The ninth letter in the alphabets of Western
Europe, called by the Greeks Iota, after its Shemitic name. The
Hebrew equivalent is, of the numerical value of 10, and signifies
a hand. The oldest forms of the letter, as seen in the Phenician
and Samaritan, have a rude resemblance to a hand with three fingers,
but by a gradual simplification, the character came to be the
smallest in the alphabet, and iota, or jot, is a synonym for a
trifle. The thumb and two fingers are much used, and are of great
significance, in religious forms, as well as in Freemasonry. It
is the position of the hand when the Pope blesses the congregation,
and signifies the Three in One. The Hebrew letter ain, y, with
the numerical value of 70, possesses and gives the English sound
of the letter i.
I. A. A. T.
Reghellini (i, 29) says that the Rose Croix
Freemasons of Germany and Italy always wear a ring of gold or
silver, on which are engraved these letters, the initials of Ignis,
Aer, Aqua, Terra, in allusion to the Egyptian mystical doctrine
of the generation, destruction, and regeneration of all things
by the four elements, lire, air, water, and earth; which doctrine
passed over from the Egyptians to the Greeks, and was taught in
the philosophy of Empedocles. But these Rose Croix Freemasons,
probably borrowed their doctrine from the Gnostics.
I AM THAT I AM
The name which the Great Architect directed
Moses to use (Exodus iii, 14), that he might identify himself
to the Israelites as the messenger sent to them by God. It is
one of the modifications of the Tetragrammaton, and as such, in
its Hebrew form eheyeh usher eheyeh, the e pronounced like a in
fate, has been adopted as a significant word in the higher Degrees
of the York, American, and several other Rites. The original Hebrew
words are actually in the future tense, and grammatically mean
I will be what I will bc; but all the versions give a present
signification. Thus, the Vulgate has it, I am who am; the Septuagint,
I am he who exists; and the Arabic paraphrase, I am the Eternal
who passes not away. The expression seems intended to point out
the eternity and self-existence of God, and such is the sense
in which it is used in Freemasonry (see Eheyeh asher eheyeh).
IATRIC FREEMASONRY
From the Greek word the art of medicine.
Ragon, in his Orthodoxic Maçonnique (page 450), says that
this system was instituted in the eighteenth century, and thats
its adepts were occupied in the search for the universal medicine.
It must therefore have been a Hermetic Rite. Ragon knew very little
of it, and mentions only one Degree, called the Oracle of Cos.
The island of Cos was the birthplace of Hippocrates, the father
of medicine, and to him the Degree is dedicated. The Order or
Rite has no longer any existence.
I-COLM-KILL
An island south of the Hebrides, once the
seat of the Order of the Culdees, containing the ruins of the
monastery of Saint Columba, founded 565 A.D. Tradition plants
the foundation of the Rite of Heredom on this island.
ICONOCLASTS
From the Greek words eikon, meaning image,
and klazo, I break. The name used to designate those in the Church,
from the eighth century downward, who have been opposed to the
use of sacred images, or, rather, to the paying of religious honor
or reverence to such representations. Image worship prevailed
extensively in the sixth and seventh centuries in the Eastern
Empire. The iconoclast movement commenced with the Imperial Edict
issued, in 726, by the Emperor Leo III, surnamed the Isaurian,
who allowed images only of the Redeemer. The second decree was
issued in 730. This was opposed strenuously by Popes Gregory II
and III, but without avail.
ICONOLOGY
The science which teaches the doctrine of
images and symbolic representations. It is a science collateral
with Freemasonry, and is of great importance to the Masonic student,
because it is engaged in the consideration of the meaning and
history of the symbols which constitute so material a part of
the Masonic system.
IDAHO
The Grand Lodge of Oregon granted a Dispensation
to Idaho Lodge, No. 35, on July 7,1863, and on June 21,1864, a
Charter was issued. At a Convention held in Idaho City on December
16, 1867, for the purpose of organizing a Grand Lodge, members
of the four chartered Lodges in the State, namely, Idaho, No.
35; Boise City, No. 37; Placer, No. 38, and Pioneer, No. 12, were
present. It was agreed that members of Owyhee Lodge, U. D., should
be admitted and permitted to vote. On December 17, 1867, Grand
officers were elected and installed, and, adopting the Constitution
of the Grand Lodge of Oregon, the Grand Lodge of Idaho was opened
in Ample Form.
Idaho Chapter in Idaho City, was granted a Charter on June 18,
1867, by the Grand Chapter of Oregon which was under the impression
that the General Grand Chapter had ceased to exist. The General
Grand Chapter, when considering the above Charter acknowledged
that the petitioners acted in good faith and granted a Charter
to Idaho Chapter, No. 1, on September 18, 1868. Ten Chapters in
all were also chartered by the General Grand Chapter in this State.
The eleven Chapters organized the Grand Chapter of Idaho on June
16, 1908. The first Council in Idaho, Idaho Council at Pocatello,
was issued a Dispensation by the Officers of the General Grand
Council on December 15, 1896. This Dispensation was annulled on
October 11, 1897. on January 24, 1912, however, the General Grand
Council issued a Dispensation to Idaho Council, No. 1, and chartered
it on September 10, 1912.
Five Commanderies were instituted in Idaho
before the Grand Commandery was organized. The first of these
was Idaho, No. 1, at Boise, which was granted a Dispensation May
24, 1882, and a Charter September 13, 1882. With four other Commanderies,
Lewiston, No. 2; Moscow, No. 3; Gate City, No. 4; Coeur d'Alene,
No. 5, and Idaho, No. 1, the Grand Commandery was organized on
August 21, 1904.
A Lodge of Perfections a Chapter of Rose
Croix, a Council of Kadosh, and a Consistory, Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, were established at Lewiston
by the Supreme Council as Lewiston, No. 1, by Charters dated respectively
June 15, 1895; January 18, 1898; April 29, 1899; and June 27,
1899.
IDIOT
Idiocy is one of the main disqualifications
for initiation. This does not, however, include a mere dulness
of intellect and indocility of apprehension. These amount only
to stupidity, and "the judgment of the heavy or stupid man,"
as Doctor Good has correctly remarked, "is often as sound
in itself as that of the man of more capacious comprehension."
The idiot is defined by Blackstone as "one that hath had
no understanding from his nativity; and therefore is by law presumed
never likely to attain any." A being thus mentally imperfect
is incompetent to observe the obligations or to appreciate the
instructions of Freemasonry. It is true that the word does not
occur in any of the old Constitutions, but from their general
tenor it is evident that idiots were excluded, because "cunning,"
or knowledge and skill, are everywhere deemed essential qualifications
of a Freemason. But the law of the ritual is explicit on the subject.
IDOLATRY
The worship paid to any created object.
It was in some one of its forms the religion of the entire ancient
world except the Jews. The forms of idolatry are generally reckoned
as four in number.
1. Fetichism, the lowest form, consisting in the worship of animals,
trees, rivers, mountains, and stones.
2. Sabianism or Sabaism, the worship of the sun, moon, and stars.
3. Shintoism, or the worship of deceased ancestors or the leaders
of a nation. 4. Idealism, or the worship of abstractions or mental
qualities.
Brother Oliver and his school have propounded
the theory that among the idolatrous nations of antiquity, who
were, of course, the descendants, in common with the monotheistic
Jews, of Noah, there were the remains of certain legends and religious
truths which they had received from their common ancestor, but
which had been greatly distorted and perverted in the system which
they practised. This system, taught in the Ancient Mysteries,
he called the Spurious Freemasonry of antiquity.
IGNE NATURA RENOVATUR INTEGRA
A Latin phrase meaning By fire, nature is
perfectly renewed (see I.·. N.·. R.·.1.·.)
IGNORANCE
The ignorant Freemason is a drone and an
encumbrance in the Order. He who does not study the nature, the
design, the history and character of the Institution, but from
the hour of his initiation neither gives nor receives any ideas
that could not be shared by a profane, is of no more advantage
to Freemasonry than Freemasonry is to him. The true Freemason
seeks light that darkness may be dispelled, and knowledge that
ignorance may be removed. The ignorant aspirant, no matter how
loudly he may have asked for light, is still a blind grouper in
the dark.
IH-HO
The Cabalistic mode of reading Ho-hi, one
of the forms of the Tetragrammaton (see Zo-hi).
I. H. S.
A monogram, to which various meanings have
been attached. Thus, these letters have been supposed to be the
initials of In hoc signo, words which surrounded the cross seen
by Constantine. But that inscription was in Greek; and besides,
even in a Latin translation, the letter V, for vinces, would be
required to complete it. The Church has generally accepted the
monogram as containing the initials of Jesus Hominum Salvator,
a Latin expression meaning Jesus the Savior of Men; a sense in
which it has been adopted by the Jesuits, who have taken it in
the form here illustrated, as the badge of their society. So,
too, it is interpreted by the Masonic Templars, on whose banners
it often appears. A later interpretation is advocated by the Cambridge
Camden Society in a work published by them on the subject. In
this work they contend that the monogram is of Greek origin, and
is the first three letters of the Greek name, JESUS. But the second
of these interpretations is the one most generally received.
IJAR
The eighth month of the Hebrew civil year.
It corresponds to a part of the months of April and May.
ILLINOIS
The Anti-Masonic movement had so great an
effect on Freemasonry in Illinois that it practically died. After
the agitation ceased the Craft appeared again with renewed vigor.
There are thus two early Lodges and two Grand Lodges to be considered
in an account of the growth of Freemasonry in this State. On September
4, 1805, a Dispensation for six months was issued to Western Star
Lodge, No. 107, while Illinois was still in Indian Territory.
The Lodge was chartered and on September
13, 1806, was duly constituted. A Convention was held at Vandalia
on December 9, 1822, to consider the organization of a Grand Lodge
for the State. At another meeting held December 1, 1823, eight
Lodges were represented and a Grand Lodge was opened with Brother
Shadrach Bond as Grand Master. In 1827, this Grand Lodge ceased
operations and after June 24, 1827, all the Lodgea in the State
went out of existence. A Warrant was issued on August 30, 1838,
to Bodley Lodge, No. 97, by the Grand Lodge of Kentucky, there
being at that time no other working Lodge in Illinois. At a Convention
held at Jacksonville on April 6, 1840, six of the eight chartered
Lodges in the State were present and one under Dispensation was
represented. The Grand L,odge officers were elected and the Grand
Lodge then opened. For some time, however, several Lodges in Illinois
paid allegiance to Missouri because their business in St. Louis
made it more convenient for the Brethreu to attend the Grand Lodge
of Missouri.
A Dispensation was granted by the Deputy
General Grand High Priest to Springfield Chapter, on July 19,
1841, and in the following September a Charter was issued. Seven
Chapters were given permission subsequently by the General Grand
Iiing to organize a Grand Chapter. On April 10, 1850, six of these
Chapters held a Convention and opened the Grand Chapter of Illinois.
Degrees of the Cryptic Rite were conferred
in some of the Royal Arch Chapters in this State. Then several
Councils were chartered from 1852 by the Grand Council of Kentucky,
the first being Illinois Council No. 15. A Charter was granted
to Alton Council at Alton in 1853. Springfield Council at Springfield
was not chartered until February, 1853, though the Convention
to form a Grand Council was assembled on September 29, 1853, and
during the adjourned meeting at Springfield the various Councils
were arranged as Illinois Council No. 1; Springfield Council No.
2, and Alton Council No. 3. Any misunderstanding was cleared up
by a second Convention at Springfield, March 10, 1854, when the
Constitution was readopted and the Grand Council constituted by
representatives of the three Councils.
Apollo Encampment, later Apollo Commandery,
was organized at Chicago under Dispensation dated May 5, 1845,
issued by Deputy Grand Master Joseph E. Stapleton of Baltimore.
It received a Charter dated September 17, 1847. The Grand Commandery
was organized on October 27, 1857, under authority of Grand Master
W. B. Hubbard of the Grand Encampment, by three Commanderies:
Apollo, No. 1; Belvidere, No. 2, and Peoria, No. 3. At the Conclave
of 1858, Sir Hosmer A. Johnson presented a piece of the Charter
Oak received from the Hon. Isaac W. Stewart of Hartford, Connecticut,
which was afterwards made into a Patriarchal Cross for the use
of the Grand Commanders as a Jewel of Office.
As early as 1857, appeared the first Body
of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in Illinois, when an
Rensselaer Lodge of Perfection was chartered on May 14, at Chicago.
On that date also Chicago Council of Princes of Jerusalem, Gourgas
Chapter of Rose Croix, and Oriental Consistory were established
in the same city.
ILLITERACY
The word illiteracy, as signifying an ignorance
of letters, an incapability to read and write, suggests the inquiry
whether illiterate persons are qualified to be made Freemasons.
There can be no doubt, from historic evidence, that at the period
when the Institution was operative in its character, the members
for the most part that is, the great mass of the Fraternity were
unable to read or write. At a time when even kings made at the
foot of documents the sign of the cross, pro ignorantia litterarum.
because they could not write their names, it could hardly be expected
that an Operative Mason should be gifted with a greater share
of education than his sovereign. But the change of the Society
from Operative to Speculative gave to it an intellectual elevation,
and the philosophy and science of symbolism which was then introduced
could hardly be understood by one who had no preliminary education.
Accordingly, the provision in all Lodges, that initiation must
be preceded by a written petition, would seem to indicate that
no one is expected or desired to apply for initiation unless he
can comply with that regulation, by writing, or at least signing,
such a petition.
The Grand Lodge of England does not leave
this principle to be settled by implication, but in express words
requires that a candidate shall know how to write, by inserting
in its Constitution the provision that a candidate, "previous
to his initiation, must subscribe his name at full length to a
declaration." The official commentary on this, in an accompanying
note, is, that "a Person who cannot write is consequently
ineligible to be admitted into the Order," aid this is now
the very generally accepted law. The Latin words ne varies in
Masonic diplomas, which follows the signature in the margin, indicates
that the holder is required to know how to sign his name.
ILLUMINATED THEOSOPHISTS
A modification of the system of Pernetty
instituted at Paris by Benedict Chastanier, who subsequently succeeded
in introducing it into London. It consisted of nine Degrees, for
an account of which see Chastanier.
ILLUMINATI
This is a Latin word, signifying the enlightened,
and hence often applied in Latin Diplomas as an epithet of Freemasons.
ILLUMINATI OF AVIGNON
See Avignon, Illuminati of
ILLUMINATI OF BAVARIA
A secret society, founded on May 1, 1776,
by Adam Weishaupt, who was Professor of Canon Law at the University
of Ingolstadt. Its founder at first called it the Order of the
Perfectibilists; but he subsequently gave it the name by which
it is now universally known. Its professed object was, by the
mutual assistance of its members, to attain the highest possible
degree of morality and virtue, and to lay the foundation for the
reformation of the world by the association of good men to oppose
the progress of moral evil.
To give to the Order a higher influence,
Weishaupt connected it with the Masonic Institution, after whose
system of Degrees, of esoteric instruction, and of secret modes
of recognition, it was organized. It has thus become confounded
by superficial writers with Freemasonry, although it never could
be considered as properly a Masonic Rite. Weishaupt, though a
reformer in religion and a liberal in politics, had originally
been a Jesuit; and he employed, therefore, in the construction
of his association, the shrewdness and subtlety which distinguished
the disciples of Loyola; and having been initiated in 1777 in
a Lodge at Munich, he also borrowed for its use the mystical organization
which was peculiar to Freemasonry. In this latter task he was
greatly assisted by the Baron Von Knigge, a zealous and well-instructed
Freemason, who joined the Illuminati in 1780, and soon became
a leader, dividing with Weishaupt the control and direction of
the Order.
In its internal organization the Order of
Illuminati was divided into three great classes, namely,
1. The Sursery;
2. Symbolic Freemasonry; and
3. The Mysteries; each of which was subdivided into several Degrees,
making ten in all, as in the following table:
I. Nursery. After a ceremony of preparation
it began:
1. Novice.
2. Minerval.
3 Illuminatus Minor.
II. Symbolic Freemasonry.
The first three Degrees were communicated without any exact respect
to the divisions. and then the candidate proceeded:
4 Illuminates Major, or Scottish Novice.
5 Illuminates Diligent, or Scottish Knight.
III. The Mysteries.
This class was subdivided into the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries.
The Lesser Mysteries were:
6. Presbyter, Priest, or Epops.
7. Prince, or Regent.
The Greater Mysteries were:
8 Magus.
9 Rex, or King.
Anyone otherwise qualified could be received
into the Degree of Novice at the age of eighteen; and after a
probation of not less than a year he was admitted to the Second
and Third Degrees, and so on to the advanced Degrees; though but
few reached the Ninth and Tenth Degrees, in which the inmost secret
designs of the Order were contained, and, in fact, it is said
that these last Degrees were never thoroughly worked up. The Illuminati
selected for themselves Order Names, which were always of a classical
character. Thus, Weishaupt called himself Spartocus, Knigge was
Philo, and Zwack, another leader, was known as Cato. They gave
also fictitious names to countries. Ingolstadt, where the Order
originated, was called Eleusis; Austria was Egypt, in reference
to the Egyptian darkness of that kingdom, which excluded all Freemasonry
from its territories; Munich was called Athens, and Vienna was
Rome. The Order had also its calendar, and the months were designated
by peculiar names; as, Dimeh for January, and Bemeh for February.
They had also a cipher, in which the official correspondence of
the members was conducted. The character now so much used by Freemasons
to represent a Lodge, was invented and first used by the Illuminati.
The Order was at first very popular, and
enrolled no less than two thousand names upon its registers, among
whom were some of the most distinguished men of Germany. It extended
rapidly into other countries, and its Lodges were to be found
in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Hungary,
and Italy. The original design of Illuminism was undoubtedly the
elevation of the human race. Knigge, who was one of its most prominent
working members, and the author of several of its Degrees, was
a religious man, and would never have united with it had its object
been, as has been charged, to abolish Christianity. But it cannot
be denied, that in process of time abuses had crept into the Institution
and that by the influence of unworthy men the system became corrupted;
yet the coarse accusations of such writers as Barruel and Robison
are known to be exaggerated, and some of them altogether false.
The Conversations-Lexicon, for instance,
declares that the s society had no influence whatever on the French
Revolution, which is charged upon it by these as well as other
writers. But Illuminism came directly and professedly in conflict
with the Jesuits and with the Roman Church, whose tendencies were
to repress the freedom of thought. The priests became, therefore,
its active enemies, and waged war so successfully against it,
that on June 22, 1784, the Elector of Bavaria issued an Edict
for its suppression. Many of its members were fined or imprisoned,
and some, among whom was Weishaupt, were compelled to flee the
country. The Edicts of the Elector of Bavaria were repeated in
March and August, 1785, and the Order began to decline, so that
by the end of the eighteenth century it had ceased to exist. Adopting
Freemasonry only as a means for its own more successful propagation,
and using it only as incidental to its own organization, it exercised
while in prosperity no favorable influence on the Masonic Institution,
nor any unfavorable effect on it by its dissolution.
An Order but little known; mentioned by
Ragon in his Catalogue as having been instituted for the propagation
of Martinism.
ILLUMINISM
The system or Rite practiced by the German
Illuminati is so called.
ILLUSTRIOUS
A title commonly used in addressing Brethren
of the Thirty-Third Degree in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish
Rite. Formerly the word had a more extended usefulness among the
Craft. For example, there is a Minute Book preserved in the Museum
of the Grand Lodge Zur Sonne at Bayreuth, Germany. This record
is written in French as a report of the inauguration of the Lodge
Eleusis at Bayreuth on December 4, 1741. A translation of the
memorandum is as follows: The fourth of the month of December
our Very Worshipful Lodge hats installed the new Lodge in the
City at the Golden Eagle. The procession was arranged with beautiful
ceremonies.
1. Two Bearers carrying gloves.
2. Two Stewards or Marshals with their insignia and white batons
or staffs in hand.
3. The Grand Sword Bearers of the Grand Lodge.
4. The Secretary of the Grand Lodge.
5. Our Very Illustrious MasterMargrave Friedrich von BrandenburgBayreuthas
Grand Master of the Order, between the Wardens.
6. The new Master of the new Lodge, between laid Wardens.
7. All the Brethren, fifty in number.
Before the entrance to the Golden Eagle
was posted a Sentinel, on the staircase was another. Music of
very agreeable kind woes heard. We made some Brethren anti Masters.
After supper the Procession returned in the same manner that it
had arrived. The student of Freemasonry will not only note the
early use of the word Illustrious but also the prominence given
to the gloves on this occasion (see Gloves).
ILLUSTRIOUS ELECT OF THE FIFTEEN
The title now generally given to the Elect
of Fifteen, which see
IMPRESSMENT OF MASONS
A record of the 1590's shows that at that
period there were Lodges in existence in Great Britain which had
both Operatives and non-Operatives in their membership; and the
records of that period indicate that such Lodges had been in existence
long before 1590. The first written version of the Old Charges
was made it is believed, in the middle of the Fourteenth Century,
or during the latter half of it. These Lodges were small in membership,
therefore only a few of the men in the building trades were in
them.
These two facts together suggest that there must have been
some special occasions, some particular event, or unusual set
of circumstances, at some time and place, to account for these
special Masonic organizations. There are two known historical
occasions, either one of which would satisfy this theory. One
of these has been carefully studied by Bros. Knoop and Jones in
a paper published in Economic History, February, 1937, entitled
"The Impressment of Masons for Windsor Castle" and to
a more limited extent by Knoop, Jones, and Hamer w in The Two
Earliest Masonic MSS., pp. 12, 13, 23. On page 12 of the latter
they write:
For the supply of these wage workers the Crown relied
to a considerable extent upon impressment. The practice of pressing
masons, as well as other craftsmen and laborers, was very common
at this period. (1300 to 1400.) fin some eases orders were issued
to sheriffs to take masons and to send them to certain royal works
by specified dates; in other cases the master mason or clerk of
the works at some particular building operation was authorized
to press ' such labor as was required. Occasionally the Crown
would authorize the Church or other employers to 'impress masons."
After referring to the cases of impressment in Wales, they write
on page 23:
"The influence exerted, however, was probably
slight compared with that exercised by the greatly increased use
of impressment from 1344 onwards and in particular by its wholesale
adoption in 136S3, when Masons from almost every county in England
were assembled in such large numbers at Windsor Castle, that the
continuator of the Polychronicon could write that William Wykeham
had gathered at Windsor almost all the masons and carpenters in
England. Though the chronicler's statement was doubtless an exaggeration,
the vast gathering of Masons at Windsor in 1368 must have marked
an epoch in Masonic history and probably contributed more than
any other single event to the unification and consolidation of
the Masons' customs, and very possibly led to their first being
set down in writing."
(Note. It does not follow that violence
was used in the impressment of masons and carpenters; it was
the only available means by which large numbers of craftsmen could
be brought together at one time and place.)
In his The Masonic
Poem of 1390, Circa, (page 28) Bro. Roderick H. Baxter notes a
similar concentration of craftsmen, a ad, as will transpire from
the paragraph, it has one advantage over the above suggestion.
He is referring to the Regius MS.: "So far as the location
of the writing is concerned, Dr. Begemann, after a careful and
minute philological enquiry into the dialects of the country,
succeeded in placing it at the South of Worcestershire or Herefordshire
or even the North of Gloucestershire. [Dialects in the period
hardly stopped short of being separate languages.] Assuming this
conclusion to be correctand no one, so far as I am aware,
has ever tried to controvert itwe have only to examine the
architectural remains in this district, to find that great activity
of building was proceeding at the time of writing.
The cathedrals
of Worcester, Hereford and Gloucesterto say nothing of the
various abbeys and minor buildings in the neighborhoodall
exhibit remarkable traces of the architecture of the period, and
although a similarity of activity could of course be traced to
other parts of the country, I think this evidence may fairly be
accepted as confirmatory of our learned Brother's view [Begemann].
so far as I am personally concerned, I would like to assume that
the poem [Regius MS.] was written for the benefit of the craftsmen
engaged in the erection of the beautiful (and unusually placed)
cloisters of Gloucester Cathedral, for Mr. Wyatt Papworth tells
us, that the work was completed under Abbot Froucester between
1381 and 1412, dates which very nearly coincide with the range
of time during which experts have placed the writing. " There
is yet a third possibility, although it has no connection with
the subject of impressment, and it has the advantage of conforming
to an old tradition. This is the possibility that the required
set of special circumstances may have occurred at York. According
to old records the first church was built there in 627 A.D. (This
is according to Bede.) This was destroyed by fire in 741 A.D.
In 767 A.D. a second, and much larger church was built, but this
also was destroyed by fire in 1069 when Northumbrians attacked
the city. In 1070 a Norman, Archbishop Thomas, rebuilt the church;
in 1171 a new Choir was built; a new Nave was begun in 1291 and
completed in 1340.
This latter date brings us into the period
presupposed for the original version of the Old Charges, and when,
according to this writer's own hypothesis, the first independent,
permanent Lodges began to appear. The Presbytery was begun in
1361, completed in 1373. The Choir (presupposing the old one had
been lost by fire) was begun in 1380, completed in 1400. In 1405
the central tower was begun, and other equally important operations
continued until 1472. (A set of Fabric Rolls is authority for
much of this data.) Thus, as Albert G. Mackey says, "For
the long period of eight hundred and forty-five years, with some
halting, the great work of building a cathedral in the city of
York was pursued by Freemasons . . . " (And other buildings
also; see Clegg's Mackey's Revised History of Freemasonry, page
1135 ff.) Dr. Begemann placed the writing of the Refries MS. in
HerefordshireWorcestershireGloucestershire but the
Regius was a copy of an original; the latter may well have been
written in York.)`
INDEPENDENT AND REGULAR NATIONAL GRAND LODGE
OF FRANCE AND THE FRENCH COLONIES
The French title of this organization is
Grande Loge Nationale Indépendante et Reguliere pour la
France et les Colonies Française. Grand Master D. E. Ribaucourt
sent us the following information:
"Desirous of working in France outside
of all compromise of political or atheistical character, some
Brother French freemasons had in 1910 revived the practice of
the old Rite of the Rectified Regime, which is a deistic system.
This regular Rite among us had been practiced in France by numerous
Lodges since the commencement of the eighteenth century. Lodges
of that type have been put to sleep in France since 1841. They
bequeathed their powers to the Grand Rectified Directory of Geneva,
Switzerland in order that the Lodges of France should be awakened
when the time was opportune.
That was done in 1910 by the Grand Rectified
Directory of Geneva, which created the Respectable Rectified Lodge
Le Center des Amis at the Orient of Paris. Thereupon the Grand
Orient of France, preoccupied with the foundation of a new order
of things, proposed to us a double Constitution guaranteeing the
integrity of our Rituals of 1782, and the free exercise of the
symbols of the Grand Architect of the Universe during these three
years, 1910 -13, our Rite made much progress in France. In June,
1913, the Council of the Order of the Grand Orient of France violated
the solemn promises of 1910 and imposed upon us new rituals, in
which the opening and closing invocations had the symbol of the
Grand Architect of the Universe suppressed. We carried our case
before the Masonic Convent of the Grand Orient in 1913, and we
were forbidden to use our old-time rituals.
The Orator of the Convent of the Grand Orient
of France declared at that time amid the plaudits of the assemblage
that the symbol of the Grand Architect of the Universe was contrary
to the Constitution of the Grand Orient of France. To defend our
menaced Masonic faith and to safeguard the traditions of our Order,
we have been obliged to constitute ourselves in October, 1913,
into the Independent and Regular National Grand Lodge. The Respectable
Rectified Lodge, Le Centre des Amis of Paris, of which records
exist as far as 1762, took the initiative and was promptly followed
by the Respectable Lodge, L'Anglais No. 204, at Bordeaux, which
existed in 1732. Some new Lodges have combined with us, and will
adhere to the course of our action. We shall work after a just
and perfect fashion in order to afford a sanctuary in France to
Brothers believing in the Grand Architect of the Universe, loving
and respecting His symbol, and also to resume with those abroad
the chain of union so unfortunately broken between French Freemasons
and those of other lands.
We have imposed and shall impose upon our
Lodges the following obligations
1. During the work. the Bible shall be constantly open upon the
altar at the first chapter of Saint John.
2. The ceremonies shall strictly conform to the Ritual of the
Rectified Regime which we practice, revised in 1778 and approved
in 1782.
3. The communications shall always be opened and closed with the
invocation and in the name of the Grand Architect of the Universe,
and Lodges shall insert in a space in their announcements, documents,
the inscription A. L. G. D. G. A. D. l'U, these being the initials
of the French words meaning, to the glory of the Grand Architect
of the Universe.
4. No religious or political discussion shall be allowed in the
Lodges.
5. The Brethren shall never officially as a Lodge take part in
political matters, but each Brother shall reserve and guard his
entire liberty of action.
6. Lodges of this Obedience only receive as visitors the Brethren
belonging to the regular Obedience recognized by the Grand Lodge
of England.
"In answer to our appeal, the Grand
Lodge of England and its very Respectable Grand Master recognized
us on November 20, 1913, as the only regular Masonic Power in
France, and the announcement was made at the Centenary of that
very Respectable Grand Lodge on December 3, 1913" (see France).
INDIA
An extensive peninsula of Southern Asia.
The Grand Lodge of England authorized Brother George Pomfret in
1728 to open a Lodge in Bengal. Captain Ralph Farwinter, Pomfret's
successor, was appointed Provincial Grand Master of India in 1730.
The records of this Provincial Grand Lodge are not extant but
even previous to this time Lodges had been constituted at various
places.
A Dutch Body, the Grand Lodge of Solomon
at Chinsura, was always most friendly to the Bengal Lodge and
at times the two worked a joint ceremony.
January 25, 1781, was the date of the last
meeting of the Bengal Provincial Grand Lodge before the war in
the Carnatic proved the cause of the downfall of all but Industry
and Perseverance Lodge in Calcutta. July 18, 1785, the Provincial
Grand Lodge reopened and Freemasonry began an uphill struggle
to regain its former strength. In 1794 the Provincial Grand Lodge
controlled nine Lodges, from the first two of which its officers
were always chosen. This caused ill feeling and a secession of
several Lodges took place. It disappeared for a time but was re-established
in 1813 by the Earl of Moira. The Provincial Grand Master returned
to England in 1826 and the loss of all proper authority gradually
brought about a failure of communication between the Bengal Provincial
Grand Lodge and the Grand Lodge of England.
The earlier groupings of the Lodges overseas
in India and other countries were designated as in the records
of the Grand Lodge as Provinces but since 1866 these have been
termed Districts to distinguish them from the Provinces in England
itself.
The Grand Lodge of Ireland issued a Charter
for a Lodge in 1837 at Kurnaul but this did not survive.
A Lodge at Madras was chartered from England
in 1755, and in 1766 a Provincial Grand Master, Captain Edmond
Pascal, was appointed.
A Lodge was warranted for Bombay under English
authority in 1758 and Brother James Todd was appointed Provincial
Grand Master in 1763.
The Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1836 appointed
Dr. James Burnes of the Indian Medical Service as Provincial Grand
Master of Western India and its Dependencies, and a Provincial
Grand Lodge came into being on January 1, 1838. A Provincial Grand
Lodge of Eastern India was also created to control Masonic matters
on behalf of the Grand Lodge of Scotland and of this Body also
Doctor Burnes became the head, and in 1846 he was duly invested
as Provincial Grand Master for all India. He was the author of
a Sketch of the History of the Knights Templar in 1844 and was
also the founder of a fraternal organization having three classes
of members, Novice, Companion, and Officer, and known as the Brotherhood
of the Olive Branch of the East. Natives of India joined the Craft,
and Rising Star Lodge at Bombay and Saint Andrew's Lodge at Poona
were set up West and East in 1844 for that purpose and soon followed
by others. Some prominent natives of India have become Freemasons.
Among these are the son of the Nabob of Arcot, Umdat-ul-Umara,
Prince Keyralla, Khanof Mysore, Prince Shadad Khan, the former
Ameer of Scinde, Maharajah Duleep, and Maharajah Rundeer Sing.
George Pomfret was in 1728 appointed by
the Grand Lodge of England to be Provincial Grand Master of East
India (not to be confused with the East Indies) but nothing farther
is known of him. The following year Captain Ralph Farwinter succeeded
him, and in 1730 constituted Lodge No 72 in Bengal. (In 1731 he
sent a gift of money and liquor to the Grand Lodge at London;
he did not receive a reply until two years afterwards. India suffered
as much as did the Provincial Grand Lodges in America from the
silences, always long and often absolute, of the Grand Secretary
in London; the Grand Secretary-ship appears for many years to
have been a paralytic arm of the Mother Grand Lodge except in
the immediate circles of London.) The first Lodge on the Coast
of Coromandel was established at Madras in 1752. In the Presidency
of Bombay, Lodge No. 234 was constituted at Bombay in 1758, and
Lodge No. 569 at Surat in 1798; a Provincial Grand Master was
appointed in 1763. Ceylon received no Lodge until 1761, when a
military Lodge was brought there by a regiment with a Charter
from the Ancient Grand Lodge. It will thus be seen that the planting
of the Craft in India coincided with the period of its establishment
in America, and by English merchants, soldiers, and sailors first,
followed by Irish and Scottish.
The Lodges were of the same pattern,
used the same Constitutions and Rituals, were composed of men
of the same type; and as with Indians here so with Hindus there,
it was not until long afterwards and then in small numbers only
that they began to be admitted into membership. Of Freemasonry
itself, there was in India no trace before the white man arrived.
Some Theosophists, Rosicrucians, and other occultists have argued
that Freemasonry originated in India, but they produce no facts
and their reasoning is weakas when one of them argues that
the thread worn by a Brahmin around his neck is the origin of
the Cable Tow! In no other land in the world were the social,
political, and religious customs less likely to produce Freemasonry,
or anything similar to it in principles and teachings. The whole
people were cut asunder by a caste system which made impossible
any universality or meeting on the level or fraternalism; the
500 or so native states were (and still are) under personal despotisms
which have always forbidden free associations; the religious cleavages
are as abysmic as the caste cleavages; and nothing is farther
from the truth than the notion that because the religion called
Hinduism finds room in it for a million gods it would therefore
find room in it for a million religions; its gods are Hindu gods,
and it has never yet found room in itself for Mohammedanism, Judaism,
Buddhism (it drove Buddhism out of India), Lamaism, Parsceism,
or Christianity though it has been surrounded by these and many
other religions for centuries. Indians are much given to the use
of symbols, rites, ceremonies, and once had a large gild system;
but the same has been true of every other people. Nothing in Indian
philosophies, which are neither so numerous nor so profound as
Americans have been led to believe (most of them are unbelievably
crude) coincides at any point with the philosophy of Freemasonry-
None of the many origins of Freemasonry had their first roots
in India.
INDIANA
The first Lodge in Indiana was organized
at Vincennes by Dispensation from the Grand Lodge of Kentucky,
August 27, 1807, as Sincennes Lodge, No. 15. Prior to this, however,
Freemasonry had been introduced by Brethren belonging to Lodges
in the army on the northwestern frontier. A Convention of representatives
of the following Lodges of Ancient York Masons was held at Corydon
on December 3, 1817, to consider the establishment of a Grand
Lodge: Vincennes, No. 15; Lawrenceburg, No. 44; Madison Union,
No. 29; Blazing Star, Is-o. 36; Melchizedeek, No. 43; Pisgah,
No. 45. Three Lodges under dispensations Switzerland, Risines
Sun and Brookville Harmona, also sent representatives and it was
resolved to open a Grand Lodge. On January 12, 1818, arrangements
were completed. The Id following day Grand Officers were elected
with M. W. Alexander Buckner as Grand Master, and the Grand Constitution
was adopted January 15. Since 1825 this Grand Lodge has had permanent
quarters at Indianapolis but before then it met at Charlestown
and elsewhere.
According to the proceedings of the General
Grand Chapter on September 14, 1826, a Charter was granted to
Vincennes Chapter on May 13, 1820. At the twelfth Convocation
of the General Grand Chapter in 1St4, permission was granted for
a Convention of Chapter representatives to assemble on November
18, 1845, and the Grand Chapter of Indiana was duly constituted
on December 5, 1845. At the meeting of the General Grand Chapter
the General Grand Secretary stated that, according to the records
of 1819, Dispensations were said to have been granted for Chapters
at Madison and Brookville which were not ratified and therefore
the Chapters ceased to exist in a legal sense. They were supposed,
however, to have continued their labors for some years and, with
another Chapter established at Vincennes, to have organized a
Grand Chapter in 1823. Of this there was no documentary evidence,
but the General Grand Chapter granted Madison Chapter a legal
Charter on September 12, 1844.
The Council Degrees in Indiana were at first
given in the Chapter work but, after the General Grand Chapter
decided in 1853 to give up control of the Cryptic Degrees, Councils
were chartered by the Grand Council of Kentucky, August 30, 1854,
and by the Grand Council of Ohio, October 18, 1B55. The three
Councils thus organized sent delegates to a meeting on December
20, 1855, when the Grand Council of Indiana was formed.
The first Commandery to be organized in
Indiana was Roper, No. 1, at Indianapolis, which was granted a
Dispensation May 14, 1848. It was chartered October 16, 1850.
With three others, Greensburg, No. 2; La Fayette, No. 3, and Fort
Wayne, No. 4, this Commandery organized the Grand Commandery of
Indiana on May 16, 1854, by authority of the Grand Encampment.
On May 19, 1865, the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite became part of the Masonic life of Indiana when
the Adoniram Lodge of Perfection, the Saraiah Council of Princes
of Jerusalem, the Indianapolis Chapter of Rose Croix and the
Indiana Consistory were established at Indianapolis by the Supreme
Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction.
INDIAN CALENDAR
An Indian or Hindu year begins in April,
thus: First Vaisakha, April 13; First Jyaishtha, May 14; First
Ashadha, June 14; First Sravana, July 16; First Bhadrapada, August
16; First Asvina, September 16; First Kartlika, October 17; First
Agrahayana or Margasirsha, November 16; First Pansha, December
15; First Magha, January 13; First Phalguna, February 15; First
Caitra, March 13. The days of the week, commencing with Sunday,
are Aditya, Soma, Mangala, Budha, Guru, Sukra, and Sani. The Hindu
Era, until April 13, 1885, was 1937.
INDIAN FAITH
See Buddhism
INDIAN FREEMASONRY
There is no doubt that Indians have been
Freemasons, and devoted ones. But the claim has been made that
there are Indian customs of so decided Masonic a character that
a Freemason would at once assume their identity with the ceremonies
of the Craft. The subject has been treated in a book, Indian Masonry,
by Brother Robert C. Wright, who describes a number of Indian
signs, for example, and he arrives at this conclusion (page 18).
It can thus be readily understood that Masonic
signs which are simply gestures given to convey ideas, no doubt
have taken their origin from the same signs or like signs no v
corrupted but which meant something different in the beginning.
Were we able to trace these signs we would then at once jump to
the conclusion that the people who used them were Freemasons the
same as we ourselves. The signs which have just been mentioned
as given by the Indians could easily be mistaken for Masonic signs
by an enthusiastic Freemason, more anxious to find what he thinks
is in them than to indulge in sober analysis of the sign and its
meaning. A ceremonial sign for peace, friendship, or brotherhood
was made by the extended fingers separated, interlocked in front
of the breast, the hands horizontal with the backs outward. When
this sign is represented as a pictograph, we have on the Indian
chart what corresponds exactly to the clasped hands on the Masonic
chart. which means the same thing.
On the next page Brother Wright gives some
attention to the study of things that may resemble each other
and yet not be identical For instance, he says:
Charles Frush, a Freemason who spent many
years among the Indians of Oregon and Washington, told me he had
never seen any Masonic sign given by Indians, and if any one claimed
he had seen such, it was misunderstood and was for conversational
purposes. In response to an inquiry about a report that Indians
who had gone East many years ago, upon returning to Lewiston,
Idaho, had formed a Masonic Lodge, T. W. Randall, Grand Secretary
of A. F. &; A. M. in Idaho, wrote me as follows: "I was
in Lewiston as early as 1862 and heard of Indian Freemasons but
was never able to trace this to a reliable source. I have frequently
discussed this question with old pioneers of Oregon and Washington
but never found a person who was a Freemason, and who believed
the Indians ever were Freemasons or had a Lodge. That some Tribes
have certain signs by which they can recognize each other, there
can be no doubt, but those signs are not Masonic signs so far
as I can learn." Brother Randall has thus correctly determined
that the signs he refers to are nothing more than conversational
signs. The different Tribes had a sign which stood for their totem
or the name of their Tribe, and it is very easily understood that
an Indian of the same Tribe on seeing his tribal sign, would recognize
the one giving it as a fellow tribesman. Indians of a different
Tribe, familiar with it, would also recognize the sign and in
turn could give their own sign and thus each know where the other
"hails from." There is nothing strange about it.
The closing chapter by Brother Wright sums
up the "Lessons," as he heads it, we may derive from
a Masonic study of the American Indian. He says on pages 108 and
109:
There is no Indian Freemasonry. There is
Indian Freemasonry. This wide difference I make clear when I say,
no Indian Freemasonry as the average man understands it, but there
is a deep Indian Freemasonry for them who seeks to find it.
Shall we Freemasons, who tell the E. A.
of the universality of Freemasonry, dare to say that the Indian
is not a Freemason? An interesting institution was found among
the Wyandottes and some other tribesthat of fellowship.
Two young men agree to be friends forever, or more than Brothers.
Each tells the other the Secrets of his life, advises him on important
matters and defends him froth wrong and violence and at his death
is his chief mourner. Here are, in full reality, all the elements
of a Masonic Lodge. Those men were Freemasons in their hearts.
There is no Indian Freemasonry in that small and narrow sense
which most of us think of, that is, one who pays Lodge dues, wears
an apron like ours and gives signs so nearly like ours that we
find him perforce a freemason in any degree or degrees we know,
and which degrees we are too prone to watch, just as we do a procession
of historical floats, which casually interest us and maybe a little
more so if we can but secure a place sit the head of the procession
the true meaning of which we have but a faint idea about. This
makes our own Freemasonry as meaningless as the interpretation
of Indian signs by an ignorant trapper.
In a paper on the North American Indians,
their Beliefs and Ceremonies Akin to Freemasonry, read by Brother
F. C. Van Duzer on April 10, 1924, at a meeting of the Metropolitan
College, London, England, and printed in the Transactions of that
year (pages 18 to 27), the author examines several interesting
kindred customs of the Indians of North America and the Masonic
Craft. He also furnishes some valuable particulars of the initiation
of North American Indians into Freemasonry according to the Rites
of the Craft. Brother Van Duzer says:
The first American Indian, of whom there
is a definite record of having become a Master Mason, is Joseph
Brant, the famous Mohawk, lroquois, Chief, whose native name was
Thayendanega, and who was a brother in-law of Sir William Johnson,
who married as his second wife Molly Brant, Joseph Brant's sister.
Brant was born in Ohio in 1742, and was the son of Nickus, Indian
for Nicholas, a full-blooded Mohawk of the Wolf family who is
said to be a grandson of one of the five Sachems who visited England
in 1710 and was presented to Queen Anne. He was initiated in the
Hiram's Cliftonian Lodge, No. 41 " Moderns holden in Princes
Street, in Leicester Fields, London, on April 26, 1776.
His Grand Lodge Certificate was signed by
Joseph Heseltine, Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of the Moderns.
die was a member of Lodge No. 10, Hamilton, Canada, and No. 11,
Mohawk Village, of which he was first Master. He translated, among
other works, the Gospel of Saint Mark into the Mohawk language
in 1776. Brother Brant was buried in the Mohawk Church, Mohawk
Village, and the Freemasons restored the vault or tomb in 1850,
placing an appropriate inscription on it. It is stated that Brant's
Masonic apron was presented to him by King George III. The Lodge
at Hudson, New York, has upon its walls a painting of Brother
Brant, and in its archives is the story of his friendship for
Colonel McKinistry, whose life he once saved through recognition
of the Sign of D. It is also related of Brother Brant that during
General John Sullivan's raid on the Iroquois in 1779 he recognized
the Sign of D, as given by Lieutenant Boyd, who with Sergeant
Parker, was captured by the Indians. He saved them from immediate
death, but having been called away, the captives were placed in
the charge of the noted Tory, Butler, who, exasperated because
they would give him no information with regard to their Army,
handed them over to the Indians, who tortured them to death.
It is further claimed that the famous Seneca
orator, Red Jacket, a contemporary of Brother Brant, was a Freemason,
but the probability is that he was only an entered Apprentice.
Certain it is that on the village sites of the Iroquois of Colonial
times. Masonic emblems have been discovered that have evidently
been in possession of the Indians. There is in the Tioga Point
Museum at Athens, Pennsylvania, an emblem of the Royal Arch, found
in an Indian grave in the immediate vicinity, and which probably
dates from the period of the American Revolution. It is known
that a great Masonic student in America has in his possession
the somewhat conventional Masonic emblems, showing the square
and compasses hammered and cut from a silver coin by an Iroquois
silversmith, and it was obtained from the Seneca Indians. Many
other similar emblems have been seen and noted among the Indians.
Masonic history holds records of a number
of Delaware Indians who were Freemasons. One of these was a
member of the Munsey division who was named John Ronkerpot, who
impoverished himself to help the American cause during the Revolution,
and who later received Masonic aid. George Copway, the Ojibway
was an ardent Freemason.
Shabbonee, the Pottawatomi who saved the
early settlers of Chicago from the Sauk chief, Black Hawk, is
known to have been a freemason and tradition claims the famous
Black Hawk himself as such but that is doubtful. General Eli S.
Parker, the Seneca Chief, who entered the American Civil War as
a private and came out as Aide-de-Camp and Secretary to General
Grant, is a very good example of an American Indian Freemason.
His distinguished nephew, Archie C Parker, State Archaeologist
of New Cork, whose native name was Gazoasauana or Great Star Shaft,
has recently been elevated to the Thirty-Third Degree, perhaps
the first American Indian to receive that signal honor. I should
like to refer to one or two other prominent Freemasons, and among
them the Cherokee Chiefs, Ross Bushyhead, Hayes and Pleasant Porter.
Gabe E. Parker, Registrar of the United States Treasury, a Chickasaw
Indian, and James Muriel a Pawnee, may also be mentioned. On November
10, 1923, Kenwood Lodge No. 303, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, conferred
the Degree of Master Mason upon Amos Oneroad, whose native name
was Jinxing Cloud a full-blooded Sioux Indian.
They conferred this Degree on behalf of
Hiawatha Lodge So. 434, of Mount Vernon, New York. Amos Oneroad
comes of a distinguished stock. His grandfather, Blue Medicine.
was the first of his Tribe to welcome the white man to their country,
and his Chief's medal, together with an American Flag with thirteen
stars and a Certificate of good character, are still treasured
by his descendants. Brother Oneroad's father, Peter Oneroad was
a warrior of great distinction, having earned practically every
honor that is possible to the Sioux and Dakota Nations. It is
related that once, at the head of a small party, he completely
overwhelmed a large body of the warriors of the Ponea Tribe and
personally killed both of their Chiefs. In other accounts it is
stated that he dared the fire of the enemy to secure the body
of a wounded comrade. Again, he rescued an Indian girl from freezing,
carrying her ninety miles on his back over the snow-swept plain.
Brother Oneroad had the advantage of a good education. He was
a graduate of the Haskell Institute, at Lawrence, Kansas, and
of the Bible Teachers' Training School in New York; and he became
an ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church. He has been a
good and steadfast friend. In fact, that is the literal meaning
of his name, for One Road signified steads fast among the Sioux.
Thus from primitive and ancient rites akin
to Freemasonry, which had their origin in the shadows of the distant
past, the American Indian is graduating into Free and Accepted
Masonry as it has been taught to us. It is an instructive example
of the universality of human belief in fraternity, morality and
immortality.
General Eli S. Parker, the Seneca Chief,
to whom I have previously referred, in alluding to himself at
a banquet, said, "I am almost the sole remnant of what was
once a noble race, which is rapidly disappearing as the dew before
the morning sun. I found my race melting away and I asked myself,
'Where shall I find home and sympathy when our last Council fire
is extinguished?' I said, 'I will knock at the door of Freemasonry
and see if the white race will recognize me as they did my ancestors
when we were strong and the white man weak.' I knocked at the
door of the Blue Lodge and found Brotherhood around its altar.
I went before the Great Light in the Chapter and found companionship
beneath the Royal Arch. I entered the Encampment and found there
valiant Sir Knights willing to shield me without regard to race
or nation. If my race shall disappear from the continent I have
a consoling hope that our memory shall not perish. If the deeds
of my ancestors shall not live in stories their memories will
remain in the names of our lakes and rivers, pour towns and cities,
and will call up memories otherwise forgotten. I am happy; I feel
assured that when my glass is run out I shall follow the footsteps
of my departed race, Masonic sympathizers will cluster around
my coffin and drop in my lonely grave the evergreen acacia, sweet
emblem of a better meeting."
Brother Van Duzer says further: "I
desire to express my grateful thanks to R. W. Brother Alanson
Skinner; the eminent anthropologist of Milwaukee United States
of America, for the great assistance he has rendered me."
INDIANS AMERICAN
American Indians, including those in Canada,
Mexico, Central, and South America (perhaps 25,000,000 in all),
are divided into peoples, and these peoples are divided into either
tribes or clans, or both; and they are remarkable for their large
number of independent languagesamong the Pueblo villages
in New Mexico, no one of which has a population over 3,000, four
separate languages are used. But it is equally extraordinary that
in spite of these multiplying units of peoples and languages,
and the lack of central or general states and governments, Indians
are everywhere singularly at one in a continual use of ceremonies,
for innumerable purposes, and on innumerable occasionssome
of them improvise ceremonies on the spot for some special purpose.
A learned Indian in the Pueblo of Isleta said: we are a race who
always have believed in the power of ceremonies." In the
tens of thousands of ceremonies in North, Central, and South America
together, there are countless emblems, symbols, rites, signs,
passwords, etc. It was inevitable that one of those should occasionally
coincide with some symbol or rite of Freemasonry (the Navajos
have an outdoor ceremony strikingly like the Third Degree); it
was from this inevitable coincidence that the belief arose a century
ago that the Indians (the Mayan were an Indian people) had possessed
Freemasonry before Columbus came, whereas in fact they had none
of it, and at the present have none except among the comparatively
few Indian members of regular Lodges. (See The Builder; consult
index under Arthur C. Parker, and Alanson Skinner. See also page
480 of this Encyclopedia.) (It is among the Pueblo Indians of
New Mexico and of Arizona [the Hopis are a Pueblo people] that
the Indian prepossession with and great talent for ceremonies
can be studied best, because they have carried ceremonies to their
perfection, and to an extreme. See in especial The Delight Makers,
by Adolph Bandelier.It is the "classic on the American Indian";
the characters are fictitious, but otherwise, as Pueblo Indians
themselves admit, nothing else in it is fictional. Next in rank
to it is Zuni Folk Tales, by Frank Hamilton Cushing; G. P. Putnam's
Sons; New York; 1901. Since Cushing [who lived at Zuni Pueblo]
wrote his path-finding study, Hodge, Hewitt, Webster, and a long
succession of specialists have produced a large literature.)
The
principal feature of the Pueblo cosmology is shipapu, or Underworld,
from which Indian peoples came to the Upper World and to which
they return, the entrance being at the "Four Corners,"
a spot roughly in the region where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah,
and Colorado meet. In shipapu are the katcinas, which are not
gods, or demons, or nature forces, but a "Something"
impossible for a white man to envisage; each of them is in control
of one of the many large cycles or things or regular occurrences,
such as winds, rains, growing crops, seasons, death, etc. The
Pueblo Indian believes that his ceremonies can set into action,
or stop, or otherwise affect these katcinas. They are therefore,
in his eyes, not dances, or prayers, or religious rites, or symbols,
but a means of getting something done; a ceremony may set a katcina
into action just as a horse may set a wagon in motion. Such ceremonies
obviously have nothing in common with Masonic ceremonies; so also
with ceremonies used by other Indian peoples, which, though they
are unlike Pueblo ceremonies, are the same in principle.
INDIFFERENTS, THE
This organization flourished in the middle
of the eighteenth century in France The rites were of a quasi-Masonic
character and both men and women were eligible to membership-
The badge was a ribbon, striped black, white and yellow, and the
device was an imitation of an icicle. One of the oaths taken by
the members was to fight against Love, whose power they renounced,
Mlle. Salle, a famous danseuse, was President for a time.
INDISCHE MYSTERIEN,
or INDIAN MYSTERIES
In the German Cyclopedia we find the following:
The East Indians have still their mysteries. which it is very
probable they received from the ancient Egyptians. These mysteries
are in the possession of the Brahmans, and their ancestors were
the ancient Brachmen.
It is only the sons-of these priests who
are eligible to initiation. Had a grown-up youth of the Braehmen
sufficiently hardened his body, learned to subdue his passions,
and given the requisite proofs of his abilities at school, he
must submit to an especial proof of his fortitude before he was
admitted into the mysteries, which proofs were given in a cavern.
A second cavern in the middle of a high hill contained the statues
of nature, which were neither made of gold, nor of silver, nor
of earth, nor of stone, but of a very hard material resembling
wood, the composition of which was unknown to any mortal.
These statues are said to have been given
by God to His Son, to serve as models by which He might form all
created beings. Upon the crown of one of these statues stood the
likeness of Bruma, who was the same with them as Osiris was with
the Egyptians. The inner part, and the entrance also into this
cavern, was quite dark, and those who wished to enter into it
were obliged to seek the way with a lighted torch. A door led
into the inner part, on the opening of which the water that surrounded
the border of the cavern broke loose. If the candidate for initiation
was worthy, he opened the door quite easily, and a spring of the
purest water flowed gently upon him and purified him. Those, on
the contrary who were guilty of any crime, could not open the
door; and if they were candid, they confessed their sins to the
priest, and besought him to turn away the anger of the gods by
praying and fasting.
In this cavern, on a certain day, the Brachmen
held their annual assembly. Some of them dwelt constantly there-
others came there only in the spring and harvest conversed
with each other upon the doctrines contained in their mysteries,
contemplated the hieroglyphics upon the statues and endeavored
to decipher them. Those among the initiated who were in the lowest
degrees, and who could not comprehend the sublime doctrines of
one God, worshiped the sun and other inferior divinities. This
was also the religion of the common people. The Brahmans, the
present inhabitants of India, those pure descendants of the ancient
Braehmen, do not admit any person into their mysteries without
having first diligently inquired into his character and capabilities,
and duly proved his fortitude and prudence. No one could be initiated
until he had attained a certain age; and before his initiation
the novice had to prepare himself by prayer, fasting, and almsgiving,
and other good works, for many days.
When the appointed day arrived he bathed
himself and went to the Guru, or chief Brahman, who kept one of
his own apartments ready in which to perform this ceremony. Before
he was admitted he was asked if he earnestly desired to be initiatedif
it was not curiosity which induced him to do soif he felt
himself strong enough to perform the ceremonies which would be
prescribed to him for the whole of his life, without the exception
of a single day. He was at the same time advised to defer the
ceremony for a time, if he had not sufficient confidence in his
strength. If the youth continued firm in his resolution, and showed
a zealous disposition to enter into the paths of righteousness,
the Guru addressed a charge to him upon the manner of living,
to which he was about to pledge himself for the future. He threatened
him with the punishment of heaven if he conducted himself wickedly;
promised him, on the contrary, the most glorious rewards if he
would constantly keep the path of righteousness. After this exhortation,
and having received his pledge, the candidate was conducted to
the prepared chamber, the door of which stood open, that all those
who assembled might participate in the offering about to be made.
Different fruits were thrown into the fire,
while the High Priest. with many ceremonies, prayed that God might
be present with them in that sacred place. The Guru then conducted
the youth behind a curtain, both having their heads covered, and
then gently pronounced into his ear a word of one or two syllables,
which he was as gently to repeat into the ear of the Guru, that
no other person might hear it. In this word was the prayer which
the initiated was to repeat as often as he could for the whole
day, yet in the greatest stillness and without ever moving the
lips. Neither does he discover this sacred word unto any person.
No European has ever been able to discover
thus word, so sacred is this secret to them. When the newly initiated
has repeated this command several times, then the chief Brahman
instructs him in the ceremonies, teaches him several songs to
the honor of God, and finally dismisses him with many exhortations
to pursue a virtuous course of life (see Paris) .
INDO-CHINA, FRENCH
Southeast of Asia and south of China, including
the protectorates of Annam, Tongking and Cambodia, the colony
of Cochin China, and part of the Laos country. At Saigon, Cochin
China, the Grand Orient of France established a Lodge in 1868,
Le Réveil de l'Orient, meaning in English The Awakening
of the East, and the Grand Lodge of France also warranted a Lodge
there in 1908, La Ruche d'Orient, meaning The Beehive of the East.
On December 8, 1886, the Grand Orient of France erected a Lodge
at Hanoi, La Fraternité Tonkinoise, a title meaning The
Tonking Brotherhood; a Lodge at Haiphong on July 21, 1892, L'Etoile
du Tonking, meaning in English The Star of Tonking, and on March
20, 1906, another at Pnom-Penh, L'Avenir Khmer, meaning The Coming
Cambodia, Pnom-Penh being the capital of Cambodia or Khmer.
INDUCTION
This word has more than one meaning:
1. The
Master of a Lodge, when installed into office, is said to be inducted
into the Oriental Chair of King Solomon. The same term is applied
to the reception of a candidate into the Past Master's Degree.
The word is derived from the language of the law, where the giving
a clerk or parson possession of his benefice is called his induction.
2. Induction is also used to signify initiation into the Degree
called Thrice Illustrious Order of the Cross.
INDUCTOR
The Senior and Junior Inductors are officers
in a Council of the Thrice Illustrious Order of the Cross, corresponding
to the Senior and Junior Deacons.
INDUSTRY
A virtue inculcated amongst Freemasons,
because by it they are enabled not only to support themselves
and families, but to contribute to the relief of worthy distressed
Brethren. "All Masons," say the Charges of 1722, "shall
work honestly on working days that theft may live creditably on
holy days" (Constitutions, 1723, page 52). The Masonic symbol
of industry is the beehive, which is used in the Third Degree.
INEFFABLE DEGREES
From the Latin word, ineffabilrs, that which
can not or ought not to be spoken or expressed. The Degrees from
the Fourth to the Fourteenth inclusive, of the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite, Which are so called because they are principally
engaged in the investigation and contemplation of the Ineffable
Name.
INEFFABLE NAME
It was forbidden to the Jews to pronounce
the Tetragrammaton or sacred name of God; a reverential usage
which is also observed in Freemasonry. Hence the Tetragrammaton
is called the Ineffable Name. As in Freemasonry, so in all the
secret societies of antiquity, much mystery has been attached
to the Divine Name, which it was considered unlawful to pronounce,
and for which some other word was substituted. Adonai was among
the Hebrews the substitute for the Tetragrammaton.
INEFFABLE TRIANGLE
The two triangles in crusted one upon the
other, containing the Ineffable Name in Enochian characters, represented
in the Eleventh Grade of the Ineffable Series. Good and t evil,
light and darkness, life and death, are here not wanting in symbolism,
foreshadowing the philosophic Degrees, and furnishing the true
original of the two interlaced triangles adopted in modern Freemasonry
(see Enochian Alphabet).
INELIGIBLE
Who are and who are not ineligible for initiation
into the mysteries of Freemasonry is treated of under the head
of Qualifications of Candidates, which see.
INFORMATION, LAWFUL
One of the modes of recognizing a stranger
as a true Brother, is from the lawful information of a third party.
No Freemason can lawfully give information of another's qualifications
unless he has actually tested him by the strictest trial and examination,
or knows that it has been done by another. But it is not every
Freemason who is competent to give lawful information. Ignorant
and unskillful Brethren cannot do so, because they are incapable
of discovering truth or of detecting error. A rusty Freemason
should never attempt to examine a stranger, and certainly, if
he does, his opinion as to the result is worth nothing. If the
information given is on the ground that the party who is vouched
for has been seen sitting in a Lodge, care must be taken to inquire
if it was a "just and legally constituted Lodge of Master
Masons."
A person may forget from the lapse of time,
and vouch for a stranger as a Master Mason, when the Lodge in
which he saw him was only opened in the First or Second Degree.
Information given by letter, or through a third party, is irregular.
The person giving the information, the one receiving it, and the
one of whom it is given, should all be present at the same time,
for otherwise there would be no certainty of identity. The information
must be positive, not founded on belief or opinion, but derived
from a legitimate source. And, lastly, it must not have been received
casually, but for the very purpose of being used for Masonic purposes.
For one to say to another, in the course
of a desultory conversation, "A. B. is a Freemason,"
is not sufficient. He may not be speaking with due caution, under
the expectation that his words will be considered of weight. He
must say something to this effect: "I know this man to be
a Master Mason, for such or such reasons, and you may safely recognize
him as such." This alone will insure the necessary care and
proper observance of prudence.
INFRINGING UPON FREEMASONRY
The reader will see under Imitative Societies
certain observations with regard to these organizations that in
some ways resemble the Craft. As imitation is said to be a sincere
form of flattery, such resemblances may be deemed a compliment
to the reputation and the character of the Masonic Institution.
Where the features maintained in common by the imitator and the
imitated are employed innocently and perhaps for an object thoroughly
devoid of any purpose to defame or in any particular to injure
the Masonic Institution, the infringing organization is on an
entirely distinct and different foundation than if it were guilty
of the theft and misuse of a good name. So identified is that
name with a recognized and highly respected Institution that any
who attempt to take unauthorized liberties with the exclusive
use of it do so at some risk of at least a rebuke and a refusal
of legal permission to proceed. An instance is afforded in the
case of the American Masonic Federation, which will be found concisely
explained elsewhere in this work (see Clandestine). Another case
where a Charter was sought to use a couple of significant words
in combination with the name of a proposed organization is mentioned
briefly here.
Brother Thomas G. Price, Past Potentate
of Mecca Temple, New York City, contributed to the Meccan, September,
1921, a decision handed down on August 5 of that year by Justice
Gannon of the Part II, Supreme Court of New York, to the effect
that the words Masonic Rite are the property of the established
Masonic Order and are not to be encroached upon by other organizations
of any kind. Such a decision reserves to the Masonic Fraternity
the right to the use of the word Masonic in connection with Rite
and denies its use elsewhere no matter how it may be qualified
by other words. Brother Price wrote that so far as he was able
to ascertain, Justice Gannon was not a member of the Craft and
in making this decision he was guided solely by the law and not
by any personal bias. While the decision is given here to show
the trend of judicial thought and not because of any claim for
its value in law as a general precedent, it should have some influence
on the activities of organizations claiming to be Masonic. The
decision reads as follows:
I
n regard to Masonic Adriatic RiteCertain
citizens have presented a proposed Certificate, under Section
41 of the Membership Corporation Law, for my approval. The objects
stated are patriotic and entirely laudable but the name presents
an objection that I am not able to overcome. The title, Masonic
Adriatic Rile, containing two words suggestive of a very ancient
and familiar organization, cannot but lead to the conclusion that
the proposed corporation is connected with and duly sanctioned
by Masonic authority. The organizers concede that this is not
the case and they contend that the qualifying word Adriatic removes
this apparent identity I cannot subscribe to this view. A title
containing the words Masonic and Rite, however separated, cannot
blot be objectionable to the Masonic Order with which they have
been connected from time immemorial, and it is not fitting that
these objections should be challenged Thousands of words descriptive
and arbitrary are available. The organizers must upon reflection
see the reasonableness of these observations. Approval of the
Certificate under the present title is withheld.
A few references are given here to show
the tendency of court decisions, and incidentally, against the
unauthorized use of emblems:
The term " Freemasons" includes all members of any regular
Body of the Fraternity known as "Free and Accepted Masons"
or "Ancient Free and Accepted Masons." They have a peculiar
system of jurisprudence which in determining legal questions concerning
them, is considered and applied by the courts.
Smith v. Smith. 3 Desaus (S. C.), 566.
Connelly v Masonic Mutual Benefit Assn. (Conn.), 18 Am. St. Rep.,
296.
It is almost the exclusive province of an Order like Freemasons
to impose its own terms of membership, and the courts will not
interfere to compel recognition as a member of a Masonic Lodge
of one who affiliates with a Rite of Masonry different from that
recognized by the Grand Lodge.
Burt v. Grand Lodge. 66 Mich., 85.
Lawson v. Hewell, 188 Cal., 613.
Seceders have no particular rights which the courts are required
to recognize.
Washington v. White, 27 Pittsburgh Legal Journal, New Style 338.
Curien v. Sam Tini, 16 La. Ann., 27.
Polar Star Lodge No. 1 v. Polar Star Lodge No. 1, 16 La. Ann.,
53.
Smith v. Smith, 3 Desaus (S. C.), 357.
It is now universally held that the expulsion of a Freemason from
a Blue Lodge will effect a like result as regards his membership
in any of the higher Bodies in which he may belong.
Commonwealth v. O'Donnell, 188 pa. St., 14.
In cases involving the examination of ceremonies and rituals of
the Masonic Order, members are allowed to state their opinions
on the points involved without being obliged to discuss any of
the secrets of Freemasonry.
Smith v. Smith, 3 Desaus (S. C.), 563.
The acts of the defendants and those under whom they hold in assuming
to adopt the name, insignia, badges, etc., claimed by petitioners
and those with whom they are associated, are contrary to the public
policy of the State of Georgia on the subject of counterfeiting.
as disclosed by Section 1989, et seq., Civil Code,
and Sections 254-8 of the Criminal Code.
Creswill v. Knights of Pswthias 133 Ga., 837.
Lane v. Evening Star Society, 120 Ga., 355.
The Good Samaritans and Sons of Samaria Case, 139 Ga., 423.
The Odd Fellows Case, 140
It is also contrary to the whole spirit of the age on the subject
of counterfeiting.
See 3 Ann. Cases 32, and note.
Hammer v. State 21 Ann. Cases 1034.
(See also Clandestine, and Square.)
INHERENT RIGHTS OF A GRAND MASTER
This has been a subject of fertile discussion
among Masonic jurists, although only a few have thought proper
to deny the existence of such rights. Upon the theory which, however
recently controverted, has very generally been recognized, that
Grand Masters existed before Grand Lodges were organized, it must
be evident that the rights of a Grand Master are of two kinds
those, namely, which he derives from the Constitution of a Grand
Lodge of which he has been made the presiding officer, and those
which exist in the office independent of any Constitution, because
they are derived from the landmarks and ancient usages of the
Craft. The rights and prerogatives which depend on and are prescribed
by the Constitution may be modified or rescinded by that instrument.
They differ in various Jurisdictions, because
one Grand Lodge may confer more or less power upon its presiding
officer than another; and they differ at different times, because
the Constitution of every Grand Lodge is subject, in regard to
its internal regulations, to repeated alteration and amendment.
These may be called the accidental rights of a Grand Master, because
they are derived from the accidental provisions of a Grand Lodge,
and have in them nothing essential to the integrity of the office.
It is unnecessary to enumerate them, because they may be found
in varied modifications in the Constitutions of all Grand Lodges.
But the rights and prerogatives which Grand
Masters are supposed to have possessed, not as the presiding officers
of an artificial Body, but as the Rulers of the Craft in general,
before Grand Lodges came into existence, and which are dependent,
not on any prescribed rules which may be enacted today and repealed
tomorrow, but on the long-continued usages of the Order and the
concessions of the Craft from time out of mind, inhere in the
office, and cannot be augmented or diminished by the action of
any authority, because they are landmarks, and therefore unchangeable.
These are called the inherent rights of
a Grand Master. They comprise the right to preside over the Craft
whenever assembled, to grant Dispensations, and, as a part of
that power, to make Freemasons at sight (see Doctor Mackey's revised
Jurisprudence of Freemasonry).
IN HOC SIGNO VINCES
On the Grand Standard of a Commandery of
Knights Templar these words are inscribed over "a blood-red
Passion Cross," and they constitute in part the motto of
the American branch of the Order. Their meaning, By this sign
thou shalt conquer, is a substantial, but not literal, translation
of the original Greek, Av vour¢ó. For the origin of
the motto, we must go back to a well known legend of the Church,
which has, however, found more doubters than believers among the
learned. Eusebius, who wrote a life of Constantine says that while
the emperor was in Gaul, in the year 312, preparing for war with
his rival, Maxentius, about the middle hours of the day, as the
sun began to verge toward its setting, he saw in the heavens with
his own eyes, the sun surmounted with the trophy of the cross,
which was composed of light, and a legend annexed, which said
"by this conquer." This account Eusebius affirms to
be in the words of Constantine. Lactantius, who places the occurrence
at a later date and on the eve of a battle with Maxentius, in
which the latter was defeated, relates it not as an actual occurrence,
but as a dream or vision; and this is now the generally received
opinion of those who do not deem the whole legend a fabrication.
On the next day Constantine had an image of this cross made into
a banner, called the labarum, which he ever afterward used as
the imperial standard. Eusebius describes it very fully. It was
not a Passion Cross, such as is now used on the modern Templar
standard, but the monogram of Christ. The shaft was a very long
spear.
On the toll was a crown composed of Kold
and precious stones, and containing the sacred symbol, namely,
the Greek letter rho or P. intersected by the chi or X, which
two letters are the first and second of the name XPI2TOX`, or
Christ. If, then, the Templars retain the motto on their banner,
they should, for the sake of historical accuracy, discard the
Passion Cross, and replace it with the Constantinian Chronogram,
or Cross of the Labarum. But the truth is, that the ancient Templars
used neither the Passion Cross, nor that of Constantine, norWyet
the motto in hoc silo Winces on their standard. Their only banner
was the black and white Beauseant, and at the bottom of it was
inscribed their motto, also in Latin, Non nobis Domine, non nobis,
sed noxnini too da gloriam, meaning Not unto us, O Lord, not unto
us, but unto Thee give the glory. This was the song-or shout of
victory sung by the Templars when triumphant in battle.
INIGO JONES MANUSCRIPT
Brother R. F. Gould (History of Freemasonry,
volume i, page 63) informs us that this manuscript was published
only in the Masonic Magazine, July, 1881. A very curious folio
manuscript, ornamented title and drawing by Inigo Jones, old red
morocco, gilt leaves, dated 1607, was sold by Puttick & Simpson,
November 12, 1879, and described as The Ancient Constitutions
of the Free and Accepted Masons. Brother Woodford became its possessor,
who mentions it as "a curious and valuable manuscript per
se, not only on account of its special verbiage, but because it
possesses a frontispiece of Masons at work, with the words Iniyo
Jones delin. at the bottom. It is also highly ornamented throughout,
both in the capital letters and with finials. It is of date 1607....
It is a peculiarly interesting manuscript in that it differs from
ail known transcripts in many points, and agrees with no one copy
extant."
Brother Gould remarks, "This, one of
the latest discoveries, is certainly to be classed amongst the
most valuable of existing versions of our manuscript Constitutions."
It is now the property of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Worcestershire,
and has been reproduced by the Quatuor Coronati Lodge. It was
probably a copy of a much earlier manuscript, and is considered
to belong to the latter half of the seventeenth century, and never
to have belonged to Inigo Jones.
INITIATE
The Latin is Initiatus.
1. The Fifth and last Degree of the Order of the Temple;
2. The Eleventh Degree of the Rite of Philalethes;
3. The Candidate in any of the Degrees of Freemasonry is called
an Initiate.
INITIATE IN THE EGYPTIAN SECRETS
The Second Degree in the Rite of African
Architects.
INITIATE IN THE MYSTERIES
The Twenty-first Degree in the Metropolitan
Chapter of France.
INITIATE IN THE PROFOUND MYSTERIES
The Sixty-second Degree of the collection
of the Metropolitan Chapter of France.
INITIATE INTO THE SCIENCES, THE
Brother Kenneth Mackenzie, in the Royal
Masonic Cyclopedia, informs us that this is the title of the Second
Degree of a Masonic system founded on the doctrines and principles
of Pythagoras.
INITIATED KNIGHT AND BROTHER OF ASIA
The Thirty-second Degree of the Order of
Initiated Brothers of Asia (see Asia, Initiated Knights and Brothers
of ).
INITIATION
A term used by the Romans to designate admission
into the mysteries of their sacred and secret rites. It is derived
from the word initia, which signifies the first principles of
a science. Thus Justin (Liber or book xi, chapter 7) says of Midas,
King of Phrygia, that he was initiated into the mysteries by Orpheus,
Ab Orpheo sacrorum solemnibus initiatus. The Greeks used the term
Muat la, from ,uuar71puav, a mystery. From the Latin, the Freemasons
have adopted the word to signify a reception into their Order.
It is sometimes specially applied to a reception into the First
Degree, but he who has been made an Entered Apprentice is more
correctly said to be Entered (see Mysteries).
INITIATION, BABYLONIAN RITE OF
Professor Sayce, in his Hibbert Lecture,
on the origin and growth of religion as illustrated by the religion
of the ancient Babylonians (page 241), tells us of a tablet which
describes the initiation of an Augur, a prophet, a soothsayer
or fortune-teller, one foretelling future events by interpreting
omens and giving advice upon these things, and states how one
of these must be "of pure lineage, unblemished in hand or
foot," and speaks thus of the vision which is revealed to
him before he is "initiated and instructed in the presence
of Samas and Rimmon in the use of the book and stylus" by
the ascribe, the instructed one, who keeps the oracle of the gods."
He is made to descend into an artificial imitation of the lower
world and there beholds "the altars amid the waters, the
treasures of Anu, Bel, and Ea. the tablets of the Gods, the delivery
of the oracle of Heaven and Earth, and the cedar-tree, the beloved
of the great gods, which their command has caused to grow."
IN MEMORIAM
Latin, meaning As a memorial. Words frequently
placed at the heads of pages in the Transactions of Grand Lodges
on which are inscribed the names of Brethren who have died during
the past year. The fuller phrase, in Latin, of which they are
an abbreviated form, is In perpetuam rei meinoriam, meaning, As
a perpetual memorial of the event. Words often inscribed on pillars
erected in commemoration of some person or thing.
INNER GUARD
An officer of a Lodge, according to the
English system, whose functions correspond in some particulars
with those of the Junior Deacon in the American Rite. His duties
are to admit visitors, to receive candidates, and to obey the
commands of the Junior Warden. This officer is unknown in the
American system.
INNER ORDER
Name of the sixth grade of von Hund's Templar
system.
INNOVATIONS
There is a well-known maxim of the law which
says Omnis innovatio plus nontate perturbat quam utilitate prodest,
that is, every innovation occasions more harm and disarrangement
by its novelty than benefit by its actual utility. This maxim
is peculiarly applicable to Freemasonry, those system is opposed
to all innovations. Thus Doctor Dalcho says, in his Ahiman Rezon
(page 191), "Antiquity is dear to a Mason's heart; innovation
is treason, and saps the venerable fabric of the Order."
In accordance with this sentiment, we find the installation charges
of the Master of a Lodge affirming that "it is not in the
power of any man or body of men to make innovations in the body
of Masonry."
By the "body of Masonry" is here
meant, undoubtedly, the landmarks, which have always been declared
to be unchangeable. The non-essentials, such as the local and
general regulations and the lectures, are not included in this
term. The former are changing every day, according as experience
or caprice suggests improvement or alteration. The most important
of these changes in the United States has been the tendency to
abolition of the Quarterly Communications of the Grand Lodge,
and the substitution for them, of an annual Communication. But,
after all, this is, perhaps. only a recurrence to first usages;
for, although Anderson says that in 1717 the Quarterly Communications
"were revived," there is no evidence extant that before
that period the Freemasons ever met except once a year in their
General Assembly. If so, the change in 1717 was an innovation,
and not that which has almost universally prevailed in the United
States.
The lectures, which are but the commentaries
on the ritual and the interpretation of the symbolism, have been
subjected, from the time of Anderson to the present day, to repeated
modifications.
But notwithstanding the repugnance of Freemasons
to innovations, a few have occurred in the Order. Thus, on the
formation of the Grand Lodge of Ancient, as they called themselves
in contradistinction to the regular Grand Lodge of England, which
was styled the Grand Lodge of Moderns, the former Body, to prevent
the intrusion of the latter upon their meetings, made changes
in some of the modes of recognitionchanges which, although
Dalcho has said that they amounted to no more than a dispute "whether
the glove should be placed first upon the right hand or on the
left" (Ahitnan Rezon, page 193), were among the causes of
continuous acrimony among the two Bodies, which was only healed,
in 1813, by a partial sacrifice of principle on the part of the
legitimate Grand Lodge, and have perpetuated differences which
still exist among the English and American and the Continental
Freemasons.
But the most important innovation which
sprang out of this unfortunate schism is that which is connected
with the Royal Arch Degree. On this subject there have been two
theories: One, that the Royal Arch Degree originally constituted
a part of the Master's Degree, and that it was dissevered from
it the Ancient; the other, that it never had any existence until
it was invented by Ramsay, and adopted by Dermott for his Antient
Grand Lodge. If the first, which is the most probable and the
most generally received opinion, be true, then the regular or
Modern Grand Lodge committed an innovation in continuing the disseverance
at the Union in 1813. If the second be the true theory, then the
Grand Lodge equally perpetuated an innovation in recognizing it
as legal, and declaring, as it did, that "Antient Craft Masonry
consists of three degrees, including the Holy Royal Arch."
But however the innovation may have been introduced, the Royal
Arch Degree has now become, so far as the York and American Rites
are concerned, well settled and recognized as an integral part
of the Masonic system. About the same time there was another innovation
attempted in France. The adherents of the Pretender, Charles Edward,
sought to give to Freemasonry a political bias in favor of the
exiled house of Stuarts, and, for this purpose, altered the interpretation
of the great legend of the Third Degree, so as to make it applicable
to the execution or, as they called it, the martyrdom of Charles
I. But this attempted innovation was not successful, and the system
in which this lesson was practiced has ceased to exist. although
its workings are now and then seen in some of the advanced Degrees,
without, however, any manifest evil effect.
On the whole, the spirit of Freemasonry,
so antagonistic to innovation, has been successfully maintained;
and an investigator of the system as it prevailed in the year
1717, and as it is maintained at the present day, will not refrain
from wonder at the little change which has been brought about
by the long cycle of these many years.
INNS AND TAVERNS
The sketches and floor plans of the Goose
and Gridiron on pages 412 and 413 are reminders of the fact that
the inns and taverns in which the Speculative Lodges met in Great
Britain and America during the Eighteenth Century were not like
the modern hotel or bar-room, but were a center of hospitality
of a type no longer met with; nor were they like the present-day
English "pub."
The inn was often one of the most distinguished
buildings in a town; beautifully constructed and furnished; and
managed by an inn-keeper and a staff who made of hospitality a
trained profession. Except in the smallest villages the majority
of inns were built with at least one large room designed for Lodges
and clubs, and these usually had a private service stairway from
the rear, so that even after a Lodge's doors were closed it could
still make use of the facilities of the kitchen, the wine cellar,
and the staff of servants. Each inn had a sign in front which
consisted of a picture and which gave it its nameThe King's
Head, The Boar's Head, The White Horse, etc. A Masonic Lodge took
its name from the inn in which it met, and it was not until the
end of the Century that Lodges began to be numbered. Even as late
as the end of the Nineteenth Century American Lodges here and
there continued to meet in hotels; there are some of these old
buildings still standing, especially in the Middle West, and on
the old coach runs; in more than one of them the old fashioned
judas window is still in an upstairs door, though it has been
a half century since Lodges made use of them.
Lodge meetings in
inns and taverns were never completely satisfactory; some Lodges
must never have found them satisfactory to any degree, because
their Minutes show that they kept moving about every one or two
years. A lack of privacy, the inconvenience of having to pack
furniture and paraphernalia away after each meeting, difficulties
with landlords, and the over-nearness of the bar, these were disadvantages;
but it is probable that the many small early Lodges could not
have managed under any other system. A joke has been made of the
fact that the first Grand Lodge of Speculative Freemasonry held
its first Grand Communion in a tavern but no Eighteenth Century
Englishman or American would have seen any point to the joke;
learned societies, clubs, religious groups, literary circles,
scientific bodies (like the Royal Society), artists' groups, public
officers, army and navy clubs, clubs of philosophers, an endless
number of such societies met in the same rooms. A good tavern
was highly respected in any community; its "mine host"
often was the first citizen of his town. See The English Inn;
Past and Present, by H. D. Eberlein; J. B. Lippincott Co.; Philadelphia;
1926.
IN PERPETUAM REI MEMORIAM
Latin, meaning In perpetual memory of the
thing.
I.·.N.·.R.·.I.·.
The initials of the Latin sentence which
was placed upon the cross: Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judaeorum, meaning
Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. The Rosicrucians used them
as the initials of one of their Hermetic secrets: Igne Natura
Rerun vatur Integra7 meaning that By fire, nature is perfectly
renewed. They also adopted them to express the names of their
three elementary principles salt, sulphur, and mercury by making
them the initials of the sentence, Igne Nitrum Roris Invenitur.
Ragon finds in the equivalent Hebrew letters nor the initials
of the Hebrew names of the ancient elements: Iaminim, water; Nour,
fire; Ruach, air; and Iebschah, earth.
INSECT SHERMAH
A Jewish belief that the Solomonian Temple was constructed by Divine means, that the stones were squared and polished by a specially created worm called samis, and that the stones by innate power came to the temple ground, and were placed in position by angelic aid. The worm has been designated the Insect Shermah.
INSIGNIA
See Jewels, Official
INSPECTOR
See Sovereign Grand Inspector
INSTALLATION
The act by which an officer is put in possession of the place he is to fill. In Freemasonry it is, therefore, applied to the induction of one who has been elected into his office. The officers of a Lodge, before they can proceed to discharge their functions, must be installed. The officers of a new Lodge are installed by the Grand Master, or by some Past Master deputed by him to perform the ceremony. Formerly, the Master was installed by the Grand Master, the Wardens by the Grand Wardens, and the Secretary and Treasurer or by the Grand Secretary and Treasurer, but now this custom is not continued. At the election of the officers of an old Lodge, the Master is installed by his predecessor or some Past Master present, and the Master Elect then installs his subordinate officers. No officer after his installation can resign. At his installation, the Master receives the Degree of Past Master. It is a law of Freemasonry that all officers hold on to their respective offices until their successors are installed. It is installation only that gives the right to exercise the franchises of an office.
The ceremony is an old one, and does not pertain exclusively to Freemasonry. The ancient Romans installed their priests, their kings, and their magistrates; but the ceremony was called inauguration, because performed generally by the augurs. The word installation is of comparatively modern origin, being medieval Latin, and is compounded of in and stallum, meaning a seat. Priests, after ordination or reception into the sacerdotal order, were installed into the churches or parishes to which they were appointed. The term as well as the custom is still in use.
Installation as a Masonic ceremony was early used. We find in the first edition of Anderson's Constitutions, a form of Constituting a New Lodge, which was practised by the Duke of Wharton, who was Grand Master in 1723. It was probably prepared by Desaguliers, who was Deputy, or by Anderson, who was one of the Wardens, and perhaps by both. It included the ceremony of installing the new Master and Wardens. The words "Shall, in due form, install them" are found in this document. The usage then was for the Grand Master, or some Brother for him, to install the Master and for the Master to install his Wardens; a custom which still exists.
INSTALLED MASTERS
Similar in form and identical in purpose to the Actual Past Masters Degree. Writing on the subject in Masonic Record, London, December, 1926, Brother Lionel Vibert says in part that "The full working of the Board of Installed Masters followed by Lodges in all parts of England except perhaps the South East. The present Grand Master states it is unknown to the Scottish Craft. The Minutes of Royal Cumberland No. 41, Bath, prove the use of the ceremony in 1827 (see the 1924 volume of the Somerset Master's Transactions, page 268). At Exeter the Minutes show the working in 1823, and it was no new thing. At Bristol there is evidence back to 1773, and in 1827 it was described in the Minutes of a Lodge."
INSTALLED MASTERS, BOARD OF
An expression used in England to designate a Committee of Masters to whom "the Master Elect is presented that he may receive from his predecessor the benefit of installation." It is the same as the Emergent Lodge of Past Masters assembled in the United States for the same purpose.
INSTALLING OFFICER
The person who performs the ceremony of installation is thus called. He should be of the same official dignity at least; although necessity has sometimes permitted a Grand Master to be installed by a Past Deputy, who in such case acts as locum tenens, the holder of the place, of a Grand Master. The Masonic rule is that anyone who has been installed into an office may install others into similar or inferior offices. In this it agrees with the old Rabbinical law as described by Maimonide (Statute de Sanhedrim, chapter 4), who says: "Formerly, all Rabbis who had been installed, hasmochachim, could install others; but since the time of Hillel the faculty can be exercised only by those who have been invested with it by the Prince of the Grand Sanhedrim; nor then, unless there be two witnesses present, for an installation cannot be performed by less than three." So the strict Masonic rule requires the presence of three Past Masters in the complete installation of a Master and his investiture with the Past Master's Degree.
The first Master of a new Lodge can be installed only by the Grand Master, or by a Past Master especially appointed by him and acting as his proxy.
INSTRUCTION
It is the duty of the Master of the Lodge to give the necessary instruction to the candidate on his initiation. In some of the advanced Degrees and in the Continental Rites these instructions are imparted by an officer called the Orator; but the office is unknown in the English and American systems of Ancient Craft Freemasonry.
INSTRUCTION, LODGE OF
See Lodge of Instruction.
INSTRUMENTAL FREEMASONRY
Brother Oliver by this term defines a species of Freemasonry which is engaged in the study of mechanical instruments. But there is no authority in any other writer for the use of the term, nor is its necessity or relevancy apparent.
INSTRUMENTS OF FREEMASONRY
Masonic working tools have been called Instruments of Freemasonry
INTEGRITY
Integrity of purpose and conduct is symbolized by the Plumb, which see.
INTEMPERANCE
This is a vice which is wholly incompatible with the Masonic character, and the habitual indulgence in which subjects the offender to the penalty of expulsion from the Order (see Temperance).
INTENDANT OF THE BUILDING
The French expression is Indendant du Bâtiment. This Degree is sometimes called Master in Israel. It is the Eighth in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Red is the emblematic color; and its principal officers, according to the old rituals, are a Thrice Puissant, representing Solomon; a Senior Warden, representing the Illustrious Tito, one of the Harodim; and a Junior Warden, representing Adoniram the son of Abda. But in the later rituals of the two Supreme Councils of the United States the three chief officers represent Adoniram, Joabert, and Stolkin; but in the working of the Degree the Past Officer assumes the character of Solomon. The legend of the Degree is, that it was instituted to supply the place of the chief architect of the Temple.
INTENTION
The obligations of Freemasonry are required to be taken with an honest determination to observe them; and hence the Freemason solemnly affirms that in assuming those responsibilities he does so without equivocation, secret evasion, or mental reservation.
INTERNAL PREPARATION
See Preparation of the Candidate.
INTERNAL QUALIFICATIONS
Those qualifications of a candidate which refer to a condition known only to himself, and which are not patent to the world, are called internal qualifications. They are: That he comes forward by his own free-will and accord, and unbiased by the solicitations of others; that he is not influenced by mercenary motives, and that he has a disposition to conform to the usages of the Order. The knowledge of these can only be obtained from his own statements, and hence they are included in the preliminary questions which are proposed before initiation.
INTERNATIONAL BUREAU OF MASONIC AFFAIRS
In German the title is Die Freimaurerische Weltgeschdftsstelle, and in French Le Bureau International de Relations Maçonniques. This was organized by the authority of the Grand Lodge Alpina of Switzerland on January 1, 1903. The officer in charge was Brother Edouard Quartier-la-Tente, of NeuchAtel, where the headquarters were located. He died January 19, 1925. Born in New York in 1855, his father was a founder of La Sinc6rit6 Lodge there. Past Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Alpina of Switzerland, a member of the Supreme Council of the Thirty-third Degree, he had also been General Representative since its organization of the International Bureau for Masonic Affairs. Director of the Secondary and Higher Schools of NeuchAtel, Professor of Theology, and Director of Public Education, he had taken an active part in civic and Masonic life. For fifteen years he edited the Masonic Journal Alpina.
The program of the Bureau was announced as the following:
1. Facilitate fraternal intercourse between Masonic Powers.
2. Favor the development of Masonic ideas.
3. Collect all obtainable information about the organization and activity of Freemasonry everywhere.
4. Draw up a list of Grand Orients, Grand Lodges and Supreme Councils.
5. Catalogue the Masonic periodicals of all countries.
6. Collect the documents necessary for an abridged history of Freemasonry everywhere.
7. Acquire new adhesions among the Masonic Powers in favor of the Bureau.
8. Publish the Bulletin frequently.
9. Publish in the Bulletin the important facts which mark the activity of Freemasonry.
10. Give series of practical and historical questions for discussion in the Lodges.
11. Develop the exchange of interesting works.
12. Spread the knowledge of useful newspapers, documents, and transactions.
13. Found a library of all Masonic works.
14. Study the Masonic Rites and Rituals.
15. Publish a correct Annual of Freemasonry every year.
16. Translate the most useful Masonic works into various languages.
To be admitted as members of the Bureau the regular Masonic Powers only had to send for the Act of Adhesion and sign it, at the same time contributing an optional annual subscription. This gave the right to receive all the publications of the Bureau, and to ask for any information that might be useful to them, without further charge.
But such uncertain donations were insufficient to meet the needs of so ambitious a program. Nevertheless the Bulletin appeared, even if irregularly, and was in English, French, and German, with occasional Esperanto, the international or auxiliary language, altogether a polyglot combination that with all these tongues must have proved most perplexing to the Editor. An Annual or Calendar edition was published and this cataloging of Masonic Bodies was praiseworthy though the desired information was difficult to get and therefore the returns were of uneven value as a showing of Freemasonry everywhere. Some pamphlets were produced, as an outline of Freemasonry in Eastern Europe. Yet up to his death Brother La-Tente was at his post, his last effort immediately at his seizure being to append his signature at the office to a message for the writer of these lines. He was succeeded in office by Brother Max Gottschalk of Brussels, Belgium (see the Masonic International Association).
INTERNATIONAL COMPACT
An agreement entered into by the Grand Lodges of Scotland and Ireland with the Grand Lodge of England in July, 1814. The object of the Compact was to place on record the fact that the United Grand Lodge of England, formed by a coalition of the Antients and Moderns, was in perfect accord with the other two parties to the agreement. Before the union of the two Grand Lodges of England that was known as the Moderns had not been in agreement with Scotland and Ireland. Eight articles were specified in the International Compact pertaining to the Degrees of pure ancient Freemasonry, limits of jurisdiction, etc.
INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE OF FREEMASONS
This was organized in Europe by Masonic officials but independently of Grand Lodges in the hope of securing a permanent peace among the nations, and to that end to promote mutual understanding, cultivate the sense of knowing one another, and strengthen the will for all to again join hands together. Meetings were held annually before the World War for several years and these assemblies were renewed in December, 1924, when Brethren from France, Germany, Holland, Luxembourg and Switzerland met to discuss the possibility of any practical plan of reconciliation. A Board or International Committee was appointed to consist of a representative of every nation active in this movement and National Committees in every separate country were contemplated. A second meeting was held at Basle, Switzerland, in August, 1925.
INTERNATIONAL MAGIAN SOCIETY
Organized in 1919 with headquarters at 813 Republic building, Louisville, Kentucky (see Light, March 1-15, 1919, published at Louisville), the main object announced as the practical application of Masonic principles (see also Magian Society)
INTIMATE INITIATE
The Latin name is Intimus. The Fourth Degree of the Order of the Temple.
INTIMATE SECRETARY
The French title is Secretaire Intime. The Sixth Degree in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Its emblematic color is black, strewed with tears; and its collar and the lining of the apron are red. Its officers are only three: Solomon, King of Israel; Hiram, King of Tyre;"and a Captain of the Guards. Its history records an instance of unlawful curiosity, the punishment of which was only averted by the previous fidelity of the offender. The legend in this Degree refers to the cities in Galilee which were presented by Solomon to Hiram, King of Tyre; and with whose character the latter was so displeased that he called them the Land of Cabul.
INTOLERANCE
This is the arch-enemy of Freemasonry. Toleration is one of the chief foundation stones of the Fraternity, and Universality and Brotherly Love are ever taught. Notwithstanding this fact, Intolerance has ever had its grip upon the brotherhood, and insidiously does its silent and undermining work. Human powers are limited or circumscribed. Man by nature is weak, and is largely the creature of early education; yet no institution has such resisting power and is of such avail as Freemasonry against that great enemy of man, which has destroyed more of the human race than any other evil power. The synonym may be found in the Third and Tenth Degrees, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
INTRODUCTOR AND INTRODUCTRESS
Officers in a Lodge of Adoption, whose functions resemble those of a Master of Ceremonies.
INTRUSTING
A ritualistic word.
INVERSION OF LETTERS
In some of the French documents of the advanced Degrees the letters of some words were inverted—not apparently for concealment, but as a mere caprice. Hence Thory (Fondation, page 128) calls them Inversions Enfantines meaning childish inversions. Thus they wrote oanos 110s '34 for Rosae crucis. But in all French cahiers and rituals, or, as they call them, tuilleurs, words are inverted; that is, the letters are transposed for purposes of secrecy. Thus they would write Nontolos for Solomon, and Marih for Hiram. This was also a custom among the Cabalists and the Alchemists to conceal secret words.
INVESTIGATION OF CANDIDATES
Reference may well be made in this connection to what is said elsewhere in this work regarding Candidate. The subject is of the utmost importance to Freemasons and many Lodges supplement so far as this is deemed proper the work of the usual Investigating Committees. Such additional Committees often carry on an investigation of their own in an independent manner but this is not to say that more or less co-operation of the various Brethren is impracticable in a working combination if this is desired, in fact any and all other available Masonic means are justifiable of making successful inquiries about the qualifications of petitioners for the Degrees.
These supplementary or Advisory Committees, as they are sometimes called, are commonly permanent; that is they are not as in the case of the Investigating Committees specifically appointed to consider but one individual but may examine into all the cases, few or many, referred to them for study. Naturally this task is of such a character that the Advisory Committees frequently are wholly comprised of the older Brethren of the Lodge or they are principally selected from that experienced class of the membership. They may be past or present officers of the Lodge though the doubling or overlapping of responsible duties, active officers of the Lodge serving also on committees, is as a rule avoided in order that Brethren may not be overburdened with exacting labor and that the work may be the better divided among the various members.
Of course the purpose is not to interfere and certainly not to dominate or control the work of the Investigating Committee but to add whatever aid may be at hand, to do just what the words Advisory Committee suggest. Behind this appointment and lending pressure to it is the paramount thought among many Brethren that too much care cannot well be devoted to the preliminary labor, that before the ballot has been passed is a proper time to make all the requisite search into the worthiness of the applicant for membership.
INVESTITURE
The presentation of an apron to a candidate in the ceremony of initiation.
INVINCIBLE
The Degree of Knights of the Christian Mark, formerly conferred in the United States, was called the Invincible Order, and the title of the presiding officer was Invincible Knight.
INVISIBLES, LES
French expression, meaning The Invisibles. A secret Order of which little is known, Thory (Acta Latomorum i, page 319) quotes a German writer, who says: "C'est la secte la plus dangereuse; les r6ceptions des initits se font la nuit, sous une vagte souterraine, et la doctrine des initians preche, l'athlisme et le suicide," meaning, "This is a most dangerous organization; the candidates are initiated at night, within an underground vault, and the doctrine of the initiated extols atheism and suicide." We need say no more upon this subject, and believe the society "sleeps the sleep that knows no waking."
INWOOD, JETHRO
The Rev. Jethro Inwood was Curate of Saint Paul's at Deptford, in England. He was born about the year 1767, and initiated into Freemasonry in 1785 as a Lewis, according to Brother Oliver. He was soon after appointed Chaplain of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Kent, an office which he held for more than twenty years, during which time he delivered a great number of sermons on festival and other occasions. A volume of these sermons was published in 1799, with a portrait of the author, under the title of Sermons, in which are explained and enforced the religious, moral, and political virtues of Freemasonry, preached upon several occasions before the Provincial Grand Officers and other Brethren in the Counties of Kent and Essex. An edition of these sermons was published by Dr. George Oliver, in 1849, in the fourth volume of his Golden Remains. These sermons are written, to use the author's own expression, "in a language that is plain, homely, and searching"; but, in Masonic character, surpass the generality of sermons called Masonic, simply because they have been preached before the Craft. Doctor Oliver describes him as "an assiduous Mason, who permitted no opportunity to pass unimproved of storing his mind with useful knowledge, or of imparting instruction to those who needed it."
INQUISITION
A Court or Tribunal especially established
in the twelfth century by Innocent III, to apprehend and punish
heretics or persons guilty of any offense against orthodoxy. Freemasonry
has always been the subject of much disapproval by the Roman Catholic
Church and the Fraternity has been victimized by Papal pronunciations
and Bulls issued by one after the other of the popes. Although
Freemasonry makes a subscription to a belief in the existence
of a Supreme Being a necessity yet the Roman Church chooses to
regard its teachings as atheistic and as such has pursued, tortured,
imprisoned and burned the Brethren of the Order at every period
during the entire course of the Inquisition. Llorente, everywhere
regarded as a reliable authority as he was secretary of the Inquisition
at Madrid from 1789 to 1791, having access to the original documents
and records, says in his History of the Inquisition:
The first severe measure against Freemasons
in Europe was that decreed on December 14, 1732, by the Chamber
of Police of the Chatelet at Paris: it prohibited Freemasons from
assembling, and condemned M. Chapelot to a penalty of 6000 lives
for having suffered them to assemble in his house. Louis IV commanded
that those peers of France, and other gentlemen who had the privilege
of the entry, should be deprived of that honor if they were members
of a Masonic Lodge. The Grand Master of the Parisian Lodges, being
obliged to quit France, convoked an assembly of Freemasons to
appoint his successor. Louis XV, on being informed of this declared
that if a Frenchman was elected, he would send him to the Bastille.
INQUISITION, THE, AND FREEMASONRY
Speculative Freemasonry appeared in Madrid
in 1726, at Gibraltar in 1727, and at about the same time in Paris.
The first Italian Lodges were constituted in Tuscany about 1735,
and a Lodge was working in Rome at about the same time. These
dates are mere indicia, and in themselves mean little, because
almost every page of written records was lost, and it is probable
that there were many more Lodges, and Masons not in Lodges, than
the few surviving records would indicate. On April 28, 1738, Pope
Clement XII issued a Bull of Excommunication; it was a feeble,
ill-drawn document, in a Medieval Latin which only experts could
read, but it consigned a Mason to hell in the future and ostracized
him from the church, his family, and his property here and now;
also it was drawn in such a way as to be most useful to the Inquisition,
which assisted the Pope to draft it. The modus operandi of arrests,
tortures, penalties, etc., was left to local tribunals; but the
Cardinal Secretary of State gave assistance by publishing on Jan.
14, 1739, a model for these tribunals to use; it pronounced "irresistible
pain of death, not only on all members but on all who should tempt
others to join the Order, or should rent a house to it or favor
it in any other way."
But while local tribunals were adjured
to be as harsh as possible, the crusade as a whole was turned
over to the Holy Inquisition. It is difficult for modern men,
and especially in England, America, and Canada, to understand
the organization of the Inquisition because they have never had
it in their midst. For centuries each country had two governments
side by side; the state, or civil, or "temporal" government
headed by a King, Prince, or Parliament; and an ecclesiastical
government headed by the Pope, and under him by Cardinals, Bishops,
and special offices appointed for the purpose.
Present day churches
have their own rules and regulations governing their internal
affairs, but these do not at any point encroach upon civil government,
nor can they apply civil penalties. The Roman Church government
was of a different kind, before the Reformation, and rested on
a different principle; it was not a church government, but a general
government, of an authority and a jurisdiction equal to that of
the civil government; it differed from the latter in that only
such categories of laws and cases belonged to it as had to do
with religion, and with the properties belonging to the church;
there were, therefore, two complete governments standing side
by side, of equal sovereignty, and duplicating offices and penalties.
The church enacted laws (canonical law); it had courts, lawyers,
judicial processes, hearings, verdicts, and penitentiaries and
execution yards or chambers. lt arrested men, tried them, sentenced
them, and punished them. Among its punishments were the disfrocking
of priests, removal from office, excommunications, interdicts,
alienation of property, torture, selling into slavery, hanging,
burning at the stake, beheading, sentence to galleys, banishment,
fines, etc. If a crime, or an alleged crime, was a mixture of
both civil and ecclesiastical offenses, the accused would be tried
and sentenced in the civil courts and then tried and sentenced
a second time in the church courts. He was in "double jeopardy"
each day of his life. (It was one of the first concerns of the
framers of our Constitution to make double jeopardy impossible.)
The so-called Holy Inquisition was set up as a special arm of
this ecclesiastical government, and yet while only an arm was
itself empowered to act as a separate government, and could impose
and execute sentence in its own name; it differed from ecclesiastical
government in general only in that it was designed to stamp out
heresy, and by heresy usually was meant any form of Protestantism.
It is this fact which in the long run filled men of normal, sane
minds with horror and led to uprisings and to driving the Holy
Inquisition out of the country, as happened even in Spain which
once was its home and center, as it also was the home and center
of the Jesuits; and where an auto dafé, or the public and
ceremonious burning of "here tics," was a holiday, and
celebrated like a Fourth of July. The secret police of the czars,
and the gestapos of the Fascists, Phalangists, and Nazis were
patterned on it. Heinrich Himmler and his staff made a detailed
study over a period of years of the methods used by the Inquisition.
The Inquisition was not directed against criminals but against
men accused of heresyan exceptionally flexible term, because
the Inquisition could decide for itself, and on the spot, what
it meant by heresy; thousands of the men and women destroyed by
it were of irreproachable reputation and character, many of a
saintly life, and whom not even the Inquisition could accuse of
crime. The theory on which the Inquisition worked was that it
should act as a detective to search out the heretic, the heretic
should confess, and the penalty would then be sanctioned by his
confession; but where a marked-down man refused to confess or
had nothing to confess, torture was used to reduce him to a state
where out of agony or when out of his mind he became willing to
confess anything again, precisely according to the methods
used by the Gestapo. Such an engine could be employed for many
purposes: to terrorize a community, to browbeat a civil ruler,
to defy civil laws, to destroy churches and associations, to seize
wealth and property, to commit plain murder, etc.
The Inquisition
was not given exclusive jurisdiction over men accused of Masonry,
for the regular church and civil courts continued to have jurisdiction
also, but the Inquisition was especially held responsible for
what in later years Adolf Hitler, a spiritual descendant of the
Inquisition, was to describe as "the liquidation of Freemasons.
" There were never many Masons in countries where the Inquisition
was free to act in the Eighteenth Century, and only a few records
escaped being destroyed, but in proportion to their numbers the
Masons probably suffered more excommunications, tortures, and
martyrdoms than any other one group. Books were written about
the cases of Coustos and Da Costa. Cagliostro was a charlatan
and a thief, and was repudiated by Lodges when his character was
exposed, but the wide publicity given to his imprisonment brought
the methods of the Inquisition into the light, and in the long
run helped to drive it back into the un-advertised offices in
the Vatican where it continues to carry on such work as it is
able. In Spain alone, and as late as 1816, twenty five Masons
suffered under the Inquisition; in 1819 there were seven cases;
if it were free to act again, without a civil government to check
it, it would resume its old practices, because neither it itself
nor the Vatican has ever admitted the Inquisition to have been
a crime against Christianity and civilization, nor altered its
principles. Americans are far from Europe and farther still from
the period when the Church was the second government in a land;
because of this lack of information and first-hand knowledge they
often confuse the Inquisition with the Jesuits. The two are and
ever have been independent of each other.
The Society of Jesuits
is in theory an army, a church "militant," its members
are enlisted; they receive a training," each is under an
oath of allegiance to a general"; they go as troops, singly
or in companies, wherever they may be sent, to carry out whatever
orders are given to them. In some times and places they have been
ordered to make war on Freemasonry; in others they have been ordered
to join in with it, to weaken or divide it from within by "
infiltration, " etc.; the whole story of Jesuit dealings
with Freemasonry reads like a page out of a detective novel of
a rather trashy sort, and causes adult men still unbereft of their
senses to wonder how other grown-up men can have indulged in practices
so childish. The Jesuit author of the article on Freemasonry in
the Catholic Encyclopedia even charged Masons with "phallic
worship" and Pope Leo XIII solemnly assured the whole of
France that Masons worship the devil! The records of the Holy
Inquisition are voluminous, in a dozen languages, full of ecclesiastical
terminology, tortuous and tortured to the extreme; it is doubtful
if any American scholar except Henry Charles Lea has ever examined
them detail by detail; but the general organization and purpose
of it is public, plain, easily intelligible.
When in 1738 the
Roman Church decided to abolish Freemasonry the Inquisition was
used as one of the engines for that purpose. See Clement XII's
Bull. History of Inquisition in Spain, by Henry Charles Lea. Freemasonry
and Roman Catholicism, by H. L. Haywood. Sufferings of John Coustos,
by Coustos. Censorship of the Church of Rome, by George Haven
Putnam. Article on Freemasonry in Catholic Encyclopedia by Abbe
Gruber. Memoirs of the History of Jacobznism and Freemasonry,
by Barruel. See also in Catholic Encyclopedia Vol. II, p. 127;
Vol. III, p. 330; Vol. XIV, p. 347; Vol. IV, p. 748; Vol. XIII,
p. 9; a sort. on "Illuminati"; Vol. VII; Vol. XIV, p.
265; Vol. XV, p. 309; Vol. XIV, p. 72; Vol. X, p. 266; Vol. XII,
p. 138; Vol. XII, p. 190; Vol. XIII, p. 193; Vol. XIV, pp. 67,
624. Roman Catholicism and Freemasonry, by Dudley Wright. Severe
condemnations of the Inquisition have been written by Roman Catholics
themselves. Lord Acton, a Roman Catholic, was a scholar of learning,
intelligence, and character far above the type of such propagandists
as the Abbe Gruber, and still more the unhappy Abbe Barruel; he
declared the Inquisition to have been organized on the principle
of crime, and that its executions were murders and nothing more.
Men rebelled against the Inquisition because it was criminal,
sadistic, unjust, and in violent contradiction of Christianity;
American Roman Catholic apologists, of whom the number is now
rapidly increasing, seek to becloud that known fact and at the
same time to win Protestants over to their side by reiteration
of the sophistry that men were killed by the Inquisition "because
they were the foes of the Christian religion. "
INVENTORY, THE LODGE
If the Minute Books of fifty of the oldest
American Lodges as of the period between 1800 and 1825 are compared
with the Minute Books of the same Lodges as of the period 1900
to 1925 it will be discovered that the subject of the Lodge inventory
was somewhere lost, abandoned, forgotten in the years between.
Ever so often in the early days a Secretary with loving care,
and often with an openly expressed pride, wrote out his inventory;
and such inventories are for us now one of the best sources for
a knowledge of what Lodge life was a century and a half ago, and
coincidentally make vivid and clear one thing wrong with Lodge
life now something lost out of Masonry, like the Lost Word,
an old Landmark unintentionally violated; a thing lost though
not necessarily beyond recall. The inventory was not of the carpets,
walls, windows, or other structural equipment, nor was it for
real estate or taxation or fire insurance purposes; it was an
inventory of the treasures of the Lodge. In almost every instance
each item was described as a gift from some Brother, or as a memento
of some occasion long remembered; there were oil portraits, framed
prints, photographs; jewels kept in cases, of silver, and engraved,
once the property of officers who later had presented them to
the Lodge; aprons, collars, ballot boxes, gavels, Bibles and books,
music books, an organ, sets of plate, glass and dishes, altar
coverings, certificates, cherished letters in frames, punch bowls,
and there were gifts which the Lodge had made to itself, such
as hand-made and carved chairs for the officer, a visitors' book
bound in morocco, etc. The Lodge Room had a feeling of being richly
furnished; it was filled with the emblems and symbols of Freemasonry,
of the Lodge's own past, of the community's esteem for it, and
the members who had gone were not completely gone. Men loved their
Lodge, and because they did there was no need to devise schemes
for persuading them to attend. In every Lodge, even the crassest,
there are these untapped feelings of affection. Each one should
have an inventory. When a Lodge room is empty, its walls bare,
it has no atmosphere of its own, does not feel like home; the
Ritual loses its soul because it has not the environment it requires;
the worst effect of the bare Lodge room is that its Masonry becomes
barren because the Lodge has only the sense of being in a room
and does not have a sense of being in the midst of a living and
moving Fraternity; nor can it have a sense of its own past, or
the Fraternity's past, but sinks into a feeling of isolation and
flatnessit cannot even have a banquet because it has nothing
to have it with. The inventory was one of riches; the riches came
not out of the members' dues but out of their affection.
ONIAN ISLANDS
A chain of islands along the western and southern shores of Greece. Freemasonry appears to have been founded at Corfu, by a Lodge, Loge de Saint Napolgon, under the Grand Orient of France, in 1809, with a second Lodge in 1810.
IONIC ORDER
One of the three Grecian Orders,
and the one that takes the highest place in Masonic
symbolism. Its distinguishing characteristic is the
volute of its capital, and the shaft is cut into twenty
flutes separated by fillets. It is more delicate and
graceful than the Doric and more simply majestic than the Corinthian. The judgment and skill displayed in its construction, as combining the strength of the former with the beauty of the latter, has caused it to be adopted in Freemasonry as the symbol of Wisdom, and being placed in the East of the Lodge it is referred to as represented by the Worshipful Master.
IOWA
On July 3, 1838, Congress passed a bill for the organization of the Territory of Iowa, and two years later the Brethren in the new State decided to form a Lodge. On November 12, 1840, a meeting was held at which were present Col. Hiram C. Bennett, Evan Evans, William Foye, David Hammer, Robert Martin, J. L. Lockwood, William Thompson, W. D. McCord, Thomas H. Curts, Chauncey Swan, Theodore S. Parvin and Robert Lucas, Governor of the Territory. The petition for the new Lodge was drawn up and a Dispensation dated November 20, 1840, was received from the Deputy Grand Master of Missouri. Brothers Bennett, Thompson and Evans were named as Worshipful Master, Senior and Junior Wardens. The Dispensation was granted to Burlington Lodge but after the Charter was issued the name was changed to Des Moines Lodge. The Grand Lodge of Iowa was formed by Des Moines Lodge, No. 1; Iowa Lodge, No. 2; Dubuque Lodge, No. 3, and Iowa City Lodge, No. 4, formerly Nos. 41, 42, 62, and 63 of Missouri. Brother Ansel Humphreys presided over the Convention held on January 2, 1844, and Brother John H. McKinney was Secretary. Brothers Oliver Cock and T. S. Parvin were elected Most Worshipful Grand Master and Grand Secretary.
The Deputy General Grand High Priest authorized by proxy the formation of Iowa Chapter at Burlington, by Dispensation dated August 24, 1843. A Charter was granted on September 11, 1844. A Convention of four Chapters, namely, Iowa Chapter, No. 1; Iowa City Chapter, No. 2; Dubuque Chapter, No. 3, and Washington Chapter, No. 4, met at Mount Pleasant on June 8, 1854, and established the Grand Chapter of Iowa. Some time later the Grand Chapter of Iowa opposed the authority of the General Grand Chapter by claiming the privilege of issuing Dispensations for the organization of Chapters wherever no other Grand Chapter was at work. On October 26, 1869, however, it annulled its act of secession passed nine years previously, and since 1871 has been represented in the General Grand Chapter.
When the General Grand Chapter gave up control over Council Degrees in 1855, Companion Theodore S. Parvin journeyed to Alton where, on February 9, 1855, he was empowered by Dispensation to organize Webb Council which was chartered by the Grand Council of Illinois, September 26, 1855. Webb Council, Excelsior Council and Dubuque Council held a Convention at Dubuque on January 2, 1857, and a Grand Council was organized. On October 1-5, 1878, the Grand Council adopted a plan of consolidation whereby the Degrees were to be conferred in a Royal Arch Chapter. On March 1, 1899, the Grand Chapter
gave up this control of the Cryptic Degrees and therefore representatives from ten chartered Councils met at Des Moines, October 15, 1900, on the invitation of General Grand Master William H. Mayo, and organized a Grand Council.
The De Molay Commandery, No. 1, at Muscatine, was organized by Dispensation March 14, 1855, and chartered, September 10, 1856. Four Commanderies: De Molay, No. 1; Palestine, No. 2; Siloam, No. 3, and Des Moines, No. 4, took part in the organization of the Grand Commandery of Iowa on October 27, 1863, acting upon a Warrant issued by Sir B. B. French, Grand Master of the Grand Encampment.
The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, was first established in Iowa at Clinton. On May 12,1869, a Lodge of Perfection, Iowa, No. 1, was opened; a Council of Kadosh, Hugh de Payens, No. 1, and a Chapter of Rose Croix, Delphic, No. 1, on July 21, 1870, and the De Molay Consistory, No. 1, on March 6, 1877.
IOWA MASONIC LIBRARY
Shortly after Theodore Sutton Parvin became
Iowa's Grand Secretary in 1844 he began the building of a collection
of Masonic books which became the first American Masonic library,
in the true sense of having a librarian, a catalog, and a building;
and though Bro. Parvin gave the required time and attention to
his duties as Grand Secretary, it was into his office as Grand
Lodge Librarian that he put his heart. Decades before 1901, the
year of his decease, his Iowa Masonic Library at Cedar Rapids
had become not an Iowa center of Masonic learning only, nor even
an American center, but a world-wide center. Its part in the development
of Freemasonry from 1865 until now is un-honored because it is
unsung; but if any Mason will go behind the published Proceedings
of Grand Bodies and the published books and will search through
the private correspondence which came to Parvin's desk he will
discover that not only was this Library commandeered by leaders
and scholars in every land but also that it made possible certain
of the most important achievements of Masonic Bodies and of Masonic
scholars and leaders. Thus, Gould, Hughan, Crawley (a part of
Crawley's correspondence is at hand while this is being written),
Lane, and the group in general which collaborated on the work
published as Gould's History of Freemasonry, made continual use
of it from England and Ireland. Mackey could not have prepared
this Encyclopedia nor have written either his History or his Jurisprudence
without it. Albert Pike was always drawing upon it. and especially
so in his war on Cerneauism, herein some of his most devastating
arrows had been barbed by Parvin, etc. Moreover it was a visible
proof to otherwise skeptical American Masons that Masonic books,
and in large number, do in actuality exist; and it became an inspiration
to other Grand Jurisdictions to set up Libraries of their own.
From 1901 to 1925 Bro. Newton R. Parvin, the son of T. S. Parvin,
was Grand Librarian as well as Grand Secretary; and if he was
not a scholar he was at least a great book-man, and under him
the collection grew. It occupies the largest part of one very
extensive three-story building and the whole of another. The Grand
Jurisdiction continued in its good fortune when in 1925 R. W. Bro. Charles Clyde Hunt succeeded to both the Grand Secretaryship
and the Grand Librarianship. Born in Cleveland, O., in 1866, Bro.
Hunt went west to Iowa, worked his w ay through the famous Grinnell
College, taught school for a time, became a county treasurer,
and in 1917 became Deputy Grand Secretary, giving his full time
to the position, and from the first devoting a major part of his
time to the Library. He has for many years edited the Grand Lodge
Bulletin. In 1930 he published Some Thoughts on Masonic Symbolism
(later revised and enlarged); and collaborated with Eugene Hinman
and Ray . Denslow (General Grand High Priest) to write in two
volumes The History of the Cryptic Rite. Bro. Hunt was made a
Mason in Lafayette Lodge, No. 52, Montezuma, Iowa in 1900. He
joined each of the Rites one after another and has held a long
list of offices.
IRAM
The Hebrew word spelled copy, and in Latin
Aureum Excelsus, or of Golden Eminence. The former ruling Prince
of Idumea (see Genesis xxxvi 43; First Chronicles i, 54).
IRELAND
The early history of Freemasonry in Ireland
is involved in the deepest obscurity. It is vain to look in Anderson,
in Preston, Smith, or any other English writer of the eighteenth
century, for any account of the organization of Lodges in that
kingdom anterior to the establishment of a Grand Lodge.
All the official records of the Grand Lodge
of Ireland before the year 1760, and all the Minute Books prior
to 1780, have been lost (see volume 6, page 52, History of the
Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Ireland, 1925, Brothers
John Heron Lepper and Philip Crossle). Brother Wilhelrn Begemann
(Freirnaurerei in Ireland, page 8) alludes to the remarkable circumstance
that Old Constitutions have not been discovered or traced in Ireland
although many copies were found in England and Scotland. The absence
of such documents is singular. Brothers Lepper and Crossle (History,
page 36) refer to the vear 1688 and to the existence then of a
Speculative Lodge at Trinity College, Dublin. Of this interesting
instance, Brother W. J. Chetwode Crawley first submitted some
particulars in the Preface to Brother Sadler's Masonic Reprints
and Revelations. The following quotation is from the manuscript
left by the author John Jones, a friend of the famous Dean Jonathan
Swift:
It was lately ordered that for the honor
and dignity of the University there should be introduced a society
of freemasons, consisting of gentlemen, mechanics, porters (etc.,
etc.) who shall hind themselves by an oath never to reveal their
mighty no-secret and to relieve whatsoever strolling distressed
brethren they meet with, after the example of the fraternity of
freemason in and about Trinity College, by whom a collection was
lately made for, and the purse of charity well stuffed for, a
reduced brother, who received their charity as follows.
Then come some academic jokes which in the
course of centuries have lost the savor of their salt and finally
the writer acknowledges he has offended his acquaintances "I
have left myself no friends.... The Freemasons will banish me
their Lodge, and bar me the happiness of kissing Long Lawrence'-
(see The Differences between English and Irish Masonic Rituals,
treated historically, by Brother J. Heron Lepper, 1920, Dublin).
Weighty as are the items collected by Brothers
Lepper and Crossle none have greater romantic lure than those
relating to these Lady Freemason, the Hon.Elizabeth Aldworth,
about the only instance as the commentators suggest where the
supposed initiation of a woman rests upon something more than
mere tradition. Essays dealing with this curious ceremony are
in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, by Brothers Crawley and Conder, and
there is also a pamphlet by Brother John Day of Cork, Ireland,
Memoirs of the Lady Freemason, 1914. A significant point is that
in a portrait of her a small trowel is worn suspended from the
left shoulder. This emblem on her breast is still deemed in the
United States the distinguishing Masonic jewel of the Craft and
its prominence in the day of Mrs. Aldworth and more recently for
a like purpose in Ireland is another tie between the Lodges of
the two countries For further information in this direction the
reader may consult a paper, Irish Influence upon American Freemasonry,
by Robert I. Clegg, read at a Belfast communication of the Lodge
of Research, No. 202, Dublin.
Briefly as to the Lady Freemason, we may
here say she was the only daughter of the first Viscount Doneraile.
Born in 1693, married in 1713 to Richard Aldworth, she died in
1773, aged 80. The tradition first printed in 1811 is that as
a young girl, before her marriage, she by accident witnessed the
meeting of a Masonic Lodge, held at Doneraile House, where her
father was Master, and on her discovery was initiated. She is
credited with a life-long love of the Craft, her portrait shows
her wearing a small trowel and a lambskin apron trimmed with blue
silk still preserved by her descendants, her name appears as a
subscriber to Brother Fifield D'Assigny's famous book, the Serious
and Impartial Enquiry, 1744, and after her death the Freemasons
in 1782 toasted the memory of "our Sister Aldworth of New-Market"
(Ahiman Rezon, Belfast, 1782, page xx). The date of her initiation,
neglecting the other details as we may prefer, in connection with
the Jones account, indicates an early Masonic activity in Ireland
before what is now considered the Grand Lodge era.
But Dr. W. J. Chetwode Crawley, former Grand
Treasurer of Ireland and a brilliant student of the Craft has
done much to lift the veil from the early Irish Freemasonry. A
contemporary newspaper has been discovered, which gives an account
of the installation of the Earl of Rosse as Grand Master of Ireland
in June, 1725; and this account is so worded as to leave little
room for doubt that the Grand Lodge of Ireland had already been
in existence long enough to develop a complete organization of
Grand Officers with at least six subordinate Lodges under its
jurisdiction (see Brother Crawley's Caementaria Hiber nica, Fasciculus
ii).
Brother W. J. Chetwode Crawley (caementaria
Hybernica, Fasciculus i, page 3) tells that in the year 1876 the
Council-book of the Corporation of Cork was carefully transcribed
and edited by Richard Caulfield, LL.D., Librarian of the Queen's
College at Cork, an antiquary of more than local repute, who brought
to light two entries of Masonic importance. Under the date of
December 2, 1725, he found this item, "That a Charter be
granted for the Master Wardens and Society of Free Masons, according
to their petition." Two months later, on January 31, 17254,
he described this entry: "The Charter of Freemasons being
this day read in Council, it is ordered that further consideration
of this Charter be referred to the next Council, and that Alderman
Phillips, Mr. Croker, Foulks, Austin, and Mr. Com. Speaker, do
inspect same."
Brother Crawley found that beyond these
two, no references are made, before or afterwards, to the Charter,
or to Freemasons. He further states that the records of other
Corporations in the South of Ireland have been published by the
same diligent antiquary, but no similar entries have been found,
"though we know the towns were thick-set with Freemasons."
The Minute of the Grand Lodge of Ireland
for December 27, 1726, with which the records of the Grand Lodge
begin, is not the earliest entry, either in point of time or of
position. The transactions of a subordinate Lodge, which evidently
acted as a Mother Lodge for Cork, and intermixed, and systematically
entered by the same hand, in many cases, on the same page as those
of the Grand Lodge. An entry of this sort holds the first page,
and shows us the subordinate Lodge in full working order. "With
some little pride," Brother Crawley continues, we can point
out that the first recorded transaction of Irish Freemasons is
concerned with the relief of a poor brother.' " He also points
out that "The Minute of Grand Lodge plunges so boldly in
mediatress, that we cannot help harboring the suspicion that this
was not its first meeting." The wording of the item is as
follows:
At an Assembly and Meeting of the Grand
Lodge for the Provinee of Munster at the Lodge of Mr. Herbert
Phaire in Corke on Saint John's Daye being the 27th day of December
ano Dni 1726. The Honble. James O'Brien Esqrs, by unanimous consent
elected Grand Master for the ensuing year.
Spningett Penn Esqre. appointed by the Grand Master as his Deputy.
Walther Good Gent}
Thomas Riggs Gent} appointed Grand Wardens.
The Grand Master was the third son of William,
Earl of Inchiquin, and represented Youghall in the Irish Parliament.
The Deputy Grand Master, Springett Penn, or Penne, as he signed
himself, was a great-grandson of Admiral Penn, the famous Commonwealth
Admiral, and grandson of the still more famous Quaker. Born in
1703, he died in 1744. Brother W. Wonnacott, Grand Librarian of
England added to the above information by Brother Crawley the
further interesting item that Springett Penn was a Brother in
1723 of the Lodge at the Ship behind the Royal Exchange at London
as recorded in the Grand Lodge Minute Book No. 1.
In 1731 Lord Kingston, who had been Grand
Master of England in 1729, became Grand Master of the Grand Lodge
of Munster and also of the Grand Lodge of Ireland, in connection
with what appears to have been a reorganization of the latter
Body. No more is heard of the Grand Lodge of WIunster, and from
1731 to the present date the succession of the Grand Officers
of the Grand Lodge of Ireland is plain and distinct (Gould's Concise
History of Freemasonry, page 273). In the year 1730, The Constitutions
of the Freemasons Containing the History, Charges, Regulations,
etc., of that most Ancient and Right Worshipful Fraternity. For
the use of the Lodges, was published at Dublin. A second edition
was published in 1744, and a third, in 1751. In 1749, the Grand
Master's Lodge was instituted, which still exists; a singular
institution, possessing several unusual privileges, among which
are that its members are members of the Grand Lodge without the
payment of dues, that the Lodge takes precedence of all other
Lodges, and that any candidates nominated by the Grand Master
are to be initiated without ballot.
In 1772, the Grand Lodge of Ireland recognized
the Grand Lodge of the Ancient and entered into an alliance with
it, which was also done in the same year by the Grand Lodge of
Scotland. This does not appear to have given any offense to the
regular Grand Lodge of England; for when that Body, in 1777, passed
a vote of censure on the Lodges of Ancient Freemasons, it specially
excepted from the censure the Lodges of Ireland and Scotland.
In 1779, an application was made to the
Mother Kilwinning Lodge of Scotland, by certain Brethren in Dublin,
for a Charter empowering them to form a Lodge to be called the
High Knights Templar, that they might confer the Templar Degree.
The Kilwinning Lodge granted the petition for the three Craft
Degrees only, but at a later period this Lodge became, says Findel,
the source of the Grand Encampment of Ireland.
The Grand Lodge holds jurisdiction over
all the Blue Lodges. The Mark Degree is worked under the Grand
Royal Arch Chapter. Next comes the Royal Arch, which formerly
consisted of these three Degrees, the Excellent, Super-Excellent,
and Royal Arch the first two being nothing more than passing the
first two veils with each a separate obligation. But that system
was abolished some years ago, and a new ritual framed something
like the American, except that the King and not the High Priest
is made the Presiding Officer.
The next Degrees are the Fifteenth, Sixteenth,
and Seventeenth, which are under the jurisdiction of the Templar
Grand Conclave, and are given to the candidate previous to his
being created a Knight Templar. Next to the Templar Degree in
the b Irish system comes the Eighteenth or Rose Croix, which is
under the jurisdiction of the Grand Chapter of Prince Masons or
Council of Rites, composed of the first three officers of all
the Rose Croix Chapters, the Supreme Council having some years
ago surrendered its authority over the Degree. The Twenty-eighth
Degree or Knight of the Sun is the next conferred, and then the
Thirtieth or Kadosh in a Body over which the Supreme Council has
no control except to grant Certificates to its members. The Supreme
Council confers the Thirty-first, Thirty-second, and Thirty-third
Degrees, there being no Grand Consistory.
The Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite for Ireland was established by a Patent from the
Supreme Council of the United States, at Charleston, dated August
13, 1824, by which the Duke of Leinster, John Fowler, and Thomas
McGill were constituted a Supreme Council for Ireland, and under
that authority it continues to work. Whence the advanced Degrees
came into Ireland is not clearly known. The Rose Croix and Kadosh
Degrees existed in Ireland long before the establishment of the
Supreme Council. In 1808 Doctor Dalcho's Orations were published
at Dublin, by "the Illustrious College of Knights of K. H.,
and the Original Chapter of Prince Masons of Ireland." It
is probable that these Degrees were received from Bristol, England,
where there are preserved the earliest English records of the
Rose Croix.
IRELAND, PRINCE MASONS OF
See Prince Masons of Ireland
IRISH CHAPTERS
These Chapters existed in Paris from the
year 1730 to 1740, and were thence disseminated through France.
They consisted of Degrees, such as Irish Master, Perfect Irish
Master, and Sublime Irish Master, which, it is said, were invented
by the adherents of the house of Stuart when they sought to make
Freemasonry a political means of restoring the exiled family to
the throne of England. The claim has been made but is disputed
that Ramsay, when he assumed his theory of the establishment of
Freemasonry in Scotland by the Templars, who had Bed thither under
d'Aurnont, took possession of these Degrees (if he did not, as
some suppose, invent them himself) and changed their name, in
deference to his theory, from Irish to Scottish, calling, for
instance, the Degree of Matre Irlandou or Irish Master, the Maitre,
Ecossais or Scottish Master.
IRISH COLLEGES
The Irish Chapters are also called by some
writers Irish Colleges.
IRISH DEGREES
See Irish Chapters
IRISH MASONIC GIRLS SCHOOL
A philanthropic and benevolent Masonic society
for rendering assistance to the needy. In 1789 Chevalier Ruspini,
State Dentist to George III, established a Royal Masonic Institution
for Girls in England with thirty pupils. In 1790 several Irish
Brethren met together and made themselves responsible for the
school fees only that is, they did not pay for the board or clothing
of the daughters of some deceased Brethren From that inauspicious
beginning has sprung the present Masonic Female Orphan School
of Ireland.
In 1792, a small house, affording accommodation
for twenty girls, was taken where the pupils were boarded. clothed
and educated until such time as they could earn their own living.
In 1852, after several removals, Burlington House was opened.
An appeal for funds was made to the Brethren and met with a steady
response. Great interest was taken in the work by Augustus, third
Duke of Leinster, who reigned as Grand Master of Ireland from
1813 to 1874. Such was the quality of the instruction given that
the Education Committee was able to select its teachers from among
the girls who had been educated in the school.
The first annual grant of one hundred pounds
by the Grand Lodge of Ireland was made in 1855, which has been
continued- ever since. Girls were admitted from six to ten years
of age and retained until they reached the age of fifteen, unless
they were then drafted on to the domestic staff. An extension
of the building and equipment was made in 1860 and a further extension
accomplished in 1870, when a public ball was held. Nine years
later a more general enlargement became necessary and a more general
appeal for funds was made. In 1880 the foundation stone of the
school at Ball's Bridge, Dublin, was laid by James, first Duke
of Abercorn who was Grand Master of Ireland from 1875 to 1885.
Practically the entire sum appropriated for this building was
subscribed by the Brethren.
In 1853 twenty-one girls were residents
of the school; in 1875 there were forty-five; in 1890, eighty;
and in 1925 there were one hundred four, but, in addition, more
than sixty others were receiving extra grants to assist in their
maintenance and education and annual sums are expended for the
purpose.
IRON TOOLS
The lectures teach us that at the building
of King Solomon's Temple there was not heard the sound of ax,
hammer, or other metallic tool. But all the stones were hewn,
squared, and numbered in the quarries; and the timbers felled
and prepared in the forest of Lebanon, whence they were brought
on floats by sea to Joppa, and thence carried by land to Jerusalem,
where, on being put up, each part was found to fit with such exact
nicety that the whole, when completed, seemed rather the handiwork
of the Grand Architect of the Universe than of mere human hands.
This can hardly be called a legend, because the same facts are
substantially related in the First Book of Kings; but the circumstance
has been appropriated in Freemasonry to symbolize the entire peace
and harmony which should prevail among Freemasons when laboring
on that spiritual temple of which the Solomonic Temple was the
arche-type.
IRON WORKER AND KING SOLOMON
Christian Schussele was born in Alsace,
in 1824, studied painting in Paris where he specialized in the
historical subjects then in vogue, moved to the United States
in 1847, was for eleven years director of the Pennsylvania Art
Schools, and died in Merchantville, N. Y., August 21, 1879. Four
of his canvasses became famous. One of them has been among the
most gazed-at pictures ever painted in America, because prints
of it hang in half the Lodge quarters in the United States, and
it has been reproduced in Masonic books and periodicals without
number under the title of "King Solomon and the Blacksmith.
" It is a conservative estimate that since it was painted
(about 1860) at least twenty-five million men and women either
have their own copies or have looked at it.
In 1868 Mr. Joseph
Harrison, Jr. wrote and printed a brochure (J. B. Lippincott;
Philadelphia) entitled Tale Iron Worker and King Solomon.
In it he says he had Schussele paint the picture for him (he was
writing in 1867) "four or five years ago." In the brochure
he gives in his own words a version of the legend which is the
subject-matter of the picture. Mr. Harrison, Jr. was one of the
first American engineers of his day, who had built railways in
Russia and iron construction in Britain, where he was held in
high honor. In a speech delivered in 1859 he relates how from
a folk-lore expert and friend of his, Charles G. Cleland (author
of Hans Breitmann's Ballads of 1868), he heard a version of what
he took to be an old Rabbinical Legend, and was so inspired by
it that he engaged Schussele to reproduce it on canvas. The picture
was engraved by Sartain (a member of the Thirty-third Degree),
and was published by the Macoy Company of New York about 1890,
accompanied by a pamphlet entitled Tubal Cain. (The pamphlet,
and Harrison's brochure, are collectors' items.) This title, and
the conspicuous figure of Solomon in the picture, led Masons everywhere
to take it for a Masonic picture, and has occasioned the immense
popularity referred to above.
For many centuries the blacksmiths
in England, a branch of the ironmongers, were a fraternity, and
celebrated the Day of St. Clement their Patron, November 23, and
in Britain continue to do so in centers where old ways are kept
alive. (In ancient Ireland "smith" meant a builder.)
As time passed Tubal Cain, Vulcan, and their St. Clement, whom
they know as "Clem," became fused into a single character.
They carried an image of him in their processions. This fraternity
of blacksmiths has many old legends about "Clem," one
of them built around King Arthur, and sing jolly songs about his
adventures. Another and more popular version uses King Solomon
in place of King Arthur; and a written legend (like and yet unlike
our "Legend of the Craft") is still, or was until some
years ago, read at gatherings of the Sons of Clem in English towns.
It is this legend which Mr. Harrison Jr. heard from his friend
Cleland, and not "an old Rabbinical legend." In the
Talmudic and Rabbinical literature available at this writing no
such legend is found, though there are any number of old stories
and fables about Tubal Cain. It is the character of Tubal Cain,
even if transmogrified into a blacksmith, whose description reminds
one of the legend of HA.-. Freemasons have lost nothing by mistaking
the Solomon and Blacksmith legend for one of their own, because
in its modern written form it could be incorporated into the Ritual
without dislocation, and the idea at the center of the story is
as Masonic as the Square and Compasses.
Notes. References to the
Solomon and Blacksmith legend itself, to legends about Tubal Cain,
and to the history and customs of the old fraternity of smiths
are very numerous. Many titles in that bibliography, as well as
the text of the legend itself, will be found in "Some Usages
and Legends of Crafts Kindred to Masonry," by Gordon P. G.
Hills; Are Quatuor Coronatorum; Vol. XXVIII; page 115.
ISAAC AND ISHMAEL
The sons of Abraham by Sarah and Hagar.
They are recognized, from the conditions of their mothers, as
the free-born and the bondman. According to Brother Oliver, the
fact that the inheritance which was bestowed upon Isaac, the son
of his free-born wife, was refused to Ishmael, the son of a slave
woman, gave rise to the Masonic theory which constitutes a Landmark
that none but the free-born are entitled to initiation.
ISCHNGI
The Hebrew word Off, the Latin salus mea,
my aid. one of the five Masters, according to the Masonic myth,
appointed by Solomon after the death of Hiram to complete the
Temple.
ISH CHOTZEB
non ads. Literally meaning in Hebrew, men
of hewing, that is, hewers. The phrase was originally used by
Anderson in the first edition of the Constitutions (page 10),
but is not found in the original Hebrew (First Kings v, 18) to
which he refers, where it is said that Solomon had fourscore "hewers
in the mountains," Chotzeb Bahar. But Ish Chotzeb is properly
constructed according to the Hebrew idiom, and is employed by
Anderson to designate the hewers whe, with the Giblim, or stonecutters,
and the Bonai, or builders, amounted to eighty thousand, all of
whom he calls (in his second edition, page ll) "bright Fellow
Crafts." But he distinguishes them from the thirty thousand
who cut wood on Mount Lebanon under Adoniram.
ISH SABBAL
The Hebrew expression xxxxxxxx, meaning,
Men of burden. Anderson thus designates the 70,000 laborers who,
in the original Hebrew (First Kings v, 18) are called Noshe Sabal,
or bearers of burdens. Anderson says "they were of the remains
of the old Canaanites, and, being bondmen, are not to be reckoned
among Masons" (see Constitutions, 1738, page 11). But in
Webb's system they constitute the Apprentices at the building
of the Temple.
ISH SODI
Corruptly, Ish Soudy. This expression is
composed of the two Hebrew words, Ish, and Sod. The first of these
words, Ish, means a man, and Sod signifies primarily a couch on
which one reclines. Hence Ish Sodi would mean, first, a man
of my couch, one who reclines with me on the same seat, an indication
of great familiarity and confidence. Thence followed the secondary
meaning given to Sod, of familiar intercourse, consultation, or
intimacy. Job (xix, 19) applies it in this sense, when, using
Mati, a word synonymous with Ish, he speaks of Mati Sodi in the
passage which the common version has translated thus: "all
my inward friends abhorred me," but which the marginal interpretation
has more correctly rendered, "all the men of my secret."
Ish Sodi, therefore, in this Degree, very clearly means a man
of my intimate counsel, a man of my choice, one seleeted to share
with me a secret task or labor. Such was the position of every
Select Master to King Solomon, and in this view those are not
wrong who have interpreted Ish Sodi as meaning a Select Master.
ISIAC TABLE
Known also as the Tabula Isiaca, Mensa Isiaca,
and Tabula Bembina. A monument often quoted by archeologists previous
to the discovery and understanding of hieroglyphics. A flat rectangular
bronze plate, inlaid with niello and silver, 56 by 36 inches in
size. It consists of three compartments of figures of Egyptian
deities and emblems; the central figure is Isis. It was sold by
a soldier to a locksmith, bought by Cardinal Bembo in 1527, and
is now in the Royal Museum in Turin.
ISIS
The sister and the wife of Osiris, and worshiped
by the Egyptians as the great goddess of nature. Her mysteries
constituted one of the Degrees of the ancient Egyptian initiation
(see Egyptian Mysterzes and Osiris).
ISlS-URANEA TEMPLE
This Body was formed in England of Hermetic
students in 1887 to give instruction in the mediaeval occult sciences.
The Rituals were written in English from old Rosicrucian Manuscripts
supplemented by independent literary researches. Several other
Temples emerged from this one, namely: Osiris, Wester-super-Mare;
and Horus, Bradford, in England; Amen Ra, Edinburgh, Scotland,
and Ahathoor, Paris, France. Following a resignation in 1897,
the English Temples lapsed into abeyance.
ISRAFEEL
In the Mohammedan faith, the name of the
angel who, on the judgment morn, will sound the trumpet of resurrection.
ITALY
There is said to have been a Lodge in Italy
at Naples as early as 1750 but there is no definite evidence to
prove this statement. In 1767, however, according to the English
"Constitutions," Don Nieholas Manuzzi was appointed
Provincial Grand Master for Italy. A National Grand Lodge was
founded by delegates from eight Lodges at a Convention held on
February 27, 1764. The year 1767 opened a period of hardship for
the Craft in Italy. Ferdinand IV was hostile to the Brethren and
though Queen Caroline, his wife, did all she could to aid them,
the Lodges finally in 1783 gave up their activities. Many Lodges
and Grand Bodies were formed only to be suppressed and the result
was a great confusion. In 1867 there existed a Grand Orient at
Florence, two Supreme Councils at Palermo and a Grand Council
at Milan. Brother Garibaldi (see Garibaldi), who was Grand Master
of a Supreme Council at Palermo, then called a meeting on June
21, 1867, of all the Lodges in Italy. The result was that several
of the Grand Bodies united and then combined the functions of
a Supreme Grand Council of the Thirty-third Degree, a Symbolic
Grand Lodge, and a Supreme Council of the Rite of Memphis.
Brother Oliver Day Street, in his excellent
report to the Grand Lodge of Alabama, 1922, quotes from a letter
to the International Bureau for Masonic Affairs, Neuchatel, Switzerland,
as follows:"There are in Italy several Grand Lodges that
are not recognized by any jurisdiction of other countries. There
is a Grand Lodge in Florence, another at Naples; they are practicing
rites of a rather occultist and mixed character, borrowed of rituals
fallen long ago into desuetude." A Grand Lodge of the Italian
Symbolic Rite and a Grand Orient of Italy have been organized
separately distinct from each other and there is also independently
at work a Supreme Council of Italy, Ancient and Accepted Scottish
Rite, founded in 1908. Under the dictatorship of Benito Mussolini,
Premier of Italy, a leader of the Fascisti, organized on November
12, 1920, at Naples, and succeeding in gaining Rome and controlling
the Italian Government, the Freemasons have been persecuted, their
property destroyed, and prominent Brethren exiled.
ITRATICS, ORDER OF
A society of adepts, engaged in the search
for the Universal Medicine, an organization that is now extinct.
Mentioned by Fustier. The name is from the Greek and means healers.
I.. V.·. I.·. O.·.
L.·.
The initials of a Latin sentence Inveni
Verbum in Ore Leonis. Letters of significant words used in the
Thirteenth Degree, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. They have
reference to the recovery of the key of the Sacred Ark, which
contains certain treasures. The Ark and its key having been lost
in the forest during a battle which occurred when the Jews were
journeying through the wilderness, the key was found in the mouth
of a lion who dropped it upon the ground on the approach of the
Israelites. Much symbolical teaching is deduced from the historical
myth.
IVORY KEY
The symbolic jewel of the Fourth Degree,
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. On the wards of the key is
the Hebrew letter zain or Z.
IZABUD
A corruption of Zabud, which see.
IZADS
The twenty-eight creations of the beneficent
deity Ormudz, or Auramazda, in the Persian religious system.
IZRACHIAH
The Hebrew words nanny Latin orietur Dominus.
A word connected with the Seventh Degree of the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite.
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