" which comprised in Pre-Reformation days all pursuits in science and 
philosophy had passed into Rosicrucianism. Bacon's "Novum Organum," in 1620, 
having established the necessity for specialization in experimental science, 
Rosicrucianism was doomed to final extinction. Bacon's "New Atlantis" (1624) set up 
a new ideal for men eager to enlist in the service of mankind by the advancement of 
civilization. (5) 


"The New Atlantis" was written, as Diderot pointed out in the prospectus of the 
French Encyclopedistes, "at a time when, so to say, neither sciences nor arts existed." 
The twilight efforts of the Alchemists no longer sufficed. More light was wanted. Day 
was at hand. "Solomon's House, that beautiful dream of the philosopher, began to be 
realized less than forty years after his death." (6) The picture of Solomon's House 
drawn by Bacon in "The New Atlantis" was the model from which the Royal Society 
was built. (7) The historian of this Society, Dr. Thomas Sprat (1636-1713) Bishop of 
Rochester, made acknowledgment of this when he wrote: "I shall only mention one 
great man who had the true imagination of the whole extent of this enterprise, as it is 
now set on foot, and that is Lord Bacon." (8) 


Professor Nichol sums up the established testimony of all authorities on the subject, in 
these words: (9) "It is admitted that the suggestion of the College of Philosophy 
instituted in London (1645) and after the Restoration extended into the Royal Society 
(1662) was due to the prophetic scheme of Solomon's House in the New Atlantis. 
Wallis, one of the founders of the Society, exalts him by name, along with Galileo, as 
heir master. Sprat says "It was a work becoming the largeness of Bacon's wit to devise 
and the greatness of Clarendon's prudence to establish." Boyle invokes for its 
inauguration "that profound naturalist * * * one great Verulam." 


The spirit that animated the whole conception of Solomon's House was "the love of 
man and the honoring of God." The Royal Society limited its membership quite 
naturally to men considered capable of rendering eminent service to the advancement 
of scientific discovery. Thereby it assured the progress of the great work it had 
undertaken, but it limited, at the same time, the realization of the ideal pictured in the 
"New Atlantis." The consciousness of this fact, together with the remembrances of the 
derivation from the true seekers after truth among the earlier Alchemists, were, I am 
persuaded, the chief reasons which prompted many of the members of the Royal 
Society to join the "revived" Society of Freemasons, shortly after the establishment of 



the Grand Lodge of England. In Freemasonry they hoped for the complete and 
universal realization of the whole ideal of the "New Atlantis," with the Royal Society 
as the scientific center of Solomon's House. 


This is, briefly and summarily told, my conclusion regarding the evolution of 
"Speculative" Freemasonry, more particularly during the seventeenth century, for "the 
love of man and the honoring of God." Imperfectly as the result of my researches is 
placed before you, my brethren, I hope to have at least suggested where to look for 
traces of the origins of our beloved Fraternity founded upon the Fatherhood of God, 
the mystic foundation stone of the universe, and the practice of the Royal Art which is 
the fulfilment of the Royal Faw according to the Scripture: "Thou shalt love thy 
neighbor as thyself.' 


POSTSCRIPT 


I trust I have not given the impression that the substance of modern Freemasonry was 
derived from the Rosicrucians. An organized Fraternity of the Rosy Cross probably 
never existed outside of books. The writings of Fludd and Frisius formulated for Great 
Britain a body of Rosy Cross tenets differing in essential points from the teachings of 
the Rosicrucians of Continental Europe. English and Scottish Alchemists followed 
Fludd and Frisius. Their attempts to translate the plans of these leaders into practice, 
appears to have induced some of them to form occasional lodges, either independently 
under the designation of Freemasons— the name of Rosicrucian having fallen into 
disrepute— or in the bosom of Masonic craft gilds, as a separate "secret brotherhood" 
of Accepted Freemasons. Read in connection with "Freemasonry and the Medieval 
Craft Gilds," the suggestion will be clearly understood. 


Freemasonry, as established by the Constitutions of 1722-3, represents the confluence 
of two streams, each having many tributaries: The sources of the one stream must be 
looked for in the Anglo-Saxon gyld, and its name is democracy; the sources of the 
other must be looked for in the earliest academies of philosophers searching for the 
One Living God, Father of all men, and its name is liberty of conscience. 



(1) Aben or Eben (as in Ebenezar) is Hebrew for stone. 

(2) For a vivid picture of life in the fourth century, the period so trying for men's 
souls, I refer those who read French to the charming, wonderful book of Louis 
Bertrand on "St. Augustin." 

(3) See Laurie's "Rise of Universities," first two chapters. 

(4) Especially from the fourteenth century onward. 

(5) "Doubtless it was one of Bacon's highest hopes that from the growth of true 
knowledge would follow in suiprising ways the relief of man's estate; this, as an end, 
runs through all his yearning after a fuller and surer method of inteipreting nature." 
—Dean Church. 

(6) M.C. Adam's "Philosophic de F. Bacon," Paris, 1890, p. 328. Bacon died on April 
9th, 1626. The London "College of Philosophy" which became the Royal Society, was 
instituted in 1645. 

(7) G.C. Moorr Smith, in his edition of "The New Atlantis,' (Pitt Press Series) 
Cambridge, 1900, page 28. 

(8) "History of the Royal Society," edition of 1667, page 35. 

(9) "Francis Bacon; His life and Philosophy," (Blackwood's Phil. Classics) 1889, vol. 
II, p. 136. 


— o — 


SYMBOLISM OF THE THREE DEGREES 


BY BRO. OLIVER DAY STREET, ALABAMA 


PART III THE SYMBOLISM OF THE MASTER MASON DEGREE 



MANY of the lessons of the third degree are obvious to the most superficial mind, but 
others (and these the most important) are grasped only after long and patient study. I 
shall not attempt anything original, but only lay before you in an imperfect way a few 
of the reflections and conclusions of some of our most trustworthy Masonic scholars. 


I believe it susceptible of the clearest proof that Freemasonry, viewed in the 
aggregate, is an elaborate allegory of human life, that the three degrees considered 
collectively, symbolically epitomize man's existence both here and in the hereafter. 
My excuse for recurring to this idea is that in my judgment Speculative Masonry can 
not be otherwise adequately explained. The lodge is emblematical of the world; 
initiation, of birth; the Entered Apprentice, of the preparatory stage of life, or youth; 
the Fellow Craft, of the construction stage, or manhood; the Master Mason, of the 
reflective stage, or old age, death, the resurrection, and the everlasting life. This 
explanation of the three degrees is briefly given in our lecture on the "Three Steps" 
delineated on the Master's Caipet. Any symbol or any meaning attributed to a symbol 
which does not legitimately contribute to this allegory may be discarded as 
nonMasonic. 


THE ANTIQUITY OF MASONIC SYMBOLISM 


The age of our symbolism is an important question in this connection, because upon it 
to a great extent depend the meanings that must be assigned to our symbols. While 
some of them may be of comparatively modem origin, many of them are older than 
the oldest written language. 


Says Brother Robert Freke Gould, one of the most cautious of our historians: 


"The symbolism of Masonry, or at all events a material part of it, is of very great 
antiquity, and in substance the system of Masonry we now possess, including the 



three degrees of the Craft, has come down to us in all its essentials from times remote 
to our own." (1) 


Another of our historians of the most exacting school, Brother William J. Hughan, 
declares that "symbolism in connection with Freemasonry antedates our oldest 
records." 


Even this cautious statement would date our symbolism back more than five hundred 
years, and Brother Gould is on record as declaring that, if it can be put back that far, 
there is practically no limit backward to which its beginning must be assigned. (2) 


Another distinguished Masonic scholar, Brother George William Speth, records his 
belief that "the greater part of our symbolism (including all essentials) is undoubtedly 
medieval at least, and probably centuries older than that." (3) 


Still another, Brother William Simpson, distinguished as an orientalist, says: 


"The more important Masonic symbols are ancient and their true meanings can only 
be found by tracing them back into the past. This will be found to be particularly the 
case with the third degree; its true meaning can only be realized by the study of 
similar rites which appear to go far back into the history of our race." (4) 


These are the opinions of men who, noted for their scholarship, have disregarded our 
Masonic traditions and studied the question from the purely historical viewpoint. 


Following them, (and if they cannot be followed there are none who can be,) our 
symbolism has come down to us from ancient times. 



Of some of these symbols we know a part at least of their meanings, but of some we 
know nothing at all. We get a hint from Brother Pike that much of our symbolism has 
been forgotten, and Brother Gould asserts the same and declares that "to a 
considerable portion of the symbolism of Freemasonry, even at this day, no meaning 
can be assigned which is entirely satisfactory to the intelligent mind." (5) 


Heckethorn, a non-Mason, says that many of the mystical figures and schemes of very 
ancient times are preserved in Masonry though their meaning is no longer understood 
by the Fraternity. (6) 


It should therefore be obvious that if we are ever to reacquire this lost knowledge, we 
must have recourse to the records and institutions of ancient times. 


THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES 


Do we find any institutions in ancient times similar to our own and employing our 
symbols for like purposes? I answer at once that we do. 


In all periods from the dawn of history till about the fifth century, A. D., there is 
recorded the existence in nearly every known country of secret societies which, so far 
as our knowledge of them enables us to judge, were strikingly like Freemasonry in all 
except name. Our foremost Masonic historian, Brother Gould, says that they taught 
precisely the same doctrines in precisely the same way. These ancient societies 
bearing different names in different countries, yet appearing everywhere to have been 
the same thing, are generally termed "The Ancient Mysteries." 


In Egypt they were known as the Mysteries of Osiris and Isis, and these appear to 
have been the model for all others. They prevailed in Egypt, India, Persia, Phoenicia, 
Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, and many other countries. The most ancient of these 
were certainly in existence as early as 3000 B. C., and some of them were still 



flourishing in Western Europe, in a corrupted state, it is true, as late as the fourth 
century of the Christian era. 


Notwithstanding their differences in name, it does not admit of a doubt that they were 
all substantially the same; "so much so," it has been said by high Masonic authority, 
"that we may conclude either that they were all independent copies from a great 
original or that they were propagated one from another." Brother Gould, than whom 
no more judicious historian has ever written on any subject, thinks they were only 
differentiated types of one original form of worship, the object of which was in every 
instance the God of Light and of Truth and of Beneficence. The Osiris of Egypt, the 
Brahma of India, the Mithras of Persia, the Bacchus (or Dionysius) of Greece, the Bel 
(or Baal) of the Chaldeans, the Belenus of Gaul, the Baldur of Scandanavia, the 
Adonis of Phoenicia, and the Adonai of the Jews were all the same god; each, to his 
own people, was the Supreme One, the Creator, the Enlightener, Lord and Master. All 
the mysteries taught a more or less pure system of monotheism, though coupled with 
the idea of a Trinity, or one God in three persons. Their Trinity differed from ours, 
however, in that they conceived it to be a male, female and offspring, or Father, 
Mother and Son. They taught also the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead and the 
immortality of the soul. (7) 


Cicero tells us that in the Elusinian Mysteries they were taught to live virtuously and 
happily and to die in the hope of a blessed futurity. (8) 


"The great doctrine of immortality of the soul," says Brother Gould, "and the 
teachings of the two lives, the present and the future, are to be found in the Ancient 
Mysteries, where precisely the same doctrines were taught in precisely the same way" 
that they are now taught by the Freemasons. 


It seems that among pagan people of ancient times a few superior minds and spirits 
were found who did not accept the idolatrous notions of the populace as an adequate 
conception of the Deity and who searched constantly in the great book of nature in the 
effort to find out and understand him aright. To have openly proclaimed their beliefs 
and their rejection of the popular gods and popular religion would have but called 
down upon themselves contempt and ridicule and doubtless persecutions. They, 



therefore, chose to drift along with the common herd to all outward appearances, 
reserving the contemplation and discussion of their cherished beliefs for secret 
communication with those of kindred mind in societies where they were secure from 
observation and the interference of the outside world. Such seems to have been the 
occasion of the origin of these ancient fraternities. 


These societies were characterized by fixed forms of initiation, successive steps or 
degrees, oaths of secrecy, a symbolical system of teaching, and the possession of 
emblems and perhaps of grips, signs and words of recognition. (9) Their rites were 
usually celebrated at night in chambers securely guarded against intrusion and 
arranged similarly to our lodges, often with the three chief officers seated in the 
South, West and East. 


With all of them the East was an object of peculiar veneration as the source of light 
and knowledge. 


Initiation was an allegorical search for light and knowledge and consisted of 
prescribed physical and moral preparations of the candidate, lustrations, purifications 
and the administrations of oaths of secrecy; the ushering from darkness to light 
symbolizing a transformation from ignorance to knowledge, from corruption to moral 
and spiritual purity; the investiture with an emblem of this purity consisting 
sometimes of a white apron, sometimes of a white sash or robe; the encountering of 
trials and dangers sometimes mock and sometimes real. In the Mithraic Mysteries the 
candidate was received into the place of initiation upon the point of a sword piercing 
his naked left breast. Many of their symbols were identical with those that can now be 
seen in any Masonic lodge. 


To each of the Ancient Mysteries pertained a characteristic legend, which w as made 
the instrumentality of teaching with great impressiveness the doctrines of the 
resurrection and immortality. 



The legend of Osiris, probably the oldest and the model for all the others was as 
follows: 


Osiris, meaning the soul of the Universe, the Governor of nature, was at once king and 
god of the Egyptians. The name appears as far back as 3000 B. C. Having taught 
civilization, the arts and agriculture to his own people, he magnanimously resolved to 
spread in person their benign influence throughout the world. Leaving his kingdom in 
charge of his wife, Isis, he departed upon his beneficent mission. After an absence of 
three years he returned, but meanwhile his brother Typhon had organized a conspiracy 
to murder him and seize the throne. At a grand banquet given in honor of his return, 
Typhon provided a magnificent chest which exactly fitted the body of Osiris. All the 
other guests being in the conspiracy, they feigned great admiration of the chest and 
finally Typhon announced that he would give it to the one whose body it would most 
neatly contain. Osiris, trying the box, was no sooner in it than the lid was clapped 
down and securely fastened and the whole thrown into the river Nile. It was borne out 
to sea by the current and in course of time was cast ashore at Byblos, in Phoenicia, at 
the foot of an acacia tree. The tree grew up rapidly and completely encased the chest 
containing the body of Osiris. 


No sooner had Isis learned of the fate of her husband than, weeping, she set out in 
search of his body and on her way interrogated every one she met for information 
concerning its whereabouts. Virgins accompanied her who dressed and combed her 
hair. 


She finally discovered the body in the acacia tree, but the king of that country, struck 
with the tree's beauty caused it to be cut down and a column made of it for his palace. 
Isis thereupon engaged herself to the king as a nurse for his children and asked and 
received for her pay this column. The column was broken and the body released and 
at once borne back to Egypt, but before it could be properly interred it was again 
seized by Typhon and cut into fourteen pieces and these hidden in as many places. 
After long search Isis succeeded in finding and bringing together all the parts except 
the phallus, and the body was embalmed and buried in due form. It will be borne in 
mind that according to ancient Egyptian ideas there could be no resurrection in the 
absence of the body; hence, the great care with which they embalmed their dead. As 
soon as the body of Osiris had been recovered and buried, it was announced that he 
had risen from the dead and had resumed his place among the gods. 



The ceremonies of initiation into the Egyptian Mysteries dramatically represented the 
death of Osiris, the search for his body, its discovery in the acacia tree, and its burial 
and resurrection, the murdered god being personated by the candidate. 


Pertaining to each of the Mysteries was a counterpart of this legend. In Greece, Osiris 
becomes Bacchus, (not the drunken Bacchus of later ages,) who is slain by the Titans 
and his limbs tom asunder. Isis becomes Rhea, who after long and bitter search finds 
and inters his body, and in due course he takes his place among the gods. In the 
Dionysian Mysteries celebrated in his honor an effigy was stretched upon a couch, as 
if dead, while his votaries bitterly bewailed his decease. After a proper time the figure 
was quickly removed and the announcement made that the god had risen from the 
dead. Likewise in some of the Mysteries of India the candidate underwent an 
allegorical death, burial and resurrection. Those celebrated in Phoenicia during the 
time of Solomon, King of Israel, Hiram, King of Tyre and Hiram Abif were obvious 
copies of those of Egypt. Adonis and Venus became substitutes in the legend for 
Osiris and Isis. During the course of these Mysteries, with which our three ancient 
Grand Masters must have been familiar, an image was laid upon a bier as if it were a 
dead body. During a momentary darkness the figure was invisibly removed, after 
which it was announced that the god had risen from the dead. The substantial identity 
with each other of all these Mysteries and doctrines they were intended to inculcate is 
obvious. 


It is claimed by students of ancient mythology, that this legend of the Mysteries and 
the ceremonies based on it were all prophetic of the coming of a Messiah, who should 
triumph over death and the grave, and thereby demonstrate to mankind for a certainty 
that there is a life after death. That this was common belief, not merely among the 
Jews, but the Egyptians, Phoenicians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Chaldeans, 
Hindus, Greeks and Romans is now generally conceded. 


The teachings of the Mysteries have been thus summarized: 



"They diffused a spirit of unity and humanity, purified the soul from ignorance and 
pollution; secured the peculiar aid of the gods; the means of arriving at the perfection 
of virtue; the serene happiness of a holy life; the hope of a peaceful death and endless 
felicity in the Elysian fields; whilst those not initiated therein should dwell after death 
in places of darkness and horror." 


Thus did these ancient societies seek by means of the dramatic presentation of a 
legend to teach the great Masonic doctrines of the resurrection and the life after death. 


There were lectures explanatory of the Mysteries but the crowning ceremony of 
initiation was the communication to the candidate of an ineffable name which it was 
lawful to speak only on certain occasions and in a certain manner. Among the 
Egyptians, Persians and Hindus, notwithstanding their pride separation, this was the 
mysterious AUM, pronounced OM. I have puiposely mingled things dissimilar with 
things similar to Freemasonry but the intelligent Master Mason will be able to detect 
the points of resemblance. 


Brother Robert F. Gould, whom I have already several times quoted, without 
venturing to pronounce Freemasonry and the Ancient Mysteries identical, says: 


"It is a well known fact that these Mysteries offer striking analogies with much that is 
found in Freemasonry; their celebration in grottoes or covered halls, which 
symbolized the Universe, and which in disposition and decoration presented a distinct 
counterpart to our lodge; their division into degrees conferred by the initiatory rites 
wonderfully like our own; their method of teaching through the same astronomic 
symbolism the highest truths then known in Philosophy and Morals; their mystic bond 
of secrecy, toleration, equality and brotherly love." 


He intimates strongly his belief that Freemasonry is a development out of the 
Mysteries of Mithras, which, originating in Persia, spread to Greece, Rome and 
Western Europe and lingered there until the fourth or fifth century, A. D. 



Enough has been said on this point to make it plain that anyone who would 
understand our Masonic symbolism must at least make a study of what these same 
symbols meant to these ancient societies. 


THIRD DEGREE SYMBOLS 


I shall not lengthen this paper and tax your patience by repeating explanations laid 
down in our monitors and lectures. I shall for the most part confine myself to things 
that are not explained at all, or that are explained inadequately. 


Many of the symbols of the Master's degree are common to the preceding degrees and 
these I shall touch upon very briefly. There is, however, discoverable in their use as 
the degrees progress, an increasing seriousness and depth of meaning. 


For instance, in the first two degrees, the lodge symbolizes the world, the place where 
all workmen labor at useful avocations and in the acquisition of human knowledge 
and virtue. But in the Master's degree it represents the Sanctum Sanctorum, or Holy of 
Holies of King Solomon's Temple, which was itself a symbol of Heaven, or the abode 
of Deity. It was there that nothing earthly or unclean was allowed to enter; it was there 
that the visible presence of the Deity was said to dwell between the Cherubim. In the 
Master's lodge, therefore, we are symbolically brought into the awful presence of the 
Deity. The reference here to death and the future life is obvious and is a further 
evidence that this degree typifies old age and death. 


But there is even a deeper symbolism in the Master's lodge. The allusion is not only to 
the sacred chamber of Solomon's physical temple, it alludes also to the sacred 
chamber of that spiritual temple we all are, or should he, namely, a pure heart, and 
admonishes us to make of it a place fit for Deity himself to dwell. 



The likening of the human body to a temple of the Deity is an ancient metaphor. Jesus 
said, in speaking of the temple of his body, "Destroy this temple and in three days I 
will raise it up." Again, Paul says, "Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that 
the spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man destroyeth the temple of God, him shall 
God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, and such arc ye." I quote these passages, 
not as a Christian doctrine, but as a beautiful expression of Jewish thought far older 
than Christianity. We can with difficulty conceive the extreme sacredness of the 
Temple in the eyes of the Jew. It far exceeded the veneration with which we now 
regard our churches and synagogues. This idea once comprehended shows how 
greatly this figure of speech ennobles the human body. It declares it a fit dwelling 
place for Deity himself. 


In the Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft degrees, Light typifies the acquisition of 
human knowledge and virtue; in the Masters degree it typifies the revelation of divine 
truth in the life that is to come. 


In the first two degrees the square and compasses denote the earth and inculcate and 
impress upon us the desirability of curbing our passions; in the third degree the 
compasses symbolize what is heavenly, because to our ancient brethren the visible 
heavens bore the aspect of circles and arches, geometrical figures produced with the 
compasses. 


In some of the monitors we are told that "the compasses are peculiarly consecrated to 
this degree," but the reasons there given are not satisfying. In ancient symbolism the 
square signified the earth, while the circle, a figure produced with the compasses, 
signified the sun or the heavens. The square therefore symbolized what is earthly and 
material while the compasses signified the heavenly and the spiritual. It is not without 
significance, therefore, that in the Entered Apprentice degree, both points of the 
compasses are beneath the square; that in the Fellow Craft degree one point is above 
the square, while in the Master's degree both points are above, signifying that in the 
true Master, the spiritual has obtained full mastery and control over the earthly and the 
material. (10) 


DISCALCEATION 



Discalceation, or the plucking off of one's shoes, was in the Entered Apprentice 
degree, as we there learned, a symbol of fidelity to our fellow man. In this degree, 
however, it alludes to an ancient act of homage paid by man to Deity, namely, the 
Eastern custom that prevailed among both Jews and Gentiles of entering only 
barefooted into any sacred place or upon any holy ground. In the one case, this 
practice was a testimony of man to man; in the other, it is a testimony of man to his 
Creator. 


Pythagoras taught his disciples in these words, "offer sacrifice and worship with thy 
shoes off." Adam Clarke includes the universality of this custom among his thirteen 
proofs that all mankind has descended from common ancesters. A Master Mason's 
lodge represents, as we have seen, the Holy of Holies of Solomon's Temple into 
which the High Priest alone entered only once yearly, and then with bare feet. The 
lodge in some of the old rituals is said to stand on holy ground. God said to Moses at 
the burning bush: "Put off thy shoes from thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest 
is holy ground." (11) 


Note also the deeper significance of the shock of reception as the degrees progress. In 
the first, the appeal is to the sense of fear, in other words, purely physical. In the 
second, appeal is made to the moral sense and inculcates fair dealing with men, but in 
the third it is not merely to our sense of justice towards our fellow man, but to our 
brotherly love for him and to those higher reflective elements of our nature whose 
proverbial seat is the breasts. 


It is a mistake to limit the "Brotherly Love" of this degree to members of the Masonic 
fraternity. If the lodge symbolizes the world, as it undoubtly does, so should its 
members symbolize all the inhabitants thereof. The love that should prevail among the 
members of the lodge, therefore, typifies the love that should prevail among all 
mankind. In the highest sense all men are our brothers precisely as we are so 
strikingly taught in the parable of the Good Samaritan that all men are our neighbors. 


CIRCUMAMBULATION 



Circumambulation, from the Latin word "circumambulare," to walk around, is a very 
ancient rite, one common to all the Ancient Mysteries. The sun, the fructifier and 
giver of life, in his daily course across the heavens, appears to those living in the 
Northern Hemisphere, where the ancient world dwelt, to proceed from the East by the 
way of the South to the West, and thence through the darkness of the night via the 
North back to the East again. Vegetation was seen to spring up, animal life to be 
aroused from slumber and take on increased energy, as the King of Day moved with 
dignity across the heavens. To the untutored mind of primeval man it is not strange 
that the sun should appear to be the giver of life, the very Creator himself. His 
apparent course, therefore, from East through the South to the West and back to the 
East by way of the North became the "course of life", as the ancients expressed it. 


The ancients in their ceremonies when representing life pursued this course, and we 
Masons follow their example. To proceed in the reverse direction typified death, and 
as every Master Mason knows at one important point in our ceremonies we take this 
reverse course. At the grave of a deceased brother, however, contrary to what might 
be expected, we still follow the course of life as a token of our belief in the life that 
follows death. (11) 


THE WORKING TOOLS 


With us in America the especial working tool of a Master Mason is said to be the 
Trowel. In England, this symbol is almost obsolete, and they employ the Skirrit, 
Pencil and Compasses. 


Of the Trowel, Dr. Oliver, a noted but somewhat discredited Masonic authority, says: 


"The triangle, now called the Trowel, was an emblem of very extensive application 
and was much revered by ancient nations as containing the greatest and most abstruse 
mysteries that it signified equally Deity, Creation and Fire." (12) 



We will learn directly something more of the symbolical signification of the triangle. 


The Skirrit, the Pencil and the Compasses are not enumerated in America among the 
working tools of a Master Mason. The Skirrit is an instrument working on a center pin 
and used by the Operative Mason to mark out on the ground the foundation of the 
intended structure. The Pencil is employed in drafting the plans and the Compasses in 
determining the limit and proportions of its several parts. Symbolically they are 
explained in English (Emulation) working in the following words: 


"The Skirrit points out to us that straight and undeviating line of conduct laid down 
for our guidance in the volume of the sacred law. The Pencil teaches us that all our 
words and actions are not only observed, but are recorded by the Most High, to whom 
we must render an account of our conduct through life. The Compasses reminds us of 
his unerring and impartial justice, which having defined for our instruction the limits 
of good and evil will either reward or punish us, as we have obeyed or disregarded his 
divine commands." (13) 


We must admit that the trowel would seem more properly to belong to the Fellow 
Craft, who in Operative Masonry puts the stones in place, rather than to the designer 
and overseer who corresponds to our Master Mason. 


Brother John Yarker in his Arcane Schools says that the Skirrit as a hieroglyphic 
signifies the origin of things. (14) 


DEITY AND IMMORTALITY 


There are a few who feign that they believe nothing that cannot be experienced 
through the five senses of the body. Wonderful as are these faculties, I am persuaded 



that we are possessed of a sixth sense which is higher and finer even than those of the 
body. By this sense we perceive though we see not; we feel though we touch not; we 
understand though we hear not; we know though we neither taste nor smell. By it, 
also, we are aware of all the higher aspirations of the mind and soul; by it alone are 
we conscious of our own existence. Seeing is not thinking. Nor is hearing, or feeling, 
or tasting, or smelling. These five senses are but ministers to this sixth sense. The five 
senses of human nature we were concerned with in a former degree, but we are here 
concerned with something far superior to them, whatever we call it, whether 
consciousness, faith, mind, soul or spirit. Are the testimonies of this sixth sense any 
less real or any less reliable than those of the five senses of the body? By it mankind 
has always, in every age and in every condition, felt intuitively that there was a God 
and that we shall live again. These beliefs are so strong and so ever present with us 
that we never doubt them until we begin to argue about them. 


There is nothing in Masonry so constantly pressed upon our thoughts as these two 
great doctrines. Signs, symbols, and legends are all repeatedly employed to emphasize 
them. 


In the Master's degree, the Pot of Incense, the All-Seeing Eye, the Three Grand 
Masters, the Triangle, and the legends of the Temple and of Hiram Abif are all 
employed for this purpose, as I shall attempt to show. 


We read with incredulity that men could ever bow down to, and worship, idols. 
Doubtless the thoughtful and intelligent ones have never done so even in pagan 
countries. They looked beyond and viewed the idol as merely a symbol. As the idol 
among pagan people usually assumed a human form, the Jews as well as other 
believers in monotheism of ancient times, forbade the employment of the human 
effigy as a symbol of Deity. To supply the need so keenly felt by the ancients of a 
symbol to represent every idea, conventional figures such as squares, circles, 
triangles, etc., were adopted by the ancient monotheists to symbolize the Deity. Thus 
perhaps it is that the being which alone is said to have been made in the image of his 
Creator is nowhere employed in our symbolism to represent the G. A. O. T. U. 


THE HIRAMIC LEGEND 



The most important series of symbols in Freemasonry is the legend concerning Hiram 
Abif and the other symbolic allusions connected therewith. For obvious reasons, I do 
not attempt to narrate the story of this legend. Nor shall I undertake to make any 
systematic or exhaustive study of it, but only to discuss in a disconnected way those 
symbols associated with it that are most important or whose meaning is least obvious. 


As we have already seen, the Ancient Mysteries employed a legend dramatically 
presented to teach the great doctrines of the existence of Deity, the resurrection of the 
body, and the immortality of the soul. Among Freemasons, the legend of Hiram, the 
builder, is employed in a strikingly similar way to teach the same truths. It is not 
permissible, even if it were necessary, to enter further into details in order to 
demonstrate this parallel, but the points of resemblance will be sufficiently obvious to 
the intelligent Mason. 


A few observations upon the name Hiram Abif will not be out of place. Abif is 
certainly not a surname as our use of it would seem to indicate. It is translated in the 
English Bibles "Hiram, my father's" and "Hiram, his father." This scarcely makes 
sense; and hence the general consensus of opinion among Masonic scholars is that 
"Abif' is a Hebrew idiom indicating superiority in his Craft and may therefore, in a 
general sense, be said to be synonymous with "Master." (15) 


The name "Hiram" itself has been supposed by many to bear a symbolic meaning. In 
Kings it is written "Hiram" but in Chronicles it is written "Huram." Brother Albert 
Pike contends that the proper form is "Khirum" or "Khumm." The former Khirum is 
from the Hebrew word "Khi" meaning "living", and "ram" meaning "was or shall be 
raised or lifted up." Hence Khirum means "was raised or lifted up to life." The other 
form, Khumm, means nearly the same, "raised up noble or free." Brother Pike shows 
this name to be synonymous with the Egyptian Her-ra, and the Phoenician Heracles, 
the personification of Light and the sun, the Mediator, the Redeemer and the Savior. 


But do not be mislead into supposing that the reference is here Christian. The idea of a 
Mediator, Redeemer or Savior is far older than Christianity and by no means confined 



to the Jews. It is a concept that seems to have been almost universal in the ancient 
world. 


Again, it is said that Hiram, in its pure and original form, literally meant Light or the 
sun. His murder by the three ruffians is by many scholars believed to have symbolic 
reference to the declension of the sun towards the south during the three winter 
months with its accompanying temporary death of many forms of vegetable and 
animal life; the discovery and raising of his body, to the return of spring with its 
manifestations of newness of life in its thousands of forms. There is no doubt that this 
astronomical phenomenon, so typical of both death and a new life, was extensively 
employed by the ancients to teach the doctrines of resurrection and immortality. 


Those who attach an astronomical signification to this legend of Hiram Abif believe 
the fifteen Fellow Craft to be a faulty symbol; that the true number is twelve, 
corresponding to the twelve signs of the Zodiac through which the sun apparently 
passes every year; that the number of those who conspired and the number who 
recanted have been confused; that name, typifying those who recanted, fill the spring, 
summer and autumn with their seasons of planting, growth and harvest, while the 
three who persisted typify winter, when all nature, if not dead, appears to be dormant. 
It has been pointed out as corroborating this interpretation of this legend that our two 
festival seasons, June 24th and December 27th, the birthdays respectively of John the 
Baptist and John the Evangelist, very nearly coincide respectively with the summer 
and winter solstices; that is to say that when the sun is at its greatest intensity, and, 
when in the dead of winter, having reached his furthermost limit to the South, he 
begins his fructifying and vivifying journey towards the North again. 


I can but touch upon this abstruse symbolism, and invite the serious student of 
Freemasonry to its study. It cannot be covered in an evening; volumes have been and 
may still be written upon the subject without exhausting it. (16) 


In nearly all the ancient systems of religion, Deity was regarded as a triad or trinity, 
by whom, acting conjointly only, could anything be done that was done. Our own 
doctrine of the Trinity is but a mere spiritualized modification of this ancient 
trinitarian conception. The secrets known only to our Three Grand Masters typify 



divine truth known only to this trinitarian Deity, and which is not to be communicated 
and made known to man, the Fellow Craft, the workman, until he has completed his 
spiritual temple. Then, according to divine promise, if found worthy, if this temple he 
nobly and worthily built and made a fit dwelling place for divine truth, these secrets 
will be communicated to him. He can then travel into that foreign country whither we 
all are bound and there obtain the wages of the master, that is to say, the reward of a 
righteous and well spent life. But he who would force or steal this knowledge or 
obtain it other than by faithful labor and effort to prepare himself for its understanding 
and enjoyment is no better than a murderer and robber. It is the same allegory as that 
of Adam eating of the tree of knowledge. For a like offense, stealing the sacred fire of 
the gods and bestowing it upon man, was Prometheus bound to the rock, his body torn 
open and his liver fed upon by the vultures of the air. 


THE THREE RUFFIANS 


One having the least familiarity with the religions of the East cannot fail to recognize 
in the names of the three ruffians the name of the gods of Palestine, Phoenicia and 
Egypt, Jah, Bel and Om, spelled AUM. This will be even more striking to the Royal 
Arch Mason. Whether this is a mere coincidence or the result of design, or if 
designed, what is the significance, are unknown. (17) 


LOW TWELVE In ancient symbolism, the number twelve denoted completion. 
Whether this meaning arose from the fact that twelve months completed the year, or 
twelve signs of the Zodiac, or whether from the fact that what was regarded as the 
most stable geometrical figure known, the cube, is marked by twelve edges, opinions 
differ. At any rate, it denoted a thing fulfilled. It was, therefore, an emblem of a 
human life. Death followed immediately after life; the number thirteen immediately 
after twelve; it is for this reason that thirteen has long been regarded as an unlucky 
number. With us the solemn stroke of twelve marks the completion of human 
existence in this life. 


THE LION OF THE TRIBE OF JUDAH 



The Lion from most ancient times has been a symbol of might or royalty. It was 
blazoned upon the standard of the tribe of Judah, because it was the royal tribe. The 
kings of Judah were, therefore, called the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, and such was 
one of the titles of Solomon. Remembrance of this fact gives appropriateness to an 
expression employed at one point in our ceremonies which is otherwise obscure, not 
to say absurd. Such is the literal meaning of this phrase, but it also has a symbolical 
one. 


The Jewish idea of a Messiah was of a mighty temporal king. He was also designated 
as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah; in fact this title was regarded as peculiarly 
belonging to him. The expression does not, as many Masons suppose necessarily have 
reference to Jesus of Nazareth. The Christian Mason is privileged to so interpret it, if 
he so likes, but the Jew has equal right to understand it as meaning his Messiah. 
Indeed, every great religion of the world has contained the conception in some form, 
of a Mediator between God and man, a Redeemer who would raise mankind from the 
death of this life and the grave, to an everlasting existence with God hereafter. The 
Mason who is a devotee of one of these religions, say Buddhism, Brahmanism or 
Mohammedanism, is likewise entitled to construe this expression as referring to his 
own Mediator. 


In an ancient Egyptian inscription is depicted a lion seizing by the wrist a man lying in 
front of an altar, prostrate upon his back as if dead. The lion seems to be raising the 
man up and to symbolize that power by which the dead are brought to newness of life. 
Near the altar stands a man with his left arm elevated in the form of a square. 


(To be continued) 


(1) Ars Quatuor Coronatoram vol. Ill, p. 10. 

(2) Idem, p. 24. 

(3) Idem, p. 27. 

(4) Idem, p. 26. 



(5) Idem, p. 23. 

(6) Idem, p. 24. 

(7) Gould's Concise History, pp. 24, 25 

(8) Mackey's Symbolism, p. 36. 

(9) Yarker's Arcane Schools 113. 

(10) Morals and Dogma, pp. 850, 854. 

(11) Mackey's Symbolism, pp. 124, 129. 

(12) Oliver's Signs and Symbols, p 10; Universal Masonic Library, p. 14; 
Transactions Lodge of Research 1909-10, p. 42. 

(13) Aiken, p. 80. 

(14) Yarker's Arcane Schools, pp. 33, 220. 

(15) Mackey's Encyclopedia, p. 3: Morals and Dogma, p. 81. 

(16) Festival of Mal-Karth, Morals and Dogma, p. 78. 

(17) Morals and Dogma, pp. 80, 82, 448, 488: Tyler Keystone, Aug. 20, 1908, pp. 77, 
78. 

(18) Portal, p. 30; Masonic Magazine, p. 328: Morals and Dogma, pp. 79, 254, 461. 

READY TO BE TRIED AGAIN 


'Tis no matter how much work we have done ere dawned today 
'Tis no matter how we've striven on an upward, onward way; 



There are duties ever new falling due each day to men, 

And the one who does them best waits but to be tried again. 

Though we have been tried as came duties new upon the way, 
Though the storm obscured the sun that was bright as dawned the 
day; 

Though the yesterdays are past 'tis no matter what they've been, 
'Tis today that we must be ready to be tried again. 

There's no wage can come to us only as our work is done, 

There's no premium to life save as are its triumphs won; 
Recompense comes with the toil e'en as we the task begin, 

E'en as we report to self, ready to be tried again. 

And as Masons we are taught that while we've been often tried 

We are never by the Craft of the privilege denied 

Of the trying for the work that it makes so clear and plain, 

And for which we all should be ready to be tried again. 

And the fact that we're in wait may unlock the mystic door 
To the findings in the Art that may prove a golden store; 

'Tis an inspiration e'en if there's not a moment when 



We're not in the firing line, ready to be tried again. 


And by trial comes the glow of a brighter, keener joy— 

That real something that we know in the mystic Arts employ; 

Tis the thought unfolding to the ideal it gives to men 
That the trial is in being ready to be tried again. 

And the thought is larger still, 'tis a trial now and here 
For and in and as the task as each day's new claims appear, 

Trial measured by the TRUTH as it may respond amen 
As we ever DO and DARE, READY TO BE TRIED AGAIN. 

— Bro. L. B. Mitchell, Michigan. 

MEMORIALS TO GREAT MEN WHO WERE MASONS 

BY BRO. GEORGE W. BAIRD, P. G. M., DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

BENJAMIN RUSH 


THERE is a bronze statue of Dr. Rush in front of the United States Naval Hospital, in 
Washington, not erected by a grateful Republic, to a famous patriot and signer of the 



Declaration of Independence, but by the Medical Societies of the United States, more 
than a century after the War of the Revolution. 


Out of the fifty- six signers of the Declaration there are but three memorialized in the 
Capital City; not one by the Government, but all by private subscription. To Medical 
Director A.L. Gihon, U.S.N., more than to any other one man, the subscription for this 
monument and its location are due. Unfortunately it is in a part of the city not 
frequently visited by tourists. 


Dr. Rush, a signer of the Declaration, was bom in Philadelphia in 1 746, and died there 
in 1813. He was the first American Alienist; the first Surgeon-General of the U.S. 
Army; a Member of Congress, and the author of a number of books on medical 
subjects. He was descended from one of Cromwell's officers. An oiphan at the age of 
six years he was educated by his uncle, the Rev. Dr. Finley, and was graduated at 
Princeton College. Dr. Rush kept a diary, which proved to be of great use to his 
successors in the medical profession, particularly in his notes on the yellow fever 
epidemic in 1762. 


Dr. Rush was ever warmly patriotic, but he disliked politics. He was a quick and ready 
debater, which led his friends to put him forward in politics. He was a consistent and 
conscientious Christian, a member of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and though a 
Freemason, was probably never active in it. Records, however, in his day, were not 
carefully kept nor preserved, which may have obscured his activity. In the Masonic 
History, Vol. IV, he is recorded by that Prince of Masonry, Gould. 


The statue shown in the cut was modeled by R. Hinton Perry and Lewis R. Metcalf, and 
was unveiled on the 1 1th day of June, 1904, with all the eclat, eulogy and honor the 
American Medical Association could give it, and but for the presence of the uniformed 
medical officers of the Navy and the Army there would have been an absence of 
Nationalism. The Government authorized the placing of the statue on the lawn, in front 
of the buildings of the Navy Medical School and Hospital. It is a beautiful piece of 
work. 



Dr. Rush left one son who was held in high esteem, and a grandson, a Commander in 
the Navy, whom the writer has ever held in close friendship and memory. 


The American people, so full of patriotic oratory, have sadly lacked a practical proof of 
that highly commendable quality. 


— o — 


Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. - Sir Thomas Browne. 


— o — 


The fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself. - Carlyle. 


— o- 


FOR THE MONTHLY LODGE MEETING 


CORRESPONDENCE CIRCLE BULLETIN-NO. 21 DEVOTED TO ORGANIZED 
MASONIC STUDY Edited by Bro. H. L. Haywood 


THE BULLETIN COURSE OF MASONIC STUDY FOR MONTHLY LODGE 
MEETINGS AND STUDY CLUBS 



FOUNDATION OF THE COURSE 


THE Course of Study has for its foundation two sources of Masonic information: 

THE BUILDER and Mackey's Encyclopedia. In another paragraph is explained how 
the references to former issues of THE BUILDER and to Mackey's Encyclopedia may 
be worked up as supplemental papers to exactly fit into each installment of the Course 
with the papers by Brother Haywood. 


MAIN OUTLINE 


The Course is divided into five principal divisions which are in turn subdivided, as is 
shown below: 


Division I. Ceremonial Masonry. 

A. The Work of a Lodge. 

B. The Lodge and the Candidate. 

C. First Steps. 

D. Second Steps. 

E. Third Steps. 

Division II. Symbolical Masonry. 

A. Clothing. 

B. Working Tools. 


C. Furniture. 



D. Architecture. 


E. Geometry. 

F. Signs. 

G. Words. 

H. Grips. 

Division III. Philosophical Masonry. 

A. Foundations. 

B. Virtues. 

C. Ethics. 

D. Religious Aspect. 

E. The Quest. 

F. Mysticism. 

G. The Secret Doctrine. 

Division IV. Legislative Masonry. 

A. The Grand Lodge. 

I. Ancient Constitutions. 

2. Codes of Law. 

3. Grand Lodge Practices. 

4. Relationship to Constituent Lodges. 

5. Official Duties and Prerogatives. 



B. The Constituent Lodge. 

1. Organization. 

2. Qualifications of Candidates. 

3. Initiation, Passing and Raising. 

4. Visitation. 

5. Change of Membership. 

Division V. Historical Masonry. 

A. The Mysteries— Earliest Masonic Light. 

B. Studies of Rites— Masonry in the Making. 

C. Contributions to Lodge Characteristics. 

D. National Masonry. 

E. Parallel Peculiarities in Lodge Study. 

F. Feminine Masonry. 

G. Masonic Alphabets. 

H. Historical Manuscripts of the Craft. 

I. Biographical Masonry. 

J. Philological Masonry— Study of Significant Words. 


THE MONTHLY INSTALLMENTS 



Each month we are presenting a paper written by Brother Haywood, who is following 
the foregoing outline. We are now in "First Steps" of Ceremonial Masonry. There will 
be twelve monthly papers under this particular subdivision. On page two, preceding 
each installment, will be given a list of questions to be used by the chairman of the 
Committee during the study period which will bring out every point touched upon in 
the paper. 


Whenever possible we shall reprint in the Correspondence Circle Bulletin articles 
from other sources which have a direct bearing upon the particular subject covered by 
Brother Haywood in his monthly paper. These articles should be used as supplemental 
papers in addition to those prepared by the members from the monthly list of 
references. Much valuable material that would otherwise possibly never come to the 
attention of many of our members will thus be presented. 


The monthly installments of the Course appearing in the Correspondence Circle 
Bulletin should be used one month later than their appearance. If this is done the 
Committee will have opportunity to arrange their programs several weeks in advance 
of the meetings and the Brethren who are members of the National Masonic Research 
Society will be better enabled to enter into the discussions after they have read over 
and studied the installment in THE BUILDER. 


REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTAL PAPERS 


Immediately preceding each of Brother Haywood's monthly papers in the 
Correspondence Circle Bulletin will be found a list of references to THE BUILDER 
and Mackey's Encyclopedia. These references are pertinent to the paper and will 
either enlarge upon many of the points touched upon or bring out new points for 
reading and discussion. They should be assigned by the Committee to different 
Brethren who may compile papers of their own from the material thus to be found, or 
in many instances the articles themselves or extracts therefrom may be read directly 
from the originals. The latter method may be followed when the members may not 



feel able to compile original papers, or when the original may be deemed appropriate 
without any alterations or additions. 


HOW TO ORGANIZE FOR AND CONDUCT THE STUDY MEETINGS 


The Lodge should select a "Research Committee" preferably of three "live" members. 
The study meetings should be held once a month, either at a special meeting of the 
Lodge called for the puipose, or at a regular meeting at which no business (except the 
Lodge routine) should be transacted-all possible time to be given to the study period. 


After the Lodge has been opened and all routine business disposed of, the Master 
should turn the Lodge over to the Chairman of the Research Committee. This 
Committee should be fully prepared in advance on the subject for the evening. All 
members to whom references for supplemental papers have been assigned should be 
prepared with their papers and should also have a comprehensive grasp of Brother 
Haywood's paper. 


PROGRAM FOR STUDY MEETINGS 


1 . Reading of the first section of Brother Haywood's paper and the supplemental 
papers thereto. 


(Suggestion: While these papers are being read the members of the Lodge should 
make notes of any points they may wish to discuss or inquire into when the discussion 
is opened. Tabs or slips of paper similar to those used in elections should be 
distributed among the members for this puipose at the opening of the study period.) 


2. Discussion of the above. 



3. The subsequent sections of Brother Haywood's paper and the supplemental papers 
should then be taken up, one at a time, and disposed of in the same manner. 


4. Question Box. 


MAKE THE "QUESTION BOX" THE FEATURE OF YOUR MEETINGS 


Invite questions from any and all Brethren present. Let them understand that these 
meetings are for their particular benefit and get them into the habit of asking all the 
questions they may think of. Every one of the papers read will suggest questions as to 
facts and meanings which may not perhaps be actually covered at all in the paper. If at 
the time these questions are propounded no one can answer them, SEND THEM IN 
TO US. All the reference material we have will be gone through in an endeavor to 
supply a satisfactory answer. In fact we are prepared to make special research when 
called upon, and will usually be able to give answers within a day or two. Please 
remember, too, that the great Library of the Grand Lodge of Iowa is only a few miles 
away, and, by order of the Trustees of the Grand Lodge, the Grand Secretary places it 
at our disposal on any query raised by any member of the Society. 


FURTHER INFORMATION 


The foregoing information should enable local Committees to conduct their Lodge 
study meetings with success. However, we shall welcome all inquiries and 
communications from interested Brethren concerning any phase of the plan that is not 
entirely clear to them, and the services of our Study Club Department are at the 
command of our members, Lodge and Study Club Committees at all times. 



QUESTIONS ON "SIGNS, TOKENS, WORDS, AND THE RITE OF 
SALUTATION" 


I Give examples of the use of secret modes of recognition in past times. What does 
Gould say about the use of signs, grips, etc? Why, do you suppose, are these 
"common features" of all secret societies? In what way do they protect secrecy? Why 
should secrecy be protected? Can you name any political, social, religious, or literary 
clubs which employ secret modes of recognition? If so, why do they use them? If not, 
why do they not use them? Chemists and druggists employ arbitrary signs to stand for 
various formulae and these are understood only by themselves. Are such signs 
analogous to our own ? 


II What evidence is there to show that Freemasons used signs in old times ? Why is 
the evidence so slender? Why were not these signs published and explained ? What is 
the point of the quotation from Ferguson ? Even if the early Operative Masons had 
been able to read and write, could they have dispensed with their signs and grips? We 
can all read and write: why have we not dispensed with them ? 


ITT Can you guess what the Scotch "Mason Word" may have been ? What was the 
significance of "words" among Masons in other countries at that time? How, and for 
what purpose, do we use words? Can you define a "password"? What are its usages 
and advantages ? Does the army employ passwords ? Why ? What other organizations 
do so ? In what way is "Word" used in the third degree ? What is the meaning of "The 
Lost Word" ? 


IV 


What is the "due-guard" ? Why was it invented and taken up by American lodges ? 
What is the meaning of "an Americanism" as Mackey employs the term? 



In what way are grips and tokens different from pass words? Can you give any 
examples of your own use of these outside the lodge room? When we say we have 
given a friend "a token of our esteem” do we use the word in its Masonic sense? Why 
are Masons entitled to use secret modes of recognition? Can you give reasons not 
given in this paper ? 


VI What is the meaning of "salutation"? How is it used in general society? Is tipping 
your hat to a lady a salutation? Why does a private salute an officer in the army? Give 
all the reasons you can think of to explain why the candidate should salute the 
Wardens. In what way do they represent the law and authority of the lodge? 


VII What is there in the principles of Masonry that has ever caused it to be the 
champion of liberty ? Can you offer examples not given in the paper? Can you tell the 
story of Masonry's part in the Revolutionary War ? What great leaders in that day 
were Masons? Was LaFayette a Mason? Washington? Franklin ? Where was the Bible 
obtained on which Washington took his oath of office ? Can liberty exist in a 
monarchy as well as in a democracy ? What is the difference between "freedom" and 
"liberty"? Between "liberty" and "independence"? Can a nation be independent 
without enjoying liberty? Did Italy secure liberty when she gained independence from 
Austria and France? What is a "free thinker"? Are Masons "free thinkers" ? Why is 
law necessary to liberty ? What would become of liberty if laws were destroyed ? 


VIII What does law do for us in our daily life ? Why should a man desire to be free? 
What are the advantages of freedom? What are the relations between liberty and 
authority ? Are they opposed to each other? Why are Masons bound to uphold the 
dignity of law and order? What is meant by "civil skepticism"? Does the habit of 
speaking sarcastically of law and of courts help to uphold men's respect for social 
order ? What should be a Mason's attitude toward the laws of his own community? 
Suppose, as was the case in Italy, that Masonry itself were declared unlawful, should a 
Mason under such circumstances oppose the law ? If so, why ? In what way should 
such opposition be different from lawlessness ? Is the desire to substitute a good law 
for a bad law, lawlessness? How were the laws of Masonry instituted ? How are they 
enforced? In what way do they protect the liberty of each member? Would you say 
that the Masonic organization is a constitutionalism or a democracy? What is the 
difference? 



SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES 


Mackey's Encyclopedia: Sign, p. 690; Significant Word, p. 691; Sign of Distress, p. 
691; Token, p. 789; Word p. 856. THE BUILDER; Vol. I- Shibboleth, p. 43; The 
Master's Word, p. 285. Vol. II.— A Grip, p. 57; Masonic Signs, p. 253; Masonry and 
The Mysteries, p. 19; The Three Grips, p. 30. Vol. Ill— Aboriginal Races and 
Freemasonry, p. 96; Masonry Among Primitive Peoples, p.39; Modes of recognition, 
June C.C.B., p. 2; Secret Societies of Islam, p; 84; Sign, Token and Word, p. 207. 
Vol. IV.— Voice of the Sign in this issue. 


FIRST STEPS BY BRO. H.L. HAYWOOD, IOWA 


PART IX— SIGNS, TOKENS, WORDS, AND THE RITE OF SALUTATION 


I THE USE of signs, grips, words, tokens, etc., is very ancient and universal. Some 
historians believe that a sign language was in use before oral words were invented; 
whether that be true or not it is certain that long after language was spoken and written 
these secret methods of communication were in common use. The Spartans always 
preferred gestures to words; the initiates of the Mysteries were given a very elaborate 
system of passwords and grips; the custom is even referred to in the Bible, as in the 
case where Ben-Hadad saved his life by making a sign. Both the Essenes and 
Pythagoreans communicated with each other by signs. In Rome whole dramas were 
produced on the stage by gesture alone by the Pantomimi, who anticipated the art of 
the movies. In medieval monastelies the Monks were frequently taught a sign 
language "like the alphabet." Brother R. F. Gould, whose essay on "The Voice of the 
Sign" is a repository of such examples, writes that "signs and passwords, I think, we 
may confidently assume, were common features of all or clearly all secret societies 
from the earliest times to our own." 



Strangely enough there is no documentary evidence to prove that Freemasons used 
signs earlier than the seventeenth century but all analogy and all indirect evidence 
goes to show, of course, that in common with other secret societies they employed 
that familiar means of identification and recognition. Ferguson, in his "History of 
Architecture," explains why we may be morally certain that the medieval founders of 
our fraternity did make use of words, grips and passwords just as we continue to do 
today: 


"At a time when writing was unknown among the laity, and not one Mason in a 
thousand could either read or write, it was evidently essential that some expedient 
should be hit upon, by which a Mason traveling to his work might claim the assistance 
and hospitality of his brother Masons on the road, and by means of which he might 
take his rank at once, on reaching the lodge, without going through the tedious 
examinations or giving practical proof of his skill." 


Ill 


At one time in Scotland a man was made a Mason by merely having conferred upon 
him the "Mason Word": what that word was we know not, but it was probably 
something more than a "password"; among Operative Masons in other countries "the 
word" seems always to have been used in the last named sense. We continue to use 
passwords in our speculative lodges and also, it should be noted, we have given it a 
high symbolic meaning, as may be clearly seen in the legend of the "Lost Word" in 
the third degree. 


IV "Due Guard," it is probable, was never used in English lodges but came into use in 
this country. Mackey calls it "an Americanism." It is a perpetual reminder of the 
obligation and is always used in entering or retiring from a lodge. 


V Grips and tokens are signs of fellowship and recognition which may be used both 
within and without the lodge room. How long they have been employed among 
Masons it is impossible to know for manifestly their nature and purpose has been such 



as to make written records or explanations impossible; but we may feel sure that they 
have been used ever since Masonry has been a secret society. 


This custom of having secret modes of recognition among Masons has often been 
misunderstood among the profane and sometimes derided, as when a friend remarked 
to the present writer, "Masons are like little children with their signs, grips and such 
nonsense." Had this man understood the nature and purpose of the fraternity he would 
have spoken differently. Words and grips are as necessary as secrecy, and for the 
same reasons. Masonry is a world within itself, and Masons are as a hidden race 
among men, so that there is nothing more natural than that they should have a 
language of their own. Moreover, modes of secret recognition are always on the side 
of gentleness and charity for they often enable one brother to assist another without 
the injury of self-respect through publicity. 


VI After having taken the obligation and received the words and grips the candidate is 
a real member of the lodge according to the corresponding degree. The lodge formally 
recognizes this fact by having the candidate conducted to the Wardens and Master 
who so greet him; at the same time he is given a drill, as it were, in the use of the 
modes of recognition he has just received. 


But we are entitled to see more in the ceremony than this. Like every other act of the 
candidate it has a symbolic meaning of great value, if only we look beneath the 
surface. Salutation is a two-sided act. The Wardens recognize the candidate as a 
brother, the candidate recognizes the Wardens as the authorized representatives and 
spokesmen for the lodge. He has now the freedom of the lodge, but he is not free from 
the lodge; he holds his rights as a member only under the Jurisdiction of the laws and 
masters of the organization of which he has become a member. Are we not privileged 
to see in this a fact of large significance, a fact that helps us to understand the Masonic 
principles of liberty? 


VII Masonry has never given anything to the world more precious than its influences 
toward liberty, not only the liberty of thought and faith, but actual political and social 
liberty. It worked like a leaven in France at the time of the Revolution; it was one of 
the underground forces which made for independence and nationality in Italy during 



the times of Mazzini and Cavour; and, as we all know, it was a prime factor in our 
own Revolution. Albert Pike was but giving voice to the Fraternity's achievements in 
actual history when he wrote that Masonry "is devoted to the cause of Toleration and 
Liberality against Fanaticism and Persecution, political and religious, and to that of 
Education, Instruction and Enlightenment against Error, Barbarism and Ignorance. 


VIII But to Masonry, and to all who understand its true nature, liberty 


is never freedom from but freedom in the law. This is nature's way, and law is never 
saying else, if it really be law and not mere custom, than e open path along which life 
walks to ample power. He that keeps the laws of hygiene enjoys the vigor and liberty 
of health; he that keeps step with the seasons and observes the ritualism of seed-time 
and harvest will reap the usufruct of the fields; he that thinks in the rhythm of the fact 
and evidence is made free of the truth. It is our loyalty to just laws, whether they be 
natural, social or political, that sets us free; it is our keeping the rules of the game that 
yields us the joy and spontaneity of the game. 


All just civil laws partake of the same character, for their purpose is to release us from 
the bondage of caprice, the dominance of the brutal, and all tyranny, whether it be the 
tyranny of a monarch or the majority; it is law that makes it safe for women and 
children to go about the streets unprotected; law is the friend and protector of the 
human race and guards our property, arbitrates our quarrels, secures us the fruit of our 
toil, and, night and day, stands watch above our lives. Always the best country is that 
where the head is held high, the heart is open, the mind free, and men walk in that true 
liberty which is "inbound in law." 


If there is any danger lurking in our midst today it is that subtle and insidious civil 
skepticism which flouts authority and makes light of order. If these skeptics be rich 
they will seek to prostitute the statutes of the land in support of ill-gotten gains; if they 
be poor they will seek to fashion laws in order to wrest that which they desire from 
those that have; and the anarchists, of whom there are more in fact than in name, 
whisper that law is itself is bondage and every authority a tyrant. Masonry teaches that 
whatever evils there may be in present laws can only be remedied by making laws 
more wise and just, not by denying the necessity and beneficence of law itself, and 



that the cure for bad authority is good authority. It is a significant fact in our ritualism 
that the candidate is no sooner released from the cable tow, which is the symbol of 
bondage, than he is required to salute the Wardens in recognition of their authority. 


THE VOICE OF THE SIGN BY BRO. ROBERT FREKE GOULD, ENGLAND 


IN the " Natural 1 Historie of Wiltshire," of which the last chapter was written in 1686, 
John Aubrey informs us that the Freemasons were then "known to one another by 
certayn Signes and watchwords," and Dr. Plot— writing in the same year— mentions 
their "Secret Signes" as being endowed with so singular an efficacy, that on the 
communition of any one of them to a Fellow of the Society, he would be compelled to 
come at once "from what company or place soever he was in; nay, tho' from the top of 
the Steeple," to know the pleasure of, and to assist his summoner. This whimsical 
conceit is thus pleasantly alluded to in a pamphlet of 1 723 : 


"When once a man his arm forth stretches, It Masons round some distance fetches; 
Altho' one be on Paul's great steeple, He strait comes down amongst the people." 


In the year last named (1723) there appeared the first of the long series of Masonic 
catechisms, or (so-called) exposures of Masonry, which has come down to us. It is 
almost certain that there were earlier versions, but those of 1 723 and 1 724 styled 
respectively "A Mason's Examination" and "The Grand Mystery of Freemasons 
Discover'd," both of which are given at length in my history of our Society, will 
amply serve to illustrate my puipose, which is to establish that, in the popular 
estimation, at least, the gesture language of the Freemasons constituted no mean 
portion of the learning of that Fraternity. Of this, indeed, many other proofs might be 
afforded, though I cannot pause to cite them, as I must pass on to my general subject, 
to which the preceding observations must be regarded as merely preliminary. 


Krause was of the opinion that the Masons derived their custom of having signs of 
recognition from the usage of the Monastic orders, but in truth, the existence of signs 



can be traced back to the remotest antiquity, or, in other words, so far into the past as 
there is either written history or evidence to guide us. 


It is laid down by Warburton in his famous "Divine Legation," that "in the first ages 
of the world mutual converse was upheld by a mixed discourse of words and actions; 
hence the Eastern phase of 'The Voice of the Sign,' and use and custom, as in most 
other affairs in life, improving what had arisen out of necessity, into ornament, this 
practice subsisted long after the necessity was over; especially amongst the Eastern 
people, whose natural temperament inclined them to a mode of conversation, which so 
well exercised their vivacity, by motion; and so much gratified it, by a perpetual 
representation of material images." Of this, innumerable instances are afforded in the 
sacred writings, from which we leam that the prophets of old, by certain actions 
instructed the people in the will of God, and conversed with them in signs. 


As speech became more cultivated, this rude manner of speaking by action was 
smoothed and polished into an apologue or fable. We have a noble example of this 
form of instruction in the speech of Jonathan to the men of Shechem, in which he 
upbraids their folly, and foretells their min, in choosing Abimelech for their King. 
This is not only the oldest, but, according to Warburton, the most beautiful apologue 
of antiquity, and the same writer then proceeds to show how nearly the apologue and 
instmction by action are related, which he does by instancing the account of 
Jeremiah's adventure with the Rechabites— an instmction partaking of the joint nature 
of action and apologue. 


But it is not only in Biblical history that we meet with the mode of speaking by action. 
"Profane antiquity," says Warburton, "is full of these examples; the early oracles in 
particular frequently employed it, as we learn from an old saying of Heraclitus— that 
the King, whose oracle is at Delphi, neither speaks nor keeps silent, but reveals by 
signs." 


The Pythagoreans used certain conventional symbols, by which members of the 
Fraternity could recognize each other, even if they had never met before, and that, in 
all the Ancient Mysteries the initiated possessed secret signs of recognition is free 
from doubt. In the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius, Lucius, the hero of the story is initiated 



into the mysteries of Isis, but finds that it is also expected of him to be instructed in 
those "of the Great God, and Supreme Father of Gods, the invincible Osiris." In a 
dream he perceives one of the officiating priests, of whom he thus speaks, "He also 
walked gently with limping step, the ankle bone of his left foot being a little bent, in 
order that he might afford me some sign by which I might know him." In another 
work (Apologia), the author of the "Metamorphosis" says: 


"If anyone happens to be present who has been initiated into the same rites as myself, 
if he will give me the sign, he shall then be at liberty to hear what it is that I keep with 
so much care." 


Plautus, too, alludes to this custom in one of his plays when he says: "Give me the 
sign, if you are one of these votaries." 


Chironomia, or the art of gesticulating, or talking with the hands and by gestures, with 
or without the assistance of the voice, was one of very great antiquity, and much 
practiced by the Greeks and Romans, both on the stage and in the tribune, induced by 
their habit of addressing large assemblies in the open air, where it would have been 
impossible for the majority to comprehend what w as said without the assistance of 
some conventional signs, which enabled the speaker to address himself to the eye as 
well as to the ear of his audience. These were chiefly made by certain positions of the 
hands and fingers, the meaning of which was universally recognized and familiar to 
all classes, and the practice itself reduced to a regular system, as it remains at the 
present time amongst the populace of Naples, who will carry on a long conversation 
between themselves by mere gesticulation, and without pronouncing a word. It is 
difficult to illustrate such a matter in an article like this; but the act is frequently 
represented on the Greek vases, and other works of ancient art, by signs so clearly 
expressed, and so similar in their character to those still employed at Naples, that a 
common lazzaroni, when shown one of these compositions, will at once explain the 
purport of the action, which a scholar with all his learning can not divine. 


Says Disraeli: 



"The Pantomimi of the Romans combined with the arts of gesture, music and dances 
of the most impressive character. Their silent language often drew tears by the 
pathetic emotions which they excited: 'their very nod speaks, their hands talk, and 
their fingers have a voice,' says one of their admirers. Montfaucon (L'Antiq. Exp., v. 
63) conjectures that they formed a select fraternity." 


To judge by two familiar anecdotes, the old mimes had brought their art to great 
perfection. Macrobius says it was a well-known fact that Cicero used to try with 
Roscius, the actor, which of them could express a sentiment in the greatest variety of 
ways, the player by mimicry or the orator by speech, and that these experiments gave 
Roscius such confidence in his art that he wrote a book comparing oratory with 
acting. Warburton tells a story of a certain Asiatic Prince, entertained at Rome by 
Augustus, being, among other shows and festivities, amused with a famous 
pantomime, whose actions were so expressive that the barbarian begged him of the 
Emperor for his interpreter between himself and several neighboring nations, whose 
languages were unknown to one another. 


The Spartans, indeed, (as we are told by Herodotus) preferred converse by action to 
converse by speech, believing that action had all the clearness of speech, and was free 
from all the abuses of it. This historian, in his Thalia, informs us that when the 
Samians sent to Lacedemon for succor in distress, their orators made a long and 
laboured speech. When it was ended the Spartans told them that the former part of it 
they had forgotten, and could not comprehend the latter. Whereupon the Samian 
orators produced their empty bread-baskets and said they wanted bread. "What need 
of words," replied the Spartans; "do not your empty bread baskets sufficiently declare 
your meaning ? " 


Of the Essenes, we are told by Porphyry, that "though meeting for the first time, the 
members of this sect at once salute each other as intimate friends"; and Matter informs 
us that the Gnostics communicated by means of emblems and symbols. 


A symbolic language appears to have existed in the old monasteries, the signs not 
being optional, but transmitted from antiquity, and taught like the alphabet. The 
Cistercian monks held speech, except in religious exercises, to be sinful, but for 



certain purposes communication among the brethren was necessary, so that the 
difficulty was met by the use of pantomimic signs. Two of their written lists or 
dictionaries are printed in the collected edition of Liebnitz's works; they are not 
identical, but appear to be mostly or altogether derived from a list drawn up by 
authority. Disraeli tells us: 


"That the Monks had not in high veneration the profane authors appears by a facetious 
anecdote. To read the classics was considered as a very idle recreation, and some held 
them in great horror. To distinguish them from other books they invented a 
disgraceful sign; when a Monk asked for a pagan author, after making the general sign 
they used in their manual and silent language when they wanted a book, he added a 
particular one, which consisted in scratching under his ear, as a dog, which feels an 
itching, scratches himself in that place with his paw— because, said they, an unbeliever 
is compared to a dog. In this manner they expressed an itching for those dogs Virgil or 
Horace." 


A curious method of recognition, also relating to the monastic orders, is thus 
pleasantly narrated by the same ingenious author: "By the Monks it was imagined that 
Holiness was often proportioned to a Saint's filthiness, and one of these heroes 
declares that the purest souls are in the dirtiest bodies. On this they tell a story of a 
Brother Juniper, who was a gentleman perfectly pious on this principle. Indeed, so 
great was his merit in this species of mortification, that a brother declared that he 
could always nose Brother Juniper when within a mile of the monastery provided the 
wind was at the due point." 


Much to the same point are the remarks of a modem writer in his reference to the 
habits of the priests of Diana, who were forbidden to enter the baths, and he observes, 
"that in all religions emanating from the East, personal dirtiness has ever been the 
recognized outward and visible sign of inward purity— fully exemplified in fakirs, 
dervishes, and medieval saints." 


I shall next allude to a semi-monastical Association, the Komoso, which, according to 
Japanese tradition, first came into prominent notice at the time of the rise of the last or 



Tokugawa dynasty of Shoguns— i. e., in the year 1603. Its history prior to that date is 
unknown, but from then down to the year 1868, its existence was fully recognized. 


The Society (or Fraternity) was filled from the ranks of the Samurai class alone, and 
entrance into it proved a means of refuge for any person who had committed a deed of 
bloodshed, etc., which rendered it necessary for him to flee away from the territory of 
his feudal chieftain. Thus its numbers were recruited chiefly from among those who 
had, under the influence of intoxication, or in some other way than of malice 
aforethought, killed or wounded a fellow clansman, a friend, or other person. None, 
however, was admitted who had been guilty of any disgraceful crime held to be 
unworthy of a Samurai— as, for instance, adultery, burglary, or theft. 


The chief lands of the Society were situated in the province of Owari, a little to the 
east of the castle town of Wagoya, and slightly removed from the high road 
(Tokaido). Here was the Honji, or chief temple of the society, but there were also 
Matsuji, or branch temples, in different parts of the country. Meetings were held in 
these branch temples at various intervals, and troops of Komoso were often to be seen 
entering some remote town or village in different localities; but where or when they 
met was a profound mystery, and the morrow's dawn saw them leaving the place as 
silently as they entered it. 


The Society was under the command of a Chief, elected by the general votes of the 
members. Under him were the Assistant Chief, Treasurer, and other officers; all 
chosen in a similar manner. The Chief usually resided at the principle temple, and was 
invested with wide powers. His style of living and general position are said to have 
been equal to those of any Daimio. He had power of life and death over all his 
fellows, and was only required to make a report to the Government in the event of any 
Komoso being put to death by his orders. The Assistant Chief might act in his stead 
whenever such necessity arose. 


Anyone desirous of entering the Society, used to go to the chief temple stating his 
case, and giving the reason why he had left his feudal lord's domain. He was then 
lodged in the temple while private inquiries were set on foot to ascertain the truth of 
his statement; if it was discovered that he had committed some unworthy deed, he was 



rejected and dismissed, but if it appeared that his offence of bloodshed was not 
premeditated, he was admitted into the Society with all due rites and ceremonies. 

What these rites were is unknown, but it is allowed that every candidate was bound by 
solemn oath to conceal them. 


The distinctive dress of the Komoso was white, consisting of the loose Japanese 
Kimono and tight fitting trousers. The wide trousers and upper mantle usually worn 
by the samurai class were never used. They carried but one long sword. The hat was 
of bamboo, in shape resembling a large inverted basket of circular form, with a small 
aperture to enable the wearer to see freely. This hat was never removed during a 
journey; it was worn, too, in lodging houses, and even at meals. When sleeping, 
however, the Komoso might take it off, and in the temples of the Society it could be 
laid aside at will. A long staff and a flute completed their equipment, and certain notes 
blown on the latter formed one of the signs by which the members could make 
themselves known to their fellows. 


The lands granted to the Society enabled its members to obtain sufficient means of 
maintenance. On a journey they were assisted by other Komoso, and often by 
outsiders also. If a Komoso met another person similarly attired, he at once challenged 
him by signs, etc., to ascertain if he were a true member of the Society. In case of 
failure to respond, such person was deemed to have assumed the garb merely as a 
disguise (as was, indeed, often the case), and the true Komoso was then held to be 
justified in seizing and confiscating the clothing of the pretender. The white clothing 
was in the first instance given to each man by the superior officers of the Society. The 
Chief, when traveling, was always attended by a select band of his followers and their 
journeys were performed on foot. 


No women were admitted into the Society, and a man desirous of entering it used 
therefore to leave his wife and family in the charge of relatives or friends. A son was 
often admitted with his father, but boys of tender age were on no account received. 
Communication with the outer world was discountenanced, and it was an exceedingly 
difficult matter for any uninitiated person to gain access to a friend who had entered 
the Society. He was always subjected to rigid examination at the temple, before 
various members, ere he could be allowed to see his friend, and even then the 
interview was but brief. 



Those members who died were buried in the temple enclosures, whenever this was 
practicable. The tombstones, so tradition has it, always bore the true name of the 
deceased, and thus, in death, were at last known the actual appellations of those who 
during their lifetime, had wandered to and fro, homeless and unknown men. One of 
the principal Komoso cemeteries is said to exist even now in the neighborhood of 
Nagoya, and another to the east of Kioyoto; the very site, however, of the latter is well 
nigh unknown, and it is probable that the former has shared the fate of the chief 
temple to which it was originally attached. 


I pass over the shadowy and half-mythical Rosicmicans, the Steinmetzen, the 
Companionage, and other Secret Societies and fraternities, all of which may have and 
probably had their special signs and modes of salutation and recognition, though we 
can only speculate upon their possible existence, without getting much nearer to what 
they really were. In a manuscript of the Order of Gregorians, written in the last 
century, I find the following: 


"The Sign Manual being given by the Grand, he shall give in charge to the new 
Brother, that in all these cases (for fear of discovery) he shd chuse rather to receive 
than give the Sign." 


Signs and passwords, I think we may confidently assume, were common features of 
all or nearly all secret societies from the earliest times down to our own. 


Boswell tells us: 


"The inhabitants of Corsica, like the Italians, express themselves much by signs. 
When I asked one of them if there had been many instances of the General (Paoli) 
foreseeing future events, he grasped a large bunch of hair, and replied, 'Tante Signore' 
(so many sir)." 



Among the aborigines of North America the language of signs has attained a very 
high degree of development. Sir Richard Burton says: 


"A remarkable characteristic of the Prairie Indian is his habit of speaking, like the deaf 
and dumb, with his fingers. The pantomime is a system of signs, some conventional, 
others instinctive or imitative, which enables tribes who have no acquaintance with 
each other's customs and tongues to hold limited but sufficient communication. An 
interpreter who knows all the signs which, however, are so numerous and 
complicated, that to acquire them is a labour of years, is preferred by the whites even 
to a good speaker. Some writers, as Captain Stansbury, consider the system purely 
Arbitrary: others, Captain Marcy, for instance, hold it to be a natural language similar 
to the gestures which surd-mutes use spontaneously. Both views are true, but not 
wholly true." 


It is, however, among the Prairie Indians alone that gesture: speech has arrived at such 
perfection, that it may properly be called a language, and this— as we leam from 
Colonel Dodge— for the very sufficient reason that these tribes use it not only in 
intercourse with people whose oral language they neither speak nor understand, but 
for everyday intercourse among themselves. In their own camps and families, this 
language is used so constantly that it becomes a natural and instinctive habit; almost 
every man, even when using oral language, accompanying his words by sign-pictures 
conveying the same meaning. In this way wonderful facility and accuracy of 
expression by signs is attained. Of this "Indian pantomime," Tylor observes: 


"Captain Burton considers it to be a mixture of natural and conventional signs, but so 
far as I can judge from the one hundred and fifty or so which he describes, and those I 
find mentioned elsewhere. I do not believe that there is a really arbitrary sign among 
them. There are only about half a dozen of which the meaning is not at once evident, 
and even these appear on close inspection to be natural signs, perhaps a little 
abbreviated or conventionalized. I am sure that a skilled deaf and dumb talker would 
understand an Indian interpreter, and be himself understood at first sight, with 
scarcely any difficulty. The Indian pantomime and the gesture language of the deaf 
and dumb are but different dialects of the same language of nature." 



Within comparatively a few years the attention of philologists has been particularly 
directed to the sign language. Some authorities assert that "all the tribes of North 
American Indians have had, and still use, a common and identical sign language of 
ancient origin," which serves as a medium of converse from Hudson Bay to the Gulf 
of Mexico. Others deny this. To learn it sufficiently well for ordinary intercourse is no 
more difficult than to learn any foreign language; to master it, one must have been 
born in a lodge of Prairie Indians, and have been accustomed to its daily and hourly 
use from his earliest to mature years. 


Two expert sign talkers engaged in conversation will make every sign with one hand 
so distinctly as to be understood. Two Indians, each wrapped up in a blanket tightly 
held with the left hand, will thrust the right from under its folds and engage in 
animated conversation. So also when on horseback, though the left hand is holding the 
reins, the conversation will not flag nor be misunderstood. 


On the other hand, however, a slight unintentional gesture may entirely alter the 
meaning that an amateur sign talker is desirous of conveying. Thus Baillie Grohman 
undertook to say to an Arapahoe: "How has it come to pass that the bravest of the 
brave, the man of all men, the dearest friend I have among the Arapahoes, has grown 
such a flowing beard?" but only succeeded in informing the gentle savage "that his 
face was like a young maiden's, and his heart that of an old squaw." 


The Arapahoes, who possess a very scanty vocabulary, can hardly converse with one 
another in the dark, and like the Bushmen of South Africa— who intersperse their 
language with so many signs that they are only intelligible during daylight — when 
they want to converse at night are compelled to collect round their camp fires. 


A story is told by Burton of a man who, being sent among the Cheyennes to qualify 
himself for interpreting, returned in a week and proved his competence. All that he 
did, however, was to go through the usual pantomime with a running accompaniment 
of grunts. 



The first lesson is to distinguish the signs of the different tribes, each of which has not 
only its distinctive name, but also its sign, by which it is known and designated by all 
other Indians. "It will be observed," says Burton, "that the French voyageurs and 
traders have often named the Indian natives from their totemic or Masonic gestures. 


"The Pawnees (Les Loups) imitate a wolfs ears with the two forefingers; the right 
hand is always understood unless otherwise specified. 


"The Arapahoes, or Dirty Noses, rub the right side of that organ with the forefinger. 
Some, however, call this bad tribe the Smellers, and make their sign to consist of 
seizing the nose with the thumb and forefinger. 


"The Comanches (Les Serpents) imitate by the waving of the hand or forefinger the 
forward crawling motion of a snake. 


"The Cheyennes, Paikanavos, or Cut Wrists, draw the edge of the hand across the left 
arm, as if gashing it with a knife. 


"The Sioux (Les Coupes-gorges) by drawing the lower edge of the hand across the 
throat. It is a gesture not unknown to us, but forms a truly ominous salutation, 
considering those by whom it is practiced: hence the Sioux are called by the Yutas, 
Pampe Chyimina, or Hand-Cutters. 


"The Hapsaroke (Les Cerbeaux), by imitating the flapping of the bird's wings with the 
two hands— palms downward — brought close to the shoulders. 


"The Kiowas, or Prairie-Men, make the sign of the prairie and of drinking water. 



"The Yutas, 'they who live on the mountains,' have a complicated sign which denotes 
living in the mountains. 


"The Blackfeet, called by the Yutas, Paike or Goers, pass the right hand bent-spoon 
fashion, from the heel to the little toe of the right foot. 


Further tribal signs are given by Dodge, from whose description I take the following: 


"The Northern Arapahoes join the fingers and thumb of the right hand, and strike the 
points on the left breast several times. 


"The Apaches move the right hand in much the same way as a barber strops a razor." 


Among the miscellaneous signs may be cited those of "Hat Wearer," by which with 
apt gestures, the White Man is referred to, "Beard Wearer," in like manner applied to 
Mexican, and "Black White Man" to the Negro. 


The sign of love is made by folding the hands crosswise over the breast, as if 
embracing the object, assuming at the same time a look expressing a desire to carry 
out the operation. This gesture, Sir Richard Burton assures us, will be understood by 
the dullest squaw. 


The Indians, observes the same careful writer, like the Bedouin and North African 
Moslems, do honour to strangers and guests by putting their horses to speed, couching 
their lances, and other peculiarities, which would readily be dispensed with by 
gentlemen of peaceful pursuits and shaky nerves. If friendly, the band will halt when 



the hint is given, and return the salute; if not, they will disregard the order to stop, and 
probably will make the sign of danger. Then— ware scalp! 


"It is asserted by squaw men and others, in a position to know that almost every tribe 
of Indians has its secret societies, which have passwords, grips, and signs, as the 
Masons. Odd - Fellows, etc. I have never been able positively to ascertain the truth or 
falsity of this statement. Most of the Indians deny it, but from the grim silence that 
falls upon an occasional old head-man, when asked about it, I suspect it may be true." 


The existence, among the Aborigines of North America, of Fraternities bound by 
mystic ties; and claiming, like the Freemasons, to possess an esoteric knowledge, is, I 
believe, fairly well attested. DeWitt Clinton relates, on the authority of a respectable 
native minister, who had received the signs, the existence of-such a society among the 
Iroquois. The number of the members was limited to fifteen, of whom six were to be 
of the Seneca tribe, five of the Oneidas, two of the Cayugas, and two of the St. Regis. 
They claim that this institution has existed from the era of creation. The late Giles 
Fonda Yates, in his work on the ceremonies of the Indian tribes, sought ingeniously, if 
not satisfactorily, to discover a Masonic meaning in the Indian mystic rites. 


The experiment of bringing Indians and deaf mutes together has often been tried 
during visits of Indians to the East, and they always communicate readily, the signs 
being, of course, ideographic. A very wonderful demonstration of the extent of natural 
meaning in signs and expression was a test exhibition by President Gallaudet, of the 
National Deaf Mute College, at Washington, in which he related intelligibly to a pupil 
the story of Brutus ordering the execution of his two sons for disobedience, without 
making a motion with hand or arms, or using any previously determined sign or other 
communication, but simply by facial expression and motion of the head. 


The best evidence of the unity of the gesture language (to quote the words of Mr. 
Tylor), is the ease and certainty with which any savage from any country can 
understand and be understood in a Deaf and Dumb school. A native of Hawaii is taken 
to an American institution, and begins at once to talk in signs with the children, and to 
tell about his voyage and the country he came from. A Chinese, who had fallen into a 



state of melancholy from long want of society, is quite revived by being taken to the 
same place, where he can talk in gestures to his heart's content. 


Alexander von Humboldt has left on record his experiences of the gesture language 
among the Indians of the Orinoco: 


"'After you leave my mission,' said the good monk of Uruana, 'you will travel like 
mutes.' This prediction was almost accomplished, and not to lose all the advantage 
that is to be had from intercourse even with the brutalized Indians, we have sometimes 
preferred the language of signs." 


Describing the Puris and Coroados of Brazil, Spix and Martius, having remarked that 
different tribes converse in signs, and explained the difficulty they found in making 
them understand by signs the objects or ideas for which they wanted the native names, 
go on to say how imperfect and devoid of inflection or construction these languages 
are. Signs with hand or mouth, they say, are required to make them intelligible. To 
say, "I will go into the wood," the Indian uses the words "wood-go,' and points his 
mouth like a snout in the direction he means. 


Gesture-signs are mentioned by Captain Cook as forming an accompaniment to 
spoken language among the Tahitians, who, he says, "joined signs to their words, 
which were so impressive that a stranger might easily apprehend their meaning. 


Mr. W. Simson, in his "History of the Gipsies," says: "Not only have they had a 
language peculiar to themselves, but signs as exclusively theirs as are those of the 
Freemasons. The distinction consists in this people having blood, language, a cast of 
mind, and signs, peculiar to itself." 


Mr. Laurence Oliphant tells us, "The Druses have secret signs of recognition, and are 
in fact organized as a powerful political, as well as secret society," and the same 



writer goes on to say, "among the Ansariyeh there are two classes, as among the 
Druses— the initiated and uninitiated,"— but the curious reader who may wish to pursue 
the inquiry is referred to the account of the "Ansaireeh or Nusairis of Syria," given in 
the "Asian Mystery," by the Rev. Samuel Lyde. 


Of the Todas of the Neilgherries, Sir Richard Burton says, "A Brother Mason informs 
us that the Todas use a sign of recognition similar to ours, and they have discovered 
that Europeans have an institution corresponding with their own." Yet as the great 
traveler goes on to say, "but in our humble opinion, next to the antiquary in simplicity 
of mind, capacity of belief; and capability of assertion, ranks the Freemason - it will 
but, perhaps, not to lay too much stress on the alleged similarity between customs that 
after all may, and probably do not, possess a single feature in common." 


Mr. Wilfrid Powell, who passed three years of his life among the Cannibals of New 
Britain, thus describes the Duk-duk Society of that island: "The Duk-duk is both a 
curse and a blessing his people; he certainly keeps order and makes the natives raid to 
commit any flagrant act of felony, but at the same time it encourages cannibalism and 
terrorism 


"There are secret signs between the initiated by which they know each other from 
outsiders. It is curious how widely distributed is this Duk-duk system in the north 
peninsula of New Britain. It is in nearly every district, also in New Ireland, from the 
west coast lying south of the Rossel mountains to Cape St. George, and how far it may 
spread on the other side I cannot tell." 


Dr. Milligan, speaking of the language of Tasmania, the habit of gesticulation, and the 
use of signs to eke out monosyllabic expressions, says that the Aborigines conveyed 
in a supplementary fashion by tone, manner and gesture, many modifications of 
meaning, which are otherwise expressed by ourselves. 


With regard to the practice of uncovering the feet, Tylor says, when we find the 
Damaras, in South Africa, taking off their sandals before entering a stranger's house, 



the idea of conducting the practice with the Ancient Egyptian custom, or of ascribing 
it to Moslem influence, at once suggests itself, but the king off the sandals as a sign of 
respect seems to have prevailed in Peru. No common Indian, it is said, dared go shod 
along the Street of the Sun, nor might anyone, however great lord he might be, enter 
the house of the Sun with his shoes on, and even the Inca himself went barefoot into 
the Temple of the Sun. 


The custom (or as called by some Masonic authors, the rite) of discalceation— i. e., the 
act of putting off the shoes as a sign reverence, is frequently referred to in the sacred 
writings, and Dr. Adam Clarke considered the custom of worshipping the Deity 
barfooted to have been so general among all nations of antiquity, that in his 
commentary on Exodus he assigns it as one of his thirteen proofs that the whole 
human race have been derived from one family. 


The lowest class of salutation, says Tyler, which merely aim at giving pleasant bodily 
sensations, merge into the civilities which we see exchanged among the lower 
animals. Such are patting, stroking, kissing, pressing noses, blowing, sniffing, and so 
forth. The often-described sign of pleasure or greeting of the Indians of North 
America, by rubbing each other's arms, breasts and stomachs, and their own, is similar 
to the Central African custom of two men clasping each other's arms with both hands, 
and nibbing them up and down, and that of stroking one's own face with another's 
hand or foot, in Polynesia; and the pattings and slappings of the Fuegians belong to 
the same class. Darwin describes the way in which noses are pressed in New Zealand, 
with details which have escaped less accurate observers. It is curious that the Linnaeus 
found the salutation by touching loses in the Lapland Alps. People did not kiss, but 
put noses together. The Andaman Islanders salute by blowing into another's hand with 
a cooing murmer. Charlevoix speaks of an Indian tribe in the Gulf of Mexico who 
blew into one another's ears; and Du Chaillu describes himself as having been blown 
upon in Africa. Natural experiences of joy, such as clapping hands in Africa, and 
jumping up and down in Tierra del Fuego, are made do duty as signs of friendship or 
greeting. 


There are a number of well known gestures which are hard to explain. Such are 
various signs of hatred and contempt— for example, lolling out the tongue, which is a 
universal sign, though it is not clear why it should be so, biting the thumb, making the 



sign of the stork's bill behind another's back (ciconiam facere), and the sign known as 
"taking a sight," which was as common at the time of Rabelais as it is now. 


Shaking hands, it may be observed, is not a custom which belongs naturally to all 
mankind, and we may sometimes trace its introduction into countries where it was 
before unknown. The Fijians, for instance, who used to salute by smelling or sniffing 
at one another, have learned to shake hands from the missionaries. The Wa-nika, near 
Mombaz, grasp hands, but they use the Moslem variety of the gesture, which is to 
press the thumbs against one another as well, and this makes it all but certain that the 
practice is one of the many effects of Moslem influence in East Africa. 


Tylor lays down that gesture-language is a natural mode of expression common to 
mankind in general and also that it is the same in principle and similar in its details all 
over the world. "It is true," he remarks, "that the signs used in different places and by 
different persons are only partially the same; but it must be remembered that the same 
idea may be expressed in signs in very many ways, and that it is not necessary that all 
should choose the same." 


The "universelle longage of Maconnes" is named in the Leland-Locke MS. as being 
among those secrets which "the Maconnes concele aud hyde." This document has of 
late years been given up as apocryphal, though it exercised no slight influence in its 
time. The original was said to have been in the handwriting of King Henry VI., the 
copy to have been made by John Leland, the antiquary, and the annotations to have 
been the work of John Locke the philosopher. 


In his alleged commentary Locke is made to say: "An Universal language has been 
much desired by the learned of many ages. It is a thing rather to be wished than hoped 
for." It is evident, however, says Mackey, "that such a substitute for a universal 
language has always existed among mankind. There are certain expressions of ideas 
which, by an implied common consent, are familiar even to the most barbarous tribes. 
An extension forward of the open hands will be understood at once by an Australian 
savage or an American Indian as a gesture betokening peace, while the idea of war or 
dislike would be as readily conveyed to either of them by a repulsive gesture of the 
same hands." "These are not, however," continues the same careful writer, "what 



constitute the signs of Masonry." The words last cited are worthy of remembrance, 
and may aid in dispelling many an illusion. The crop of "traveller's tales" increases 
year by year, wherein as a common feature, appear either the manifestation of the 
recognition of Masonic signs by Arabs of the desert, native Australians, Bushmen, 
Afghans, and the like. In the expressive pantomime of the gesture language an Indian, 
it has been said, will by his signs, "talk all over," his whole body being made use of to 
convey a message, but in all cases of the kind whatever resemblances may appear to 
exist with our Masonic customs, will, in the vast majority of cases, be fortuitous only, 
and fall within the doctrine of "chance coincidences" a phrase very happily coined by 
Mr. Hyde Clarke in 1864. 


-o- 


THE TRIANGLE OF THE WORLD 


MASONRY— the thread of finest, purest gold 
That is woven from the loom of ages old 
Has lived to see its principles unfold. 


FRATERNITY— the Truth worked out in man, 
The only thing that has or ever can 
Bring to him peace and wars forever ban. 


DEMOCRACY— with love upon its throne— 
The fruitage of the seed that has been sown 



Will make the world a sweeter, better home. 
— Bro. L. B. Mitchell, Michigan. 

By wisdom wealth is won! 

But riches purchased wisdom yet for none. 
—Bayard Taylor. 

Success is counted sweetest 
By those who ne'er succeed. 

—Emily Dickinson. 

— o — 

A word hurts more than a wound. 


MILITARY LODGES 



BY BRO. DR. G. ALFRED LAWRENCE, NEW YORK 


"Neither in ancient nor in modem time, has the schoolmaster made single step of 
progress, except by holding on to the skirts of the soldier's coat. Regular armies gave 
the first check to the barbarism of the Middle Ages, and it was under their protection 
alone that arts, science, commerce and industry grew up and extended in Europe." 
—Major Gen. J. Mitchell. 


THE above statement of Major Gen. Mitchell we believe is applicable to the role of 
Military Lodges in the general diffusion of Masonry throughout the world. No other 
single factor has been so potent and far-reaching. The flower of royalty, nobility, 
members of the military and naval establishment, statesmen, men of letters and of the 
liberal arts and professions of practically every civilized nation of the earth have 
identified themselves with Masonry and many although not by profession military or 
naval officers have at some period been identified with the service and gained their 
first knowledge of the craft through Military Lodges. A mere enumeration of the host 
of distinguished Masons in this class would occupy many pages. Such men as Lord 
Nelson of Trafalgar, our own immortal Commander-in-Chief, George Washington 
(and practically all of his generals), Field Marshals Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener, 
and Sir Charles Warren (first Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge of London), are 
striking examples. 


There were no less than sixteen Military officers upon the membership roll of Lodge 
No. 4, which with numbers 1, 2 and 3 founded the Grand Lodge of England in 1717. 
Shortly after this, in 1728, the first purely Military Lodge (of which there is any 
distinct record) was established at Gibraltar and originally numbered 57 on the lists. 
This was constituted by the Duke of Wharton while engaged in the Spanish service 
and was thus also the first lodge in foreign parts to obtain a place in the Grand Lodge 
of England. 


In 1734 another Duke, (Richmond), a gallant soldier and former Grand Master of 
England, assisted by Baron de Montesquieu and others, at Paris, admitted many 



distinguished persons into the Society of Freemasons and in the following year (1735) 
Desaguliers, formerly Grand Master of England, while at the Hotel Bussy in Paris, 
admitted into Masonry the Second Duke of Kingston (also a general) assisted by Lord 
Dursley (afterwards Fourth Earl of Berkeley and a General in the Army.) 


The Grand Lodge of York (established in 1725, reconstructed in 1761, and expiring 
about 1792) issued a Military Warrant to the Sixth Inniskilling Regiment of Dragoons 
in 1770. 


The junior Grand Lodge of England (established in 1751) which arrogated to itself the 
title "Ancients" established many Military Lodges and was even more active in this 
respect, especially in regions beyond the seas, than the parent Grand Lodge of 
England established in 1717 and anomalously styled "Modems" by these self- 
designated "Ancients." This junior Grand Lodge of England was also designated as 
the "Atholl Grand Lodge" from the Fourth Duke of Atholl who was Grand Master of 
same from 1775 to 1781 and Grand Master of Scotland during 1778 and 1779. 


The Grand Lodge of Ireland established in 1731 was also very active in establishing 
Military Lodges and always worked according to the system in vogue among the so- 
called "Ancients." The first warrant creating a travelling lodge of Freemasons by this 
Grand Lodge— to which No. 1 1 was subsequently assigned— was issued to the First 
Foot (then the "Royal Regiment" and now the "Royal Scots") a British Regiment, in 
the year 1732. 


The Grand Lodge of Scotland, established in 1736, did not erect a Military Lodge 
until 1743 when William, the Fourth Earl of Kilmarnook, was Grand Master. The 
petitioners were some sergeants and sentinels belonging to Col. Lee's (afterwards the 
55th) Regiment of Foot. This lodge had no place accorded to it in the official roll 
however so that the following lodge in another regiment of infantry is recorded as the 
earliest Military Lodge chartered by the Grand Lodge of Scotland. This latter was 
"The Duke of Norfolk's" in the 12th Foot and was placed on the Scottish roll as No. 

58 in 1747 and in their petition they averred that "The Duke of Norfolk's Masons 
Lodge" had been "erected into a Mason body bearing the title aforesaid, as far back as 
1685." 



It is a matter of interest to note here that John Young, Deputy Grand Master of 
Scotland and a Lieutenant Colonel at the capitulation and massacre at Fort William 
Henry in 1757 was in this latter year appointed Provincial Grand Master of all the 
Scottish lodges (mostly of a Military character) in America and the West Indies. 


In addition to Military Lodges established by the Grand Lodge of Scotland, "Mother 
Kilwinning" issued warrants directly to many Military Lodges and was recognized as 
their superior and entirely independent of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. In 1 747 there 
was a Military Lodge in the 2nd Dragoons (now the Royal Scots Grays), the exact 
date of its constitution is uncertain but the interesting point is that it obtained its 
warrant from Kilwinning through the influence of the Earl of Eglinton. 


All these bodies issued many other warrants in addition to the above. The Grand 
Lodge of Ireland shortly after 1732 issued warrants to Military Lodges in four other 
British Regiments, then bearing the names of their Colonels but which afterwards 
became the 33rd, 27th, 21st and 28th Foot— making a total of five at work under this 
jurisdiction in 1734 and this number had increased to eight when the first Military 
Warrant was issued by the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1743. Two of these eight, 
dated 1732 and 1734 and bearing the numbers 1 1 and 33 were attached to the 1st and 
21st Foot respectively— both Scottish Regiments. There were other Military Lodges in 
existence in Scotland other than those above enumerated as early as 1744 as the 
minutes of "St. John's Old Kilwinning" at Inverness records the visit of "David 
Holland, Master of the Lodge of Freemasons in Brigadier Guize's Regiment," 
afterwards the 6th Foot, then "lying at Fort George." This lodge seems to have been 
without any charter or warrant but the lost archives of the Grand Lodge of Ireland 
might have supplied a key to the mystery and undoubtedly there must have been many 
Irish Military Lodges in the British Army and elsewhere of which all traces have been 
lost. There were actually 39 Military Lodges on the registry of the Grand Lodge of 
Ireland and 5 on that of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, so far as the records show, 
when the earliest Military Lodges were established by the rival Grand Bodies of 
England. 



A Military Lodge was established in the 8th Foot by the "Modems" in February, 1755, 
and one in the 57th Foot of the "Ancients" in September of the same year and as many 
more constituted by both Bodies from this time forward. 


Abraham Savage who was authorized by the Provincial Grand Master of North 
America under the "Modems" "to congregate all Free and Accepted Masons in the 
Expedition against Canada into one or more lodges" admitted into Masonry at Crown 
Point (after the surrender of that fortified place) twelve officers of the 1st Foot in a 
lodge he had established there and of which he was Master in 1759. 


Later in the same year at Quebec "the Anniversary of St. John the Evangelist was duly 
observed by the several lodges of Freemasons in the garrison." 


On October 1st, 1766, the 14th, 29th and part of the 69th Regiments arrived at Boston, 
Mass., and a little later the 64th and 65th Foot direct from Ireland and the three 
Military Lodges in the above all worked under the "Ancient system"— No. 58 in the 
14th Foot, No. 322 in the 29th Foot and No. 106 in the 64th Foot— holding under the 
Grand Lodges of England ("Ancients"), Ireland and Scotland respectively. The 
members of St. Andrews, a Scottish lodge at Boston, fraternized with these visiting 
Military brethren and endeavored through this means to form a Grand Lodge under 
the Grand Lodge of Scotland. It is interesting to note that none of these Army lodges 
were represented at the installation of the Provincial Grand Master under England 
("Modems") in November, 1768, but all joined in a petition to the Grand Lodge of 
Scotland requesting the appointment of a "Grand Master of 'Ancient' Masons in 
America." In 1769 Dr. Joseph Warren was appointed "Grand Master of Masons in 
Boston and within 100 miles of the same." The 64th regiment having removed from 
this station in the meantime, the Grand Lodge was formerly inaugurated by St. 
Andrew's Lodge, Lodge No. 58 ("Ancients") in the 14th Foot and Lodge No. 322 
(Ireland) in the 29th Foot. By a further Scottish patent in 1772 Dr. Joseph Warren 
(afterwards killed at the battle of Bunker Hill, where although holding a commission 
as Major-General he fought as a volunteer) was appointed Grand Master for the 
Continent of America— this patent being granted by the Fifth Earl of Dumfries, Grand 
Master of Scotland, 1771-1772 and a Colonel of the Foot Guards. It is of interest to 
note here that of the 27 Grand Masters of Scotland prior to 1769, 14 held commissions 
in the army. 



Under General Oughton in 1770 the Lodge "Scots Grays of Kilwinning" in the 2nd or 
Royal North British Dragoons, having lost their charter and all their records in the 
wars, petitioned for a warrant from the Grand Lodge of Scotland, which was granted, 
and the lodge reconstituted March 12th, 1770, as "St. Andrew's Royal Arch" having as 
its Master Colonel William (afterwards Sixth Lord) Napier, then in command of the 
2nd Dragoons. 


The Earl of Ancrum, afterwards Fifth Marquis of Lothian and Grand Master of the 
Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1794-95 served for many years in his father's regiment 
(the 1 1th Dragoons) in which a lodge was established by the Grand Lodge of England 
("Modems") "in Captain Bell's troop." In this troop he held a commission as 
Lieutenant in 1756 and attained the rank of General in the army in 1796. 


Of great interest is the fact that the "Ancients" and field lodges in New York met as a 
Grand Lodge and elected Grand Officers on January 23, 1781, and a warrant for a 
Provincial Grand Lodge was granted by the Grand Lodge of England ("Ancients") 
September 5th, 1781. This Provincial Grand Lodge was duly inaugurated by three 
stationary and six ambulatory lodges in December, 1782. The stationary lodges were 
numbers 169, 210 and 212 on the rolls of the "Ancients"— the first acknowledged as 
the leading authority by the various Army lodges and the latter two were also to a 
great extent Military Bodies. Of the six Travelling or Military Lodges, No. 52 was 
attached to the 37th Foot, No. 213 to the 4th Battalion Royal Artillery and No. 215 to 
the Anspach-Baymeth Regiment— all three English ("Ancient"); No 132 attached to 
the 22nd Foot, Scottish- No. 441 to the 38th Foot, Irish; and Sions Lodge in the 57th 
Regiment holding under a dispensation granted by Lodge No. 210 ("Ancients") with 
the consent and approval of No. 132 "Moriah" in the 22nd Foot and No. 134 Eskdale 
Kilwinning at Langholm in Dumfriesshire. In the following year (1783) a majority of 
the Grand Officers left New York with the British Army and by that date lodges had 
been formed by this Provincial Grand Lodge in New Jersey Volunteers, the Regiment 
of Knyphansen, the 57th Foot and the Loyal American Regiment. During this same 
period two Irish Lodges, Nos. 478 in the 17th Dragoons and No. 90 in the 30th Foot, 
arrayed themselves under its banner. After the Revolutionary War this Grand Body 
thus established by British Military Lodges abandoned its provincial character and 
assumed the title of the Grand Lodge of New York. The above mentioned No. 132, 
"Moriah" in the 22nd Foot originally received an Irish warrant which it "lost in the 
Mississippi" about the year 1759 and next applied for this Scottish warrant No. 132. 



This latter was granted in 1769. After taking part in the formation of the Grand Lodge 
of New York as just described, it experienced a most remarkable incident if the 
following statement which appeared in the "Newcastle Courant" of January 4th, 1770, 
can be credited: "This is to acquaint the public that on Monday, the first inst., being 
the lodge (or monthly meeting) night of the Free and Accepted Masons of the 22nd 
Regiment, held at the Crown near Newgate (Newcastle) Mrs. Bell, the landlady of the 
house, broke open a door (with a poker) that had not been opened for some years past, 
by which means she got into an adjacent room, made two holes through the wall, and 
by that stratagem discovered the secrets of Masonry; and she knowing herself to be 
the first woman in the world who ever found out that secret is willing to make it 
known to all her sex. So any lady who is desirous of learning the secrets of Masonry 
by applying to that well-learned woman (Mrs. Bell, that lived fifteen years in and 
about Newgate) may be instructed in the secrets of Masonry." 


Military Lodges continued to increase in number and importance so that up to 1 790 
one hundred are recorded as having been established by the Grand Lodge of Ireland 
(and doubtless many others of which the records are now lost), twenty-one by the 
Grand Lodge of Scotland, and fortynine directly by the "Ancients," in addition to a 
large number of subsidiary lodges chartered by the provincial authorities under this 
"Ancient" system in America, Upper and Lower Canada, Nova Scotia, Gibraltar and 
Jamaica, including various Regimental lodges. To a more restricted extent the 
"Modems" also issued local warrants in foreign districts and up to the above date 
fourteen Regimental lodges were listed. There were also about fourteen Army lodges 
attached to various brigades in Bengal in addition to many other stationary lodges of a 
Military character in all three of the Indian Presidencies, especially on the coast of 
Coromandel. In addition to the above there were "Royal Navy" Lodges at Deal, 
Gosport, London, and Halifax; a Marine Lodge at Plymouth; "The Royal Military" at 
Woolwich; "Lodge of Mars" at Yassy in Russia (established by the "Moderns" in 
1784); "Carnatic Military Lodge" constituted at Arcot in 1784; and "St. John's Lodge 
of Secrecy and Harmony" (in the Order of Knights of St. John) at Malta, established 
in 1789. Two years later in 1792 there were eleven Military Lodges at Gibraltar, one 
Scottish, six Irish and three English ("Ancients") and one Provincial— in as many 
different regiments then stationed there. 


On St. John's Day, 1813, the "Ancients" and "Moderns" united to form the "United 
Grand Lodge of England," of which the Duke of Sussex became the first Grand 
Master and by this action the 116 Military Lodges established by the "Ancients" and 
the 25 established by the "Moderns" came under the allegiance of this newly formed 



Grand Body. The number of Irish lodges had increased to 190 and the Scottish to 21 
making a grand total of 352 Military or Regimental lodges created to this date. Many 
of these had become dormant however so that only 219 were actually carrying on 
work. 


After the battle of Waterloo (1815) the decline in Military Lodges owing to the 
reduction of the British Army to a peace footing was very rapid so that in 1 822 only 
about thirty Irish, 25 English and 2 Scottish lodges were chartered— 57 in all— thus 
making a total of 409 Ambulatory lodges known to have been constituted by the 
Grand Lodges of the British Isles. In addition to the above there were no less than 
forty "Regimental," "Military," or "Army" lodges and several bearing the title of 
"Royal Navy" or "Marine" warranted by the English provincial authorities abroad and 
which were never registered in the books of any of the Grand Lodges. The last 
Travelling (Military) lodge in the Scottish Roll was "cut off in 1860. In 1886 there 
were only fifteen such bodies working under the Grand Lodges of England and 
Ireland and by 1889 these were still further reduced to eight of which six were Irish 
and two English. It is of interest to note here that the famous English Masonic 
Historian, Robert Freke Gould, was the first Master of the Military Lodge, established 
in 1858 in the 3 1st Foot and which continued in existence for over thirty years. 

Among others who made Masonic History prior to this may be mentioned Edward 
Augustus, Duke of York, and brother of King George III, who was the first member of 
the English Royal family in the Naval service to become a Mason. He was initiated in 
1765 at Berlin in a lodge, which as a result of this event, assumed the title "Royal 
York of Friendship" and is now the Grand Lodge of that name. Three years prior to 
this Washington Shirley, Earl Ferrers, became Grand Master of England, 1762-1763, 
while a Captain in the Naval service (promoted to Rear-Admiral in 1775.) 


The Lord High Admiral, the Duke of Clarence, afterwards King William IV of Great 
Britain; Sir John Ross, the famous Arctic Navigator; Sir William Sidney Smith, who 
vainly endeavored to effect a reunion of the Knights of all the European Orders and 
succeeded to the Regency of the Knights Templar of France in 1838- General Sir 
James Outram (the Bayard of India), Sir Henry Keppel, Senior Admiral of the Fleet, 
and several of the Dukes of Wellington were famous in Naval and Military Masonry. 


It is not generally known that the celebrated Roman Historian, Edward Gibbon, was at 
one time a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army and made a Mason in the "Lodge 



of Friendship" in 1775 and Sir Walter Scott held a commission in the Royal 
Midlothian Cavalry in 1797 and became a member of the "Lodge of St. David" 
Edinburgh in 1801. 


Lieutenant-General Thomas Desaguliers, son of the famous Grand Master of that 
name, joined a Military Lodge in the Royal Artillery and to his influence and example 
is attributed the extraordinary prevalence of Military Lodges in this branch of the 
service during the latter half of the eighteenth century. 


Our own famous naval hero, Paul Jones, our ambassador to France at a critical 
Military period, Benjamin Franklin (also Colonel of a regiment in 1755), the famous 
Voltaire, and many other Military and Naval brethren were members of the "Lodge of 
the Nine Muses" at Paris. 


Field Marshal Viscount Wolseley was initiated in Military Lodge No. 728, Dublin, in 
1851, served as its Master, and with Field Marshals, Earl, Roberts and Kitchener was 
one of the Past Grand Wardens of the Grand Lodge of England. 


Illustrative of the many ramifications of the Military Lodge system a zealous Master 
of Royal Military Lodge No. 371, Captain George Smith, while Inspector of the Royal 
Military Academy at Woolwich and Provincial Grand Master for Kent, found some 
Master Masons confined in the Kings Bench Prison. He adjourned his lodge, with the 
Constitution, to said prison and there held a meeting and made Masons. This was 
brought to the attention of the Grand Lodge which very properly ruled "that in the 
opinion of the Grand Lodge it is inconsistent with the principles of Masonry that any 
Freemasons lodge can be regularly held for the puipose of making, passing, or raising 
Masons in any prison or place of confinement." Whereupon this Royal Military Lodge 
No. 371 was erased from the list and still later this Capt. Smith, who had committed a 
still graver misdemeanor, was expelled from the Society. 


A still more unique experience was that of the American adventurer, General William 
Augustus Bowles, who joined the British Army in 1776 and in 1791 was initiated in 



the "Prince of Wales Lodge" and subsequently made "Provincial Grand Master" of the 
Creek, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians under the Grand Lodge of 
England. 


These Military Lodges wherever located, as a rule, worked harmoniously with, and 
exchanged Masonic courtesies with the stationary lodges of the vicinity and of interest 
in this connection is the fact that in 1759 when members of Lodge No. 74 in the 2nd 
Battalion of the First Foot left Albany, N. Y., they granted an exact copy of their Irish 
warrant to some influential citizens of that city, who in 1765 changed it for a 
Provincial charter and this lodge, "Mount Vernon," now holds the third place on the 
roll in New York State. A still earlier patent— in fact the first Military Warrant ever 
issued— had been previously granted to the First Battalion of this same regiment and 
the lodge (Irish) never took a name and was only known by its number (No. 11). In 
1814 this latter Battalion together with the Fourth Battalion having "Royal Thistle 
Fodge No. 289" (Scottish) was stationed at Quebec. A third lodge "Unity, Peace and 
Concord, No. 316" was established in this same First Foot (now Royal Scots) and in 
the 2nd Battalion. This latter lodge attained the longest span of uninterrupted 
existence of any Army lodge, receiving its warrant in 1798 and renewed in 1808 when 
this Battalion was serving on the Coast of Coromandal "to some 'privates' stationed at 
Wallahjabad." These petitioners, however, were not all private soldiers but included a 
large number of non-commissioned officers. In the following year (1809) the officers 
of this 2nd Battalion asked permission to form a second lodge in the same coips to be 
styled "The Officers Fodge." The result of this petition was not recorded but there are 
numerous examples in India and elsewhere of lodges formed in Regiments, the 
membership of which was restricted to commissioned officers. This lodge "Unity, 
Peace and Concord No. 3 1 6" undoubtedly was No. 74 originally granted by the Grand 
Fodge of Ireland in 1737 and although cancelled in 1801 would almost certainly have 
been renewed. This famous lodge is working today in the 2nd Battalion, Royal Scots 
on the western battle front in France under the designation "Unity, Peace and 
Concord, No. 316." 


"The Military Fodge of the Duke of Norfolk" in the 12th Foot was among those that 
walked in the procession at the laying of the Foundation Stone of the North Bridge 
with Masonic honors at Edinburgh in 1762. 



A Military Lodge in the 25th, now the "King's Own Borderers" obtained an Irish 
warrant in 1749 and the minutes of an existing "Border Lodge" (which they evidently 
visited) is the only record that the lodge chest of this regiment was lost at Munster, 
Germany, and a new one was "consecrated" at Berwick in December, 1763. 


At the first recorded meeting of the Royal Arch Lodge "St. Andrews" in Boston in the 
month of August 1769, foreign soldiers were chosen as the first officers of the lodge 
and William Davis of No. 68 ("Ancients") in the 14th Foot received "four steps" 
described as those of "Excellent, Super-Excellent, Royal Arch and Knight Templar." 


About this same time "Royal Arch Lodge No. 3" of Philadelphia was in close 
communication with No. 351 (Irish) in the 18th Regiment and these two bodies were 
in the habit of lending their Royal Arch furniture to one another. 


Some of these Military Lodges later became stationary as "Fuzilier Lodge No. 33" 
originally chartered 1734, later lapsed and their warrant renewed in 1817 in the Royal 
North British Fuziliers and accompanied that regiment to Tasmania, where it was 
granted a civil warrant with the old name and number and became the first stationary 
lodge in that Colony in 1823. 


There was much rivalry at times between the "Ancients" and "Modems." At Gibraltar, 
for instance, there were various Military Lodges and No. 148 in the Royal Artillery 
wrote to the Junior Grand Lodge of England "Ancients" stating "that a set of people 
who had their authority from the 'Modern' Grand Lodge thought proper to dispute the 
legality of said warrant, No. 148; that in the said garrison there were also held Lodges 
11, 244, 290, 359, 420 and 466 (in 1st, 2nd, 39th, 56th, 76th, and 58th Foot 
respectively) on the registry of Ireland and No. 58 (12th Regiment) in the Registry of 
Scotland." Captain Murray, R. N. for services rendered to No. 148 "in proving the 
authenticity of their warrant" was awarded a gold medal by the "Ancient" Grand 
Lodge in 1777. Later in 1786 the Provincial Grand Lodge of Andalusia which had 
been under the jurisdiction of the "Modems" for over twenty years applied for a 
warrant under the "Ancients" and refused to act any longer under the former, although 
the Duke of Cumberland was said to be Grand Master of the "Moderns." 



There was a similar rivalry between the "Ancients and Moderns" on the coast of 
Coromandal, India, in 1786. Intimate social relations, however, were often maintained 
by these Military Lodges with the stationary lodges in the community where they 
might be stationed and it is recorded that members of No. 960 in the 2nd Dragoon 
Guards "in token of respect for their uniform Masonic conduct during their stay in 
Norwich were fraternally entertained by the Lodge of Eleusinian Mysteries at that city 
in 1825." On St. John's Day (winter of 1838) a Masonic ball was given by the 
"Cameronian Lodge" No. 26 at Calcutta to which visiting (Military) brethren were 
freely invited. In the same year at a meeting of No. 7 in the 7th Dragoon Guards, then 
stationed at Edinburgh, deputations from nearly all the lodges in that Metropolis were 
present. Later in July, 1844, No. 26 returned from India and while quartered in 
Edinburgh assisted in laying a foundation stone, officially recorded as follows: 
"Amongst the numerous lodges in attendance was that of the 26th or Cameronian 
Regiment, in the Registry of Ireland, which being a visiting stranger lodge, under the 
rule of a Sister Grand Lodge was placed near the Grand Lodge of Scotland. 


Coming to the period of the Seven Years War (1756-1763) by Frederick the Great in 
alliance with England against France, Austria, Russia, Sweden, Saxony and most of 
the smaller German States, at the famous battle of Minden, fought on August 1 st, 
1759, so numerous had become Military Lodges that every regiment of English 
Infantry engaged (with the possible exception of the 5 1st) had one or more Military 
Lodges in the same. These were the 12th, 20th, 23rd, 25th and 37th and lodges were 
known to have also been attached to the troops of the other countries engaged. 


About this time on the Continent the Rite or System called the "Strict Observance" 
was in vogue based on the fiction that at the time of the destruction of the Templars a 
certain number of the Knights took refuge in Scotland and thus preserved the due 
succession of the order by the election of Pierre d'Aumont as Grand Master of the 
Templars in Scotland in 1313. For various reasons these Knights were said to have 
joined the Gilds of Masons in the Kingdom and thus arose the Society of Freemasons. 
The great doctrine laid down for the followers of this Rite was "that every true Mason 
is a Knight Templar." Thus lodges in British Regiments constantly worked side by 
side with lodges under the Strict Observance which for twenty years at least pervaded 
all Continental Europe. The many Masons taken by both sides fraternized with their 
captors and thus lodges composed of such prisoners of war sprang into existence and 
the degree of Knight Templar became a favorite one in the lodges of the British Army. 



They must have derived their knowledge of this degree from associating with lodges 
and brethren under the "Strict Observance" and thereby finally introduced the same 
into England and America. It was due to intercourse with brethren belonging to 
regiments that served in Ireland toward the end of the eighteenth century that Scottish 
lodges actually owed their acquaintance with Knight Templarism. It was known as 
"Black Masonry" and was propagated to a large extent through charters issued by a 
lodge of Freemasons at Dublin, which had been constituted by "Mother Kilwinning" 
for the practice of Craft degrees. This action of the daughter lodge led to the belief in 
Kilwinning being a centre of so-called "High Degrees" and in 1813 application was 
made to Kilwinning Lodge requesting it to authorize the transfer of a "Black Warrant" 
from the Knights of the Temple and of Malta in the Westmeath Militia (holding Irish 
warrant No. 791 cancelled in 1826) to brethren-of the same degree serving in the 
Shropshire Militia (holding an English warrant and made civil and stationary in 1 820 
and now authorized to assemble as Masons of the "Salopian Lodge of Charity" at 
Shrewsbury). Kilwinning Lodge in reply to the Sir Knights of this Shropshire 
regiment, however, repudiated the existence of any maternal tie between herself and 
any Society of Masonic Knighthood and expressed her inability- to regard anything as 
Masonry beyond the three regular steps. It is thus probable that all degrees above the 
first three obtained a footing in the British Islands through the medium of Army 
lodges. In Scotland these additional degrees were first conferred by the lodges and 
afterwards more often in Encampments. A Lodge "Aboyne" was formed in the 
Aberdeen Militia in 1799 and an Encampment in 1812 and moved with the regiment 
to Dover in 1812, Liverpool 1813, London 1814 and returned to Aberdeen in 1815. In 
this latter year the degrees practiced in this "St. George Aboyne Enampmenf ' were 
arranged in seven groups: 1. Master past the Chair, Excellent and Super-Excellent, 
Royal Arch; 2. Ark, Black Mark, Link and Chain; 3. Knight Templar, Knight of St. 
John of Jerusalem, Mediterranean Pass, Knight of Malta; 4. Jordan Pass, Babylon 
Pass; 5. Knight of the Red Cross, 6. High Priest; and 7. Prussian Blue. Both Master 
Masons and Royal Arch Masons were received as candidates and if former they began 
with Group 1 and if latter with Group 2. When the degrees of Group 1 were conferred 
the meeting was called a Chapter and for the remainder an Encampment. In the 
"Modems" the only degrees worked (with official sanction) down to 1813 were the 
first three but by the "Union of 1 813" the Royal Arch and Installed Master's degrees 
were accepted as additions to "pure and ancient Masonry bequeathed to them in 
1717." In the "Ancients," however, prior to 1813, both the Royal Arch and installed 
Master's degrees were essential features of their system. The practice of conferring the 
higher degrees under warrant for the first three degrees is shown by the following 
letter received from the Deputy Grand Secretary by the Irish lodge "No. 441 " in the 
38th Foot in 1822: "There is not any warrant issued by any Grand Lodge of Ireland 
other than that you hold; it has therefore always been the practice of Irish lodges to 
confer the Higher Degrees under that authority." "Minden Lodge No. 63" of the 20th 



Regiment continued the work of the Royal Arch under its original (Craft) warrant 
until 1838 when a separate charter was issued by the Grand Lodge of Ireland. 


This Irish lodge "No. 63" just mentioned, took the additional name of "Minden" 
owing to the Regiment (20th Foot) greatly distinguishing itself in the battle of Minden 
and celebrated the century of its warrant in 1 848— having received its warrant of 
constitution "No. 63" in December 1748 from the Grand Lodge of Ireland and its first 
Colonel (afterwards Lord) George Sackville was appointed its first Master. This 
practice of appointing the Colonel (or commanding officer) of a regiment the first 
Master was by no means unusual. 


Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, who commanded the allied forces at this battle of 
Minden and served in several campaigns under Frederick the Great, was initiated in 
December, 1740 in the "Lodge of the Three Globes" at Berlin and in 1770 was 
appointed English Provincial Master for the Duchy of Brunswick but in 1771 "he 
forsook pure and ancient Freemasonry" and was admitted into the "Strict 
Observance." 


Sir David Baird, Colonel of both the 24th Foot, and the Westminster Militia stationed 
at Harwich, was ordered with the former for service in the Baltic. So great was their 
affection for their Colonel and Masonic brother that the members of the Militia 
offered to a man to volunteer but it could not be done until the Military transfer Bill 
was passed whereupon 223 of the 228 men enrolled themselves with the 24th Foot. 
Military Lodge No. 426 of the English List for 1768 was in this 24th Foot and lodge 
"Westminster Militia" in this Militia establishment. 


(To be continued) 



IF 


If you quaff each joy 
With its alloy; 

If you heed no warning fears, 
Deep in the heart 
Is set apart 
—At last— 

The pearl of tears. 

If, crushed alone 
'Neath sorrow's stone, 

If your soul no fires destroy, 
Deep in the heart 
Is set apart 
—At last— 

The diamond - Joy. 

James T. Duncan. 


There is nothing so powerful as truth; and often nothing so 



strange. 

—Daniel Webster. 


-o- 


" JERUSALEM DELIVERED" 


BY BRO. CHARLES SUMNER LOBINGER, CHINA 


The number of communications which THE BUILDER has printed on Zionism 
proves that to many of our readers this is a timely subject. The following article, 
written by a Mason, should prove interesting to Zionists and students of the 
movement. -EDITOR. 


SUCH was the title which Tasso, the Italian poet of the late Middle Ages, chose for 
the epic in which he sang the glories of the First Crusade. It and its seven successors 
fill a notable page in human history, but it seems to have been reserved for our day to 
realize the age long dream of the Crusaders. 


Jerusalem was indeed "delivered" by Godfrey de Bouillon and his army of Christian 
knights in 1099; but the deliverance did not long continue, for the strength of the 
Seljukian Turks was too great. 


"The Christian throne of Jerusalem fell in the dust. The Mosque of Omar still occupies 
the site of the Holy Temple. The Crusades, with all their pomp and pageantry of war 
and romance, went by, and have long since faded away in the dim past. A new age has 
succeeded, with new ideas, new institutions, new aims; and if the Holy Sepulchre is 
again to be the heritage of a Christian power, and the appanage of a Christian Throne, 



that will be brought about by peaceful negotiation, or as the result of a war between 
great nations, in God's good time, and not by a new Crusade." 


Do these predictions written many years ago, find fulfillment in the present mighty 
conflict? They would certainly seem to in the light of recent events. The British army 
which, under Sir Archibald Murray, started from Egypt a year and a half ago or more, 
has been moving slowly but surely northward, not far from the traditional pathway of 
the wandering Israelites. On December 10 last, Jerusalem was taken and on the 
following day the commanding general entered the city and the British, French and 
Italian flags were raised. 


Thus for the first time in seven hundred and thirty years the Holy City is once more in 
the hands of "a Christian power" and it is not strange if some with historic vision see 
in this the completion of the work of England's crusader king, Richard Coeur de Lion. 
One such wrote even before the entry: 


"Again the Briton nears the ancient gates! The city of the Holy Sepulchre Sits in its 
Eastern calm and dumbly waits The coming of the legions from afar. 


They're dust a thousand years, the knightly train That followed Richard's leopard- 
blazoned shield Down the long road that valor pointed plain— The path of honor to the 
stricken field. 


Now men as bold as they, their sires' sons, Toil through the sands where centuries ago 
Their forebears fought - awake with roaring guns The dead who heard crusading 
trumpets blow. 


Perchance the ghost of grim old Saladin A scimitar across their path may fling. Yet 
shall one wave them onward till they win— The wraith of England's Lion-hearted 
King!" (1) 



The taking of Jerusalem — the most spectacular event of the present stupendous 
conflict — has riveted the attention of three worlds— Christendom, Islam and Israel— 
and for the moment, at least, places the question of Palestine's future in the foreground 
of discussion. On one point there is a singular unanimity. All of Christendom and 
nearly all of Islam and of Israel will approve the position taken by the head of the 
Roman church, and implied in both President Wilson's and Premier Lloyd George's 
recent statements of the allied war aims, that the Turk must not be allowed to 
reconquer the Holy Land. 


It is not so long since the Turk had his apologists. Lord Beaconsfield's party e. g. not 
only helped the Sultan to keep his terrorized realm but actually defended his policy. 
"Oh," they would say, "the Turk is not so bad. Those Armenians are terrible fellows 
and had to be punished for their crimes." Today this reminds one of a defense of the 
Belgian atrocities. And even above the wretched babble of that day rose the accusing 
voice of Gladstone, characterizing the Sultan as "The Great Assassin." And such is the 
verdict of posterity. No one now speaks of the Turk's right to rule. In the eyes of both 
Moslem and Christian he has long since forfeited any claim to such right. This cruel 
barbarian from the steppes of Central Asia, this abductor of children, defiler of 
women, murderer of millions of his subjects and oppressor of all others, must no 
longer be allowed to pollute earth's fairest and most historic regions. If the present war 
ends without eliminating the Turk it will fail in one of its most beneficent 
possibilities. 


But when the selection of a successor to the Turk is mentioned, unanimity is not so 
pronounced. Palestine is the Holy Land not of one faith only but of many — of all 
indeed who profess to revere the God of the Old Testament and who venerate its 
heroes. 


"Whatever is done there," says a recent writer, (2) "must be a setting aside of all 
places holy to others. The Russians make pilgrimages to the Holy Sepulchre. The 
Crusades were fought for it. Jerusalem stands next to Mekka in the Moslem mind." 



Godfrey de Bouillon, indeed, founded his Latin kingdom of Jerusalem on the 
cornerstone of religious intolerance, marking his entry of the Holy City by the 
massacre, it is recorded, of 70,000 Moslems, and the burning of the Jews in their 
Synagogue. One who reads that ghastly story can scarcely regret or wonder that the 
Latin kingdom was so short-lived, lasting barely two generations. 


But how refreshing by way of contrast is the account of the latest occupation. The 
allied forces (for there were French as well as British) carefully planned and deferred 
their attack so as to avoid a bombardment and to save the holy places. The Latin 
Patriarch reports to the Vatican that there was no firing or damage in the city. And the 
allied commander, Sir Edmund Allenby, entered Jerusalem on foot and was greeted 
by the Sheiks at the Mosque of Omar (over which, with other places sacred to Islam, 
he placed Moslem guards) and by the Patriarchs of the Eastern churches. 


The entry on foot was to demonstrate, no doubt, that the allied commander came not 
as a conqueror but as a deliverer. So the avoidance of damage and the detail of guards 
appear to have been Britain's public redemption of a pledge made early in the war to 
her Moslem subjects (of which she has more than any other power) that their holy 
places would be respected and preserved. 


In March, 1917, Sir Archibald Murray, then commanding these new crusaders, issued 
a proclamation stating his views, and presumably that of his government, regarding 
the future of Palestine. 


"There can be little doubt," he said, "that we should revive the Jewish Palestine of old, 
and allow the Jews to realize their dreams of Zion in their homeland. Not all the Jews 
will return to Palestine, but many will. The new Jewish State, under British or French 
aegis, would become the spiritual and cultural centre of Jewry throughout the world. 
The Jews would at least have homeland and a nationality of their own. The national 
dream that has sustained them for a score of centuries and more will have been 
fulfilled." 



On November 2 last, Mr. Balfour, British Foreign Minister, wrote to Sir Lionel 
Rothschild, Vice President of the English Zionist organization: 


"His Majesty's Government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a 
national home for the Jewish people, and will use its best endeavors to facilitate the 
achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done 
which will prejudice the civil and religious right of existing nonJewish communities 
in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country." 
(3) 


For of all the aspirants the claim of the Jews far antedates any other. They may not, 
indeed, have been the aborigines of Palestine but they were at least the kinsfolk and 
successors, even if dispossessors, of the latter. And of the long list of usuipers who 
followed them— Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Saracens, 
Crusaders, and Turks— the Jews alone have sufficiently preserved their identity to be 
able now to occupy the Holy Land. Well may the Jew ask with Byron, 


"Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, where are they?" 


And the ghosts of those vanished nations must answer with Kipling, 


"Lo all our pomp of yesterday Is one with Nineveh and Tyre." 


But the Jew may invoke the later lines of the same bard, 


"The tumult and the shouting dies, The captains and the kings depart, Still stands thine 
ancient sacrifice, An humble and a contrite heart." 



After 2000 years of exile the Jew still looks to the land of his fathers and is prepared 
to enter it once more — yea has already entered it in part, as will presently appear. 


The land of his fathers; there is another prop to the Jew's claim. For to no other 
claimant is Palestine his ancestral home; it is merely a shrine— a repository of sacred 
and historic remains. But Canaan is inseparable from Israel— the background of its 
history, the scene of its Golden Age, the stage on which its national tragedy was 
enacted. 


Finally the Jew needs Palestine. I am well aware that there are large and fortunate 
sections of the Jewish race notably those of England and America— whose own 
surroundings are so favorable that they have no desire to return to Palestine and who 
even oppose a movement to that end. But that should not obscure the obvious fact that 
there are other larger and less fortunate sections, like those of Russia, Rumania and 
Austria which have long needed and, despite impending political changes, are still 
likely to need, an asylum. Have their coreligionists forgotten Kishnieff, or the 
Rumanian persecutions of barely four years ago ? 


I repeat, therefore, that the Jew needs Palestine, meaning, of course, the oppressed and 
persecuted Jew. And one of the best expressions of that need is the movement known 
as Zionism. That movement really began with the operations of the Alliance Israelite 
Universelle in 1860. But organized Zionism, formally inaugurated in the closing 
decade of the last century by the late Theodore Herzl, merely gave organized 
expression to Israel's age long dream of repatriation. At its first Congress in Basel in 
1 897 it formulated a program for "the establishment of a publicly recognized, legally 
secured, homeland for the Jews in Palestine." 


That program has finally won the adherence of some of the most representative Jews— 
Israel Zangwill, Jacob H. Schiff, Adolph Lewisohn and Mr. Justice Brandeis of our 
Federal Supreme Court. Last spring a resolution expressing confidence that the allies 
would use their best efforts toward its realization was adopted by an organization 
representing some 2,000,000 Jews of the United States. Last month a conference of 
Orthodox Jews, representing widely scattered constituencies in America, assembled at 
New York to organize for practical work in Palestine; and about the same time a mass 



meeting of Jews was held in London, under the presidency of Lord Rothschild, at 
which resolutions were unanimously adopted thanking the government for its 
Palestine declaration and pledging its wholehearted support to the Zionist cause. And 
later in the same month (Dec. 29) it was announced that even the German Zionist 
Association had adopted similar resolves. The claim that the Jews as a whole do not 
want Palestine meets almost daily refutation. 


Nor does this need rest solely upon the desire for an asylum of refuge. Says Dr. Harry 
Friedenwald, a leading American Zionist: 


"It is only in a great re-settlement of Palestine, in the normal development of our 
people that it can again rise to real greatness. The lioness of the forest does not bear 
young in captivity, even well-fed and surrounded by comfort, and the lion of Judah 
has failed to bring forth prophets and great men in 2,000 years of captivity and 
dispersion." 


So Mr. Justice Brandeis recently wrote: 


"The Zionists seek to establish this home in Palestine because they are convinced that 
the undying longing of Jews for Palestine is a fact of deepest significance; that it is a 
manifestation in the struggle for existence by an ancient people which had established 
its right to live— a people whose three thousand years of civilization has produced a 
faith, culture, and individuality which enable them to contribute largely in the future, 
as they had in the past, to the advance of civilization; and that it is not a right merely, 
but a duty of the Jewish nationality to survive and develop. They believe that there 
only can Jewish life be fully protected from the forces of disintegration; that there 
alone can the Jewish spirit reach its full and natural development; and that by securing 
for those Jews who wish to settle in Palestine the opportunity to do so, not only those 
Jews but all other Jews will be benefited and that the long perplexing Jewish Problem 
will, at last, find solution." (4) 



I have said that the Jew has already returned to Palestine in part. For that statement I 
need only refer to the Jewish colonies which were planted and flourished there before 
the war. An English writer (5) of the past year declares that 


"the number of colonies has risen to about forty, with 16,000 inhabitants in all and 
1 10,000 acres of land, and these figures do not do full justice to the importance of the 
colonising movement. The 15,000 Jewish agriculturists are only 12 1/2 per cent of the 
Jewish population in Palestine, and 2 per cent of the total population of the country; 
but they are the most active, intelligent element, and the only element which is rapidly 
increasing. * * * Under this new Jewish husbandry Palestine has begun to recover its 
ancient prosperity. The Jews have sunk artesian wells, built dams for water storage, 
fought down malaria by drainage and eucalyptus planting, and laid out many miles of 
roads. In 1890 an acre of irrigable land at Petach-Tikweh, the earliest colony, was 
worth 3.12s., in 1914 36 pounds; and the annual trade of Jaffa rose from 760,000 
pounds to 2,080,000 pounds between 1904 and 1912." 


Nor is this development solely on the material side. Schools were long since 
established in which the medium of instruction is the ancient Hebrew tongue. 


"The foundation of a national university in Jerusalem is as ultimate a goal for them as 
the economic development of the land, and their greatest achievement has been the 
revival of Hebrew as the living language of the Palestine Jews." (6) 


Funds for such a University were being raised years ago and included in the plan was 
a provision for scholarships for advanced research. (7) Indeed we might expect such 
an institution to occupy a place superior even to that of the University of Athens 
which in recent years has attracted so many classical students from foreign lands. 
What possibilities are here of research and discovery by Jewish scholars working on 
their own ground in the tempting fields of Semitic archaeology, history, philology and 
jurisprudence! 



The aspirations of the Jew as the restorer of Canaan need not conflict with the 
interests which any other race or religion may have in Palestine. It is estimated (8) that 
the country will easily support 3,000,000 people, or more than four (and some say ten) 
times its present number. And that the Jew's presence has already benefited the native, 
Arabic speaking population we have evidence from a source which cannot be 
suspected of bias toward that side. In 1912 the German Vice Consul at Jaffa (Joppa) 
reported: 


"The impetus to agriculture is benefiting the whole economic life of the country." (9) 


Herbert Samuel, speaking at the mass meeting in London last month, emphasized the 
thought that "in any new development of Palestine there must be full recognition of 
Arab rights and reverent respect for the Christian and Mohammedan holy places." 


As to the Christian (and in the main the Moslem) world at large, it has no desire for 
Palestine as a place of residence. Its longings are satisfied if the ancient land is made 
safe and inviting as a place of pilgrimage. The lack of that, you remember,— the 
inability of pilgrims to visit the Holy Land in safety— was the immediate cause of the 
First Crusade. 


But now even the medieval pilgrimage is largely obsolete. For during the centuries 
which have intervened since the Crusades, Christendom has been slowly coming to 
realize the conception of its Founder as expressed in that illuminating conversation 
(10) at the Shechem well where one said: 


"Our fathers worshipped in this mountain and ye say that Jerusalem is the place to 
worship." 


And the Other replied: 



"The hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship 
the Father." 


Our own Whittier echoes the same thought when he sees 


"That all the good the old hath had, Remains to make our own time glad; Our 
common, daily life, divine, And every land a Palestine" 


Christians will be satisfied if Palestine is made comfortable and attractive for travel 
and (since I have heard Professor Sayce feel bound to add) excavation. They would 
like its repulsive sights removed,— the noisy beggars who infest almost every scene 
and mar its hallowed or historic association; the horrible incongruity of Turkish 
soldiers guarding the Holy Sepulchre; the wailing of the wretched folk at the temple 
enclosure. They would have the beggars and the wailers transformed into an 
industrious yeomanry and the Turkish soldiers banished altogether. 


And after all most of us find no great enjoyment in visiting a mere ruin. We would 
like to see Palestine restored as nearly as possible— its historic scenes reproduced— its 
ancient prosperity revived. And who is more likely to accomplish that result than the 
Jew? For him all this would be a labor of love. There he would find a most congenial 
field for his thrift, for his enteiprise and industry and above all for his idealism. The 
Jew is best fitted to be Christendom's trustee and caretaker of Palestine ! 


But it is recognized that the trusteeship will need a protector at least for a time. 
General Murray's announcement, it will be remembered, mentioned a protectorate 
under Britain or France. Our own nation has been suggested. Norman Hapgood wrote 
long since: "The position of the Jews in all countries will be improved if America can 
be brought to accept a protectorate over Palestine. America is better situated to 
conduct diplomatic negotiations fol a Jewish Commonwealth than any other power 
because we are not the rivals of any other in the near East." 



Doubtless the protector will be one of these three powers. But the selection should 
afford no occasion for rivalry or competition. It should offer no occasion for territorial 
expansion but only one for humanitarian service, and the sole question should be, 
What nation can best discharge the trust? 


The deliverance of Jerusalem, then, makes possible the realization of two age long 
dreams— that of the Jews for repatriation and that of the crusaders for the possession of 
the Holy Sepulchre. And each may be realized without hindering the other, indeed 
each may greatly assist the other. Jewish genius devoted to the restoration of Palestine 
and the good faith of Christendom, acting through a leading power pledged to its 
protection, may together enable that ancient land once more to assume a pivotal place 
in the world. Certainly there could be no more effective object lesson in religious 
tolerance than the making of Palestine a place where Christian, Jew and Moslem may 
meet on common ground in peace and safety, reverently visiting the same shrines and 
acknowledging the same Deity, each loyal to his own ideals yet respecting those of his 
neighbors and considerate of their sentiments and convictions. And when that is made 
possible by the generous policy of Christian powers it will be a long step toward the 
brotherhood of man. 


(1) O. C. A. Child in the New York Times. 

(2) Lit. Dig., Vol. 54, p. 710 (Mch. 17, 1917). 

(3) See The Nation (New York) Vol. 105, p. 690. 

(4) See The Nation (New York) Vol. 105, p. 692. 

(5) Turkey, A Past and a Future, The Round Table, June, 1917, 60, 61. Cf. Zionism 
and the Jewish Future (London, 1916) 138 et seq. 

(6) Id. p. 64. 

(7) The Nation (New York) Vol. 93, p. 472. 

(8) Id. Vol. 105, P. 555- 



(9) Turkey, A Past and a Future, The Round Table, June, 1917, p. 61 

(10) John, IV, 20,21. 


-o- 


THOMAS SMITH WEBB - MASONIC RITUALIST 


BY BRO. R. M. C. CONDON, MICHIGAN 


IN many cases the life story of our Masonic forefathers is buried in a fog of tradition, 
not always trustworthy, but not so in the case of Thomas Smith Webb. Fortunately he 
was one of those rare men who kept a diary— it is still in possession his descendants— 
and from this we can learn not only the events of his own private career but many 
facts of wide interest concerning the Masonic Fraternity at large, which is indebted to 
Webb as to few others. Brother Webb, who was bom in the time-hallowed city of 
Boston on October 30th, 1771, was the son of Samuel and Margaret Webb who had 
migrated from Northern England some few years previously, hoping to make their 
fortune in New England. As a child Webb was unusually precocious, morally and 
temperamentally as well as mentally; even while only three years of age his family 
and friends predicted great things for him, he was so winning in spirit, so bright, so 
talented. 


At an early age he entered a public school, after which he made his way to a Latin 
school, from which he graduated with highest honors. From boyhood he found his 
chief pleasure in books, and, like many another boy book-lover, aspired to publish 
something of his own, and, again like most young literary enthusiasts, he first 
attempted poetry. Poetry is the most difficult of all literary forms but young Webb 
became so proficient in it that his effusions attracted the attention of a Boston editor 
who afterwards took the young man into a partnership which enabled him to learn the 
printing business. Despite the drudgery of this work he loved it, and persevered the 



while with his poetry, one of his songs, "Companions Assemble on this Joyful Day," 
coming to have a wide popularity. 


From Boston he moved to Keene, New Hampshire, where he was initiated into 
Masonry, becoming a member of Rising Sun Lodge. Later on he moved to Albany, 
New York, at that time one of the principal centers of American Masonry. Here he 
opened a book store, one of the most regular customers of which was himself, for he 
had grown in his fondness for books. It was at this time, and while studying the old 
Preston lectures, that he saw the need for a revision of the ritual for American use. 
Thus it was that he came to publish in 1797, the now famous "Webb Freemason 
Monitor," in which he re- systematized, and often re-wrote, the entire Blue Lodge 
Ritual, adding some new material to it. 


Needless to say, Brother Webb became one of the most influential Masons in Albany; 
he was elected Worshipful Master of Temple Lodge and took a prominent part in 
organizing a Royal Arch Chapter and an encampment of Knights Templar. 


From Albany Brother Webb moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where he became a 
member of St. John's Lodge in 1801. So zealous in the work of Masonry, so earnest to 
have it grow and flourish, and so efficient in all its various forms of activities, he was 
soon prominent throughout the jurisdiction, so prominent that in 1813 he was elected 
Grand Master, and then re-elected in the following year. During this time he was 
successful in business, as might have been expected in one whose talents were so 
various and yet so symmetrical. 


It is believed by some that the plan of organizing the first Grand Encampment of the 
United States was originated by his brain; however that may be, it is certain that he 
played a conspicuous part in the project. A measure of his popularity is indicated by 
the fact that he was elected the first Grand Commander. 


From Providence Brother Webb moved to Walpole, Massachusetts, where he 
established a cotton factory which was one of the first in the country to employ safety 



devices to protect the life and limbs of employees.. In 1817 he moved this factory to 
Worthington, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus, and put his associate Brother John Snow, 
in charge. 


During February of the following year Brother Webb granted a dispensation to 
Brother Snow to form an encampment in Worthington; at first the plan was to hold 
meetings for six months in Columbus, but this plan was later changed, and all the 
meetings were held in Columbus: thus was begun the famous Mt. Vernon 
Commandery which recently celebrated its one hundredth anniversary with fitting 
ceremonies. 


In 1819 Brother Webb started on a business trip to Columbus, but while in Cleveland, 
Ohio, making preparations to continue his journey, he was stricken down with 
apoplexy. This was on June 6th. He died during the evening of the same day. The 
body was interred in Cleveland but was later removed to Providence in November, at 
which time the Masonic Bodies of the nation paid a solemn tribute to his memory. 


— o- 


Before Philosophy can teach by Experience, the Philosophy has to be 
in readiness, the Experience must be gathered and intelligibly 
recorded. 

—Carlyle 


— o- 


Philosophy is nothing but Discretion. 



—John Seldon. 


— o — 


The greatest trust between man and man is the trust of giving 
counsel.— Bacon. 


-o- 


EDITORIAL 


What do American Masons really believe is the proper attitude for our Fraternity to 
adopt in the present world crisis? How far do they appreciate how vitally Masonic 
principles are involved in the tremendous struggle across the seas? We have taken a 
little space in these columns to speak our convictions that this Fraternity of ours, so all- 
embracing in its American personnel, has not measured up to its opportunities because 
it has as yet failed to consider the problems from a national viewpoint. Optimistic to the 
core on the general subject of the Masonic efficiency of the future, we do not despair. 
But we are still waiting to discover the 1918 reincarnations of the Masonic Patriots of 
1776. Where are the General Warrens, the Paul Reveres and the Benjamin Franklins of 
today? The historic personages who wove into the woof of this Republic the principles 
of Freemasonry would not remain silent in these days when those principles are 
attacked by the viper of Autocracy! To us it seems as if the voices of thousands of 
Masonic Patriots are in the air, calling on us to defend the priceless jewel of Freedom 
for which they gave their utmost energy! 


And so, when Brother Greenfield, our esteemed contributing editor from Georgia, 
voices the thought which to us seems a dynamic force like the echoes which haunt 
Independence Hall, we wonder if others would hear them if a convention of Masons 



were assembled to consider Masonry's duty in wartime? Likewise there comes to us a 
voice from across the seas - the voice of an American soldier who sees the vision of 
what an American Masonic dynamo could accomplish in Europe today. It too, is an 
editorial. Typical of hundreds that have come to us, it perhaps best epitomizes a crying 
need of the hour as we see it. 


Why can we not heed these clarion calls? Do we not sleep too long? Is our sleep an 
indefinite sleep? Or is it a form of hypnotism? Are we listening to soft voices which are 
false? Are our eyes blinded to all but the routine duties concerning which we debate so 
much? Do we know, or are we refusing to admit, that insiduous forces are at work 
among us which would stifle our every effort to be "just to our Government and true to 
our Country?" in the highest and most practical sense? 


Pause and reflect, brethren. Let us TRUST ONE ANOTHER! Editor 


STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN! 


THESE four simple words are being placed at every railroad crossing in the United 
States. They are words of tremendous import. They are a warning to the wayfarer that 
here danger is always present and that.upon obedience to that warning may depend 
human life. 


This same command is worthy of regard elsewhere than on the great highways of the 
continent. The young man enjoying the many pleasures of life should stop, take counsel 
with himself, look forward to where his mode of conduct is tending, and listen to the 
promptings of his better judgment. The man of mature age engaged in the eternal fight 
for financial independence, should stop, look into his own being, see if his higher nature 
and nobler impulses are being waiped and contracted, and listen to those finer instincts 
that would mellow his life and make him a potent factor in every forward movement. 
And the man whose life's sands are running low should stop in his self-satisfied 
journey, look back over the road he has traveled, and listen to the voice of the soul that 



asks, "Have you done all your abilities and opportunities would have enabled you to do, 
for the benefit of mankind and the glory of God?" 


As with individuals, so with Fraternities, which are made up of individuals, and as with 
Fraternities in general, so with the Masonic Fraternity in particular. I single it out 
because it is the one we are interested in, and because it is confessedly the greatest, the 
most philosophic, the most universal (in a territorial sense) and the most influential of 
all; Would it not be well if the Royal Craft would stop, look and listen? 


We live in the greatest age of all centuries. We annihilate distance, and talk through 
space without physical connections. We create enormous waterways between oceans, 
defying in their construction, pestilence, earthquakes and landslides. We abolish 
deserts; converting them into fruitful fields and smiling gardens. We cast down the 
gauntlet to disease, summon science to our aid, and cure deformities that a few years 
ago seemed impossible of correction. We live on a high, although an exhaustive plane; 
but we have bettered sanitary conditions, improved modes of living; ameliorated labor 
annoyances, and have begun to pay some attention to our neighbors' needs and woes. 


The Masonic Fraternity is in the heyday of its glory. It numbers it votaries by the 
million. Today it is quite the respectable thing to be a Free and Accepted Mason. The 
masculine world is knocking at theTyler's door, the membership is growing by leaps 
and bounds. All over this broad land we hear of special functions of one sort and 
another. The newspapers teem with notices of Communications, Conclaves, Reunions 
and Ceremonials. All kinds of expedients are used to catch the attention. One lodge 
announces a meeting on a mountain top, another in the dark recesses of a canyon. Still 
another holds out as an inducement that a degree will be conferred by a team of Past 
Masters, and so on. 


Suppose we, too, stop, look and listen. Stop for a season the work of doing nothing but 
making more Masons; look the tendency of the drift of the Craft squarely in the face, 
and listen to what our reason and our love for the Order tells us what we ought to do. 
And then above all things let us do it. 



We should stop in the mad rush for new members, and the wild desire to add to our 
numbers. A healthy growth is both desirable and necessary. It is needed to repair 
defections from death, dimit, loss of interest and other reasonable causes. But is the 
present growth a healthy one? The great desire of the average presiding officer is to add 
more to the roster than his predecessor. He has ceased to be an instructor, a leader in 
actual performance. His boast is the amount of "work” he has done and in time he turns 
over his lodge to the Senior Warden, who, by virtue of the rotation system now so 
largely in evidence, becomes the Master and who, as a rule, keeps up the same old 
grind. The result is a relaxing of that strict inquiry into fitness and character that once 
prevailed. 


The effect of this is now too apparent. No one who thinks, and is observant, can deny 
the fact that the morale of the Craft is not as high as it used to be, and that it is not held 
in as high esteem, by the profane world as formerly. 


Why is it that few of the leaders of thought in the land take an active part in the work of 
the Order? Masonic historians tell us, and Masonic orators are fond of repeating the 
statement, that Washington, and John Hancock, and Paul Revere, and Joseph Warren, 
and Benjamin Franklin, and Henry Clay, and many others of that type, were proud to be 
Masters of lodges and Grand Masters of their respective States. Today, hardly a figure 
of national prominence is engaged actively in Masonic work. They hold membership, it 
is true, but we only know it when one of them is a candidate for an office.. Then the 
degrees he has taken are exploited in full in his press announcements. Very often he 
becomes a regular attendant at the meetings until balloting day is over, when he 
promptly drops out of sight until the time comes for reselection. Such a member is not 
an asset to the Craft. More than that, any member that fails to assume his share of the 
responsibilities, and does nothing but pay his dues, is almost a distinct liability. He is 
not actuated by the proper motives, and his object in retaining his membership is 
generally a venial one. 


We should listen to the criticisms of those outside the Temple; listen to the murmerings 
of the Craftsmen themselves; listen to the call for aid in combating the evils of our 
complex civilization; prepare to face the problems of post-war conditions. 



We often speak of the wasted talents of an individual, but what of the wasted 
potentialities of Freemasonry? The failure to use the powers and influences for good, of 
nearly two million selected men, men of strong moral character, of keen business 
acumen, and presumably of high ideals, is a reflection on the intelligence and leadership 
of those who are directing the destinies of the Craft. 


What can they do? Anything they win to do! I have great faith in mankind and the 
potency of his determined will. They can cure defects in the national moral spirit; they 
can elevate the "submerged tenth" of our population; they can mould public opinion; 
they can control and dictate the course of empire. I go further - there is not any great 
evil known to mankind, no matter how strongly entrenched, that could not be stamped 
out of existence by the intelligently directed power of the Masons of America. The 
liquor traffic, the white slave trade, the sweat shop, child labor - all would vanish like 
snow on a summer's day before the onslaught of such an army. 


What stands in the way of such achievement? Principally vanity, jealousy, the question 
of prerogatives, of precedence. Some time ago I participated in an informal conference. 
There were all kinds of high sounding titles present. There were Most Worship fuls, 
Right Eminents, and Very Excellents, and Most Puissant Companions. Even Inspectors 
General were not missing. In the absence of something else to talk about, the subject of 
the war came up. The argument was advanced, and eloquently supported, that some 
united (mark the word "united") action should be taken by the Craft to minister to the 
needs of our brethren with the Colors, while at Camp, in the trenches and after the war 
is over. What was the result of that discussion? One or two exalted brethren said their 
Grand Bodies had contributed to the Red Cross and the Y.M.C.A. funds and they 
thought they had done their duty. In other words, it was so much easier to let some one 
else do it. Others thought it was a question for each particular jurisdiction. This meant 
they were only interested in those that belonged to their own household of faith. Many 
sat glum and noncommittal. Finally, as usual, nothing was done, and a magnificent 
opportunity was lost to do something for God, for humanity, and for the brethren. 


When the boys in khaki have done their duty at the front and come back to civil life, 
what are you going to do for them? Are you going to prepare in advance, meet them 
more than half way and help them to reestablish themselves, or are you going to wait 
until they come knocking like beggars at the doors of Masonic Relief Boards, and then 
salve your conscience by handing them out a dole? 



There ought to be started a great National Masonic movement utilizing all Masonic 
activities, including the General Grand Bodies. They ought to strip their treasuries to 
the last cent; co-operate with the Government Industrial Vocation plan; sink petty 
jealousies; forget the question of precedents, prerogatives and personalities; and act as a 
united body of consecrated men, fired with the spirit of Masonic love, and governed by 
that high sense of duty, that spirit of self-abnegation that is willing to crucify itself on 
the altar of obligation. ' 


The great need of the Craft today is unity, unity of puipose, unity of method, unity of 
action. We also need some sort of a directing head. We now have forty-nine Grand 
Lodges pulling in forty-nine different ways. Suppose our Nation was run in the same 
fashion. How much help could we give towards winning the war ? 


One of the ambitions of the Fraternity seems to be building of Temples. They are good 
things; and after other more pressing claims have been satisfied, it may be agreed that 
the dignity and grandeur of the order demand them. But I would rather stand before the 
final judgment bar, and proffer as my passport for admission into the Celestial Lodge, a 
crippled child made whole, or a maimed soldier made self-sustaining, than all the 
offerings of "frozen-music" that can be erected from now until the end of time. 


We all have visions of the future, and I sometimes picture to myself what Masonry will 
be, when all its various elements are banded together in a common cause, and each 
indiidvual is doing his part. There is a building in India called the Taj Mahal. It is said 
to be the most beautiful structure in the world, but it is the tomb of a woman. The 
Pyramids are the most stupendous example of the builder's art ever erected, but they are 
the tombs of a vanished civilization. St. Peter's at Rome is the grandest religious temple 
now in existence, but it is the tomb of a dying hierarchy. Westminister Abbey is the 
pride of the Anglo Saxon race, but its glory is in its memorials of the dead. 


Freemasonry in the future will not be like these. It will be a living, sentient, dominant 
force; a world power; one of the instruments of Almighty God, moving forward to its 
appointed task, catching the music of the spheres and joining in the anthem of the 



Universe; leading the onward march of human progress entering the lists full panoplied 
against the forces of evil, and fighting ever and always for the final triumph of all that 
makes men pure and true and noble. It will be the incarnate spirit of Brotherhood; the 
spirit of the Man of Galilee; the spirit of triumphant hosts of heaven as they sing their 
hallelujahs around the threat White Throne. 


And He who sitteth as the Judge Supreme looking on the army of the Compasses and 
Square will smile with approbation, and from His lips will come the blessed approval: 
"These are my beloved children," while the glory of a constructive, character building 
Craft will rest like a benison on the hearts of men. 


May we all work together to hasten the coming of that day. 


Joseph C. Greenfield. 


— o — 


LISTEN AGAIN! 


Since coming to France I have missed the Fraternal affiliation so prevalent in my home 
State and especially those splendid Masonic gatherings. While in the interior I had very 
little time to devote to things of that kind, and while I am not much better fixed as 
regards time than I was then, yet the opportunity here is pressing and should have 
attention. 


In this vicinity is situated Base Section No. 1 for the United States troops and while 
numerous changes are being constantly made, yet a large number are here constantly 
and in this number I believe I am conservative when I estimate the number of Master 
Masons as being 500 at all times. I was assigned to duty here about seven weeks ago 



and as soon as I got my work in hand, began to investigate the situation and could find 
no traces of any Masonic organization. I gathered five congenial spirits into my room 
and we went to work on a club proposition with the expectation of other things later. An 
informal banquet was held at which we had an attendance of ninety-one and on last 
Tuesday evening we held a meeting for business at the Y.M.C.A. with over 100 
present. At this meeting I learned that three other attempts had been made to start 
something but for one reason or another the attempt ended with the election of officers. 
After the debris of the former attempts had been cleared away we elected officers for 
Base Masonic Club No. 1, together with several committees. Since then we have rented 
a nice hall that we can use temporarily at least for a meeting place to transact business 
and furnish as a sort of club. We meet again tomorrow night and I expect to see at least 
two hundred present. 


A telegram was sent you a short time ago asking advice as to the proper methods of 
going after a dispensation for the Order here where only a few members of each 
jurisdiction were stationed and we would be grateful, indeed, if the matter could be 
arranged. We have a crying need for a Masonic organization here. In the first place we 
miss the fellowship and naturally many of the opportunities for carrying out the 
responsibilities which our obligation entails. Rapid means of communication is 
necessary for the greatest good and this can be had only through organization. The club 
will help in a great measure, but more is needed. I am sorry to state that I am informed 
that several brothers, some of whom are wounded soldiers returned from the front, have 
crossed the Great Divide right here without the consolation of knowing that a brother 
has in charge their last messages to friends and loved ones at home, or were ever visited 
by a brother Mason during their stay here in the hospital. We have a sick committee 
now and will attend to these cases so far as possible in the future. This will be a base for 
troops until long after the war and it should be arranged in some way to have a working 
Masonic body here. I personally know of a number of officers and men who were able 
to get only the first degree before they left the States who are more than anxious to 
complete the work. It is true that some officers might change, but an emergency exists 
that should be met in some way. So far as I can leam there are no Masonic lodges in 
France with which we can affiliate. 


Here is a chance for the Masons of America to do something really worth while, and I 
face the future with confidence that a way will be provided for the relief of the present 
situation here. 



An Army Captain in France. 


— o — 


MAN’S INSIGNIFICANCE 


Have I knowledge? Confound it shrivels at Wisdom laid bare. 

Have I forethought? How purblind, how blank to the Infinites Care! 
Do I task any faculty highest, to image success? 

I but open my eyes - and perfection, no more and no less, 

In the kind I imagined, full-fronts me, and God is seen God 
In the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and in the clod. 

And thus looking within and around me, I ever renew 
(With that stoop of the soul which in bending upraises it too) 

The submission of man's nothing-perfect to God's all-complete, 
And by each new obeisance in spirit, I climb to His feet. 

- Robert Browning. 

Life is not measured by the time we live. - Crabbe. 



Dost thou love life ? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. - 
Benj. Franklin. 




A small degree of wit, accompanied by good sense, is less tiresome in the long run 
than a great amount of wit without it. - La Rochefoucauld. 


-o- 


Where Liberty dwells, there is a country. - Benj. Franklin. 


THE LIBRARY 


EDITED BY BRO. H.L. HAYWOOD 


The object of this Department is to acquaint our readers with time-tried Masonic books 
not always familiar; with the best Masonic literature now being published; and with 
such non-Masonic books as may especially appeal to Masons. The Library Editor will 
be very glad to render any possible assistance to studious individuals or to Study Clubs 
and Lodges, either through this Department or by personal correspondence; if you wish 



to learn something concerning any book - what is its nature, what is its value, or how it 
may be obtained - be free to ask him. If you have read a book which you think is worth 
a review write us about it; if you desire to purchase a book - any book - we will help 
you get it, with no charge for the service. Make this your Department of Literary 
Consultation. 


POETRY OF THE DAY 


WE ARE in the midst of a renaissance of poetry; not since Browning, Tennyson, 
Swinburne and Wadsworth were in full song has the world been blessed with such a 
choir of singers as today. John Masefield, Alfred Noyes, Edwin Markham, Edwin 
Arlington Robinson and a few others are known on both sides of the Atlantic: 
alongside of these are a host of lesser lights, some of whom seem destined, it seems, to 
write great poetry. 


For the most part these poets are content to use the old meters and the old themes; 
certain of them, however, have struck out on new paths. Impatient of what they believe 
to be the restraints of regular rhyme schemes and weary of time-worn vocabulary of 
previous singers they have fashioned a new style of verse and adapted to their uses 
such words as Tennyson would have scorned to use. Whether or not imagism, verse 
fibre, Vorticism, Neopaganism, etc., are to win a permanent place in the future 
classifications of poetry remains to be seen; meanwhile all lovers of the art welcome 
the innovators for bringing a fresh stream of influence into a very ancient craft. 


Edward J. O'Brien, himself a poet of the new schools, has recently edited an anthology 
of this "New Poetry" under the not very descriptive title of "The Masque of Poets." It is 
published by Dodd, Mead and Co., at $1.25. The half hundred poems in this volume 
were originally published anonymously in The Bookman, and the fact that they were 
well received by a public ignorant of their authorship indicates that they possess 
intrinsic value. Nevertheless one reads the slender anthology with disappointment. The 
poems are over- sophisticated too subtle, too much in the way of an appeal to an 
esoteric circle of satiated readers. In many cases the meaning escapes one entirely, in 
other cases one feels that whatever meaning was intended might better have been 
expressed in a less recondite manner. Edwin Arlington Robinson's Browningesque 



dialogue is solid. Maxwell Bodenheim contributes a few lines very much like Edgar 
Lee Master's "Spoon River Anthology." Amy Lowell supplies one or two pieces of 
distinction. Vincent O'Sullivan undertakes to infuse "magic" into his verse, after the 
manner of Walter de la Mare. John Gould Leltcher displays a mind at work in his 
verse, a mind of penetrative power; but for the most part there is not a page in this 
volume that a reader will long remember. There is not a poem that contains the bread 
of life. 


The unsophisticated reader will find more to his taste in the two volumes of present 
day poetry edited by Mrs. Waldo Richards: "The Melody of Earth," ($1.50) and "High 
Tide," ($1.25), both published by Houghton Miflin and Co., contain some four or five 
hundred poems, all written in recent years. The "New Poetry" is well represented but 
the majority of the pieces are such as one has been wont to find in the old familiar 
'Standard Authors." 


The "Melody of Earth" is an anthology of garden and nature poems. T.A. Daly's two 
poems in Italian dialect are alone worth the price of the volume. "High Tide" is a 
collection of poems "selected chiefly because they strike the vital spark of inspiration 
and enthusiasm." The latter volume contains Richard Le Galliene's great poem, "To a 
Bud at Dawn," and also two poems by Alice Mynell, who is unquestionably one of the 
noblest of living poets. It also contains the following poem by James Stephens, the 
Irish mystic who wrote that delectable story, "The Crock of Gold." We believe these 
verses will strike a responsive chord in the breats of all Masons. 


THE ROAD 


Because our lives are so cowardly and sly, 
Because we do not dare to take or give. 
Because we scowl and pass each other by 


We do not live: we do not dare to live. 



We dive, each man, into his secret house, 
And bolt the door, and listen in affright. 
Each timid man beside a timid spouse, 
With timid children huddled out of sight. 

Kissing in secret, fighting secretly! 

We crawl and hide like vermin in a hole 
Under the bravery of the sky, 

We flash on meannesses of face and soul. 

Let us go out and walk up the road 
And quit forevermore the brick-built den 
The lock and key, the hidden, shy abode, 
That separates us from our fellow-men. 

And by contagion of the sun we may 
Catch at a spark from that primeval fire 
And learn that we are better than our clay. 
And equal to the peaks our desire. 





THE QUESTION BOX 


THE BUILDER is an open forum for free and fraternal discussion. Each of its 
contributors writes under his own name, and is responsible for his own opinions. 
Believing that a unity of spirit is better than a uniformity of opinion, the Research 
Society, as such, does not champion any one school of Masonic thought as over 
against another; but offers to all alike a medium for fellowship and instruction, 
leaving each to stand or fall by its own merits 


MASONIC SYMBOLISM IN THE FORTY-SEVENTH PROBLEM OF EUCLID 


It has been stated that the Forty- Seventh Problem of Euclid contains the entire 
symbolism of Masonry. I am unable to find even all the implements of Masonry 
revealed therein. Can someone explain, or what is better, submit drawings to illustrate ? 
O. B. S., Illinois. 


By the statement that the Forty- Seventh Problem of Euclid contains the entire 
symbolism of Masonry is meant that the symbolic lessons taught by Masonry are also 
taught by the symbolism of the Forty-Seventh Problem. It was used by the ancient 
Egyptians to measure and lay out the ground on which they were to build their temples, 
as we use the twenty-four-inch gauge to measure and lay out the time we are to spend 
on each part of the work. The very word Geometry means measurement of the earth and 
the Operative Mason measures his work by the twenty-four- inch gauge as the ancient 
Egyptians measured theirs by the principle of the Forty- Seventh Problem. By the 
common gavel, he breaks off the uneven surfaces which prevent the stones from fitting 
squarely into the building. So it teaches us as Speculative Masons to divest ourselves of 
all the vices which prevent us from living on the square so that we can fit as living 
stones into that spiritual building - the house not made with hands. 



The plumb admonishes us to walk uprightly, representative of the perpendicular. The 
horizontal reminds us of the level, these two are at right angles to each other and 
represent the square. The hypothenuse of the right-angled triangle which binds the two 
sides together and keeps them square, represents the cement of brotherly love and 
affection which is spread by the trowel. These are but hints of the resemblance between 
the working tools and the Forty- Seventh Problem and may be carried further if you 
wish. 


The ancient Egyptians in measuring out the ground for their temples could determine 
the north and south line from the stars; but the east and the west line was found by 
means of the Forty-Seventh Problem. On the north and south line, as ascertained by the 
stars, a string or cord was laid. (See diagram.) Let N S be the north and south line, A B 
C D the cord. On this cord they took a rod of any convenient length and laid off three 
lengths of the rod from A to B. four lengths from B to C, and five lengths from C to D. 
The cord was then fastened by pegs or pins at B and C, and then A to D were brought 
together at the same point as A prime D prime. A right triangle would thus be formed 
with sides 3, 4 and 5 with the right-triangle at B. and the east and west line of the 
building would be found in AB. 


Anderson, in his Constitutions of 1723, page 21, says "The Forty-Seventh Problem is 
the foundation of all Masonry, sacred, civil and military." In his edition of 1738, page 
26, he calls it "That amazing proposition which is the foundation of all Masonry of 
whatever materials or dimensions." The high regard in which the ancients, as well as 
the earliest Masons, held this proposition has doubtless lead to the claim to which you 
refer. Strictly speaking, it may not be true, and yet hints of the lessons taught in each of 
the emblems of Masonry can be found in some application of the Forty- seventh 
Problem. C.C.H. 


* * * 


"OFTEN TRIED, NEVER DENIED, AND WILLING TO BE TRIED AGAIN" 



The following question was recently brought up in one of our study meetings and the 
Research Committee of Mount Moriah Lodge No. 69 found themselves unable to give a 
satisfactory answer to it. Can you answer it for us ? 


"What must be the condition of a brother to say he has been often tried, never denied, 
and willing to be tried again?" 


- J.I.R., Louisana. 


This question has a two-fold application - the literal and the symbolic. In the literal 
sense it means that the brother has so posted himself that he is able to prove himself to 
be a Mason whenever tested. He was tried when he presented himself for advancement; 
he was not denied when the brethren voted him proficient. No well-informed brother 
after trying him has ever denied that he was a Mason. Having thus been tried and 
accepted in the past, he feels confident of his ability to prove himself a Mason and is 
willing to be tried again. 


In the symbolic sense, Life is a trial - a continual trial. Each of us are moral builders for 
eternity. The Master has never denied us as being unfit material to be worked into the 
spiritual temple, and if we are true Masons, endeavoring to do our part, we are not only 
willing, but desirous of continuing in the work, or in other words, willing to be tried 
again. 


C.C.H. 


* * * 


THE UNKNOWN LIFE OF CHRIST 



Has there ever been any systematic research work relative to what transpired in the life 
of Jesus Christ between the time he is recorded as having been found by Joseph and 
Mary in the Temple "sitting in the midst of the teachers, both hearing them and asking 
them questions," and his baptism by John? 


The accepted belief is that this intervening time was spent by him in Galilee as a 
caipenter. But, so far as the writer knows, there is no positive proof that this is, or is not, 
a fact. Also there are other theories, including that of being a member of the "Great 
School," but these are apparently without authenticity. 


I have oftened wondered why, if there has been no such research work, that students 
have not considered it a subject worthy of investigation. 


This query is not prompted by any disposition to be irreverent or to create discussion, 
but by a real desire for information. E.P.H., Florida. 


Ever since the canon of the New Testament was closed this interval of time in the life of 
Jesus about which you inquire has occasioned a vast deal of speculation and 
controversy. Some would have it (Theosophists, for example,) that Jesus spent this 
period in Egypt or India; others, that he lived in a circle of occulists somewhere - the 
so-called "Great School" - and recently George Moore, in his "Brook Kedron" disinters 
the old notion that Jesus was an Essene and spent those years in one of their 
monasteries; unfortunately these theories, one and all, like the dome seen by Coleridge 
in his dream, hang in the air. 


Thus far not one single item of tangible evidence has been brought forward to 
substantiate any one of these theories. It is easy to make assertions, difficult to offer 
proof. On the other hand, the New Testament discloses a number of facts which give 
much weight to the traditional view that Jesus passed the interim in Palestine, 
presumably at Nazareth; how otherwise would he have become as familiar with the 



ideas, institutions and customs of his people, intimate with the slight details of his daily 
life, a turn of phrase, a touch of nature, a private gesture. His solidarity with his people 
implies that he had spent years among them. 


You ask if any systematic research has been devoted to this. Such research as the 
paucity of data makes possible has been carried on, and that exhaustively, ever since the 
Renaissance times; those who waive the "traditional views" aside so airily would do 
well to familiarize themselves with the solid scholarship on which it rests. If you have 
not time or inclination to read many books you will find an epitome of the various 
arguments in the introductbry chapters of Moffat's "Introduction to the New 
Testament," and in "The Jesus of History," by T. R. Glover. The latter work is scholarly 
and intensely interesting, a book worth going twenty miles to read. 


H.L.H. 


— o- 


CORRESPONDENCE 


PERTINENT COMMENT ON THE JUNE ISSUE OF THE BUILDER 


NAMES OF CANDIDATES IN LODGE NOTICES 


While enjoying the contents of the June BUILDER, I noticed some items on which a 
few words from me might seem interesting. 



To begin at the end, I notice a brother is condemning the practice of publishing names 
of candidates in lodge notices. It is possible, of course, that harm might occasionally be 
done a candidate in this way, but on the other hand, the safety and well being of the 
lodge is so much advanced thereby that in the Grand Lodge of Canada, in this Province, 
such publication is required by the Constitution. Then, too, although this method works 
Bell enough for small communities where there are say a half dozen lodges, it has been 
found necessary to go still further in the larger cities. Here in Toronto there are thirty- 
six blue lodges, and up to about five years ago there had been found cases of 
unscrupulous men so determined to penetrate our ranks that they applied to two lodges 
at once, and were sometimes initiated in one before the news of their rejection in 
another could get around. Or they would re-apply shortly after rejection, instead of 
waiting twelve months as required, and get in because our very numbers made the old 
system too cumbersome. Also there were other causes for Masonic scandal in the 
growth of our membership, which needed to be prevented. 


Out of these condition arose the formation of a Central Masonic Bureau, with which at 
first the lodges affiliated voluntarily at their discretion. To the Secretary of this Bureau 
(I was Secretary for three years) all names of candidates were sent, together with the 
dates of their initiation or rejection. These names were card indexed and all new names 
were compared with those on file, and if it were found, for instance, that John Smith 
had previously applied to A Lodge, or had been rejected in B Lodge, this information 
with dates and names was at once sent to the Secretary of C Lodge so that they might 
know how to deal with his application. 


This system worked out so well that after some four years' trial it was adopted into our 
constitutional machinery by our Grand Lodge, and I may add that it has saved our 
lodges and also our Secretaries a vast deal of labor and other trouble. Similar bureaus 
can be found in any town where there are two or more lodges having concurrent 
jurisdiction, and the system also keeps a watch for those men who try to slip in under 
the dual residence plan. I hope that eventually the Bureau will become provincial rather 
than municipal, somewhat like that obtaining in the Grand Lodge of Ireland in Antrim, 
when it will be about as good as we can make it. 


ASSISTANCE FROM ENEMY MASONS 



C.V.H. asks as to "enemy Masons having aided each other" in the present war. 


One of our brethren, who went over with the ranks and returned a Lieutenant, told me 
this incident, which he had from one of those who benefited by it. 


It occurred at the second battle of Ypres. A little group of English prisoners were being 
marched to the rear, when our fire became so heavy that they and their captors had to 
seek shelter. During this interval the "non-com." in charge of the English prisoners went 
through the pockets of some of them and came across one of those certificates of 
membership in three languages, which have been used quite extensively. It was a 
question whether the party could proceed further without being destroyed as a party, so 
the "non-com." handed back the card to its owner and told him he could go where he 
liked with his prisoners. 


I was also told by the editor of our "Masonic Sun" that he knew a lady in this city who 
had been helped out of Germany, and through Holland, by a German officer because he 
found her wearing a Masonic charm. 


THE CABLE TOW 


Brother Haywood says, on page four of the Correspondence Circle Bulletin, that 
"before the obligation the candidate is held by compulsion," and cites the cable-tow as 
the symbol thereof. 


I do not think this is well founded at all. I have always understood that candidates 
expressly stated they were in that position of their own free will and accord, and that it 
was unMasonic even to solicit their applications. 



In more primitive times the cable-tow served as a guide wherewith to draw the man 
along an unknown path, and, insofar as initiation represents a new birth, the cable-tow 
can very properly be arranged to represent the umbilical cord and its special uses. This 
would apply especially to those States where the work acknowledges the particular 
relationship of the J. D. to the candidate during his initiation. 


N.W.J.H., Canada. 


* * * 


A DISCUSSION OF THE DISCREPANCIES IN THE FLAG NUMBER OF THE 
GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 


Editor THE BUILDER: 


I am returning the letter of Gilbert L. Grosvenor together with my comments on same. 


It seems to me that THE BUILDER is to be congratulated on the very timely 
publication of the flag article. There is hardly any subject on which there is greater 
interest than the flag. 


I have been more than anxious that there should be no error in that and I was equally 
more than anxious that there should be no error in my reply to the Geographical 
Magazine. I have carefully looked up the matter and I am fully convinced that we have 
made no error in any particular, but I am more fully convinced than ever that the 
Geographic Magazine did make a most serious error in omitting the flag of 1812. This 
in addition to the outright blunders of history seems to me to make it more than 
reasonable that the Geographic Magazine would make some corrections. 



However, I am not so interested in w hat the Geographic Magazine does as I am that 
THE BUILDER is put absolutely right. 


Fraternally, 

John W. Barry, P.G.M., Iowa. 


A LETTER FROM THE EDITOR OF THE GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 


Editor THE BUILDER: 


I have your favor of recent date with respect to the criticisms of the Flag Number of the 
National Geographic Magazine by Mr. John W. Barry, published in the April number of 
THE BUILDER. It is not my puipose to engage in any controversy with Mr. Barry, but 
I am sure you will be glad to publish the answer as you published the charge, as a 
matter of fairness as well as of courtesy. 


Mr. Barry states that the Geographic is in error in saying that the Union flag was raised 
first on January 2nd. Admiral Prebble investigated that matter and fixed the date as 
January 2nd. He cites the letter to the Philadelphia Gazette reporting the activities of the 
army on that day, in which it is stated that the flag "was raised on the 2nd in 
compliment to the United Colonies." He also cites other letters to the same effect. 
General Washington's Orderly Book does not say when the flag was raised. 


It is asserted by Mr. Barry that there was no such thing as a Colonial standard, yet he 
says that the contemporaneous writings of General Schuyler and the drawing in colors 
of the flag of the Royal Savage showed definitely a Union flag. General Washington 
says in his letter to Joseph Reed that "We hoisted the Union flag in compliment to the 
United Colonies.” 



Mr. Barry then goes on to assert that this flag was promptly abandoned, being an 
English flag. The record shows beyond question that he is in error in that conclusion. 
First there is Major Samuel Seldon's powder horn, dated March 9th, 1776, showing the 
ship Amaraca flying the striped flag with the British crosses. That was the date when 
the British were forced to agree to evacuate Boston. Again, under authority of 
Congress, North Carolina issued paper money dated April 2, 1776. Thereon appears a 
perfect representation of the Continental flag with the union crosses and the thirteen 
stripes. Still further, under date of May 13, 1776, a writer from New Providence to the 
London Ladies' Magazine, states "that the colors of the American fleet were striped 
under the Union with thirteen stripes." Still further yet, we find a report of the Virginia 
convention read to the army at Williamsburg, May 16, 1776, in which it is stated, "The 
Union Flag of the American States waved upon the Capitol during the whole of this 
ceremony." 


These citations certainly prove that the Union flag was in general use before the 
Declaration of Independence. 


That this "Union Flag" was also in general use after the Declaration of Independence is 
shown with equal clearness. On July 30, 1776, Captain Chapman, of H.M.S. "Shark" 
wrote to Vice-Admiral Young saying, "I saw a sail in the offing with colors which I 
was unacquainted with (being red and white striped, with a Union next the staff) found 
to be an American armed ship, mounting 18 guns, 6 pounders, and wears a Jack, Ensign 
and Pendant. I have since learned her name to be the Reprisal, Capt. Weeckes." Here 
we have an American naval vessel flying the Union flag after July 4th, 1776, and the 
records show that she sailed from America after that date. Again, sometime after July 
12, 1776, Ambrose Searle, confidential secretary to Admiral Lord Howe, wrote to the 
Earl of Dartmouth describing the colors used by the American troops as follows: "Their 
colors are thirteen stripes of red and white alternately with the English Union in the 
comer." Again, we find the Royal Savage, as cited by Mr. Barry, flying the Union flag, 
yet Wyncoop (whose schooner Schuyler says she was, and the notation on the water 
color painting showing her flying this flag) did not take command until some time after 
May 2, 1776, and Arnold did not supersede him until August. The ship was mn aground 
October 1 1th, 1776. Still again, under orders dated October 17, 1776, the Andrew 
Doria, Captain Isaiah Robinson, sailed for the Dutch island of St. Eustatius, more than 
three months after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. On November 16th, 
1776, she was saluted by the Dutch Governor of the island. Great Britain protested the 



salute and submitted two affidavits showing that the Andrew Doria flew "the flag of the 
Continental Congress." Again, under date of November 19th, 1776, we find a report to 
the Maryland Council of Safety, from St. Eustatia, "All American vessels here now 
wear the Congress colors." These citations show beyond controversy that the Union 
flag was flown by Government vessels long after the Declaration of Independence was 
adopted, and leave no ground whatever for the statement that the Union flag was 
"promptly abandoned" because it was an English flag. They also show that there was a 
"colonial standard," recognized as the flag of the Continental Congress. Having direct, 
official, sworn testimony that the official ships of the United States were flying the 
Union flag as late as November, 1776, testimony borne out by ship masters and civilian 
observers, it were a waste of time to discuss the contention that this flag was abandoned 
after July 4, 1776, or that Betsy Ross designed a flag that superseded the Union flag on 
that date. After July 4, 1776, the American Army was using the Union flag and so was 
the American navy. 


As to the evidence upon which the Betsy Ross legend is hung a passing notice is 
sufficient. Aside from the hearsay evidence of her descendents, there is offered the fact 
that regiments were allowed money after July 4, 1776, for altering their colors, that 
certain Indians petitioned for a "flag of the United States" eleven days before June 14, 
1777, and that Captain Montgomery is alleged to have flown "the Stars and Stripes," on 
the Nancy. This last allegation is based on the statement of his daughter that he received 
the news of the Declaration of Independence before sailing from St. Thomas and a 
description of the new flag, from which he promptly had one made and unfurled. Yet 
the records show that the Nancy was blown up off Cape May June 29th, 1776, five days 
before the Declaration of Independence, and that she had left St. Thomas before Betsy 
Ross is alleged to have designed the Stars and Stripes. 


Again Mr. Barry says that General Washington was interested in having Betsy Ross 
make the flag, and in proof thereof cites a letter to General Putnam, written May 28th, 
asking him to speak to the several Colonels and hurry them to get their colors done. But 
how could these colors be the Betsy Ross colors, if Mrs. Ross designed the flag in June, 
as her descendants allege? 


Again, Mr. Barry says that the Union flag was the flag of India, yet we have the 
statements of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams that the ideas represented in the flag 
were borrowed from the Dutch. 



Clearly the statement that the picture of Washington Crossing the Delaware was painted 
by Peale was a slip of the pen. The writer of those lines has seen the original hundreds 
of times and knows well it was by Leutze. 


With reference to the statement that the Geographic had erroneously substituted another 
flag for the one adopted in 1 8 1 8, it needs only to be said that the arrangements of the 
stars was not specified by Congress. The navy always used the parallel lines of stars, 
and the Army finally adopted the Navy arrangement. The flag as the world knows it 
through the Navy must be the flag and that in 1818 had the stars in parallel rows as it 
has always had since. Very truly yours, 


Gilbert H. Grosvenor, Director and Editor. 


* * * 


PAST GRAND MASTER BARRY’S REPLY TO MR.GROSVENOR’S LETTER 


Editor BUILDER: 


I thank you for the opportunity to see and comment on the letter from Gilbert H. 
Grosvenor, Editor of the Geographic Magazine, referring to my article as published in 
the April BUILDER. 


Now it is clearly apparent that what he or I may say of events before our time is 
trustworthy only insofar as we may quote from records of the time under consideration 
or from later but accredited historians. The absence of authorities is the great defect in 



the flag article in the October, 1917, number of the Geographic Magazine and from the 
letter just handed me. 


January 1, 1776 - True Date of Grand Union Flag 


The Orderly Book of George Washington is in the Pension Division of the War 
Department according to last report. George Canby in his "Evolution of the American 
Flag ' says on page 3 1 , that he personally copied therefrom the quotation given in my 
BUILDER article establishing the date of January 1, 1776, as the date of first hoisting 
the Grand Union Flag. My reference was: "American Archives, 4th Series, vol. IV, p. 
568." Also "Avery, vol. V, p. 307." Instead of saying the above is not true, it would be 
more convincing to investigate - even photograph the page of the Orderly Book. True, 
he cites Prebble, but he is on both sides, for on page 223, 4th edition, he gives a picture 
of the "Grand Union" Flag with the date Jan. 1, 1776, while in the text he says Jan. 2. 


George Bancroft is generally recognized as an authority on American history. In vol. 
IV, chapter XX, p. 322, he gives the date of the Grand Union Flag as January 1, 1776. 
There is, therefore, no room to doubt the correctness of THE BUILDER on this point. 
See also Journal of American History vol. I, p. 15. 


Mr. Grosvenor holds me in error for saying there was no Colonial flag and that many 
flags were in use. Yet pages 338-9 of the Flag number of the Geographic show some of 
the many Colonial flags in use - fully bearing out my statement. Further, previous to 
June 14, 1777, no flag of any kind had been established by law, though various flags 
were in more or less general use including the stars and stripes. 


Grand Union Flag Abandoned Seven Months Before Stars and Stripes Adopted 


I quoted from that eminent historian, Avery, thus: "After the Declaration of 
Independence the British Union was removed from the colors of the new nation." For 



so doing, Mr. Grosvenor takes me to task very severely - using a whole page of 
citations but without giving specific references. However, they prove just what was said 
in THE BUILDER. The last use of the Grand Union Flag was in November, 1776. No 
reference to any later use has ever been found though careful search has been made, yet 
this was nearly seven months before the formal adoption of the Stars and Stripes, June 
14, 1777. Evidently Avery and THE BUILDER are right on that point. 


Grand Union "A Signal of Surrender" Because Flay of India 


That the Grand Union Flag was the counterpart of the flag of the East India Company is 
shown by Prebble, p. 221 . Many of the troops in Boston had seen service in India and 
when Washington raised this flag Jan. 1, 1776, naturally they took it, to use the words 
of Washington, "as a signal of surrender." "Thus," he says, "We gave great joy to them 
(the Red Coats, I mean) without knowing or attending it." See Washington's letter to 
Reid. 


Betsy Ross Made, and Washington Designed, the Stars and Stripes 


Mr. Grosvenor says that it is "a waste of time to discuss the contention that Betsy Ross 
designed a flag." Now no one has ever contended that Betsy Ross designed the flag, but 
that she did make the flag - that is all. Washington is generally given credit for the 
design and may have been assisted by Francis Hopkinson who rendered bills to 
Congress for such service. His bills were not paid because he was already in 
government service, and further, others had been consulted, but Betsy Ross was paid 
for making flags about that time and continued many years at the same job and in the 
same little house in Philadelphia. See also Journal American History, vol. I, p. 13. 


The Geographic Wrong as to Trumbull and Peale 



Mr. Grosvenor is not very discriminating. He refers to the sketch on Major Samuel 
Sheldon's powder horn as perfectly good evidence, yet I am unable to find the name of 
this Major in any reference book available, though I have access to a fair reference 
library. On the other hand, he gives no credit to John Trumbuil, one of Washington's 
noted commanders, who in a painting commemorating the battle of Princeton, Jan. 
3,1777, shows the Stars and Stripes in use six months before their formal adoption by 
Congress. How does Grosvenor treat such a witness, who actually participated in that 
battle? He says he left the country while Washington was before Boston nearly a year 
previous and was away seven years. This must be another slip of the pen for he was 
active in the U.S. until 1780 and later Congress provided by resolution to pay Trumbull 
$32,000 to paint the events he had witnessed - the four large pictures now in the rotunda 
of the Capitol at Washington. 


Mr. Grosvenor makes only one admission in this almost "Comedy of Errors," thus: 
"Clearly the statement that the picture of Washington crossing the Delaware was 
painted by Peale was a slip of the pen. The writer of those lines has seen the original 
hundreds of times and knows it was by Leutze" - many thanks, but the Leutze picture is 
not in point. What about Peak's picture of Washington at Trenton bought by Congress 
because of its fidelity to fact and now hanging in a glass case in the Capitol at 
Washington at the head of the grand staircase, Senate Wing? Has he seen this once? It 
is the real thing. It shows the Stars and Stripes in use about seven months before their 
formal adoption by Congress June 14, 1777. Peale was one of Washington's 
commanders there and even Mr. Grosvenor should give him at least as much credit as 
he does the unknown author of a sketch on a powder hom. Neither was Trumbull in 
anyway related to Betsy Ross, as might be assumed from Mr. Grosvenor's statement 
because their graphic records tend to sustain her claims as the maker of the first "Old 
Glory." Mr. Grosvenor confuses "colors" with flags - two very differed things. Even 
now the company colors often have but little semblance to the flag. Washington's letter 
to Putnam was mentioned to show that Washington had the matter of flags and colors 
on his mind. No one conversant with the terms can misunderstand. 


Mr. Grosvenor says "We have the statements of Benjamin Franklin and John Adams 
that the ideas represented in the flag were borrowed from the Dutch." Well, Ben and 
John have written much and I have read some of it. But just what are the "statements" 
and where may they be found? Please be a little more specific. Give book and page. 



Admits Suppression of a Well Known Flag 


Mr. Grosvenor justifies the suppression of the flag adopted by Congress in 1818 
because the law did not specify the arrangement of the stars. The same reason would 
justify omitting the flag of 1895. The original flag law of June, 1777, said nothing about 
the arrangement of either stars or bars, because in all probability, Washington had laid 
before them the flag he had Betsy Ross make for him. Now if in practice the bars had 
come to be vertical as in some flags, the historian, in fidelity to facts, should show the 
flag adopted. In 1818 the flag then adopted was very different from the one now shown 
in the Geographic Magazine, ft is true the one shown is authorized because the law did 
not specify the arrangement of the stars. But here again, in 1777, Congress was 
adopting a design actually before the House and any attempt to excuse the historian 
from showing just what that design really was is mere camouflage. 


The records of Congress show, and so far as I can find no one claims any different, that 
the flag adopted had its twenty stars arranged in the form of one great star. The flag was 
made by Mrs. Samuel Chester Reid, according to her husband’s design as adopted by 
Congress April 4, 1818. The flag was ready April 13, and at once hoisted over the 
Capitol as shown by my quotation from James Schouler in THE BUILDER. 


Further, this form of the flag was in general use for years - a fact shown by Rear 
Admiral George Henry Prebble whose testimony is competent because he was many 
times an eye witness of that flag. In his history of the flag first published in 1 872, he 
devotes twelve pages to the flag law of 1818. Just to show the flag suppressed by the 
Geographic Magazine is in point of fact a serious omission from the flag story, let 
Prebble testify. On page 348 of 4th edition he says: 


"This, the first flag of the kind put together or hoisted, was made at New York by Mrs. 
S.C. Reid, under the direction of her gallant husband, and the twenty stars on its union, 
representing as many states were arranged to form one great star.” See No. 22 in THE 
BUILDER. Continuing, Prebble says: 



"The unions of the flags which wave over our Fortresses, and in use by the Military 
Department of the Government are generally if not always, so arranged. In the navy 
flags, the stars have always been set in parallel lines." 


Now, Mr. Grosvenor, inasmuch as the Geographic Magazine purports to give the 
military and land flags as well as the flags of the navy, the suppression of this Reid flag 
actually adopted by Congress in 1 8 1 8 and used so generally, as Prebble shows, can in 
no way be justified because of changes made by executive direction in later years. You 
have omitted an important flag, long the only one known to the interior of this country. 
You are not to blame for all these errors; they are almost inherent in such a work. But I 
cannot see how you can be held blameless unless you correct them, particularly this last 
one - the omitted flag. 


John W. Barry, P.G.M., Iowa.