The Hebrew letter is the fourteenth letter
in the English and Hebrew alphabets; its numerical value is 50,
and its definition, fish. As a final, Nun is written 1, and then
is of the value of 700. The Hebrew Divine appellation is Formidabilis.
NAAMAH.
The daughter of Lamech and sister of Tubal-cain
(see Genesis iv, 18-24, and 99, which have been read as meaning
two different persons but now usually understood as of the same
list). To her the Legend of the Craft attributes the invention
of the art of weaving, and she is united with her three brothers,
by the same legend, in the task of inscribing the several sciences
on two pillars, that the knowledge of them might be preserved
after the Flood.
NABAIM
See Schools of the Prophets
NAHARDA, BROTHERHOOD OF
After the destruction of the Solomonial
Temple, the captives formed an association while slaves at Naharda,
on the Euphrates, and are there said to have preserved the secret
mysteries.
NAKED
In Scriptural symbology, nakedness denoted
sin, and clothing, protection. But the symbolism of Freemasonry
on this subject is different. There, to be "neither naked
nor clothed" is to make no claim through worldly wealth or
honors to preferment in Freemasonry, where nothing but internal
merit, which is unaffected by the outward appearance of the body,
is a recommendation for admission.
NAME OF GOD
A reverential allusion to the name of God,
in some especial and peculiar form, is to be found in the doctrines
and ceremonies of almost all nations. This ineffable or unutterable
name was respected by the Jews under the sacred form of the word
Jehovah. Among the Druids, the three letters I. O. W. constituted
the name of Deity. They were never pronounced, says Giraldus Cambrensis,
but another and less sacred name was substituted for them. Each
letter was a name in itself. The first is the Word, at the utterance
of which in the beginning the world burst into existence; the
second is the Word, whose sound still continues, and by which
all things remain in existence; the third is the Word, by the
utterance of which all things will be consummated in happiness,
forever approaching to the immediate presence of the Deity. The
analogy between this and the past, press ent and future significations
contained in the Jewish Tetragrammaton will be evident
Among the Mohammedans there is a science
called Ism Allah, or the science of the name of God. "They
pretend," says Niebuhr, "that God is the loglc of this
science, and Mohammed the key; that, consequently, none but Mohammedans
can attain it; that it discovers what passes in different countries;
that it familiarizes the possessors with the genii, who are at
the command of the initiated, and who instruct them; that it places
the winds and the seasons at their disposal, and heals the bites
of serpents, the lame, the maimed, and the blind."
In the chapter of the Koran en titled Araaf,
it is written: "God has many excellent names. Invoke him
by these names, and separate yourselves from them who give him
false names." The Mohammedans believe that God has ninety-nine
names, which, with that of Allah, makes one hundred; and, therefore,
their chaplets or rosaries are composed of one hundred beads,
at each of which they invoke one of these names; and there is
a tradition, that whoever frequently makes this invocation will
find the gates of Paradise open to him. With them Allah is the
Ism al adhem, the Great Name, and they bestow upon it all the
miraculous virtues which the Jews give to the Tetragrammaton.
This, they say, is the name that was engraven
on the stone which Japheth gave to his children to bring down
rain from heaven; and it was by virtue of this name that Noah
made the ark float on the waters, and governed it at will, without
the aid of oars or rudder. Among the Hindus there was the same
veneration of the name of God, as is evinced in their treatment
of the mystical name Aum. The "Institutes of Menu" continually
refer to the peculiar efficacy of this word, of which it is said,
"All rites ordained in the Veda oblations to fire, and solemn
sacrifices pass away; but that which passes not away is the syllable
Aum, thence called aishara, since it is a symbol of God, the Lord
of created beings."
There was in every ancient nation a sacred
name given to the highest god of its religious faith, besides
the epithets of the other and subordinate deities.
The old Aryans, the founders of our race,
called their chief god Dyaus, and in the Vedas we have the invocation
to Dyaus Pitar, which is the same as the Greek Zev cramp, and
the Latin, Jupiter, all meaning the Heaven-Father, and at once
reminding us of the Christian invocation to "Our Father which
art in heaven."
There is one incident in the Hindu mythology
which shows how much the old Indian heart yearned after this expression
of the nature of Deity bv a name.
There was a nameless god, to whom, as the
"source of golden light," there was a worship. This
is expressed in one of the Veda hymns, where the invocation in
every stanza closes with the exclamation, "Who is the god
to whom we shall offer our sacrifice?"
Nor, says Bunsen (God in History i, 302),
"the Brahmanic expositors must needs find in every hymn the
name of a god who is invoked in it, and so, in this case. their
have actually invented a grammatical divinity the god Who."
What more pregnant testimony could we have of the tendency of
man to seek a knowledge of the Divine nature in the expression
of a name?
The Assyrians worshiped Assur, or Asarac, as their chief god.
On an obelisk, taken from the palace of Nimrod, we find the inscription,
"to Asarac, the Great Lord, the King of all the great gods."
Of the veneration of the Egyptians for the
name of their supreme god, we have a striking evidence in the
writings of Herodotus, the Father of History, as he has been called,
who, during a visit to Egypt. was initiated into the Osirian mysteries.
Speaking of these initiations he says (book u, chapter 171), "the
Egyptians represent by night his sufferings, whose name I refrain
from mentioning." It was no more lawful among the Egyptians
than it was among the Jews, to give utterance aloud to that Holy
Name.
At Byblos the Phenicians worshiped Eliun,
the Most High God. From him was descended El, whom Philo identifies
with Saturn, and to whom he traces the Hebrew Elohim. Of this
El, Max Muller says that there was undeniably a primitive religion
of the whole Semitic race, and that the Strong One in Heaven was
invoked under this name by the ancestors of the Semitic races,
before there were Babylonians in Babylonia, Phenicians in Sidon
and Tyre, or Jews in Mesopotamia and Jerusalem. If so, then the
Mosaic adoption of Jehovah, with its more precise teaching of
the Divine essence, was a step in the progress to the knowledge
of the Divine Truth. In China there is an infinite variety of
names of elemental powers, and even of ancestral spirits, who
b are worshiped as subordinate deities; but the ineffable name
is Tien, compounded of the two signs for great and one, and which,
the Imperial Dictionary tells us, signifies "The Great OneHe
that dwells on high, and regulates all below."
Drummond (Origines) claimed that Abaur was
the name of the Supreme Deity among the ancient Chaldeans. It
is evidently the Hebrew signifies "The Father of Light."
The Scandinavians had twelve subordinate gods, but their chief
or supreme deity was Al-Fathr, or the All Father.
Even among the Red Men of America we find
the idea of an invisible deity, whose name was to be venerated.
Garcilasso de la Vega tells us that while the Peruvians paid public
worship to the sun, it was but as a symbol of the Supreme Being,
whom they called, Pachacamac, a word meaning the soul of the world,
and which was so sacred that it was spoken only with extreme dread.
The Jews had, besides the Tetragrammaton
or four-lettered name, two others: one consisting of twelve and
the other of forty-two letters. But Maimonides, in his More Nevochim
(part i, elxii), remarks that it is impossible to suppose that
either of these constituted a single name, but that each must
have been composed of several words, which must, however, have
heen significant in making man approximate to a knowledge of the
true essence of God. The Cabalistical book called the Sohar confirms
this when it tells us that there are ten names of God mentioned
in the Bible, and that when these ten names are combined into
one word, the number of the letters amounts to forty-two.
But the Talmudists, although they did not
throw around the forty-two-lettered name the sanctity of the Tetragrammaton,
prescribed that it should be communicated only to men of middle
age and of virtuous habits, and that its knowledge would confirm
the n as heirs of the future as well as the present life. The
twelve-lettered name, although once common, became afterward occult;
and when, on the death of Simon I, the priests ceased to use the
Tetragrammaton, they were accustomed to bless the people with
the name of twelve letters. Maimonides very wisely rejects the
idea that any power was derived from these letters or their pronunciation,
and claims that the only virtue of the names consisted in the
holy ideas expressed by the words of which they were composed.
The following are the ten Cabalistic names
of God, corresponding to the ten Sephiroth:
1. Eheyeh
2. Jah
3. Jehovah
4. El
5. Eloah
6. Elohim
7. Jehovah Sabaoth
8. Elohim Sabaoth
9. Elhi
10. Adonai
Lanzi extends his list of names to twenty-six, which, with their
signification, are as follows:
At—Aleph and Tau, that is, Alpha and Omega. A name figurative of the Tetragrammaton.
Ihoh—Eternal, absolute principle of creation.
Hoh—Destruction. the male and female principle, the author and regulator of time and motion.
Jah—Lord and remunerator.
Oh—Severer and punisher.
Jao—Author of life.
Azazel—Author of death.
Jao-Sabaoth—God of the co-ordinations of loves and hatreds. Lord of the solstices and the equinoxes.
Ehie—The Being, the Ens.
El—he First Cause. The principle or beginning of all things.
Elo-hi—The Good Principle.
Elo-ho—The Evil Principle.
El-raccum—The Succoring Principle.
El-cannum—The Abhoring Principle.
Ell—he Most Luminous.
II—The Omnipotent.
Ellohim—The Omnipotent and Beneficent.
Elohim—The Most Beneficent.
Elo—The Sovereign, the Excelsus.
Adon—The Lord, the Dominator.
Etoi—The Illuminator, the Most Effulgent.
Adonai—he Most Firm, the Strongest.
Elion—The Most High.
Shaddai—The Most Victorious.
Yeshurun—The Most Generous.
Noil—The Most Sublime.
Like the Mohammedan Ism Allah, Freemasonry
presents us as its most important feature with this science of
the names of God. But here it elevates itself above Talmudical
and Rabbinical reveries, and becomes a symbol of Divine Truth.
The names of God were undoubtedly intended originally to be a
means of communicating the knowledge of God himself. The name
was, from its construction and its literal powers, used to give
some idea, however scanty, in early times, of the true nature
and essence of the Deity. The Ineffable Name was the symbol of
the unutterable sublimity and perfection of truth which emanate
from the Supreme God, while the subordinate names were symbols
of the subordinate manifestations of truth. Freemasonry has availed
itself of this system, and, in its reverence for the Divine Name,
indicates its desire to attain to that truth as the ultimate object
of all its labor. The significant words of the Masonic system,
which describe the names of God wherever they are found, are not
intended merely as words of recognition, but as indices, pointinglike
the Symbolic Ladder of Jacob of the First Degree, or the Winding
Stairs of the Second, or the Three Gates of the Thirdthe
way of progress from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge,
from the lowest to the highest conceptions of Divine Truth. And
this is, after all, the real object of all Masonic science.
NAMES OF LODGES
The precedency of Lodges does not depend
on their names, but on their numbers The rule declaring that "the
precedency of Lodges is grounded on the seniority of their Constitution"
was adopted on the 27th of December, 1727 (Constitutions, 1738,
page 154). The number of the Lodge, therefore, by which its precedency
is established, is always to be given by the Grand Lodge. In England,
Lodges do not appear to have received distinctive names before
the latter part of the eighteenth century. Up to that period the
Lodges were distinguished simply by their numbers. Thus, in the
first edition of the Book of Constitutions, published in 1723,
we find a list of twenty Lodges, registered by their numbers,
from No. 1 to No. 20, inclusive. Subsequently, they were further
designated by the name of the tavern at which they held their
meetings. Thus, in the second edition of the same work, published
in 1738, we meet with a list of one hundred and six Lodges, designated
sometimes, singularly enough, as Lodge No. 6, at the Rummer Tavern,
in Queen Street; No. 84, at the Black Dog, in Castle Street; or
No. 98. at the Bacchus Tavern, in Little Bush Lane. With such
names and localities, we are not to wonder that the "three
small glasses of punch," of which Doctor Oliver so feelingly
speaks in his Book of the Lodge, were duly appreciated; nor, as
he admits, that "there were some Brethren who displayed an
anxiety to have the allowance increased." In 1766 we read
of four Lodges that were erased from the Register, under the similar
designations of the Globe, Fleet Street; the Red Cross Inn, Southwark;
No. 85, at the George, Ironmongers' Lane and the Mercers Arms,
Mercers Street. To only one of these, it will be perceived, was
a number annexed. The name and locality of the tavern was presumed
to be a sufficient distinction. It was not until about the close
of the eighteenth century, as has been already observed, that
we find distinctive names beginning to be given to the Lodges;
for in 1793 we hear of the Shakespear Lodge, at Stratford-on-Avon;
the Royal Brunswick, at Sheffield; and the Lodge of Apollo, at
Alcester. From that time it became a usage among our English Brethren,
from which they have never since departed.
But a better taste began to prevail at a
much earlier period in Scotland, as well as in Continental and
Colonial Lodges. In Scotland, especially, distinctive names appear
to have been used from a very early period, for in the very old
Charter granting the office of Hereditary Grand Masters to the
Barons of Rosslyn of which the date cannot be more recent than
1600, we find among the signatures the names of the officers of
the Lodge of Dunfermline and the Lodge of Saint Andrew's. Among
the names in the list of the Scotch Lodges, in 1736 are those
of Saint Mary's Chapel, Kilwinning, Aberdeen, etc. These names
were undoubtedly borrowed from localities; but in 1763, while
the English Lodges were still content with their numerical arrangement
only we find in Edinburgh such designations as Saint Luke's, Saint
Giles's, and Saint David's Lodges.
The Lodges on the Continent, it is true,
at first adopted the English method of borrowing a tavern sign
for their appellation; whence we find the Lodge at the Golden
Lion, in Holland, in 1734, and before that the Lodge at Nure's
Tavern, in Paris, in 1725. But they soon abandoned this inefficient
and inelegant mode of nomenclature; and accordingly, in 1739,
a Lodge was organized in Switzerland under the appropriate name
of Stranger's Perfect Union. Tasteful names, more or less significant,
began thenceforth to be adopted by the Continental Lodges. Among
them we may meet with the Lodge of the Three Globes, at Berlin,
in 1740; the Minava Lodge, at Leipsic, in 1741; Absalom Lodge,
at Hamburg, in 1742; Saint George's Lodge, at the same place,
in 1743; the Lodge of the Crowned Column, at Brunswick, in 1745;
and an abundance of others, all with distinctive names, selected
sometimes with much and sometimes with but little taste. But the
worst of them was undoubtedly better than the Lodge at the Goose
and Gridiron, which met in London in 1717.
In the Colonies of America, from the very
first introduction of Freemasonry into the western world, significant
names were selected for the Lodges; and hence we have, in 1734,
Saint John's Lodge, at Boston; a Solomon's Lodge, in 1735, at
both Charleston and Savannah; and a Union Kilwinning, in 1754,
at the former place.
This brief historical digression will serve
as an examination of the rules which should govern all founders
in the choice of Lodge names. The first and most important rule
is that the name of a Lodge should be technically significant;
that is, it must allude to some Masonic fact or characteristic;
in other words, there must be something Masonic about it. Under
this rule, all names derived from obscure or un-masonic localities
should be reflected as unmeaning and inappropriate. Doctor Oliver,
it is true, thinks otherwise, and says that "the name of
a hundred, or wahpentake, in which the Lodge is situated, or of
a navigable river, which confers wealth and dignity on the town,
are proper titles for a Lodge." But a name should always
convey an idea, and there can be conceived no idea worth treasuring
in a Freemason's mind to be deduced from bestowing such names
as New York, Philadelphia, or Baltimore, on a Lodge. The selection
of such a name shows but little originality in the chooser; and,
besides, if there be two Lodges in a town, each is equally entitled
to the appellation; and if there be but one, the appropriation
of it would seem to indicate an intention to have no competition
in the future.
Yet, barren of Masonic meaning as are such
geographical names, the adoption of them is one of the most common
faults in American Masonic nomenclature. The examination of a
very few old Registers, taken at random, will readily evince this
fact. Thus, eighty-eight, out of one hundred and sixty Lodges
in Wisconsin, were named after towns or counties; of four hundred
and thirty-seven Lodges in Indiana, two hundred and fifty-one
have names derived from the same source; geographical names were
found in one hundred and eighty-one out of four hundred and three
Lodges in Ohio, and in twenty out of thirty-eight in Oregon. But,
to compensate for this, we had seventy-one Lodges in View Hampshire,
and only two local geographical appellations in the list. There
are, however, some geographical names which are admissible, and,
indeed, are highly appropriate These are the names of places celebrated
as Masonic history. Such titles for Lodges as Jerusalem, Tyre,
Lebanon and Joppa are unexceptionable. Patmos. which is the name
of a Lodge in Maryland, seems. as the long residence of one of
the Patrons of the Order. to be unobjectionable.
So, too, Bethel, because it signifies the
House of God; Mount Moriah, the site of the ancient Temple; Calvary,
the small hill on which the sprig of acacia was found; Mount Ararat,
where the ark of our father Noah rested; Ophir, whence Solomon
brought the gold and precious stones with which he adorned the
Temple; Tadmor, because it was a city built by King Solomon; and
Salem and Jebus, because they are synonyms of Jerusalem, and because
the latter is especially concerned with Ornan the Jebusite, on
whose threshing-floor the Temple was subsequently builtare
all excellent and appropriate names for Lodges. But all Scriptural
names are not equally admissible- Cabul, for instance, must be
rejected, because it was the subject of contention between Solomon
and Hiram of Tyre; and Babylon, because it was the place where
"language was confounded and Freemasonry lost," and
the scene of the subsequent captivity of our ancient Brethren;
Jericho, because it was under a curse; and Misgab and Tophet,
because they were places of idol worship. In short, it may be
adopted as a rule, that no name should be adopted whose antecedents
are in opposition to the principles of Freemasonry.
The ancient patrons and worthies of Freemasonry
furnish a very fertile source of Masonic nomenclature, and have
been very liberally used in the selection of names of Lodges.
Among the most important may be mentioned Saint John, Salomon,
Hiram, King David, Adoniram, Enoch, Archimedes, and Pythagoras.
The Widow's Son Lodge, of which there are several instances in
the United States, is an affecting and significant title, which
can hardly be too often used. Recourse is also to be had to the
names of moderate distinguished men who have honored the Institution
by their adherence to it, or who, by their learning in Freemasonry,
and by their services to the Order, have merited some marks of
approbation. And hence we meet, in England, as the names of Lodges,
with Sussex, Moira, Frederick, Zetland, and Robert Burns; and
in the United States with Washington, Lafayette, Clinton, Franklin,
and Clay. Care must, however, be taken that no name be selected
except of one who was both a Freemason and had distinguished himself,
either by services to his country, to the world, or to the Order.
Brother Oliver says that "the most appropriate titles are
those which are assumed from the name of some ancient benefactor
or meritorious individual who was a native of the place where
the Lodge is held; as, in a city, the builder of the cathedral
church."
In the United States we are, it is true,
precluded from a selection from such a source; but there are to
be found some of those old benefactors of Freemasonry, who, like
Shakespeare and Milton, or Homer and Virgil, have ceased to belong
to any particular country and have now become the common property
of the world-wide Craft. There are, for instance Carausius, the
first Royal Patron of Freemasonry in England; and Saint Alban,
the first Grand Master; and Athelstan and Prince Edwin, both active
encouragers of the art in the same kingdom. There are Wykeham,
Gundulph, Giffard, Langham, Yevele (called, in the old records
the King's Freemason), and Chicheley, Jermyn, and Wren, all long
celebrated as illustrious Grand Masters of England, each of whom
would be well entitled to the honor of giving name to a Lodge,
and any one of whom would be better, more euphonious, and more
spirit-stirring than the unmeaning, and oftentimes crabbed, name
of some obscure village or post-office, from which too many of
our Lodges derive their titles.
And, then, again, among the great benefactors
to Masonic literature and laborers in Masonic science there are
such names as Anderson, Dunckerley, Preston, Hutchinson, Town,
Webb, and a host of others, who, though dead, still live by their
writings in our memories. The virtues and tenetsthe inculcation
and practice of which constitute an important part of the Masonic
systemform very excellent and appropriate names for Lodges,
and have always been popular among correct Masonic nomenclatures.
Thus we everywhere find such names as Charity, Concord, Equality,
Faith, Fellowship, Harmony, Hope, Humility, Mystic Tie, Relief,
Truth, Union, and Virtue. Frequently, by a transposition of the
word Lodge and the distinctive appellation, with the interposition
of the preposition of, a more sonorous and emphatic name is given
by our English and European Brethren, although the custom is but
rarely followed in the United States. Thus we have by this method
the Lodge of Regularity, the Lodge of Fidelity, the Lodge of Industry,
and the Lodge of Prudent Brethren, in England; and in France,
the Lodge of Benevolent Friends, the Lodge of Perfect Union, the
Lodge of the Friends of Peace, and the celebrated Lodge of the
Nine Sisters.
As the names of illustrious men will sometimes
stimulate the members of the Lodges which bear them to an emulation
of their characters, so the names of the Masonic virtues may serve
to incite the Brethren to their practice, lest the inconsistency
of their names and their conduct should excite the ridicule of
the world.
Another fertile and appropriate source of
names for Lodges is to be found in the symbols and implements
of the Order. Hence, we frequently meet with such titles as Level,
Trowel, Rising Star, Rising Sun, Olive Branch, Evergreen, Doric,
Corinthian, Delta, and Corner-Stone Lodges. Acacia is one of the
most common, and at the same time one of the most beautiful, of
these symbolic names; but unfortunately, through gross ignorance,
it is often corrupted into Cassiaan insignificant plant,
which has no Masonic or symbolic meaning.
An important rule in the nomenclature of
Lodges, and one which must at once recommend itself to every person
of taste, is that the name should be euphonious, agreeable sounding.
This principle of euphony has been too little attended to in the
selection of even geographical names in the United States, where
names with impracticable sounds, or with ludicrous associations,
are often affixed to our towns and rivers. Speaking of a certain
island, with the unpronounceable name of Srh, Lieber says, "If
Homer himself were born on such an island, it could not become
immortal,-for the best-disposed scholar would be unable to remember
the name"; and he thinks that it was no trifling obstacle
to the fame of many Polish heroes in the Revolution of that country,
that they had names which left upon the mind of foreigners no
effect but that of utter confusion. An error like this must be
avoided in bestowing a name upon a Lodge. The word selected should
be soft, vocalnot too long nor too shortand, above
all, be accompanied in its sound or meaning by no low, indecorous,
or ludicrous association. For this reason such names of Lodges
should be rejected as Sheboygan and Oconomowoc from the Registry
of Wisconsin, because of the uncouthness of the sound; and Rough
and Ready and Indian Diggings from that of California, on account
of the ludicrous associations which these names convey. Again,
Pythagoras Lodge is preferable to Pythagorean, and Archimedes
is better than Archimedean, because the noun is more euphonious
and more easily pronounced than the adjective. But this rule is
difficult to illustrate or enforce; for, after all, this thing
of euphony is a mere matter of taste, and we all know the adage,
"De gustibus non est disputandum," there is no disputing
about tastes.
A few negative rules, which are, however,
easily deduced from the affirmative ones already given, will complete
the topic. No name of a Lodge should be adopted which is not,
in some reputable way, connected with Freemasonry Everybody will
acknowledge that Morgan Lodge would be an anomaly, and that Cowan
Lodge, would, if possible, be worse. But there are some names
which, although not quite as bad as these, are on principle equally
as objectionable. Why should any of our Lodges, for instance,
assume, as many of them have, the names of Madison, Jefferson,
or Taylor, since none of these distinguished men were Freemasons
or Patrons of the Craft. The indiscriminate use of the names of
saints unconnected with Freemasonry is for a similar reason objectionable.
Beside our Patrons, Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the
Evangelist, but three other saints can lay any claims to Masonic
honors, and these are Saint Alban, who introduced, or is said
to have introduced, the Order into England, and has been liberally
complimented in the nomenclature of Lodges; and Saint Swithin,
who was at the head of the Craft in the reign of Ethelwolf; and
Saint Benedict, who was the founder of the Masonic Fraternity
of Bridge Builders. But Saint Mark, Saint Luke, Saint Andrew all
of whom have given names to numerous Lodges, can have no pretensions
to assist as sponsors in these Masonic baptisms, since they were
not at all connected with the Craft.
To the Indian names of Lodges there is a
radical objection. It is true that their names are often very
euphonious and always significant, for the Red Men of the American
Continent are tasteful and ingenious in their selection of namesmuch
more so, indeed, than the whites, who borrow from them; but their
significance has nothing to do with Freemasonry.
What has been said of Lodges may with equal
propriety be said, mutatis mutandis, the necessary changes having
been made, of Chapters, Councils, and Commanderies.
We may supplement what Doctor Mackey says
here with a few allusions to peculiar names of Lodges Gaelic Lodge
of Glasgow, Scotland, has the peculiarity that once a year the
Brethren confer a Degree in that quaint old Celtic language of
the Scotch. America Lodge of London, England comprises exclusively
only those who were born in the United States. There is a Lodge
of lawyers at Belfast. Ireland which bears the significant name
of the Lodge of Good Counsel. A Lodge at London comprises a membership
keenly interested in the improvement of the condition of the blind,
and the name of their Lodge, Lux in Tenebris, or Light Among Shadows
has a meaning that touches the heart.
Titles of many foreign Lodges have a peculiar
significance as they exhibit a tendency to group Brethren of certain
professions and pursuits. The London Hospital Lodge, the Middlesex
Hospital Lodge and the City of London Red Cross Lodge are particularly
significant names and several of the leading clubs, permanent
schools, societies of musicians, of architects, of chartered accountants,
the London School Board as well as engineers and various other
professional organizations have Lodges bearing the names of these
institutions. The Telephone Lodge has an expressive title, and
one might suspect that the Sanitarian and Hygeia Lodges have to
do with public health, and that is correct. Aquarius Lodge recruits
its members from Brethren connected with the London Water Works,
Aguartus being indeed the "water bearer." The Brethren
of Evening Star Lodge are concerned with the lighting of London.
We Visited a Lodge at London whose members were all lawyers and
all engineers; they were certified members of the Institution
of Patent Agents and the name of their Lodge was Invention. Hortus
Lodge comprises Brethren who are merchants or growers of flowers,
hortus being the Latin word for garden.
NAMUR
A city of Belgium, where the Primitive Scottish
Rite was first established; hence sometimes called the Rite of
Namur.
NAOS
The ark of the Egyptian gods. A chest or
structure with more height than depth, and thereby unlike the
Israelites Ark of the Covenant. The winged figures embraced the
lower part of the Naos, while the cherubim of the Ark of Yahveh
were placed above its lid. Yahveh took up His abode above the
propitiatory or covering between the wings of the cherubim, exteriorly,
while the gods of Egypt were reputed as hidden in the interior
of the Naos of the sacred barks, behind hermetically closed doors
(see Cherubim).
NAPHTALI
The territory of the tribe of Naphtali adjoined,
on its western border, to Phenicia, and there must, therefore,
have been frequent and easy communication between the Phenicians
and the Naphtalites, resulting sometimes in intermarriage. This
will explain the fact that Hiram the Builder was the son of a
widow of Naphtali and a man of Tyre.
NAPLES
Freemasonry must have been practiced in
Naples before 1751, for in that year Ring Charles issued an Edict
forbidding it in his dominions. The author of Anti-Saint Nicaise
says that there was a Grand Lodge at Naples, in 1756, which was
in correspondence with the Lodges of Germany. But its meetings
were suspended by a royal Edict in September, 1775. In 1777 this
Edict was repealed at the instigation of the Queen, and Freemasonry
was again tolerated. This toleration lasted, however, only for
a brief period. In 1781 Ferdinand IV renewed the Edict of Suppression,
and from that time until the end of the century Freemasonry was
subjected in Italy to the combined persecutions of the Church
and State, and the Freemasons of Naples met only in secret. In
1793, after the French Revolution, many Lodges were openly organized.
A Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite was established on the 11th of June 1809 of which
King Joachim elected Grand Master, and the Grand Orient of Naples
on the 24th of the same month. The fact that the Grand Orient
worked according to the French Rite, and the Supreme Council according
to the Scottish, caused dissensions between the two Bodies, which,
however, were finally healed. And on the 23d of May, 1811, a Concordat
was established between the Supreme Council and the Grand Orient,
by which the latter took the supervision of the Degrees up to
the Eighteenth, and the former of those from the Eighteenth to
the Thirty-third. In October, 1812, Wing Joachim accepted the
presidency of the Supreme Council as its Grand Commander. Both
Bodies became extinct in 1815, on the accession of the Bourbons.
NAPOLEON I
It has been claimed, and with much just
reason, as shown in his course of life, that Napoleon the Great
was a member of the Brotherhood. Brother J. E. S. Tuckett, Transactions
of Quatuor Coronati Lodge (volume xxvii, pages 96 to 141, 1914),
arrives at the following conclusions:
The evidence in favor of
a Masonic initiation previous to Napoleon's assumption of the
imperial title is overwhelming:
The initiation took place in the body of
an Army Philadelphe Lodge of theEcossaisPrimitive
Rite of Narbonne, the third initiation of the " Note Communique"
being an advancement in that Rite; These initiations took place
between 1795 and 1798.
Brother David E. W. Williamson sends us
a reference of value here: In his Notes pour servir a Histoire
de la Franc-Maçonnerie a Nancy jusqu'en 1805, M. Charles
Bernardin, P. M. of the Lodge at Nancy, writing about 1910, says
"3e Décembre (1797) on place la visite du general
Bonaparte a la loge de Nancy." If this visit by him as a
Freemason is a fact we can limit to a narrow range the probable
time when Bonaparte was initiated and thus support the claim of
Brother Tuckett.
Brother Tuckett's evidence is summed up
thus:
In 1801, that is, fully two years before Napoleon became
Emperor, a prominent Ecossais, Brother Abraham, writes of the
Masonic order "as proud now to number the immemorial Brothers
Bonaparte and Moreau among its members." The Official report
of a Masonic Festival at Dijon in November of the same year described
Masonic honors paid to Napoleon and refers to " Les DD..
et RR.. FF.. Buonaparte et Moreau." Another official report
of a similar Festival at Montauban eleven days later describes
Masonic honors paid to Napoleon and Moreau, and in the Toast List
their names occur with essentially Masonic embellishments. Moreau
became head of the Army Philadelphes in 1801. The Strassburg Lodge
is said to have toasted Napoleon as a Freemason. The wording of
the toast shows that this was before Napoleon became Emperor.
At the same period a Philadelphe Lodge, probably of the Army Branch,
did exist at Strassburg. In 1805, or early 1806, an eminent Brother
Pyron, then, or a few months later, a Philadelphe, writing to
another eminent Brother Eques, chief of the Philadelphes, claims
Napoleon as brother of our Rite." Rite referred to possibly
Philadelphe, certainly an Ecossais Rite.
In March, 1807, at Milan, in a Lodge named
in honor of the Empress, the mother of the Viceroy, Grand Master
at Milan, Napoleon is toasted as "Brother, Emperor and King,
Protector." In 1816 appears a book of Confesses de Napoleon
with an engraving representing the reception of Bonaparte by the
llluminsti. In 1820, and again in 1827, an unknown writer says,
"It is certain that Napoleon underwent three initiations."
The first, 1795, the reception by the Francs- Juges-query, Illuminati
? The second, from description evidently an Ecossais initiation,
is placed between March, 1796, and June, 1798. The third, a Philadelphe,
more probably of the Army Branch initiation at Cairo. In the same
volume Napoleon is made to say that he had been initiated into
a "Secte des Egyptien.s." In 1829 the Abeille Masonnique,
and in 1830 Clavel, state that Napoleon visited Lodges in Paris
incognito, unknown. From 1829 onwards a number of writers repeat
that Napoleon was initiated at Malta in 1798. In 1859 a correspondent
of the Freemasons Magazine claims to have known a French Brother
who professed to have met Napoleon as a Freemason in open Lodge.
Frost in his Secret Societies of the European
Resolutions London, 1876 (volume i, page 146), quoted Nodier's
authority for the statement that "the Emblem " of the
Army Philadelphes was identical with that adopted for the Legion
of Honor. The Insignia chosen for the Legion consisted of a white
enameled five-rayed star bearing the portrait of Napoleon and
a wreath of oak and laurel. LegendNapoleon Empereur des
Français. On the reverseThe Frence Eagle grasping
3 thunderbolt. egendHonneur et Patrie. The Ribbon was of
scarlet watered silk. Presumably Frost and Nodier allude to the
five-rayed star, derived from the Pentalpha an emblem found in
all Masonic and related systems. The Emperor's brothers, the Imperial
Princes Joseph, Lucian, Louis and Jerome, were all Freemasons
as was also his step-son Eugene Beauharnaisat first regarded
as the Imperial Heir-Apparent, his brother-in-law Murat, and his
nephew Jerome. Joseph, 1768-1844. King of Naples, 1806-8. King
of Spain, 1808-13. Nominated by the Emperor himself as Grand Master
of the Grand Orient of France, 1804. Louis, 1778 to 1846. King
of Holland, 1806-10. Grand Master Adjoined of the Grand Orient
of France, 1804. Jerome, 1784 to 1860. King of Westphalia, 1807-13.
Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Westphalia. His son Jerome
was also a Freemason. Lucien, 1775 to 1840.
A member of the Grand Orient of France.
Eugene Beauharnais, 1781 to 1S24. Viceroy of Italy 1805-14. Grand
Master of Italy and Grand Master of the Grand Orient of the Division
Militaire at Milan, 1805. Joachim Murat,1771 to 1815. King of
Naples,1808. Senior Grand Warden of the Grand Orient of France,
1803. Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Naples 1808. Grand Master
of the Order of Saint Joachim 1806. The Empress Josephine is known
to have been friendly to Freemasonry. She was initiated into the
Maconnerie d'Adoption in the Lodge Les Francs Chevaliers in 1804
at Paris, together with several of the ladies of her court, and
became an active member as well as patroness of that Rite. Those
who were chosen by Napoleon for high honor and office in the State
were nearly all of them members of the Craft and higher Degrees.
Of the sis who, with the Emperor himself formed the Grand Council
of the Empire, five were certainly Freemasons, at their head being
the Arch-Chancellor, Prince Jean Jacques Regis Cambaceres, the
Emperor's right-hand man, and in his time the most active, enthusiastic
and indefatigable Freemason in France.
The sixth, the Arch-Treasurer Le Brun, formerly
Third Consul, is also believed to have been of the Craft, but
it is not certain. Of the nine lesser Imperial officers of State,
six at least were active Masons. Of Marshals of France who served
under Napoleon, at least twenty-two out of the first thirty were
Freemasons, many of them Grand Officers of the Grand Orient. The
union of all the separate and often mutually hostile Rites in
one governing body was from the first the project of Napoleon.
Mereadier relates that during the Consulate Napoleon threatened
to abolish Freemasonry altogether unless this was accomplished.
Late in 1804, at the request of Cambaceres he interested himself
in the reorganization of the Grand Orient with the result that
in 1805 the Grand Orient assumed control over the whole body of
Freemasonry in the Empire, with the Emperor's brother, Joseph,
as Grand Master, with Cambaceres and Murat as his Grand Master
Adjoints. Through Cambaceres the Emperor assured the Brothers
of his imperial protection, stating that he had instituted inquiry
into the subject of Freemasonry, and that he perceived that their
highly moral aim and purpose were worthy of his favor.
Louis Napoleon III was a member of the Supreme,
of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of France.
NAPOLEONIC FREEMASONRY
An Order under this name, called also the
French Order of Noachites, was established at Paris, in 1816,
by some of the adherents of the Emperor Napoleon. It was divided
into three Degrees:
1. Knight
2. Commander
3. Grand Elect
The last Degree was subdivided into three points
i. Secret Judge
ii. Perfect Initiate
iii. Knight of the Crown of Oak
The mystical ladder in this Rite consisted
of eight steps or stages, whose names were Adam, Eve, Noah, Lamech,
Naamah, Peleg, Oubal, and Orient. The initials of these words,
properly transposed, compose the word Napoleon, and this is enough
to show the character of the system. General Bertrand was elected
Grand Master, but, as he was then in the Island of Saint Helena,
the Order was directed by a Supreme Commander and two Lieutenants.
It was Masonic in form only, and lasted but for a few years.
NARBONNE, RITE OF
See Primitive Rite
NATIONAL GRAND LODGE
The Royal Mother Lodge of the Three Globes,
which had been established at Berlin in 1740, and recognized as
a Grand Lodge by Frederick the Great in 1744, renounced the Rite
of Strict Observance in 1771, and, declaring itself free and independent,
assumed the title of the Grand National Mother Lodge of the Three
Globes, by which appellation it is still known. The Grand Orient
of France, among its first acts, established, as an integral part
of itself, a National Grand Lodge of France, which was to take
the place of the old Grand Lodge, which, it declared, had ceased
to exist. But the year after, in 1773, the National Grand Lodge
was suppressed by the power which had given it birth; and no such
power was recognized in French Freemasonry (see Grand Lodge and
General Grand Lodge).
NATIONAL GRAND LODGE
See General Grand Lodge
NATIONAL LEAGUED OF MASONIC CLUBS
See Masonic Clubs, National Imbue of
NATIONAL MASONIC RESEARCH SOCIETY
Organized in Iowa, 1914, the Society commenced
the publication of the Builder, January, 1915, with Reverend Joseph
Fort Newton as Editor-in-Chief. A managing Board of Stewards,
all of the Grand Lodge of Iowa, were George E. Frazier, President;
Newton R. Parvin, Vice-President; George L. Sehoonover, Secretary,
with Louis Block, C. C. Hunt, John W. Barry. Ernest A. Reed of
New Jersey became President in 1922, with R. I. Clegg, Ohio, Vice President;
C. C. Hunt, Iowa, Secretary, and F. H. Littlefield, Missouri,
Executive Secretary and Treasurer. Later, Brothers R. I. Clegg,
H. L. Haywood, Robert Tipton, Dudley Wright, Louis Block, A. B.
Skinner, J. H. Tatsch, became associate editors, Brother Haywood
becoming editor in 1921, and R. J. Meekren in 1926.
In 1913 Bro. George L. Schoonover of Anamosa,
Ia., who was to become Grand Master, Grand Lodge of Iowa, some
five years later, became deeply impressed by the fact that among
the three million Masons in America were a rapidly-increasing
number of Masonic students; and that newly-made Masons, imbued
with the spirit of the time, were more and more demanding to know
"what it is all about." He was familiar with the world-wide
influence of the Iowa Grand Lodge Library, and with the work of
Research Lodges in England, but believed that the American Craft
needed a facility of a different kind, not localized but national,
and one not an official arm of any Grand Lodge yet one that could
be approved by each Grand Lodge and could cooperate with them.
He worked out a plan for a national society, to be devoted to
Masonic studies and to be a way-shower in Masonic education, and
to be composed not of Lodges or of Grand Lodges but of individual
Masons who would join it voluntarily, each paying a small annual
sum for dues; he also believed that such a society would require
a monthly journal; not a Masonic newspaper but a competently edited,
well-printed, illustrated magazine, carrying no advertisements,
which could compare favorably with the best non-Masonic journals.
He believed also that while the society ought to stand on its
own feet and pay its own way it should be examined, approved,
and officiallY endorsed by a Grand Lodge beforehand.
In 1914 he laid his plan before the Grand
Lodge of Iowa, and received whole-hearted endorsement. Though
not a man of great wealth Bro. Schoonover was a man of means, and
at his own expense he erected a three-story, beautifully designed
headquarters building in his home town of Anamosa, Ia., some twenty-three
miles outside of Cedar Rapids. The newly-formed organization chose
the name "National Masonic Research Society"; secured
Joseph Fort Newton as Editor-in-Chief; employed Wildey E. Atchison
of Colorado to be Assistant Secretary in charge of staff and on
January lst, 1915, issued the first number of The Builder, its
official monthly journal, sent to members only.
Each member paid an annual membership fee
($2.50 at first, and then $3.00); for this he received The Builder,
special brochures and booklets as they were published, could have
answers to any question, could secure expert advice on Lodge educational
methods, assistance in private Masonic researches, etc. The membership
increased slowly, but in due time passed 20,000, among which were
hundreds in foreign countriesat one time more than 40 countries,
with 200 to 300 in England alone. The only new activity added
after the Society's formation was a department for the sale of
Masonic books as a convenience to its members, and not for profit.
Bro. F. H. Littlefield became Executive Secretary in 1921 and
removed headquarters to St. Louis, Mo.
When in 1916 Bro. J. F. Newton was called
to London to become pastor of the City Temple his place was filled
for a time by a group of associates, among the latter being Bro.
H. L. Haywood, who wrote three books for the Society. He served
as Editor without pay for about two years, and then in 1921 became
Editor-in-Chief; Bro. Jacob Hugo Tatch was his Assistant Editor
for about one year then transferred to the Masonic Service Association
(it had no connection with the N. M. R. S.); he was succeeded
by Bro. R. J. Meekren, who in turn became Editor-in-Chief in 1925,
after Bro. Haywood had left for New York to become architect and
director of the Board of General Activities of the Grand Lodge
of New York, including editorship of The New York Masonic Outlook.
Midway in the year 1931 the Society was
so depleted in membership by the depression when some thirteen
million men were out of employment that it was forced to discontinue.
During the sixteen years the Society had published The Builder
in the form of a bound volume with index each year. In a certain
sense that set of books continues the work of the society, because
it is in almost every Masonic library in America, in many public
libraries, and in thousands of homes. It is a work of great reference
value, because in it are carefully wrought, factual articles on
the history, symbolism ritual, and jurisprudence of the Fraternity,
the larger number (unlike Ars Quatuor Corona natoram, a reference
work for another purpose) being on Freemasonry in America.
NATIONAL MASONIC TUBERCULOSIS SANATORIA
ASSOCIATION
The National Tuberculosis Association estimates
that some fifty thousand living cases exist at all times among
Freemasons in the United States and that five thousand of the
Brethren die from tuberculosis every year. A Tuberculosis Sanatoria
Commission was appointed by the Grand Lodges of Texas, Arizona,
and New Mexico.
An investigation was made by this Commission
in 1922 of the situation in the Southwestern United States where
thousands of consumptives resort. Many of these are Freemasons.
Information collected by the Commission indicated distressing
conditions and an urgent need for larger fraternal co-operative
service. During the forty-seventh Annual Communication on February
18, 1925, Grand Lodge of New Mexico, a Committee was empowered
and subsequently, at Las Cruces in that State, the Committee met
and provided for the incorporation of a National Masonic Tuberculosis
Sanatoria Association with an office at Albuquerque, New Mexico,
under the supervision of Brother Alpheus A. Keen Grand Secretary.
The purpose of the institution is to act as trustee or agency
for receiving and administering funds for the relief of Freemasons
and members of their families or others suffering from tuberculosis
or in distress from other causes; to provide hospitalization for
sick and employment for the well; to establish institutions for
the care of those suffering from tuberculosis and other diseases;
and to acquire and conduct property in lands and buildings for
such training schools, hotels, and so forth, as required for the
objects named, and to circulate scientific and useful information
for the prevention, relief and cure of tuberculosis, etc.
The Association is to do whatever may be
deemed essential to accomplish these objects, to encourage and
promote works of humanity and charity, to relieve poverty sickness,
distress, suffering, to prevent danger, and to educate, to conquer
tuberculosis. The management is under a Board of Governors, one
member from each United States Grand Lodge Jurisdiction, the General
Grand Chapter, General Grand Council, Grand Encampment, the two
Supreme Councils, the Shrine, and the Eastern Star. The first
President, Jaffa Miller, was succeeded by Herbert B. Holt, both
Past Grand Masters of New Mexico; the first Secretary was Alpheus
A. Seen, Grand Secretary of Freemasons, Albuquerque, New Mexico,
and the Executive Secretary was Francis E. Lester, Past Grand
Master, Mesilla Park, New Mexico. The Builder, National Masonic
Researeh Society, St. Louis, Missouri, had a monthly department,
"The North-East Corner," conducted vigorously and ably
as a Bulletin of the Association by Robert J. Newton, Las Cruces,
New Mexico.
NATIONAL SOJOURNERS
An association of Freemasons who hold or
have held commissions in the defense forces of the United States
Government. Detroit Chapter No. 1 was organized in 1919.
NAVAL LODGES
Because of crowded space in ships and because
of frequent changes of personnel early attempts to constitute
Lodges on board war vessels did not meet with large success, even
at the period when Thomas Dunckerley, master organizer, and himself
member of a Naval Lodge on H. M. S. Vanguard, put his enthusiasm
behind them. In his Lodge Lists, Lane names only four British
Naval Lodges. Between 1760 and 1768 the Modern Grand Lodge chartered
only three. In 1810, after a conference called by the Grand Lodge
of Scotland, the British Grand Lodges agreed not to authorize
Naval warrants. Men in the Navy, marines on sea duty, and seamen
in general found their Masonic homes in Lodges working in the
ports, many of which were Naval or Mariners' Lodges in effect.
Masonic students have to be on guard against confusing a Masonic
meeting on board a ship, called by Masons in its crew or passenger
list or by a Military Lodge on board a transport, with chartered
Naval Lodges. (There are a number of instances where Masonic burial
services have been solemnized on board a ship; in one instance
where a retiring missionary died on board ship a group of Masons
wirelessed to Washington for permission to bring the body home
for burial, and three of them accompanied the body and the widow
to her home in the Midwest.)
NAYMUS GRECUS
The Grand Lodge Manu, script, No. 1, contains
the following passage: "Yt befell that their was on curious
Masson that height [was called] Naymus Grecus that had byn at
the making of Sallomon's Temple, and he came into ffraunce, and
there he taught the science of Massonrey to men of ffraunce."
Who was this Naymus Grecus? The writers of these old records of
Freemasonry are notorious for the way in which they mangle all
names and words that are in a foreign tongue. Hence it is impossible
to say who or what is meant by this word. It is differently spelled
in the various manuscripts.
Namas Grecious in the Lansdowne, .Nayrnus
Graecus in the Sloane, Grecus alone in the Edinburgh-Kilwinning,
and Maymus Grecus in the Dowland. For a table of various spellings,
there are about twenty-five, see Transactions, Quatuor Coronati
Lodge (volume iii,page 163). Doctor Anderson, in the second edition
of his Constitutions (1738, page 16), calls him Ninus. Now, it
would not be an altogether wild conjecture to suppose that some
confused idea of Magna Graecia was floating in the minds of these
unlettered Freemasons especially since the Leland Manuscript records
that in Magna Graecia Pythagoras established his school, and then
sent Freemasons into France.
Between Magna Graecia and Maynus Grecuns
the bridge is a short one, not greater than between Tubal-cain
and Wackan, which we find in a German Middle Age document. The
one being the name of a place and the other of a person would
be no obstacle to these accommodating record writers; nor must
we flinch at the anachronism of placing one of the disciples of
Pythagoras at the building of the Solomonic Temple, when we remember
that the same writers make Euclid and Abraham contemporaries.
Just so do we find w this "Curious Masson" flourishing
at the widely different periods of King Solomon and Charles Martel,
a claim not easily explained on historical grounds.
NAYMUS GRECUS
The curiously puzzling problem of Naymus
Grecus which is discussed on page 700 is in a sense a Rosetta
Stone for the archeology of early Masonic Manuscripts, therefore
the large amount of time devoted to it by Masonic scholars has
not been out of proportion. Robert I. Clegg's penetrating suggestion
in that article that Naymus Wrecks was Magna Graecza is respected
as one of the reasonable solutions. On page 94 of his History
of Freemasonry Mackey refused to commit himself except to reject
Krause's theory that Naymus had been Nannon, a Greek scholar of
the period of Charles the Bold. Edmund H. Dring contributed to
Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. XVIII., page 178, a treatise in
which he brought his great erudition to bear to prove that Naym?~s
Grecus was a corruption of the name Alcuin. R. F. Gould had proposed
the theory that Naymus meant "some one with a Greek name."
Wm. E. Upton believed that Grecus was a genuine surname. Wyatt
Papworth enumerated eight possible derivations. Howard advocated
the theory that a Greek colony in France named Nemausus or Nismes
was referred to; and with this W. J. Hughan agreed. Sidney Klein
took Naymus Grecus to be an anagram of Simon Grynaeus, a 15th
century editor of Euclid. Russell Forbes took Naymus to have been
an architect who worked under Charlemagne. Speth and Yarker identified
him with Marcus Graecus. (The data immediately above are collected
from the discussions appended to Dring's treatise.)
To these may be added yet another suggestion.
Jewish scholars who divide the history, religion, and literature
of the Jews into the three periods of Hebraic, Israelitish, and
Judaic, begin the third period at the time when the Jews enlarged
their own culture to include, first, Hellenic culture, with its
Greek language and dialects, and (at a somewhat later period)
Arabic culture. Mohammed received most of what little education
he possessed from Jewish teachers in his home community, and it
is certain that his Allah was his own theological presentation
of Moses Jehovah, a pure monotheism; when Mohammedanism swept
through the Near East and into North Africa and Spain it carried
with it a saturation of Old Testament and Talmudic lore.
During the long period when the regnant culture in North Africa,
Egypt, Arabia, the Near East, and some of Greece was an amalgam
of Jewish, Hellenic, and Mohammedan elements the word naymus was
everywhere in use by it. In Greece a naysus was a law-giver, or
teacher, or great scholar. In the Talmud he was a prophet, the
term being taken to denote an orator, leader, scholarly reformer,
etc. Among Arabs a naymus was a "cryer out," or prophet
or teacher; Mohammed himself was called a naytnus. Perhaps in
that whole culture (of which 80 much infiltrated into Europe from
Greece, Sicily, Spain, and from the Crusades) the most famous
Greek naymus was Pythagoras; and since he is in the Old Manuseripts
connected with Euclid, Naymus Grecus could easily have referred
to Pythagoras as the Greel; "Naymus." This is not to
suggest that the author of the Old Charges intended Naymus Grecus
to be Pythagoras; rather it is to suggest that originally Naymus
Grecus had been a title, but that the author of the 0ld Charges
took this title to be a name; and it may be that it originally
had been a title used of Pythagoras.
NAZARETH
A City of Galilee, in which Jesus spent
his childhood and much of his life, and whence he is often called,
in the New Testament, the Nazarene, or Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus
Nazarenus was a portion of the inscription on the cross (see I.
N. R. I). In the Rose Croix, Nazareth is a significant word, and
Jesus is designated as "our Master of Nazareth," to
indicate the origin and nature of the new dogmas on which the
Order of the Rosy Cross was instituted.
NEBRASKA
In March, 1854, the region between the Missouri
River and the Rocky Mountains was divided by Congress into the
Territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The Grand Master of Illinois
issued a Dispensation for a Lodge at Bellevue to petitioners who
were vouched for by a member of Garden City Lodge, No. 18, and
by Lafayette Lodge, No. 18, both of Chicago. The Lodge was chartered
as Nebraska Lodge, No. 184, on October 3, 1855. On January 24,
1888, the Lodge moved to Omaha. Three Lodges, namely, Nebraska,
No. 184; Giddings, No. 156, and Capital, No. 101, sent representatives
to a Convention held on September 23, 1857, at Omaha to organize
a Grand Lodge. David Lindley presided and George Armstrong was
chosen Secretary. Grand Officers were elected: Brother Robert
C. Jordan, Grand Master and Brother George Armstrong, Grand Secretary.
The name of Giddings Lodge was changed to Western Star and that
of Capital to Capitol. The Lodges were then renumbered as Nebraska,
No. 1, at Bellevue; Western Star, No. 2, at Nebraska City, and
Capitol, No. 3, at Omaha.
On November 21, 1859, Omaha Chapter, No.
1, was granted a Dispensation by the General Grand King, and on
September 8, 1865, when this was reported to the General Grand
Chapter, a Charter was issued. At a Convention held March 19,
1867, at Plattsmouth, by permission of the Deputy General Grand
High Priest, the Grand Chapter of Nebraska was regularly organized.
Officers were elected and installed as follows: Companions Harry
P. Deuel and James W. Moore, Grand High Priest and Deputy Grand
High Priest; Companion David H. Wheeler, Grand King; Companion
Edwin A. Allen, Grand Scribe, and Companions Orsamus H. Irish
and Elbert T. Duke, Grand Treasurer and Grand Secretary. All who
helped in the organization of this Grand Chapter were later made
Life Members. Nebraska is one of the States which make the Order
of High Priesthood an essential qualification to the installation
of the High Priest elect.
The Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction,
Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, granted a Charter for the
organization of Omaha Council, No. 1, on July 8, 1867. Delegates
from Omaha, No. 1; Alpha, No. 2, and Furnas, No. 3, formed the
Grand Council of Nebraska on November 20, 1872. From 1875 to 1886
the Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons controlled the Council
Degrees in Nebraska, but they again came under the Grand Council
on March 9, 1886, and in 1889 the latter became a member of the
General Grand Council.
Mount Calvary Commandery, No. 1, was formed
at Omaha by Dispensation dated June 16, 1865, and issued by Grand
Master Benjamin B. French. It was organized July 24 and chartered
September 6. Representatives of the four Commanderies of the State,
Mount Calvary, No. 1; Mount Olivet, No. 2; Mount Carmel, No. 3,
and Mount Moriah, No. 4, met in Omaha on December 28, 1871, and
established the Grand Commandery of Nebraska.
In 1881 came the beginning of the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, in Nebraska.
Mount Moriah Lodge of Perfection, No. 1, was chartered January
1; Semper Fidelis Chapter of Rose Croix, No. 1, on January 17;
Nebraska Consistory, No. 1, was granted a Charter April 12, 1885,
and Saint Andrew's Council of Kadosh, No. 1, on October 22, 1890.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR
About 630 years before Christ, the Empire
and City of Babylon were conquered by Nebuchadnezzar, the King
of the Chaldeans, a nomadic race, who, descending from their homes
in the Caucasian Mountains, had overwhelmed the countries of Southern
Asia. Nebuchadnezzar was engaged during his whole reign in wars
of conquest. Among other nations which fell beneath his victorious
arms was Judea, whose King, Jehoiakim, was slain by Nebuchadnezzar,
and his son, Jehoichin, ascended the Jewish throne. After a reign
of three years, he was deposed by Nebuchadnezzar, and his kingdom
given to his uncle, Zedekiah, a monarch distinguished for his
vices. Having repeatedly rebelled against the Babylonian king,
Nebuchadnezzar repaired to Jerusalem, and, after a siege of eighteen
months, reduced it. The city was leveled with the ground, the
Temple pillaged and burned, and the inhabitants carried captive
to Babylon. These events are commemorated in the first section
of the English and American Royal Arch system.
NEBUZARADAN
A Captain, or, as we would now call him,
a general of Nebuchadnezzar, who commanded the Chaldean army at
the siege of Jerusalem, and who executed there orders of his sovereign
by the destruction of the city and Temple, and by carrying the
Inhabitants, except a few husbandmen, as captives to Babylon.
NEGRE
The dark skin of Gabriel Mathieu Marconis
the elder, a founder of the Rite of Memphis, made him known as
the Negre, or Negro.
NEGRI, BENED
Composer of the song, the Aged Brothers,
the words written by Brother J. J. Smith, and sung at Freemasons
Hall, London, June 24, 1846, in aid of the Aged Freemasons Home.
NEGRO LODGES
The subject of Lodges of colored persons.
commonly called Negro Lodges, has long been a source of contention
in the United States. Not on account of the color of the members
of these Lodges, but because of the supposed illegality of their
origin and operation.
Prince Hall and thirteen other negroes were
made Freemasons in a Military Lodge in the British Army then at
Boston on March 6, 1775. When the Army was withdrawn these negroes
applied to the Grand Lodge of England for a Charter and on the
20th of September, 1784 a Charter for a Masters Lodge was granted
(although not received until 1787), to Prince Hall and others,
all colored men, under the authority of the Grand Lodge of England.
The Lodge bore the name of African Lodge No. 459 and was situated in the City of Boston. This Lodge,
like many others, had little connection with the Grand Lodge of
England for many years. and its registration, like many others,
of Lodges still working. was stricken from the rolls of the United
Grand Lodge of England when new lists were made in 1813.
African Lodge continued to operate and in
1827 they proclaimed "that with knowledge they possessed
of Masonry, and as people of color by themselves, they were, and
ought by right to be free and independent of other Lodges."
Accordingly on June 18, 1827, they issued a protocol, in which
they said: "We publicly declare ourselves free and independent
of any Lodge from this day, and we will not be tributary or governed
by any Lodge but that of our own." That is their present
de facto status.
They soon after assumed the name of the
Prince Hall Grand Lodge and issued Charters for the constitution
of subordinates, and from it have proceeded the vast majority
of the Lodges of colored persons now existing in the United States.
On March 12. 1947 the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts
voted "to accept, approve and record" the report of
a special committee of Past Grand Masters on this subject which
closed its report with these words: "In conclusion your Committee
believes that in view of the existing conditions in our country
it is advisable for the official and organized activities of white
and colored Freemasons to proceed in parallel lines, but organically
separate and without mutually embarrassing demands or commitments.
However, your Committee believes that within these limitations,
informal cooperation and mutual helpfulness between the two groups
upon appropriate occasions are desirable. " This was construed
by some United States Grand Jurisdictions as recognition, though
not actually so, and recognition of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts
was withdrawn by some Grand Lodges and threatened by others
and in 1949 the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts rescinded this resolution,
not because they had changed their attitude. but they said because
it seemed inexpedient and this action was taken only for the sake
of harmony.
An apparently insurmountable barrier to
recognition is the doctrine of exclusive Masonic territorial jurisdictiononly
one Grand Lodge in any one state or territory. This rule is confined
to the United States and Canada. but is strictly observed and
enforced It prohibits invasion of occupied territory by any other
Grand Lodge, let alone those of Negro origin and membership.
Since the writing of the article, a number
of records of the Revolutionary Period have been discovered which
have made it more clear why Negro, or Prince Hall, Masonry is
clandestine in each and every American Grand Jurisdiction, and
has been for more than a century. Prince Hall sent a petition
for a Charter to the (Modern) Grand Lodge of Masons in 1777; according
to Masonic law then in effect he should have submitted his petition
to one or the other of the two already longest abolished Provincial
Grand Lodges in Massachusetts, because he did not ask for a military
warrant. Owing to war conditions, and to the chronic dilatoriness
of the Modern Grand Lodge in responding to communications from
America, the Charter was not received until 1787; yet during this
inchoate period the self-styled African Lodge worked as a Lodge,
made Masons, and helped to initiate the formation of other Negro
Lodges, all in violation of Grand Lodge law. The Charter itself
became dormant, was rendered null and void, and was erased from
the lists by the Grand Lodge of England.
In 1827 a group of Negroes made use of this
piece of paper, which had become completely devoid of authority,
to set up a new "Grand Lodge," and in which they declared
themselves independent of any other Lodgewhich declaration
was in itself a plain proclamation that in their own eyes they
were a clandestine society, and therefore not entitled by either
Masonic or civil last to use the name "Masonic." Bodies
acting according to the so-called "Prince Hall Constitutions"
(which never existed) have continued to be clandestine ever since.
In 1930 they had 37 Grand Lodges, with some 750,000 members in
some 5,000 to 6,000 Lodges; by 1940, and owing to the depression,
the membership had declined to about 500,000.
In 1899 the Grand Lodge of Washington, acting
on a Report submitted by William H. Upton, declared its willingness
to provide for Negro Lodges if a sufficient number of regularly-made
Negro members could be found; but when one after another of the
other Grand Lodges withdrew recognition, Washington rescinded
its action. (See under PEACE AND HARMONY.) Upton elaborated his
Report in book form under the title of Negro Masonry in 1902 the
book is now obsolete because,
1) he did not at the time possess complete
data
2) because his argument to the effect that Prince Hall and his
associates had been regularly made and possessed a legitimate
ritual in the beginning is irrelevant. Many Lodges have become
clandestine in Britain and America after having worked for years
as regular Lodges side the cases of Preston's Grand Lodge of England
South of the River Kent, and the Lodges under the so-called Wigan
Grand Lodge, and the many American Lodges which lost their charters
during the Cerneau affair; and because
3) the whole structure of the argument which Lipton based on his
theory of the Modern vs. the Ancient Grand Lodge is invalid.
See Negro Masonry in the United States,
by Harold van Buren Voorhis; Henry Emmerson; New York; 1940; 132
pages; complete bibliography; it contains a chapter on Alpha Lodge,
No. 116, Newark, N. J., which has all Negro members. (There are
Lodges under the Grand Lodge of England with Negro membership.)
Official History of Freemasonry among the Colored People in Narth
America, by William H. Grimshaw; New York; 1903; 393 pages. Prince
Hall and his Followers, by George W. Crawford (a Prince Hall member);
New York; 1914; 96 pages. (Like other non-Masons Negro authors
find it difficult to understand Masonic data; their statements
of fact about actions taken by regular Grand Lodges may be checked
against Grand Lodge Proceedings. Negro writers very seldom, for
example, have their facts straight about actions taken at different
times by the Grand Lodges of Massachusetts and of Washington.)
NEHEMIAH
Son of Haehaliah. During the Babylonish
captivity, given permission to rebuild the Temple and restore
the city, becoming Tirshatha or Governor of Judea and Jerusalem,
for twelve years. Literally translated, the Hebrew, Nehemiah,
is Consolation af God.
NEIGHBOR
All the Old Constitutions have the charge that "every Mason
shall keep true counsel of Lodge and Chamber" (see Sloane
Manuscript, No. 3848). This is enlarged in the Andersonian Charges,
of 1722 thus: "You are not to let your family, friends and
neighbors know the concerns of the Lodge" (Constitutions,
1723, page 55). However loquacious a Freemason may be in the natural
confidence of neighborhood intercourse, he must be reserved in
all that relates to the esoteric concerns of Freemasonry.
NEITH
The Egyptian synonym of the Greek; Athené
or Minerva.
NEKAM
But properly according to the Masoretic
pointing, Nakam. A Hebrew word signifying Vengeance, and a significant
word in the high Degrees (see vengeance).
NEKAMAH
Hebrew word, signifying Tengeance, and,
like Nakam, a significant word in the advanced Degrees.
NEMBROTH
A corruption of Nimrod, frequently used
in the Old Records
NEMESIS
According to Hesiod, the daughter of Night,
originally the personification of the moral feeling of right and
a just fear of criminal actions; in other words, Conscience. A
temple was erected to Nemeses at Attica. She w as at times called
Adrastea and Rhamnusia, and represented in the earliest days a
young virgin like unto Venus; at a later period, as older and
holding a helm and wheel. At Rhamnus there was a statue of Nemesis
of Parian marble, executed by Phidias. The Festival in Greece
held in her honor w as called Nemesia.
NEOCORUS
A name of the guardian of the Temple.
NEOPHYTE
Greek , meaning newly planted. In the primitive
church. it signified one who had recently abandoned Judaism or
Paganism and embraced Christianity; and in the Roman Church those
recently admitted into its communion are still so called. Hence
it has also been applied to the young disciple of any art or science.
Thus Ben Jonson calls a young actor, at his first entrance "on
the boards," a neophyte player. In Freemasonry the newly
initiated and uninstructed candidate is sometimes so designated.
NEOPLATONISM
A philosophical school, estate fished at
Alexandria in Egypt, which added to the theosophic theories of
Plato many mystical doctrines borrowed from the East. The principal
disciples of this school were Philo-Judaeus, Plotinus, Porphvry,
Jamblichus, Proclus, and Julian the Apostate. Much of the symbolic
teaching of the advanced Degrees Of Freemasonry has been derived
from the school of the Neoplatonists, especially from the writings
of Jamblichus and Philo-Judaeus.
NEPHALIA
Festivals, without wine, celebrated in honor
of the lesser deities.
NE PLUS ULTRA
Latin, meaning Nothing more beyond. The motto adopted for the
Degree of Kadosh by its founders, when it was supposed to be the
summit of Freemasonry, beyond which there was nothing more to
be sought. And, although higher Degrees have been since added,
the motto is still retained.
NERGAL
The Hebrew word in:. The synonym of misfortune
and ill-luck. The Hebrew name for Mars; and in astrology the lesser
Malefic. The word in Sanskrit is Nrigal.
NESBIT, WILBUR D
American poet and humorist. Born at Nenia,
Ohio, September 16, 1871; died at Chicago, Illinois, August 20,
1927. Received the initiatory Degrees in Evans Lodge No. 524,
Evanston, Illinois, where his membership remained until his death.
The Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite were conferred
upon him in 1919 at Chicago, and he was honored with the Thirty-third
Degree by the Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction,
at Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 15, 1925. Also a member
of Medinah Temple, Ancient Arabic Order Nobles of the Mystic Shrine,
at Chicago. Brother Nesbit wrote a number of poems of Masonic
significance one of which through his courtesy follows:
I SAT IN LODGE WITH YOU
There is a saying filled with cheer.
Which calls a man to fellowship.
It means as much for him to hear
As lies within the brother-grip.
Nay, more! It opens wide the way to friendliness sincere and true
There are no strangers when you say to me: I sat in lodge with
you."
When that is said, then I am known;
There is no questioning or doubt;
I need not walk my path alone
Nor from my fellows be shut out.
These words hold all of brotherhood and help me face
the world anew
There's something deep and rich and good in this: " I sat
in lodge with you."
Though in far lands one needs must roam,
By sea and shore and hill and plain,
Those words bring him a touch of home
And lighten tasks that seem in vain
Men's faces are no longer strange, but seem as those he
always knew
When some one brings the joyous change with his: " I sat
in lodge with you."
So you, my brother, now and then Have often put me in your debt
By showing forth to other men
That you your friends do not forget.
When all the world seems gray and cold and I am weary,
worn and blue
Then comes this golden thought I holdyou said: " I
sat
in lodge with you."
When to the last great Lodge you fare
My prayer is that I may be
One of your friends who wait you there,
Intent your smiling face to see.
We, with the warder at the gate, will have a pleasant task to
do
We'll call, though you come soon or late: " Come in ! We
sat in lodge with you."
NETHERLANDS
Speculative Freemasonry was first introduced
in the Netherlands by the opening at the Hague, in 1731, of an
Occasional Lodge under a Deputation granted by Lord Lovel, Grand
Master of England, of which Doctor Desaguliers was Master, for
the purpose of conferring the First and Second Degrees on the
Duke of Lorraine, afterward the Emperor Francis I. He received
the Third Degree subsequently in England. But it was not until
September 30, 1734, that a regular Lodge was opened by Brother
Vincent de la Chapelle, as Grand Master of the United Provinces,
who may therefore be regarded as the originator of Freemasonry
in the Netherlands. In 1735, this Lodge received a Patent or Deputation
from the Grand Lodge of England, John Cornelius Rademaker being
appointed Provincial Grand Master, and several Daughter Lodges
were established by it. In the same year the States General prohibited
all Masonic meetings by an Edict issued November 30, 1735.
The Roman clergy actively persecuted the
Freemasons, which seems to have produced a reaction, for in 1737,
the magistrates repealed the Edict of Suppression, and forbade
the clergy from any interference with the Order, after which Freemasonry
flourished in the United Provinces. The Masonic innovations and
controversies that had affected the rest of the Continent never
successfully obtruded on the Dutch Freemasons, who practiced with
great fidelity the simple Rite of the Grand Lodge of England,
although an attempt had been made in 1757 to introduce them. In
1798, the Grand Lodge adopted a Book of Statutes, by which it
accepted the three Symbolic Degrees, and referred the four advanced
Degrees of the French Rite to a Grand Chapter. In 1816, Prince
Frederick attempted a reform in the Degrees, which was, however,
only partially successful. The Grand Lodge of the Netherlands,
whose Orient is at the Hague, tolerates the advanced Degrees without
actually recognizing them. Most of the Lodges confine themselves
to the Symbolic Degrees of Saint John's Freemasonry, while a few
practice the reformed system of Prince Frederick.
NETWORK
One of the decorations of the pillars at
the porch of the Temple (see Pillars of the Porch).
NEUFCHATEAU, COUNT FRANÇOIS DE
See Francois de Neufchateau, Le Comte
NEVADA
On May 15, 1862, Carson Lodge, No. 154,
now No. 1, at Carson City was granted a Charter. At a meeting
held on January 16, 1865, to consider the formation of a Grand
Lodge, six of the eight Lodges in the State were represented.
The following day delegates were sent by seven Lodges, namely,
Carson, No. 154; Washoe, No. 157; Virginia, No. 162; Silver City,
No. 163; Silver Star, No. 165; Escurial, No. 171, and Esmeralda,
No. 170. Lander Lodge, the only remaining one in the State did
not appear at the Convention but paid allegiance to the new Grand
Lodge along with the others. A Constitution was adopted, Grand
Officers were elected and installed January 17, and the first
Annual Grand Communication at Virginia City was held October 1S13,
1865. Ten years later the Grand Lodge lost heavily by fire. In
consequence the next regular meeting, at which 92 members and
286 visitors were present, was held on top of Mount Davidson,
7,827 feet high.
A Dispensation was issued by the General
Grand High Priest, Companion John L. Lewis, in May, 1863, to Lewis
Chapter at Carson City, Nevada. Its Charter was dated September
8, 1865. Companion Lewis granted authority to the four Chapters
in the State, namely, Lewis, Virginia, Austin, and White Pine,
to take steps to form a Grand Chapter. Three days later Charters
were granted to two Chapters which were working under Dispensation.
The early Councils in Nevada were not long-lived
owing probably to the fewness of the Companions who started them.
The first was Carson Council at Carson City. Its Dispensation
was issued on September 3, 1896, by the General Grand Council
but was annulled September 24, 1900. Several others were organized
but ceased work before long and the first to receive a Charter
was Nevada, No. 1, at Goldfield, on September 10, 1912.
The De Witt Clinton Commandery, No. 1, at
Virginia was established under a Dispensation from Grand Master
Henry L. Palmer, February 4, 1867, and was chartered September
18, 1868. It was duly constituted and officers installed on January
8, 1869. When the Grand Commandery of Nevada was organized on
April 15, 1918, there were in existence in the State three subordinate
Commanderies, De Witt Clinton, No. 1; Malta, No. 3, and Winnemucca,
No. 4. Eureka, No. 2, had ceased work some time before.
In 1901 Charters were granted by the Supreme
Council, Southern Jurisdiction, to four bodies of the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite at Reno, namely, Nevada Lodge of Perfection,
No. 1; Washoe Chapter of Rose Croix, No. 1; Pyramid Council of
Kadosh, No. 1, and Reno Consistory, No. 1. The Charters were dated
respectively June 28, August 30, December l9, and December 20.
NE VARIETUR
Latin, meaning Lest it should be changed.
These words refer to the Masonic usage of requiring a Brother,
when he receives a Certificate from a Lodge, to affix his name,
in his own handwriting, in the margin, as a precautionary measure,
which enables distant Brethren, by a comparison of the handwriting,
to recognize the true and original owner of the Certificate, and
to detect any impostor who may surreptitiously have obtained one.
NEW BRUNSWICK
New Brunswick was part of Nova Scotia until
the year 1786. On August 22, 1792, Solomon's Lodge, No. 22, was
warranted by the Provincial Grand Lodge at Halifax. It was constituted
at St. Anns, now Fredericton, the capital of New Brunswick. When
the Dominion of Canada was established in 1867 the question of
an Independent Grand Lodge of New Brunswick was discussed and
as a result fourteen Lodges opened a Grand Lodge on October 10,
1867. Within four years all the Lodges in the district came under
the control of the new Body. Brother Robert T. Clinch, the District
Grand Master, was elected Grand Master but declined the office
as he was still on the English Registry. Brother B. Lester Peters
was then elected and finally installed on January 22, 1868. Capitular,
Cryptic and Templar Freemasonry each have Bodies in the Province.
NEW CALEDONIA
See Oceanza
NEWFOUNDLAND
The Ancient Colony of Newfoundland remained
without the Confederation of the Canadian Provinces. Freemasonry
in this island dates back to 1746, the first Warrant being granted
by the Provincial Grand Lodge at Boston. Brother J. Lane's list
gives six Lodges warranted in the eighteenth century. The Grand
Lodge of the Ancient, England is credited with fourone in
1774 and three in 1788and the Grand Lodge of England, Moderns,
with two one each in 1784 and 1785. Nine others were chartered
by the United Grand Lodge of England up to 1881, a number still
remaining active. Six Lodges were organized under the Scottish
Jurisdiction. A District Grand Lodge has been formed.
NEW HAMPSHIRE
A petition was sent to Henry Price of Boston
on February 5, 1735, by six Freemasons at Portsmouth who had been
working for some time under Constitutions "both in print
and manuscript." No Lodge had up till then been chartered
in Portsmouth but they probably possessed a copy of the British
Constitutions of 1723 and a set of older laws in manuscript. It
is likely that meetings were held by these Brethren even before
the establishment of the Grand Lodge in 1717. In 1787 a Convention
of delegates from two or more Lodges was called to organize a
Grand Lodge but it was not fully established until July 8, 1789.
General John Sullivan was elected the first Grand Master and the
name chosen for the new body was "The Most Worshipful Grand
Lodge of the Ancient and Honorable Fraternity of Free and Accepted
Masons of the State of New Hampshire."
The General Grand King issued a Warrant
to Saint Andrew's Chapter at Hanover on January 27, 1807. The
Warrant was confirmed with others on June 7, 1816; at the Convocation
of the General Grand Chapter of the United States. On the organization
of the Grand Chapter of this State on June 10, 1819, the following
officers were elected: Grand High Priest and Deputy Grand High
Priest, John Harris and Thomas S. Bowles; Grand King, Henry Hutchinson;
Grand Treasurer, John Davenport; Grand Secretary, Thomas W. Colby;
Grand Chaplain, Thomas Beede; Grand Marshal, Timothy Kenrick;
Grand Stewards, Companions Cady, Baker, Saxton, Pierce, and Grand
Tyler, Jesse Corbett. The Grand Chapter was recognized by the
General Grand Chapter at the Convocation held on September 9,
1819.
Tyrian Council of Royal Masters was established
by four Brethren on August 5, 1815. It was visited about August
19, 1817, by Companion Jeremy L. Cross who conferred the Degree
of Select Master upon several members of the Council. Tyrian,
Guardian, Washington and Columbian Councils together formed a
Grand Council for the State of New Hampshire on July 9, 1823.
From 1835 to 1855, however, the work of the Royal and Select Masters
in New Hampshire ceased owing to the Morgan turmoil.
A meeting to organize Trinity Encampment,
No. 1, was held at Lebanon in March, 1824. Two other meetings
were held on April 8 and 15 and the Charter was received on April
10. During the Morgan excitement the Encampment ceased work but
was granted another Charter on September 19, 1853. Sir Henry Fowle
on May 27, 1826, granted a Dispensation for a Grand Encampment.
A meeting of delegates at Concord on June 13, 1826, elected officers
and chose Sir John Harris of Hopkinton as Grand Master. A Constitution
was adopted on June 14 and meetings were held regularly until
interrupted by the Anti-Masonic movement- on Tuesday, June 12,
1860, delegates from five subordinate Commanderies, namely, De
Witt Clinton, Trinity, Mount Horeb, North Star, and St. Paul,
were present at a meeting to reorganize the Grand Commandery.
A Warrant of Dispensation was granted on July 19 and, on August
22, 1860, in the presence of Benjamin B. French, Grand Master
of the Grand Encampment, officers were duly elected and installed.
Two Charters were issued to the Ineffable
Lodge of Perfection at Portsmouth, one on January 31, 1842, which
was destroyed by fire in 1865, and a second on May 19, 1866. A
second body of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the Grand
Council of Princes of Jerusalem at Portsmouth, was chartered June
25, 1845. On June 4, 1864, Charters were granted to the Saint
George Chapter of Rose Croix and the Edward A. Raymond Consistory
at Nashua.
NEW JERSEY
The first Provincial Grand Master in America,
Daniel Coxe, lived in the State of New Jersey but did not, it
is believed, exercise his Masonic powers there. On May 13,1761,
A Warrant was granted by George Harrison, Provincial Grand Master
of the Province of New York to Freemasons in the Town of Newark.
The first meeting place of this body, the Saint John's Lodge,
No. 1, of which the Minutes are preserved even yet, was the Rising
Sun Tavern. It met afterwards at the houses of the members. William
Tukey was named in the Charter as the first Master and under his
direction the Lodge flourished. Washington's birthday was always
observed as a festival and when the General's Headquarters were
located at Morristown in 1779, numerous military Lodges were organized.
A Convention of Master Masons was held on December 18, 1786, to
consider the establishment of a Grand Lodge for New Jersey. A
Constitution was adopted on April 2, 1787.
In the Proceedings of the General Grand
Chapter for June 6, 1816, there is mention of a Warrant granted
to Washington Chapter, Newark, May 26, 1813. The General Grand
High Priest was reported to have granted permission for the formation
of a Grand Chapter but, owing to the fact that there was only
one regularly chartered Chapter subordinate to the General Grand
Chapter in New Jersey, it was declared impossible. Not until February
13, 1857, was the Grand Chapter of New Jersey established by Newark
Chapter, No. 2; Hiram, No. 4, and Boudinot, No. 5. The Grand Council
of Pennsylvania chartered New Brunswick Council, No. 12, on June
23, 1860. This Council wag later known as Scott Council, No. 1.
New Brunswick, No. 12; Eane, No. 11; Gebal, No. 14, the three
Councils in New Jersey, all chartered by the Grand Council of
Pennsylvania, began work for the formation of a Grand Council
of New Jersey. A Convention was held at New Brunswick November
26, 1860, when Nathan O. Benjamin, Grand Master of the Grand Council
of New York, was elected to preside and Joseph H. Hough, Deputy
Master of Gebal Council, became Secretary. The Grand Council u
then opened in Ample Form.
Hugh de Payens Commandery, No. 1, at Jersey
City was granted a Dispensation March 12, 1858, and a Charter
September 16, the following year. It was duly constituted on November
25, 1859. The Grand Commandery was constituted on February 14,
1860, with three subordinate Commanderies, Hugh de Payens, No.
1; Saint Bernard, No. 2, and Helena, No. 3. In 1863 the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite was first established at Trenton when
the Mercer Lodge of Perfection was chartered, May 23, 1863. The
Mercer Council of Princes of Jerusalem and the Trenton Chapter
of Rose Croix were both established at Trenton by Charters dated
May 19, 1866, and June 26 1868, respectively. On May 16, 1867,
the New Jersey Consistory at Jersey City was granted a Charter.
These bodies are under the Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction.
NEW MEXICO
During the Mexican War Freemasonry was brought
into the district by military Lodges attached to Regiments stationed
there. Among these Lodges were Missouri, No. 86, and Hardin, No.
87, but both were closed with the end of the Mexican War. The
Territory was then established and the Grand Lodge of Missouri
issued a Charter for Montezuma Lodge, No. 109, the first Lodge
to be organized in the new political division. It was duly instituted
on August 22, 1851. A Convention was held at Santa Fe, August
6, 1877, for the purpose of making arrangements to establish a
Grand Lodge. Simon B. Newcomb presided and A. Z. Huggins acted
as Secretary. Representatives of four Lodges, namely, Aztec, No.
108; Chapman, No. 95; Montezuma, No. 109, and Union, No. 480, were
appointed to be present, but when the meeting took place those
from the last named failed to attend. The next day William W.
Griffin was elected Grand Master and David J. Miller, Grand Secretary.
The following Chapters were organized under
Dispensation and received Charters: Santa Fe, No. 1, Santa Fe,
December 11. 1865, September 18, 1868; Silver City, No. 2, Silver
City, February 22, 1876, August 24, 1877; Las Vegas, No. 3, Las
Vegas, March 10, 1881, August 15, 1883; Rio Grande, No. 4, Albuquerque,
January 12, 1882, August 15, 1883; Deming, No. 5, Deming, February
28, 1885, October 1, 1886; Raton, No. 6, Raton, no Dispensation,
July 23, 1891; Columbia, No. 7, Roswell, January 24! 1894, August
24, 1894, and Socorru, No. 8, Socorro, October 1, 1896, October
13, 1897. The Grand Chapter was organized October 3, 1898, and
W. H. Seamon was elected Grand High Priest and A. A. Keen, Grand
Secretary.
Deming Council, No. 1, was granted a Dispensation
May 11, 1887, by the General Grand Council. Its Charter was issued
November 19, 1889, but was annulled November 4, 1909. Hiram Council,
No. 1, at Albuquerque, organized under a Dispensation, January
19, 1920, was granted a Charter from the General Grand Council
on September 9, 1924. Zuni Council, at Gallup, was organized by
Dispensation, April 3, 1922, and Santa Fe Council at Santa Fe,
April 19, 1922, a Council of that name under Dispensation at Santa
Fe, May 1, 1895, surrendered its Dispensation on November 38,
1899.
A Commandery organized in New Mexico as
Santa Fe, No. 1, was granted a Dispensation May 31, 1869. A Charter
was issued September 21,1871. When the Grand Commandery was instituted
on August 21, }901, there were six subordinate Commanderies in
existence, Santa Fe, No. 1; Las Vegas, No. 2; Pilgrim, No. 3; McGrorty,
No. 4; Aztec, No. 5, and Rio Hondo, No. 6 on August 29 Malta,
No. 7, was established at Silver City. A Lodge of Perfection,
the first body of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern
Jurisdiction, to be organized in New Mexico, was granted a Charter
as Santa Fe, No. 1, on April 8, 1886. On October 20, 1909, three
more bodies of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite were chartered,
namely, Aztlan Chapter of prose Croix, No. 1 Coronado Council
of Kadosh, No. 1, and New Mexico Consistory, No. 1.
NEW SOUTH WALES
A state of the Commonwealth of Australia,
in the southeast portion of the island continent. Freemasonry
owed its introduction to this State to the Social and Military
Virtues Lodge, No. 227 (Ireland), which, attached to the 46th
Foot in 1752, was at work in Sydney in 1816. Following on this,
other Lodges, with a fixed abode, were opened under Irish Warrants,
the first of which was Australian Social Lodge, No. 260, opened
in 1820.
The Grand Lodge of England chartered a Lodge
entirely for Australians, Australia, No. 820, in 1828. In 1839
England appointed a Provincial Grand Master and Scotland and Ireland
followed suit in 1855 and 1858 respectively.
Representatives of twelve Scottish and Irish
Lodges met on December 3, 1877, and organized the Grand Lodge
of New South Wales. A body had however existed for some years
which had also called itself the Grand Lodge of New South Wales
but its proceedings had been highly irregular and when the new
Grand Lodge was formed it accepted a Lodge Warrant from the new
authority. The latter however was itself refused recognition by
the Grand Lodges of the British Isles owing to there being seventy-three
other Lodges in the district over which the few had no right to
annex authority. On September 1, 1888, a Grand Lodge of West South
Wales was opened which was duly sanctioned by other Grand Lodges
and the existing dissension was thus ended.
NEW TEMPLARS
An Order of five Degrees instituted in France
in the early part of the nineteenth century. The Degrees were
termedInitiati; Intimi Initiati; Adepti; Orientales Adepti;
and Magnae aquilae nigrae sancti Johannes Apostoli Adepti.
NEWTON, SIR ISAAC
Was Sir Isaac Newton a Mason? The question
lies in the same case as that about Samuel Johnson (which see).
There is in Cambridge an Isaac Newton Lodge, No. 859, but the
fact does not prove Newton a Mason any more than the existence
(at various times) of some three Shakespeare Lodges proves that
Shakespeare was a Mason. There are, however, presuppositions in
favor of his membership. Dr. J. T. Desaguliers was one of Newtons
closest friends, so close that Newton stood godfather to Dr. Desaguliers'
daughter; and Dr. Desaguliers at the time was the master builder
of the new Grand Lodge system of Speculative Freemasonry.
The Royal Society was the apple of Newton's
eye. Newton in turn was the leader, inspiration, and glory of
the Royal Society; and the membership of the Royal Society was
so wholly Masonic that six or ten of its members were in the same
Lodge at the same time; the Society's club shared its rooms with
a Lodge; furthermore, a few of the Lodges acted as extension centers
for the Society at a time when it was not yet popularly recognized
and was the butt of much newspaper ridicule, so that it meant
not a little for Royal Society members to be able to deliver scientific
lectures (even on mechanics) to Lodges. Newton was therefore in
a Masonic circle. Also, one of the few of his papers published
posthumously was an attempt to work out the dimensions of Solomon's
Temple. He had his formula for gravitation held up for twenty
y ears because he had forgotten that a French mile and an English
mile were not the same length. His calculations on the Temple
were held up even longer, forever in fact, because he found that
four different cubits were in use as units of measure in Solomon's
time, and he could nowhere discover which one had been used; nevertheless
this interest in Solomon's Temple is significant. As against these
presuppositions in favor of his having been a Mason stand two
facts: no record of his membership has been found; Sir Isaac himself
w as "not a clubbable man."
NEW YORK
The first Provincial Grand Master from 1730,
Colonel Daniel Coxe, did not take any active steps towards the
exercise of his new office. Captain Richard Riggs, however, who
succeeded him on November 15, 1737! arrived in New York on May
21, 1738. The Provincial Grand Lodge was then organized and the
first mention of Freemasonry in New York which occurs in the New
York Gazette of January 22, 1739, is thought to refer to this
body.
The fourth Provincial Grand Master was the
most active in organizing Lodges Temple and Saint John's were
both alive in 1758 and the latter, the Charter of which was dated
1751, was probably constituted first. On September 5, 1781, the
Atholl Grand Lodge authorized the constitution of a Provincial
Grand Lodge of New York with the Rev. William Walter as Provincial
Grand Master. Nine Lodges united in its formation, but Lodges
constituted by the Moderns were excluded, and some years elapsed
before it was thought advisable to allow them to participate.
In 1787 the Grand Lodge declared illegal all Lodges in the State
not under its own control.
The Royal Arch Degree was probably worked
under the Lodge Charters at first. It is thought that Washington
Chapter began life with the Provincial Grand Lodge, warranted
in 1781, but as its records were destroyed by fire the facts about
its early history are unknown. Five Chapters, namely, Hudson,
Temple, Horeb, Hibernian and Montgomery, constituted on March
14, 1798, a Deputy Grand Chapter for the State of New York, subordinate
to the Grand Chapter of the United States. Companion De Witt Clinton
was then elected Deputy Grand High Priest. Brother Clinton also
served as Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of New York, Grand
Master of Knights Templar of the United States and for fourteen
years was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of his State, being
furthermore United States Senator, Mayor of New York City, and
later was elected Governor of New York. He did not hesitate to
publicly defend Freemasonry when many in public office were too
fearful to be fair, or were even maliciously antagonistic. As
Governor he was prompt, judicial and thorough with the problems
raised by the Morgan mystery, and also wrote these sterling convictions
to show his personal Masonic sentiments:
"I know that Free Masonry, properly understood, and faithfully
attended to, is friendly to religion, morality, liberty and good
government; and I shall never shrink under any state of excitement,
or any extent of misapprehension, from bearing testimony in favor
of the purity of an Institution which can boast of a Washington
and a Franklin and a Lafayette as distinguished members, which
inculcates no principles and authorizes no acts that are not in
perfect accordance with good morals, civil liberty and entire
obedience to the government and the laws."
On January 10,
1799, the Grand Chapter to the Northern States assumed the name,
as it already had the status, of a General Grand body and the
Deputy Grand Chapters omitted the word Deputy from their titles.
Columbia Grand Council, No. 1, was opened
at a meeting in Saint John's Hall on September 2, 1810. It was
probably a self-constituted body. On January 18, 1823, it was
resolved to form a Grand Council of Royal and Select Masters and
at a Convention held a week later Companion Lownds was chosen
Most Illustrious Royal Grand Master.
In 1860 this Grand Council united with another
organized May 7, 1854, by representatives of Washington, Pennell
and Oriental Councils. A list of members of Morton's Encampment,
probably the first in the State, appeared in 1796. Reference to
a procession including Knights Templar in the Independent Journal
of New York, December 28, 1785, suggests that the Encampment was
at work years before 1796. Of those established about the beginning
of the nineteenth century, Temple Commandery, No. 2, seems to
be the oldest. A meeting was held on January 2, 1814, of the leading
Knights Templar in the State Assuming the necessary authority,
they chose officers for a Grand Encampment and on June 18, 1814,
this body was established with De Witt Clinton as Grand Master.
June 21, 1816, the General Grand Encampment of the United States
was organized at New York. Ineffable Lodge of Perfection and Grand
Council of Princes of Jerusalem were chartered at Albany on December
2O, 1767. Some years elapsed and on August 6, 1806, the Chapter
of Rose Croix of New York City and the Consistory of New York
City were both constituted.
NEW ZEALAND
A dominion consisting of a group of islands
in the Pacific Ocean about one thousand miles to the southeast
of Australia. Less than 100 years after the standing of the first
European in this country a French Lodge, Franqaise Primitive ntipodienne,
the Antipodes meaning the opposite side of the earth, was chartered
at Akaroa on August 9, 1843. The second and third were founded
by the Grand Lodges of Ireland and England respectively in 1844
and 1845.
After 1862 the progress of the Craft gained
impetus and many more Lodges sprang up. Between 1860 and 1875
fifty-four Lodges in all were warranted. On April 99, 1890, the
Grand Lodge of New Zealand was established by those Lodges which
desired independence. The others have continued their allegiance
to their original Grand Lodges but have always maintained a friendly
attitude towards the Grand Lodge of New Zealand.
At the time of the writing of the concise
account of Freemasonry in New Zealand on page 707 the oldest known Lodge record was dated 1843. In Centennial History of the New
Zealand Pacific Lodge, Aro. It by R. C. G. Weston (published by
the Lodge in 1942) evidence is given of a Lodge at mork in 1842.
NICARAGUA
A republic of Central America, between the
Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. The Lodge of Regularity,
No. 300, was granted a Charter by the Grand Lodge of England at
Black River in 1763, but its name was removed from the register
at the Union of 1813. Lodges were opened also at Greyto an by
authority of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.
About 1762 a Provincial Grand Master, Brother
Thomas 51. Perkins, was appointed by Lord Aberdour and this authority
was later extended to cover America.
Brother Street states in 1922' report to
the Grand Lodge of Alabaman "The Grand Lodge of Nicaragua
has its seat at Managua but we have been able to learn nothing
of its history or present activities."
NICK
From the Danish word, Nikken. The spirit
of the waters, an enemy of man, the devil, or in the vulgate,
Old Nick.
NICOLAI, CHRlSTOPH FRIEDRICH
Christopher Frederick Nicolai, author of
a very interesting essay on the origin of the Society of Freemasons,
was a bookseller of Berlin, and one of the most distinguished
of the German savants of that Augustan age of German literature
in which he lived. He was born at Berlin on the 18th of March,
1733, and died in the same city on the 8th of January, 1811. He
was the editor of and an industrious contributor to, two German
periodicals of high literary character, a learned writer on various
subjects of science and philosophy, and the intimate friend of
Leasing, whose works he edited, and of the illustrious Mendelssohn.
In 1782-3, he published a work with the following title: Versuch
über die Beschuldigungen welche dem Tempelherrnorden gemacht
worden und über dessen Geheimniss; nebst einem Anhange über
das Entstehen der Freimaurergegeselschaft that is, An Essay on
the accusations made against the Order of Knight's Templar and
their mystery; troth an Appendix on the origin of the Fraternity
of Freemasons. In this work Nicola advanced his peculiar theory
on the origin of Freemasonry, which is substantially as follows:
Lord Bacon, taking certain hints from the
writings of Andrea, the founder of Rosicrucianism and his English
disciple, Fludd, on the subject of the regeneration of the world,
proposed to accomplish the same object, but by a different and
entirely opposite method. For, whereas, they explained everything
esoterically, Bacon's plan was to abolish all distinction between
the esoteric and the exoteric and to demonstrate everything by
proofs from nature. This idea he first promulgated in his Instauratio
Magna, but afterward more fully developed in his New Atlantis.
In this latter world he introduced his beautiful apologue. abounding
in Masonic ideas, in which he described the unknown island of
Bensalem, where a king had built a large edifice, called after
himself, Solomon's House. Charles I, it is said, had been much
attracted by this idea, and had intended to found something of
the kind upon the plan of Solomon's Temple, but the occurrence
of the Civil War prevented the execution of the project.
The idea lay for some time dormant, but
was subsequently revived, in 1646, by Wallis, Wilkins, and several
other learned men, who established the Royal Society for the purpose
of carrying out Bacon's plan of communicating to the world scientific
and philosophic eat truths. About the same time another society
was formed by other learned men, who sought to arrive at truth
by the investigations of alchemy and astrology. To this society
such men as Ashmole and Lily were attached, and they resolved
to construct a House of Solomon in the island of Bensalem, where
they might communicate their instructions by means of secret symbols.
To cover their mysterious designs, they got themselves admitted
into the Masons Company, and held their meetings at Masons Hall,
in Masons Alley, Basinghall Street. As Freemen of London, they
took the name of Freemasons, and naturally adopted the Masonic
implements as symbols.
Although this association, like the Royal
Society, sought, but by a different method, to inculcate the principles
of natural science and philosophy, it subsequently took a political
direction. Most of its members were strongly opposed to the puritanism
of the dominant party and were in favor of the royal cause, and
hence their meetings, ostensibly held for the purpose of scientific
investigation, were really used to conceal their secret political
efforts to restore the exiled house of Stuart. From this society,
which subsequently underwent a decadence, sprang the revival in
1717, which culminated in the establishment of the Grand Lodge
of England. Such was the theory of Nicola. Few will be found at
the present day to concur in all his views, yet none can refuse
to award to him the praise of independence of opinion, originality
of thought, and an entire avoidance of the beaten paths of hearsay
testimony and unsupported tradition. His results may be rejected,
but his method of attaining them must be commended.
NICOTIATES, ORDER OF
or the Order of the Priseurs. As smoker,
meaning a smoker of tobacco, so priseur means taker-a taker of
snuff. A secret Order mentioned by Clavel, teaching the doctrines
of Pythagoras From a strictly historical point of view the Society
seems to have had its rise about the year 1817, but its traditional
history carries one back to the closing years of the fifth century,
and the persecution under Emperor Justinian, instigated by his
wife, Theodora. In so far as can be gathered, Cachire de Beaurepaire,
A. MealletEsline and Etienne Francois Bazot seemed to have
been the original members or founders of the Society. Brother
R. E. Wallace James was of the opinion, derived from various circumstances,
although he had as then no actual evidence sufficient to verify
the belief, that to Bazot should be contributed this honor.
The Society lasted only for some sixteen
years. The last meeting of which we can find any trace was a banquet
which was held in June, 1833. During these sixteen years, however,
the Priseurs gathered to the membership the bulk of the most famous
Masonic characters of the time resident in Paris. Among the first
to join was J. M. Ragon, who was admitted a member on June 1,
1817, at which time, though the Society had only been a few months
in existence, the membership numbered twenty-five. Andre Joseph
Etienne Le Rouge was admitted at the following meeting, held upon
January 21, 1818, and on his being appointed Secretary, he became
the ruling spirit of the Society. In short, the Priseurs were
apparently a very select little coterie of Parisian Masons who
met together, over their pipes and cigars, to discuss the various
subjects connected more or less with Freemasonry (see Transactions,
Quatuor Coronati Lodge, volume xxviiu, 1915).
NIGERIA
The Grand Lodges in the British Isles are
responsible for the introduction of Freemasonry into Nigeria,
a territory of West Africa. The English Grand Lodge controls five
Lodges at Lagos and one each at Calabar, Ebute Metta, Kaduna,
Onitsha, Fort Harcourt, Warri and Zaria; Ireland one at Calabar,
and Scotland has two at Lagos and one at Calabar.
NIGHT
Lodges, almost universally, all over the
world, meet, except on special occasions, at night. In some large
cities, as New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Lodges have been established
of Brethren whose occupations prevent their assemblage at other
than the daytime, hence these are usually called Daylight Lodges.
In this selection of the hours of night and darkness for initiation,
the usual coincidence will be found between the ceremonies of
Freemasonry and those of the Ancient Mysteries, showing their
derivation from common origin. Justin says that at Eleusis, Triptolemus
invented the art of sowing corn, and that, in honor of this invention,
the nights were consecrated to initiation. The application is,
however, rather abstruse.
In the Bacchae of Euripides (Act in, line 485), that author introduces
the god Bacchus, the supposed inventor of the Dionysian Mysteries,
as replying to the question of King Pentheus in the following
words:
Pentheus. By night or day, these sacred rites perform'st thou?
Bacchus. Mostly by night, for venerable is darkness;
In all the other Mysteries the same reason
was assigned for nocturnal celebrations, since night and darkness
have something solemn and August in them which is disposed to
fill the mind with sacred awe. Hence black, as an emblem of darkness
and night, was considered as the color appropriate to the mycteria.
In the Masteries of Hindustan, the candidate for initiation, having
been duly prepared by previous purification, was led at the dead
of night to the gloomy cavern, in which the mystic rites were
performed.
The same period of darkness was adopted
for the celebration of the Mysteries of Mithras, in Persia Among
the Druids of Britain and Gaul, the principal annual initiation
commenced at low twelve, or midnight of the eve of May-Day. In
short, it is indisputable that the initiations in all the Ancient
Mysteries were nocturnal in their character.
The reason given by the ancients for this
selection of night as the time for initiation, is equally applicable
to the system of Freemasonry. "Darkness," says Brother
Oliver, "was an emblem of death, and death was a prelude
to resurrection. It will be at once seen, therefore, in what manner
the doctrine of the resurrection was inculcated and exemplified
in these remarkable institutions." Death and the resurrection
were the doctrines taught in the Ancient Mysteries; and night and darkness were necessary to
add to the sacred awe and reverence which these doctrines ought
always to inspire in the rational and contemplative mind. The
same doctrines form the very groundwork of Freemasonry; and as
the Master Mason, to use the language of Hutchinson, "represents
a man saved from the grave of iniquity and raised to the faith
of salvation," darkness and night are the appropriate accompaniments
to the solemn ceremonies which demonstrate this profession.
NIHONGI
Japanese, meaning Chronicles of Fisons The
companion of the Rojiki; the two works together forming the doctrinal
and historic basis of Sintonism. The Japanese adherents of Sinsyn
are termed Sintus, or Sintoos, who worship the gods, the chief
of which is Ten-sio-dai-yin. The Nihongi was composed about 720
A.D., with the evident design of giving a Chinese coloring to
the subject-matter of the Kojiki, upon which it is founded.
NILE
There is a tradition in the old Masonic
Records that the inundations of the River Nile, in Egypt, continually
destroying the perishable landmarks by which one man could distinguish
his possessions from those of another, Euclid instructed the people
in the art of geometry, by which they might measure their lands;
and then taught them to bound them with walls and ditches, BO
that after an inundation each man could identify his own boundaries.
The tradition is given in the Cooke Manuscript (lines 455-72)
thus: "Euclyde was one of the first founders of Geometry,
and he gave hit name, for in his time there was a water in that
lond of Egypt that is called Nilo, and hit florid so ferre into
the londe that men myght not dwelle therein. Then this worthi
clerke Enclide taught hem to malre grete wallys and diches to
holde owt the watyr, and he by Gemetria mesured the londe and
departyd hit in divers parties, and made every man to close his
own part with walles and dishes." This legend of the origin
of the art of geometry was borrowed by the old Operative Masons
from the Origines of Saint Isidore of Seville, where a similar
story is told.
NIL NISI CLAVIS DEEST
Latin, and meaning Nothing but the key
is wanting. A motto or device often attached to the Double Triangle
of Royal Arch Masonry It is inscribed on the Royal Arch badge
or jewel of the Grand Chapter of Scotland, the other devices
being a Double Triangle and a Triple Tau.
NIMROD
The Legend of the Craft in the Old Constitutions
refers to Nimrod as one of the founders Of Freemasonry. Thus in
the York Manuscript. No. 1, we read: 'At ye makeing of ye Toure
of Babell there was Masonrie first much esteemed of, and the King
of Babilon yt was called Nimrod was A Mason himself and loved
well Masons." And the Cooke Manuscript thus repeats the story:
'And this same Nembroth began the towre of babilon and he taught
to his werkemen the craft of Masonrie, and he had with him many
Masons more than forty thousand. And he loved and cherished them
well" (see line 343). The idea no doubt sprang out of the
Scriptural teaching that Nimrod was the architect of many cities;
a statement not so well expressed in the authorized version, as
it is in the improved one of Bochart, which says: "From that
land Nimrod went forth to Asshur, and builded Nineveh, and Rehoboth
city, and Calah and Resen between Nineveh and Calah, that is the
great city."
NINE
If the number three was celebrated among
the ancient sages, that of three times three had no less celebrity;
because, according to them, each of the three elements which constitute
our bodies is ternary: the water containing earth and fire; the
earth containing igneous and aqueous particles; and the fire being
tempered by globules of water and terrestrial corpuscles which
serve to feed it. No one of the three elements being entirely
separated from the others, all material beings composed of these
three elements, whereof each is triple, may be designated by the
figurative number of three times three, which has become the symbol
of all formations of bodies. Hence the name of ninth envelop given
to matter. Every material extension, every circular line, has
for its representative sign the number nine among the Pythagoreans,
who had observed the property which this number possesses of reproducing
itself incessantly and entire in every multiplication; thus offering
to the mind a very striking emblem of matter, which is incessantly
composed before our eyes, after having undergone a thousand decompositions.
The number nine was consecrated to the Spheres
and the Muses. It is the sign of every circumference; because
a circle or 360 degrees is equal to nine, that is to say, 3+6+0=9.
Nevertheless, the ancients regarded this number with a sort of
terror; they considered it a bad presage; as the symbol of versatility,
of change, and the emblem of the frailty of human affairs. Wherefore
they avoided all numbers where nine appears, and chiefly 81, the
produce of nine multiplied by itself, and the addition whereof,
8+1, again presents the number nine. As the figure of the number
six was the symbol of the terrestrial globe, animated by a Divine
Spirit, the figure of the number nine symbolized the earth, under
the influence of the Evil Principle; and thence the terror it
inspired. Nevertheless, according to the Cabalists, the character
nine symbolizes the generative egg, or the image of a little globular
being, from whose lower side seems to flow its spirit of life.
The Ennead, signifying an aggregate of nine thongs or persons,
is the first square of unequal numbers. Every one is aware of
the singular properties of the number nine, which, multiplied
by itself or any other number whatever, gives a result whose final
sum is always nine, or always divisible by nine. Nine multiplied
by each of the ordinary numbers, produces an arithmetical progression,
each member whereof, composed of two figures, presents a remarkable
fact; for example:
1 . 2 . 3 . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 . 9 . 10
9 . 18 . 27 . 36 . 45 . 54 . 63 . 72 . 81 . 90
The first line of figures gives the regular
series, from 1 to 10. The second reproduces this line doubly;
first ascending from the first figure of 18, and then returning
from the second figure of 81. In Freemasonry, nine derives its
value from its being the product of three multiplied into itself,
and consequently in Masonic language the number nine is always
denoted by the expression three times three. For a similar reason,
27, which is 3 times 9, and 81, which is 9 times 9, are esteemed
as sacred numbers in the advanced Degrees.
NINEVEH
The capital of the ancient Kingdom of Assyria,
and built by Nimrod. The traditions of its greatness and the magnificence
of its buildings were familiar to the Arabs, the Greeks, and the
Romans. The modern discoveries of Rich, of Botta, and other explorers,
have thrown much light upon its ancient condition, and have shown
that it was the seat of much architectural splendor and of a profoundly
symbolical religion, which had something of the characteristics
of the Mithraic worship. In the mythical relations of the did
Constitutions, which make up the Legend of the Craft, it is spoken
of as the ancient birthplace of Freemasonry, where Nimrod, who
was its builder, and "was a Mason and loved well the Craft,"
employed 60,000 Masons to build it, and gave them a charge "that
they should be true," and this, says the Harleian Manuscript,
No. 19g, was the first time that any Mason had any change of Craft.
NINE WORTHIEST
Also known as the Nine Excellent Masters,
Freemasons selected from Brethren. each representing a Lodge in
London and Westminster. Nine Brethren were elected every year
by the Grand Chapter to visit the Lodges and report to the Grand
Chapter or to the Right Worshipful Deputy Grand Master in order
to preserve the uniformity of the work in England. Appointment
of the Body occurred in 1792 and it was abolished in 1813. A special
medal was used by these nine members, being surrendered to the
successors every year The medal, recalled by the Grand Chapter
in 1817 on one side represented Freemasons at work and on the
reverse side showed an incident in the Arch legend.
NINUS GRAECUS
See Nalymus Grecus
NISAN
The seventh month of the Hebrew civil year,
and corresponding to the months of March and April, commencing
with the new moon of the former.
NINE SISTERS, LODGE OF THE
A famous Masonic Body at Paris, France,
La Loge des Neufs Soeurs, whose request for formal organization
same before the Grand Orient on March 11, 1776. The name, Nine
Sisters, refers to the Muses, the classic nine goddesses presiding
over the arts and sciences; their names, their departments, and
their characteristic attributes being as follows: Calliope, epic
poetry bearing wax tablet and pencil; Clio, history, with B scroll;
Erato, erotic poetry, with a small Lyre; Euterpe, lyric poetry,
bearing a double Hute; Melpomene, tragedy, with tragic mask and
ivy wreath; Polyhymnia, or Polymnia, sacred hymns, veiled and
in an attitude of thought; Terpsichore, choral song and the dance,
with a lyre; Thalia, comedy, with comic mask and ivy wreath, and
Urania, astronomy, carrying the celestial globe.
This truly remarkable Lodge had many noted members and it exhibited
some curious features. For instance, the tendency that has cropped
up here and there to some small extent to demur at any taking
of an oath in the conferring of a Degree was long ago considered
by this Lodge and it decided adversely to the practice. Among
the leading Brethren of the Lodge was Benjamin Franklin, the second
Worshipful Master, who during his term of office, two years, had
undoubtedly a part of consequence in the organization mainly by
the members of his Lodge of the Apollonian Society, called after
the fabled originator and protector of civil order, the founder
of cities and legislatures.
The President of this organization was Antoine
Court de Gebelin, who was Secretary of the Lodge in 1779. IIe
was a member of several learned societies and the author of a
comprehensive work planned to extend over thirty volumes, of which
he published nine, entitled the Primitive World Analyzed and Comas
pared with the Modern World. This enterprise gave him such a reputation
that he became the Royal Censor, although a Protestant. In 1780,
some months before the formation of the Apollonian Society, the
French Academy having the disposal for the first time of the prize
founded by Count de Valbelle awarded it to Court de Gebelin as
having produced the most meritorious and most useful work.
This writer having an encyclopedic knowledge
was an extremely zealous Freemason. Before the foundation of the
Lodge of Nine Sisters he was a member of another Lodge at Paris,
that of the Amie Reunis, Reunited Friends. He had been one of
the principal founders of the Rite of the Philalethes or Seeders
of Truth which played an important part in the Freemasonry of
the period and which extended its influence even beyond French
territory. In 1777 he gave in a series of seven lectures a course
on the Allegories most resembling the Masonic Grades where he
had for hearers the most distinguished Freemasons of Paris.
The Apollonian Society was organized November
17, 1780, and from the literary program of its first meeting we
can easily understand the nature of its activities. The institution
begun under its guidance was said to be "Particularly consecrated
to encourage the progress of the several sciences relating to
the arts and to commerce." It had two objects. The first
was to offer to scientists, professional or amateur, laboratories
for their experiments. The second was of teaching the use of machines
and of demonstrating their application for the making of all things
necessary to life. The program included a course in physics and
chemistry, serving as an introduction to the arts and trades in
which was made known the natural history of the materials there
used; a course in experimental physics and mathematics which could
be especially applied to the mechanic arts; a course in the manufacturing
of fabrics, of dyes and so on; a course in anatomy showing its
utility in sculpture and in painting, together with the knowledge
of physiology necessary to the art student; a course in the English
language and another in Italian. This was afterwards extended
to include Spanish and other tongues.
While a charge was made to defray expense,
yet some provision was arranged for free training. The institution
received upon its opening the favor of the learned societies and
responded with establishing new courses in mathematics, astronomy,
electricity and so forth. The name of the school became the Lycee,
the Lyceum, named after the great institution of learning opened
at Athens by Aristotle. It went through the Revolutionary period
without being obliged to close its doors and for sixty years this
institution of the higher education continued the ideas with which
it was begun by the Freemasons of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters.
A long list of notable men of France attended. We are told that
it "developed in French society a taste for the higher studies.
It contributed largely to the expansion of new ideas and to make
known scientific discoveries. It stimulated public education.
" we have mentioned what was done by the Lodge for training
along educational lines but there is a similar chapter in what
its members did for the protection of the innocent unjustly accused
and for the reform of the penal laws.
The active membership of Benjamin Franklin
in this Lodge raises an interesting question relative to the influence
this distinguished Freemason may have exerted regarding the attitude
of French Lodges in particular toward community problems. Franklin
was the founder of the club in Pennsylvania called the Junto,
a sort of small debating body in which the members educated one
another by discussion.
This was popularly known as the Leather
Apron Caleb, a suggestive title, by the way, and the rules drawn
up by Franklin require that every member in his turn should submit
one or more questions on any point of morals, politics, or natural
philosophy for general discussion and once in three months produce
and read an essay of his own writing on any subject he pleased.
What we know of this particular organization and its interest
in sociology is well worth study in connection with what is here
recorded of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters at Paris. The history
of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters was written by Louis Amiable,
lawyer, once Mayor of the Fifth District of Paris, Councillor
of the Court of Appeals, Grand Orator of the Grand College and
formerly Member of the Council of the Grand Orient of France.
He died suddenly at Aix, January 23, 1897, only the day following
the writing of the last few pages of his book. As is pathetically
said on the flyleaf, "The work is published without having
been submitted to the corrections of the author."
Brother Amiable's book, Une Loge Maçonnique
d'Avard 1789, has the charm and "go" of an alluring
novel full of remarkable incidents and striking people better,
indeed, than any novel could be, because the adventures are historical
and the actors are real. The wonderful book sketches with almost
breathless sweep the electrically charged zone of the French Revolution.
For Freemasonry in France, like the progress of the Craft in American
Colonial days, was a school of patriotism.
Freemasonry of the French and American Revolution
was neither watery nor apologetic. In truth it was a home and
a laboratory for the cleansing fluid that acidly tried men's souls,
that assayed the pure gold from the dross and sent the refined
product out into the world to hang together or hang separately
in the sacred cause of freedom. Says Brother Amiable:
Freemasonry
was incontestably one of the factors of the great changes which
were produced in North America and in France, not by means of
some kind of international conspiracy, as has been pretended so
childishly but in the elaboration of ideas, in rendering public
opinion clearer, wiser and stronger, fashioning the men in the
fray and whose action was decisive. Of all the Masonic Lodges
who exerted that influence in our country (France) the best known,
or perhaps I had better say, the least unknown today, is that
which received Voltaire some weeks before his death. Brother Amiable
is justly proud of the membership of the Lodge, the most famous
men of the time. Violtaire, the great writer; Lalande, the astronomer;
Benjamin Franklin, who followed Lalande as Worshipful Master;
Paul Jones was a member; and there is a long list of titled men,
counts and marquises; eminent lawyers, as de Seze, who defended
the King, Louis XVI, before the Convention; groups of literary
leaders, Delille, Chamfort, Lernierre, and Florian, of the French
Academy; painters of international fame as Vernet and Greuze;
the great sculptor Houdon; musicians, as Precinni and Delayrac;
while there was also a group of the Revolutionist Party chiefs,
Sieves, Bailly, Petion, Rabaut-Saint-Etienne, Brissot, Cerutti,
Foucroy, Camille Desmoulins and Danton.
The clergy themselves had furnished the
Nine Sisters with a notable array. Two churchmen took part in
the first grouping of founder members. On the day, when Voltaire
was received, the Lodge contained no less than thirteen priests
of religion. One of these, untiring in his zeal, took part in
the work. Four others who came later into the Lodge sat as members
of the great Revolutionary Assemblies.
Brother Amiable tells us that twelve members
had their seats in the National Institute, some occupying the
highest positions; thus Francois de Neufchateau was president
of the Senate Conservatory; Fontanes, president of the Legislative Body; Lacepe, Grand Chancellor
of the Legion of Honor; while Moreau de Saint MeryWorshipful
Master in 1805 was Councillor of State. Brother Amiable discusses
Masonic service:
In 1780 the Lodge in community service doubled
herself, in some sort, by the foundation of the Apollonian Society,
called afterwards the Museum and then the Lyceum of Paris, from
whence was drawn the origin of that development of the higher
public education in our country, France. Again, by Deputy and
Pastorate, the Lodge reinforced, directed, and caused to triumph
the great movement of opinion for the reform of the penal laws,
which had a satisfactory beginning in the Royal Declaration of
May, 1888, and which prompted the reformatory decrees of the Constitution.
Pages are given by Brother Amiable to the civil, literary, artistic,
and scientific activities of the members. The standard of qualification
was lofty and exacting, jealously cherished and enforced. He gives
some extracts he makes from the Lodge records. For instance,
The truly instructed Freemason, truly imbued with his duties,
is a man free from reproach and from remorse. He possesses, without
dependence on philosophy, the most sublime precepts of morality.
He will be just because he is benevolent and unselfish. None near
to him are strangers, and he will be himself neither strange nor
aloof nor indifferent to any. All men will be his brothers, whatever
may be their opinions or whatever may be their country. Lastly
he will be a faithful subject, a zealous citizen, submissive to
law and conservation, subordinate to the duties of society by
principle.
There is also in the same Document a survey
of the Lodge position: T
he Lodge of the Nine Sisters, in making
the Masonic virtues the base and support of its institution, believes
to have joined there the culture of the sciences, of letters and
of the arts. This is but reclaiming their true origin. The arts
have had, like Freemasonry, the unobtrusive advantage of bringing
men together. It was to the sounds of the harp and voice of Orpheus
that the savages of Thracia abandoned their caves. These were
the fine arts that sweetened the customs of the nations; they
are the preservers even to this day of the graciousness of manners.
Let us labor then with zeal, with perseverance, to fill the double
purpose of our institution. Because the base constantly upholds
the structure, let us decorate it, but let not the new ornaments
ever had the dignity of its ancient architecture.
The character of the Lodge was well exhibited in the following
rule adopted by it:
The talents that the Lodge of the Nine Sisters
exact of a candidate, in order that he may justify the name he
bears, comprises the sciences and the liberal arts, to the end
that any and all subjects proposed to him ought to be dowered
by whatsoever talent, be it of the nature of the arts or of the
sciences as the case may be, and that he has already given a public
and sufficient proof of possessing this talent,
Note that the candidate must be publicly
known as a talented man, This rule was not only carried out in
regard to the candidates, but was also in effect for affiliates.
Nevertheless, the rigor of the rule was not absolute. On occasion
it was judiciously relaxed. The Lodge, we are told, did not wish
to deprive itself of the element of strength that could be brought
in by the co-operation of that considerable group of persons who
had not already given public and sufficient proof of possessing
some particular talent. Therefore the following qualifying rule
was in effect:
There may be exceptions to the rule only when the candidates are
distinguished by their rank or by the honorable positions they
occupy.
As a consequence of the character of the
Lodge we find the following requirement:
All candidates for initiation
must be proposed or a member of the Lodge. His application and
the precise description are announced to all the Brethren by the
Secretary. Three members of a Committee are named to inform themselves
of his life, his morals, and of his talents, and upon these things
they shall make report by word of mouth or in writing. On this
report there is taken a vote by ballot, and three black balls
suffice for rejection of the candidate. If the first ballot is
favorable, the candidate is simply authorized to ask in writing
(by a letter, not by filling out a blank) for his initiation.
His request should be brought into the Lodge by the proposer.
On the receipt of that request the discussion is reopened and
he is subjected to a new ballot. The candidate is only accepted
on the following basis: The proposer and the members of the Investigating
Commits tee are the responsible agents. If, after the initiation,
there shad be learned, relative to the new Brother, such things
as cause the Lodge to regret his admission and thereupon to east
him out of its bosom, the proposer will be deprived of entrance
to the Temple for five months and the members of the Committee
for three months.
We read from page 12 of La Dismerie's Memoirs
quoted by Brother Amiable:
It was necessary to give proofs of a regular and sustained conduct,
of a docile character, of a sociable humor. All measures that
human prudence might suggest were employed by us to anticipate
and avoid in this regard every kind of oversight.
Freemasons desiring to affiliate with the
Lodge were subjected to a like examination by an Investigating
Committee. A ballot was taken in every case and three black balls
were sufficient to reject the applications. A visit by a Freemason
had critical supervision. The visitor was only introduced after
showing a letter of summons signed by the Secretary and addressed
to him with mention of the Brother who had caused the invitation
to be issued. Officers of the governing Bodies of the Grand Orient
itself were only exempt from this rule that aimed at giving the
Lodge all the privacy of a home.
In all that concerned the solemn engagement
taken by the new Brethren at their initiation, the philosophical
spirit of the Lodge manifested itself by a remarkable innovation.
Hitherto that pledge was invested with an oath. In the same way
it was accompanied by an imprecation against perjury. The Brethren
of the Nine Sisters held that the promise of a free and honest
man should be sufficient among upright folk. It was therefore
regularly by a rule decided that the candidate at initiation having
submitted his proofs that the request for admission called for.
and having the right hand placed on the heart, shall make a pledge
of which here are the obligations:
O
f never saying, writing, or doing anything in the Lodge against religion, against morality,
or against the state.
Of being always ready to fly to the relief of humanity.
Of never disclosing the secrets that are confided to him
Of observing inviolably the Statutes and By-Laws of the Lodge of the Nine Sisters.
Of making every endeavor to contribute co-operatively to the glory and prosperity of the Lodge.
From the Lodge By-Laws adopted in 1781 the Grand Orient took over
the innovation, amplifying the formula and putting therein certain
other obligations. But, after the Revolution, they reinserted
the oath and the imprecation against perjury, though a recent
revision (this was written by Brother Amiable in 1898) caused
these to disappear.
The Lodge had twenty-five officers, exclusive
of the two substitutes to fill the positions of absentees. There
were three Orators. This is explained by Brother Amiable "by
reason of the importance of their use in such a Lodge." There
were two Directors of Concerts:
The first of these two officials, in 1778, is Dalavrae who figured
with the qualification of Guard of the Eing Dalavrac, aged twenty-five
years, yet unknown to the general public, but who became one of
the most fertile and most popular of composers in the style of
Comic Opera.
These officers were all elected annually
in May. Three qualifications were necessary:
He must be a contributing
member, have been at least a year holding membership in the Lodge
counting from the day he took his obligation, and has been present
at five Grand Assemblies in the course of the year preceding
the election. Independently of the reunions of Committees pertaining
to administration, there was every month a General Reunion or
Grand Assembly followed by a banquet, except in September and
October which are the two months of vacation. The meeting preceding
the banquet is devoted to a concert and to specimens of workmanship,
that is to say, of literary productions. Three of these reunions
are more important than the others, of such were the two Festivals
of Saint John in summer and in winter, corresponding to the two
solstices, and to that reunion of May 9 in honor of the renewal
of the Masonic year. This last comprised particularly an exposition
of works of art produced by, and of choice specimens of music
composed by, brethren of the Lodge.
At each ordinary Grand Assembly one of the
Orators took the floor and spoke eulogistically of some great
man no longer among the living. The Worshipful Master, the Senior
Warden, the Archiviste (Keeper of Documents) and one of the Experts
(an officer having somewhat similar functions to oar Senior Deacon)
ought also at predetermined dates to produce pieces of architecture.
(The French expression for a Freemason's service done in the spirit
of craftsmanship and exhibiting the result of h's special talent.)
At every Festival of Saint John, three Brothers,
so designed at the preceding Festival, are to pronounce respectively,
one a eulogy upon a great man of the past; another, an example
of eloquence- the third, a specimen of versification. Moreover,
a closing discourse shall be given by one of the Orators at the
Grand Assembly of August 9, preceding the vacation period—and
a like address will be offered at the reopening on November 21.
All these are outside the pieces of architecture presented by
the newly admitted Brethren, and of such as all the Brethren are
at liberty to produce. It is difficult to imagine a greater intellectual
activity. Sever did a society of learned men make greater showing.
He shall see later by the testimony that is in our possession
relative to certain members of the Lodge, that the performance
responded fully to the above program. Two items in the regulations
merit also to be specially mentioned.
The one instituted a foundation at twelve
hundred pounds for new editions of works by members of the Lodge
which shall be judged worthy, and which shall relate to the objects
cherished by the dine Sisters, to sciences, to literature, to
the fine arts, music, painting, engraving, etc. Brine Commissioners
were named for each occasion by the Lodge to judge upon the merits
of the respective works. They acted not, as is often done elsewhere,
by making a mere investment, but made a liberal advance payment,
to give some leeway in view of future requirements. The Lodge
supervised the edition in a manner to bring it up to date, fresh
and timely, and two issues of the work were issued before the
Brother to whom they had made the advance was able to lay claim
upon any profits.
Not less remarkable is the injunction coming
among those referring to financial benefactions an injunction
which imposes the special duty of assistance to those Brethren
who are lawyers, physicians, and surgeons, the obligation of giving
their advice gratis in consultation to all those who are recommended
to them by the Lodge. But there is more than that involved. The
solemn obligation they have contracted "to fly to the relief
of humanity" implied that every Craftsman of the Lodge of
the Nine Sisters was devoted to the succor of victims of injustice,
at a time when great iniquities were so frequently committed,
the duty of imitating, as far as is possible, the noble example
shown by Voltaire. Such an engagement could not remain a dead
letter in the Lodge which counted among its members the most celebrated
legal advocate of the period, Elie de Beaumont, with whom the
patriarch of Ferney was himself associated in the defense of Calas
and of Serven.
The text of the By-laws provided in the
case where one of the Brethren should have been charged with the
defense of the innocent unjustly accused, and where any state
of affairs rendered such papers necessary to the justification
of the person under attack, the lawyer Brother should be provided
with an allowance up to a total of one hundred pounds toward the
printing and publishing of the statements in question. Not so
much was it the amount allowed, as will here be seen, but the
prompting to an act of devotion. Moreover, some time later, when
Deputy undertook the memorable struggle to save the three innocent
persons condemned to death by the Parliament of Paris. he spent
much more than three hundred pounds for the printing of the arguments
that tore them away from the executioner.
Essays given to the Lodge were rehearsed
later before other notable gatherings. The eulogy upon Louis IX
by a member, the Abb d'E;spagnac, was later heard before the French
Academy in solemn session. In fact, the prize of the Academy,
August 12, 1777, was awarded to the Abbe Remy, later one of the
three Orators in 1778, for a repetition of a Lodge address. La
Dixmerie says, however:
The taste for addresses is not the only
thing about our meetings. Everything that concerns literature,
the sciences, the arts, the morals, is there heard, welcomed,
and encouraged.
The same author shows that from the very beginning
the Lodge had made all sorts of gifts to the indigent. Every year
they remitted, to the principal of a College of Paris, a generous
sum to be distributed amongst students, "the least fortunate
and the most meritorious." The Lodge also provided education
and food for three poor children, and when these arrived at the
proper age, the Lodge placed them in an apprenticeship and paid
the price of their being taught the mastery of a business. Every
Lodge Festival was the occasion of generous collections for charity.
The ecclesiastics of the Lodge were of liberal tendencies. Remy
wrote eloquently but irreverently of the Council of Trent. Brother
Amiable says: "To see the clergy censured by a priest is
never common. Of course it is true that this priest was a Freemason.
That he was in turn censured by the theologians was natural."
We are told by Bachaumont: "But the clerical power was humbled,
the clamor of the clergy was impotent to obtain from the Government
the suppression of the printed work."
Another extract from the Memoirs Secrets
of Bachaumont tells that the Lodge decided on September 10, 1777,
to give thanks by a solemn church service for the recovery from
a very serious illness of the Duke de Chartres, then the Grand
Master of France.
Father Cordier, a very ardent and very zealous
Brother, presented the subject for deliberation in the Lodge of
the Nine Sisters, and the vote being unanimous for carrying the
plan into execution, it was arranged that on the next Wednesday,
the 17th of the month, there should be chanted a Mass and a Te
Deum in music at the Church of the Cordeliers as an act of grace
for the happy event. There will be admission tickets. separate
entrance will be provided for the ladies and gentlemen and those
only may be admitted who have the signs of recognition.
As Henri Martin points out in his History
of France (page 397): "The reception of Voltaire among the
Freemasons was an episode deserving of memorial.
Their secret was but his, 'Humanity and
Toleration."' There is an echoing expression in the verses
credited to Brother La Dixmeurie: "At the name of our Illustrious
Brother, today all Freemasons triumph. If he receives from us
the light, the world had it from him." On April 7, 1778,
in the morning, was the initiation. Some two hundred and fifty
were present, Lalande, the famous scientist, presided. We are
told that "the elite of Freemasonry was present."
Father Cordier, declaring that he presented Voltaire for their
initiation, observed that an assembly as literary as it was Masonic,
ought to be flattered by witnessing the most celebrated Frenchman
being desirous of admission among them. He hoped that they would
have a kindly regard for the great age and feeble health of the
illustrious neophyte.
Voltaire was born November 21, 1694, and
there fore at his initiation was in his eighty-fourth year.
The
dodge taking that request under consideration decided at once
to dispense with the greater part of the ordinary proofs, that
he should not be placed blind folded between the columns but that
only a black curtain should hide the East until a convenient season.
A commission of nine members was appointed
by the Worshipful Master to receive and prepare the candidate;
this was headed by the Count Stragonoff and the Candidate was
introduced by the Chevalier de Villars, the aged author leaning
on the arms of Benjamin Franklin afterwards Master of the Lodge
and at that time Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States)
and Court de Gebelin. Questions on philosophy and morals were
propounded to Voltaire by the Worshipful Master and were answered
in a manner that compelled those present in several instances
to manifest their admiration.
He himself was strongly impressed and all
the more so when the curtain being suddenly removed he saw the
East brilliantly illuminated and the illustrious men seated there.
He was conducted to the Worshipful Master, where he took an obligation,
after which he was constituted an Apprentice and received the
signs, words and grips of this Degree. During this time the musicians,
under the direction of the celebrated violinist, Caproni, executed
ia brilliant style the first part of the third symphony of Guenin.
Then Larive of the Comedie Franeaise placed upon the initiate's
head a crown of laurel.
We give a few extracts from the address
by the Worshipful Master to Voltaire, who was seated "by
an unusual distinction in the East."
Very dear Brother, the era most flattering
for this Lodge will be henceforth marked by the day of your admission.
It brings an Apollo to the Lodge of the Nine Sisters. She finds
in him a friend of humanity who reunites all the titles of glory
that she is able to desire for the ornamentation of Freemasonry.
A King (Frederick the Great of Prussia), of whom you have long
been the friend, and who is known as the Illustrious Protector
of our Order, had inspired in you the taste for entering it; but
it was to your own country that you reserved the satisfaction
of initiating you to our mysteries.
After having received the applause and the
cheers of the nation, after having seen its enthusiasm and its
raptures, You come to receive, in the Temple of friendship, of
virtue and of letters, a crown less brilliant but equally solacing
to the heart and the soul. The emulation that your presence undoubtedly
will spread and enforce, giving a new luster and a new activity
to our Lodge, will renown to the profit of the poor she solaces,
of the studies she encourages and of all the good she ceases not
to do. What citizen has so well served as you the nation in the
illumination of duty and of true interests, in rendering fanaticism
odious and superstition ridiculous, in recalling good taste to
its true principles history to its real purpose the laws to their
chief integrity.
We Brethren promise to come to the succor
of our friends; but you have been the creator of a multitude who
adore you and who give a voice to your good deeds. You have raised
a Temple to the Eternal; but that which we value even more, we
have seen near this Temple and asylum, a refuge for men outlawed
but useful, that a blind zeal had repelled. Thus, my dear Brother,
you were a Freemason before that time when vou formally received
that designation, and you were fulfilling Masonic duties before
you had taken the obligation between our hands. The square that
we bear is the symbol of the rectitude of our actions; the apron
represents a life of labor and of useful actingly, the white gloves
express candor, innocence, and the purity of our actions; the
trowel serves to cover up the defects of the Brethren; all these
are relating to benevolence and love of humanity and consequently,
only expressing the qualities that distinguish you. We are but
able to unite you with us and of receiving you with the tribute
of our admiration and of our recognition.
There followed several addresses in prose
and verse by members, and a response by Voltaire. Court de Gebelin
presented a copy of his new book, the Primitive World, and he
read that part of it concerning the ancient mysteries of Eleusis.
During the course of the proceedings, Monnet, Painter to the King,
made a sketch from life for a portrait of Voltaire.
Voltaire became very ill about the middle
of May and on the thirtieth sank into an unconscious condition,
dying during the night. Preparations for a suitable memorial meeting
of the Lodge were arranged for November 98, 1778. The correspondence
of Bachaumont shows how impressive and elaborate were the plans
for this occasion, and incidentally he mentions the fact that
Doctor Franklin had inherited the apron of Voltaire. Franklin
acted as a Warden at this time. Of the ceremony we need not go
further than to say it was a remarkable display of esteem and
affection framed in a setting of rare splendor and charm. At the
close there was the usual offering taken by the Lodge for poor
students distinguished in their studies at the University. A further
donation was proposed by the Abbe Cordier de Saint-Firmin of five
hundred pounds, French, to be deposited with a notary for the
apprenticeship to a trade of the first poor infant born after
a certain time in the Parish of Saint Sulspice. Several Brethren
offered to contribute to this fund (see Voltaire, also Franklin).
NOACHIDAE
The descendants of Noah. A term applied
to Freemasons on the theory, derived from the Legend of the Craft,
that Noah was the father and founder of the Masonic system of
theology. Hence the Freemasons claim to be his descendants, because
in times past they preserved the pure principles of his religion
amid the corruptions of surrounding faiths. Doctor Anderson first
used the word in this sense in the second edition of the Book
of Constitutions: "A Mason is obliged by his tenure to observe
the moral law as a true Noachida." But he was not the inventor
of the term, for it occurs in a letter sent by the Grand Lodge
of England to the Grand Lodge of Calcutta in 1735, which letter
is preserved among the Rawlinson Manuscript in the Bodleian Library,
Oxford (see Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, volume xi, page
35).
NOACHITE, or PRUSSIAN KNIGHT
The French expression is Noachite ou Chevalier
Prussien. There are two uses of the title.
l. The Twenty-first Degree of the Ancient
and Accepted Scottish Rite. The history as well as the character
of this Degree is a very singular one. It is totally unconnected
with the series of Masonic Degrees which are founded upon the
Temple of Solomon, and is traced to the Tower of Babel. Hence
the Prussian Knights call themselves Nonwhites, or Disciples of
Noah, while they designate all other Freemasons as Hiramites,
or Disciples of Hiram. The early French Rituals state that the
Degree was translated in 1757 from the German by M. de Beraye,
Knight of Eloquence in the Lodge of the Count Saint Gelaire, Inspector-General
of Prussian Lodges in France. Lenning gives no credit to this
statement, but admits that the origin of the Degree must be attributed
to the wear above named. The destruction of the Tower of Babel
constitutes the legend of the Degree, whose mythical founder is
said to have been Peleg, the chief builder of that edifice. A
singular regulation is that there shall be no artificial light
in the Lodge-room, and that the meetings shall be held on the
night of the full noon of each month.
The Degree was adopted by the Council of
Emperors of the East and West, and in that way became subsequently
a part of the system of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
But it is misplaced in any series of Degrees supposed to emanate
from the Solomonic Temple. It is, as an unfitting link, an unsightly
interruption of the chain of legendary symbolism substituting
Noah for Solomon, and Peleg for Hiram Abif. The Supreme Council
for the Southern Jurisdiction abandoned the original ritual and
made the Degree a representation of the Vehmgericht or Westphalian
Franc Judges. But this by no means relieves the Degree of the
objection of Masonic incompatibility That it was ever adopted
into the Masonic system is only to be attributed to the passion
for advanced Degrees which prevailed in France in the middle of
the eighteenth century.
In the modern work the meetings are called
Grand Chapters. The officers are a Lieutenant Commander, two Wardens,
an Orator, Treasurer, Secretary, Master of Ceremonies, Warder,
and Standard-Bearer. The apron is yellow, inscribed with an arm
holding a sword and the Egyptian figure of silence. The order
is black, and the jewel a full moon or a triangle traversed bv
an arrow. In the original instructions there is a coat of arms
belonging to the Degree, which is thus emblazoned, to use the
language of heraldry: Party perfuse; in chief, Azure, send of
stars, or a full moon, advent in base, sable, an equilateral triangle!
having an arrow suspended from its upper point, barb downward,
or. Of these quaint terms we may say that party per fess, means
divided by a horizontal band across the shield, some means strewn
or scattered, or and ardent mean the colors of gold and silver
respectively.
The legend of the Degree describes the travels
of Peleg from Babel to the north of Europe, and ends with the
following narrative: "In trenching the rubbish of the salt-mines
of Prussia was found in 553 A.D. at a depth of fifteen cubits,
the appearance of a triangular building in which was a column
of white marble, on which was written in Hebrew the whole history
of the Noachites. At the side of this column was a tomb of freestone
on which was a piece of agate inscribed with the following epitaph:
'Here rest the ashes of Peleg, our Grand Architect of the tower
of Babel. The Almighty had pity on him because he became humble."'
This legend, although wholly untenable on historic grounds, is
not absolutely puerile. The dispersion of the human race in the
time of Peleg had always been a topic of discussion among the
learned, long dissertations had been written to show that all
the nations of the world, even America, had been peopled by the
three sons of Noah and their descendants. The object of the legend
seems, then, to have been to impress the idea of the thorough
dispersion. The fundamental idea of the Degree is, under the symbol
of Peleg, to teach the crime of assumption and the virtue of humility.
2. The Degree was also adopted into the Rite of Mizraim, where
it is the Thirty-fifth.
NOACHITE, SOVEREIGN
The French title is Noachite Souverain.
A Degree contained in the nomenclature of Fustier.
NOACHITES
The same as Noachidae, which see.
NOACHITES, FRENCH ORDER OF
See Napoleonic Freemasonry
NOAH
In all the old Masonic manuscript Constitutions
that are extant, Noah and the Flood play an important part in
the Legend of the Craft. Hence, as the Masonic system became developed,
the Patriarch was looked upon as what was called a Patron of Freemasonry.
This connection of Noah with the rnystic history of the Order
was rendered still closer with the influence of many symbols borrowed
from the Arkite Worship, one of the most predominant of the ancient
faiths. So intimately were incorporated the legends of Noah with
the legends of Freemasonry t hat Freemasons began, at length,
to be called, and are still called, Noachidae, or the descendants
of Noah a term first applied by Doctor Anderson, and very frequently
used at a much later day.
It is necessary, therefore, that every scholar
who desires to investigate the legendary symbolism of Freemasonry
should make himself acquainted with the Noachic myths upon which
much of it is founded. Doctor Oliver, it is true, accepted them
all with a childlike faith; but it is not likely that the skeptical
inquirers of the present day will attribute to them any character
of authenticity. Yet they are interesting, because they show us
the growth of legends out of symbols, and they are instructive
because they are for the most part symbolic. The Legend of the
Craft tells us that the three sons of Lamech and his daughter,
Naamah, "did know that God would take vengeance for sin,
either by fire or water; wherefore they wrote these sciences which
they had found in two pillars of stone, that they might be found
after the flood." Subsequently, this legend took a different
form, and to Enoch was attributed the precaution of burying the
Stone of Foundation in the bosom of Mount Moriah, and of erecting
the two pillars above it.
The first Masonic myth referring to Noah
that presents itself is one which tells us that, while he was
piously engaged in the task of exhorting his contemporaries to
repentance, his attention had often been directed to the pillars
which Enoch had erected on Mount Moriah. By diligent search he
at length detected the entrance to the subterranean vault, and,
on pursuing his inquiries, discovered the Stone of Foundation,
although he was unable to comprehend the mystical characters there
deposited. Leaving these, therefore, where he had found them,
he simply took away the Stone of Foundation on which they had
been deposited, and placed it in the Ark as a convenient altar.
Another myth, preserved in one of the Ineffable
Degrees, informs us that the Ark was built of cedars which grew
upon Mount Lebanon. and that Noah employed the Sidonians to cut
them down, under the superintendence of Japheth. The successors
of these Sidonians, in after times, according to the same tradition,
were employed by King Solomon to fell and prepare cedars on the
same mountain for his stupendous Temple.
The record of Genesis lays the foundation
for another series of symbolic myths connected with the Dove,
which has thus been introduced into Freemasonry.
After forty days, when Noah opened the window
of the Ark that he might learn if the waters had subsided, he
despatched a raven, which, returning, gave hun no satisfactory
information. He then sent forth a Dove three several timed at
an interval of seven days between each excursion. The first time,
the Dove Ending no resting-place, quickly returned; the second
time she came back in the evening, bringing in her mouth an olive-leaf,
which showed that the waters must have sufficiently abated to
have exposed the tops of the trees; but on the third departure,
the dry land being entirely uncovered, she returned no more. In
the Arkite Rites, which arose after the dispersion of Babel, the
Dove was always considered as a sacred bird, in commemoration
of its having been the first discoverer of land. Its name, which
in Hebrew is zonah, was given to one of the earliest nations of
the earth; and, as the emblem of peace and good fortune, it became
the Bird of Venus. Modern Freemasons have commemorated the messenger
of Noah in the honorary Degree of Orb and Dove, which is sometimes
conferred on Royal Arch Masons.
On the 27th day of the second month, equivalent
to the 12th of November, in the year of the world 1657, Noah,
with his family, left the ark. It was exactly one year of 365
days, or just one revolution of the sun, that the Patriarch was
enclosed in the Ark. This was not unobserved by the descendants
of Noah, and hence, in consequence of Enoch's life of 365 days,
and Noah's residence in the Ark for the same apparently mystic
period, the Noachites confounded the worship of the solar orb
with the idolatrous adoration which they paid to the Patriarchs
who were saved from the Deluge. They were led to this, too, from
an additional reason, that Noah, as the restorer of the human
race, seemed, in some sort, to be a type of the regenerating powers
of the sun.
So important an event as the Deluge, must
have produced a most impressive effect upon the religious dogmas
and rites of the nations which succeeded it. Consequently, we
shall find some allusion to it in the annals of every people and
some memorial of the principal circumstances connected with it,
in their religious observances. At first, it is to be supposed
that a veneration for the character of the second parent of the
human race must have been long preserved by his descendants.
Nor would they have been unmindful of the
proper reverence due to that sacred vesselsacred in their
eyeswhich had preserved their great progenitor from the
fury of the waters. "They would long cherish," says
Alwood (Literary Antiquities of Greece, page 182), "the memory
of those worthies who were rescued from the common lot of utter
ruin; they would call to mind, with an extravagance of admiration,
the means adopted for their preservation; they would adore the
wisdom which contrived, and the goodness which prompted to, the
execution of such a plan." So pious a feeling would exist,
and be circumscribed within its proper limits of reverential gratitude,
while the legends of the Deluge continued to be preserved in their
purity, and while the Divine preserver of Noah was remembered
as the one god of his posterity. But when, by the confusion and
dispersion at Babel, the true teachings of Enoch and Noah were
lost, and idolatry or polytheism was substituted for the ancient
faith, then Noah became a god, worshiped under different names
in different countries, and the Ark was transformed into the Temple
of the Deity. Hence arose those peculiar systems of initiations
which, known under the name of the Arkite Rites, formed a part
of the worship of the ancient world, and traces of which are to
be found in almost all the old systems of religion.
It was in the six hundredth year of his
age, that Noah, with his family, was released from the Ark. Grateful
for his preservation, he erected an altar and prepared a sacrifice
of thank-offerings to the Deity. A Masonic tradition says, that
for this purpose he made use of that Stone of Foundation which
he had discovered in the subterranean vault of Enoch, and which
he had carried with him into the Ark. It was at this time that
God made his Covenant with Noah, and promised him that the earth
should never again be destroyed by a flood. Here, too, he received
those commandments for the government of himself and his posterity
which have been called "the seven precepts of the Noachidae."
It is to be supposed that Noah and his immediate
descendants continued to live for many years in the neighborhood
of the mountain upon which the Ark had been thrown by the subsidence
of the waters. There is indeed no evidence that the Patriarch
ever removed from it. In the nine hundred and fiftieth year of
his age he died, and, according to the tradition of the Orientalists,
was buried in the land of Mesopotamia. During that period of his
life which was subsequent to the Deluge, he continued to instruct
his children in the great truths of religion. Hence, Freemasons
are sometimes called Noachidae, or the sons of Noah, to designate
them, in a peculiar manner, as the preservers of the sacred deposit
of Masonic truth bequeathed to them by their great ancestor; and
circumstances intimately connected with the transactions of the
immediate descendants of the Patriarch are recorded in a Degree
which has been adopted by the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite
under the name of Patriarch Noachite.
The primitive teachings of the Patriarch,
which were simple but comprehensive, continued to be preserved
in the line of the Patriarchs and the Prophets to the days of
Solomon, but were soon lost to the other descendants of Noah,
by a circumstance to which we must now refer. After the death
of Noah, his sons removed from the region of Mount Ararat, where,
until then, they had resided, and "traveling from the East,
found a plain in the land of Shinar, and dwelt there." Here
they commenced the building of a lofty tower.
This act seems to have been displeasing
to God, for in consequence of it, He confounded their language
so that one could not understand what another said; the result
of which was that they separated and dispersed over the face of
the earth in search of different dwelling-places. With the loss
of the original language, the great truths which that language
had conveyed, disappeared from their minds. The worship of the
one true God was abandoned. A multitude of deities began to be
adored. Idolatry took the place of pure theism. And then arose
the Arkite Rites, or the worship of Noah and the Ark, Sabaism,
or the adoration of the stars, and other superstitious observances,
in all of which, however, the Priesthood, by their Mysteries or
initiations into a kind of Spurious Freemasonry, preserved, among
a multitude of errors, some faint allusions to the truth. and
retained just so much light as to make their "darkness visible."
Such are the Noachic traditions of Freemasonry, which, though
if considered as materials of history, would be worth but little,
yet have furnished valuable sources of symbolism, and in that
way are full of wise instruction.
NOAH
The writer of the Cooke MS. (1410-1450 A.D.)
had before him an original which may have been written about 1350
A.D. The author of that original frankly acknowledges that many
of his historical statements are taken from "the polycronicon,"
a sort of universal history, or omnium gatherum, in which were
collected scraps and fragments of lore of many kinds, especially
about the remote past, and without any attempt to distinguish
genuine history from myths, legends, tales, fables. It was from
such a polychronicon that the writer of the Cooke original drew
the story of Noah and the Deluge which the Cooke condenses into
a paragraph beginning at line 290. According to the old tale thus
taken from the polychronicon men knew that God would destroy the
world out of vengeance, either by fire or by water; therefore
in order to save them from destruction, men wrote the secrets
of the Arts and Sciences on two "pilers of stone." When
the vengeance came, it turned out to be by water as Noah had expected,
and for 365 days he and his family lived in the Ark. With him
mere his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and their wives.
Many years afterwards, the "cronyelere telleth," the
two pillars were found; Pythagoras found one, and Hermes the other.
The Old Charges (Masonic MS, Old Constitutions,
etc., they also were called) which served as a charter for the
first permanent Lodges of the Freemasons were held in great reverence;
in them was this story of Noah and the pillars, and it is from
this source, it is reasonable to believe, that pillar and column
symbolism came to be used in Speculative Masonry; and since the
use of the Arts and Sciences traced directly back to Noah's sons
who recovered their use after the Deluge, practitioners of them
were sometimes called "Sons of Noah."
The first, or 1723, edition of the Book
of Constitutions of the Mother Grand Lodge touches but lightly
on the story of Noah, but in the second, or 1738. edition the
whole account is changed, the Ark itself is described as having
been a Masonic masterpiece, and Noah and his three sons are described
as "four Grand officers." "And it came to pass
as they journeyed from the East of the plains of Mount Ararat,
where the Ark rested toward the West, they found a plain in the
land of Shinar, and dwelt there as Noachidae, or Sons of Noah
. . ." In a footnote the author explains the word: "The
Srst name of Masons, according to some old traditions."
What those "old traditions" were
nobody knows because there is no evidence that Operative Freemasons
called themselves by that name. But it was in some use prior to
1738, for in 1734 Lord Weyrnouth ordered a letter to be sent to
the Prov. Grand Master at Calcutta in which this curious statement
was included: "Providence has fixed your Lodge near those
learn'd Indians that affect to be called Noachidae, the strict
observance of his Precepts taught in those Parts by the Disciples
of the great Zoroastres, the learned Archimagus of Bactria, a
Grand Master of the Magians, whose religion is much preserved
in India (which we have no concern about), and also many of the
Rituals of the Ancient Fraternity used in his time, perhaps more
than they are sensible of themselves. Sow if it was consistent
with your other Business, to discover in those parts the Remains
of Old Masonry and transmit them to us, we would be all thankful
...." (A. Q. C. XI, p. 35.)
If ever "Noachidae" was in use
as a name for Masons it could not have been extensive, because
the word (an ugly hybrid) is almost never met with in early Lodge
Alinutes or Histories; it is probable that such small use of it
as is encountered in American Lodges in the first half of the
Nineteenth Century (it is now wholly obsolete) was directly owing
to the popularity here of the writings of the Rev. George Oliver
u ho never hesitated to give to fancies out of his own mind the
same weight as the verdict records of history
There mere two reasons for the place of
Noah and his sons in Masonic thought and traditions. It is obvious
that the writer of the Cooke MSor rather, the author of
the original of which the Cooke is a copy had an historical
problem to solve: if the Deluge destroyed everything how were
the Arts and Sciences, Geometry especially, preserved and recorded?
The story of the pillars and of the use
made of them by Noah's sons, which, as was seen, he found ready-made
in a polychronicon, was his solution. Second, the story of the
sons of Noah had a point to it of value for Masons who sought
to make clear to their own minds the religious foundations of
the Craft. If Masonry w as geometry and architecture it is as
old as the world; if it existed in Noah's time it existed before
Christianity, or Judaism either; and yet it now works in Christian
lands; how could a "Christian" society have a pre-Christian
origin? The answer was that under the separate religions is a
ground, or fundament, or matrix of a universal religion which
consists of a belief in God and Brotherhood among men, and righteousness.
Oliver himself gives one of the clearest expressions of this idea
in a paragraph of his in A Dictionary of Symbolical Masonry (New
York; 1855; p. 190): "NOACHIDAE, Sons of Noah; the first
name of Freemasons; whence we may observe that believing the world
u as framed by one supreme God, and is governed by him; and loving
and worshiping him; and honoring our parents; and loving our neighbor
as ourselves; and being merciful even to brute beasts, is the
oldest of all religions."
Not all the versions of the Old Charges
contain the Noah story in the same form; the Graham MS. version
which has so many details peculiar to itself, and is really an
Old Catechism more than a version of the Old Charges, gives the
Noah story in a different form and reads in it a different lesson;
and it has the lost secrets discovered after the death of Noah
rather than after the death of Niram. In his Ahiman Rezon, or
Book of Constitutions, writing as Grand Secretary for the Ancient
Grand lodge of 1751, Laurence Dermott ridicules the whole story;
but it is only as history that he ridicules it, not as symbolism,
because (to judge by such written remains of it as have survived)
the Ancient Ritual connected the Great Pillars with the two "pillars"
in the Cooke MS. Also, in both Ancient and Modern symbolism and
in the Royal Arch, the Ark is used as an emblem. (This identification
of the Ark with Noah's Ark may be a mistake on the part of Eighteenth
Century Ritualists, because before 1717 Operative Gilds kept their
papers in a "coffin" which later reappears under
the name "casket," "the Lodge," and "ark.")
Notes. In a medal struck by Henry Steel
Lodge, No. 12, of Winchester, Va., on or about 1809, the emblems
on the obverse side include not only the Ark, but also a Dove
andwhat is more interestinga Raven ! This same medal
indicates that in Steel Lodge. the Royal Arch was not as yet disentangled
from the Third Degree because on the reverse side of the same
medal the Arch is surrounded by the emblem of that Degree. See
American Freemason; Louisville, Ky.; Jan. 1, 1855; page 51.
NOAH, PRECEPTS OF
The precepts of the Patriarch Noah, which
were preserved as the Constitutions of our ancient Brethren, are
seven in number and are as follows:
1. Renounce all idols.
2. Worship the one true God.
3. Commit no murder.
4. Be not defiled by incest.
5. Do not steal.
6. Be just.
7. Eat no flesh with blood in it.
The Proselytes of the Gate, as the Jews
termed those who lived among them without undergoing circumcision
or observing the ceremonial law, were bound to obey the seven
precepts of Noah. The Talmud says that the first six of these
precepts were given originally by God to Adam, and the seventh
afterward to Noah. These precepts were designed to be obligatory
on all the Noachidae, or descendants of Noah, and consequently,
from the time of Moses, the Jews would not suffer a stranger to
live among them unless he observed these precepts, and never gave
quarter in battle to an enemy who was ignorant of them.
NOBLES OF THE MYSTIC SHRINE, ANCIENT ARABIC
ORDER
See Shrine
NOFFODEI
The name of this person is differently spelled
by various writers. Villani, and after him Burnes, call him Noffo
Dei, Reghellini Neffodei, and Addison Nosso de Florentin; but
the more usual spelling is Noffodei. He and Squin de Flexian were
thefirst to make thosefalse accusationsagainst the Knights Templar
which led to the downfall of the Order. Noffodei, who was a Florentine,
is asserted by some writers to have been an Apostate Templar,
who had been condemned by the Preceptor and Chapter of France
to perpetual imprisonment for impiety and crime. But Dupui denies
this, and says that he never was a Templar, but that, having been
banished from his native country, he had been condemned to rigorous
penalties by the Prevost of Paris for his crimes (for a history
of his treachery to the Templars, Bee Squin de Flezian).
NOMENCLATURE
There are several Masonic works, printed
or in manuscript, which contain lists of the names of Degrees
in Freemasonry. Such a list is called by the French writers a
Nomenclature. The word means a system of names or of naming but
is capable of an extension much beyond these limits. For instance,
Porter ( Human Intellect, page 399) says, "The technical
nomenclature of a single science when finished and arranged, is
a transcript of all the discriminating thoughts, the careful observations,
and the manifold experiments by which science has been formed."
The most important of these nomenclatures
pertaining to Freemasonry are those of Peuvret, Fustier, Pyron,
and Lemanceau. Pagon has a nomenclature of Degrees in his Tuileur
Generale. Thory has an exhaustive and descriptive one in his A
cta Latomorum. Oliver also gives a nomenclature, but an imperfect
one, of one hundred and fifty Degrees in his Historical Landmarks.
It has been evident for some years past that the subject of Masonic
nomenclature is growing in importance to a point where Masonic
scholars must make it a specialty. Even now, and with investigations
scarcely begun, the clearing up of the original meaning of only
five or six terms has occasioned a recasting of a few of the most
important pages in the history of the Craft. When Anderson entitled
his book in 1723 "Constitutions" he meant not a body
of organic, fundamental law but a book of customs and ceremonies;
it was not until the last quarter of the Eighteenth Century that
the word became a term for the Written Law, and it was the incorporating
of one law after another in a book of customs which changed the
modern texts of Grand Lodge Constitutions so radically that they
have been led far away from Anderson's book. In many Grand Lodge
Codes the Book of Constitutions is published separately under
the head of "Old Charges."
In the General Regulations adopted in 1721
by the Mother Grand Lodge, brethren are warned that "they
must obtain a Grand Master's Warrant to join in forming a new
Lodge" by Warrant was meant "permission," to be
granted or not by the Grand Master personally, and either the
Grand Master or a deputy appointed by him was to be present in
person to constitute the Lodge. The first written Warrant (or
Charter) as a legal document, as possessing authority in itself,
was issued by the Grand Lodge of Ireland in 1755 and by the (Modern)
Grand Lodge of England for the first time in 1757.
The word Deputation which now, as applied
to a Lodge, means a temporary warrant (in America) granted by
a Grand Master to form a Lodge, meant in the early Grand Lodge
period a letter from a Grand Master to authorize a brother to
act in his place to constitute a Lodge; that is, it was authority
granted to a man, not to a body, though usually a Lodge was permitted
to keep such a document in its possession.
The term Regular now describes any Lodge
which is chartered and is on the list of a recognized and established
Grand Lodge, any other body being a clandestine or spurious society;
originally "regular" only denoted such early Lodges
as had come voluntarily under authority of the Grand Lodge; this
did not imply that Lodges which had not done so were spurious
or clandestine. The word Degree is now generally held to have
been a misnomer, though it is so widely rooted in usage that it
probably cannot be changed thus, the First Step should be called
not the Degree of Entered Apprentice but the Lodge of Entered
Apprentices. The correct name for the old documents is still under
discussion; Hughan clung to "Old Charges" because the
Mason of earliest record called them that; Gould preferred "Old
Manuscripts." Since the Old Catechisms also are Old MSS.
the latter name is ambiguous. A correct, unambiguous name awaits
discovery.
And the suggestion is here and now made
that the familiar "Time Immemorial" should be discontinued
The phrase came into usage apparently from Blackstone and naturally
denotes something of "which the memory of man runneth not
to the contrary," hence a "time immemorial" Lodge
would be taken to mean a very old, an almost prehistoric Lodge.
It is on record that many "time immemorial" Lodges in
Britain before the constitution of the first Grand Lodge in 1717
were only ten to fifty years old at the time; so with the "First
Lodge" in Philadelphia. The name "self-constituted Lodge"
is recommended to take the place of "time immemorial."
Other terms of nomenclature now in the melting pot are dues, jurisdiction,
prerogatives, spurious, clandestine, irregular, universality,
comity.
NOMINATION
It is the custom in some Grand Lodges and
Lodges to nominate candidates for election to office. and in others
this custom is not adopted. But the practice of nomination has
the sanction of ancient usage- Thus the records of the Grand Lodge
Of England, under date of June 24, 1717, tell us that "before
dinner the oldest Master Mason . . . in the chair proposed a list
of proper candidates, and the Brethren by a majority of hands,
elected Mr. Antony Sayer, Gentleman, Grand Master of Masons"
(constitutions 1738, page 109).
The present Constitution of the Grand Lodge
of England requires that the Grand Master shall be nominated in
December, and the Grand Treasurer in September but that the election
shall not take place until the following March. Nominations appear,
therefore, to be the correct Masonic practice; yet, if a member
be elected to any office to which he had not previously been nominated,
the election will be valid, for a nomination is not essential.
NON-AFFILIATION
The state of being unconnected by membership
with a Lodge (see Unaffiliated Freemason) .
NONESYNCHES
In the Old Constitutions, known as the Dowland
Manuscript, is found the following passage: "Saint Albones
loved well Masons and cherished them much. And he made their pay
right good, . . . for he gave them ijs-vjd, a week, and iijd to
their nonesynches." This word, which cannot, in this precise
form, be found in any archaic dictionary, evidently means food
or refreshment, for in the parallel passage in other Constitutions
the word used is cheer, which has the same meaning. The old English
word from which we get our luncheon is noonshun, which is defined
to be the refreshment taken at noon, when laborers desist from
work to shun the heat. Of this, nonesynches is a corrupt form.
NONIS
A significant word in the Thirty-second
Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. The original
old French Rituals endeavor to explain it, and say that it and
two other words in conjunction are formed out of the initials
of the words of a particular aphorism which has reference to the
secret arena and sacred treasure of Freemasonry. Out of several
interpretations, no one can be positively asserted as the original,
although the intent is apparent to him to whom the same may lawfully
belong (see Saliz and Tengu).
NON NOBIS
It is prescribed that the motto beneath the Passion Cross on the
Grand Standard of a Commandery of Knights Templar shall be Non
nobis Domine! non nobis, sed nomini tuo da Gloriam. That is,
Not unto us, O Lord! not unto us, but unto Thy name give Glory.
The commencement of the 115th Psalm, which is sung on occasions
of thanksgiving. It was the ancient Templar's shout of victory.
NON-RESIDENT
The members of a Lodge who do not reside
in the locality of a Lodge, but live at a great distance from
it in another State, ore perhaps country, but still continue members
of it and contribute to its support by the payment of Lodge dues,
are called rum resident members. Many Lodges, in view of the fact
that such members enjoy none of the local privileges of their
Lodges, require from them at least amount of annual payment than
they do from their resident members.
NOORTHOUCK, JOHN
The editor of the fifth, and by far the
best, edition of the Book of Constitutions, which was published
in 1784. He was the son of Herman Noorthouck, a bookseller, and
was born in London about the year 1746. Brother Oliver describes
him as "a clever and intelligent man, and an expert Mason."
His literary pretensions were, however, greater than this modest
encomium would indicate. He was patronized by the celebrated printer,
William Strahan, and passed nearly the whole of his life in the
occupations of an author, an index maker and a corrector of the
press. He was, besides his edition of the Book of Constitutions,
the writer of a History of London, quarto, published in 1773,
and a Historical and Classical Dictionary, two volumes, octavo,
published in 1776. To him also, as well as to some others, has
been attributed the authorship of a once popular book entitled
The Man after God's own Heart. In 1852, J. R. Smith, a bookseller
of London, advertised for sale "the original autograph manuscript
of the life of John Noorthouck." He calls this " a very
interesting piece of autobiography, containing many curious literary
anecdotes of the last century, and deserving to be printed."
Noorthouck died in 1816, aged about seventy years.
NORFOLK
Thomas Howard, eighth Duke of Norfolk. Grand
Master of the English Grand Lodge, installed January 29, 1730,
remaining until 1731, and succeeded by Lord Lovel. From Venice,
1731, he sent the Grand Lodge of England the sword of Gustavus
Adolphus, together with twenty pounds for the Masons' Charity,
and a handsome Minute Book. He died in 1732.
NORMAL
A perpendicular to a curve; and included
between the curve and the axis of the abscissas. Sometimes a square,
used by Operative Masons, for proving angles. The word means to
act according to an established standard and is from the Latin
term signifying both the square for measuring right angles and
the rule or precept of personal conduct.
NORNAE
In the Scandinavian Mysteries these were
three maidens, known as Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld, signifying Past,
Present, and Future. Their position is seated near the Urdar-wells
under the world-tree Yggdrasil, and there they determine the fate
of both gods and men. They daily draw water from the spring, and
with it and the surrounding clay sprinkle the ash-tree Yggdrasil,
that the branches may not wither and decay.
NORTH
The north is Masonically called a Place
of Darkness. The sun in his progress through the ecliptic never
reaches farther than 23 28' north of the equator. A wall being
erected on any part of the earth farther north than that, will
therefore, at meridian, receive the rays of the sun only on its
south side, while the north will be entirely in shadow at the
hour of meridian. The use of the north as a symbol of darkness
is found, with the present interpretation, in the early instructions
of the eighteenth century. It is a portion of the old sun worship
of which we find so many relics in Gnosticism, in Hermetic philosophy,
and in Freemasonry. The east was the place of the sun's daily
birth, and hence highly revered; the north the place of his annual
death, to which he approached only to lose his terrific heat,
and to clothe the earth in darkness of long nights and dreariness
of winter.
However, this point of the compass, or place
of Masonic darkness, must not be construed as implying that in
the Temple of Solomon no light or ventilation was had from this
direction. The Talmud, and as well Josephus, allude to an extensive
opening toward the North, framed with costly magnificence, and
known as the great Golden Window. There were as many openings
in the outer wall on the north as on the south side. There were
three entrances through the "Chel" on the north and
six on the south (see Temple). While once within the walls and
Chel of the Temple all advances were made from east to west, yet
the north side was mainly used for stabling, slaughtering, cleansing,
etc., and contained the chambers of broken knives, defiled stones
of the House of Burning, and of sheep. The Masonic symbolism of
the entrance of an initiate from the north, or more practically
from the northwest, and advancing toward the position occupied
by the Corner-stone in the north-east, forcibly calls to mind
the triplet of Homer:
Two marble doors unfold on either side
Sacred the South by which the gods descend;
But mortals enter on the Northern end.
So in the Mysteries of Dionysos, the gate
of entrance for the aspirant was from the north; but when purged
from his corruptions, he was termed indifferently new-born or
immortal, and the sacred south door was thence accessible to his
steps.
In the Middle Ages, below and to the right
of the judges stood the accuser, facing north; to the left was
the defendant, in the north facing south. Brother George F. Fort,
in his Antiquities of Freemasonry (page 292), says:
In the center of the court, directly before
the judge stood an altar piece or shrine, upon which an open Bible
was displayed. The south to the right of the justiciaries was
deemed honorable and worthy for a plaintiff- but the north was
typical of a frightful and diabolical sombreness.
Thus, when a solemn oath of purgation was taken in grievous criminal
accusations, the accused turned toward the north.
The judicial headsman, in executing the
extreme penalty of outraged justice, turned the convict's face
northward, or towards the place whence emanated the earliest dismal
shades of night. When Earl Hakon bowed a tremulous knee before
the deadly powers of Paganism and sacrificed his seven-year-old
child, he gazed out upon the far-off, gloomy north.
In Nastrond, or shores of death, stood a
revolting hall, whose portals opened toward the norththe
regions of night. North, by the Jutes was denominated black or
sombre; the Frisians called it fear corner. The gallows faced
the north, and from these hyperborean shores everything base and
terrible proceeded. In consequence of this belief, it was ordered
that, in the adjudication of a crime, the accused should be on
the north side of the court enclosure. And in harmony with the
Scandinavian superstition, no Lodge of Masons illumines the darkened
north with a symbolic light, whose brightness would be unable
to dissipate the gloom of that cardinal point with which was associated all that was sinstrous and direful.
So many of our Masonic customs hinge Upon
the connection with old church practices that we are inclined
to add to the above summary a few additional particulars. The
book entitled Curious Church Customs, edited by William Andrews,
1898, has on page 136 the following item:
Tradition authorizes the expectation that
our Lord still appear in the east; therefore all the faithful
dead are buried with their feet towards the east to meet Him.
Hence in Wales the east wind is called " The wind of the
dead men's feet." The eastern portion of a churchyard is
always looked on as the most honoured next the south then the
west, and last of all the north from the belief that in this order
the dead will rise curious instance of this belief is furnished
by an epitaphon a tombstone, dated 1807, on the north side of
Epworth Churchyard, Lincolnshire, the last two lines of which
run as follows:
And that I might longer undisturbed abide
I choosed to be laid on this northern side.
Felons, and notorious bad characters, were frequently buried on
the north side of the church. In Suffolk most of the churches
have both a north and south door, and where old customs are observed,
the bodes is brought in at the south door, put down at the west
end of the aisle and carried out by the north door. In Lincolanshire
the north is generally reserved entirely for funerals, the south
and west doors being reserved for christenings and weddings.
William Andrews, in a companion volume dealing
with Ecclesiastical Curiosities, 1899, has some references to
churchyard superstitions, and gives considerable space to inquiries
made regarding the old prejudices against being buried on the
north side of the church. This prejudice is proven in several
parts of England by the scarcity of graves on the north side of
churches. The Reverend Theodore Johnson, writing upon this subject,
tells of taking charge of a parish in Norfolk; and on being called
upon to select a suitable place for a funeral suggested that as
there were no graves on the north side of the church a place
could be assigned there.
This aroused vigorous objection but no particular
explanation beyond that of a decided dislike. Further inquiry
obtained the information that in some cases the north part of
the churchyard was left unconsecrated for burial of those for
whom no religious service was considered necessary. At last the
clergyman found light in visiting an old member of his flock during
his last hours on earth. He was a widower, and in speaking of
his place of burial he particularly emphasized the words "On
the south side, sir, near by the wife." The clergyman inquired why there was such a strong objection to burial on the
north side of the church, and the prompt and reproachful answer
was at once made: "The left side of Christ, sir: we don't
like to be counted among the goats." The author continues:
Here was the best answer to the mystery,
pointing with no uncertain words to the glorious Resurrection
Day, this aged, earthly shepherd at the end of his years of toil
recognized his Great Master, Jesus. as the True Shepherd of mankind,
meeting His flock as they arose from their long sleep of death,
with their faces turned eastward, awaiting His appearing.
Then when all had been called and recognized
He turned to lead them onward, still their True Shepherd and Guide,
with the sheep on His right hand, and the goats on His left hand,
so wonderfully foretold in the Gospel story: "When the Son
of Man shall come in His glory, and all the hole angels with Him,
then shall He sit upon the throne of His glory; land before Him
shall be gathered all nations and He shall separate them one from
another as a Shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: and he
shall set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats on the left."
Matthew xxv, 31-3.
Surely, the above simple illustration explains
much that is difficult and mysterious to us in the wax of religious
superstition. Undoubtedly, we have here a good example of how
superstitions have arisen, probable from a good source, it may
be the words of some teacher long since passed away. The circumstance
has long been for gotten, yet the lesson remains, and being handed
down by oral tradition only, every vestige of its religions nature
disappears and but the feeling remains, which, b in the minds
of the ignorant populace, increases in mysteries and enfolds itself
in superstitious awe, without any desire from them to discover
the origin, or Source, of such a strange custom, or event.
So much of our ceremonies and instruction
in the Craft is bound up intimately with the practices of the
Church that the foregoing details and the comments made upon them
are well worth notice and reflection. We need not in any enthusiasm
for the prehistoric and the religious customs of the older nations
in the childhood of their faith when the Mysteries of Greece and
Rome were flourishing, overlook the equally good claims for attention
presented by the more recent traditions that survive and thrive
even unto our own times.
NORTH AMERICAN MASONIC CONGRESS
See General Grand Lodge
NORTH CAROLINA
The Grand Lodge of England warranted a Lodge
in North Carolina at Wilmington in March, 1754 or 1755. This was
afterwards known as Saint John's, No. 1. A Grand Lodge of North
Carolina was organized in 1771 which met at New Bern and Edenton,
but its early history is obscure owing to the supposed destruction
of the records by the English during the War of the Revolution.
Representatives of seven Lodges, Unanimity, Saint John's, Royal
Edwin, Royal White Hart, Royal William, Union and Blandford-Bute,
met on December 9, 1787, to reorganize the Grand Lodge. In 1856
Saint John's College was established at Oxford, but during the
war of 1861-5, when it was vacated by the students, it was converted
into one of the best orphan homes in the country. In charity as
in everything else this Grand Lodge has always achieved success.
The first mention of Capitular Freemasonry
in North Carolina occurs in the Proceedings of the fourth Convocation
of the General Grand Chapter where it appears that a Charter was
to have been issued to Concord Chapter at Wilmington, May 4, 1815,
by the General Grand King. He also granted one to Phoenix Chapter
at Fayetteville, September 1, 1815.
fit the thirteenth Convocation of the General
Grand Chapter held on September 14, 1847, at Columbus, Ohio, the
General Grand Secretary reported that a Grand Chapter of North
Carolina had once existed but had ceased work twenty years before;
that according to information just received it had lately been
reorganized. An Assembly of representatives of three Chapters
had duly adopted a Constitution and elected officers on June 98,
1847. On September 16, 1847, the Grand Chapter of North Carolina
was, after the alteration of one or two articles in its Constitution,
granted legal authority by the General Grand Chapter of the United
States.
Five Councils had been chartered in North
Carolina before the organization of the Grand Council. In each
ease the document was signed by the Supreme Council of the Southern
Jurisdiction. All five were represented at a Convention for the
organization of the Grand Council at Fayetteville, June 21, 1822.
In 1859 the Grand Chapter resisted an attempt to incorporate the
Degrees with the Chapter by a declaration to the effect that it
desired to exercise no such control. A Grand Council was organized
June 6, 1860, but owing to the Civil War no meeting was held until
1866, and in 1883 it was dissolved altogether. The Degrees then
came under the control of the Grand Chapter until 1887 when the
Grand Council was again established.
The first official mention of Templarism
in North Carolina appeared in the Proceedings of the Grand Encampment
of the United States for September 19, 1826. The issue of a Charter
to Fayetteville Encampment among others on December 21, 1821,
was the item in question. This Encampment ceased work at an early
date and the details about an attempt made in 1845 to start another
are not known. On September 16, 1850, it was resolved by the General
Grand Encampment of the United States to grant renewed authority
to Fayetteville and Wilmington. On January 10, 1881, the Grand
Commandery of North Carolina was established.
On November 91, 1892, Asheville Lodge of
Perfection, No. 1, at Asheville, was granted a Charter. Charters
were issued to a Chapter of Rose Croix, a Council of Kadosh, and
a Consistory, all located at Charlotte, namely, Mecklenburg, No.
1, October 5, 1901; Charlotte, No. 1, October 23, 1907; Carolina,
No. 1, December 18, 1907, respectively, under the Southern Jurisdiction
of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
NORTH DAKOTA
When the Territory of Dakota was divided
into North and South Dakota in 1889 the question arose of the
necessity for a Grand Lodge in each of the two districts. It was
decided that there must be a division of Grand Lodges to correspond
with the political division. A Convention was held on June 12,
1889, at Mitchell which resolved that a Grand Lodge for North
Dakota should be organized. The following Lodges were represented:
Shiloh, No. 8; Pembina, Sto. 10; Casselton, No. 12; Acacia, No.
15; Bismarck, No. 16; Jamestown, No. 19; Valley City, No. 21;
Nandan, No. 23; Cereal, No. 29; Hillsboro, No. 32; Crescent, No.
36; Cheyenne Valley, No. 41; Ellendale, No. 49; Sanborn, No. 51;
Wahpeton, No. 58; North Star, No. 59; Minto, No. 60; Mackey, No.
63; Goose River, No. 64; Hiram, No. 74; Minnewaukan, Bio. 75;
Tongue River, No. 78; Bathgate, No. 80; Euelid, No. 84; Anchor,
No. 88; Golden Valley, No. 90; Occidental, No. 99. A Constitution
and By-laws were adopted, Grand Officers duly elected, and the
first session held the following day.
A similar problem occurred with regard to
the Grand Chapter of North Dakota. The Chapters in South Dakota
had organized their Grand Chapter on January 6, 1890. Thereupon
the representatives of Missouri, No. 6; Casselton, No. 7; Cheyenne,
No. 9; Keystone, No. 11; Jamestown, No. 13, and Lisbon, No. 29,
organized on January 9 the Grand Chapter of North Dakota. The
first Annual Convocation was held at Grand Forks, nine days later.
The first Council in North Dakota, Fargo,
No. 1, was granted a Dispensation on February 12, 1889, while
the Territory was still undivided. It was chartered, however,
five months after the division took place, on November 19, 1889.
At a Convention held on March 20, 1916, members of Fargo Council,
No. 1; Lebanon, No. 2, and Adoniram, No. 3, organized the Grand
Council of North Dakota as a constituent member of the General
Grand Council.
The Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of the United States
issued a Dispensation to form the Commandery of North Dakota on
June 4, 1890. Thereupon Tancred, No. 4; Fargo, No. 5; Grand Forks,
No. 8, and Wi-ha-ha, No. 12, Commanderies on June 16, 1890, organized
the Grand Commandery of North Dakota.
With regard to the Ancient and Accepted
Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, Dakota Consistory, No. 1,
was chartered on May 26, 1886; Fargo Council of Kadosh, No.1,
on December 8,1883; Pelican Chapter of Rose Croix, No. 1, on June
19, 1883, and Enoch Lodge of Perfection, No. 1, on June 7, 1883.
NORTHEAST CORNER
In the Institutes of Menu, the sacred book
of the Brahmans, it is said: "If any one has an incurable
disease, let him advance in a straight path towards the invincible
northeast point, feeding on water and air till his mortal frame
totally decays, and his soul becomes united with the supreme."
It is at the same northeast point that those first instructions
begin in Freemasonry which enable the true Freemason to commence
the erection of that spiritual temple in which, after the decay
of his mortal frame, "his soul becomes united with the supreme.
"
In the important ceremony which refers to
the Northeast Corner of the Lodge, the Candidate becomes as one
who is, to all outward appearance, a perfect and upright 7nan
and Mason, the representative of a spiritual Corner-stone, on
which he is to erect his future moral and Masonic edifice. This
symbolic reference of the Corner-stone of a material edifice to
a Freemason when, at his first initiation, he commences the moral
and intellectual task of erecting a spiritual temple in his heart,
is beautifully sustained when we look at all the qualities that
are required to constitute a "well-tried, true, and trusty"
Corner-stone. The squareness of its surface, emblematic of morality
its cubical form, emblematic of firmness and stability of character
and the peculiar finish and fineness of the material, emblematic
of virtue and holiness show that the ceremony of the Northeast
Corner of the Lodge was undoubtedly intended to portray, in the
consecrated language of symbolism, the necessity of integrity
and stability of conduct, of truthfulness and uprightness of character,
and of purity and holiness of life, which, just at that time and
in that place, the candidate is most impressively charged to maintain.
NORTH STAR
This star is frequently used as a Masonic
symbol, as are the morning star, the day star, the seven stars.
Thus, the morning star is the forerunner of the Great Light that
is about to break upon the Lodge; or, as in the grade of Grand
Master Architect, twelfth of the Scottish System, the initiate
is received at the hour "when the day star has risen in the
east, and the north star looked down upon the seven stars that
circle round him." The symbolism is truth; the North Star
is the Pole Star, the Polaris of the mariner, the Cynosura. that
guides Freemasons over the stormy seas of time. The seven stars
are the symbol of right and justice to the Order and the country.
NORWAY
Freemasonry must be studied in Sweden and
Denmark jointly with Norway as politically the three were united
for many years and the Swedish Rite has left a permanent impression
on all of these countries. As far back as the year 1030 A.D.,
Danish power controlled Norway. Soon a Swedish King was chosen
over Norway, 1036, and then in 1380 a King of Denmark became ruler
of the sister nations.
So it continued until 1814 when Denmark
ceded Norway to Sweden and this union lasted until June, 1908,
when a Swedish Prince was chosen as King Haakon VII. Some few
Lodges in Norway erected by Danish authority came under the control
of the Grand Lodge of Sweden when the two countries were politically
united, this Grand Lodge being formed in 1759.
A separation of the countries, Sweden and
Norway, involves a governing division Masonically and there is
a Grand Lodge of Norway. From 1796 by Royal Edict all Swedish
Princes have been members of the Craft. A Civil Order was also
instituted by the King, Charles XIII, Grand Master, to be conferred
on the Princess and no more than thirty others of the tenth Degree
of the Rite, which is dominantly Christian. The Grand National
Lodge of Berlin, uses a like Ritual. A Provincial Grand Lodge
operated from May 7, 1793, under the Grand Lodge Zur Sonne, the
latter having its headquarters at Bayreuth, Germany. This was
constituted as the Grand Lodge Den Norskc Polarstjernen on May
8, 1920.
NOTUMA
A significant word in some of the advanced
Degrees of the Templar System. It is the anagram of Aumont, who
is said to have been the first Grand Master of the Templars in
Scotland, and the restorer of the Order after the death of DeMolay.
NOVA SCOTIA
A slab of rock discovered in 1827 on Goat
Island in the Annapolis Basin was found to be engraved with the
Square and Compasses and the date 1606, but the history of it
remains unknown and nothing can be guessed of its origin. The
first Lodge in Nova Scotia was established at Annapolis by authority
of the Saint John's Grand Lodge of Massachusetts at some time
previous to 1740. Nova Scotia was originally governed by the Provincial
Grand Master of New England, whose authority extended over all
North America, but on September 24, 1784, Brother John George
Pyke was appointed Provincial Grand Master of a Provincial Grand
Lodge formed that day and warranted the previous June. On January
16, 1866, all the Scotch Lodges but one called a meeting at which
it was decided to summon a Convention on February 20. A Grand
Lodge was duly formed and Brother W. H. Davies elected Grand Master.
In 1869 the remaining Scotch Lodge and the English District Grand
Lodge united with the new body under the name of The Grand Lodge
of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons of Nova Scotia.
NOVICE
1. The Second Degree of the Illuminati of Bavaria.
2. The Fifth Decree of the Rite of Strict Observance.
NOVICE, MAÇONNE
That in French is to say a female Mason
who is a Novice. It is the First Degree of the Moral Order of
the Dames of Mount Tabor
NOVICE, MYTHOLOGICAL
The French title is Novice Mythologigue.
The First Degree of the Historical Order of the Dames of Mount
Tabor.
NOVICE, SCOTTISH
In French the title is bodice Ecossaise.
The First Degree of initiation in the Order of Mount Tabor.
NOVITIATE
The time of probation, as well as of preparatory
training, which, in all Religious Orders, precedes the solemn
profession at least one year. By Dispensation only can the period
of time be reduced. Novices are immediately subject to a superior
called Master of Voices, and their time must be devoted to prayer
and to liturgical training.
NUK-PE-NUK
The Egyptian equivalent for the expression
"I am that I am."
NUMBERS
The symbolism which is derived from numbers
was common to the Pythagoreans, the Cabalists the Gnostics, and
all mystical associations. Of all superstitions. it is the oldest
and the most generally diffused. Allusions are to be found to
it in all Systems of religion; the Jewish Scriptures, for instance,
abound in it, and the Christian shows a share of its influence-
It is not, therefore, surprising that the most predominant of
all symbolism in Freemasonry is that of numbers. The doctrine
of numbers as symbols is most familiar to us because it formed
the fundamental idea of the philosophy of Pythagoras. Yet it was
not original with him, since he brought his theories from Egypt
and the East, where this numerical symbolism had always prevailed.
Jamblichus tells us (On the Pythagorean Life, 28) that Pythagoras
himself admitted that he had received the doctrine of numbers
from Orpheus, who taught that numbers were the most provident
beginning of all things in heaven, earth, and the intermediate
space, and the root of the perpetuity of Divine beings, of the
gods and of demons. From the disciples of Pythagoras we learn,
for he himself taught only orally, and left no writings, that
his theory was that numbers contain the elements of all things,
and even of the sciences. Numbers are the invisible covering of
beings as the body is the visible one. They are the primary causes
upon which the whole system of the universe rests; and he who
knows these numbers knows at the same time the laws through which
nature exists.
The Pythagoreans, said Aristotle (Metaphysica
xii, 5), make all things proceed from numbers. Dacier (Life of
Pythagoras), it is true, denies that this was the doctrine of
Pythagoras, and contends that it was only a corruption of his
disciples. It is an immaterial point. We know that the symbolism
of numbers was the basis of what is called the Pythagorean philosophy.
But it would be wrong to suppose that from it the Freemasons derived
their system, since the two are in some points antagonistic; the
Freemasons, for instance, revere the nine as a sacred number of
peculiar significance, while the Pythagoreans looked upon it with
detestation. In the system of the Pythagoreans, ten was, of all
numbers, the most perfect, because it symbolizes the completion
of things; but in Masonic symbolism the number ten is unknown.
Four is not, in Freemasonry, a number of much representative importance;
but it was sacredly revered by the Pythagoreans as the Tetractys,
or figure derived from the Jewish Tetragrammaton, by which they
swore.
Plato also indulged in a theory of symbolic
numbers and calls him happy who understands spiritual numbers
and perceives their mighty influences Numbers according to Plato,
are the cause of universal harmony and of the production of all
things. The Neoplatonists extended and developed this theory,
and from them it passed over to the Gnostics; from them probably
to the Rosicrucians, to the Hermetic philosophers and to the Freemasons.
Cornelius Agrippa has descanted at great
length in his Occult Philosophy, on the subject of numbers. "That
there lies," he says, "wonderful efficacy and virtue
in numbers, as well for good as for evil, not only the most eminent
philosophers teach, but also the Catholic Doctors." And he
quotes Saint Hilary as saying that the seventy Elders brought
the Psalms into order by the efficacy of numbers.
Of the prevalence of what are called representative
numbers in the Old and New Testament, there is abundant evidence.
"However we may explain it," says Doctor Utahan (Palmoni,
page 67), "certain numerals in the Scriptures occur so often
in connection with certain classes of ideas, that we are naturally
led to associate the one with the other. This is more or less
admitted with regard to the numbers Seven, Twelve, Forty, Seventy,
and it may be a few more. The Fathers were disposed to admit it
with regard to many others, and to see in it the merles of a supernatural
design." Among the Greeks and the Romans there was a superstitious
veneration for certain numbers. The same practice is found among
all the Eastern notionist entered more or less into all the ancient
systems of philosophy; constituted a part of all the old religions;
was accepted to a great extent by the early Christian Fathers;
constituted an important part of the Cabala; was adopted by the
Gnostics, the Rosicrucians, and all the mystical societies of
the Middle Ages; and finally has carried its influence into Freemasonry.
The respect paid by Freemasons to certain
numbers all of which are odd. is founded not on the belief of
any magical virtue but because they are assumed to be the type
or representatives of certain ideas. That is to say, a number
is in Freemasonry a symbol, and no more. It is venerated, not
because it has any supernatural efficacy, as thought the Pythagoreans
and others, but because it has concealed within some allusion
to a sacred object or holy thought, which it symbolizes. The number
three, for instance, like the triangle, is a symbol; the number
nine, like the triple triangle, another. The Masonic doctrine
of sacred numbers must not, therefore, be confounded with the
doctrine of numbers which prevailed in other systems. The most
important symbolic or sacred numbers in Freemasonry are three,
five, seven, nine, twenty-seven and eighty-one. Their interpretation
will be found under their respective titles (see Odd Numbers).
The subject is also discussed in Doctor Mackey's revised History
of Freemasonry; Numbers, their Occult Power and Mystic Virtues,
W. Wynn Westcott, Supreme Magus, Rosicrucian Society of England;
Numbers, their Meaning and Magic, Isidore Kozminsky, and Rabala
of Numbers, Sepharial.
NUMEROLOGY
Numerology is to arithmetic what astrology
is to astronomy. It is a form of occultism in which magical properties
are attributed to the natural numbers; and it is probable that
it has been more or less experimented with in Europe since the
Thirteenth Century Kabbalists introduced it into some of their
most obscure pages it is reported that at the present time the
Kabbala and numerology are virtually synonymous among Jewish Kabbalists
in the Near East, of whom there are a few but who carry little
weight. It was the fashion for generations to father numerology
on Pythagoras; and in the small scraps of information about him
available in the periods before modern archeology there appeared
to be ground for that doctrine; but the theory is now abandoned;
it is believed that what Pythagoras discovered (as in harmonics)
was the fact that numbers are not mere words, mere subjective
devices of men's minds, but are true objectively, and describe
properties which belong inherently to material things.
There is no evidence of any infiltration
of numerology into Freemasonry. The builders of the cathedrals
were too sound and intelligent in their knowledge of geometry,
made too much practical use of it, to give countenance to fuzzy,
unreal, heterodox occultists about numbers and geometrical figures
professing magical powers. They believed in no form of fortune-telling.
Nor is there anywhere evidence that Speculative Masons believed
in it. The Monitorial Lectures of the Second Degree in which the
numbers 3, 5, 7 occur were either written or adopted by William
Preston, an orthodox Christian of the latter half of the Eighteenth
Century to whom any form of occultism would have been abhorrent, so would it have been to his predecessors, Drs. Desaguliers
and James Anderson. (See article in this Supplement on WAITE,
ARTHUR EDWARD; he wrote much on the subject, and out of a very
wide knowledge.)
NUMERATION BY LETTERS
There is a Cabalistical process especially
used in the Hebrew language, but sometimes applied to other languages,
for instance, to the Greek, by which a mystical meaning of a word
is deduced from the numerical value of the words of which it is
composed, each letter of the alphabet being equivalent to a number.
Thus in Hebrew the name of God, Jah, is equivalent to 15, because
j = 10 and n = 5, and 15 thus becomes a sacred number. In Greek,
the Cabalistic word Abraxas, is made to symbolize the solar year
of 365 days, because the sum of the value of the letters of the
word is 365; thus, a=1 b=2, p=100, a=1, t=60, a=1, and s=200.
To facilitate these Cabalistic operations, which are sometimes
used in the advanced Degrees and especially the Hermetical Freemasonry,
the numerical value of the Hebrew and Greek letters is here given.
The word Gematrta means to calculate by
letters as well as numbers. (See illustration) While this was a late development
there are traces of it in the Old Testament in the opinion of
W. H. Bennett (Hasting's Dictionary of tile Bible). He says (page
660):
It consisted in the indicating of a word
by means of the number which would be obtained bs adding together
the numerical values of the consonants of the word. Thus in Genesis
xiv, 14, Abraham has 318 trained servants, 318 is the sum of the
consonants of the name of Abraham's Steward, Eliezer, in its original
Hebrew form The number is apparently constructed front the name.
The Apocalyptic number of the Beast is often explained by Gematria,
and 666 has been discovered to be the sum of the numerical values
of the letters of some form or other of a large number of names
written either in Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin. Thus the Beast has
been identified with hundreds of persons, ie. Mohammed, Luther,
the Pope, Napoleon I, Napoleon III, etc., each of whom was specially
obnoxious to the ingenious identifier. Probably by a little careful
manipulation any name in some form or other, in Hebrew, Greek,
or Greek letters is here given. Latin could be made by Gematria
to yield 666. The two favorite explanations are Lateinos=Latinus,
the Roman Empire or Emperor, and Nero Caesar. The latter has the
special advantage that it recounts not only for 666, but also
for the variant reading, 616, mentioned above; as Neron Caesar
it gives 666, and as Nero Caesar, 616.
Much interesting reading on the Number of
the Beast is in the two volumes of a Budget of Paradozes Augustus
de Morgan. Both Bennett and Morgan agree, the latter being even
less impressed by the claims made by various compilers of these
numerical values. Brother Frank C. Higgins has devoted considerable
study to the subject and discussed it freely by articles in the
New Age, American Freemason, etc., as well as in such books as
the Cross of the Magi, 1912.
NUN
The Hebrew word, meaning abash, in Syrian
an inkhorn. The Chaldaic and hieroglyphic form of this Hebrew
word or letter was like Figure 1, and the Egyptian like Figure
2, signifying fishes in any of these forms. Joshua was the son
of Nun, or a fish, the deliverer of Israel. As narrated of the
Noah in the Hindu account of the Deluge, whereby the forewarning
of a fish caused the construction of an ark and the salvation
of one family of the human race from the flood of waters (see
Beginnings of History, by Lenormant).
Nun is the fourteenth letter of the Hebrew
alphabet and so used in the 119th Psalm to mean the fourteenth
part, every verse beginning with this letter.
NUNEZ
A Portuguese founder of an imitation of
Knights Templar, termed the Order of Christ, at Paris, 1807.
NURSERY
The first of the three classes into which
Weishaupt divided his Order of Illuminati, comprising three Degrees
(see Illuminati).
NYASALAND
In this country of Central Africa, there
have been two Lodges, one at Blantyre and one at Zomba. Both were
chartered by the Grand Lodge of Scotland.
NYAYA
The name of the second of the three great
systems of ancient Hindu philosophy.
NYCTAZONTES
An ancient sect who praised God by day but
rested in quiet and presumed security during the night.
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