The fourth letter of the Phoenician, the
Hebrew, the Greek, the Roman, and of nearly all alphabets. In
Hebrew it is Daleth, signifying the door of life, a representation
of which was probably its original hieroglyph, as in the illustration.
Here
1 shows the approximation to the Hebrew Daleth;
2 the Greek Delta, resembling the opening of a tent.
The numerical value of Daleth is four; as
a Roman numeral it stands for 500.
DA COSTA, HIPPOLYTO JOSEPH
A native of Colonia-do-Sacramento, on the
river La Plata. He was made a Freemason in Philadelphia in the
United States and afterward settled in Lisbon. He was subsequently
persecuted by the Inquisition, and was rescued only in time to
save his life by the aid of English Brethren who got him under
the protection of the British flag. He then passed over into England,
where he lived for several years, becoming a zealous Freemason
and devoting himself to Masonic literature. In 1811, he published
in London a Narrative of his persecution in Lisbon, by the Inquisition,
for the pretended crime of Freemasonry, in two volumes. He wrote
also a History of the Dionysian Artificers, in which he attempts
to connect Freemasonry with the Dionysian and other mysteries
of the ancients. He begins with the Eleusinian mysteries, assuming
that Dionysus, Bacchus, Adonis, Thammuz, and Apollo were ail various
names for the Sun, Whose apparent movements are represented by
the death and resurrection referred to in the ceremonies. But
as the sun is typified as being dead or hidden for three months
under the horizon, he thinks that the mysteries must have originated
in a cold climate as far north as latitude 66 , or among a people
living near the polar circle. He therefore attributes the invention
of these mysteries to the ancient Scythians or Massagetae, of
whom he confesses that we know nothing. He afterward gives the
history of the Dionysiac or Orphic mysteries of El eusis, and
draws a successful parallel between the initiation into these
and the Masonic initiation. His disquisition's are marked by much
learning, although his reasoning may not always carry conviction.
DACTYLI
Priests of Cybele, in Phrygia, of whom there
were five, which number could not be exceeded, and alluded to
the salutation and blessing by the five fingers of the hand. The
word is from the Greek daktylos, meaning a finger.
DADUCHOS
A torch-bearer. The title given to an officer in the Eleusinian
mysteries, who bore a torch in commemoration of the torch lit
by Ceres at the fire of Mount Etna, and carried by her through
the wood in her search for her daughter.
DAEDALUS
A famous artist and mechanician, whose genealogy
is traced in the Greek myths as having sprung from the old Athenian
race of kings, the Erechtheidae. He is said to have executed the
Cretan Labyrinth, the reservoir near Megaris in Sicily, the Temple
of Apollo at Capua, and the celebrated altar sculptured with lions
on the Libyan coast. He is said to be the inventor of a number
of the working Tools used in the various degrees of Freemasonry,
the plumb-line and the ax, most of the tools used in carpentry,
and of glue. Of him is told the fable of his flying safely over
the Aegean by means of wings made by himself. His nephew, Perdix,
is the reputed inventor of the third Great Light in Freemasonry,
the Compasses, which are dedicated to the Craft. Through envy
Daedalus is said to have hurled his nephew, Perdix, from the Temple
Athena.
DAGGER
In the advanced Degrees a symbol of Masonic
vengeance, or the punishment of crime (see Vengeance).
DAGRAIN, LOUIS
A miter in the Amsterdam Journal of November
3, 1735, of an article on the subject of Freemasonry, which caused
an edict from the States General forbidding Masonic gatherings
throughout the country (see Thory, Acta Latomorum 11, 306).
DAGRAN, LOUIS
President of a General Assembly of thirty
Lodges, held on Saint John's Day, 1756, at the Hague, for the
formation of the Grand Lodge of Holland. It was at this December
meeting that Baron Van Aerssen Beyeren Van Hogerheide was appointed
Grand Master (see Thory, Acta Latomorum 1, 72).
DAIS
From the French word dais, meaning a canopy.
The raised floor at, the head of a banqueting room, or any ceremonial
chamber or hall, designed for guests of distinction ; so called
because it used to be decorated with a canopy. In Masonic language,
the dais is the elevated portion of the eastern part of the lodge-room,
which is occupied by Past Masters and the dignitaries of the Order.
This should be elevated three steps above the floor. This station
of the Junior Warden is raised one step, and that. of the Senior
two.
DAKOTA
Saint John's Lodge was the first Lodge
in Dakota. It received a Dispensation from the Grand Lodge of
Iowa, December 5, 1862, and a Charter on June 3, 1863. Representatives
of this Lodge and of Incense. Elk Point, Minnehaha, and Silver
Star Lodges held a Convention on June 21, 1875, to consider the
formation of a Grand Lodge.
Members of Mount Zion Lodge, U. D., were
present but, owing to the fact that they had no Charter, did not
take part, in the proceedings. A Constitution was adopted and
Grand Officers; who were installed at another meeting on July
21, were elected. When in 1999 the territory of Dakota was divided
by Act of Congress into North Dakota and South Dakota the Grand
Lodge of Dakota became the Grand Lodge of South Dakota and certain
Lodges in North Dakota were permitted to organize a Grand Lodge
of North Dakota.
The General Grand Chapter of the United
States chartered eight Chapters in Dakota, the first of which
was Yankton, No. 1, at. Yankton, chartered on August 24, 1885.
On February. 25, 1885, the Grand Chapter was organized by the
following Chapters: Yankton, No. 1; Sioux Falls, No. 2; Dakota,
No. 3; Siroc, No. 4; Casselton, No. 7; Cheyenne, No. 9, U. D.
Huron, No. 10, U. D.; Keystone, No. 11, U. D.; Watertown, No.
12, U. D.; Jamestown, No, 13, U. D.; Aberdeen, No. 14, U. D. The
first Annual Convocation was held June 8, 1885. When the division
of the Territory took place the Grand Chapter of Dakota gave permission
to the Lodges located in South Dakota to organize a Grand Chapter
of South Dakota, under the Constitution of the General Grand Chapter.
This was done on January 6, 1890. The Grand Chapter of North Dakota
was organized three days later.
The first Council in Dakota, Fargo, No .1,
was chartered by the General Grand Council on November 19, 1889.
This Council was located in North Dakota and, therefore, after
1889, was considered the first. Council of that State. There was
no Grand Council in Dakota until after the division of the Territory.
The Grand Commandery was organized at Sioux
Falls on May 14, 1884, by representation of the four Commanderies.
Dakota. No. 1; Cyrene, No. 2; De Molay; No. 3, and Fargo, No. 5.
On June 16, 1890 the representatives of Tancered. No 4: Fargo,
No. 5; Grand Forks, No. 8, and Wi-ha-ha, No . 12, organized the
Grand Commandery of North Dakota. The Grand Commandery of North
Dakota. The Grand Commandery of Dakota then changed its name to
that of Grand Commandery of South Dakota.
A Consistory of the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite was chartered at Fargo, on May 26, 1886, as Dakota,
No. 1; a Council of Kadosh, Fargo, No. 1, on December 8, 1883;
a Chapter of Rosy Croix, Mackey, No.1, on February 27, 1882, and
a Lodge of Perfection, Alpha, No. 1, on February 8, 1882.
DALCHO, FREDERICK
One of the founders of the Supreme Council
of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for the Southern Jurisdiction
of the United States. He was born in the City of London in the
year 1770, of Prussian parents. His father had been a distinguished
officer under Frederick the Great and, having been severely wounded,
was permitted to retire to England for his health. He was a very
earnest Freemason, and transmitted his sentiments to his son.
At his death, this son was sent for by an uncle, who had a few
years before emigrated to Baltimore. Here he obtained a good classical
education, after which he devoted himself successfully to the
study of medicine, including a more extensive course of botany
than has been common in medical schools.
Having received his degree
of Doctor of Medicine, he took a commission in the medical department
of the American army. With his division of the army he came to
South Carolina, and was stationed at Fort Johnson, in Charleston
harbor. Here some difficulty arose between Doctor Dalcho and his
brother officers, in consequence of which he resigned his place
in the army in 1799. He then removed to Charleston, where he formed
a partnership in the practice of physic with Isaac Auld, and he
became a member of the Medical Society, and a trustee of the Botanic
Garden, established through its influence.
On the 12th of June,
1818, Doctor Dalcho was admitted to the priesthood of the Protestant
Èpiscopal Church. On the 23rd of February, he was elected
assistant minister of Saint Michael's Church, in Charleston. He
died on the 24th of November, 1836, in the sixty- seventh year
of his age, and the seventeenth of his ministry in Saint Michael's
Church.
The principal published work of Doctor Dalcho is "An
Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South
Carolina. He also published a work entitled " The Evidence
from Prophecy for the Truth of Christianity and the Divining of
Christ : besides several sermons and essays, some of which were
the result of considerable labor and research. He was also the
projector, and for a long time the principal conductor, of the
Gospel Messenger, then the leading organ of the Episcopal Church
in South Caroline.
The Masonic career of Doctor Dalcho closely
connects him with a York Freemasonry in South Carolina, and the
Scottish Rite throughout. the United States.
He was initiated in a York or Athol Lodge
at the time when the Jurisdiction of South Carolina was divided
by the existence and the dissension's of two Grand Lodges, the
one deriving its authority from the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted
Masons of England, and the other from the rival Atholl Grand Lodge.
His constant desire appears, however, to
have been to unit these discordant elements, and to uproot the
evil spirit of Masonic rivalry and contention which at that time
prevailed -a wish which was happily gratified, at length, by the
union of the two Grand Lodges of South Carolina in 1817, a consummation
to which he himself greatly contributed.
In 1801 Doctor Dalcho received the Thirty.-third
and ultimate Degree of Sovereign Grand Inspector of the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite ; and May 31, 1801 he became instrumental
in the establishment at Charleston of the Supreme Council for
the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, of which Body
he was appointed Grand Secretary, and afterward Grand commander;
which latter position he occupied until 1823, when he resigned.
September 23, 1801, he delivered an oration before the Sublime
Grand Body in Charleston. This and another delivered March 21,
1803, before the same Body, accompanied by a learned historical
appendix, were published in the latter year under the general
name of Dalcho's Orations. The work was soon after republished
in Dublin by the Grand Council of Heredom or Prince Masons of
that city; and McCosh says that there were other editions issued
in Europe, which, however, Brother Mackey had never seen.
The oration of 1803 and the appendix furnish
the best information that up to that day, and for many years afterward.
was accessible to the Craft in relation to the history of the
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in this country.
In 1807. at the request of the Grand Lodge
of York Masons of South Carolina, he published an Ahiman Rezon,
which was adopted as the code for the government of the Lodges
under the jurisdiction of that Body. This work, as was to be expected
from the character of the Grand Lodge which it represented, was
based on the previous book of Laurence Dermott.
In 1808 he was elected Corresponding Grand
Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Ancient York Masons, and from
that time directed the influences of his high position to the
reconciliation of the Masonic difficulties in South Carolina.
In 1817 the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted
Masons and that of Ancient York Masons of South Carolina became
united under the name of the Grand Lodge of Ancient Freemasons
of South Carolina. Doctor Dalcho took a very active part in this
reunion, and at the first annual communication he was elected
Grand Chaplain. The duties of this office he faithfully performed.
and for many years delivered a public address or sermon on the
Festival of Saint John the Evangelist.
In 1822 he prepared a second edition of the Ahiman Rezon which
was published the following year, enriched with many notes. Some
of these notes he would have hardly written, with the enlarged
experience of the present day; but on the whole the second edition
was an improvement on the first. Although retaining the peculiar
title which had been introduced by Dermott it ceased in a great
measure to follow the principles of the "'Ancient Masons."
In 1823 Dalcho became involved in an unpleasant controversy with
some of his Masonic associates, in consequence of difficulties
and dissension's which at that time existed in the Scottish Rite;
and his feelings were so wounded by the un-masonic spirit which
seemed to actuate his antagonists and former friends, that he
resigned the office of Grand Chaplain, and retired for the remainder
of his life from all participation in the active duties of Freemasonry.
DALMATIC
A robe worn by deacons in some Christian
Churches. Originally made of linen, as shown by early Christian
paintings on the walls of the catacombs at Rome, but now generally
made of heavy woolen or silk material, as the planate or outer
vestment worn by the priest. This article of dress has become
quite common in many of the Degrees of various Rites.
DAMASCUS
An ancient and important city of Syria,
situated on the road between Babylon and Jerusalem, and said in
Masonic tradition to have been one of the resting-places of the
Freemasons who, under the proclamation of Cyrus, returned from
the former to the latter city to rebuild the Temple. An attempt
was made in 1868 to introduce Freemasonry into Damascus, and a
petition, signed by fifteen applicants, for a Charter for a Lodge
was sent to the Grand Lodge of England; but the petition was rejected
on the ground that all the petitioners were members of Bodies
under other Grand Lodge Jurisdictions.
DAMBOOL
The vast rock temple of the Buddhists in
Ceylon, containing a profusion of carvings, figures of Buddha
of extraordinary magnitude. Monuments of this deity are, in the
common Singhalese term, called Dagoba, but the more general name
is Stupa or Tope (see Topes).
DAME
In the York Roll No.4 and some of the other
old manuscripts, we find the direction to the Apprentice that
he shall not so act as to bring harm or shame, during his apprenticeship,
"either to his Master or Dame." It is absurd to suppose
that this gives any color to the theory that in the ancient Masonic
gilds women were admitted. The word was used in the same sense
as it still is in the public schools of England, where the old
lady who keeps the house at which the pupils board and lodge,
is called the dame. The Companions de la Tour in France called
her la mére, or the mother. it must, however, be acknowledged,
that women, under the title of sisters were admitted as members.
and given the freedom of the company, in the old Livery Companies
of London -a custom which Herbert ( History of the Livery Companies
i, 83) thinks was borrowed, on the reconstitution of the companies
by Edward III, from the religious gilds (see this subject discussed
under the tittle Sisters of the Gild).
DAMES OF MOUNT TABOR
An androgynous, both sexes, Masonic Society,
established about the year 1818, under the auspices of the Grand
Orient of France. Its design was to give charitable relief to
destitute females.
DAMES OF THE ORDER OF SAINT JOHN
Religious ladies who, from its first institution,
had been admitted into the Fraternity of Knights Hospitalers of
Saint John of Jerusalem. The rules for their reception were similar
to those for the Knights, and the proofs of noble descent which
were required of them were sometimes more rigid. They had many
conventual establishments or asylums in France, Italy, and Spain.
DAMES PLEIADES
See Feuillants
DAMOISEL
A name sometimes given in the times of chivalry
to a page or candidate for knighthood, but also used mean a young
woman.
DAN
One of the twelve tribes of Israel, whose
blue banner, charged with an eagle, is borne by the Grand Master
of the First Veil in a Royal Arch Chapter.
DANGER
In all the old Constitutions and Charges,
Freemasons are taught to exercise brotherly love, and to deal
honestly and truly with each other, whence results the duty incumbent
upon every Freemason to warn his Brother of approaching danger.
That this duty may never be neglected, it is impressed upon every
Master Mason by a significant ceremony.
DANIEL
The old countersign with "Darius"
formerly used in the Thirty-second Degree, Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite. A Hebrew prophet, contemporary of Ezekiel, about
600 B.C. Carried captive to Babylon in the fourth year of Jehoiakim,
but selected for instruction in all the learning of the Chaldeans
by order of the Court. His skill in the interpretation of dreams
was famed. He became Governor of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar,
and the first ruler of the whole Medo-Persian Empire, inferior
only to Darius, then the king. Under Cyrus he was Grand Master
of the Palace and Interpreter of Visions, as suggested by the
Fifteenth Degree, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
He did not return with his countrymen to
Judea when granted their liberty. It is a dispute as to when he
died, or where, but the majority favor Sushan, in Persia, when
he was ninety years of age. At the present day a tomb is shown
in this ancient city bearing his name; in fact, it is the only
standing structure there. Daniel was noted and famed for his piety,
and as well for his worldly possessions.
DANNEBROG
The banner of Denmark containing a white
cross is founded upon the tradition, which reminds us of that
of Constantine, that Waldemar II, of Denmark, in 1219 saw in the
heavens a fiery cross, which betokened his victory over the Esthonians.
Brother Charles Schou, San Carlos, Occidental
Negros, Philippine Islands, writes that the Danish flag is a white
cross on a red field, the white cross dividing the background
or field of the flag into four red squares. He says further that
" the origin of this banner, or the legend of its origin
as it was taught to me years ago when I went to school. in Denmark
is as follows: 'During the Esthonian battle in 1219, the Danish
army was being hard pressed and it looked as if it would lose
the battle. Bishop Absolon who was with the Army, asked to be
carried up on a hill nearby and there he prayed for victory for
the Danes. The Bishop was old, he had just left his sickbed and
he soon became exhausted and it was necessary for the monks to
hold up his arms while praying. Suddenly the heavens opened up
and a large red banner with a white cross was seen floating towards
earth. It was immediately caught and carried to the front of the
Danish Army. The sight of the cross inspired the Army with new
courage and soon the Esthonians were fleeing for their lives.'
DANTZIC
In the year 1768, on the 3rd of October,
the burgomaster and magistrates of the city of Dantzic commenced
a persecution against Freemasonry, which Institution they charged
with seeking to undermine the foundations of Christianity; and
to establish in its place the religion of nature. Hence, they
issued a decree forbidding every citizen, inhabitant, and even
stranger sojourning in the city, from any attempt to reestablish
the society of Freemasons, which was thenceforth to be regarded
"as forever abolished," under penalties of fine and
imprisonment.
DAO
The Zen name for light, from Daer, meaning
to shine.
DARAKIEL
A responsive word in the Twenty-third Degree
of the Scottish Rite. sometimes pronounced dar-kee-ale. The Latin
expression is Directio Dei, meaning By direction of God.
DARIUS
The successor of Cyrus on the throne of
Persia, Babylon, and Medea. He pursued the friendly policy of
his predecessor in reference to the Jews, and confirmed the decrees
of that monarch by a new edict. In the second year of his reign,
Haggai and Zechariah, encouraged by this edict, induced their
countrymen to resume the work of restoring the Temple, which was
finished four years afterward.
Darius is referred to in the Degrees of
Princes of Jerusalem, the Sixteenth of the Scottish Rite, and
Companion of the Red Cross in the American Rite.
DARKNESS
Darkness has, in all the systems of initiation,
been deemed a symbol of ignorance, and so opposed to light, which
is the symbol of knowledge.
Hence the rule, that the eye should not
see until the heart has conceived the true nature of those beauties
which constitute the mysteries of the Order. In the Ancient Mysteries,
the aspirant was always shrouded in darkness as a preparatory
step to the reception of the full light of knowledge. The time
of this confinement in darkness and solitude varied in the different
mysteries. Among the Druids of Britain the period was nine days
and nights; in the Grecian Mysteries it was three times nine days,
while among the Persians, according to Porphyry, it was extended
to the almost incredible period of fifth, days of darkness, solitude,
and fasting. Because, according to all the cosmogonies, accounts
of the universe, darkness existed before light was created, darkness
was originally worshiped as the firstborn, as the progenitor of
day and the state of existence before creation. The apostrophe
of Young to Night embodies the feelings which gave origin to this
debasing worship of darkness:
O majestic night!
Nature's great ancestor! Day's elder born!
And fated to survive the transient sun!
By morals and immortals seen with awe!
Freemasonry has restored darkness to its
proper place as a state of preparation; the symbol of that antemundane
chaos from whence light issued at the Divine command; of the state
of nonentity before birth, and of ignorance before the reception
of knowledge. Hence, in the Ancient Mysteries, the release of
the aspirant from solitude and darkness was called the act of
regeneration, and he was said to be born again, or to be raised
from the dead. And in Freemasonry, the darkness which envelops
the mind of the uninitiated being removed by the bright effulgence
of Masonic light, Freemasons are appropriately called the sons
of light. In Doctor Oliver's Signs and Symbols there is a lecture
"On the Mysterious Darkness of the Third Degree.'' This refers
to the ceremony of enveloping the room in darkness when that Degree
is conferred-a ceremony once always observed, but now, in this
country at least, frequently but improperly omitted. The darkness
here is a symbol of death, the lesson taught in the Degree, while
the subsequent renewal of light refers to that other and subsequent
lesson of eternal life.
DARMSTADT, GRAND LODGE OF
The Grand Lodge of Darmstadt, in Germany,
under the distinctive appellation of the Grand Lodge zur Eintracht
(meaning of Concord), was established on the 22nd of March, 1846,
by three Lodges, in consequence of a dissension between them and
the Eclectic Union. The latter body had declared that the religion
of Freemasonry was universal, and that Jews could be admitted
into the Order. Against this liberal declaration a Lodge at Frankfort
had protested, and had been erased from the roll for contumacy.
Two other Lodges, at Mainz and at Darmstadt, espoused its cause,
and united with it in forming a new Grand Lodge for Southern Germany,
founded on the dogma "that Christian principles formed the
basis on which they worked." It was, in fact, a dispute between
tolerance and intolerance. Nevertheless, the Body had the Grand
Duke of Hesse as patron, and was recognized by most of the Grand
Lodges of Germany.
DASSIGNY, FIFIELD
A Freemason and physician of Dublin, Ireland,
who published, in 1744, at that city, A Serious and Impartial
Inquiry into the Cause of the present Decay of Freemasonry in
the Kingdom of Ireland. It contained an abstract of the history
of Freemasonry, and an allusion to the Royal Arch Degree, on account
of which it has been cited by Dermott in his Ahiman Rezon. The
work is important on account of its reference to Royal Arch Masonry,
but is very scarce, only three copies of it being known to exist,
of which one belongs to the Grand Lodge of Iowa, and one to the
West Yorkshire Masonic Library, of which a facsimile was published
in 1893, while a third copy was discovered in 1896.
The writer's name is spelled D'Assigny or
Dassigny, but is given in the latter form on the title-page of
the Serious Enquiry. Dr. W. J. Chetwode Crawley has investigated
the history of the D'Assigny family (see Caelnentaria Hibernica.
FascieulusII).
Both the spelling and the pronunciation
of this name have been matters of some inquiry. The name is Dassigny
on the title page of his famous Enquiry.
The Ahiman Rezon of Brother Laurence Dermott,
1764 (page 47), gives the name as D'Assigny. Kenning's Cyclopedia
of Freemasonry spells the name Assigny and says of this spelling
" generally so spelt, but his real name seems to have been
Dassigny," though Brother Woodford (page 148) spells it D'Assigny,
a choice of three ways. As for the sounds in the name the following
is suggested as representative of common usage: Das, as in pass
or class; sig, as in see or key, and ny, as in penny or many.
Doctor E. B. de Sauzé prefers the following from a French
point of view: Da, as the first a in lateral; ssi, as ci in city;
gn, as in signor with the Spanish ñ, and y, as the French
i. He also feels certain that the original spelling of the name
was D'Assigny.
DATES, MASONIC
See Calendar
DATHAN
A Reubenite who, with Korah and Abiram,
revolted against Moses and unlawfully sought the priesthood. In
the first chapter of the Book of Numbers, where the whole account
is given, it is said that as a punishment the earth opened and
swallowed them up. The incident is referred to in the Order of
High Priesthood, an honorary Degree of the . American Rite, which
is conferred upon the installed High Priests of Royal Arch Chapters.
DAUGHTER, MASON'S
See Mason's Wife and Daughter
DAUGHTER OF A FREEMASON
The daughter of a Freemason is entitled
to certain peculiar privileges and claims upon the Fraternity
arising from her relationship to a member of the Craft. There
has been some difference of opinion as to the time and manner
in which the privileges cease. Masonic jurists, however, very
generally incline to the opinion that they are terminated by marriage.
If a Freemason's daughter marries a profane, she absolves her
connection with the Fraternity. If she marries a Freemason, she
exchanges her relation of a Freemason's daughter for that of a
Freemason's wife.
DAVID
David has no place in Masonic history, except
that which arises from the fact that he was the father of King
Solomon, and his predecessor on the throne of Israel. To him,
however, were the Jews indebted for the design of a Temple in
Jerusalem, the building of which was a favorite object with him.
For this purpose he purchased Mount Moriah, which had been the
threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite; but David had been engaged
in so many wars, that it did not seem good to the Lord that he
should be permitted to construct so sacred an edifice. This duty,
therefore, he left to his son, whom, before dying, he furnished
with plans and with means to accomplish the task. Though David
is a favorite subject among the Cabalistic and the Mohammedans,
who relate many curious traditions concerning him, he is not alluded
to in the legends or symbolism of Freemasonry except incidentally
as the father of Solomon.
DAVID I, KING OF SCOTLAND
1124--53; known as Protector of Freemasons
and Patron of the building art (see Alexander III).
DAVID, SHIELD OF
See Shield of David
DAZARD, MICHEL FRANÇOIS
Born at Chateaudun, in France, May 2, 1781.
He was a devoted student of Freemasonry, and much occupied in
the investigation of the advanced Degrees of ail the Rites.
He was an opponent of the Supreme Council,
against which body he wrote, in 1812, a brochure in French of
forty-eight pages entitled Eztrait des colonnes gravées
du Père de Famille, vallée d'Angers ( meaning Extract
from the Graven Columns of the Father of the Family, Valley of
Angers). Kloss calls it an important and exhaustive polemic document.
It attempts to expose, supported by documents, what the author
and his party called the illegal pretensions of the Supreme Council,
and the arrogance of its claim to exclusive Jurisdiction in France.
Dazard was the author of several other interesting discourses
on Masonic subjects.
DEACON
In every Symbolic Lodge, there are two officers
who are called the Senior and Junior Deacons. In America the former
has been appointed by the Master and the latter by the Senior
Warden, both have been elected according to the respective Codes
of the Jurisdictions, Pennsylvania, for example, has the Deacons
appointed, Ohio has them elected; in England both are appointed
by the Master. It is to the Deacons that the introduction of visitors
should be properly entrusted. Their duties comprehend, also, a
general surveillance over the security of the Lodge, and they
are the proxies of the officers by whom they are appointed. Hence
their jewel, in allusion to the necessity of circumspection and
justice is a square and compasses. In the center, the Senior Deacon
wears a sun, and the Junior Deacon a moon, which serve to distinguish
their respective ranks. In the English system, the jewel of the
Deacons is a dove, in allusion to the dove sent forth by Noah.
In the Rite of Mizraim the Deacons are called acolytes.
The office of Deacons in Freemasonry appears
to have been derived from the usage's of the primitive church.
In the Greek church, the Deacons were always the doorkeepers, and in the Apostolica Constitutions
the Deacon was ordered to stand at the men's door, and the Subdeacon
at the women's, to see that none came in or went out during the
oblation.
In the earliest rituals of the eighteenth century, there
is no mention of' Deacons, and the duties of those officers were
discharged partly by the Junior Warden and partly by the Senior
and Junior Entered Apprentices, and they were not generally adopted
in England until the Union of 1813. Brother W,J. Chetwode Crawley
has some comments upon the subject in Caementaria Hibernica (Fasciculus
i, pages 9-10). He advises that:
"We must carefully distinguish between
the Deacon of the early Scottish Minute Books, and the Deacon
of Irish ritual. The former occupied almost, if not altogether,
the highest post among his Brethren, and having precedence over
the Warden and presiding over the meeting when occasion required.
The latter corresponded to the Dean-that is Deacon-of Faculty; the latter to the lost order of the Ministry, the Deacon in
Ecclesiastical parlance. The similarity does not go beyond the
name.
The appointing of Deacons served in latter
days, as a distinction between Irish and English work, for the
Lodges under the Constitution of the Ancient naturally followed
the Irish use. It must be observed that the office of Deacon was
confined to supporting Lodges. During the first one hundred and
twenty years of its existence, the Grand Lodge of Ireland never
elected Grand Deacons . when their services were required they
were selected for the occasion from the Masters then present.
Their first appearance as prominent Grand Officers is in the addition
of the Irish Constitutions, promulgated in 1850, though thirty-seven
years previously the United Grand Lodge of England had adopted
the office, in deference to the usage of the Ancient.
(See also
references under Titles.)
DEACON'S ROD
See Rod, Deacon's
DEAF AND DUMB
Deaf mutes, as imperfect men, come under
the provisions of the Old Constitutions, and are disqualified
for initiation. At one time, however, a Lodge in Paris, captivated
by the eclat of the proceeding, and unmindful of the ancient landmark,
initiated a deaf mute, who was an intelligent professor in the
Deal and Dumb Asylum. All the instructions were given through
the medium of the language of the deaf mutes. lt. scarcely need
be said that this cannot be recognized as a precedent.
DEATH
The Scandinavians, in their Edda, describing
the residence of Death in Hell, where she was east by her father,
Loke, say that she there possesses large apartments, strongly
built, and fenced with gates of iron. Her hall is Grief; her table,
Famine Hunger, her knife; Delay, her servant; Faintness, her porch;
Sickness and Pain, her bed ; and her tent, Cursing and Howling.
But. the Masonic idea of death, like the Christian's, is accompanied
with no gloom, because it is represented only as a sleep, from
whence we awaken into another life. Among the ancients, sleep
and death were fabled as twins. Old Gorgias, when dying, said,
"Sleep is about to deliver me up to his brother''; but the
death sleep of the heathen was a sleep from which there was no
awaking. The popular belief was annihilation, and the poets and
philosophers fostered the people's ignorance, by describing death
as the total and irremediable extinction of live. Thus Seneca
says - and he was too philosophic not to have known better - ''that
after death there comes nothing,'' while Vergil, who doubtless
had been initiated into the Mysteries of Eleusis, nevertheless
calls death "an iron sleep, an eternal night," yet the
Ancient Mysteries were based upon the dogma of eternal live, and
their initiations were intended to represent a resurrection. Freemasonry,
deriving its system of symbolic teachings from these ancient religious
associations, presents death to its neophytes as the gate or entrance
to eternal existence.
To teach the doctrine of immortality is
the great object of the Third Degree. In its ceremonies we learn
that live here is the time of labor, and that, working at the
construction of a spiritual temple, we are worshiping the Grand
Architect for whom we build that temple. 'But we learn also that,
when that live is ended, it closes only to open upon a newer and
higher one, where in a second temple and a purer Lodge, the Freemason
will find eternal truth. Death, therefore, in Masonic philosophy,
is the symbol of initiation completed, perfected, and consummated.
DEATH IN THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES
Each of the ancient religious Mysteries,
those quasi-Masonic associations of the heathen world, was accompanied
by a legend, which was always of a funereal character representing
the death, by violence, of the deity to whom it was dedicated,
and his subsequent resurrection or restoration to life. Hence,
the first part of the ceremonies of initiation was solemn and
lugubrious in character, ,while the latter part was cheerful and
joyous. These ceremonies and this legend were altogether symbolical,
and the great truths of the unity of God and the immortality,
of the soul were by them intended to be dramatically explained.
This representation of death, which finds
its analogue in the Third Degree of Freemasonry, has been technically
called the Death of the Mysteries. It is sometimes more precisely
defined, in reference to any special one of the Mysteries, as
the Cabiric death or the Bacchic death, as indicating the death
represented in the Mysteries of the Cabiri or of Dionysus.
DEBATE
Debates in a Masonic Lodge must be conducted
according to the fraternal principles of the Institution. Masonic
debate or discussion should not become wrangling disputes nor
quarrelsome contention. in the language of Doctor Oliver, ''the
strictest courtesy should be observed during a debate, in a Mason's
Lodge, on questions which elicit a. difference of opinion; and
any gross violation of decorum and good order is sure to be met
by an admonition from the chair." It must be always remembered
that the object of a Masonic: discussion is to elicit truth, and
not simply to secure ,victory. When, in a debate, a Brother desires
to speak, he rises and addresses the chair. The presiding officer
calls him by' his name, and thus recognizes his right to the floor.
while he is speaking, he is not to be interrupted by any other
member, except on a point of order. If called to order by any
member, the speaker is immediately to take his seat until the
point is stated, when the Master will make his decision without
debate. The speaker will then rise and resume his discourse, if
not ruled out by the Master. During the time that he is speaking,
no motion is permissible. Every member is permitted to speak once
on the subject under discussion ; nor can he speak a second time,
except by permission of the Master, unless there is a more liberal
provision in the by-laws of the Lodge. There are to this rule
two exceptions, namely, when a member rises to explain, and when the mover of the resolution closes
the debate by a second speech to which he is entitled by parliamentary
law.
DECALOGUE
The ten commandments of the Masonic law,
as delivered from Mount Sinai and recorded in the twentieth chapter
of Exodus, are so called. They are not obligatory upon a Freemason
as a Freemason, because the Institution is tolerant and cosmopolite,
and cannot require its members to give their adhesion to any,
religious dogmas or precepts, excepting those which express a
belief in the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul.
No partial law prescribed for a particular religion can be properly
selected for the government of an Institution whose great characteristic
is its universality (see Moral Law).
DECANUS
An officer in the Knights Templar system
of Baron Hund, who, in the absence of the Grand Master and his
Prior, possessed the right to preside in the Chapter.
DECATUR, STEPHEN
There were two of this name, father and
son. One, born at Newport, Rhode Island, exact date unknown, died
in 1808, at Philadelphia. Captain in the United States Navy from
its birth, Brother Decatur was in charge of the Delaware, sloop
of war, and later on commanded the Philadelphia, until the close
of the differences with France. He moved from Philadelphia to
Sinnepuxent, Maryland, and there, January 5, 1779, his son, Stephen
Decatur II, was born. In August, 1777, Brother Decatur, the father,
was initiated in Lodge No. 16, at Baltimore, and later in the
same year received the Second and Third Degrees. Baltimore Lodge
No. 16 was chartered by the Provincial Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania
in 1770. In 1781 its Charter was forfeited but was restored in
1785 as Saint, Johns Lodge No. 20, Fells Point, Baltimore, and
which later went out of existence. Grand Secretary John A. Perry,
Pennsylvania, writes to us that on "revering to the Minute
Book of Lodge No. 3, I find the signature of Stephen Decatur of
the outside leaf. The minutes show:
Stated Lodge opened in due form April 18,
1780.
Brother Decatur of Lodge No. 16 in Maryland
petitioned to become a member of this Lodge, was balloted or and
unanimously approved of.
Lodge closed and a Master's Lodge opened.
Brothers Jackway and Decatur were raised
to the sublime degree of Master Mason, returned and gave thanks.
Brother Decatur paid his fees $100.00 in the hands of the Treasurer.
" He no doubt previously received the
Entered Apprentice Degree in Lodge No. 16, Baltimore, Maryland,
whose Warrant was granted by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania,
September 21, 1779, but was not in existence very long."
The claim is made but not fully proven that the younger Stephen
Decatur was initiated in Saint Johns Lodge, either of Maryland
or Rhode Island, October 12, 1799. He became a naval commander
of prominence and met with great success in various enterprises
(see History of Freemasonry in Maryland , E.T. Schultz volume
1, pages 60, 102; also Builder, George W. Baird, May, 1920).
DECIUS
The nom de plume, meaning in French the
pen name, of C. L. Reinhold, a distinguished Masonic writer (
(see Reinhold).
DECLARATION OF CANDIDATES
Every candidate for initiation is required
to "upon honor," the following declaration before
an appropriate officer or committee:
That unbiased by the improper solicitation
of friends, and uninfluenced by mercenary motives, he freely and
voluntary offers himself as a candidate for the Mysteries Freemasonry:
that he is prompted to solicit the privileges of Freemasonry by
a favorable option conceived of the constitution and a desire
of knowledge; and that he will cheerfully conform to all the ancient
usage's and established customs of the Fraternity.
This form is very old. It is to be found
in precisely the same words in the earliest edition of Preston.
It is required by the English Constitution, that the candidate
should subscribe his name to this declaration, But in America
the declaration is made oral; and usually before the Senior Deacon
or the Stewards.
DECLARATION OF THE MASTER
Every Master of a Lodge, after his election
and before his installation, is required to give, in the presence
of the Brethren, his assent to the following fifteen charges and
regulations:
1. Do you promise to be a good man and true,
and strictly to obey the moral law?
2. Do you promise to be a peaceable citizen, and cheerfully to
conform to the laws of the country in which you reside?
3. Do you promise not to be concerned in plots and conspiracies
against the government of the country in which you live, but patiently
to submit to the decisions of the law and the constituted authorities?
4. Do you promise to pay proper respect to the civil magistrates,
to work diligently , live creditably, and act honorably by all
men?
5. Do you promise to hold in veneration the original rulers and
patrons of' the Order of Freemasonry, and their regular successors,
supreme and subordinate, according to their station ; and to submit
to the awards and resolutions of your Brethren in Lodge convent, in every case consistent with the constitutions of the Order?
6. Do you promise, as much as in you lies, to avoid private piques
and quarrels, and to guard against intemperance and excess.
7. Do you promise to be cautions in your behavior, courteous to
your Brethren, and faithful to your Lodge?
8. Do you promise to respect genuine and true Brethren, and to
discountenance impostors and all dissenters from the Ancient Landmarks
and Constitutions of Masonry?
9. Do you promise, according to the best of your abilities to
promote the general good of society, to cultivate the social virtues,
and to propagate the knowledge of the mystic art, according to
our statutes?
10. Do you promise to pay homage to the Grand Master for the time
being, and to his officers when duly installed, and strictly to
conform to every edict of the Grand Lodge or General Assembly
of Masons that is not subversive of the principles and groundwork
of Masonry'?
11. Do you admit that it is not in the power of any man or body
of men, to make innovations in the Body of Masonry?
12. Do you promise a regular attendance on the committees and
communications of the Grand Lodge, on receiving proper notice,
and to pay attention to all the duties of Masonry , on convenient
occasions?
13. Do you admit that no new Lodge can be formed without permission
of the Grand Lodge; and that no countenance ought to be given
to any irregular Lodge, or to any person clandestinely initiated
therein, as being contrary to the ancient churches of the Order?
14. Do you admit that no person can be regularly made a Freemason
in, or admitted a member of, any regular Lodge, without precious
notice, and due inquirer into his characters
15. . Do you agree that no visitors shall be received into your
lodge without due examination and producing proper vouchers of
their having been initiated in a regular Lodge?
With very slight
differences, such as might properly be called editorial variations,
these charges and regulations are generally in use.
DECLARING OFF
When a brother ceases to visit and pay his
monthly subscription, he thereby declares himself off the Lodge"
(see the Symbolical Dictionary). In England, the Brother resigns.
Various designations rule in the United States, the chief one
being dropped from the roll. In some States the Brother is punished
by suspension. If, however, in certain States, he is clear of
the books, upon application he can receive a certificate to that
effect, and be dropped from the roll. In England he gets a clearance
certificate. in Scotland a demit is issued by the Daughter Lodge
and countersigned by the Grand Secretary.
DECORATIONS
A Lodge-room ought, besides its necessary
furniture, to be ornamented with decorations which, while they
adorn and beautify it, will not be unsuitable to its sacred character.
On this subject, Doctor Oliver (in his Book of the Lodge, chapter
v, page 70) makes the following judicious remarks: The expert
Mason will be convinced that the walls of a Lodge room ought neither
to be absolutely naked nor too much decorated. A chaste disposal
of symbolical ornaments in the right places, and according to
propriety, relieves the dullness and vacuity of a blank space
and, though but sparingly used, will produce a striking impression
and contribute to the general beauty and solemnity of the scene.
DEDICATION OF A LODGE
Among the ancients every temple, altar,
statue, or sacred place was dedicated to some divinity. The Romans,
during the Republic, confided this duty to their consuls, pretors,
censors, or other chief magistrates, and afterward to the emperors.
According to the Papirian law, the regulations of a clan or group
of Roman families, the dedication must have been authorized by
a decree of the senate and the people, and the consent of the
college of augurs. The ceremony consisted in surrounding the temple
or object of dedication with garlands of flowers, whilst the vestal
virgins poured on the exterior of the temple the lustral water.
The dedication was completed by a formula of words uttered by
the Pontiff, and the immolation of a victim, whose entrails were
placed upon an altar of turf. The dedication of a temple was always
a festival for the people, and was annually commemorated.
While the Pagans dedicated their temples
to different deitiessometimes to the joint worship of several
the monotheistic Jews dedicated their religious edifices
to the one supreme Jehovah. Thus, David dedicated with solemn
ceremonies the altar which he erected on the threshing-floor of
Ornan the Jebusite, after the cessation of the plague which had
afflicted his people; and Calmet conjectures that he composed
the thirtieth Psalm on this occasion. The Jews extended this ceremony
of dedication even to their private houses, and Clarke tells us,
in reference to a passage on this subject in be Book of Deuteronomy,
house to God with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving; and this was
done in order to secure the divine presence and blessing, for
no pious or sensible man could imagine he could dwell safely in
a house that was not under the immediate protection of God."
There is a noteworthy reproduction in the
Symbolism of the Churches and Church Ornaments, a translation
of the first book of the Rationale Divinorum Officorum written
by William Durandus in the thirteenth century. Here we have the
ritual of an ancient form of dedication. There is also quoted
a brief but suggestive passage from Sugerius book on the dedication
of the Church of St. Denis:
Right early in the morning, archbishops
and bishops archdeacons and abbots, and other venerable persons
who had lived of their proper expense, bore themselves right bishop
fully and took their places on the platform raised for the consecration
of the water, and placed between the sepulchers of the holy martyrs
and S (the holy) Saviour's altar. Then might ye have seen and
they who stood by saw, and that with great devotion, such a band
of so venerable bishops, arrayed in their white robes, sparkling
in their pontifical robes and precious orfreys, grasp their pastoral
staves, call on God in holy exorcism pace around the consecrated
enclosure, and perform the nuptials of the Great King with such
care that it seemed as though the ceremony were performed by a
chorus of angels not a band of men. The crowd, in overwhelming
magnitude, rolled around to the door, and while the aforesaid
Episcopal band were sprinkling the walls with hyssop, the king
and his nobles drive them back, repress them, guard the portals.
Suger, or Sugerius, as the name is often
Latinized, was born about 1081 A.D. and died on January 31, 1151.
A Frenchman who has been deemed the foremost historian of his
time, he was in his tenth year at school in the Priory of St.
Denis near Paris. Later he became secretary to the Abbot of St.
Denis, and after a sojourn at Rome succeeded to this office. At
his death the Abbey possessed considerable property, including
a new church of which he had written much, including the above
item of interest in regard to the old ceremony of dedication.
According to the learned Selden, there was
a distinction among the Jews between consecration and dedication,
for sacred things were both consecrated and dedicated, while profane
things, such as private dwelling-houses, were only dedicated.
Dedication was, therefore, a less sacred ceremony than consecration.
This distinction has also been preserved among Christians, many
of whom, and, in the early ages, all, consecrated their churches
to the worship of God, but dedicated them to, or placed them under,
the especial patronage of some particular saint. A similar practice
prevails in the Masonic Institution; and therefore, while we consecrate
our Lodges "to the honor of God's glory," we dedicate
them to the patrons of our Order.
Tradition informs us that Masonic Lodges
were originally dedicated to King Solomon, because he was our
first Most Excellent Grand Master. In the sixteenth century Saint
John the Baptist seems to have been considered as the peculiar
patron of Freemasonry; but subsequently this honor was divided
between the two Saints John, the Baptist and the Evangelist; and
modern Lodges, in the United States at least, are universally
erected or consecrated to God, and dedicated to the Holy Saints
John. In the Hemming lectures, adopted in 1813, at the time of
the union of the two Grand Lodges of England, the dedication was
changed from the Saints John to King Solomon, and this usage now
prevails very generally in England where Lodges are dedicated
to "God and His Service, also to the memory of the Royal
Solomon, under chose auspices many of our Masonic mysteries had
weir origin"; but the ancient dedication to the Saints John
was never abandoned by American Lodges.
The formula in Webb which dedicates the
Lodge to the memory of the Holy Saint John," was, undoubtedly,
an inadvertence on the part of that lecturer, since in all his
oral teachings Brother Mackey asserts he adhered to the more general
system, and described a Lodge in his esoteric work as being "dedicated
to the Holy Saints John." This is now the universal practice,
and the language used by Webb becomes contradictory and absurd
when compared with the fact that the festivals of both saints
are equally celebrated by the Order, and that the 27th of December
is not less a day of observance in the Order than the 24th of
June.
In one old lecture of the eighteenth century,
this dedication to the two Saints John is thus explained:
Q. Our Lodges being finished, furnished,
and decorated with ornaments, furniture, and jewels, to whom were
they consecrated?
A. To God.
Q. Thank you, Brother; and can you tell me to whom they were first
dedicated?
A. To Noah, who was saved in the Ark.
Q. And by what name were the Masons then known?
A. They were called Noachidæ, Sasses, or Wise Men.
Q. To whom were the Lodges dedicated during the Mosaic Dispensation?
A. To Moses! the chosen of God, and Solomon, the an of David,
king of Israel, who was an eminent patron of the Craft.
Q. And under what name were the Masons known during that period?
A. Under the name of Dionysias, Geometricians, or Masters in Israel.
Q. But as Solomon was a Jest, and died long before the promulgation
of Christianity. to whom were they dedicated under the Christian
Dispensation?
A. From Solomon the patronage of Masonry passed to Saint John
the Baptist.
Q. And under what name were they known after the promulgation
of Christianity?
A. Under the name of Essenes, Archaics, or Freeze masons.
Q. Why were the Lodges dedicated to Saint John the Baptists
A. Because he was the forerunner of our Savior, and, by preaching
repentance and humiliation, drew the first parallel of the Gospel.
Q. Had Saint John the Baptist any equal?
A. He had; Saint John the Evangelist.
Q. Why is he said to be equal to the Baptist?
A. Because he finished by his learning what the other began by
his zeal, and thus drew a second line parallel to the former-
ever since which time Freemasons' Lodges in all Christian countries,
have been dedicated to the one or the other, or both, of these
worthy and worshipful men.
There is another old lecture, adopted into the Prestonian system,
which still further developed these reasons for the Johannite dedication, but with slight variations
in some of the details. Brother Mackey quotes it thus:
From the building of the first Temple at Jerusalem to the Babylonian
captivity, Freemasons' Lodges were dedicated to King Solomon;
from thence to the coming of the Messiah, they were dedicated
to Zerubbabel, the builder of the second Temple, and from that
time to the final destruction of the Temple by Titus, in the reign
of Vespasian, they were dedicated to Saint John the Baptist; but
owing to the many massacres and disorders which attended that
memorable event, Freemasonry sunk very much into decay; many Lodges
were entirely broken up, and but few could meet in sufficient
numbers to constitute their legality; and at a general meeting
of the Craft, held in the city of Benjamin, it was observed that
the principal reason for the decline of Masonry was the want of
a Grand Master to patronize it. They therefore deputed seven of
their most eminent members to wait upon St. John the Evangelist,
who was at that time Bishop of Ephesus, requesting him to take
the office of Grand Master. He returned for answer, that though
well stricken in years, being upwards of ninety, yet having been
initiated into Masonry in the early part of his life, he would
take upon himself the office. He thereby completed by his learning
what the other Saint John effected by his zeal, and thus drew
what Freemasons term a sine parallels ever since which time Freemasons
Lodges in all Christian countries have been dedicated both to
Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist.
So runs the tradition, but, as it lacks
every claim to authenticity, a more philosophical reason may be
assigned for this dedication to the two Saints John.
One of the earliest deviations from the
pure religion of the Noachidae was distinguished by the introduction
of sun worship. The sun, in the Egyptian mysteries, was symbolized
by Osiris, the principal object of their rites, whose name, according
to Plutarch and Macrobius, signified the prince and leader, the
soul of the universe and the governor of the stars. Macrobius
(Saturnalia, Book 1, chapter 18) says that the Egyptians worshiped
the sun as the only divinity; and they represented him under various
forms, according to the several phases, of his infancy at the
winter solstice in December, his adolescence at the vernal equinox
in March, his manhood at the summer solstice in June, and his
old age at the autumnal equinox in September.
Among the Phoenicians, the sun was adored
under the name of Adonis, and in Persia, under that of Mithras.
In the Grecian mysteries, the orb of day was represented by one
of the officers who superintended the ceremony of initiation;
and in the Druidical rites his worship was introduced as the visible
representative of the invisible, creative, and preservative principle
of nature. In short, wherever the spurious Freemasonry existed,
the adoration of, or, at least, a high respect for, the solar
orb constituted a part of its system.
In Freemasonry, the sun is still retained
as an important symbol. This fact must be familiar to every Freemason
of any intelligence. It occupies, indeed, its appropriate position,
simply as a symbol, but, nevertheless, it constitutes an essential
part of the system. "As an emblem of God's power," says
Hutchinson (Spirit of Masonry, Lecture IV, page 86), "His
goodness, omnipresence, and eternity, the Lodge is adorned with
the image of the sun, which he ordained to arise from the east
and open the day; thereby calling forth the people of the earth
to their worship and exercise in the walks of virtue."
"The government of a Mason's Lodge,"
says Oliver (Signs and Symbols of Freemasonry, pages 204), "is
vested in three superior officers, who are seated in the East,
West, and South, to represent the rising, setting, and meridian
sun."
The sun, obedient to the all-seeing eye,
is an emblem in the ritual of the Third Degree, and the sun displayed
within an extended compass constitutes the jewel of the Past Master
in the American system, and that of the Grand Master in the English.
But it is a needless task to cite authorities
or multiply instances to prove how intimately the sun, as a symbol,
is connected with the whole system of freemasonry.
It is then evident that the sun, either
as an object of worship, or of symbolization, has always formed
an important part of what has been called the two systems of Freemasonry,
the Spurious and the Pure.
To the ancient sun worshipers, the movements
of the heavenly bodies must have been something more than mere
astronomical phenomena; they were the actions of the deities whom
they adored, and hence were invested with the solemnity of a religious
character. But, above allay the particular periods when the sun
reached his greatest northern and southern declination, at the
winter and summer solstices, by entering the zodiacal signs of
Cancer and Capricorn, marked as they would be by the most evident
effects on the seasons, and on the length of the days and nights,
could not have passed unobserved. hut, on the contrary, must have
occupied an important place in their ritual Now these important
days fall respectively on the 21st of June and the 21st of December.
Hence, these solstitial periods were among
the principal festivals observed by the Pagan nations. Du Pauw
(Dissertations on Egyptians and Chinese in, page 159) remarks
of the Egyptians, that "they had a fixed festival at each
new moon; one at the summer, and one at the winter solstice, as
well as the vernal and autumnal equinoxes "
The Druids always observed the festivals
of midsummer and midwinter in June and December The former for
a long time was celebrated by the Christian descendants of the
Druids "The eve of Saint John the Baptist," says Chambers
(information for the recopies Nose 89), "variously called
Midsummer Eve, was formerly a time of high observance amongst
the English, as it still is in Catholic countries. Bonfires were
everywhere lighted, round which the people danced with joyful
demonstrations, occasionally leaping through the flame.''
Godfrey Higgins (Celtic Druids, page 165)
thus alludes to the celebration of the festival of midwinter in
the ancient world:
The festival of the 25th of December was
celebrated, by the Druids in Britain and Ireland, with great fires
lighted on the tops of the hills. On the 25th of December, at
the first moment of the day, throughout all the ancient world,
the birthday of the god Sol was celebrated. This was the moment
when, after the supposed winter solstice and the lowest point
of his degradation below our hemisphere he began to increase and
gradually to ascend. At this moment. in all the ancient religions,
his birthday was kept; from India to the Ultima Thule. these ceremonies
partook of the same character: everywhere the god was feigned
to he born, and his festival was celebrated with great rejoicings.
See, also, Dudley Wright's Druidism, the
Ancient Faith of Britain (page 24).
Our ancestors finding that the Church, according to its usage
of purifying Pagan festivals by Christian application, had appropriated
two days near those solstitial periods to the memory of two eminent
saints, incorporated these festivals by the lapse of a few days
into the Masonic calendar, and adopted these worthies as patrons
of our Order. To this change, the earlier Christian Freemasons
were the more persuaded by the peculiar character of these saints.
Saint John the Baptist, by announcing the approach of Christ,
and by the mystic ablution to which he subjected his proselytes,
and which was afterward adopted in the ceremony of initiation
into Christianity, might well be considered as the Grand Hierophant
of the Church; while the mysterious and emblematic nature of the
Apocalypse assimilated the mode of instruction adopted by Saint
John the Evangelist to that practiced by the Fraternity.
We are thus led to the conclusion that the
connection of the Saints John with the Masonic Institution is
rather of a symbolic than of a historical character In dedicating
our Lodges to them, we do not so much declare our belief that
they were eminent members of the Order, as demonstrate our reverence
for the great Architect of the Universe in the symbol of His most
splendid creation, the great light of day.
In conclusion it may be observed that the
ceremony of dedication is merely the enunciation of a form of
words, and this having been done, the Lodge is thus, by the consecration
and dedication, set apart as something sacred to the cultivation
of the principles of Freemasonry, under that peculiar system which
acknowledges the two Saints John as its patrons. Royal Arch Chapters
are dedicated to Zerubbabel, Prince or Governor of Judah, and
Commanderies of Knights Templar to Saint John the Almoner. Mark
Lodges should be dedicated to Hiram the Builder; Past Masters
to the Saints John, and Most Excellent Masters to King Solomon.
DEDICATION OF THE TEMPLE
There are five dedications of the Temple
of Jerusalem which are recorded in Jewish history:
1. The dedication of the Solomonic Temple, 1004 B.C.
2. The dedication in the time of Hezekiah, when it was purified
from the abominations of Ahaz, 726 B.C.
3. The dedication of Zerubbabel's Temple, 513 B.C.
4. The dedication of the Temple when it was purified after Judas
Maccabaeus had driven out the Syrians, 161 B.C.
5. The dedication of Herod's Temple. 22 B.C.
The fourth of these is still celebrated
by the Jews in their Feast of the Dedication. The first only is
connected with the Masonic ritual, and is commemorated in the
Most Excellent Master's Degree of the American Rite as the Celebration
of the Capstone. This dedication was made by King Solomon in the
blear of the World 3000, and lasted eight days, commencing in
the month of Tisri, 15th day, during the Feast of Tabernacles.
The dedication of the Temple is called. in the English system
of Lectures, the third grand offering which consecrates the floor
of a Mason s Lodge. The same Lectures contain a tradition that
on that occasion King Solomon assembled the nine Deputy Gland
Masters in the holy place, from which all natural light had been
carefully excluded, and which only received the artificial light
which emanated from the east, west, and south, and there made
the necessary arrangements. The legend must be considered as a
myth; but the inimitable prayer and in vocation which were offered
up by King Solomon on e occasion are recorded in the eighth chapter
of the first Book of Kings, which contains the Scriptural fount
of the dedication.
DEFAMATION
See Back
DEFINITION OF FREEMASONRY
"The definitions of Freemasonry,"
says Oliver, in his historical Landmarks of Freemasonry, "have
been numerous; but they all unite in declaring it to be a system
of morality, by the practice of which its members may advance
their spiritual interest, and mount by the theological ladder
from the Lodge on earth to the Lodge in heaven. It is a mistake,
however, to suppose that Freemasonry is a system of religion.
It is but the handmaiden to religion, although it largely and
effectually illustrates one great branch of it, which is practice."
The definition in the English Lectures is
often quoted, which says that "Freemasonry is a peculiar
system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated symbols."
But Brother Mackey believed that a more
compressive and exact definition is that it is a science which
is engaged in the search after Divine Truth, and which employs
symbolism as its method of instruction.
Another definition is by Dr. S. Bein, who
terms Freemasonry that religious and mystical society - hose aim
is moral perfection on the basis of general quality and fraternity
(see Vortaro de Esperanto, page 50).
A more elaborate definition is by Brother
W. N. Pontone, P.G.M., of Canada, as follows:
Masonry is something
more than a secret Society, though secrecy is an element in esoteric
work, more than ritualism, though the ritual, simple in its dignity
and quaint and rhythmic in expression, is a factor more than symbolism,
though Symbolic teaching is significant and transfigures the commonplace;
more than philosophy, though it speculatively teaches how to live
wisely and well; more than religion, but not greater than religion,
yet discerning the divinity in humanity; more than mere landmarks,
though these have their defining, historical, and traditional
place; more even than brotherhood, for as in the Pythagorean days,
it is educational and intellectual as well as social and fraternal;
more than constructive and practical philanthropy, though love
crowns all; yet it is all of these together with that something
more of which language is inadequate to express the subtle mystery,
even to those few choice spirits who seek to penetrate to the
heart of its often unconscious power, and the span of life too
brief to enable those who endeavor to attain the ideal perfection
of that living organism, whose countersign is manhood~ whose inspiration
is the God-headthat Masonic edifice of which love and truth
form base and spireNisi Dominus frustra (see Builder, volume
viii, page 55).
The Latin phrase Nisi Dominus frustra may
be expressed in English as meaning Except the Masler be cheated.
Brother Roscoe Pound has contributed to the Dictionary of Religion
and Ethics (Macmillan Company, 1921), the following definition
of our Institution:
The art or mystery of the Freemasons or
Free and Accepted Masons, a universal religious, moral, charitable
and benevolent fraternal organization It is religious in requiring
belief in God as a prerequisite of initiation and insisting on
such belief as one of its unalterable fundamental points. Beyond
this and belief in immortality it has no religious dogmas but
expects the brother to adhere to some religion and obligates him
upon the sacred oath of the religion he professes For the rest
it seeks to promote morals by ceremonies, symbols and lectures,
inculcating life measured by reason and performance of duties
toward God, one's country, one's neighbor and oneself. It relieves
needy Brothers, cares for their dependents, educates orphans,
and insists upon duties of charity and benevolence.
At the laying of a cornerstone with Masonic
ceremonies, an old friend, the late Colonel Edward hi. L. Ehlers,
Grand Secretary of New York, gave an eloquent oration in which
he used with fine effect a magnificent tribute to Freemasonry
as our gifted and beloved Brother understood the Masonic Institution.
As a definition it may be appropriately inserted here and should
be studied with a similar statement found elsewhere (see Charity).
Fraternities of men have existed in some
shape or form during every period of the world s history. Doubtless
in the primitive ages it became apparent that mutual protection
would afford the greatest security against the unbroken forces
of nature and the evil nature of man and secure sympathy, support
and protection, to those whose bond of union was made a common
cause. Hence originated Masonry.
The origin of Masonry, like other historical
transactions, lies buried in the gloom of obscurity. Its philosophy
may be traced to the remotest ages of the world's history. Its
symbols are older than the Temple of Solomon and antedate the
Pentateuch of Moses. Its ceremonials were practiced in the ancient
mysteries when Egypt stood as the first and the most enlightened
power of the then known world. Its tenets were known by the nomadic
tribes of the East and transmitted from father to son, generation
after generation, so that even today the Bedouin of the desert
recognizes the hail of the Craftsman.
The mission of Masonry is to curb intemperate
passions and to reconcile conflicting interests; to extend to
nations these principles of humanity and benevolence which should
actuate individuals, to destroy the pride of conquest and the
pomp of war; to annihilate focal prejudices and unreasonable partialities;
to banish from the world every Source of enmity and hostility,
and to introduce those Social dealings which are better r adulated
to preserve peace and good order than penal laws or political
regulations.
The advantages which mankind in genera!
reap from this master Science are beyond calculation. Its blessings
are confined to no country, but are diffused with the Institution
throughout the world. Men of all languages, of all religions,
of the remotest nations, and of every habit and opinion, are united
in a bond of brotherly affection.
A Mason is at home in every country and
with his friends in every clime. What Society other than our own
could make the proud boast that we know no foreign land On the
plane of Masonry we only know God and man We know no royal blood
or peasant stock. Men of wealth and simple toil, philosophers
and men of low degree. royal heirs and hard-handed peasants, meet
hers upon a common ground as brothers and God is Father of them
all.
Live on for ever, thou Genius of Masonry! Bring light and gladness, toleration and rational liberty, to
those who dwell in darkness and superstition! reach the millions
yet unborn thy Faith, thy Hope, thy Charity!
DEFORMITY
The Old Constitutions declare that the candidate
for Freemasonry must be a "perfect youth, having no maim
or defect in his body." The Masonic law of physical qualifications
is derived from the Mosaic, which excluded from the priesthood
a man having any blemishes or deformities. The regulation in Freemasonry
constitutes one of the landmarks, and is illustrative of the symbolism
of the Institution. The earliest of the Old Constitutions, that
of the Halliwell or Regius Manuscript (lines 153 to 156), has
this language on the subject:
To the Craft it were great shame
To make a halt man and a lame,
For an imperfect man of such blood
Should do the Craft but little good.
This question is discussed in Doctor Mackey's
Jurisprudence of Freemasonry.
DEGREES
The word degree, in its primitive meaning,
signifies a step. The degrees of Freemasonry are, then, the steps
by which the candidate ascends from a lower to a higher condition
of knowledge. It is now the opinion of the best scholars, that
the division of the Masonic system into Degrees was the work of
the revivalists of the beginning of the eighteenth century; that
before that period there was but one Degree, or rather one common
platform of ritualism; and that the division into Masters, Fellows,
and Apprentices was simply a division of ranks, there being but
one initiation for all.
In 1717 the whole body of the Fraternity
consisted only of Entered Apprentices, who were recognized by
the thirty-nine Regulations, compiled in 1720, as among the law-givers
of the Craft, no change in those Regulations being allowed unless
first submitted "even to the youngest Apprentice."
In the Old Charges, collected by Anderson
and approved in 1722, the Degree of Fellow Craft is introduced
as being a necessary qualification for Grand Master, although
the word degree is not used. "No brother can be a Grand Master
unless he has been a Fellow Craft before his election." And
in the Manner of constituting a New Lodge of the same date, the
Master and Wardens are taken from "among the Fellow Crafts,"
which Dermott explains by saying that "they were called
Fellow Crafts because the Masons of old times never gave any man
the title of Master Mason until he had first passed the chair."
In the thirteenth of the Regulations of 1720, approved in 1721,
the orders or Degrees of Master and Fellow Craft are recognized
in the following words: "Apprentices must be admitted Masters
and Fellow Crafts only in the Grand Lodge." Between that
period and 1738, the system of Degrees had been perfected; for
Anderson, who, in that year, published the second edition of the
Book of Constitutions, changed the phraseology of the Old Charges
to suit the altered condition of things, and said, "a Prentice,
when of age and expert, may become an Entered Prentice or a Free-Mason
of the lowest degree, and upon his due improvements a Fellow Craft
and a Master-Mason" (see Old Charge Ill, Constitutions, 1738,
page 145).
No such words are found in the Charges as
printed in 1723; and if at that time the distinction of the three
Degrees had been as well defined as in 1738, Anderson would not
have failed to insert the same language in his first edition.
That he did not, leads to the fair presumption that the ranks
of Fellow Craft and Master were not then absolutely recognized
as distinctive degrees. The earliest ritual extant, which is contained
in the Grand Mystery, published in 1725, makes no reference to
any Degrees, but gives only what we may suppose was the common
understanding of the initiation in use about that time.
The division of the Masonic system into
three Degrees must have grown up between 1717 and 1730, but in
80 gradual and imperceptible a manner that we are unable to fix
the precise date of the introduction of each Degree. In 1717 there
was evidently but one Degree, or rather one form of initiation,
and one catechism. Perhaps about 1721 the three Degrees were introduced,
but the second and third were probably not perfected for many
years. Even as late as 1735 the Entered Apprentice's Degree contained
the most prominent form of initiation, and he who was an Apprentice
was, for all practical purposes, a Freemason. It was not until
repeated improvements, by the adoption of new ceremonies and new
regulations, that the Degree of Master Mason took the place which
it now occupies; having been confined at first to those who had
passed the chair.
DEGREES, ANCIENT CRAFT
See Ancient Craft Masonry
DEGREES, ANDROGYNOUS
Degrees that are conferred on females as
well as males (see Androgynous Degrees).
DEGREES, APOCALYPTIC
See Apocalyptic Degrees
DEGREES, HIGH
See High Degrees
DEGREES, HONORARY
See Honorary Degrees
DEGREES, INEFFABLE
See Ineffable Degrees
DEGREES OF CHIVALRY
The religious and military orders of knighthood
which existed in the Middle Ages, such as the Knights Templar
and Knights of Malta, which were incorporated into the Masonic
system and conferred as Masonic degrees, have been called Degrees
of Chivalry. They are Christian in character, and seek to perpetuate
in a symbolic form the idea on which the original Orders were
founded. The Companion of the Red Cross, although conferred, in
the United States of America, in a Commandery of Knights Templar,
and as preliminary to that Degree, is not properly a Degree of
chivalry.
DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE
Fessler was desirous of abolishing all the
advanced Degrees, but being unable to obtain the consent of the
Royal York Grand Lodge, he composed out of them a new system of
five Degrees which he called Degrees of Knowledge, the German
being the words Erkenntnis-Stufen, to each of which was annexed
a form of initiation. "The Degrees of Knowledge," says
Findel (History of Freemasonry, page 496), "consisted of
a regular detailed course of instruction in each system of the
Lodges, whether extinct or in full activity, and were to end with
at complete critical remodelling of the history of Freemasonry,
and of the Fraternity of Freemasons from the most ancient period
down to our own day" (see Fessler, Rite of).
DEGREES, PHILOSOPHICAL
See Philosophic Degrees
DEGREES, SYMBOLIC
See Symbolic Degrees
DIASTOLE
The counterpart of Tuathal. Mackenzie, in
the Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, says: Deiseil is used by the Druids
as a term for the circumambulation of the sacred cairns. Derived
from dead south, and tub a course that is, in a southward direction
following the course of the sun. The opposite is Tuathal, in a
northward direction, as is observed at the present day in approaching
the grave with a corpse.
DEISM
In an abstract sense, Deism, or Theism,
is the belief in God, but the word is generally used to designate
those who, believing in God, reject a belief in the Scriptures
as a revelation. The sect of Deists which, in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, enrolled among its followers many great
intellects, such as Toland, Collins, Lord Herbert of Cherbury,
Fume, Gibbon, and Voltaireis said by Findel (History of
Freemasonry, page 126) to have "necessarily exercised an
important influence on the Fraternity of Masons"; and, he
adds, that "we cannot doubt that it contributed essentially
to its final transformation from an Operative to a universal Speculative
Society." The refutation of this remarkable assertion is
best found in the first of the Charges adopted at the revival
in 1717, and which was published in the Constitutions of 1793.
A Mason is obliged, by his tenure, obey the moral law; and if
he rightly understands the art, he will never be a stupid atheist
nor an irreligious libertine," where the words irreligious
libertine refer to the Freethinkers or Deists of that period.
It is evident, then, that the Deists could have had no influence
at that time in molding the Masonic organization.
There is still better evidence to be found
in the old records of Freemasonry during several preceding centuries,
when the Operative was its dominant character, and when the dogmas
of Christianity were fully recognized, which must necessarily
have been the case, since Freemasonry during that period was under
the patronage of the Church. There is, in fact, no evidence to
sustain Findel's theory, that in the transition stage from the
Operative to the Speculative, when such men as the deeply religious
Ashmole were among its members, the Deists could have infused
any If their principles into its organization or exercised any
influence in changing its character.
Freemasonry, at that time sectarian, demanded
almost a Christian beliefat all events, a Christian allegiancefrom
its disciples. It is now more tolerant, and Deism presents no
disqualification for initiation. An atheist would be rejected,
but none would now be refused admission on religious grounds who
subscribed to the dogmas of a belief in God and a resurrection
to eternal life.
DEITY
See Great Architect of the Universe
DeKALB, BARON
See Kalb Johann
DELALANDE, CHARLES FLORENT JACQUES
A French litterateur of the last century,
who was the author of many didactic and poetic articles on freemasonry
inserted in the Mirror de la Vérité, the Annales
Maçonniques, and other collections. He was also the author
of the Defense et Apologia de la Franche-Maconnerie, ou Refutation
des accusations dirigées contre elle à différentes
Epoques et par divers Auteurs, meaning the Defense and Apology
of Freemasonry, or Refutation of the Accusations directed against
Her at several periods and by various Writers, a prize essay before
a Lodge in Leghorn, published in 1814. He founded the archives
of the Lodge of the Philosophic Rite at Douay, France.
DELALANDE, JOSEPH JEROME
One of the most distinguished French astronomers
of the eighteenth century. His name was Joseph Jérome Lefrançais
but when quite a young man he was received at the Court of King
Frederic II he called himself Lefrançais de la Lande, which
has often been written as a surname Delalande and Lalande, the
latter being used by his biographers Brother Louis Amiable. Delalande
was born at Bourg-en-Bresse, France, July 11, 1732, and died at
Paris, April 4, 1807. He founded a Lodge of the Sciences for uniting
Freemasons especially devoted to scientific study and research.
At the suggestion of Helvetius this scope was enlarged to those
occupied with literature, science and the fine arts. The Lodge
bore the name of the Nine Sisters, referring to the Muses, the
Greek goddesses presiding over the arts and sciences. Of this
Lodge Benjamin Franklin became Worshipful Masters Delalande was
one of the founders of the Grand Orient of France and published.
in 17~ n able memoir upon the History of Freemasonry, which was
subsequently incorporated in the twentieth volume of the Encyclopedie
Méthodique.
DELAUNAY, FRANÇOIS H. STANISLAUS
A French litterateur and historian, and
author of many works on Freemasonry, the principal of which is
the Tuileur des trente-trois degrés de l'Ecossisme du Rite
Ancien et Accepts meaning Handbook of the Thirty-three Degrees
of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. This is a work of great
erudition, and of curious research in reference to the etymology
of the words of the Rite. These etymologies, however, are not
always correct; and, indeed, some of them are quite absurd, betraying
a want of the proper appreciation of the construction of Hebrew,
from which language all of the words are derived.
DELAWARE
There is some uncertainty about the first
Lodge established in Delaware. The Grand Lodge of Scotland in
1764 is said to have issued a warrant to Union Lodge, No. 191,
at Middletown, for General Marjoribank's Regiment. Failing this,
Lodge No. 5, at Cantwell's Bridge, warranted on June 4, 1765,
by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, was the pioneer Lodge of the
State. The Grand Lodge of Delaware was established under rather
unusual circumstances. Nine Brethren. said to re represent Lodge
No. 31, Grand Lodge of Maryland and Nos. 33, 96, and 14, Grand
Lodge of Pennsylvania resolved to form a Grand Lodge. On June
7, 1806. Grand Officers were appointed and, without any previous
installation, opened the Grand Lodge. The Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania
refused to recognize it as five Lodges were deemed necessary to
form a Grand Lodge and three of the Lodges taking part were indebted
to the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania for fees and dues. Not until
1816, when Lodge No. 5, at Cantwell's Bridge, joined it by permission
of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, and made up the number of
five constituent Lodges, was the new Grand Lodge fully recognized.
The first Chapter in the State was opened
on January 24, 1806, by a Convention at which were present Charles
Mareighny of New York; John Sellers, Wilmington; George Monroe,
Edinburgh, James Jefferis, Belfast; Evan Thomas, Santa Cruz; and
Edwin Roche, Virginia. In 1831, this Chapter amalgamated with
Hiram, No. 6, as Washington and Lafayette Chapter, No. 1. On June
24, 1817, delegates from the seven Chapters in Delaware, namely
Hope, No. 4; Union, No. 7; Temple, No. 3; Washington, No. 1; Hiram,
No. 6; Washington, No. 5, and one at Newcastle, held a Convention
at Wilmington and established a Grand Holy Royal Arch Chapter.
About the year 1856, however, it ceased to meet and, except for
an irregular Convocation held in 1859, nothing more was heard
of a Grand Chapter of Delaware until January, 1868. A meeting
of Royal Arch Masons was then held which finally- proceeded to
eject Grand Officers and adopt a Constitution. A Charter was issued
by the General Grand High Priest, and at a meeting on January
20, 1869, the Grand Chapter of Delaware was organized and the
Officers installed. Delaware is one of the States which make the
Order of High Priesthood an essential qualification to the installation
of the High Priest elect.
Gunning Bedford Council, No. 1, at Wilmington,
was granted a Dispensation on February 10, 1917, and a Charter
on September 30, 1918. It has been said that Jeremy L. Cross,
while on a lecture tour, conferred the Degrees on some of the
Brethren in Wilmington and Newcastle, but of this there is no
evidence.
A Commandery was organized in Delaware by
the Grand Encampment of the United States at Wilmington. namely,
Saint Johns? No. 1, which was chartered on September 18 1868.
Delaware Lodge of Perfection, chartered on September 2, 1910;
Wilmington Council of Princes of Jerusalem, chartered on September
91, 1911; Wilmington Chapter of Rose Croix. chartered on September
21, 1911, and Delaware Consistory, chartered on October 3, 1912
are all at Wilmington, under the Supreme Council, Ancient and
Accepted Scottish Rite. Northern Masonic Jurisdiction.
DELEGATES
Past Masters or others, sent, by a Lodge
to represent it in the Grand Lodge, in place of the Master and
Wardens, if these are absent. have been in some of the American
Jurisdictions called delegates. The word is a modern one, and
without good authority. Those who represent a Lodge in the Grand
Lodge, whether the Master and Wardens or their proxies, are properly
representatives.
DELIBERATION, COUNCIL OF
See Grand Consistory
DELTA
A triangle. The name of a piece of furniture
in a Commandery of Nights Templar, which, being of a triangular
form, derives its name from the Greek letter ~. delta. It is also
the title given, in the French and Scottish Rites, to the luminous
triangle which encloses the Ineffable Name (see
Triangle).
DEMETER
The Greek name of Ceres, which see
DEBIT
A Freemason is said to DEMIT from his Lodge
when he withdraws his membership; and a DEMIT is a document granted
by the Lodge which certifies that, that decision has been accepted
by the Lodge, and that the demitting Brother is clear of the books
and in good standing as a Freemason. To demit, which is the act
of the member, is, then to resign; and to grant a demit, which
is the act of the Lodge, is to grant a certificate that the resignation
has been accepted. lt. is derived from the French reflective verb
se démettre, which, according to the dictionary of the
Academy, means to withdraw from an office, to resign an employment.
Thus it gives as an example. Il s`est démis de la charge
en faveur d`un tel. meaning that he resigned (demitted) his office
in favor of such a one.
The application for a demit is a matter
of form, and there is no power in the Lodge to refuse it, if the
applicant has paid all his dues and is free of all charges.
It is true that a regulation of 1722 says that no number of Brethren
shall withdraw or separate themselves from the Lodge in which
the were made, without, a dispensation; yet it is not plain how
the law can be enforced, for Freemasonry being a voluntary association,
there is no power in any Lodge to insist on any Brother continuing
a connection with it which he desires to sever (see, on this subject,
Doctor Mackey's Jurisprudence of Freemasonry).
The usual object in applying for a DEMIT
is to enable the Brother to join some other Lodge, into which
he cannot be admitted without some evidence that he was in good
standing in his former Lodge. This is in accordance with an old
law found in the Regulations of 1663 in the following; words:
"No person hereafter who shall be accepted a Freemason, shall
be admitted into any Lodge or Assembly until he has brought a
certificate of the time and place of his acceptation from the
Lodee that accepted him unto the Master of that limit or division
where such Lodge is kept."
Brother Hunt, Grand Secretary of Iowa, wrote
to us (March 21, 1923) as follows: The word dimit I believe has
never been used in England. and the word DEMIT is seldom used
there the words withdrawal or resignation being the most common
ones used. In the Regulations of 1723 the only restriction on
the right of a Brother to withdraw is found in Section 8 of the
General Regulations which provides that they should not withdraw
in numbers unless the Lodge becomes too numerous etc. This restriction
was later withdrawn, and at the present time the rule is that
Freemasonry being quite voluntary a member of a Lodge may server
his connection with it any moment he pleases even though his dues
are unpaid or he is under charges.
When a Brother leaves a Lodge he is entitled
to a certificate stating the circumstances under which he so left.
This is provided by Section 213 of the Grand Lodge Constitution.
It has been held that if a Brother leaves under a cloud whether
this cloud be unpaid dues or charges that the Lodge issuing the
certificate should state the circumstances under which he left
but Section 212 provides that one who has been excluded or voluntarily
withdraws from a Lodge without having complied with its By-laws
or the General Regulations of the Craft shall not he eligible
to Join any other Lodge until that Lodge shall be made acquainted
with his former neglect. If any Lodge receives a petition and
accepts him and fails to make due inquiry as to the conditions
under which the Brother left his former Lodge they are liable
to his former Lodge for any arrearages which he may have owed
them at the time of his withdrawal or exclusion.
This practice seems rather strange to us
in this country but I believe that in the early days the duty-
of a Freemason to become affiliated with some Lodge was not emphasized
as it was later or as it is at the present time. A Brother had
a right to resign membership, or as it was usually called DEBIT
from his Lodge at any time he pleased, and his letter of resignation
had much the same effect as a request for a DEBIT does at the
present time except that the moment this letter was filed with
the Secretary the act became irrevocable and if he repented and
desired to withdraw the letter. he could not do so but must petition
for membership, the same as another non-affiliate.
In the Grand Lodge of England there is the
case of a Brother who wrote to his local Lodge Secretary resigning
membership in the Lodge The next day he changed his mind and asked
to be allowed to withdraw the resignation. Both letters were received
by the Secretary before the next meeting of the Lodge but the
letter of resignation was held to be final. The Grand Lodge held
that there was no other way in which the fact of the resignation
could be undone except as a joining member. This decision also
seems strange to us , because we hold that a request for a DEMIT
is inoperative until it has been read to the Lodge, and there would
be nothing to prevent a secretary from returning a request for
a dimit to a Brother requesting it provided such request was made
before it had been read to the Lodge.
However it all goes to show that Masonically
the term DEMIT is the same as a resignation of membership. The
verb DEMIT denotes the act of the Brother and not the act of the
Lodge the noun DEMIT is a Certificate issued by the Lodge, certifying
that the brother's membership has terminated. at his own request.
Therefore, there is practically no difference between a DEMIT
and a resignation of membership (see dignity).
DENDERAH
A ruined town of Upper Egypt, of great interest
in consequence of its astronomical allusions on the ceiling of
the main portico supported on twenty-four columns which is covered
with figures and hieroglyphics. This is in the principal temple,
which is 220 by 50 feet. The numerous mythological figures are
arranged in zodiacal fashion. Recent archeological travelers doubt
the reference to astronomy, in Consequence of the absence of the
Crab. The temple dates from the period of Cleopatra and the earlier
Roman emperors and is one of the finest and best preserved structures
or the kind in Egypt. The chief deity was Athor, the goddess of
night, corresponding with the Greek Aphrodite (see Zodiac).
DENMARK
The first Masonic Lodge in Denmark was opened
in Copenhagen, by Baron G. O. Munnich. on the 11th of November,
1743, umber a Charter, as he climbed from the Lodge of the Three
Globes in Berlin. In the next year a new Lodge named Zerubbabel
was formed by three members separating from the former Lodge.
Both of these Bodies, Saint Martins received as No. 204, on October
9, 1749 a Warrant from Lord Byron, Grand Master of England. granted
a Warrant to the second Lodge as No. 197 on the English Register.
The two Lodges united in 1767 under the name of Zerubbabel of
the North Star and worked alternately in Danish and in German.
When a purely Danish Lodge was instituted in 1778, Zerubbabel
Lodge confined itself entirely to the use of the German language.
In 1749 Lord Byron granted a Patent to Count Danneskiold Laurvig
as Provincial Grand Master of Denmark and Norway. A Lodge had
been established at Copenhagen, by the Grand Lodge of Scotland
under the name of Le petit Nombre, meaning the little number.
and in 1703 its Master was elevated by that body to the rank of
a Provincial Grand Master. In 1792 Prince Charles became the sole
head of the Danish Lodges, and the Grand Lodge of Denmark may
be considered to have been then established. He died in 1836,
and the Crown Prince, afterward Christian VIII, became the Protector
of the Danish Lodges. and his son and Successor Frederick VII,
became Grand Master of the Grand Master. It was decreed on January
6, 1850, by the Grand Master that the Swedish Rite should he used
thenceforward in all Lodges. The Crown in Denmark is well disposed
to the Craft, the King being Grand Master (see Norway and Sweden).
D'EON, CHEVALIER
Born October 5, 1728, at Tonnerre in Burgundy,
and christened Charles Genevieve Louise Auguste André Timothée
Déon De Beaumont. Led most singular career. After living
nearly forty years an active life as a man the Chevalier voluntarily
testified in an English Court that he had been masquerading during
this entire period and that he was actually a woman. After his
death this testimony was found to be untrue. The Chevalier was
born of parents who stood high among the nobility. His baptismal
certificate asserts that the above names were those given the
child in regular and usual form. The family name was Deon but
King Louis XV in 1757 addressed a communication to the Chevalier
as D'Eon.
D'Eon studied law and literature in Paris
at the College Mazarin. Admitted an advocate after securing the
License in Canon and Civil Law. A brilliant student, he was made
a Censor Royal of works on history and letters. Even at this early
age he published a book on Historical Finance. D'Eon took up fencing
and it was said only five could hold their own against him in
all Europe. The French King honored D`Eon with a commission in
a cavalry regiment about 175 when the Chevalier rode from Vienna
to Paris with important dispatches to the King in thirty-six hours
less time than it took the special Austrian couriers and this
notwithstanding the misfortune to break his leg while on the road.
His Physical endurance proved rugged and masculine. Louis XV,
who sent Chevalier Douglas and his young secretary, D'Eon after
his twenty-sixth year, to Russia as confidential envoys to protect
Louis' interests there as a keen rivalry existed between France
and England for the support of Russia. So ably did D'Eon serve
that he was openly made Secretary to the Embassy and privately
admitted to the inner circle of the Secret Service. This he gave
up in 1760, when he left Russia. Probably he used his effeminate
appearance in secret service work which enabled him to assume
the disguise of a woman. Many stories were told of his experiences
although the Chevalier's personal conduct was not subject to reproach.
He left Russia in 1760 to join his regiment in the Seven Years
War. D'Eon was wounded in head and thigh at Ultrop and rendered
distinguished Service. The Treaty of 1763 ended the Seven Years
War and was largely negotiated by D' Eon who went to England.
The French ambassador soon returned to France and D'Eon was first
appointed Chargé d'Affaires and later Minister Plenipotentiary.
When he returned to France England entrusted to him its official
ratification to the Court of Versailles. King Louis XV gave him
the Royal and Military order of Saint Louis. and his proper title
became the Chevalier D'Eon. He was superseded in the Embassy by
an enemy, Count de Guerchy. The Chevalier refused to turn over
some secret papers said to include charges of corruption against
the Ministers who had concluded the Treaty and plans for the invasion
of England. D'Eon retained the papers, but the death of Louis
XV, 1774, put an end to the invasion of England and the documents
lost their value. During this period of intrigue the Chevalier
never lost the confidence of Louis XV although from the time the
difficulty commenced in 1763 the question was constantly propagated
as to the true sex of D'Eon. A pamphlet in the interests of De
Guerchy was the first to print scurrilous statements reflecting
upon D'Eon.
Eliot Hodgkin, Richmond, Surrey, possessed the original
manuscripts of D'Eon's account of his current expenditures from
day to day. Several items clearly appear indicating his acceptance
into the Masonic Fraternity and his receiving the first Three
Degrees. Although the question of his sex had already begun to
be discussed, he was admitted to the French Lodge, No. 376, on
the Roll of the Grand Lodge of England, known as La loge de l'Immortalité,
formed June 16, and formally constituted September 8, in 1766,
at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, London. Probably Worshipful
Master M. de Vignoles presided at D'Eon's initiation and the first
entry showing disbursement of funds on Freemasonry is dated May
18, 1768. In January, 1769, an item appears covering four shillings
seven pence paid at time of receiving the Third Degree. Although
this Lodge did not register in the Grand Lodge Books any members
after 1767 and therefore the Chevalier's name does not appear
on the records of the Grand Lodge, Brother Henry Sadler located
in the old archives of Grand Lodge a document which supplies authoritative
evidence that Chevalier D'Eon served as Junior Warden of this
Lodge between 1769 and 1770. The number of the Lodge, originally
376, was about this same time changed to 303, and the records
of the Grand Lodge show it was erased from the books in 1775 due
to "not having contributed," etc. D'Eon, an exile from
France then resided in England and was fortunate to have a sincere
friend in Earl Ferrers, in 1762 to 1763 Grand Master of the Moderns
in England, who offered shelter to the Chevalier which he gratefully
accepted as he was subject to annoyance due to the notoriety given
the question of his sex and the danger of kidnaping by persons
financially interested. Betting on the question of the Chevalier's
sex came to such a stage that a scheme of Insurance on the sex
of M. Le Chevalier, or Mlle. La Chevaliere, D'Eon, resulted in
the policies being taken up to the amount of 120,000 pounds. It
was a practice, in the endeavor to put a legal aspect on certain
forms of gambling, for the speculators to issue a sort of Insurance
Policy covering certain mooted questions. Until 1845 the English
courts held wagers as contracts and the winner of a bet could
enforce payment through a Court of Law. So much money became involved
about D'Eon and 80 many lawsuits were imminent that it was decided
to bring the case to trial. In 1777, therefore, one of the insurance
brokers presented two witnesses, one a doctor named Le Goux, and
the other a journalist, M. de Morande, who swore that of their
own personal knowledge D'Eon was a woman. Had the English Court,
presided over by Lord Mansfield, been familiar with the history
of these two witnesses, it would no doubt have returned a different
verdict. The verdict by the jury was that the unfortunate Chevalier
was a woman and, surprisingly, just at this time D'Eon himself,
who had been negotiating through Beaumarchais for the restoration
of the secret papers, made an official declaration to the French
Ministers that he actually was a woman. He had also been negotiating
with France for a pension and Louis XVI, then King, agreed to
increase the pension and permit the return to France of the Chevalier
only on the condition that "she resume the garments of her
sex" and never appear in any part of the kingdom except in
garments befitting a female. D'Eon, for some reason no one has
been able to explain satisfactorily, accepted the condition without
argument and thenceforward became La Chevaliere D'Eon.
The two contending Grand Lodges in England at that time. known
as the Ancient and the Moderns, made much of this issue. The Ancient
claimed that here was an evidence of modern laxity which permitted
the admittance into the Masonic Order of a person not fulfilling
all the physical requirements of the Old Charges and the controversy
subjected the Fraternity to no little criticism and satire. The
Chevalier, after accepting the condition that he discard male
attire, never again attempted to enter a Masonic Lodge although,
during the period from 1769 to 1774 at which time he spent twelve
to fifteen hours a day at his desk and produced scores of Lettres,
Piecés Justificatives, Memoires pour seruir, Documents
Authentiques, and a thirteen-volume book entitled Les Loisirs
do Chevalier de Beaumont, he also wrote a rough draft of an essay
attempting to compare the merits of the Society of Freemasons
and the Society of Friends. This manuscript is included in the
collection owned by J. Eliot Hodgkin, from which the following
is quoted:
Freemasonry and Quakerism. What I say here
about Masonry is not meant to win the Gold or Silver Medal, advertised
in the London Courier Français, No........of ....page .......
, but only to win, in my heart, a prize graven on the Masonic
Compass and Triangles each point of which, like the Trinity, rests
on Truth Virtue, and Benevolence, common foundations of Equality
and Justice between Brothers by birth and by Christianity, as
between Brethren by Mason, enlightened by the Sun of Truth, inasmuch
as this is the Truth held by the primitive Christians of Jerusalem
and Antioch. But since the Greek, Latin, Gallican, and Anglican
Churches have organized themselves into formidable bodies, they
deride, individually and collectively, the sombre Society of good
Quakers, who are good only at whining, sniveling, and having no
poor among them while the Freemasons have established themselves
in Worshipful Lodges, in order to laugh, drink, sing at their
ease, and display benevolence towards their Brethren and Fellows
dispersed over the Earth, without (infringing) the Laws of Moses
or of the Paschal (Covenant). They spread sunshine, God's consolation,
and true happiness m the heart of all human beings capable of
appreciating simple Virtue. The happiness of man kind and the
well-being of the Material World are to be found in Nature, Reason,
Truth, Justice, and Simplicity, and not in huge books compiled
by Philosophy and Divinity. All the State-craft of Machiavelli
is only fit to drag man to . . . to the cells at Bedlam- or to
lead him to Montfaucon, to Tyburn, or to the underground Pantheodemonium
of the Lower Empire of Pluto. Lord Chancellor Bacon, who, of all
England, was the Doctor most stuffed with Greek, Latin and Law,
was right when he said "Honesty best Policy." These
two words em body all that is good. I hold the religion of the
Quakers very beautiful, because it is so simple.
August 6, 1777, D'Eon for the first time
in London appeared dressed as a woman and exactly a week later
he donned his uniform as Captain of Dragoons for convenience in
traveling, the last time he appeared in London in the garb of
a man. He went to France immediately, was presented to Marie Antoinette,
and took up residence with his mother in Tonnerre. It is said
that he retired for a time to the Convent of Les Filles de Ste
Marie and actually resided at La Maison des demoiselles de Saint
Cyr. However, he tendered his services to the French Fleet when
the American Revolution broke out, which offer the French Government
hastily declined. He returned to England in November, 1785, to
settle come financial affairs and resided there until his death,
never discarding his feminine garb. The French Revolution stopped
his pension and it is said that he received a small pension in
England from George III but he was in straitened circumstances
and maintained himself by his skill in fencing, but was compelled
to sell his jewels, then his library, and other possessions. He
died May 21, 1810, in seclusion and penury. After his death an
autopsy was made by a celebrated surgeon, Thomas Copeland, who
gave a professional certificate stating without question that
the deceased had been of the male sex. This fact was confirmed
by Pére Elisée, a surgeon of renown who had belonged
to the Fathers of Charity at Grenoble but left France when his
confreres emigrated and at the death of the Chevalier attended
the Duke of Queensberry. In later years Pére Elisée
became King's Surgeon to Louis XVIII. The Earl of Yarborough,
Sir Sidney Smith and a number of friends inspected the body, and
the question as to the sex of the Chevalier D'Eon was finally
settled.
Several authors have discussed this remarkable personage,
as Andrew Lang, Historical Mysteries, and the encyclopedias devote
space to him; but the most satisfactory account for Freemasons
is a paper by Brother W. J. Chetwode Crawley transactions, Quatuor
Coronati Lodge, volume xvi, 1903, pages 229-59).
DEPOSITE
The deposit of the Substitute Ark is celebrated
in the Degree of Select Master, and is supposed to have taken
place in the last year of the building of Solomon's Temple, or
1000 B.C. This is therefore adopted as the date in Cryptic Freemasonry.
In the legendary history of Freemasonry as preserved in the Cryptic
Degrees, two deposits are spoken of; the deposit of the Substitute
Ark, and the deposits of the Word, both being referred to the
same year and being different parts of one transaction. They have,
therefore, sometimes been confounded. The deposit of the Ark was
made by the three Grand Masters; that of the Word by Hiram Abif
alone.
DEPOSITE, YEAR OF
See Anno Depositionu
DEPTH OF THE LODGE
This is said to be from the surface to the
center, and is the expression of an idea connected with the symbolism
of the form of the Lodge as indicating the universality of Freemasonry.
The oldest definition was that the depth extended to the center
of the earth, which, says Dr. Oliver, is the greatest extent that
can be imagined (see Form of the Lodge).
DEPUTATION
The authority granted by the Grand Master
to a Brother to act as Provincial Grand Master was formerly called
a deputation. Thus, in Anderson's Constitutions (second edition,
1738, page 191) it is said, "Lovel, Grand Master, granted
a Deputation to Sir Edward Matthews to be Provincial Grand Master
of Shropshire." It was also used in the sense in which Dispensation
is now employed to denote the Grand Master's authority for opening
a Lodge. In German Freemasonry, a deputation is a committee of
one Lodge appointed to visit and confer with some other Lodge.
DEPUTE GRAND MASTER
Depute is a Scotticism used in the Laws
and Regulations of the Grand Lodge of Scotland to designate the
officer known in England and America as Deputy Grand Master. The
word comes from the Latin deputo, meaning to cut off or select.
DEPUTY
In French Freemasonry, the officers who
represent a Lodge in the Grand Orient are called its deputies.
The word is also used in another sense. When two Lodges are affiliated,
that is, have adopted a compact of union, each appoints a deputy
to represent it at the meetings of the other. He is also called
garant d'amitie, meaning in French the pledge of friendship, and
is entitled to a seat in the East.
DEPUTY GRAND CHAPTER
In the Constitution adopted in January,
1798, by the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the Northern States of
Americans which afterward became the General Grand Chapter, it
was provided that Grand Bodies of the system should be established
in the several States, which should be known as Deputy Grand Royal
Arch Chapters. But in the succeeding year, on the adoption of
a new Constitution, the title was changed to State Grand Chapters.
DEPUTY GRAND MASTER
The assistant and, in his absence, the representative
of the Grand Master. The office originated in the year 1720, when
it was agreed that the Grand Master might appoint both his Grand
Wardens and a Deputy Grand Master (see Constitutions, 1738, page
111).
The object evidently was to relieve a nobleman,
who was Grand Master, from troublesome details of office. The
Constitutions give a Deputy Grand Master no other prerogatives
than those which he claims in the Grand Master's right. He presides
over the Craft in the absence of the Grand Master, and, on the
death of that officer, succeeds to his position until a new election.
In England, and the custom has been followed in a few States of
America, he is appointed by the Grand Master; but the general
usage in the United States of America is to elect him.
DEPUTY LODGE
In Germany, a Deputations-Loge, or Deputy
Lodge, was formed by certain members of a Lodge who lived at a
remote distance from it, and who met under the name and by the
authority of the mother Lodge, through whom alone it was known
to the Grand Lodge, or the other Lodges. Such Bodies are not known
in England or America, and have not been so common in Germany
as formerly.
DEPUTY MASTER
In England, when a Prince of the Blood Royal
is Master of a Private Lodge, his functions are performed by an
officer appointed by him, and called a Deputy Master, who exercises
all the prerogatives and enjoys all the privileges of a regular
Master. In Germany, the Master of every Lodge is assisted by a
Deputy Master, who is either appointed by the Master, or elected
by the members, and who exercises the powers of the Master in
the absence of that officer.
DERMOTT, LAURENCE
He was at first the Grand Secretary, and
afterward the Deputy Grand Master, of that body of Freemasons
who in 1751 formed the Grand Lodge of the Ancient, which see,
stigmatizing the regular Freemasons as Moderns. In 1756, Dermott
published the Book of Constitutions of his Grand Lodge, under
the title of Ahiman Rezon; or a help to all that are or would be
Free and Accepted Masons, containing the quintessence of all that
has been published on the subject of Freemasonry. This work passed
through several editions, the last of which was edited, in 1813,
by Thomas Harper, the Deputy Grand Master of the Ancient Masons,
under the title of The Constitutions of Freemasonry or Ahiman
Rezon.
Dermott was undoubtedly the moving and sustaining
spirit of the great conflict which, from the middle of the eighteenth
to the beginning of the nineteenth century, divided the Freemasons
of England; and his reputation has not been spared by the adherents
of the constitutional Grand Lodge. Lawrie (History of Freemasonry,
page 117) says of him: "The unfairness with which he has
stated the proceedings of the moderns, the bitterness with which
he treats them, and the quackery and vainglory with which he displays
his own pretensions to superior knowledge, deserve to be reprobated
by every class of Masons who are anxious for the purity of their
Order and the preservation of that charity and mildness which
ought to characterize all their proceedings."
There is perhaps much truth in this estimate
of Dermott's character. As a polemic, he was sarcastic, bitter,
uncompromising, and not altogether sincere or veracious. But in
intellectual attainments he was inferior to none of his adversaries,
and in a philosophical appreciation of the character of the Masonic
Institution he was in advance of the spirit of his age. It has
often been asserted that he invented the Royal Arch Degree by
dismembering the Third Degree, but that this is entirely unfounded
is proved by the fact that he was Exalted to the Royal Arch Degree
in 1746, while the Degree was being conferred in London before
1744 (see Royal Arch Degree). Dermott was born in Ireland in 1720,
initiated in 1740, installed Worshipful Master of Lodge No. 26
at Dublin in 1746, was Grand Secretary of the Ancient from 1752
to 1771 at London, the Deputy Grand Master from that year until
1771, then once more Deputy from 1782 to 1787, dying in 1791 An
excellent, if brief, biography of his Masonic career has been
written by Brother W. M. Bywater and was privately printed in
1884 at London under the title of Notes on Law: Dermott G. S.
and His Work. Another essay, equally delightful, on Laurence Dermott,
is by Brother Richard J. Reece, Secretary of the Grand Masters
Lodge, No. 1, of England.
Brother Arthur Heiron's pamphlet, the Craft
in the Eighteenth Century, says that "Dermott was musically
inclined, and very fond of singing at the meetings of his Grand
Lodge but that he was not always popular amongst the Ancient is
proved by the fact that in 1752 four of their members accused
him of having 'actually sung and lectured the Brethren out of
their senses,' but in 1753 the W. M. in the chair at an Emergency
held at the King and Queen, Cable Street, Rosemary Lane, thanked
him for his last new song and 'hoped that the applause of his
Brethren would induce Brother Dermott, G. S., to compose another
against the next St. John's Day."'
DERWENTWATER
Charles Radcliffe, titular Earl of Derwentwater,
which title he assumed on the death of the unmarried son of his
brother, James Radcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater, who was executed
for rebellion in 1716, in London, was the first Grand Master of
the Grand Lodge of France, to which office he was elected on the
organization of the Grand Lodge in 1725. Charles Radcliffe was
arrested with his brother, Lord Derwentwater, in 1715, for having
taken part in the rebellion of that year to restore the house
of Stuart to the throne. Both were convicted of treason, and the
Earl suffered death, but his brother Charles made his escape to
France, and thence to Rome, where he received a trifling pension
from the Pretender.
After a residence at Rome of some few years,
he went to Paris, where, with the Chevalier Maskelyne, Heguetty,
and some other Englishmen, he established a Lodge in the Rue des
Boucheries, which was followed by the organization of several
others, and Radcliffe who had taken the title of Earl of Derwentwater
on the death of his youthful nephew, the son of the last Earl,
was elected Grand Master. Leaving France for a time, in 1736 he
was succeeded in the Grand Mastership by Lord Harnouester.
So far we follow Brother Mackey but Brother
Hawkins adds the substance of this paragraph: Such is the statement
usually made, but R. F. Gould, in his Concise History of Freemasonry,
suggests that Harnouester is a corruption of Darwentwater and
that the two persons are identical, the Earl of Derwentmater being
really elected Grand Master in 1736.
Radcliffe made many visits to England after
that time in unsuccessful pursuit of a pardon. Finally, on the
attempt of the young Pretender to excite a rebellion in 1745,
he sailed from France to join him, and the vessel in which he
had embarked having been captured by an English cruiser, he was
carried to London and beheaded on December 8, 1746.
DESAGULIERS, JOHN THEOPHILUS
Of all those who were engaged in the revival
of Freemasonry in the beginning of the eighteenth century, none
performed a more important part than he to whom may be well applied
the epithet of the Father of Modern speculative Freemasonry, and
to whom, perhaps, more than any other person, is the present Grand
Lodge of England indebted for its existence. A sketch of his life,
drawn from the scanty materials to be found in Masonic records,
and in the brief notices of a few of his contemporaries, cannot
fail to be interesting to the student of Masonic history.
The Rev. John Theophilus Desaguliers, LL.D.,
F.R.S., was born on March 12, 1683, at Rochelle, in France. He
was the son of a French Protestant clergyman; and, his father
having removed to England as a refugee on the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, he was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where
he took lessons of the celebrated Keill in experimental philosophy.
In 1719 he received the Degree of Master of Arts, and in the same
year succeeded Doctor Keill as a lecturer on experimental philosophy
at Hert Hall (now Hertford College). In the year 1713 he removed
to Westminster, where he continued his course of lectures, being
the first one, it is said, who ever lectured upon physical science
in the metropolis. At this time he attracted the notice and secured
the friendship of Sir Isaac Newton. His reputation as a philosopher
obtained for him a Fellowship in the Royal Society. He was also
about this time admitted to clerical orders, and appointed by
the Duke of Chandos his Chaplain, who also presented him to the
living of Whitchurch. In 1718 he received from the University
of Oxford the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, and was presented
by the Earl of Sunderland to a living in Norfolk, which he afterward
exchanged for one in Essex. He maintained, however, his residence
in London, where he continued to deliver his lectures until his
death in 1744.
His contributions to science consist of
a Treatise on the Construction of Chimneys translated from the
French, and published in 1716; A System of Experimental Philosophy,
of which a second edition was issued in 1719; .4 Course of Experimental
Philosophy, in two volumes, published in 1734; and in 1735 he
edited an edition of Gregory's Elements of Catoptrics and Dioptrics.
He also translated from the Latin Gravesandes Mathematical Elements
of Natural Philosophy.
In the clerical profession he seems not
to have been an ardent worker, and his theological labors were
confined to the publication of a single sermon unrepentance. He
was in fact more distinguished as a scientist than as a clergyman,
and Priestly calls him "an indefatigable experimental philosopher."
It is, however, as a Freemason that Doctor
Desaguliers will most attract our attention. But nothing is known
as to his connection with Freemasonry until 1719, when he was
elevated to the throne of the Grand Lodge, succeeding George Payne,
and being thus the third Grand Master after the revival. He paid
much attention to the interests of the Fraternity, and so elevated
the character of the Order, that the records of the Grand Lodge
show that during his administration several of the older Brethren
who had hitherto neglected the Craft resumed their visits to the
Lodges, and many noblemen were initiated into the Institution.
Doctor Desaguliers was peculiarly zealous
in the investigation and collection of the old records of the
society, and to him we are principally indebted for the preservation
of the Charges of a Freemason and the preparation of the General
Regulations, which are found in the first edition of the Constitutions;
which, although attributed to Doctor Anderson, were undoubtedly
compiled under the supervision of Desaguliers. Anderson, we suppose,
did the work, while Desaguliers furnished much of the material
and the thought. One of the first controversial works in favor
of Freemasonry, namely, A Detection of Dr. Plots' Account of the
Freemasons, was also attributed to his pen; but he is said to
have repudiated the credit of its authorship, of which indeed
the paper furnishes no internal evidence.
In 1721 he delivered before the Grand Lodge
what the records call "an eloquent oration about Masons and
Masonry." It does not appear that it was ever published,
at least no copy of it is extant, although Kloss puts the title
at the head of his Catalogue of Masonic Orations. It is indeed,
the first Masonic address of which we have any notice, and would
be highly interesting, because it would give us, in all probability,
as Kloss remarks, the views of the Freemasons of that day in reference
to the design of the Institution.
After his retirement from the office of
Grand Master, in 1720, Desaguliers was three times appointed Deputy
Grand Master: in 1723, by the Duke of Wharton; in June of the
same year, by the Earl of Dalkeith; in 1725, by Lord Paisley;
and during this period of service he did many things for the benefit
of the Craft; among others, initiating that scheme of charity
which was subsequently developed in what is now known in the Grand
Lodge of England as the Fund of Benevolence.
After this, Doctor Desaguliers passed over
to the Continent, and resided for a few years in Holland. In 1731
he was at The Hague, and presided as Worshipful Master of a Lodge
organized under a special Dispensation for the purpose of initiating
and passing the Duke of Lorraine, who was subsequently Grand Duke
of Tuscany, and then Emperor of Austria as well as of Germany.
The Duke was, during the same year, made a Master Mason in England.
On his return to England, Desaguliers was
considered, from his position in Freemasonry, as the most fitting
person to confer the Degrees on the Prince of Wales, who was accordingly
entered, passed, and raised in an Occasional Lodge, held on two
occasions at Kew, over which Doctor Desaguliers presided as Master.
Doctor Desaguliers was very attentive to
all his Masonic duties, and punctual in his attendance on the
Communications of the Grand Lodge. His last recorded appearance
by name is on the 5th of February, 1742, but a few years before
his death.
Of Desaguliers' Masonic and personal character,
Doctor Oliver gives, from tradition, the following description:
There were many traits in his character
that redound to his immortal praise. He was a grave man in private
life, almost approaching to austerity; but he could relax in the
private recesses of a Tyled Lodge, and in company with brothers
and fellows where the ties of social intercourse are not particularly
stringent. He considered the proceedings of the Lodge as strictly
confidential; and being persuaded that his brothers by initiation
actually occupied the same position as brothers by blood, he was
undisguisedly free and familiar in the mutual interchange of Unrestrained
courtesy. In the Lodge he was jocose and free-hearted, sang his
song, and had no objection to his share of the bottle, although
one of the most learned and distinguished men of his day (see
Revelations of a Square, page 10).
In 1713, Desaguliers had married a daughter
of William Pudsey, Esq., by whom he had two sons Alexander, who
was 3 clergyman, and Thomas, who went into the army, and became
a colonel of artillery and an equerry to George III.
The latter days of Doctor Desaguliers are
said to have been clouded with sorrow and poverty. De Feller,
in the Biographic Universelle, says that he became insane, dressing
sometimes as a harlequin, and sometimes as a clown, and that in
one of these fits of insanity he died. Cawthorn, in a poem entitled
The Vanity of Human Enjoyments, intimates, in the following lines,
that Desaguliers was in very necessitous circumstances at the
time of his death:
How poor, neglected Desaguliers fell!
How he who taught two gracious kings to view
All Boyle ennobled and all Bacon knew,
Died in a cell. without a friend to save
Without a guinea, and without a grave.
But the accounts of the French biographer
and the English poet are most probably both apocryphal, or, at
least, much exaggerated; for Nichols, who knew him personally,
and has given a fine portrait of him in the ninth volume of his
Literary Anecdotes, says that he died on February 29, 1744, at
the Bedford Coffee House, and was buried in the Savoy.
To few Freemasons of the present day, except
to those who have made Freemasonry a subject of especial study,
is the name of Desaguliers very familiar.
But it is well they should know that to
him, perhaps, more than to any other man, are we indebted for
the present existence of Freemasonry as a living institution,
for it was his learning and social position that gave a standing
to the Institution, which brought to its support noblemen and
men of influence, so that the insignificant assemblage of four
London Lodges at the Apple-Tree Tavern has expanded into an association
which now shelters the entire civilized world. And the moving
spirit of all this was John Theophilus Desaguliers.
The sounds in the French name Desaguliers
as pronounced by Brother McClenachan will be found in the list
of words printed at the end of the second volume of this work.
A few comments may be made here upon the matter. All that can
well be done is to indicate accepted custom. Doctor E. B. de Sauzé,
the leading American authority on modern languages, prefers the
following from a French point of view: De, as in desecrate; sa,
as za, the short a as in lateral; gu, as gu, the French or German
u (the sound best imitated by shaping the lips as if to whistle
and then uttering the u); li, as in lid or lit, and ers, as the
French é, shorter than the first e in desecrate. The reader
will note that the final letters rs are not pronounced. Another
and a fairly common pronunciation of the name among English-speaking
Brethren is heard thus: Des, as in days or pays; ag, as in lag
or tags u, as in mute or lute; li, as in lid or lit, and ers,
as in pears or bears. A French naturalist of the same name is
listed with the indicated pronunciation in Spiers' and Surenne's
Dictionary (page 175) and as nearly as we can reproduce the sounds
by English words may be illustrated thus: De, as in pay and way;
sa, as 20 in zone; gu, as in gulf or gum, the French or German
u sound being understood; li, as in lit or listen, and ers, as
the a in cat or mat. Practically there is no tonic accent in French
beyond a slight stress on the final syllable pronounced.
DESERT
The outer court of a tent in the Order of
Ishmael, or of Esau and Reconciliation.
DES ETANGS, NICHOLAS CHARLES
A Masonic reformer, who was born at Allichamps,
in France, on the 7th of September, 1766, and died at Paris on
the 6th of May, 1847. He was initiated, in 1797, into Freemasonry
in the Lodge l'Heureuse Rencontre, meaning in French of the Happy
Meeting. He subsequently removed to Paris, where, in 1822, he
became the Master of the Lodge of Trinosophs, which position he
held for nine years. Thinking that the ceremonies of the Masonic
system in France did not respond to the dignity of the Institution,
but were gradually being diverted from its original design, he
determined to commence a reform in the recognized dogmas, legends,
and symbols, which he proposed to present in new forms more in
accord with the manners of the present age.
There was, therefore, very little of conservation
in the system of Des Etangs. It was, however, adopted for a time
by many of the Parisian Lodges, and Des Etangs was loaded with
honors. His Rite embraced five Degrees, viz., 1, 2, 3, the Symbolic
Degrees; 4, the Rose Croix Rectified; 5, the Grand Elect Knight
Kadosh. He gave to his system the title of Freemasonry Restored
to Its True Principles, and fully developed it in his work entitled
veritable Lien; des Peuples, meaning True Bond of the Peoples,
which was first published in 1823. Des Etangs also published in
1825 a very able reply to the calumnies of the Abbé Barruel,
under the title of La Franc-Maçonnerie justifiée
de toutes les calomnies répandues contre elle, meaning
Freemasonry justified against all the falsehoods spread against
her. In the system of Des Etangs, the Builder of the Temple is
supposed to symbolize the Good Genius of Humanity destroyed by
Ignorance, Falsehood, and Ambition; and hence the Third Degree
is supposed to typify the battle between Liberty and Despotism
in the same spirit, the justness of destroying impious kings is
considered the true dogma of the Rose Croix. In fact, the tumults
of the French Revolution, in which Des Etangs took no inconsiderable
share, had infected his spirit with a political temperament, which
unfortunately appears too prominently in many portions of his
Masonic system. Notwithstanding that he incorporated two of the
high Degrees into his Rite, Des Etangs considered the three Symbolic
Degrees as the only legitimate Freemasonry, and says that all
other Degrees have been instituted by various associations and
among different peoples on occasions when it was desired to revenge
a death, to re-establish a prince, or to give success to a sect.
DESIGN OF FREEMASONRY
The purpose of Freemasonry is neither charity
nor almsgiving, nor the cultivation of the social sentiment; for
both of these are merely incidental to its organization; but it
is the search after truth, and that truth is the unity of God
and the immortality of the soul. The various Degrees or grades
of initiation represent the various stages through which the human
mind passes, and the many difficulties which men, individually
or collectively, must encounter in their progress from ignorance
to the acquisition of this truth.
DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE
The Temple of King Solomon was destroyed
by Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Chaldees, during the reign of Zedekiah,
3416 A.M., 588 B.C. and just four hundred and sixteen years after
its dedication. Although the city was destroyed and the Temple
burnt, the Masonic legends state that the deep foundations of
the latter were not affected. Nebuchadnezzar caused the city of
Jerusalem to be leveled to the ground, the royal palace to be
burned, the Temple to be pillaged as well as destroyed, and the
inhabitants to be carried captive to Babylon. These events are
symbolically detailed in the Royal Arch, and, in allusion to them,
the passage of the Book of Chronicles which records them is appropriately
considered during the ceremonies of this part of the Degree.
DETACHED DEGREES
Side or honorary Degrees outside of the
regular succession of Degrees of a Rite, and which, being conferred
without the authority of a supreme controlling Body, are said
to be to the side of or detached from the regular regime or customary
work. The word detached is peculiar to the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite. Thus, in the Circular of the Southern Supreme Council,
October 10, 1802, is the following: "Besides those degrees
which are in regular succession, most of the Inspectors are in
possession of a number of detached degrees, given in different
parts of the world, and which they generally communicate, free
of expense, to those brethren who are high enough to understand
them."
DEUCHAR CHARTERS
Warrants, some of which are still in existence
in Scotland, and which are used to authorize the working of the
Knights Templar Degree by certain Encampments in that country.
They were designated Deuchar Charters, on account Alexander Deuchar,
an engraver and heraldic writer, having been the chief promoter
of the Grand Conclave and its first Grand Master. To his exertions,
also, the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Scotland may be
said to have owed its origin.
He appears to have become acquainted with
Knight Templarism early in the nineteenth century through Brethren
who had been dubbed under a Warrant emanating from Dublin, which
was held by Fratres serving in the Shropshire Militia. This corps
was quartered in Edinburgh in 1798; and in all probability was
through the instrumentality of its members that the first Grand
Assembly of Knights Templar was first set up in Edinburgh. Subsequently,
this gave place to the Grand Assembly of High Knights Templar
in Edinburgh, working under a Charter, No. 31, of the Early Grand
Encampment of Ireland, of which in 1807 Deuchar was Grand Master.
The Deuchar Charters authorized Encampments to install "Knights
Templar and Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem" one condition
on which these Warrants were held being "that no communion
or intercourse shall be maintained with any Chapter or Encampment,
or body assuming that name, holding meetings of Knights Templar
under a Master Mason's Charter." In 1837 the most of these
Warrants were forfeited, and the Encampments erased from the roll
of the Grand Conclave, on account of not making the required returns.
DEUS MEUMQUE JUS
Latin, meaning God and my right. The motto
of the Thirty-third Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish
Rite, and hence adopted as that also of the Supreme Council of
the Rite. It is a Latin translation of the motto of the royal
arms of England, which is the French expression Dieu et mon droit,
and concerning which we have the following tradition: Richard
Coeur de Leon, besieging Gisors, in Normandy, in 1198, gave, as
a parole or watchword, Dieu et man droit, because Philip Augustus,
King of France, had, without right, taken that city, which then
belonged to England. Richard, having been victorious with that
righteous parole, hence adopted it as his motto; and it was afterward
marshaled in the arms of England.
DEVELOPMENT
The ancients often wrote their books on
parchment, which was made up into a roll, hence called a volume,
from cohere, the Latin word meaning to roll up. Thus, he who read
the book commenced by unrolling it, a custom still practiced by
the Jews in reading their Sacred Law, and it was not until the
whole volume had been unrolled and read that he became master
of its contents. Now, in the Latin language, to unfold or to unroll
was devolvere, whence we get our English word to develop. The
figurative signification thus elicited from etymology may be well
applied to the idea of the development of Freemasonry. The system
of Speculative Freemasonry is a volume closely folded from unlawful
eyes, and he who would understand its true intent and meaning
must follow the old proverb, and "commence at the beginning."
There is no royal road of arriving at this knowledge. It can be
attained only by laborious research. The student must begin as
an Apprentice, by studying the rudiments that are unfolded on
its first page. Then as a Fellow Craft still more of the precious
writing is unrolled, and he acquires new ideas. As a Master he
continues the operation, and possesses himself of additional material
for thought.
But it is not until the entire volume lies
unrolled before him, in the highest Degree, and the whole speculative
system of its philosophy is Lying outspread before him, that he
can pretend to claim a thorough comprehension of its plan. It
is then only that he has solved the problem, and can exclaim,
"The end has crowned the work."
The superficial Freemason who looks only
on the ornamental covering of the roll knows nothing of its contents.
Freemasonry is a scheme of development; and he who has learned
nothing of its design, and who is daily adding nothing to his
stock of Masonic ideas, is simply one who is not unrolling the
parchment. It is a custom of the Jews on their Sabbath, in the
synagogue, that a member should pay for the privilege of unrolling
the Sacred Law. So, too, the Freemason, who would uphold the law
of his Institution, must pay for the privilege, not in base coin,
but in labor and research, studying its principles, searching
out its design, and imbibing all of its symbolism; and the payment
thus made will purchase a rich jewel.
DEVICE
A term in heraldry signifying any emblem
used to represent a family, person, nation, or society, and to
distinguish such from any other. The device is usually accompanied
with a suitable motto applied in a figurative sense, and its essence
consists in a metaphorical similitude between the thing representing
and that represented. Thus, the device of a lion represents the
courage of the person bearing it. The oak is the device of strength;
the palm, of victory; the sword, of honor; and the eagle, of sovereign
power. The several sections of the Masonic sodality are distinguished
by appropriate devices.
1. Ancient Craft Masonry. Besides the arms
of Speculative Freemasonry, which are described in this work under
the appropriate head, the most common device is a square and compass.
2. Royal Arch Masonry. The device is a triple tau within a triangle.
3. Knight Templarism. The ancient device, which was borne on the
seals and banners of the primitive Order, was two knights riding
on one horse, in allusion to the vow of poverty taken by the founders.
The modern device of Masonic Templarism is a cross pattée.
4. Scottish Rite Masonry. The device is a double headed eagle
crowned. holding in his claws a sword.
5. Royal and select Masters. The device is a trowel suspended
within a triangle, in which the allusion is to the tetragrammaton
symbolized by the triangle or delta and the workmen at the first
Temple symbolized by the trowel
6. Rose Croix Masonry. The device is a cross charged with a rose-
at its foot an eagle and a pelican.
7. Knight of the Sun. This old Degree of philosophical Freemasonry
has for its device rays of light issuing frown a triangle inscribed
within a circle of darkness, which "teaches us," says
Oliver, " that when man was enlightened by the Deity with
reason, he became enabled to penetrate the darkness and obscurity
which ignorance and superstition had spread abroad to allure men
to their destruction."
Each of these devices is accompanied by
a motto which properly forms a part of it. These mottoes will
be found under the head of Motto.
The Italian heralds have paid peculiar attention
to the subject of devices, and have established certain laws for
their construction, which are generally recognized in other countries.
These laws are: That there be nothing extravagant or monstrous
in the figures.. That figures be never jointed together which
have no relation or affinity with one another. That the human
body should never be used. That the figures should be few in number,
and that the motto should refer to the device, and express with
it a common idea. According to P. Bouhours, the figure or emblem
was called the today, and the motto the soul of the device.
DEVOIR
The gilds or separate communities in the
system of French compagnonage are called devoirs (see Compagnonage).
DEVOIR OF A KNIGHT
The original meaning of devoir is duty;
and hence, in the language of chivalry, a knight's devoir comprehended
the performance of all those duties to which he was obligated
by the laws of knighthood and the vows taken at his creation.
These were: The defense of widows and orphans, the maintenance
of justice, and the protection of the poor and weak against the
oppressions of the strong and great. Thus, in one of Beaumont
and Fletcher's plays (knight of the Burning Pestle. Act II, Scene
1), the knight says to the lady Madame if any service or devoir
of a poor errant knight may right your wrongs, command it, I am
pressed to give you succor, For to that holy end I bear my armor.
The devoir of a Knight Templar was originally to protect pilgrims
on their visit to the Holy Land, and to defend the holy places.
The devoir of a modern Knight Templar is to defend innocent virgins,
destitute widows, helpless orphans, and the Christian religion.
DEVOTIONS
The prayers in a Commandery of Knights Templar
are technically called the devotions of the knights.
DEW DROP LECTURE
An eloquent and much admired elaboration
of the monitorial charge appropriate for the Fellow Craft. This
fine composition has been ascribed to the gifted General Albert
Pike.
Geometry, the first and noblest of sciences, is the basis
Upon which the superstructure of Freemasonry is erected. Regarding
man as a rational and intelligent being, capable of enjoyment
and pleasure to an extent limited only by the acquisition of useful
knowledge, our Order points him to the studio of the Liberal Arts
and Sciences and to the possession of knowledge as the most befitting
and proper occupation for the God-like endowments with which he
is gifted. Indeed, all who frequent our Masonic Temple, are charged
to labor faithfully in the wide and unbounded field of human improvement,
from which they are assured of reaping a most glorious harvest,
a harvest rich in happiness to the whole family of man, and in
manifestation of the goodness of God. Your attention is especially
directed to the science of Geometry. no royal road, is true, but
to one prepared with an outfit it must prove more attractive than
palace walks by regal taste adorned.
The ancient philosophers placed such a high
estimate upon this science that all who frequented the groves
of the Sacred Academy, were compelled to explore its heavenly
paths, and no one whose mind was unexpended be its precepts was
intrusted with the instruction of the young. Even Plato justly
deemed the first of the philosophers when asked as to the probable
occupation of Deity, replied, "He geometrizes continually."
If we consider the symmetry and order which
govern all the works of creation, we must admit that Geometry
pervades the universe. If, by the aid of the telescope, we bring
the planets within the range of our observation and by the microscope,
view particles too minute for the eye, unaided, to behold, we
find them all pursuing the several objects of their creation,
in accordance with the fixed plan of the Almighty.
By Geometry we may curiously trace nature
through her various windings to her most concealed recesses. By
it we discover how the planets move in their respective orbits
and demonstrate their various revolutions; by it we account for
the return of the seasons and the variety of scenes which each
season displays to the discerning eye; by it we discover the power,
wisdom and goodness of the Grand Artificer of the Universe. and
view with delight the proportions which connect the vast machine.
Numberless worlds are around us, all framed by the same Divine
Artist, which roll through the vast expanse and are all governed
by the same unerring law of nature. Is there not more truth than
fiction in the thought of the ancient philosopher, that God geometrizes
continually?
By geometry He rounds the dew drop; points
the pyramidal icicle that hangs from thatch-bound roof; bends
into a graceful curve the foaming cataract; paints His bow of
beauty upon the canvas of a summer shower; assimilates the sugar
to the diamond, and in the fissures of the earth-bound rocks,
forms gorgeous caverns, thickset with starry gems. Is it He taught
the bee to store its honey in prismatic cells; the wild goose
to range her fight, and the noble eagle to wheel and dart upon
its prey, and the wakesome lark, God's earliest worshiper, to
hymn its matin song in spiral flight. By it He forms the tender
lens of the delicate eye, rounds the blushing cheek of beauty,
curves the ruby lip and fashions the swelling breast that throbs
in unison with a gushing heart. By it he paints the cheek of autumn's
mellow fruit, forms in molds of graceful symmetry the gentle dove,
marks the myriad circles on the peacock's gaudy train and decks
the plumage of ten thousand warblers of His praise that animate
the woody shade. By it He fashions the golden carp, decks the
silvery perch, forms all fish of every fin and tribe that course
the majestic ocean, cut the placid lake or swim in gentle brook.
Nay, more, even the glassy element in which they dwell, when by
gentle zephyrs stirred, sends its chasing waves in graceful curves
by God's own finger traced in parallel above, beneath, around
us, all the works of His hands, animate and inanimate, but prove
that God geometrizes continually.
But if man would witness the highest evidence
of geometrical perfection, let him step out of the rude construction
of his own hands and view the wide overspreading canopy of the
stars, whether fixed as centers of vast systems or all noiselessly
pursuing their geometrical paths in accordance with the never-changing
laws of nature. Nay more, the vast fields of illimitable space
are all formed of an infinitude of circles traced by the compass
of the Almighty Architect, whose every work is set by the Level,
adjusted by the Plumb, and perfected by the Square. Do this, my
Brother, and you must admit with Plato, that God geometrizes
continually, and be assured with Job, that He who stretcheth the
earth upon emptiness and fixeth the foundation thereof upon nothing,
so it cannot be moved, can bind the sweet influence of Pleiades
or loose the bands of Orion.
A survey of Nature, and the observation
of her beautiful proportions, first determined man to imitate
the Divine plan, and study symmetry and order. This gave rise
to societies, and birth to every useful art. The architect began
to design, and the plans which he laid down, being improved by
experience and time, have produced works which are the admiration
of every age. The lapse of time, the ruthless hand of ignorance,
and the devastations of war, have laid waste and destroyed many
valuable monuments of antiquity on which the utmost exertions
of human genius have been employed. Even the temple of Solomon,
so spacious and magnificent, and constructed by so many artists,
escaped not the unsparing ravages of barbarous force. Freemasonry,
notwithstanding, has still survived. The attentive ear receives
the sound from the instructive tongue, and the mysteries of Freemasonry
are safely Lodged in the repository of faithful breasts. Tools
and instruments of architecture, and symbolic emblems, most expressive,
are selected by the Fraternity to imprint on the mind wise and
serious truths; and thus, through a succession of ages, are transmitted,
unimpaired, the most excellent tenets of our Institution.
DIALECTICS
That branch of logic which teaches the rules
and modes of reasoning. Dialecticke and dialecticus are used as
corruptions of the Latin dialectica in some of the old manuscript
Constitutions, instead of logic, in the enumeration of the seven
liberal arts and sciences.
DIAMOND
A precious stone; in Hebrew, om. It was
the third stone in the second row of the high Priest's breastplate,
according to the enumeration of Aben Ezra, and corresponded to
the tribe of Zebulun. But it is doubtful whether the diamond was
known in the time of Moses; and if it was. its great value and
its insusceptibility to the impression of a graving-tool would
have rendered it totally unfit as a stone in the breastplate.
The Vulgate more properly gives the jasper.
DIDACTICAL
Hemming is credited with naming the fourth
section of the first Masonic lecture, didactical, perceptive or
instructive and he says that "'the virtuous Mason, after
he has enlightened his own mind by those sage and moral precepts,
is the more ready to enlighten and enlarge the understanding of
others."
DIDEROT, DENIS
French encyclopedist. Born October 5, 1713;
died July 30, 1784. Credited with an address at Paris in 1778
before the famous Lodge of Nine Sisters, mentioned in the correspondence,
published at Paris in 1812, between Grimm and Diderot. But the
Histoire de la Franc-Masonnerie Française (Albert Lantoine,
1925, Paris, page 360) says Diderot was not a Freemason.
DIESEA
A term used by the Druids to designate the
circumambulation around the sacred cairns, and is derived from
two words signifying on the right of the sun, because the circumambulation
was always in imitation of the course of the sun, with the right
hand next to the cairn or altar (see Circumambulation and Deiseil).
DIEU ET MON DROIT
French, meaning God and my Right (see Deus
Meunque Jus).
DIEU LE VEUT
A French expression for God wills it. The
war-cry of the opal Crusaders, and hence adopted as a motto in
the Degrees of Templarism.
DIGNITARIES
The Master, the Wardens, the Orator, and
the Secretary in a French Lodge are called dignitaries. The corresponding
officers in the Grand Orient are called Grand Dignitaries. In
English and American Masonic language the term is usually restricted
to high officers of the Grand Lodge
DIMIT
In Brother Mackey's opinion this is a modern,
American, and wholly indefensible corruption of the technical
word Demit. As the use of this form is very prevalent among American
Masonic writers, he considered it proper that we should inquire
which is the correct word, Demit or Dimit, and so he continues
thus:
The Masonic world had been content, in its
technical language, to use the word demit. But within a few years,
a few admirers of neologismsmen who are always ready to
believe that what is old cannot be good, and that new fashions
are always the besthave sought to make a change in the well-established
word, and, by altering the e in the first syllable into an i,
they make another word dimit, which they assert is the right one.
It is simply a question of orthography, and must be settled first
by reference to usage, and then to etymology, to discover which
of the words sustains, by its derivation, the true meaning which
is intended to be conveyed.
It is proper, however, to premise that although
in the seventeenth century Sir Thomas Browne used the word DEBIT
as a verb, meaning to depress, and Bishop Hall used dimit as signifying
to send away, yet both words are omitted by all the early lexicographers.
Neither of them is to be found in Phillips, in 1706, nor in Blunt,
in 1707, nor in Bailey, in 1739. Johnson and Sheridan, of a still
later date, have inserted in their dictionaries DEBIT, but not
dignity but Walker. Richardson, and Webster give both words, but
only as verbs. The verb to DEBIT or to dimit may be found, but
never the noun a DEBIT or a dimit. As a noun substantive, this
word, however it may be spelled, is unknown to the general language,
and is strictly a technical expression peculiar to Freemasonry.
As a Masonic technicality we must, then, discuss it. And, first,
as to its meaning:
Doctor Oliver, who omits dimit in his Dictionary
of Symbolical Masonry, defines remit thus: "A Mason is said
to DEMIT from the Order when he withdraws from all connection
with it." It will be seen that he speaks of it here only
as a verb, and makes no reference to its use as a noun. Macoy,
in his Cyclopaedia, omits DEMIT, but defines dimit thus: "From
the Latin dimitto, to permit to go. The act of withdrawing from
membership." To say nothing of the incorrectness of this
definition, to which reference will hereafter be made, there is
in it a violation of the principles of language which is worthy
of note. No rule is better settled than that which makes the verb
and the noun derived from it have the same relative signification.
Thus, to discharge means to dismiss; a discharge means a dismission;
to approve means to express liking; an approval means an expression
of liking; to remit means to relax; a remission means a relaxation,
and so with a thousand other instances. Now, according to this
rule, if to demit means to permit to go, then a remit should mean
a permission to go. The withdrawal is something subsequent and
Consequent, but it may ever take place.
According to Macoy's definition of the verbs
the granting of a dimit does not necessarily lead to the conclusion
that the Freemason who received it has left the Lodge. He has
only been permitted to do so. This is contrary to the universally
accepted definition of the word. Accordingly, when he comes to
define the word as a noun, he gives it the true meaning, which,
however, does not agree with his previous definition as a verb.
To instituting the inquiry which of these
two words is the true one, we must first look to the general usage
of Masonic writers; for, after all, the rule of Horace holds good,
that in the use of words we must be governed by custom or usage,
whose arbitrary sway.
Words and the forms of language must obey.
If we shall find that the universal usage
of Masonic writers until a comparatively recent date has been
to employ the form demit, then we are bound to believe that it
is the correct form, notwithstanding a few writers have more recently
sought to intrude the form dimit upon us. Now, how stands the
case? The first time that we find the word demit used is in the
second edition of Anderson's Constitutions, 1738, page 153. There
it is said that on the 25th of November, 1723, "it was agreed
that if a Master of a particular Lodge is deposed, or demits,
the Senior Warden shall forthwith fill the Master's Chair."
The word continued in use as a technical
word in the Freemasonry of England for many years. In the editions
of the Constitution published in 1756, page 311, the passage just
quoted is again recited, and the word DEMIT is again employed
in the fourth edition of the Constitutions published in 1767,
page 345. In the second edition of Dermott's Ahiman Rezon, published
in 1764, page 52, and in the third edition, published in 1778,
page 58, the word DEMIT is employed. Oliver, it will be seen,
uses it in his Dictionary, published in 1853. But the word seems
to have become obsolete in England, and to resign is now constantly
used by English Masonic writers in the place of to DEMIT.
In America, however, the word has been and
continues to be in universal use, and has always been spelled,
until recently, DEMIT. Thus we find it used by Tannehill, Manual,
1845, page 59; Morris, Code of Masonic Law, 1856, page 289; Hubbard,
in 1851; Chase, Digest, 1859, page 104; Mitchell, Masonic History,
volume ii, pages 556, 592, and by all the Grand Lodges whose proceedings
Brother Mackey examined up to the year 1860. On the contrary,
the word dimit is of recent origin. Usage, therefore, both English
and American, is clearly in favor of demit, and dimit must be
considered as an interloper, and ought to be consigned to the
tomb of the Capulets. And now we are to inquire whether this usage
is sustained by the principles of etymology. First, let us obtain
a correct definition of the word. To demit, in Masonic language,
means simply to resign. The Freemason who demits from his Lodge
resigns from it. The word is used in the exact sense, for instance,
in the Constitution of the Grand Lodge of Wisconsin, where it
is said: "No brother shall be allowed to demit from any Lodge
unless for the purpose of uniting with some other." That
is to say: "No brother shall be allowed to resign from any
Lodge."
Now what are the respective meanings of
DEMIT and dimit in ordinary language? There the words are found
to be entirely different in signification. To DEMIT is derived
first from the Latin demittere through the French demettre. In
Latin the prefixed particle de has the weight of down; added to
the verb mittere, to send, it signifies to let down from an elevated
position to a lower. Thus, Caesar used it in this very sense,
when, in describing the storming of Avaricum (Commentary de bello
Gallico, vii, 28), he says that the Roman soldiers did not let
themselves down, that is, descend from the top of the wall to
the level ground. The French, looking to this reference to a descent
from a higher to a lower position, made their verb se demettre,
used in a reflective sense, signify to Olive up a post, office,
or occupation, that is to say, to resign it. And thence the English
use of the word is reducible, which makes to demit signify Go
region. We have another word in our language also derived from
demettre, and in which the same idea of resignation is apparent.
It is the word demise, which was originally used only to express
a Loyal death. The old maxim was that "the king never dies."
So, instead of saying the death of the king, they said the demise
of the king, thereby meaning his resignation of the crown to his
successor. The word is now applied more generally, and we speak
of the demise of Pitt, or any other person. To dimit is derived
from the Latin dimittere. The prefixed particle di or dis has
the effect of off from, and hence dimittere means to send away.
Thus, Terence uses it to express the meaning of dismissing or
sending away an army.
Both words are now obsolete in the English
language. They were formerly used, but in the different senses
already indicated. Thus, Hollinshed employs demit to signify a
surrender, yielding up, or resignation of a franchise. Bishop
Hall uses dimit to signify a sending away of a servant by his
master.
Demit, as a noun, is not known in good English;
the correlative nouns of the verbs to demit and to dimit are demission
and dimission. A demit is altogether a Masonic technicality, and
is, moreover, an Americanism of recent usage. It is then evident
that to demit is the proper word, and that to use to dimit is
to speak and write incorrectly. When a Freemason demits from a
Lodge, we mean that he residers from a Lodge, because to demit
means to resign. But what does anyone mean when he says that a
Freemason dimits from a Lodge?
To dimit means, as we have seen, to send
away; therefore he dimits from the Lodge is equivalent to saying
he sends away from the Lodge, which of course is not only bad
English, but sheer nonsense.
If dimit is to be used at all, as it is
an active, transitive verb, it must be used only in that form,
and we must either say that a Lodge dimits a Mason, or that a
Mason is dimitted by his Lodge. Brother Mackey believed he had
discovered the way in which this blunder first arose. Rob Morris
(Code of Masonic Law, page 289) has the following passage:
A demit, technically considered, is the act of withdrawing and
applies to the Lodge and not to the individual. A Mason cannot
demit in the strict sense, buff the Lodge may demit (dismiss)
him. It is astonishing how the author of this passage could have
crowded into so brief a space so many violations of grammar, law,
and common sense. First, to demit means to withdraw, and then
this withdrawal is made the act of the Lodge and not of the individual,
as if the Lodge withdrew the member instead of the member withdrawing
himself. And immediately afterward, seeing the absurdity of this
doctrine, and to make the demission the act of the Lodge, he changes
the signification of the word, and makes to demit mean to dismiss.
Certainly it is impossible to discuss the law of Masonic demission
when such contrary meanings are given to the word in one and the
same paragraph.
But certain wiseacres, belonging probably
to that class who believe that there is always improvement in
change, seizing upon this latter definition o f Morris, that to
demit meant to dismiss, and seeing that this was a meaning which
the word never had, and, from its derivation from demittere, never
could have changed the word from demit to dimit, which really
does have the meaning of sending away or dismissing. But as the
Masonic act of demission does not mean a dismissal from the Lodge,
because that would be an expulsion, but simply a resignation,
the word dimit cannot properly be applied to the act.
A Freemason demits from the Lodge; he resigns.
He takes out his demit, a strictly technical expression and altogether
confined to this country; he asks for and receives an acceptance
of his resignation.
Thus far we have followed Brother Mackey
who went into this matter in considerable detail. An equally impressive
showing is to be found in the Builder (Volume v, page 308), where
Brother C. C. Hunt discusses the same question. At the end of
his article the editor, Brother H. L. Haywood, said, "A study
of forty-nine codes of the Grand Lodges of the United States reveals
the fact that forty-one used he word dimit while but eight used
demit.
Brother Hunt (page 29, volume vi, Builder)
comments upon this note, in brief, as follows: Dimit came into
the English language through church usage, where a priest would
be sent from one diocese to another. The bishop gave him a dimit,
virtually an order to go. The priest had to accept dismissal.
This word is obsolete since letter of dismissal, or dimissory
letter takes its place. Demit came into the language from the
same Latin word, but from the late Latin and the French, and meaning
a voluntary resignation. It so came to be used by Freemasons,
the thought being that a member of a Lodge, in good standing,
had an absolute right to relinquish his membership and obtain
a certificate to that effect. Until comparatively recently the
word used was demit. History of the word has been lost and ecclesiastical
rather than the Masonic sense attached to the word by those that
use dimit.
The Lexicographer of the Literary Digest
(July 9, 1927, page 68) has this to say of the distinction between
demit and dimit: As a verb, the word demit designates to give
up; lay down, or resign as an appointment; to drop or east down;
depress. As a noun, it means a letter of dismissal, specifically,
a recommendation given to a person removing from one Masonic Lodge
to another. In the sense of to release or dimiss, demit is obsolete.
The verb dimit means to permit or to go away; dismiss; to send
or give forth; to grant or lease (see Demit).
DIOCESAN
The Fifth Degree of Bahrdt's German Union
DIONYSIAN ARCHITECTS
The priests of Bacchus, or, as the Greeks
called him, Dionysus, having devoted themselves to architectural
pursuits, established about 1000 years before the Christian era
a society or fraternity of builders in Asia Minor, which is styled
by the ancient writers the Fraternity of Dionystan Architects,
and to this society was exclusively confined the privilege of
erecting temples and other public buildings.
The members of the Fraternity of Dionysian
Architects were linked together by the secret ties of the Dionysian
mysteries, into which they had all been initiated. Thus constituted,
the Fraternity was distinguished by many peculiarities that strikingly
assimilate it to our Order. In the exercise of charity, the more
opulent were sacredly bound to provide for the exigencies of the
poorer brethren." For the facilities of labor and government,
they were divided into communities called ouvoud each of which
was governed by a Master and Wardens.
They held a general assembly or grand festival
once a year, which was solemnized with great pomp and splendor.
They employed in their ceremonial observances many of the implements
which are still to be found among Freemasons, and used, like them,
a universal language, by which one Brother could distinguish another
in the dark as well as in the light, and which served to unite
the members scattered over India, Persia, and Syria, into one
common brotherhood.
The existence of this Order in Tyre, at
the time of the building of the Temple, is universally admitted;
and Hiram, the widow's son, to whom Solomon entrusted the superintendence
of the workmen, as an inhabitant of Tyre, and as a skillful architect
and cunning and curious workman, was, very probably, one of its
members. Hence, we may legitimately suppose that the Dionysians
were sent by Hiram, King of Tyre, to assist King Solomon in the
construction of the house he was about to dedicate to Jehovah,
and that they communicated to their Jewish fellow-laborers a knowledge
of the advantages of their Fraternity, and invited them to a participation
in its mysteries and privileges. In this union, however, the apocryphal
legend of the Dionysians would naturally give way to the true
legend of the Freemasons, which was unhappily furnished by a melancholy
incident that occurred at the time.
The latter part of this statement is, it
is admitted, a mere speculation, but one that has met the approval
of Lawrie, Oliver, and our best writers; and although this connection
between the Dionysian Architects and the builders of King Solomon
may not be supported by documentary evidence, the traditional
theory is at least plausible, and offers nothing which is either
absurd or impossible. If accepted, it supplies the necessary link
which connects the Pagan with the Jewish mysteries.
The history of this association subsequent
to the Solomonic era has been detailed by Masonic writers, who
have derived their information sometimes from conjectural and
sometimes from historical authority. About 300 B.C., they were
incorporated by the kings of Pergamos at Teos, which was assigned
to them as a settlement, and where they continued for centuries
as an exclusive society engaged in the erection of works of art
and the celebration of their mysteries. Notwithstanding the edict
of the Emperor Theodosius which abolished all mystical associations,
they are said to have continued their existence down to the time
of the Crusades, and during the constant communication which was
kept up between the two continents passed over from Asia to Europe,
where they became known as the Traveling Freemasons of the Middle
Ages, into whose future history they thus became merged.
DIONYSIAN MYSTERIES
These mysteries were celebrated throughout
Greece and Asia Minor, but principally at Athens, where the years
were numbered by them. They were instituted in honor of Baccus,
or, as the Greeks called him, Dionysus, and were introduced into
Greece from Egypt. In these mysteries, the murder of Dionysus
by the Titans was commemorated, in which legend he is evidently
identified with the Egyptian Osiris, who was slain by his brother
Typhon. The aspirant, in the ceremonies through which he passed,
represented the murder of the god and his restoration to life,
which, says the Baron de Sacy (Notes on Saint-Croix, ii 86), were
the subject of allegorical explanations altogether analogous to
those which were given to the rape of Proserpine and the murder
of Osiris.
The commencement of the mysteries was signalized
by the consecration of an egg, in allusion to the mundane egg
from which all things were supposed to have sprung. The candidate
having been first purified by water, and crowned with a myrtle
branch, was introduced into the vestibule, and there clothed in
the sacred habiliments. He was then delivered to the conductor,
who, after the mystic warning, meaning in English, Bygone, begone,
all ye profane.' exhorted the candidate to exert all his fortitude
and courage in the dangers and trials through which he was about
to pass. He was then led through a series of dark caverns, a part
of the ceremonies which Stobaeus calls "a rude and fearful
march through night and darkness. " During this passage he
was terrified by the howling of wild beasts, and other fearful
noises; artificial thunder reverberated through the subterranean
apartments, and transient flashes of lightning revealed monstrous
apparitions to his sight.
In this state of darkness and terror he
was kept for three days and nights, after which he commenced the
aphanism or mystical death of Bacchus. He was now placed on the
pastos or couch, that is, he was confined in a solitary cell,
where he could reflect seriously on the nature of the undertaking
in which he was engaged. During this time, he was alarmed with
the sudden flood of waters, which was intended to represent the
deluge. Typhon, searching for Osiris, or Dionvsus, for they are
here identical, discovered the ark where Osiris had been secreted,
and, tearing it violently asunder, scattered the limbs of his
victim upon the waters. The aspirant now heard the loud lamentations
which were instituted for the death of the god.
Then commenced the search of Rhea for the
remains of Dionysus. The apartments were filled with shrieks and
groans; the initiated mingled with their howlings of despair the
frantic dances of the Corybantes; everything was a scene of distraction,
until, at a signal from the hierophant, the whole drama changedthe
mourning was turned to joy; the mangled boded was found; and the
aspirant was released from his confinement, amid the shouts of
Eyprksapeu, EU7XQLPUMel x meaning in Greek, We have found it;
let us rejoice together. The candidate was nova made to descend
into the infernal regions, where he beheld the torments of the
wicked and the rewards of the virtuous.
It was now that he received the lecture
explanatory of the Rites, and was invested with the tokens which
served the initiated as a means of recognition. He then underwent
a lustration, after which he was introduced into the holy place,
where he received the name of epopt, and was fully instructed
in the doctrine of the mysteries, which consisted in a belief
in the existence of one God and a future state of rewards and
punishments. These doctrines were taught by a variety of significant
symbols. After the performance of these ceremonies, the aspirant
was dismissed, and the Rites concluded with the pronunciation
of the mystic words, Konx Ompax (which see elsewhere in this work).
Sainte-Croix (Mysteries of Paganism ii, 90) says that the murder
of Dionysus by the Titans was only an allegory of the physical
revolutions of the world; but these were in part, in the ancient
initiations, significant of the changes of life and death and
resurrection.
DIONYSUS
The Greek name of Bacchus (see Dionysian
Mysteries)
DIPLOMA
Literally means something folded. From the
Greek;7rXoz. The word is applied in Freemasonry to the Certificates
granted by Lodges, Chapters, and Commanderies to their members,
which should always be written on parchment. The more usual word,
however, is Certificate, which see. In the Scottish Rite they
are called Patents.
DIRECTOR OF CEREMONIES, GRAND
An officer in the Grand Lodge of England, who has the arrangement
and direction of all processions and ceremonies of the Grand Lodge
and the care of the regalia, clothing, insignia, and jewels belonging
to the Grand Lodge. His jewel is two rods in saltire, or crossed!
tied by a ribbon.
DIRECTORY
In German Lodges, the Master and other officers
constitute a Council of Management, under the name of Directorium
or Directory.
DIRECTORY, ROMAN HELVETIC
The name assumed in 1739 by the Supreme
Masonic authority at Lausanne, in Switzerland (see Switzerland).
DISCALCEATION, RITE OF
The ceremony of taking off the shoes, as
a token of respect, whenever we are on or about to approach holy
ground. It is referred to in Exodus (iii, 5), where the angel
of the Lord, at the burning bush, exclaims to Moses: "Draw
not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the
place whereon thou standest is holy ground." It is again
mentioned in Joshua (v, 15), in the following words: "And
the captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe
from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy."
And lastly, it is alluded to in the injunction given in Ecclesiastes
(v, 1): "Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God."
The Rite, in fact, always was, and still is, used among the Jews
and other Oriental nations when entering their temples and other
sacred edifices. It does not seem to have been derived from the
command given to Moses; but rather to have existed as a religious
custom from time immemorial, and to have been borrowed, as Mede
supposes, by the Gentiles, through tradition, from the patriarchs.
The direction of Pythagoras to his disciples was in these words
in Greek: Avvroonos AVf KQL TpoKvMeL that is, in English, Offer
sacrifice and worship with they shoes off. Justin Martyr says
that those who came to worship in the sanctuaries and temples
of the Gentiles were commanded by their priests to put off their
shoes. Drusius, in his votes on the Book of Joshua, says that
among most of the Eastern nations it was a pious duty to tread
the pavement of the temple with unshod feet.
Maimonides, the
great expounder of the Jewish aw, asserts (in the Beth Habbechirah,
chapter vii) that "it was not lawful for a man to come into
the mountain of God's house with his shoes on his feet, or with
his staff, or in his working garments, or with dust on his feet."
Rabbi Solomon, commenting on the command in Leviticus (xix, 30),
"Ye shall reverence my sanctuary," makes the same remark
in relation to this custom. On this subject, Oliver (Historical
Landmarks ii, 471) observes: "Now the act of going with naked
feet was always considered a token of humility and reverence,
and the priests, in the temple worship, always officiated with
feet uncovered, although it was frequently injurious to their
health."
Mede quotes Zago Zaba, an Ethiopian bishop, who
was ambassador from David, King of Abyssini, to John III. of Portugal,
as saying: "We are not permitted to enter the church except
barefooted."
The Mohammedans, when about to perform their
devotions, always leave their slippers at the door of the mosque.
The Druids practiced the same custom whenever they celebrated
their sacred rites; and the ancient Peruvians are said always
to have left their shoes at the porch when they entered the magnificent
temple consecrated to the worship of the sun.
Adam Clarke (Commentary
on Elodus) thinks that the custom of worshiping the Deity barefooted,
was so general among all nations of antiquity, that he assigns
it as one of his thirteen proofs that the whole human race have
been derived from one family.
Finally, Bishop Patrick, speaking
of the origin of this Rite, says, in his Commentaries: "Moses
did not give the first beginning to this Rite, but it was derived
from the patriarchs before him, and transmitted to future times
from that ancient, general tradition; for we find no command in
the law of Moses or the priests performing the service of the
temple without shoes, but it is certain they did so from immemorial
custom; and so do the Mohammedans and other nations at this day."
DISCIPLINA ARCANl
See Discipline of the Secret
DISCIPLINE
This word is used by Freemasons, in its
ecclesiastical sense! to signify the execution of the laws by
which a Lodge is governed and the infliction of the penalties
enjoined against offenders who are its members, or, not being
members, live within its jurisdiction. To discipline a Freemason
is to subject him to punishment (see Jurisdiction and Punishments)
.
DISCIPLINE OF THE SECRET
There existed in the earlier ages of the
Christian church a mystic and secret worship, from which a portion
of the congregation was peremptorily excluded, and whose privacy
was guarded, with the utmost care, from the obtrusive eyes of
all who had not been duly initiated into the sacred rites that
qualified them to be present. This custom of communicating only
to a portion of the Christian community the more abstruse doctrines
and more sacred ceremonies of the church, is known among ecclesiastical
writers by the name of Disciplina Arcani, or the Discipline of
the Secret.
Converts were permitted to attain a knowledge of all the doctrines,
and participate in the sacraments of the church, only after a
long and experimental probation. The young Christian, like the
disciple of Pythagoras, was made to pass through a searching ordeal
of time and patience, by which his capacity, his fidelity, and
his other qualifications were strictly tested. For this purpose,
different ranks were instituted in the congregation. The lowest
of these were named the Catechumens, meaning in English, the beginners,
those under instruction. These were occupied in a study of the
elementary principles of the Christian religion. Their connection
with the church was not consummated by baptism, to which rite
they were not admitted, even as spectators, it being the symbol
of a higher Degree; but their initiation was accompanied with
solemn ceremonies, consisting of prayer, signing with the cross,
and the imposition of hands by the priest. The next Degree was
that of the Competentes, or seekers.
When a Catechumen had exhibited satisfactory
evidences of his proficiency in religious knowledge, he petitioned
the Bishop for the sacrament of baptism. His name was then registered
in the books of the church. After this registration, the candidate
underwent the various ceremonies appropriate to the Degree upon
which he vas about to enter. He was examined by the bishop as
to his attainments in Christianity, and, if approved, was exorcized
for twenty days, during which time he was subjected to rigorous
fasts, and, having made confession, the necessary penance was
prescribed. He was then, for the first time, instructed in the
words of the Apostles' Creed, a symbol of which the Catechumens
were entirely ignorant.
Another ceremony peculiar to the Competentes
was that of going about with their faces veiled. Saint Augustine
explains the ceremony by saying that the Competentes went veiled
in public as an image of the slavery of Adam after his expulsion
from Paradise, and that, after baptism. the veils were taken away
as an emblem of the liberty of the spiritual life which was obtained
by the sacrament of regeneration. Some other significant ceremonies,
but of a less important character, were used. and the Competent,
having passed through them all, was at length admitted to the
highest Degree.
The Fideles, or Faithful, constituted the
Third Degree or Order. Baptism was the ceremony by which the Competentes,
after an examination into their proficiency, were admitted into
this Degree. "They were thereby," says Bingham, "made
complete and perfect Christians, and were, upon that account,
dignified with several titles of honor and marks of distinction
above the Catechumens." They were called Illuminati, or Illuminated,
because they had been enlightened as to those secrets which were
concealed from the inferior orders.
They were also called Initiati, or Initiated,
because they were admitted to a knowledge of the sacred mysteries;
and so commonly was this name in use, that, when Chrysostom and
the other ancient writers spoke of their concealed doctrines,
they did so in ambiguous terms, so as not to be understood by
the Catechumens, excusing themselves for their brief allusions,
by saying, "the Initiated know what we mean." And so
complete was the understanding of the ancient Fathers of a hidden
mystery, and an initiation into them, that Saint Ambrose has written
a book, the title of which is, Concerning those who are Initiated
into the Mysteries. They were also called the perfect, to intimate
that they had attained to a perfect knowledge of all the doctrines
and sacraments of the church.
There were certain sprayers, which none
but the Faithful were permitted to hear. Among these was the Lord's
prayer, which, for this reason, was commonly called Oratio Fidelium,
or, the Prayer of the Faithful. They were also admitted to hear
discourses upon the most profound mysteries of the church, to
which the Catechumens were strictly forbidden to listen. Saint
Ambrose, in the book written by him to the Initiated, says that
sermons on the subject of morality were daily preached to the
Catechumens; but to the Initiated they gave an explanation of
the Sacraments, which, to have spoken of to the unbaptized, would
have rather been like a betrayal of mysteries than instruction.
Saint Augustine, in one of his sermons to
the Faithful, says: "Having now dismissed the Catechumens,
you alone have we retained to hear us, because, in addition to
those things which belong to all Christians in common, we are
now about to speak in an especial manner of the Heavenly Mysteries,
which none can hear except those who, by the gift of the Lord,
are able to comprehend them."
The mysteries of the church were divided,
like the Ancient Mysteries, into the lesser and the greater. The
former was called Missa Catechumenorum, or the Mass of the Catechumens,
and the latter, Missa Fidelium, or the Mass of the Faithful. The
public service of the church consisted of the reading of the Scripture,
and the delivery of a sermon, which was entirely of a moral character.
These being concluded, the lesser mysteries, or Mass of the Catechumens,
commenced. The deacon proclaimed in a loud voice, " Ne quis
audientium, ne quis infidelium," that is, the Latin meaning,
Let none who are simply hearers, and let no infuiets be present.
All then who had not acknowledged their faith in Christ by placing
themselves among the Catechumens, and all Jews and Pagans, were
caused to retire, that the Mass of the Catechumens might begin.
For better security, a deacon was placed at the men's door and
a subdeacon at the women's, for the deacons were the doorkeepers,
and, in fact, received that name in the Greek church. The Mass
of the Catechumens which consisted almost entirely of prayers,
with the episcopal benediction was then performed.
This part of the service having been concluded,
the Catechumens were dismissed by the deacons, with the expression,
Catechumens, depart in peace. The Competentes, however, or those
who had the Second or Intermediate Degree, remained until the
prayers for those who were possessed of evil spirits, and the
supplications for themselves, were pronounced. After this, they
too were dismissed, and none now remaining in the church but the
Faithful, the Missa Fidelium, or greater mysteries, commenced.
The formula of dismission used by the deacon
on this occasion was: Sancta sanctis, foras canes, the Latin for
Holy things for the holy, let the dogs depart, the word doff being
a term of reproach for the unworthy, the hangers-on.
The Faithful then all repeated the creed,
which served as an evidence that no intruder or uninitiated person
was present; because the creed was not revealed to the Catechumens,
but served as a password to prove that its possessor was an initiate.
After prayers had been offered upwhich, however, differed
from the supplications in the former part of the service, by the
introduction of open allusions to the most abstruse doctrines
of the church, which were never named in the presence of the Catechumens
the oblations were made, and the Eucharistical Sacrifice, or Lord's
Supper, was celebrated. Prayers and invocations followed, and
at length the service was concluded, and the assembly was dismissed
by the benediction, "Depart in peace."
Bingham records the following rites as having been concealed from
the Catechumens, and entrusted, as the sacred mysteries, only
to the Faithful: the manner of receiving baptism; the ceremony
of confirmation; the ordination of priests; the mode of celebrating
the Eucharist; the Liturgy, or Divine Service; and the doctrine
of the Trinity, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, which last,
however, were begun to be explained to the Competentes.
Such was the celebrated Discipline of the
Secret in the early Christian church. That its origin, so far
as the outward form was concerned, is to be found in the Mysteries
of Paganism, there can be no doubt, as has been thus expressed
by the learned Mosheim:
Religion having thus, in both its branches
the speculative as well as the practical, assumed a twofold character
- the one public or common, the other private or mysterious it
was not long before a distinction of a similar kind took place
also in the Christian discipline and form of divine worship; for,
observing that in Egypt as well as in other countries, the heathen
worshippers in addition to their public religious ceremonies to
which everyone was admitted without distinction, had certain secret
and most sacred rites, to which they gave the name of mysteries,
and at the celebration of which none but persons of the most approved
faith and discretion were permitted to be present, the Alexandrian
Christians first. and after them others, were beguiled into a
notion that they could not do better than make the Christian discipline
accommodate itself to this model.
No trace of the Disciptina Arcani
is found until the end of the second century and it appears to
have died rapidly near the close of the sixth century Strong traces
of it are asserted by the encyclopedists to be even now in the
Greek liturgy. Further details are given in the old works De Duciptini
Arcani by Schelstrate, published at Rome in 1685, and that by
Tentzel, published at Leipzig in 1692.
DISCOVERY OF THE BODY
See Euresis
DISCOVERY, THE YEAR OF THE
The Latin phrase Anno Inventionis, or in
the Year of the Discovery, is the style assumed by the Royal Arch
Masons, in commemoration of an event which took place soon after
the commencement of the rebuilding of the Temple by Zerubbabel.
DISMISSORIAL
The German name for what English Freemasons
call a Certificate of Lodge Resignation. A Dimit.
DISPENSATION
A permission to do that which, without such
permission, is forbidden by the constitutions and usages of the
Order.
Du Cange (in the Glossarium) defines a Dispensation
to be a prudent relaxation of a general law, the Latin expression
being Provida juris cmmmunis relaxatio. While showing how much
the ancient ecclesiastical authorities were opposed to the granting
of Dispensations, since they preferred to pardon the offense after
the law had been violated, rather than to give a previous license
for its violation, he adds, "but, however much the Roman
Pontiffs and pious Bishops felt of reverence for the ancient Regulations,
they were often compelled to depart in some measure from them,
for the utility of the church; and this milder measure of acting
the jurists called a Dispensation."
This power to dispense with the provisions
of law in particular cases appears to be inherent in the Grand
Master; because, although frequently referred to in the old Regulations,
it always is as if it were a power already in existence, and never
by way of a new grant. There is no record of any Masonic statute
or constitutional provision conferring this prerogative in distinct
records. The instances, however, in which this prerogative may be
exercised are clearly enumerated in various places of the Old
Constitutions, so what there can be no difficulty in understanding
to what extent the prerogative extends.
The power of granting dispensations is confided
to the Grand Master, or his representative, but should not be
exercised except on extraordinary occasions, or for excellent
reasons. The dispensing power is conned to four circumstances:
1. A Lodge cannot be opened and held unless
a Warrant of Constitution be first granted by the (Grand Lodge;
but the Grand Master may issue his Dispensation, empowering a
constitutional number of Brethren to open and hold a Lodge until
the next Communication of the Grand Lodge. At this communication,
the Dispensation of the Grand Master is either revoked or confirmed..
A Lodge under Dispensation is not permitted to be represented,
nor to vote in the Grand Lodge.
2. Not more than five candidates can be
made at the same communication of a Lodge; but the Grand Master,
on showing of sufficient cause, may extend to a Lodge the privilege
of making as many more as he may think proper.
3. No brother can, at the same time, belong
to two Lodges within three miles of each other. But the Grand
Master may dispense with this regulation also.
4. Every Lodge must elect and install its
officers on the constitutional night, which, in most Masonic Jurisdictions,
precedes the anniversary of Saint John the Evans list. Should
it, however neglect this duty, or should any officer die, or be
expelled. or removed permanently no subsequent election or installation
can take place, except under Dispensation of the Grand Master.
DISPENSATION, LODGES UNDER
See Lodge
DISPENSATIONS OF RELIGION
An attempt has been made to symbolize the
Pagan, the Jewish, and the Christian Dispensations by a certain
ceremony of the Master's Degree which dramatically teaches the
resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul. The
reference made in this ceremony to portions of the First, Second,
and Third Degrees is used to demonstrate the differences of the
three dispensations in the reception of these two dogmas. It is
said that the unsuccessful effort in the Entered Apprentice's
Degree refers to the heathen dispensation, where neither the resurrection
of the body nor the immortality of the soul was recognized; at
the second unsuccessful effort in the Fellow Craft's Degree refers
to the Jewish dispensation, where, though the resurrection of
the body was unknown, the immortality of the soul was dimly hinted;
and that the final and successful effort in the Master's Degree
symbolizes the Christian Dispensation, in which, through the teachings
of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, both the resurrection of the
body and the immortality of the soul were clearly brought to light.
This symbolism, which is said by Brother Mackey to have been the
invention of a peripatetic lecturer in the South many years ago,
is so forced and fanciful in its character, that it did not long
survive the local and temporary teachings of its inventor, and
is only preserved here as an instance of how symbols, like metaphors,
may sometimes run mad.
But there is another symbolism of the three Degrees, as illustrating
three dispensations, which is much older, having originated among
the lecture makers of the eighteenth century, which for a long
time formed a portion of the authorized ritual, and has been repeated
with approbation by some distinguished writers. In this the three
Degrees are said to be symbols in the progressive knowledge which
they impart of the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian
dispensations. The First, or Entered Apprentice's Degree, in which
but little Masonic light is communicated, and which, indeed, is
only preparatory and introductory to the two succeeding Degrees,
is said to symbolize the first, or Patriarchal Dispensation, the
earliest revelation, where the knowledge of God was necessarily
imperfect, His worship only a few simple rites of devotion, and
the religious dogmas merely a general system of morality.
The Second, or Fellow Craft's Degree, is
symbolic of the second or Mosaic Dispensation, in which, while
there were still many imperfections, there was also a great increase
of religious knowledge, and a nearer approximation to Divine truth,
with a promise in the future of a better theodicy. But the Third,
or Master Mason's Degree, which, in its original conception, before
it was dismembered by the innovations of the Royal Arch, was perfect
and complete in its consummation of all Masonic light, symbolizes
the last, or Christian Dispensation, where the great and consoling
doctrine of the resurrection to eternal life is the crowning lesson
taught by its Divine Founder. This subject is very fully treated
by the Rev. James Watson, in an address delivered at Laneaster,
England, in 1795, and contained in Jones's Masonic Miscellanies
(page 245); better, in Brother Mackey's opinion, by him than even
by Hutchinson.
Beautiful as this symbolism may be, and
appropriately fitting in all its parts to the laws of symbolic
science, it is evident that its origin cannot be traced farther
back than to the period when Freemasonry was first divided into
three distinctive Degrees; nor could it have been invented later
than the time when Freemasonry was deemed, if not an exclusively
Christian organization, at least to be founded on and fitly illustrated
by Christian dogmas. At present, this symbolism, though preserved
in the speculations of such Christian writers as Hutchinson and
Oliver, and those who are attached to their peculiar school, finds
no place in the modern cosmopolitan rituals. It may belong, as
an explanation, to the history of Freemasonry, but can scarcely
make a part of its symbolism.
Here a brief note may be added to
the above comments by Brother Mackey on this important subject
to say that a notebook formerly in the possession of Brother John
Barney, whose field of instruction in the Masonic ceremonies extended
through Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois, has a monitorial
teaching pertaining to the three Dispensations concluding with
Christianity, a lecture ready for use when desired but which could
easily be omitted on other occasions. Such a lecture is unknown
to the practice of-the present generation.
DISPERSION OF MANKIND
The dispersion of mankind at the tower of
Babel and on the plain of Shinar, which is recorded in the Book
of Genesis, has given rise to a Masonic tradition of the following
purport:
The knowledge of the great truths of God and immortality were
known to Noah, and by him communicated to his immediate descendants,
the Noachidae or Noachites, by whom the true worship continued
to be cultivated for some time after the subsidence of the deluge;
but when the human race were dispersed, a portion lost sight of
the Divine truths which had been communicated to them from their
common ancestor, and fell into the most grievous theological errors,
corrupting the purity of the worship and the orthodoxy of the
religious faith which they had primarily received.
These truths were preserved in their integrity
by but a very few in the patriarchal line, while still fewer were
enabled to retain only dim and glimmering portions of the true
light. The first class was confined to the direct descendants
of Noah, and the second was to be found among the priests and
philosophers, and, perhaps, still later, among the poets of the
heathen nations, and among those whom they initiated into the
secrets of these truths.
The system of doctrine of the former class
has been called by Masonic writers the Pure or Primitive Freemasonry
of antiquity, and that of the latter class the Spurious Freemasonry
of the same period. These terms were first used by Doctor Oliver,
and are intended to referthe word pure to the doctrines
taught by the descendants of Noah in the Jewish line, and the
word spurious to those taught by his descendants in the heathen
or Gentile line.
DISPUTE
The spirit of all the Ancient Charges and
Constitutions is, that disputes among Freemasons should be settled
by an appeal to the Brethren, to whose award the disputants were
required to submit. Thus, in an Old Record of the fifteenth century,
it is provided, among other charges, that: If any discord shall
be between him and his fellows, he shall abey him mekely and be
stylle at the byddyng of his Master or of the Wardeyne of his
Master, in his Master's absent to the holy day following, and
that he accorded then at the disposition of his fellows.
A similar regulation is to be found in all
the other old Charges and Constitutions, and is continued in operation
at this day by the Charges approved in 1799, which express the
same idea in more modern language.
DISSOLVED LODGES
A Lodge in England may be dissolved by the
unanimous consent of its members and can be erased or suspended
by proper vote of Grand Lodge. Should a majority of the members
of any Lodge decide to retire from it the rest of the members
have the power of assembling. Should, however, all the members
withdraw, the Lodge becomes automatically extinct.
DISTINCTIVE TITLE
In the rituals, all Lodges are called Lodges
of Saint Johns but every Lodge has also another name by which
it is distinguished. This is called its distinctive title. This
usage is preserved in the diplomas of the Continental Freemasons,
especially the French, where the specific name of the Lodge is
always given as well as the general title of Saint John, which
it has in common with all other Lodges. Thus, a Diploma issued
by a French Lodge whose name on the Register of the Grand Orient
would perhaps be La Vérité, meaning The Truth, will
purport to have been issued by the Lodge of Saint John, under
the distinctive title of La Vérité, or to use the
full expression in French, par la Lope de St. Jeansous be titre
distinctif de la Varité. The term is never used in English
or American Diplomas.
DISTRESS, SIGN OF
See Sign of Distress
DISTRICT DEPUTY GRAND MASTER
An officer appointed to inspect old Lodges,
consecrate new ones, install their officers, and exercise a general
supervision over the Fraternity in the districts where, from the
extent of the jurisdiction, the Grand Master or his Deputy cannot
conveniently attend in person. He is considered as a Grand Officer,
and as the representative of the Grand Lodge in the district in
which he resides. In England, officers of this description are
called Provincial Grand Masters.
DISTRICT GRAND LODGES
In the Constitution of the Grand Lodge of
England and some other Jurisdictions, Grand Lodges in colonies
and other foreign parts are called Distract Grand Lodges, to distinguish
them from Provincial Grand Lodges or the sovereign governing Masonic
body.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
The District of Columbia lies partly in
the State of Maryland and partly in the State of Virginia. It
was set apart by Act of Congress on July 16, 1790, for the capital
of the United States. Some months previously, on April 21, 1769,
Potomac Lodge, No. 9, had been organized in Georgetown by the
Grand Lodge of Maryland but later it ceased work. Potomac Lodge,
No. 43, warranted on November 11, 1806, was the first Lodge in
the State to endure. A Convention was held on December 11, 1810,
by five Lodges, namely Federal, No. 15; Brooke, No. 47; Columbia,
No. 35; Washington Naval, No. 41, and Potomac, No.43. The organization
of a Grand Lodge was fully completed on February 19, 1811.
The first Chapter or Encampment, as it was
called in the District of Columbia, worked under the Charter of
Federal Lodge, No. 15, F. A. A. M., of the Jurisdiction of the
Grand Lodge of Maryland. A meeting took place on Monday, December
14, 1795, to make arrangements for the new Chapter. Two other
meetings were held, one on December 16, 1795, and one on June
17, 1797, before the Chapter was finally constituted. In February,
1799, it was decided that the Royal Arch Encampment should be
broken up. A Dispensation dated August 30, 1822, was issued by
the General Grand High Priest to the Chapters in the District
of Columbia to organize a Grand Chapter. Representatives of Federal
Chapter, No. 3; Union, No. 4; Brooke, No. 6, and Potomac, No.
8, were present at a Convention held on Tuesday, February 10,
1824. Potomac Chapter, however, decided to continue under her
old Charter. After January 8, 1833, the Grand Lodge of the District
of Columbia no longer existed and the Chapters were placed under
the Jurisdiction of the Grand Chapter of Maryland. In the year
1867 steps were taken to reorganize a Grand Chapter by Columbia,
No. 15; Washington, No. 16; Mount Vernon, No. 20, and Potomac,
No. 8, and it was duly constituted in Washington at the Opera
House on May 23 1867. After encountering much trouble and opposition,
the Grand Chapter of the District was admitted to the General
Grand chapter in 1868 and a short time after was joined by 'Potomac
Chapter, No. 8. The Select Degrees were at first conferred in
Chapters. When the Grand Chapter of the District of Columbia was
organized in 1867 it resolved to drop the Select Degrees from
Chapter work, and Companion Benjamin B. French issued Dispensations
to form three Councils for the District. These, however, ceased
work after a short time.
Washington Council No. 1, chartered August
14, 1883; Adoniram Council No. 2, chartered November 9, 1909,
and Columbia No. 3, chartered September 30, 1918, through their
representatives at a Convention held at Washington on April 5,
1919, General Grand Master George A. Newell, presiding, formed
the Grand Council, Royal and Select Masters of the District of
Columbia, Companion George E. Corson being the first Grand Master
and John A. Colborn, Grand Recorder.
The first Commandery organized was Washington,
No. 1, in the City of Washington, December 1, 1824, chartered
January 14, 1825. Representatives of Washington, No. 1; Columbia,
No. 2; Potomac, No. 3; De Molay Mounted, No. 4, and Orient, No.
5, met in Convention, January 14, 1896, and constituted the Grand
Commandery by authority of a Warrant dated December , 1895. The
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was first introduced to Washington
when Mithras Lodge of Perfection, No. 1; Evangelist Chapter of
Rose Croix, No. 1; Robert de Bruce Council of kadosh, No. 1, and
Albert Pike Consistory, No. 1, were chartered on December 30,
1870; December 7, 1871; January 29, 1874, and January 12, 1876,
respectively.
DIU
Understood to be an abbreviation meaning
the Shining Light of Heaven. An Indian word applied to the Supreme
God, of the same signification as the Greek words Zeus and Theos,
and the Latin Deus, Jupiter or Jovis; in Sanskrit, Dewas; in Lettish,
Dews; in Gothic, Thius; and in North German, Tyr.
DIVINING-ROD or PEDUM
The moderator, or Royal Master, was imaged
with the ureas on his forehead, the pedum and the whip between
his knees. The Divining-Rod or wand of divination, a magic wand,
was a symbol of pn, Hek, signifies a law, a statute, or custom;
and therefore ppl, a legislator, a scepter, a king, moderator,
and a pedum. Hence, a staff. It is represented by a crook surmounted
on a pole. The rod of the Rose Croix Knight is dissimilar; it
is straight, white, like a wand, and yet may be used as a helping
or leaning staff.
DOCUMENTS, THREE OLDEST
See Krause
DODD, REVEREND WILLIAM
Born 1729, first Grand Chaplain of England,
1775, and died 1777. Weakness of character in money matters caused
him to be tried for forgery, and executed. At the dedication of
Freemasons Hall in London, 1776, he delivered an oration and he
was also the author of many books and literary papers. His Beauties
of Shakespeare was very popular.
DODD'S CONSTITUTIONS
This is a printed pamphlet of twenty pages,
in quarto, the title being The beginning and the first Foundation
of the Most Worthy Craft of Masonry; with the Charges there unto
belonging. By a deceased Brother, for the benefit of his widow.
London: printed for Mrs. Dodd at the Peacock without Temple Bar.
1739. Price, sixpence.
Probably this pamphlet was printed from
the Spencer Manuscript; it is very rare, but the Grand Lodges
of England and Iowa each have a copy and so had Brother Enoch
T. Carson of Cincinnati, who reprinted 125 copies of it in 1886;
it has also been reproduced in facsimile by the Quatuor Coronati
Lodge in volume iv of its Masonic Reprints.
DOG
A symbol in the Advanced Degrees (see Cynocephalus).
DOLMEN
A name given in France to the Celtic stone
tables termed in England cromlechs.
DOMATIC
At one time, especially in Scotland, Operative
Freemasons were styled Domatic, while the Speculative ones were
known as Geometric; but the origin and derivation of the terms
are unknown
DOMINE DEUS MEUS
The Hebrew term for this Latin expression
is ..... , pronounced as Ad-o-noy ' El-o-hay, signifying oh Lord,
my God, and referring to the Third Degree of the Scottish Rite.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Freemasonry, in the Dominican Republic,
had for its center the National Grand Orient, which possessed
the supreme authority and which practiced the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite. The Grand Orient was divided into a National Grand
Lodge, under which have been fifteen Symbolic Lodges; a sovereign
Grand Chapter General, under which are all Chapters; and a Supreme
Council, which controlled the Advanced Degrees of the Rite. Santo
Domingo was the headquarters of Morin (see further reference to
him in this work) in 1763, when he was establishing the Scottish
Rite in America.
Following the formation of the Republic
of Santo Domingo in 1844, a Grand Orient was established in 1858
by Lodges originally chartered by the Grand Orient of Haiti. A
Grand Lodge was organized in 1865 and later in that year there
came into being a Supreme Council, the two uniting as a National
Grand Orient on January 1, 1866.
DOMINICANS, ORDER OF
Founded at Toulouse, in 1215, by Dominic,
or Domingo, de Guzman, who was born at Calahorra, in Old Castile,
1170. He became a traveling missionary to convert the heretical
Albigenses, and established the Order for that purpose and the
cure of souls. The Order was confirmed by Popes Innocent III and
Honorius III, in 1216. Dress, white garment, with black cloak
and pointed cap. Dominic died at Bologna, 1221, and was canonized,
given saintly standing in the church, by Gregory IX in 1233
DONATS
A class of men who were attached to the
Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, or Knights of Malta. They did
not take the vows of the Order, but were employed in the various
offices of the convent and hospital. In token of their connection
with the Order, they wore what was called the demi-cross (see
Knights of Malta).
DOOR
Every well-constructed Lodge-room should
be provided with two doorsone on the left hand of the Senior
Warden, communicating with the preparation room; the other on
his right hand, communicating with the Tiler's apartment.
The former of these is called the Inner
Door, and is under the charge of the Senior Deacon; the latter
is called the outer Door, and is under the charge of the Junior
Deacon. In a well-furnished Lodge, each of these doors is provided
with two knockers, one on the inside and the other on the outside;
and the outside door has sometimes a small aperture in the center
to facilitate communications between the Junior Deacon and the
Tiler. This, however, is a modern innovation, and its propriety
and expediency are very doubtful. No communication ought legally
to be held between the inside and the outside of the Lodge except
through the door, which should be opened only after regular alarm
duly reported, and on the order of the Worshipful Master.
Brother Mackey here describes the common practice in the United
States of America, but the arrangement he advocates is by no means
universal, Brother Clegg reporting instances found abroad where
he entered at the left of the Senior Warden.
DORIC ORDER
The oldest and most original of the three
Grecian orders. It is remarkable for robust solidity in the column,
for massive grandeur in the entablature, and for harmonious simplicity
in its construction. The distinguishing characteristic of this
order is the want of a base. The flutings are few, large, and
very little concave. The capital has no astragal or molding, but
only one or more fillets, which separate the flutings from the
torus or bead. The column of strength which supports the Lodge
is of the Doric order, and its appropriate situation and symbolic
officer are in the West (see Orders of Architecture).
DORMANT LODGE
A Lodge whose Charter has not been revoked,
but which has ceased to meet and work for a long time, is said
to be dormant. It can be restored to activity only by the authority
of the Grand Master or the Grand Lodge on the petition of some
of its members, one of whom, at least, ought to be a Past Master.
DORMER
In the Lectures, according to the present
English system, the ornaments of a Master Mason's Lodge are said
to be the porch, dormer, and square pavement. The dormer is the
window which is supposed to give light to the Holy of Holies.
In the Glossary of Architecture, a dormer is defined to be a window
pierced through a sloping roof, and placed in a small gable which
rises on the side of the roof. This symbol is not preserved in
the American system.
DOTAGE
The regulations of Freemasonry forbid the
initiation of an old man in his dotage; and very properly, because
the imbecility of his mind would prevent his comprehension of
the truths presented to him.
DOUBLE CUBE
A cubical figure, whose length is equal
to twice its breadth and height. Solomon's Temple is said to have
been of this figure, and hence it has sometimes been adopted as
the symbol of a Masonic Lodge. Doctor Oliver (Dictionary of Symbolic
Masonry) thus describes the symbolism of the double cube:
The heathen deities were many of them represented
by a cubical stone. Pausanius informs us that a cube was the symbol
of Mercury because, like the cube, he represented Truth. In Arabia,
a black stone in the form of a double cube was reputed to be possessed
of many occult virtues. Apollo was sometimes worshiped under the
symbol of a square stone; and it is recorded that when a fatal
pestilence raged at Delphi, the oracle was consulted as to the
means proper to be adopted for the purpose of arresting its progress,
and it commanded that the cube should be doubled. This was understood
by the priests to refer to the altar, which was of a cubical form.
They obeyed the injunction, increasing the altitude of the altar
to its prescribed dimensions, like the pedestal in a Masons Lodge,
and the pestilence ceased.
We may here add a few comments upon what
Brother Mackey says of the double cube because the account may
be understood in a somewhat different way. In fact, the famous
problem of antiquity concerning the cube was not so simple as
to give it twice the dimensions of its edges but to produce a
cube twice the volume of another one, which is an entirely different
proposition.
The origin of the problem is not definitely known but probably
it was suggested by the one credited to Pythagoras, namely, squat
a square or constructing a square of twice the area of a Seen
square.
The account given by Doctor Oliver is credited
to Eratosthenes about 200 B.C. This authority in a letter to Ptolemy
Euergetes tells the history of the problem. The Delphians, suffering
a pestilence, consulted their oracles and were ordered to double
the volume of the altar to be erected to their god, Apollo. An
altar was built having an edge double the length of the original
but the plague went on unabated, the oracles not having been obeyed.
However, this story is a mere fable and is given no weight at
the present time.
DOUBLE-HEADED EAGLE
See Eagle Double headed
DOUGLAS, STEPHEN ARNOLD
American statesman, born at Brandon, Vermont,
April 23, 1813, and died June 3, 1861, at Chicago. Resourceful
in political leadership, his rise to national prominence was rapid.
Representative from Illinois, 1843, he became Senator in 1847,
unsuccessful candidate for President, 1852 and 1856, and in 1858
ably debated with Abraham Lincoln in seven cities. His petition
to Springfield Lodge No. 4, at Springfield, Illinois, is reproduced
in this work The original hangs in the Lodge-room and the photograph
was kindly furnished us by Brother H. C. McLoud.
DOVE
In ancient symbolism's the dove represented
purity and innocence; in ecclesiology, especially in church decoration,
it is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. In Freemasonry, the dove is
only viewed in reference to its use by Noah as a messenger. Hence,
in the Grand Lodge of England, doves are the jewels of the Deacons,
because these officers are the messengers of the Masters and Wardens.
They are not so used in America. In an honorary or side Degree
formerly conferred in America, and called the Arks roll of parchment,
in a very clear hand, apparently and Dove, that bird is a prominent
symbol.
DOVE, KNIGHTS AND LADIES OF THE
An Brother extinct secret society, of a
Masonic model, but androgynous, including both sexes, instituted
at Versailles, France in 1784.
DOWLAND MANUSCRIPT
First published by James Dowland, in the
Gentleman's Magazine, May, 1815 (volume lxxxv, page 489). "Written
on a long roll of parchment in a very clear hand , apparently
early in the seventeenth century, and very probably is copied
from a manuscript of earlier date." Brother William J. Hughan
says: "Brother Woodford, Mr. Sims, and other eminent authorities,
consider the original of the copy, from which the manuscript for
the Gentleman's Magazine was written, to be a scroll of at least
a century earlier than the date ascribed to Mr.Dowland's manuscript,
that is, about 1550."
The original manuscript from which Dowland
made his copy has not yet been traced. Hughan's Old Charades,
the edition of 1872, contains a reprint of the Douwland Manuscript.
DRAESEKE, JOHAN HEINRICH DERNHARDT
A celebrated pulpit orator of great eloquence,
born at Brunswick, 1774, and died at Potsdam, 1849, who presided
over the Lodge named Oelzweig, meaning, the Olive Branch, in Bremen,
for three years, and whose contributions to Masonic literature
were collected and published in 1865, by A. W. Muller, under the
title of Bishop Dräseke as a Mason, in German Der Bischof
Draseke als Maurer. Of this work Findel says that it "contains
a string of costly pearls full of Masonic eloquence."
DRAKE, FRANCIS
Francis Drake, M.D., F.R.S., a celebrated
antiquary and historian, was initiated in the city of York in
1725, and, as Hughan says, "soon made his name felt in Masonry."
His promotion was rapid; for in the same year he was chosen Junior
Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of York, and in 1726 delivered
an address, which was published with the following title: A Speech
delivered to the Worshipful and Ancient Society of Free and Accepted
Masons, at a Grand Lodge held at Merchants' Hall, in the city
of York, on St. John's Day, December the 27th, 1726. The Right
Worshipful Charles Bathurst, Esq., Grand Master. By the Junior
Grand Warden. Olim meminisse Juvabit. York.
The Latin expression here is quoted from
the Poet Vergil, recalling the joys of other times. The address
was published in York without any date, but probably in 1727,
and reprinted in London in 1729 and 1734. It has often been reproduced
since and can be found in Hughan's Masonic Sketches and Reprints.
In this work Brother Drake makes the important statement that
the first Grand Lodge in England was held at York; and that while
it recognizes the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge in London as
Grand Master of England, it claims that its own Grand Master is
Grand Master of all England. The speech is also important for
containing a very early reference to the three Degrees of Entered
Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason.
DRAMA
See Scenic Representations; Mysteries, Ancient,
and Master Mason
DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF FREEMASONRY
Freemasonry has frequently supplied the
play writers with a topic for the exercise of their genius. Kloss
(Bibliographic, page 300) gives the titles of no less than forty-one
plays of which Freemasonry has been the subject. Brother William
Rufus Chetwood wrote the libretto of an opera entitled The Generous
Freemason and this was given a first performance in London in
1730. An account of it has been printed by Brother Richard Northcott
of the Covent Garden Theater, London, England. The earliest Masonic
play is noticed by Thory (Annales Oripnis Magni Galliarum Orientis,
ou Histoire de la Fondation du Grand Orient de France, meaning
the History of the Foundation of the Grand Orient of France, page
360), as having been performed at Paris, in 1739, under the title
of Les freemasons. Editions of it were subsequently published
at London, Brunswick, and Strasbourg. In 1741, we have Das Geheimniss
der Freimaurer, the Freemason's Secret, at Frankfort and Leipzig.
France and Germany made many other contributions
to the Masonic drama. Even Denmark supplied one in 1745, and Italy
in 1785. The English dramatists give us only a pantomime, Harlequin
Freemasons which was brought out at Covent Garden in 1781, and
Solomon's Temple, an oratorio. Templarism has not been neglected
by the dramatists. Kalchberg, in 1788, wrote Die Tempelherren,
meaning The Templars, a dramatic poem in the German language in
five acts. Odon de Saint-Amand, Grand Maître des Templiers,
the latter title meaning Grand Master of the Templars, a melodrama
in three acts, was performed at Paris in 1806. Jacques Molai,
a melodrama, was published at Paris in 1807, and La Mort de Jacques
Molai, meaning in English the Death of James Molai, a tragedy,
in 1812. Some of the plays on Freemasonry were intended to do
honor to the Order, and many to throw ridicule upon it.
DRESDEN, CONGRESS OF
A General Congress of the Lodges of Saxony
was held in Dresden, in 1811, where the representatives of twelve
Lodges were present. In this Congress it was determined to recognize
only the Freemasonry of Saint John, and to construct a National
Grand Lodge. Accordingly, on September 28, 1811, the National
Grand Lodge of Saxony was established in the city of Dresden,
which was soon joined by all the Saxon Lodges, with the exception
of one in Leipzig. Although it recognized only the Symbolic Degrees,
it permitted great freedom in the selection of a ritual; and,
accordingly, some of its Lodges worked in the Rite of Fessler,
and others in the Rite of Berlin.
DRESS OF A FREEMASON
See Clothed
DROP CLOTH
A part of the furniture used in the United
States of America in the ceremony of the Third Degree.
DROPS, THREE
Refers to mystic number of drops of blood
from the White Giant, that in the Persian mysteries restored sight
to the captives in the cell of horrors when applied by the conqueror
Rustam. In India, a girdle of three triple threads was deemed
holy; 80 were three drops of water in Brittany, and the same number
of drops of blood in Mexico.
DRUIDICAL MYSTERIES
The Druids were a sacred order of priests
who existed in Britain and Gaul, but whose mystical rites were
practiced in most perfection in the former country, where the
isle of Anglesea was considered as their principal seat. Godfrey
Higgins thinks that they were also found in Germany, but against
this opinion we have the positive statement of Caesar.
The meanings given to the word have been
very numerous, and most of them wholly untenable. The Romans,
seeing that they worshiped in groves of oak, because that tree
was peculiarly sacred among them, derived their name from the
Greek word, apes, drus thus absurdly seeking the etymology of
a word of an older language in one comparatively modern. Their
derivation would have been more reasonable had they known that
in Sanskrit druma is an oak, from dru, meaning wood. It has also
been traced to the Hebrew with equal incorrectness, for the Druids
were not of the Semitic race. Its derivation is rather to be sought
in the Celtic language. The Gaelic word Druiah signifies a holy
or wise man; in a bad sense a magician; and this we may readily
trace to the Aryan druh, applied to the spirit of night or darkness,
whence we have the Zend dru, a magician. Druidism was a mystical
profession, and in the olden time mystery and magic were always
confounded. Charles Vallencey (Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicus,
iii 503) says: "Walsh, Drud, a Druid, that is the absolver
or remitter of sins; so the Irish Drui, a Druid, most certainly
is from the Persic duru, meaning a good and holy man"; and
Ousely (Collectanea Oriental iv, 302) adds to this the Arabic
dari, which means a wise man. Bosworth (Anglo-Saxon Dictionary)
gives dry, pronounced dru, as the Anglo-Saxon for a magician,
sorcerer, druid. Probably with the old Celts the Druids occupied
the same place as the Magi did with the old Persians.
Druidism was divided into three orders or Degrees, which were,
beginning with the lowest the Bards, the Prophets, and the Druids.
Godfrey Higgins thinks that the prophets were the lowest order,
but he admits that it is not generally allowed. The constitution
of the Order was in many respects like that of the Freemasons.
In every country there was an Arch-Druid in whom all authority
was placed. In Britain it is said that there were under him three
arch-flamens or priests, and twenty-five flamens. There was an
annual assembly for the administration of justice and the making
of laws, and, besides, four quarterly meetings, which took place
on the days when the sun reached his equinoctial and solstitial
points. The latter two would very nearly correspond at this time
with the festivals of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the
Evangelist. It was not lawful to commit their ceremonies or doctrines
to writing, and Caesar says (Commentarii de bello Gallico vi,
14) that they used the Greek letters, which was, of course, as
a cipher; but Godfrey Higgins (page 90) says that one of the Irish
Ogum alphabets, which Toland calls secret writing, "was the
original, sacred, and secret character of the Druids."
The places of worship, which were also places
of initiation, were of various forms: circular, because a circle
was an emblem of the universe; or oval, in allusion to the mundane
egg, from which, according to the Egyptians, our first parents
issued; or serpentine, because a serpent was a symbol of Hu, the
druidical Noah; or winged, to represent the motion of the Divine
Spirit; or cruciform, because a cross was the emblem of regeneration.
Their only covering was the clouded canopy,
because they deemed it absurd to confine the Omnipotent beneath
a roof; and they were constructed of embankments of earth, and
of unhewn stones, unpolluted with a metal tool. Nor was anyone
permitted to enter their sacred retreats, unless he bore a chain.
The ceremony of initiation into the Druidical
Mysteries required much preliminary mental preparation and physical
purification. The aspirant was clothed with the three sacred colors,
white, blue, and green; white as the symbol of Light, blue of
Truth, and green of Hope. When the rites of initiation were passed,
the tri-colored robe was changed for one of green; in the Second
Degree, the candidate was clothed in blue; and having surmounted
all the dangers of the Third, and arrived at the summit of perfection,
he received the red tiara and flowing mantle of purest white.
The ceremonies were numerous, the physical proofs painful, and
the mental trials appalling. They commenced in the First Degree,
with placing the aspirant in the pastes, bed or coffin, where
his symbolical death was represented, and they terminated in the
Third, by his regeneration or restoration to life from the womb
of the giantess Ceridwin, and the committal of the body of the
newly born to the waves in a small boat, symbolical of the ark.
The result was, generally, that he succeeded in reaching the safe
landing-place, but if his arm was weak, or his heart failed, death
was the almost inevitable consequence. If he refused the trial
through timidity, he was contemptuously rejected, and declared
forever ineligible to participate in the sacred rites. But if
he undertook it and succeeded, he was joyously invested with all
the privileges of Druidism.
The doctrines of the Druids were the same as those entertained
by Pythagoras. They taught the existence of one Supreme Being;
a future state of rewards and punishment; the immortality of the
soul, and a metempsychosis; and the object of their mystic rites
was to communicate these doctrines in symbolic language, an object
and a method common alike to Druidism, to the Ancient Mysteries
and to Modern Freemasonry (see also Druidism, Dudley Wright, London,
1924, containing a bibliography of the subject).
DRUMMOND, JOSIAH HAYDEN
Born 1827, Brother Drummond was made a Freemason
in 1849, and died on October 25, 1902, aged seventy-five. He served
at the head of all the Masonic Bodies of his State, Maine, and
had also been Grand High Priest of the General Grand Chapter,
Grand Master of the General Grand Council, and Grand Commander
of the Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite. A Freemason for fifty-four years,
this Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Maine, 1860 to 1862, was
for thirty-eight years a vigorous writer of the Foreign Correspondence
Reports and of other valuable works on Freemasonry. Christopher
Diehl of the Grand Lodge of Utah wrote of him in the Proceedings
of 1903, "His whole life was devoted to Freemasonry and for
it he did his best work and because of that work he will live
in the hearts of his Brethren for all time to come. The world
is better off because he lived. His fame is secure. May his last
sleep be sweet." At the anniversary of the one hundred years
since the death of Washington, conducted by the Grand Lodge of
Virginia at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1899, when no less than
seventeen Grand Masters were present together with the President
of the United States, Brother Drummond was introduced by the Grand
Master as follows:
"First of all I wish to call upon one whom Freemasonry delights
to honor. The most erudite and accomplished Masonic scholar our
century has known, the charm of whose personality and the strength
of whose character, coupled with a conservative, calm and judicial
mind, has made him not only beloved but a power of usefulness
throughout the whole Masonic Fraternity"
(see` Proceedings
of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, 1900).
DRUSES
A sect of mystic religionists who inhabit
Mounts Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, in Syrian 294. They settled there
about the tenth century, and are said to be a mixture of Cuthites
or Kurds, Mardi Arabs, and possibly of Crusaders; all of whom
were added, by subsequent immigrations, to the original stock
to constitute the present or modern race of Druses.
Their religion is a heretical compound of
Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedism; the last of which, greatly
modified, predominates in their faith. They have a regular order
of priesthood, the office being filled by persons consecrated
for the purpose, comprising principally the emirs and sheiks,
who form a secret organization divided into several Degrees, keep
the sacred books, and hold secret religious assemblies. Their
sacred books are written in antiquated Arabic. The Druses are
divided into three classes or Degrees, according to religious
distinctions. To enable one Druse to recognize another, a system
of passwords is adopted, without an interchange of which no communication
is made that may give an idea of their religious tenets (see Tien's
Druse Religion Unveiled). Doctor Clarke tells us in his Travels
that "one class of the Druses are to the rest what the initiated
are to the profane, and are called Okkals, which means spiritualists;
and they consider themselves superior to their countrymen. They
have various degrees of initiation."
Colonel Churchill in his Ten Years' Residence
on Mount Lebanon, tells us that among this singular people there
is an order having many similar customs to the Freemasons. It
requires a twelve months' probation previous to the admission
of a member. Both sexes are admissible. In the second year the
novice assumes the distinguishing mark of the white turban, and
afterward, by Degrees, is allowed to participate ;,n the whole
of the mysteries. Simplicity of attire, self-denial, temperance,
and irreproachable moral conduct are essential to admission to
the order. All of these facts have led to the theory that the
Druses are an offshoot from the early Freemasons, and that their
connection with the latter is derived from the Crusaders, who,
according to the same theory, are supposed to have acquired their
Freemasonry during their residence in Palestine. Some writers
go so far as to say that the Degree of Prince of Libanus, the
Twenty-second in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, refers
to the ancestors of these mystical mountaineers in Syria.
Several chapters deal with the Dresses in
the Secret Sects of Syria and the Lebanon, by Brother Bernard
H. Springett, London.
DUAD
The number two in the Pythagorean system
of numbers.
DUALISM
The state of being two-fold, as good and
evil, for example. In the old mythologies, there was a doctrine
which supposed the world to have been always governed by two antagonistic
principles, distinguished as the good and the evil principle.
This doctrine pervaded all the Oriental religions. Thus in the
system of Zoroaster, one of the great religious teachers of the
East we have Ahriman and Ormuzd, and in the Hebrew cosmogony,
their explanation of the system of the universe, we find the Creator
and the Serpent. There has been a remarkable development of this
system in the three degrees of Symbolic Freemasonry, which everywhere
exhibit in their organization, their symbolism, and their design,
the pervading influences of this principle of dualism. Thus, in
the First Degree, there is Darkness overcome by might; in the
Second, Ignorance dispersed by Snout e, and in the Third, Death
conquered by Eternal Life
DUB
In the ancient ceremonies of chivalry, a
knight was made by giving him three strokes on the neck with the
flat end of the sword, and he was then said to be dubbed a knight.
Dubbing is from the Saxon, dubban, meaning to strike with a blow.
sir Thomas Smith (English Commonwealth), who wrote in the sixteenth
century, says:
And when any man is made a knight, he, kneeling
down, is strooken of the prince, with his sword naked, upon the
back or shoulder the prince saying, Sus or sois chevalier au nom
de Dieu, the two expressions in French meaning Be of good cheer,
Knight, in God's name, and in times past they added St. George,
and at his arising the prince sayeth, Avancey. This is the manner
of dubbing of knights at this present; and that term dubbing was
the old term in this point, and not creation.
DUE EAST AND WEST
A Lodge is said to be situated due east
and west for reasons which have varied at different periods in
the ritual and lectures (see Orientation).
DUE EXAMINATION
That sort of examination which is correct
and prescribed by law. It is one of the three modes of proving
a strange Brother; the other two being strict trial and lawful
information (see Vouching).
DUE FORM
When the Grand Lodge is opened, or any other
Masonic ceremony performed, by the Deputy Grand Master in the
absence of the Grand Master, it is said to be done in due form.
Subordinate Lodges are always said to be opened and closed in
due form. It is derived from the French word du, and that from
devoir, meaning to owe, that which is owing or ought to be done.
Due form is the form in which an act ought to be done to be done
rightly. The French expression is En due form (see Ample Form).
DUE GUARD
A mode of recognition which derives its
name from its object, which is to duly guard the person using
it in reference to his obligations, and the penalty for their
violation. The Due Guard is an Americanism, and of comparatively
recent origin, being unknown to the English and Continental systems.
In some of the old books of the date of 1757, the expression is
used, but only as referring to what is now called the Sign. Dieu
garde is similar in pronunciation to Due Guard and means God preserve.
This similarity is worth consideration.
DUELING
This has always been considered a Masonic
crime, and some of the Grand Lodges have enacted statutes by which
Freemasons who engage in duels with each other are subject to
expulsion. The Monde Maçonnique, the Masonic World, a French
publication, May, 1858, gives the following correct view on this
subject:
A Freemason who allows himself to be involved
in a duel and who possesses not sufficient discretion to be able
to make reparation without cowardice and without having recourse
to this barbarous extremity destroys by that impious act the contract
which binds him to his brethren. His sword or his pistol, though
it may seem to spare his adversary, still commits a murder for
it destroys his brothers from that time fraternity no longer exists
for him.
DUES
The payment of annual dues by a member to
his Lodge is a comparatively modern custom, and one that certainly
did not exist before the revival of 1717. As previous to that
period, according to Preston, Lodges received no Warrants, but
a sufficient number of Brethren meeting together were competent
to practice the Rites of Freemasonry, and as soon as the special
business which called them together had been accomplished, they
separated; there could have been no permanent organization of
Speculative Freemasons, and no necessity for contributions to
constitute a Lodge fund.
Dues must therefore have been unknown except
in the Lodges of Operative Freemasons, which, as we find, especially
in Scotland, had a permanent existence.
There is, accordingly, no regulation in
any of the old Constitutions for the payment of dues. Brother
Mackey held that it is not a general Masonic duty, in which the
Freemason is affected to the whole of the Craft, but an arrangement
between himself and his Lodge, with which the Grand Lodge ought
not to interfere. As the payment of dues is not a duty owing to
the Craft in general, so, in his opinion, the non-payment of them
is not an offense against the Craft, but simply against his Lodge,
the only punishment for which should be striking from the roll
or discharge from membership.
Brother Mackey reports that in his day it
was the almost universal opinion of Masonic jurists that suspension
or expulsion from the Order is a punishment that should never
be inflicted for non-payment of dues. However, the reader must
be referred to the Masonic Code of his own Jurisdiction for the
practice prevailing there.
DUMBNESS
Inability to speak. Although the faculty
of speech is not one of the five human senses, it is important
as the medium of communicating instruction, admonition, or reproof,
and the person who does not possess it is unfitted to perform
the most important duties of life. Hence dumbness disqualifies
a candidate for Masonic initiation.
DUMM
A word that has been used in the Grand Chapter
of Minnesota to signify what is more usually called a substitute
in the Royal Arch Degree.
DUNCKERLEY, THOMAS
No one, among the Freemasons of England,
occupied a more distinguished position or played a more important
part in the labors of the Craft during the latter part of the
eighteenth century than Thomas Dunckerley, whose private life
was as romantic as his Masonic career was honorable. Thomas Dunckerley
was born in the city of London on the 23d of October, 1724. He
was the reputed son of a Mr. and Mrs. (Mary) Dunekerley, but really
owed his birth to a personage of a much higher rank in life, being
the natural son of the Prince of Wales, afterward George II, to
whom he bore, as his portrait shows, a striking resemblance. It
was not until after his mother's death that he became acquainted
with the true history of his birth; so that for more than half
of his life this son of a king occupied a very humble position
on the stage of the world, and was sometimes even embarrassed
with the pressure of poverty and distress.
At the age of ten he entered the navy, and
continued in the service for twenty-six years, acquiring, by his
intelligence and uniformly good conduct, the esteem and commendation
of all his commanders. But having no personal or family interest,
he never attained to any higher rank than that of a gunner. During
all this time, except at brief intervals, he was absent from England
on foreign service.
He returned to his native country in January,
1760, to find that his mother had died a few days before, and
that on her death-bed she had made 3 solemn declaration, accompanied
by such details as left no possible doubt of its truth, that Thomas
was the illegitimate son of King George II, born while he was
Prince of Wales. The fact of the birth had, however, never been
communicated by the mother to the prince, and George II died without
knowing that he had such a son living.
Dunckerley, in the account of the affair
which he left among his posthumous papers, says: "This information
gave me great surprise and much uneasiness; and as I was obliged
to return immediately to my duty on board the Vanguard, I made
it known to no person at that time but Captain Swanton. He said
that those who did not know me would look on it to be nothing
more than a gossip's story. We were then bound a second time to
Quebec, and Captain Swanton did promise me that on our return
to England he would endeavor to get me introduced to the king,
and that he would give me a character; but when we came back to
England the king was dead." Dunckerley had hoped that his
case would have been laid before his royal father, and that the
result would have been an appointment equal to his birth. But
the frustration of these hopes by the death of the king seems
to have discouraged him, and no efforts appear for some time to
have been made by him or his friends to communicate the facts
to George III, who had succeeded to the throne.
In 1761 he again left England as a gunner
in Lord Anson's fleet, and did not return until 1764, at which
time, finding himself embarrassed with 3 heavy debt, incurred
in the expenses of his family, for he had married in early life,
in the year 1744, knowing no person who could authenticate the
story of his birth, and seeing no probability of gaining access
-to the ear of the king, he sailed in a merchant vessel for the
Mediterranean. He had previously been granted superannuation in
the navy in consequence of his long services, and received a small
pension, the principal part of which he left for the support of
his family during his absence.
But the romantic story of his birth began
to be publicly known and talked about, and in 1766 attracted the
attention of several persons of distinction, who endeavored, but
without success, to excite the interest of the Princess Dowager
of Wales in his behalf.
In 1767, however, the declaration of his
mother was laid before the king, who was George III, the grandson
of his father. It made an impression on him, and inquiry into
his previous character and conduct having proved satisfactory,
in May 7, 1767, the king ordered Dunckerley to receive a pension
of £100, which was subsequently increased to £800,
together with a suite of apartments in Hampton Court Palace. He
also assumed, and was permitted to bear, the royal arms, with
the distinguishing badge of the bend sinister, and adopted as
his motto the appropriate words Fato non merito, meaning By destiny,
not merit. In his familiar correspondence, and in his book-plates,
he used the name of Fitzy George.
In 1770 he became a student of law, and
in 1774 was called to the bar; but his fondness for an active
life prevented him from ever making much progress in the legal
profession.
Dunckerley died at Portsmouth in the year
1795, at the ripe age of seventy-one; but his last years were
embittered by the misconduct of his son, whose extravagance and
dissolute conduct necessarily afflicted the mind while it straitened
the means of the unhappy parent. Every effort to reclaim him proved
utterly ineffectual; and on the death of his father, no provision
being left for his support, he became a vagrant, living for the
most part on Masonic charity. At last he became a bricklayer's
laborer, and was often seen ascending a ladder with a hod on his
shoulders. His misfortunes and his misconduct at length found
an end, and the grandson of a king of England died a pauper in
a cellar at St. Giles.
Dunckerley was initiated into Freemasonry
on January 10, 1754, in a Lodge, No. 31, which then met at the
Three Tuns, Portsmouth; in 1760 he obtained a Warrant for a Lodge
to be held on board the Vanguard, in which ship he was then serving;
in the following year the Vanguard sailed for the West Indies,
and Dunckerley was appointed to the Prince, for which ship a Lodge
was warranted in 1762; this Warrant Dunckerley appears to have
retained when he left the service, and in 1766 the Lodge was meeting
at Somerset House, where Dunckerley was then living. In 1768 the
Vanguard Lodge was revived in London, with Dunckerley as its first
Master, and it exists to the present day under the name of the
London Lodge, No. 108.
In 1767 he joined the present Lodge of Friendship;
in 1785 he established a Lodge at Hampton Court, now No. 255.
In 1767 he was appointed Provincial Grand Master of Hampshire,
and in 1776 Provincial Grand Master for Essex, and at various
dates he was placed in charge of the provinces of Bristol, Dorsetshire,
Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, and Herefordshire. In Royal Arch
Masonry Dunckerley displayed equal activity as in Craft Masonry;
he was exalted at Portsmouth in 1754 and in 1766 joined the London
Chapter, which in the following year became a Grand Chapter.
He was especially active in promoting Arch
Masonry all over the country and was in charge of the English
counties of Essex, Hants, Kent, Wilts, Dorset, Devon, Somerset,
Gloucester, Suffolk, Sussex and Durham.
He was also a most zealous Knight Templar,
being in 1791 the first Grand Master of the Order when the Grand
Conclave was formed in London.
He was also a Mark Mason. A Charge, or Oration,
is still extant, which was delivered by him at Plymouth in April,
1757, entitled The Light and Truth of Masonry Explained. He was
also the author of A Song for the Knights Templar, and of an Ode
for an Exaltation of Royal Arch Masons. These will be found in
Thomas Dunckerleyhis Life, Labors and Letters, by H. Sadler,
1891. Brother Hawkins in submitting the foregoing article points
out that it is often asserted that Dunckerley revised the Craft
Lectures and reconstructed the Royal Arch Degree, but there is
no proof forthcoming of these statements. However, we may add
to the comment by Brother Hawkins an observation by Brother Sadler
(page 224) where he tells us that the publication of the various
Charges, etc., by Brother Dunckerley are of such a character that
they not unlikely thereby originated the tradition that he had
revised or remodeled the Craft Lectures; but to Brother Sadler
it seemed more than probable that the compiler of the Lectures
made a very free use of Dunckerley's brains in the work of compilation.
DUPATY, LOUIS EMANUEL CHARLES MERCIER
The author of many Masonic songs and other
fugitive pieces inserted in the Annales Maçonniques. He
wrote in 1810, with Révéroui de Saint-Cyr a comic
opera entitled Cagliostro ou les Illuminés In 1818 he published
a Masonic tale entitled l'Harmonie. He was a poet and dramatic
writer of some reputation. He was born in the Gironde in 1775,
elected to the French Academy in 1835, and died in 1851.
DURER, ALBRECHT
Famous German painter and engraver. Born
at Nuremberg, May 21, 1471 died April 6, 1528. His mystically
symbolic copper plates are particularly interesting and significant.
The most important from a Masonic point of view is probably one
entitled Melancholy (see illustration) in which is seen an exposition
of medieval Freemasonry which suggests that Durer was familiar
with the Fraternity of his time, possibly associated with the
Nuremberg Lodge, and may have been a member of it (see American
Freemason, November, 1911, page 21).
A suggestive examination of the symbolism
of this 1514 copper-plate engraving was made by W. P. Tuckerman
and translated by R. T. House, appeared in the Open Court, July,
1911, and extracts from it are by permission of the editor, Brother
Paul Carus, given as follows: "A promising field for investigation
is furnished by Albrecht Durer's copper-engravings, etchings and
wood-cuts which, in addition to their other great merits in the
faithful portrayal of the life of his time, have caught and handed
on to us many old traditions. Real mines of information are Durer's
mystically symbolic copper-plates. Of these puzzling will-o-the-wisps
the most important is the one entitled 'Melancholy', which was
formerly considered the first picture in a cycle representing
the various moods of the soul but which now, viewed in the light
of the Nuremberg developments, is seen to be an exposition of
medieval Freemasonry. In Strasbourg, 1598, Emperor Maximilian
gave to German Lodges, whose patron and honorary brother he was,
a new organization, charter, and coat of arms.
The years from 1439 to 1477 were occupied
in the Construction of the choir of the Church of St. Lorenz in
Nuremberg, with its rich, artistic Gothic vaulted roof; and when
we remember the dates of Durer's birth and death, 1471 and 1528,
the figures fit together so well that the probabilities seem to
point to Durer's personal contact with the Nuremberg fraternity,
and his knowledge of their teachings; and a closer examination
of his engraving 'Melancholy' will show very clearly that he is
enforcing the ethical doctrines of Freemasonry by conventional
symbolic formulas.
"Symbolism, that double form of expression,
having a naive and innocent form for the larger public and a hidden
meaning for the intelligent initiated, is well known to have been
the resource of the medieval freethinking teacher who was forced
to pick his way with the utmost care among the rocks of the Inquisition.
Victor Hugo calls the images on the portals of Notre Dame the
'freedom of the press' of that epoch. It was natural that the
architects, sculptors and painters of the Middle Ages, in their
criticisms and satires directed at social evils, should have shielded
themselves from the Church, which, moreover, employed symbolism
in the promulgation of her own mystic dogmas. Hence it is that
Durer avails himself of this stratagem in the promulgation of
his humanistic ideas by his drawings, which were sold at the fairs
under the inquisitorial eye of the Church; although the Church,
in spite of her severe punishment of humanistic activities, was
unable to prevent the public appearance of the Reformation in
Nuremberg after the year 1524. "During Durer's stay in Italy
as a student in 1505, which took him to Bologna, he undoubtedly
made the acquaintance of the academies there, as appears clearly
from copper-plates like 'Great and Little Fortune.' On the other
hand, in view of his extensive knowledge of mathematics and engineering
he must have been associated with the Nuremberg Lodge, and was
probably even a member of it. That he publicly handled the ethical
doctrines of the latter, which through their agreement with teachings
of the humanists were already known to a large circle of the uninitiated,
in the regular symbolic language, indicates that the most severely
kept secrets in the Lodge were not these teachings, but some ritual
which is known no longer.
"When we examine the picture of 'Melancholy'
in a purely objective fashion, we come to the conclusion, from
a view of the most elevated figure, that of the writing angel,
that the theme is some divine command which this being is communicating,
a revelation or an ethical teaching. The content of the latter
is drastically brought out, as always with Durer, by a sharp contrast,
the contrast in this ease being the lower material handicraft
and the higher symbolic labor, so that in the arrangement of figures
the former is placed on a lower level, the latter on an elevated
platform. On this level appears the prominent figure of the whole
picture, a genius with mighty wings, much larger than the little
angel, who in accordance with the old symbolism is represented
as a small winged child.
The leading figure is a woman in rich festal
attire, a garland on her loosened hair, her head supported thoughtfully
on her left arm. Her right arm rests on a book, probably the Bible,
and in her right hand she holds an open pair of ornamented compasses
with which she is drawing figures on the tablet on her knees suggested
by the form into which her skirt is drawn. Humanistically interpreted,
this genius is the personification of some virtue operating with
the writing angel, and the use of the compasses suggests the activity
of the Masons. The explanation is given added weight by the polygonal
structure with the ladder and the great building-stone leaning
against it. But all this does not mean the completion of the work;
it has only symbolical significance. In this the three great Platonic
virtues, beauty, wisdom and strength, play a leading part as the
means to human perfection just as Raphael, for instance, treats
them in the Segaatura and are here evident as the content of the
three main elements in the picture. First the angel, who sits
on a round stone hung with a rich fringed cover, symbolizes wisdom
because he is the means of divine revelation. At his left the
great winged genius, the prominent person in the picture is Beauty.
In her is symbolically represented the main interest of the fraternity;
she is their guide and adviser, who teaches them to handle the
compasses in the production of beautiful architectural figures.
Finally, at the right of Wisdom, Strength is represented, not
in a personification, but by an indication of the result, by a
symbolizing of labor as the principal object of the effective
Masonic Lodge. This lesson is taught by the great, many-sided
building stone, with the shaping-hammer at its side, the conventional
symbol of labor. The logical conclusion of this ethical teaching
is the landscape in the background, with a sun breaking forth
from rain-clouds and a diabolical creature who has no place in
the calm scene and who is hastening to leave it, bearing a sign
which labels him Melancholy.
"This sad attitude of soul, which would
today be called pessimism, is ascribed only to the fleeing, banished
devil, not to the genius of Beauty serious as this personage,
in common with Durer's characters in general, appears nor to the
picture as a whole, which is thus wrongly named. The general characterization
of the engraving as the ethical content of Freemasonry is borne
out by the symbolic additions. In the first place it is significant
that exactly over the angel on the outer wall of the polygonal
structure the scales are hung, the well-known symbol for the judgment
of the world and divine justice. This arrangement therefore characterizes
the polygonal structure as a temple, the symbol for the perfection
of all humanity. Only two faces of the building are represented,
before whose broader front sits the genius of Beauty. Beauty,
according to the Platonic conception, is moderation and harmony
of the soul; in technical Masonry it is rhythm in architectural
proportions.
This genius has a secret to guard, as is
indicated by the bunch of keys and the bag suspended from her
girdle. The subject of the secret is indicated again by the articles
on the temple wall, especially the hour glass, the symbol of our
fast fleeting life and the careful valuing of earthly and heavenly
goods. On the dial above the hour-glass the hand stands between
the figures three and four, which can be distinctly seen with
a magnifying glass. These two numbers play an important part in
the figure that follows, which is a so-called magic square hung
up likewise on the temple wall, and reading 34 in every direction.
If the reader will make the trial with the numbers from 1 to 16
written in the sixteen squares he will be astonished at the result.
The same sum, 34, is obtained not only in the horizontal and vertical
rows, but also in the diagonals, in the four smaller squares,
in the middle square, etc. In the symbolism of numbers, three
is the number of completeness and four indicates the extension
of space in four directions, to the right, to the left, upward
and downward.
Hence four is the symbol for the world and
the house, moreover, for the Masonic Lodge and the Masonic fraternity.
If these symbols are combined with the bell symbol above, the
meaning is this, and may be put into the mouth of the genies as
follows: Here sits the genius of Beauty, whose efforts are directed
toward securing harmony between God and the world, and in view
of the transitory nature of life she invites an active interest
in the symbolic temple structure, which represents a perfected
world.
" All these explanations are taken
from well-known works on Christian symbolism and the symbols of
the old Christian catacombs. The seven-runged ladder also, which
leads into the temple, has its significance, as have the surfaces
of the great building stone. We must assume that Durer, the accurate
draughtsman, has made a correct picture; and in fact anyone who
goes scientifically to work to procure the projections of this
stone will be surprised at the many conclusions to be derived
from a study of this traditional piece of apprentice work. one
surface is an equilateral triangle, another a regular pentagon,
two are trapezoids and two irregular pentagons. An architect acquainted
with old buildings recognizes the block as the keystone for the
vaulted ceiling of a six-sided cloister room, a chapel with a
round aspe in which belongs the flat circular stone, whose center
where the altar stands is cut with a double opening, all with
symbolic significance. The keystone is to be so placed that the
triangular side comes underneath, with the point toward the altar
and the base toward the entrance. It is easy to reconstruct such
a building, and the result opens up a wonderful perspective into
some as yet unknown connection between the Masons and the Templars,
the Order which was destroyed in 1313 and whose prototype for
all their chapel structures is just the plan we have described.
One more symbol is to be mentioned, the melting-pot which stands
beside the stone, burning vigorously and ready to fuse the lead.
This symbol is unknown elsewhere, but can reasonably be assumed
to indicate the Brotherhood fused together in love, as the clamps
and braces are leaded and secured by the help of the flame. "
We
have already spoken of the landscape in the background, but we
must add that there is no evidence of a comet, as some commentators
insist; it is the sun breaking through rain-clouds and sending
out somewhat exaggerated beams. If it were not the sun the rainbow
could not be where it is, seen by the spectator with his back
to the sun, so that he looks out of the picture. According to
the old Christian symbolism the rainbow is a sign of peace and
the covenant between God and men. When this alliance with the
Most High is perfected, the bat like, nocturnal devil's imp, Melancholy,
flees from the temple and the scene. On the label there appears
after the word which has led to so mistaken a conclusion, a figure
1 or an i. The scholars who insist on a series of four pictures
dealing with moods of the soul, considered this drawing the first
because they read a 1; but if it is the letter i, it indicates
an abbreviated Latin word, appropriate to the general tone of
the picture, for example iacet. Then it reads 'Melancholia iacet',
Melancholy falls in defeat or flees, which indicates the thought
of the picture as a whole. Now if the old interpretation of the
engraving, which makes the great winged genius the personification
of Melancholy, is abandoned, and the new one accepted, the meaning
of the articles scattered about on the ground is clear. They are
the carelessly dropped, as it were discarded, tools of the trade
at the feet of the winged genius, just as in Raphael's celebrated
picture, Saint Cecilia, discards the musical instruments which
seem to her inadequate.
"In contrast to the higher symbolic
spiritual instruments, these tools, pliers, beveling tool, plumb
line, plane, iron band, saw and nails, represent incompleteness.
But among them we see the sleeping dog, the ball, and an article
which is not absolutely clear, but which is perhaps a vessel for
incense. The dog, who lies very significantly under the round
altarstone, represents in Christian symbolism, on account of his
watchfulness and fidelity, the priestly order, as is indicated
by the phrase Domini canes. When this order disregards its duty
and, like the dog here, falls asleep, it belongs among the discarded
tools and gives the laity who constitute the Masonic fraternity
the right to open communication with the Most High without clerical
mediation. As a pendant to this, could not the article lying near,
an unused incense vessel, the symbol for the prayers which are
pleasing to God, indicate that this vessel, belonging to the priesthood,
is also discarded and that in its place we have the loving alliance
of those who seek perfection through their own efforts, symbolized
by the melting pot? The ball, elsewhere a mathematical sign of
completeness, here standing for the earth, is probably also a
symbol of earthly imperfection, in view of which the flight into
purer regions of the spirit seems all the more necessary.
" Many scholars undervalue Durer's
inventive independence. Thus we read in Dohne's Runst und Kunst
'There is no reason for imputing profound thoughts to him; Durer
was no nineteenth century philosophical thinker, but his was a
genuine artist nature, and in works like "Melancholy,"
"Nemesis," and others, we may be sure that he was working
under the orders of learned patrons.' Who of the Nuremberg humanists
Pirkheimer perhaps, or the townclerk Lazarus Spenglercould
have coupled with his philosophical training so intimate a knowledge
of the practical demands of stone-masonry? It is just here we
have an evidence of Durer's peculiar nature, which this ethically
symbolic material, appealing to his mystic bent, fitted exactly.
Hence this profound artist-philosopher, who sought to train his
contemporaries in wisdom and beauty to strength, becomes for us
a still far from exhausted source of the highest pleasure and
the noblest teaching."
DUTCH GUIANA
See Surinam
DUTY
The duty of a Freemason as an honest man
is plain and easy. It requires of him honesty in contracts, sincerity
in affirming, simplicity in bargaining, and faithfulness in performing.
To sleep little, and to study much; to say little, and to hear
and think much; to learn, that he may be able to do; and then
to do earnestly and vigorously whatever the good of his fellows,
his country, and mankind requires, are the duties of every Freemason.
Northern Freemason is quoted in Palmer Templegram.
September, 1926, to the following effect: The very first duty
that an Entered Apprentice acknowledges is to improve himself
in Masonry. How many truly and sincerely attempt to discharge
that duty? What would be the success of a lawyer who ever again
looked into a law book after his admission to the bar - a minister
of the Gospel, who never read the Bible after his ordination;
a doctor who never took up medical work after securing his sheepskin;
or that of any other profession, who does not take up post graduate
studies?
And yet you find Freemasons pretending to
be Masonic lights, who never read a Grand Lodge Proceedings a
report on Foreign Correspondence, or a Masonic periodical. Some
of them, perhaps, can glibly repeat certain portions of the ritual,
but could not give an intelligent interpretation of the same to
save their lives.
Masonic reading is an essential part of
the education of a Freemason, and it is never too late to begin,
but it is always better to begin early. It is the duty of the
Worshipful Master to impress this fact upon newly-made Masons,
but if they themselves are in the class of nonreaders. how can
we expect from them such wholesome advice?
DYAUS
Sanskrit for sky; Might; exalted. Therefore
the word becomes significant of the Deity, the sun, the celestial
canopy, the firmament.
DYE NA SORE
or Die Wanderer aus dem Sanskrit Ubersetzt.
A Masonic romance, by Von Meyern, which appeared at Vienna in
1789, and contains a complete account of Masonic festivities.
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