C
The third letter of the English alphabet, which was not known in the Hebrew, Phoenician, or early Aryan languages.
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CAABA or KAABA
Arabic word Ka'abah for cubic building. The square building or temple in Mecca. More especially the small cubical oratory. within, held in adoration by the Mohammedans, as containing the black stone said to have been given by an angel to Abraham. The inner as well as the outer structure receives its name from Ka'ab, meaning cube (see Allah).
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CABALA
This word is frequently written Kabbala, which see. CABALA. The mystical philosophy or theosophy of the Jews is called the Cabala. The word is derived from the Hebrew Kabal, signifying to receive, because it is the doctrine received from the elders. It has sometimes been used in an enlarged sense, as comprehending all the explanations, maxims, and ceremonies which have been traditionally handed down to the Jews; but in that more limited acceptation, in which it is intimately connected with the symbolic science of Freemasonry, the Cabala may be defined to be a system of philosophy which embraces certain mystical interpretations of Scripture, and metaphysical and spiritual beings. In these interpretations and speculations, according to the Jewish doctors, were enveloped the most profound truths of religion, which, to be comprehended by finite beings, are obliged to be revealed through the medium of symbols and allegories.
Buxtorf (Lexicon of the Talmud) defines the Cabala to be a secret science, which treats in a mystical and enigmatical manner of things divine, angelical, theological, celestial, and metaphysical; the subjects being enveloped in striking symbols and secret modes of teaching. Much use is made of it in the advanced degrees, and entire Rites have been constructed on its principles. Hence it demands a place in any general work on Freemasonry.
In what estimation the Cabala is held by Jewish scholars, we may learn from the traditions which they teach, and which Doctor Ginsburg has given in his exhaustive work ( Kabbalah, page 84) in the following words:
The Cabalah was first taught by God himself to a select company of angels, who formed a theosophic school in Paradise. After the Fall, the angels most graciously communicated this heavenly doctrine to the disobedient child of earth, to furnish the protoplasts With the means of returning to their pristine nobility and felicity. From Adam it passed over to Noah, and then to Abraham, the friend of God, who emigrated with it to Egypt, where the patriarch allowed a portion of this mysterious doctrine to ooze out. It was in this way that the Egyptians obtained some knowledge of it, and the other Eastern nations could introduce it into their philosophical systems.
Moses, who was learned in all the wisdom of Egypt, was first initiated into it in the land of his birth, but became most proficient in it during his wanderings in the wilderness, when he not only devoted to it the leisure hours of the whole forty years, but received lessons in it from one of the angels. By the aid of this mysterious science, the lawgiver was enabled to solve the difficulties which arose during his management of the Israelites, in spite of the pilgrimages, wars, and the frequent miseries oi the nation. He covertly laid down the principles of this secret doctrine in the first four books of the Pentateuch, but withheld them from Deuteronomy.
This constitutes the former the man, and the latter the woman. Moses also initiated the seventy elders into the secrets of this doctrine, and they again transmitted them from hand to hand. Of all who formed the unbroken line of tradition, David and Solomon were first initiated into the Cabalah. No one, however, dared to write it down till Simon ben Jochai, who lived at the time of the destruction of the second Temple. Having been condemned to death by Titus, Rabbi Simon managed to escape with his son, and concealed himself in a cavern, where he remained for twelve years. Here in this subterranean abode, he occupied himself entirely with the contemplation of the sublime Cabalah, and was constantly visited by the prophet Elias, who disclosed to him some of its secrets, which were still concealed from the theosophical Rabbi. Here, too, his disciples resorted to be indicated by their master into these divine mysteries, and here Simon ben Jochai expired with this heavenly doctrine in his mouth, whilst discoursing on it to his disciples. Scarcely had his spirit departed, when a dazzling light filled the cavern, so that no one could look at. the Rabbi; whilst a burning fire appeared outside, forming as it were a sentinel at the entrance of the cave, and denying admittance to the neighbors. It was not till the light inside, and the fire outside, had disappeared, that the disciples perceived that the lamp of Israel was extinguished.
As they were preparing for his obsequies, a voice was heard from heaven, saying, " Come ye to the marriage of Simon ben Jochai; he is entering into peace, and shall rest in his chamber!" A flame preceded the coffin, which seemed enveloped by and burning like fire. And when the remains were deposited in the tomb, another voice was heard from heaven, saying, "This is he who caused the earth to quake and the kingdoms to shake! " His son, Rabbi Eliezer, and his secretary, Rabbi Abba, as well as his disciples, then collated Rabbi Simon ben Jochai's treatises, and out of these composed the celebrated work called Sohar, that is, Splendor, which is the grand storehouse of Cabalism.
The Cabala is divided into two kinds, the Practical and the Theoretieal. The Practical Cabala is occupied in instructions for the construction of talismans and amulets, and has no connection with Masonic science.
The Theoretical Cabala is again divided into the Dogmatic and the Literal. The Dogmatic Cabala is the summary of the rabbinical theosophy and philosophy.
The Literal Cabala is the science which teaches a mystical mode of explaining sacred things by a peculiar use of the letters of words, and a reference to their value. Each of these divisions demands a separate attention.
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I. THE DOGMATIC CABALA
The origin of the Cabala has been placed by some scholars at a period posterior to the advent of Christianity, but it is evident, from the traces of it which are found in the Book of Daniel, that it arose at a much earlier day. It has been supposed to be derived originally from the system of Zoroaster, but whether its inventors were the contemporaries or the successors of that philosopher and reformer it is impossible to say. The doctrine of emanation is, says King (Gnostics, page10), "the soul, the essential element of the Cabala; it is likewise the essential element of Zoroastrism. " But as we advance in the study of each we will find important differences, showing that, while the idea of the Cabalistic theosophy was borrowed from the Zendavesta, the sacred book of the Persian sage, it was not a copy, but a development of it.
The Cabalistic teaching of emanation is best understood by an examination of the doctrine of the Sephiroth. The Supreme Being, say the Cabalists, is an absolute and inscrutable unity, having nothing without him and everything within him. He is called, En Soph, meaning the Infinite one. In this infinitude he cannot be comprehended by the intellect, nor described in words intelligible by human minds, so as to make his existence perceptible. It was necessary, therefore, that, to render himself comprehensible, the En Soph should make himself active and creative. But he could not become the direct creator ; because, being infinite, he is without will, intention, thought, desire, or action, all of which are qualities of a finite being only. The En Soph, therefore, was compelled to create the world in an indirect manner, by ten emanations from the infinite light which he was and in which he dwelt.
These ten emanations are the ten Sephiroth, or Splendors of the Infinite One, and the way in which they were produced was thus: - At first the En Soph sent forth into space one spiritual emanation. This first Sephirah is called Kether, meaning the Crown, because it occupies the highest position. This first Sephirah contained within it the other nine, which sprang forth in the following order: At first a male, or active potency, proceeded from it, and this, the second Sephirah, is called Chocmah or Wisdom. This sent forth an opposite, female or passive potency, named Binah or Intelligence. These three Sephiroth constitute the first triad, and out of them proceeded the other seven.
From the junction of Wisdom and Intelligence came the fourth Sephirah, called Chesed or Mercy. This was a male potency, and from it emanated the fifth Sephirah, named Giburah or Justice.
The union of Mercy and Justice produced the sixth Sephirah, Tiphereth or Beauty; and these three constitute the second triad. From the sixth Sephirah came forth the seventh Sephirah, Nitzach or Firmness. This was a male potency, and produced the female potency named Hod or Splendor. From these two proceeded Isod or Foundation; and these three constituted the third triad of the Sephiroth. Lastly, from the Foundation came the tenth Sephirah, called Malcuth or Kingdom, which was at the foot of all, as the Crown was at the top.
This division of the ten Sephiroth into three triads was arranged into a form called by the Cabalists the Cabalistic Tree or the Tree of Life, as shown in the diagram.
In this diagram the vertical arrangement of the Sephiroth is called Pillars. Thus the four Sephiroth in the center are called the Middle Pillar; the three on the right, the Pillar of Mercy; and the three on the left, the Pillar of Justice.
They allude to these two qualities of God, of which the benignity of the one modifies the rigor of the other, so that the Divine Justice is always tempered by the Divine Mercy. C. W. King, in his Gnosties (page 12), refers the right-hand pillar to the pillar Jachin, and the left-hand pillar to the Pillar Boaz, which stood at the porch of the Temple; and "these two pillars", he says, "figure largely amongst all the secret societies of modem times, and naturally so for these Illuminati have borrowed, without understanding it, the phraseology of the Cabalists and the Valentinians." But an inspection of the arrangement of the Sephiroth will show, if he is correct in his general reference, that he has transposed the pillars. Firmness would more naturally symbolize Boaz or strength, as Splendor would Jachin or Establishment.
These ten Sephiroth are collectively denominated the archetypal man, the Microcosm, as the Greek philosophers called it, and each of them refers to a particular part of the body.
Thus the Crown is the head; Wisdom, the brain; and Intelligence, the heart, which was deemed the seat of understanding. These three represent the intellectual; and the first triad is therefore called the Intellectual World. Mercy is the right arm, and Justice the left arm, and Beauty is the chest. These three represent moral qualities; and hence the second triad is called the Moral World. Firmness is the right leg, Splendor the left leg, and Foundation the privates. These three represent power and stability; and hence the third triad is called the Material World. Lastly, Kingdom is the feet, the basis on which all stand, and represents the harmony of the whole archetypal man. Again, each of these Sephiroth was represented by a Divine name and by an Angelic name, which may be thus tabulated:
Sephiroth ........ Divine Names ........
Angelic Names
Crown ............. Eheyeh .................. Chajoth
Wisdom .......... Jah ........................ Ophanim
Intelligence ..... Jehova .................. Arelin
Mercy ............. El .......................... Cashmalim
Justice ............ Eloha .................... Seraphim
Beauty ............ Elohim .................. Shinanim
Firmness ......... Jehovah Sabaoth ... Tarshishim
Splendor ......... Elohim Sabaoth .... Beni Elohim
Foundation ..... El Chai ................. Ishim
Kingdom ......... Adonai ................ Cherubim
These ten Sephiroth constitute in their totality the Atzilatic World or the World of Emanations, and from it proceeded three other worlds, each having also its ten Sephiroth, namely, the Briatic World or the World of Creation; the Jetziratic World or the World of Formation ; and the Ashiatic World or the World of Action: each inhabited by a different order of beings.
But to enter fully upon the nature of these various worlds would carry us too far into the obscure mysticism of the Cabala. The ten Sephiroth, represented in their order of ascent from the lowest to the highest, from the Foundation to the Crown, forcibly remind us of the system of Mystical Ladders which pervaded all the ancient as well as the modern initiations; the Brahmanical Ladder of the Indian mysteries; the Ladder of Mithras, used in the Persian mysteries; the Scandinavian Ladder of the Gothic mysteries, and in the Masonic mysteries the Ladder of Kadosh; and lastly, the Theological Ladder of the Symbolical Degrees
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II. THE LITERAL CABALA
This division of the Cabala, being, as has already been said, occupied in the explanation of sacred words by the value of the letters of which they are composed, has been extensively used by the inventors of the advanced degrees in the symbolism of their significant words. It is divided into three species : Gematria, Notaricon, and Temura.
1. Gematria. The word, which is evidently a rabbinical corruption of the Greek geometric, is defined by Buxtorf to be "a species of the Cabala which collects the same sense of different words from their equal numerical value." The Hebrews, like other ancient nations, having no figures in their language, made use of the letters of their alphabet instead of numbers, each having a numerical value. Gematria, is therefore, a mode of contemplating words according to the numerical value of their letters.
Any two words, the letters of which have the same numerical value, are mutually convertible, and each is supposed to contain the latent signification of the other.
Thus the words in Genesis xlix, 10, "Shiloh shall come," are supposed to contain a prophecy of the Messiah, because the letters of ''Shiloh shall come, " and of "Messiah," both have the numerical value of 358, according to the above table.
By Gematria, applied to the Greek language, we find the identity of Abraxas and Mithras, the letters of each word having in the Greek alphabet the equal value of 365. This is by far the most common mode of applying the literal Cabala.
2. Notaricon is derived from the Latin notarius a shorthand writer or writer in cipher. The Roman Notarii were accustomed to use single letters, to signify whole words with other methods of abbreviation, by marks called notae. Hence, among the Cabalists, notaricon is a mode constructing one word out of the initials or finals of many, or a sentence out of the letters of a word, each letter being used as the initial of another word. Thus of the sentence in Deuteronomy xxx, 12, "Who shall go up for us to heaven?" in Hebrew, the initial letters of each word are taken to form the word circumcision, and the finals to form Jehovah; hence it is concluded that Jehovah hath shown circumcision to be the way to heaven. Again : the six letters of the first word in Genesis, ''in the beginning, " are made use of to form the initials of six words which constitute a sentence signifying that "In the beginning God saw that Israel would accept the law,"
3. Temura is a rabbinical word which signifies permutation. Hence temura is a Caballstic result produced by a change or permutation of the letters of a word.
Sometimes the letters are transposed to form another word, as in the modern anagram ; and sometimes the letters are changed for others, according to certain fixed rules of alphabetical permutation, the first letter being placed for the twenty-second the second for the twenty-first, the third for the twentieth, and so on. It is in this way that Babel, is made out of Sheshach, and hence the Cabalists say that when Jeremiah used the word Sheshach, xxv, 26, he referred to Babel.
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CABALISTIC COMPANION
A degree found in the archives of the Mother Lodge of the Philosophical Rite of France.
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CABIRI
or CABEIRI. A group of minor Greek, deities (the name signifying great Gods) having the protection of sailors and vessels at sea. Worshipped at Lemnos, Samothrace, Thessalia, Bocotia, etc., as early as the fifth century. Initiation into their mysteries portrayed passage through death to a higher live. Many of the ancient deities believed to have been members of the Cabiri such as Pluto, proserpine, Mercury, the sons of Vulcan, the sons of Jupiter, etc. (see An Encyclopedia of occultism, Lewis Spence, New York, 1920, page 83).
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CABIRIC MYSTERIES
The Cabiri were gods who' worship was first established in the island of Samothrace, where the Cabiric Mysteries were practiced. The gods called the Cabiri were originally two, and afterward four, in number, and are supposed by Bryant (Analysis of Ancient Mythology, iii, 342) to have referred to Noah and his three sons, the Cabiric Mysteries being a modification of the arkite worship.
In these mysteries there was a ceremony called the "Cabiric Death," in which was represented amid the groans and tears and subsequent rejoicing of the initiates, the death and restoration to life of Cadmillus, the youngest of the Cabiri. The legend recorded that he was slain by his three Brethren, who afterward fled with his virile parts in a mystic basket. His body was crowned with flowers, and was buried at the foot of Mount Olympus. Clement of Alexandria speaks of the legend as the sacred mystery of a brother slain by his brethren, or in the original as frater trucidatus à fratribus.
There is much perplexity connected with the subject of these mysteries, but it is generally supposed that they were instituted in honor of Atys, the son of Cybele or Demeter, of whom Cadmillus was but another name. According to Macrobius, Atys was one of the appellations of the sun, and we know that the mysteries were celebrated at the vernal equinox. They lasted three days, during which they represented in the person of Atys, or Cadmillus, the enigmatical death of the sun in winter, and his regeneration in the spring. In all probability, in the initiation, the candidate passed through a drama, the subject of which , was the violent death of Atys. The Cabiric Death was, in fact, a type of the Hiramic, and the legend, so far as it can be understood from the faint allusions of ancient authors, was very analogous in spirit and design to that of the Third Degree of Freemasonry.
Many persons annually resorted to Samothrace to be initiated into the celebrated mysteries, among whom are mentioned Cadmus, Orpheus, Hercules, and Ulysses. Jamblichus says, in his Life of Pythagoras, that from those of Lemnos that sage derived much of his wisdom. The mysteries of the Cabiri were much respected among the common people, and great care was taken in their concealment. The priests made use of a language peculiar to the Rites. The mysteries were in existence at Samothrace as late as the eighteenth year of the Christian era, at which time the Emperor Germanicus embarked for that island, to be initiated, but was prevented from accomplishing his purpose by adverse winds.
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CABLE TOW
The word tow signifies, properly, a line wherewith to draw. Richardson (Dictionary) defines it as " The word is purely Masonic, and in some writings of the early part of the eighteenth century we find the expression cable rope. Prichard so uses it in 1730. The German word for a cable or rope is kabeltauw, and thence our cable tow is probably derived.
In its first inception, the cable tow seems to have been used only as a physical means of controlling the canidate, and such an interpretation is still given in the Entered Apprentice's Degree. But in the Second and Third Degrees a more modern symbolism has been introduced, and the cable tow is in these grades supposed to symbolize the covenant by which all Freemasons are tied, thus reminding us of the passage in Hosea (xi, 4), "1 drew them with cords of a man, with bands of love."
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CABLE TOW'S LENGTH
Gädieke says that, "according to the ancient laws of Freemasonry, every brother must attend his Lodge if he is within the length of his cable tow." The old writers define the length of a cable tow, which they sometimes called a cable's length, to be three miles for an Entered Apprentice. But the expression is really symbolic, and as it was defined by the Baltimore Convention in 1842, means the scope of a man's reasonable ability.
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CABUL
A district containing twenty cities which Solomon gave to Hiram, King of Tyre, for his assistance in the construction of the Temple. Clark (Commentary and Critical Notes) thinks it likely that they were not given to Hiram so that they should be annexed to his Tyrian dominions, but rather to be held as security for the money which he had advanced.
This, however, is merely conjectural. The district containing them is placed by Josephus in the northwest part of Galilee, adjacent to Tyre. Hiram does not appear to have been satisfied with the gift ; why, is uncertain. Kitto thinks because they were not situated on the coast. A Masonic legend says because they were ruined and dilapidated villages, and in token of his dissatisfaction, Hiram called the district Cabul. The meaning of this word is not known. Josephus, probably by conjecture from the context, says it means unpleasing. Hiller and, after him, Bates (Dictionary) suppose that the name is derived from a combination of letters meaning as and nothing. The Talmudic derivation from "tied with fetters", is described by Brother Mackey as Talmudically childish. The dissatisfaction of Hiram and its results constitute the subject of the legend of the Degree of Intimate Secretary in the Scottish Rite.
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CAGLIOSTRO IN ANTIQUITY
Beginning on page 170 is down in more than needed volume the wretched story of Cagliostro, and now that this glossy charlatan, the gold frogs on his clothes and the self-invented title on his visiting card , has become a ghost in which no living interest remains there would be no warrant to add further facts to a surfeit of facts were it not that the article on page 170 does not contain one fact which was not available before Bros. Rylands and Firebrace published their great two-volume history of the Lodge of Antiquity.
This fact is important, and is here emphasized as such, because it sets the records straight as regards what regular Freemasonry felt about Cagliostro When Cagliastro was bodily present.
Because he had been made a Mason in a French speaking Lodge in London (see page170) Cagliostro felt he had the right to visit Antiquity, and did so on the night of Nov. 1, 1786. This year fell in that (for Antiquity ) unhappy period when there were two Antiquity Lodges; one under the leadership of William Preston and comprising the larger and most solid portion of the membership and which was acting as head of the Grand Lodge of all England South of the River Trent; the other "the Northouck Lodge," so-called from the leader who had occasioned the division. Cagliostro was accompanied by a train of his friends, some of them, had only the Brethren known it at the time, not regular Masons but members of Cagliostro's Clandestine Egyptian Rite, which he had invented as a scheme for exploiting Masons, and made, up, as were his other claims and titles, out of his own head. A newspaper reported the meeting, in substance, thus: A few at least among "Northouck's members" resented the charlatan's presence, and one of them, Bro. Marsh, found ingenious means of saving his Lodge from a compromising and embarrassing contretemps.
Bro. Marsh, called upon for a song, with a devilishly witty ingenuity substituted an act, which portrayed a "traveling physician" (a quack) and played it out at Cagliostro's elbow. The effect was devastating; the audience (except for the visitors) was in an uproar of laughter. Cagliostro withdrew.
This was a cartoon in prose, and the Lodge passed a formal Resolution to condemn it as a misrepresentation. What actually occurred in the Meeting the Minums do not tell, but whatever it was the "Count's" prestige, gold frogs and all, was ruined Masonically.
(The Trowbridge book referred to on page171 continues to be among the best-read, but to it may be added other titles: Romantic Rascals, by Charles J. Finger; MacBride; New York. Count Cagliostro, by Constantin Photiades; Rider & Co. ; 1932. Le Matre Inconnu Cagliostro, by Dr. Marc Haven; Dorbon-Aire; Paris; a very elaborate bibliography. See Vol. II, by Firebrace, in Reccrds of the Lodge of Anliquily.)
Aside from manufacturing his spurious Egyplian Rite, Cagliostro had no part in regular Freemasonry except to join a French-speaking London Lodge. What the Inquisition found out about him nobody knows, but the trial itself shocked France by exposing the sinister methods still in use by the Roman hierarchy, and in its total effects, and as precipitating a nation-wide social crisis, ranks with the Dreyfus, Rasputin (Russian), and Taxil cases. Dumas wrote a novel about Cagliostro in The Diamond Necklace; and Frank King collects a number of illuminating facts in The Last of the Sorcerers. To a Masonic community as far from Paris as is American Masonry there is not much of either profit or comfort in the case, unless it be that at this distance it lays a red underline beneath the danger confronting any Masonic Jurisdictions which permit degree making and degree mongering, disguised as Masonry, to go unchecked or unchallenged. Bro. Marsh's performance was a commentary not altogether malapropos.
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CALENDARS, MASONIC
The calendars given on page 172 ff. are in use by modern bodies of Speculative Freemasonry, and the datings are self-confessedly of modern origin. They are based on the date of the Creation as 4004 B.C. as written into the margin of the Authorized Version of the Bible by Archbishop Usher in 1611. This date had been nowhere in general use prior to that time, and afterwards was never accepted by many chronologists. A work of encyclopedic informativeness on the calendars in use during the whole of the Operative and the Transition Periods of Freemasonry is Mediaeval Kalendarium, by R. F. Hampton, two volumes; London; 1841. It covers the Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries. In a period before calendars and almanacs came into general use it was widely employed as a handbook on matters of many kinds which have to do with the calendar. It contains much folklore; many pages on the Sts. John, lists of Saints' Days; and, as illustrative of what was said above, gives in one chapter a long list of the estimates of the date of Creation as computed by authorities at different times, among them being: Scaliger, 3950 B.C.; Petavius, 3984 B.C.; Ricciola, 4063 B.C.; Eusebius, 5200 B.C.; Alphonsine Tables, 6934 B.C.
There is no evidence to show that Operative Masons ever adopted a given date, or ever found use for one; moreover they had scarcely any conception of such a thing as a calendar, but fixed dates by reference to Saints' Days, Church festivals, the reign of Kings, and memorable local events-a flood, a fire, a battle, etc.
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CALIPH OF BAGDAD, THE
This most Widely-read of Masonic novels was written by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr. He was born at Waterville, Maine (the native State of a score of eminent Masons), June 5, 1823, the first of nine children. He moved to Malden, Mass., where his father was Universalist pastor, and a friend of Bro. Hosea Ballou, and lived there ten years ; in 1838 he moved to Waltham, Mass., from which, in 1841, he joined the Navy. Returned, he took up journalism, and for forty years was on the staff of the New York Ledger, an old-fashioned newspaper which published stories and essays. He was made a Mason in Oxford Lodge, Norway, Me., in 1854, and was its Worshipful Master five times. He was exalted in 1859; Knighted in Boston in 1872, and in 1874 was made 32 in the same city. He published three Masonic stories in the New York Ledger in 1858-1874. Sea stories, Oriental stories, Masonic stories, and religious stories were his forte. A new edition of the Caliph of Bagdad was published by Geo. H. Doran; New York.
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CANDID DISQUISITION, A
Wellins Calcott (see page 172) saw in Freemasonry something more than a museum of Medieval relics, and more than a set of convivial clubs, and undertook to write a rational, or philosophy, on the Craft, becoming thereby the first of a line of greatly distinguished Craftsmen, in which were to stand Hutchinson, Preston, Oliver, Mackey. He was born at a date not discoverable in available books; in the Minutes of one Lodge he is described as "a native of Shrewsbury, county of Salop," in another as from "Salop in Cheshire." At some date in probably the late 1750's he published A Collection of Thoughts, a volume half of quotations and half of his own meditations, a type of book dear to readers in that period. He had 1600 subscriptions for it before printing; and it went through five editions. In 1769 (and with 1200 subscribers) he published A Candid Disquisition of the Principles and Practices of the Most Honorable society of Free and Accepted Masons, etc. Oliver described this book, so simple, so gentle in spirit, and with few obvious displays of the classical learning behind it, "the gem of the period." Kenning describes Calcott: "Indeed he may fully be called the father of the Masonic philosophical and didactic school." Hughan characteristically valued it because it contained a list of Boston Lodges, as follows : under the Provincial Grand Lodge headed by John Rowe: Master's, First, Second, Rising Sun; and under the Scottish Provincial Grand Lodge under Joseph Warren: St. Andrew's, Lodge No. 2: and under an Ancient Grand Lodge Warrant: Ancient York, No. 169. Calcott was twice in America, both times in the Carolinas, possibly in New York or Boston. He must have been a wandering man, perhaps one of those impracticable, learned men ungifted with the sense of trade or of money, for we can track him in Scotland and England from Lodge to Lodge, going about like a colporteur to distribute his Candid Disquisitions. He was three times in St. David Lodge, No. 30, and became member by affiliation, during 1761 and 1762. Was Worshipful Master of Holywell Lodge, in England. He visited Lodge St. John Kilwinning, Haddington, No. 57, in 1761. He was in Phoenix Lodge, No. 94, in Sunderland, in 1779, when the Minutes describe him as "from Carolina," and gave a Third Degree Lecture. In his Preston Lecture for 1928, John Stokes says: "Many of the words and phrases used in his lectures were adopted by Hemming and made part of the Ritual which we use today." It is a romantic fact (and Freemasonry is fuII of them) that words written down in 1750 or 1760 by this only half-known, gentle, much wandering man, two or three times described in Lodge Minutes as "in unfortunate circumstances," should afterwards be on the tongues of millions of men who have never so much as heard his name !
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CATASTROPHES, MASONIC RELIEF OF
During the period of five years from1923 to1928 inclusive the Fraternity in the United States was called upon to raise funds for relief no fewer than five times: the Japanese earthquake of 1923; the Florida hurricane of 1926; the Mississippi flood of 1927; the Porto Rico hurricane of 1928; the Florida hurricane of 1928. on each of these occasions the Masonic Service Association acted as a unit for the Grand Lodges holding membership in it; other non-member Grand Lodges used it as an agency through which to distribute their funds; the remaining Grand Lodges sent their funds directly to Masonic bodies or other agencies at the scene of the disaster. The total amount of monies raised by Masonic Bodies of each and every Rite has never been computed; the amounts reported as passing through the hands of the Masonic Service Association, or passing through other hands but reported by it were as follows : for the Japanese earthquake, $15,777 the Florida hurricane of 1926, $111,652; the Mississippi flood in 1927, $605,603; the Porto Rico hurricane of 1928, $81,774; the Florida hurricane of 1828 $107,622.
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CATECHISMS, THE OLD
The Early Masonic Calechismus by Douglas Knoop, G. P. Jones, and Douglas Harner (Manchester University Press; 1043) is the first book-length (200 pages) analysis of those unfamiliar but important documents which are called the Old Catechisms. The authors describe them as having been originally "mainly conceded with the form of giving the Mason Word, and the quostion and answers used to test persons claiming to have the Mason Word." There are Masons still living in America who can recall a wide-spread use of "test questions," some of which were of archaic form, and which on the surface had no apparent connection with the Ritual. Something of the same sort was in use in the Eighteenth Century (and perhaps a half century or so earlier); a few of them, and possibly the elaborate ones, were written or printed. They are useful for the data they contain, or imply, about the Esoteric Work. The authors of Early Masonic Catechismus have collected everything thus far discovered about nine written catechisms and seven printed ones. Of the former: Edinburgh Register House MS., 1696. Chetwode Crawley MS., circa 1700. Sloane MS. 3529, Circa. 1700. Dumfries No. 4 MS., circa 1700 Trinity College Dublin MS., 1711. Institution of Free Masons circa 1725. Graham MS., 1726. Chesham MS., circa 1740. Essex MS., circa 1750. Of the printed ones: A Mason's Examination, 1723. The grand Mystery of Free-Masons Discovered , 1725. The Whole Institutions of Free-Masons Opened 1725. The Grand Mustery Laid Open, 1726. A Masons Confession, 1725. The Mystery of Freemasonry, 1730 Prichards Masonry Dissected, 1730.
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CATHEDRALS, AMERICAN
The Cathedral of St. John The Devine In New York City was built according to the designs and methods used by Operative Freemasons of the Middle Ages as nearly as modern knowledge, skill and circumstances made it possible. Except that its founder, Bishop Henry C Potter, of the Protestant Episcopal Church, was an active Freemason, this first American cathedral, properly and strictly so called (architecturally), has received little attention from the American Fraternity, though each year an increasing number of Masons visit it to see with their own eyes what kind of work had been done by the founders of their own Craft. The second genuinely Gothic cathedral to be erected on the Continent, the National Cathedral at Washington, has been in a different case, for so many Grand Bodies have taken a share in building it that they must in the future ever feel a small sense of proprietorship in it.
A charter to the Protestant Episcopal Cathedral Foundation was granted by Congress in 1893. A cathedral close of 65 acres was purchased on Mount Saint Alban, 400 feet above the general level of Washington, D.C. Its central tower will stand higher in the sky than the Washington Monument ; it and the Washington Masonic Memorial (Freemasonry's own national cathedral) will be in full view of each other. Washington had expressed a hope for "a church for national purposes," I'Enfant had embodied it in his city plan; the National Cathedral is a realization of their dreams.
The bodies of Admiral Dewey, President Wilson, and Bishop Satterlee already are entombed in it; in the course of time it may become another Westminster Abbey. There will be in it a Masonic Section, as planned for by Bro. and Bishop James E. Freeman; hundreds of Masons or Masonic Bodies have paid for stones to be used in it. A Masonic Committee of the National Cathedral Association was formed, led by Bro. John H. Cowles, head of the Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction; the Rt. Rev. James E. Freeman, Bishop of Washington, Honorary Chairman.
*
CENSORSHIP
The Roman Popes set up systems of censorship long before the invention of printing, and when even hand-written manuscripts were very scarce and were too expensive for general use ; it censored also symbols, statues, pictures, music, speeches, ceremonies and pageants-it even tried to censor games and dances, and more than once went so far as to undertake the censorship of women's dress!-one of the favorite subjects of many of the bachelor Popes, and a principal theme of the sermons of the great preacher, Chrysostom. From the early days of the Christian religion down to the present moment the system of censorship of the Roman Church has rested on a single principle : it claims for itself the exclusive right to decide what is true and what is not true. Kings, princes, barons, Lords, the heads of great commercial companies, and the heads of colleges and universities, these also have employed censorship as a means of control and of preventing unorthodox words or practices. The American Revolution and the French Revolution between them were the first to overthrow this system which is as pernicious and inhuman in its own way as slavery was in another way. Today the bureau of the Roman Censorship publishes thick volumes of its Index, which are little more than titles of condemned books; many Masonic titles are among them, as also are titles by Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus, Sir Isaac Newton, John Locke, and a long list of names equally celebrated of men who have believed that facts and realities decide what is true and is not true (the many Papal condemnations of the doctrine of the sphericity of the earth had no effect on the shape of the planet)!
When the Mother Grand Lodge of England (1717) set up a censorship of Masonic books, that is, books about Masonry written by Masons, it was acting according to received custom. That censorship continued until late in the century, when it went by default, and is not likely ever to be revised, because a censored Mason and a Freemason are a contradiction in terms; for if a Mason can be trusted to be loyal to the Craft in his behavior, so can he be trusted not to betray or to misrepresent it in what he says and writes. (On Church censorship the standard work is Censorship of the Church of Rome, by George Haven Putnam; S. P. Putnam's Sons; New York; 1906.)
*
CHARLEMAGNE
The paragraph about Charlemagne on page
195 makes note of the tradition that he had a school for Masons
in his castle at Aix-la-ChapeIle (Aachen). To this may be added
two other points at which he enters the circle of Masonic studies:
1. Beginning at line 576 the Cooke MS. refers to a Carolus Secundus,
that is, Charles the Second; and in 590 ff. goes on to say that
he was a King who loved Masons and cherished them and gave them
charges and manners of which some are still in use in France,
and ordained for them an annual assembly "and for to be ruled
by matters & fellows of alle thyngs a-mysse." It is likely
that Charles the Bold (840-77 A.D.) is here referred to ; but
some commentators believe rather that it refers to Charlemagne,
and if so it explains the origin of the tradition referred to
in the above paragraph.
2. In Medieval wall paintings and stained glass windows the conventionalized picture of Charlemagne represents him as a large, bearded, Moses-like figure, carrying the model of a cathedral in the crook of his arm. In a few French Medieval manuscripts this cathedral at Aix is described as "our Solomon's Temple," Charlemagne is "our Solomon," and the knowledge and skill showed in building it is described "as Solomon's art."
*
CHAUCER AND FREEMASONRY
For some centuries the Kings of England had a general overseer to manage and to supervise their own many and often very large building operations, and to act in the King's name when Royal supervision of any other building enterprise might be called for, such officials being called at times Commissioner, Supervisor, Chief Clerk, etc. Elias de Dereham and William of Wykeham were two of the more famous ''surveyors''; as also were, at a later time, Inigo Jones, who introduced the Palladian style from Italy into England, and Christopher Wren.
Geoffrey Chaucer, the poet, held the office late in the Fourteenth Century. On page 67, of the Transactions of the Manchester Association for Masonic Research, Vol. 19-21 (for 1928-31) was quoted a document which Chaucer issued and signed:
(3) Bill of Geodffrey Chaucer, Clerk of the King's Works, to be Chancellor, for the issue of a commission under the Great Seal to Hugh Swayn to purvey stone, timber, tiles, shingles, &c. and to take masons, carpenters, and others for the works at Westminster, Sheen, Kennington, Charing Mews, Byfleet, Coldkennington, Clarendon and Hathebergh Lodge; and of similar commissions to three others for the works of the Tower of London, Berkhampstead, Childeme Langley, and Eltham. (A.D.1389. French. Probably holograph.) Signed :- Par GeoEray Chaucer, clerc des cevereines du roy nostre seignur.
Traces of signet. (Chancery Warrants 1. 1660 a No. 26)
Chaucer's Canterbury Tales also establish a link, though a less obvious one, between the poet and the Craft of Masons. The Masons' Company in London, with which Chaucer had official connections, sustained the St. Thomas Hospital there, left it many bequests, and often visited it in livery. Masons' Companies in two, and possibly three, other cities also helped to support local hospitals of their own named for St. Thomas and it is possible that they looked on St. Thomas as their Patron Saint. This Saint Thomas was the martyred Archbishop of Canterbury, St. Thomas Becket, who was murdered in his own cathedral in 1170. The fact that three knights, described at the time as "the three ruffians," murdered the fifty-three year old prelate by beating him over the head after demanding that he "give them his word," threatened to bury him in the rubbish, and that his body was buried in a spot between a memorial to John the Baptist on one side and John the Evangelist on the other, the two forming parallel lines, must have held a peculiar interest to men in the Masons' Companies, and may account for their support of St. Thomas Hospitals; and it is possible that Chauser, connected with the Mason Company in London as he was, may from that association have had his interest in Canterbury first aroused, and as a result of which he wrote in rhyme the Canterbury (St. Thomas' church) Tales.
It belongs to the in curable romanticism of Medieval England 'that this St. Thomas, England's "favorite saint,'' her most "glorious martyr," "the most English of the Saints," was by blood only half English, and half Christian. Gilbert Becket was a member of the Mercers Company, or gild, but as a young man went off on one of the Crusades to war on the infidel Saracens, was captured, was released by "a fair Saracen," a Mohammedan lady ; they fell in love, she followed him to London, professed conversion, and Thomas was their son.
Thomas learned reading and writing, went to work in the Sheriff's office, and then was employed by the King, upon whose wish, and against Thomas' own desires, he took Holy Orders expressly in order to be named Archbishop of Canterbury, where the King purposed to have a friend and supporter in that highest of ecclesiastica1offices, but discovered to his chagrin, and too late, that "he had a Tartar there."
The Mercers Company afterwards was given the land which had belonged to the senior Becket; and in the Charter given it by Henry IV in 1406 its members were named "Brothers of St. Thomas à Becket." St. Thomas was for centuries a favorite Patron Saint among the gilds and companies.
*
CADET-GASSICOURT, CHARLES LOUIS
The author of the celebrated work entitled Le Tombeau de Jacques de Molay, which was published at Paris, in 1796, and in which he attempted, like Barmel and Robison, to show that Freemasonry was the source and instigator of all the political revolutions which at that time were convulsing Europe. Cadet-Gassicourt was himself the victim of political persecution, and, erroneously attributing his sufferings to the influences of the Masonic Lodges in France, became incensed against the Order, and this gave birth to his libelous book. But subsequent reflection led him to change his views, and he became an ardent admirer of the Institution which he had formerly maligned. He sought initiation into Freemasonry, and in 1805 was elected as Master of the Lodge l'Abeille in Paris. He was born at Paris. January 23, 1769, and died in the same city November 21, 1821.
*
CADMILLUS
The youngest of the Cabiri, and as he is slain in the Cabiric Mysteries, he becomes the analogue or representative of the Builder in the legend of Freemasonry. '
*
CADUCEUS
The Caduceus was the magic wand of the god Hermes. It was an olive staff twined with fillets, which were gradually converted to wings and serpents. Hermes, or Mercury, was the messenger of Jove. Among his numerous attributes, one of the most important was that of conducting disembodied spirits to the other world, and, on necessary occasions, of bringing them back. He was the guide of souls, and the restorer of the dead to life.
Thus, Horace, in addressing him, says:
Unspotted spirits you consign
To blissful seats and joys divine,
And powerful with your golden wand
The light unburied crowd command.
Vergil also alludes to this attribute of
the magic wand
when he is describing the flight of
Mercury on his way to bear Jove's warning message to Aeneas:
His wand he takes ; with this pale ghost he calls
From Pluto's realms, or sends to Tartarus' shore.
And Statius, imitating this passage, makes
the same allusion in his Thebaid (1, 314), thus translated by
Lewis:
He grasps the wand which draws from hollow graves,
Or drives the trembling shades to Stygian waves ;
With magic power seals the watchful eye
In slumbers soft or causes sleep to fly.
The history of this Caduceus, or magic wand, will lead us to its symbolism. Mercury, who had invented the lyre, making it out of the shell of the tortoise, exchanged it with Apollo for the latter's magical wand. This wand was simply an olive branch around which were placed two fillets of ribbon. Afterward, when Mercury was in Arcadia, he encountered two serpents engaged in deadly combat. These he separated with his wand; hence the olive wand became the symbol of peace, and the two fillets were replaced by the two serpents, thus giving to the Caduceus its well-known form of a staff, around which two serpents are entwined.
Such is the legend; but we may readily see that in the olive, as the symbol of immortality, borne as the attribute of Mercury, the giver of life to the dead, we have a more ancient and profounder symbolism. The serpents, symbols also of immortality, are appropriately united with the olive wand. The legend also accounts for a later and secondary symbolism-that of peace.
The Caduceus then-the original meaning of which word is a herald's staff-as the attribute of a life-restoring God, is in its primary. meaning the symbol of immortality; so in Freemasonry the rod of the Senior Deacon, or the Master of Ceremonies, is but an analogue or representation of the Hermean Caduceus. This officer, as leading the aspirant through the forms of initiation into his new birth or Masonic regeneration, and teaching him in the solemn ceremonies of the Third Degree the lesson of eternal life, may well use the magic wand as a representation of it, which was the attribute of that ancient deity who brought the dead into life.
*
CAEMENTARIUS
Latin. A builder of walls, a mason, from caemantum, a rough, unhewn stone as it comes from the quarry. In medieval Latin, the word is used to designate an Operative Mason.
Du Cange cites Magister Caementariorum as used to designate him who presided over the building of edifices, that is, the Master of the works. It has been adopted by some modern writers as a translation of the word Freemason. Its employment for that purpose is perhaps more correct than that of the more usual word latomus, which owes its use to the authority of Thory.
*
CAGLIOSTRO
Of all the Masonic persons of romantic celebrity
who flourished in the eighteenth century the Count Cagliostro
was most prominent, whether we consider the ingenuity of his schemes,
the extensive field of his operations through almost every country
of Europe, or the distinguished character and station of many
of those whose credulity made them his enthusiastic supporters.
The history of Freemasonry in that century would not be complete
without a reference to this personage. To write the history of
Freemasonry in the eighteenth century and to leave out Cagliostro,
would be like enacting the play of Hamlet and leaving out the
part of the Prince of Denmark. And yet Carlyle has had occasion
to complain of the paucity of materials for such a work.
Indeed, of one so well known as Cagliostro comparatively little is to be found in print. Doctor Mackey held that there was sufficient published to prove him to be a "charlatan" and a "prince of Masonic imposters."
The authorities on which Brother Mackey rested his belief are mentioned in his following sentence. The only works upon which he who would write his life must depend are a Life of him published in London, 1787; Memoirs, in Paris, 1786 ; and Memoirs Authentiques, Strasbourg, 1786; a Life, in Germany, published at Berlin, 1787; another in Italian, published at Rome in 1791; and a few fugitive pieces, consisting chiefly of manifestoes of himself and his disciples.The widest differences exist among writers as to Cagliostro's true standing, the majority following the lead of Doctor Mackey, whose account is appended.
Joseph Balsamo, subsequently known as Count Cagliostro, was the son of Peter Balsamo and Felicia Braconieri, both of mean extraction, and was born on the 8th of June, 1743, in the city of Palermo. Upon the death of his father, he was taken under the protection of his maternal uncles, who caused him to be instructed in the elements of religion and learning, by both of which he profited so little that he eloped several times from the Seminary of St. Roch, near Palermo, where he had been placed for his instruction.
At the age of thirteen he was carried to the Convent of the Good Brotherhood at Castiglione. There, having assumed the habit of a novice, he was placed under the tuition of the apothecary, from whom he learned the principles of chemistry and medicine. His brief residence at the convent was marked by violations of many of its rules; and finally, abandoning it altogether, he returned to Palermo. There he continued his vicious courses, and was frequently seized and imprisoned for infractions of the law. At length, having cheated a goldsmith, named Marano, of a large amount of gold, he was compelled to flee from his native country.
He then repaired to Messina, where he became acquainted with one Altotas, who pretended to be a great chemist. Together they proceeded to Alexandria in Egypt, where, by means of certain chemical, or perhaps rather by financial, operations, they succeeded in collecting a considerable amount of money.
In 1776 Cagliostro appeared in London. During this visit, Cagliostro become connected with the Order of Freemasonry. In the month of April he received the degrees in Esperance Lodge, No. 289, which then met at the King's Head Tavern. Cagliostro did not join the Order with disinterested motives, or at least he determined in a very short period after his initiation to use the Institution as an instrument for the advancement of his personal interests. Here he is said to have invented, in 1777, that grand scheme of imposture under the name of Egyptian Freemasonry, by the propagation of which he subsequently became so famous as the great Masonic charlatan of his age.
London did not fail to furnish him with a fertile field for his impositions, and the English Freemasons seemed no way reluctant to become his dupes; but, being ambitious for the extension of his Rite, and anxious for the greater income which it promised, he again passed over to the Continent, where he justly anticipated abundant success in its propagation. This Egypt Freemasonry constituted the great pursuit of the rest of his life, and was the instrument which he used for many years to make dupes of thousands of credulous persons.
During Cagliostro's residenee in England, on his last visit, he was attacked by the editor Morand, in the Courier de l'Europe, in a series of abusive articles, to which Cagliostro replied in a letter to the English people. But, although he had a few Egyptian Lodges in London under his government, he appears, perhaps from Morand's revelations of his character and life, to have lost his popularity, and he left England permanently in May, 1787. He went to Savoy, Sardinia, and other places in the south of Europe, and at last, in May, 1789, by an act of rash temerity, proceeded to Rome, where he organized an Egyptian Lodge under the very shadow of , the Vatican. But this was more than the Church, which had been excommunicating Freemasons for fifty years, was willing to endure. On the 27th of December of that year, on the festival of St. John the Evangelist, to whom he had dedicated his Lodges, the Holy Inquisition arrested him, and locked him up in the castle of San Angelo.
There, after such a trial as the Inquisition is wont to give to the accused-in which his wife is said to have been the principal witness against him-he was convicted of having formed'' societies and conventicles of Freemasonry." His manuscript entitled Maçonnerie Egyptienne was ordered to be burned by the public executioner, and he himself was condemned to death; a sentence which the Pope subsequently commuted for that of perpetual imprisonment. Cagliostro appealed to the French Constituent Assembly, but of course in vain.
Thenceforth no more is seen of him. For four years this adventurer, who had filled during his life so large a space in the world's history-the associate of princes, prelates, and philosophers; the inventor of a spurious Rite, which had, however, its thousands of disciples-languished within the gloomy walls of the prison of St. Leo, in the Duchy of Urbino, and at length, in the year 1795, in a fit of apoplexy, bade the world adieu. But there is another side to the foregoing account by Doctor Mackey. Some more recent writers have seriously questioned the identity of Cagliostro and Balsamo.
Both Trowbridge and Spence deem the later
evidence to have proven that Cagliostro was not Balsamo. Lewis
Spenee sums up the situation thus in his Encyclopedia of Occultism
after a lengthy review of the various assertions of the authorities
and the test of them by the ascertained facts:
"It is distinctly no easy matter to get at the bedrock truth
regarding Cagliostro or to form any just estimate of his true
character. That he was vain, naturally pompous, fond of theatrical
mystery, and of the popular side of occultism, is most probable.
Another circumstance which stands out in relation to his personality is that he was vastly desirous of gaining cheap popularity. He was probably a little mad. On the other hand he was beneficent, and felt it his mission in the then king-ridden state of Europe to found Egyptian Masonry for the protection of society in general, and the middle and lower classes in particular. A born adventurer, he was by no means a rogue, as his lack of shrewdness has been proved on many occasions. There is small question either that the various Masonic lodges which he founded and which were patronized by persons of ample means, provided him with extensive funds and it is a known fact that he was subsidized by several extremely wealthy men, who, themselves dissatisfied by the state of affairs in Europe, did not hesitate to place their riches at his disposal for the purpose of undermining the tyrannic powers which then wielded sway.
There is reason to believe that he had in some way and at some period of his life acquired a certain working knowledge of practical occultism, and that he possessed certain elementary psychic powers of hypnotism and telepathy. His absurd account of his childhood is almost undoubtedly a plagiarism of that stated in the first manifesto to the public of the mysterious Rosicrucian Brotherhood, as containing an account of the childhood of their Chief. But on the whole he is a mystery, and in all likelihood the clouds which surround his origin and earlier years will never be dispersed. It is probably better that this should be so, as although Cagliostro was by no means an exalted character, he was yet one of the most picturesque figures in the later history of Europe; and assuredly not the least aid to his picturesqueness is the obscurity in which his origin is involved."
For further reading on the career of Cagliostro, a showing to the effect that if he was not of unalloyed honor, he was not altogether an impostor and scoundrel, consult Cagliostro: The Splendor and Mystery of a Master of Magic by W. R H, Trowbridge, and An Encyclopedia of Occukism by Lewis Spence.
Other books of reference are Cagliostro and Company, by Franz Funck-Brentano, and the Life of Joseph Balsamo, published at Dublin in 1792, the latter being translated from the original proceedings published at Rome by order of the Apostolic Chamber and therefore of especial interest as the Roman Catholic argument against one condemned by the Inquisition for being a Freemason. This report (page 239), asserts that the judgment entirely accords with justice, equity, prudence, religion, and public tranquillity.
It then runs thus: "Joseph Balsamo, attainted and convected of many crimes, and having incurred the censures and penalties pronounced against formal heretics, dogmatists, heresiarchs, and propagators of magic and superstition, has been found guilty, and condemned to the censures and penalties denounced as well by the apostolic laws of Clement XII and of Benedict XIV against those who in any manner whatever favor or form societies and conventicles of Free Masons, as by the edict of the Council of State against those who are guilty of this crime at Rome, or any other place under the dominion of the Pope.
Notwithstanding this, by way of special grace and favor, this crime, the expiation of which demands the delivery of the culprit over to the secular arm, to be by it punished with death, is hereby changed and commuted into perpetual imprisonment, in a fortress where the culprit is to be strictly guarded, without any hope of pardon whatever."
This order was carried into effect as was also the burning by "the hand of the hangman" of Cagliostro's manuscript on Egyptian Freemasonry as were all his other books, instruments, symbols, etc., relating thereto. The order also confirmed and renewed the laws of the Roman Catholic Church prohibiting societies and conventicles of Freemasons, and winds up by declaring "We shall enact the most grievous corporal punishments, and principally those provided for heresies, against whosoever shall associate, hold communication with, or protect, these societies."
*
CAHIER
French. A number of sheets of parchment or paper fastened together at one end. The word is used by French Freemasons to designate a small book printed, or in manuscript, containing the ritual of a Degree. The word has been borrowed from French history, where it denotes the reports and proceedings of certain assemblies, such as the clergy, the States-General, etc.
*
CAIRNS
Derived from the Gaelic can, meaning a mound, and applied thus to heaps of stones of a conical form erected by the Druids. Some suppose them to have been sepulchral monuments, others altars. They were undoubtedly of a religious character, since sacrificial fires were lighted upon them, and processions were made around them.
These processions were analogous to the circumambulations in Freemasonry, and were conducted, like them, with reference to the apparent course of the sun. Thus, Toland, in his Letters on the Celtic Religion, II, xvii, says of these mystical processions, that the people of the Scottish islands "never come to the ancient sacrificing and fire-hallowing Cams but they walk three times round them from east to west, according to the course of the sun. This sanctified tour, or round by the south, is called Deaseal, as the unhallowed contrary one by the north, Tuapholl"; and he says that Deaseal is derived from "Deas, the right (understanding hand), and soil, one of the ancient names of the sun, the right hand in this round being ever next the heap." In all this the Freemason will be reminded of the Masonic ceremony of circumambulation around the altar and the rules which govern it.
*
CALATRAVA, MILITARY ORDER OF
Instituted l158, during the reign of Sancho III, King of Castile, who conquered and gave the Castle of Calatrava, an important fortress of the Moors of Andalusia, to the Knights Templar, who subsequently relinquished their possession of it to the king.
The king, being disappointed in the ability of the Templars to retain it, then offered the defense of the place to Don Raymond of Navarre, Abbot of St. Mary of Hitero, a Cistercian convent, who accepted it. Don Raymond being successful, the king gave the place to him and his companions, and instituted the 0rder of Calatrava. A Grand Master was appointed and approved of by the Pope, Alexander III, 1164, which was confirmed by Innocent III in 1198.
The knights had been granted the power of electing their own Grand Master; but on the death of Don Gareias Lopez de Pardella, 1489, Ferdinand and Isabella annexed the Grand Mastership to the Crown of Castile, which was sanctioned by Pope Innocent VIII.
*
CALCOTT, WELLINS
A distinguished Masonic writer of the eighteenth century, and the author of a work published in 1769, under the title of A Candid Disquisition of the Principles and Practices of the Most Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons; together with some Strictures on the 0rigin, Nature, and Design of that Institution, in which he has traced Freemasonry from its origin, explained its symbols and hieroglyphics, its social virtues and advantages, suggested the propriety of building halls for the peculiar and exclusive practice of Freemasonry and reprehended its slanderers with great but judicious severity.
This was the first extended effort to illustrate philosophically the science of Freemasonry, and was followed, a few years after, by Hutchinson's admirable work ; so that Oliver justly says that ''Calcott opened the mine of Freemasonry, and Hutchinson worked it."
*
CALEDONIA, NEW
See Oceania
*
CALENDAR
Freemasons, in affixing dates to their official documents, never make use of the Common Epoch or Vulgar Era, but have one peculiar to themselves, which, however, varies in the different rites. Era and epoch are, in this sense, synonymous.
Strictly, the epoch is an important point in history beginning a period termed an era, as the epoch of the Crucifixion followed by the Christian Era.
Freemasons of the York, American, and French Rites, that is to say, the Freemasons of England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, and America, date from the creation of the world, calling it Anno Lucis, which they abbreviate A. . L. ., signifying in the Year of Light. Thus with them the year 1872 is A.'. L.'. 5872. This they do, not because they believe Freemasonry to be coeval with the Creation, but with a symbolic reference to the light of Freemasonry.
In the Scottish Rite, the epoch also begins from the date of the creation, but Freemasons of that Rite, using the Jewish chronology, would call the year 1872 A.'. M.'. or Anno Mundi meaning in the Year of the World, 5632. They sometimes use the initials A.'. H. '., signifying Anno Hebraico, or, in the Hebrew year.
They have also adopted the Hebrew months, and the year, therefore, begins with them in the middle of September (see Months, Hebrew).
Freemasons of the York and American Rites begin the year on the lst of January, but in the French Rite it commences on the lst of March, and instead of the months receiving their usual names, they are designated numerically, as first, second, third, etc. Thus, the lst of January, 1872, would be styled, in a French Masonic document, the lst day of the 11th Masonic month, Anno Lucis, 5872. The French sometimes, instead of the initials A.'. L.'., use L'an de la V.'. L. '., or Vraie Lumiére, that is, Year of True Light.
Royal Arch Masons commence their epoch with the year in which Zerubbabel began to build the second Temple, which was 530 years before Christ.
Their style for the year 1872 is, therefore, A.'. Inv.'., that is, Anno Inventionis, or, in the Year of the Discovery, 2402.
Royal and Select Masters very often make use of the common Masonic date, Anno Lucis, but properly they should date from the year in which Solomon's Temple was completed; and their style would then be, Anna Depositionis, or, in the Year of the Deposit, and they would date the year 1872 as 2872.
Knights Templar use the epoch of the organization of their Order in 1118. Their style for the year 1872 is A.'. O.'., Anno 0rdinis, or, in the Year of the 0rder, 754.
We subjoin, for the convenience of reference, the rules for discovering these different dates.
l. To find the Ancient Craft date. Add 4000
to the Vulgar Era. Thus 1872 and 4000 are 5872.
2. To find the date of the Scottish Rite. Add 3760 to the Vulgar
Era. Thus 1872 and 3760 are 5632. After September add one year
more.
3. To find the date of Royal Arch Masonry. Add 530 to the Vulgar
Era. Thus 530 and 1872 are 2402.
4. To find the Royal and Select Masters' date. Add 1000 to the
Vulgar Era. Thus 1000 and 1872 are 2872.
5. To find the Knights Templar's. Subtract 1118 from the Vulgar
Era. Thus 1118 from 1872 is 754. The following will show, in one
view, the date of the year 1872 in all the branches of the Order:
Year of the Lord, 1872 A.D.-Vulgar Era.
Year of Light, A.'. L.'. 5872-Ancient Craft Masonry.
Year of the World, A.'. M.'. 5632-Scottish Rite.
Year of the Discovery, A.'. L.'. 2402-Royal Arch Masonry.
Year of the Deposit, A.'. Dep.'. 2872-Royal and Select Masters.
Year of the Order, A.'. O.'. 754-Knights Templar.
*
CHARTERS AND THE OLD CHARGES
When King Henry III was in want of money to carry on his war against the Barons he announced to the Prior of the Templars that he intended to commandeer some portions of the riches with which their vaults were crowded (The Templars, the Knights of St. John, and the Church among them owned one-third of England) and in spite of the Charters he had given them, the Prior of the Templars replied: "What sayest thou, O King? Far be it that thy mouth should utter so disagreeable and silly a word. . . Thou wilt cease to be king."
The Prior took his defiant stand on his Charter, the solidest thing in the Middle Ages. Even the Tudor Kings, unafraid of man or devil, were smitten with fear at the mere thought of Charter breaking. There are in modern use contracts, deeds, charters, warrants, and similar instruments through which authority acts, and in which sovereignty resides; but no one of those documents is what a Medieval Charter was. For in the Middle Ages, a Charter was a document which possessed sovereignty, power, authority in itself, not as delegated, but as original. If a town received a Charter (a town might pay the king a large sum for one) it was thereby made a free, independent, sovereign, self-governing incorporation which could levy taxes, conscript soldiers, hold courts, execute criminals, buy, sell, or construct property; subject only to the national sovereignty it was almost a small nation.
The town of Cambridge was such a chartered incorporation; the University of Cambridge, though a school and not a city, and only a short distance from the town, also had a Charter, and therefore had its own courts and peace officers; and in the Town and Gown battles the two were more than once virtually at war with each other. If a gild of craftsmen or churchmen or merchants received a Charter, they became a self-governing unit even though they had no territory or property. Chartered Colonies, chartered trading companies like the East India, West India African Companies, were English governments in pello in foreign places. Medieval England was almost a government by Charters. Magna Carta was epoch making because it was a charter granted to the people of London; it was therefore the guarantee of the liberties named in it, and as against any King or Parliament, because it was a Charter.
It is evident from the Old MSS., the Craft's oldest existing written records, that the Freemasons, a fraternity spread over England, claimed to possess a Charter as a fraternity, and that it had been granted to them by Prince Edwin in the Tenth Century; from this "Great Charter" they claimed authority to constitute themselves as Lodges, to hold assemblies (so often forbidden by the Kings), to hold their own courts, to have their own laws, to make contracts (as often they did), to hold property, to regulate their own hours and wages, to take apprentices under bond, and to regulate their own affairs wherever one Freemason or a Lodge of them might be.
When any city, university, or society petitioned for a Charter it usually gave the grounds upon which it felt a right to ask it, and among the more common grounds were a great antiquity, a record of peaceableness, the prestige of names among its members, etc. ; the writer of the original book of the Old Charges (old MSS.), of which nearly two hundred copies have been found, sets out in the first half of his document, though with great brevity, and discontentedly, the grounds upon which the Fraternity of Freemasons had obtained a Charter from Prince Edwin. Freemasonry was ancient, because building went back to Adam; among its earliest founders (men who made the art possible) were such famous and learned men as Pythagoras and Euclid; such great kings as Charlemagne and Athelstan had been among its patrons; Freemasons had always been educated men, not lewd fellows ("lewd" meant illiterate) or churls, but lovers of the Liberal Arts and Sciences (curriculum of the schools and universities);
they had never held unlawful assemblies to conspire against lawful rulers, and it was while holding one of their lawful and peaceable assemblies that Edwin had given them their Great charter. Copies of such a charter, duly authenticated, were sufficient authority for regular Freemasons anywhere to hold local assemblies and constitute themselves into Lodges, nor could local prelates or lords forbid them.
Having thus shown the ground of authority the document then goes on to set down the set of rules and charges which, on Charter authority, the Masonic Fraternity imposed upon its membership.
Boys come to be made apprentices, though of gentle birth, need not expect that they would be in a loose and carefree circle, to act as they wished; they would be governed under strict laws. This grounding of the authority of the Craft on an original Charter is repeated in the records of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, the formation of which was not attempted until after the ancient family holding the rights of Masonic Charter had made over those rights to the governing body to be.
It has been assumed by some Masonic writers that the Old charges were a mere "tradition" of legendary Graft ,,history," to be piously believed, and to be read to Apprentices to give them an impression of the Craft's antiquity; and they took the charges and the rules and regulations, to be mere by-laws of a voluntary social Fraternity, or sodality. It is submitted on the basis of facts given above that this is an error. A copy of the old Charges was a Lodge's Charter, its legal right to exist. From its Minute Book it is evident that Antiquity Lodge insisted that it never had surrendered its own Charter to the new Grand Lodge in 1717; when later it believed that the Grand Master had violated Antiquity's Charter, Antiquity withdrew and continued to work in independence for more than ten years. The new Grand Lodge was not to replace the authority inherent in each Lodge but was to supervise only such matters as lay among the Lodges. And it is certain that most of the old Lodges looked upon the Book of Constitutions as a Grand Lodge Charter, and that the old Masons (represented by fourteen members) had insisted on incorporating in it the old grounds on which the original Charter (as they believed) had been given by Prince Edwin ; so that the first half of the Book was not, as Gould and Hughan erroneously believed, a fabulous and pleasing tale or legend but a claim to original Charter authority one thousand years old.
The "new men," the "gentlemen" or "accepted" Masons who followed the Duke of Montague into the Craft in a stream, and who came into control of the Fraternity had only a sketchy knowledge of Masonry and little understanding of its ancient customs and landmarks.
They committed one fateful blunder after another One of the cardinal discoveries, as even the young and green Grand Lodge found out in thirty years was that a Grand Master, privately and personally , and at his own pleasure, could not "make" a Lodge though until 1757 he undertook to do so; for if he could make a Lodge at his own pleasure he could break a Lodge at his pleasure (and often did), could control the making of Masons and decide whom to admit etc., would leave a Lodge no authority or sovereignly of its own, and would reduce it to a number of members meeting under club rules. When the Grand Lodge ordained that Master Masons could "be made only at Grand Lodge, Masons everywhere rebelled Lodges withdrew by the score, and the erection of the Ancient Grand Lodge, no such innovator was one of the consequences.
Come to its senses the Grand Lodge( of 1757, ) began in 1757 following Ireland by two years, to issue no more Grand Master's written consents, for that is what the Deputations or Warrants had been, but Charters, documents possessing original authority in themselfs.
These charters did not create the right of Freemasons to form a Lodge, they recognized it, they were an official evidence that a given Lodge received one was deemed regular by other Lodges and entitled to be represented at Craft Assemblies in the Grand Lodge.
This means that a regular Lodge possesses inherent authority, by time immemorial rights, and not a merely provisional and delegated authority; and it is one that cannot be usurped by any faction among its own members, or by other Lodges, or by the Grand Master or by the Grand Lodge. It was this which he had in mind when Albert G. Mackey stated that Masons right to form and to assemble in Lodges is an Ancient Landmark, as indubitably it is; and it is for the same reason that Lodges are not "subordinate'' to Grand Lodge, mere local branches of it, but are constituents of it, and hence are properly called Constituent Bodies.
Thus it turns out at the end of some eight or so centuries of Masonic history that modern Speculative Freemasonry discovered what the original authors of the Old Charges knew and affirmed, that a Lodge, or assembly of Masons, without a Charter will find in experience that their Lodge and assembly is an empty vanity; and that each Lodge has inherent and alienable Charter rights.
American Masons are separated by the Atlantic Ocean and centuries of time from the Middle Ages : in the nature of things they cannot be expected to have a clear and adequate knowledge of Medieval history. The fact explains the acceptance by many American Masons of the theory, often set out in Masonic periodicals and in Grand Masters' Addresses, that the original and sovereign Masonic authority was the Holy Bible. l. During almost one-half of the total history of the Craft, Masons had no copies of the Bible. In the earliest centuries they did not, excepting only a few, even know of the existence of such a Book. They had from it only a few stories, such as Adam's fall, Noah's Ark, etc., and some portions of the New Testament, and those they had not from any text directly, but only as they were used by the Church, which had modified them out of recognition by accretions of stories and legends.
2. If there had been a Bible available, the Masons could not have been persuaded to use it by any cajolery or the direst threats, because to do so would have meant a march to the stake, or the dreaded excommunication. Holy Church forbade laymen to own or use copies of any Holy Scriptures, and often forbade laymen to read the Scriptures under any circumstances. In the eyes of the Masons It would have been an unspeakable heresy for them to employ the Scriptures in their own Lodges. They left the Church to itself; never intruded upon it or interfered with it, nor permitted it to interfere with Lodges ; they taught no religious doctrines, nor made any theological pronouncements. Masons like other men of the time were men of religion but they incorporated nothing of theology in their own Fraternity, and never have; they did not see that Church and Theology had anything more to do with the Chartered Craft of builders than with a Chartered Company of Hierohants.
3. The "book" on which Apprentices made their oath was in the beginning not the Bible but the Old Charges. In the first years of the new Grand Lodge officers of Antiquity Lodge held a copy of the Old Charges aloft on a cushion and carried it around the Grand Lodge Room, thus exhibiting the authority on which the Grand Lodge was being assembled. In the minutes of the oldest Lodges and in the engravings they printed it is seen that a copy of the Old Charges (not the Bible) is placed on a pedestal directly in front of the Master. The Bible is used in the Lodge not as an original warrant of authority and constitution, but symbolically, like the Square and Compasses, and is one of the Great Lights. Its power and authority in its own place and for its own proper use is none the less for that, but the authority on which every Lodge works is not, and never was, a religious or theological authority, but is in the written, signed, and sealed Charter which hangs on the Lodge Room walls, and which is in essence and meaning as ancient as Freemasonry itself. Whether such a Charter goes back in unbroken succession to a particular sealed document issued by Prince Edwin at York does not matter; it goes back to some written Charter, or Charters, issued to the Freemasons in the beginnings of their Fraternity.
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CHESTERFIELD AND NASH
The absence of Lord Chesterfield and Beau Nash from the Masonic histories thus far published is yet another of the proofs that no really complete Masonic history has been written. They were eminent men and Masons but so were thousands of others; their distinction is that they were leaders and spokesmen for one of the most drastic reforms by which England has ever been purged, the reform of manners. Chesterfield was asked to take the Grand East of the Ancient Grand Lodge; it is unfortunate that a journey he was about to take made it impossible because his name in the list would have been both a reminder and a monument to one of the largest services the British and American Lodges rendered their countries in the Eighteenth and the first quarter of the Nineteenth Centuries. Chesterfield's letters to his son (the family name was Dormer) circulated privately for years before they were published and became one of the classics of English literature.
In one of his histories of England, Trevelyan, summarizing hundreds of reports and findings about the manners of the Eighteenth Century, notes that between 1700 and 1725 (the first Grand Lodge was erected in 1717), somebody found a way to manufacture cheap gin ; this hard liquor replaced beer and ale, children as well as women joined the men at the pubs, and thousands increasingly began to die in delirium tremens; this' national orgy of drunkenness was at home among the other fatal vices which accompanied it: lust, uncounted prostitution, universal profanity, gambling, filth, slums, vomitarian feasts, rowdyism, mobs.
The fight against this lunatic determination of the masses to commit suicide was a grim business. To Chesterfield it was a question of life or death. Beau Nash managed to make his resort at Bath popular with the aristocracy; but he compelled the young bloods from the city and the young squires from the country to bathe every day, excluded them if drunk, stopped their profanity, and pounded into them the rudiments of manners.
The Masonic Lodges set themselves against vulgarity with thin-lipped determination. At the Lodge in Highen, wealthy and aristocratic, meeting in a dining room that one of the kings had himself designed, a member rode his horse upstairs and jumped it over the banquet table. Tilers here and there had fist fights with young bloods determined to wear their swords in Lodge. When almost every Lodge was a small circle of close friends who sat around the table while conducting the Order of Business or initiating candidates, vulgarity, quarreling, profanity were fatal to it. Minute books are filled with cases where members were fined for swearing, refused admittance for arriving "disguised with liquor," rebuked, or reprimanded or excluded for quarreling, expelled for insolence or bad manners.
The Lodges were determined to wipe out this new species of barbarism or perish in the attempt; hundreds perished, but more hundreds succeeded. For decades on both sides of the Atlantic, Lodges were schools of good manners, and the fact is more important for any history of them than whole chapters about the election of officers or the names of committees.
Washington was to American Lodges what Chesterfield had been to the English, at once the ideal and the embodiment of the gentleman Mason; if biographers and historians complain that he was too stiff, too formal, too correct it is because they do not realize the dreadful dangers both to the American Fraternity and American society there was in lust, drunkenness, and vulgarity, or how much continuing power of the will was required, as it was required of Washington himself, to stand out against it.
(The literary references for this subject, and authority for the statements made above, have never been collected into one chapter or volume; they lie in thousands of entries in the Minute Books and histories of some 200 of the oldest British and American Lodges.)
Chesterfield was very early made a Mason, probably in the Lodge which met at the Horn Tavern and had been No. 4 among the "four old Lodges" which had formed the first Grand Lodge in 1717. while on a tour in Italy he met Montesquieu and the two become fast friends. When Montesquieu was on a visit to London in the early 1720's he was made a Mason, and the indications are that since he was visiting Chesterfield he was introduced and made a Mason in Chesterfield's own Lodge. When Montesquieu helped to Set up the first Lodge in Paris in 1725 it also is probable that Chesterfield and his English friends living in Paris had a hand in it. A number of famous men in that period were initiated but took no active Part in Lodge work afterwards; not so Chesterfield and Montesquieu, both of whom were Masonic leaders for many years. (See article on MONTESQUIEU).
After the murrain of bad manners with its profanity, vulgarity, lust, gambling, and drunkenness had raged Unchecked for decades the English discovered (what every other people in a like case have discovered) that the collapse of manners leads to a plague of crime; for the end of vulgarity is not, as often thought, the decay of religion (though there is much of that) because vulgarians cling to a superstitious form of religion, but to murder, thievery, rape, robbery, mobbing, arson, piracy, etc. The English at home suddenly lost interest in their great war in France where the Duke of Marlborough was winning his famous victory of Malplaquet and began assiduously to read Addison, and Steele, and Chesterfield's Letters. This has been a mystery to many historians. The explanation is that the English at home had suddenly discovered themselves in greater danger from the flood of vulgarity in which they were engulfed than from their foreign foe, and were moving heaven and earth to stem that flood. They had to stop it or perish.
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CHINA, FREEMASONRY IN
The History of Freemasonry in Northern China: 1913-1937 Shanghai; privately printed in 1938; cloth; 435 pages. This invaluable work is bacdeker as well as history. As of 1937 there were 11 Lodges in China under Charters from the United Grand Lodge of England; five Lodges of Instruction; a District Grand Lodge of Northern China; two Mark Lodges, and one Knight Templar Body.
There was one Lodge under Irish Constitution (Shanghai). Under Scottish Charters were seven Lodges, including one Lodge of Instruction, one District Grand Lodge, two Royal Arch Chapters and one Council, one Body of Royal Order of Scotland. Under Charters from the United States there were eight Lodges; one Lodge of Instruction; one District Deputy Grand Lodge (sic); two Royal Arch Chapters; one K. T. Commandery; eight Scottish Rite Bodies, four in Shanghai and four in Peking. Under the Grand Lodge of the Philippine Islands were six Lodges, including one U. D., and one District Grand Lodge.
The eight Lodges under American charters were constituted by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, which long has led other Grand Jurisdictions in work for foreign countries, followed by New York. The Mother Lodge of America in China was Ancient Landmark Lodge, Shanghai, Chartered Dec. 14, 1864.
(The History referred to at the beginning of the paragraph above is the second of two; it was preceded by an earlier volume of the same name, and included a history of Ancient Landmarks Lodge.) In 1937 it had 95 members. Shanghai Lodge was Chartered September 14, 1904; Sinim Lodge in 1904, at Shanghai; International Lodge at Peking (Peiping) was Chartered in June, 1916; Hykes Memorial Lodge, Tientsin, was Chartered in September, 1922; Pagoda Lodge, Mukden, in March, 1926; Sungari Lodge, Harbin, in March 1929. From 1864 until 1915 the Massachusetts Lodges in China (and Manchuria) were supervised by a District Deputy Grand Master, of which there were five during the period. In 1915 the District Grand Lodge of China was formed.
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CINCINNATI, GENERAL SOCIETY OF THE
The true and authentic sources of information about this Society over which there has been so much debate ever since 1783 are in transactions, proceedings, and other papers published by the Society itself. Chief among these is Proceedings of the General Society of the Cincinnati with the Original Institution of the Order (Sherman, printer; Philadelphia; 1847). This perpetuates in a better form a copy of the Institution that had been published in Philadelphia by John Steele, in 1785, except that it omits a number of letters included in the latter.
A sufficient amount of original sources is accumulated if to the above two brochures is added A Journal of the General Meeting of The Cincinnati in 1784, by Major Winthrop Sargent; Philadelphia; 1859. Of the storms of printed objections to the Society the most famous was Consideration of the Order of Cincinnati, by The Count De Mirabeau; London ; 1785. The plan as stated in the General Institution was to enable the officers of the Revolutionary Army to have a national society of their own with a branch in each state; that its first purpose was to perpetuate the fellowship of the army in the field, and its second purpose to give relief to the needy in its circles; it was assumed that to be a member would in itself be a military honor; and-it was this which aroused the storm of objections-"as a testimony of election to the memory and the offspring of such officers as have died in the service, their eldest male branches shall have the same right of becoming members as the children of the actual members of the society."
This constitution was adopted and the Society was formed on it at the Verplanck House, Steuben's Headquarters, near Fishkill, shortly before demobilization.
Washington was the first President-General,
elected in 1787, two years before his inauguration as first President;
he was succeeded by Alexander Hamilton; C. C. Pinckney; Thomas
Pinckney; Aaron Ogden ; Morgan Lewis; William Popham, H. A. S.
Dearborn; Hamilton Fish ; William Wayne; Winslow Warren. The last
original member died in 1854. The Society is still in existence.
In the accumulated literature belonging to the Society the most
valuable is a series of sermons and orations delivered before
the General Societies or the State Branches between 1784 and about
1825 ; almost without exception they are discussions by able spokesmen
of the nation (President Timothy Dwight of Yale was one of them),
of its problems, anxieties, and of the conceptions of the American
republican system and of its National Government. They are a better
portrait of what was going on in the minds of responsible and
representative Americans in the critical period between 1787 and
1825 than many volumes of general history.
(The documents referred to above, along with a number of others, are preserved in the Iowa Masonic Library, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.)
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CALIFORNIA
When gold was discovered in California many Masonic Brethren were among the crowds that poured into the district and several Lodges began work in the early part of the year 1848. Soon the question of establishing a Grand Lodge arose. A Convention met on April 18, 1850, of which Brother Charles Gilman of San Francisco was the Chairman and Brother Benjamin D. Hyam of Benicia was Secretary. The Lodges represented were California Lodge, No. 13, of San Francisco; Connecticut Lodge, No. 75, of Sacramento City ; Western Star Lodge, No. 98, of Benton City, Upper California, and New Jersey Lodge of Sacramento City. Brother Benjamin D. Hyam presented credentials from Benicia Lodge, at Benicia, but, as no Masonic information of the existence of such a Lodge could be discovered, it was not recognized. On April 19, a Constitution was adopted and Grand Officers duly elected and installed.
The first Chapter of Royal Arch Masons, namely, San Francisco, No. l, was organized by Dispensation dated May 9, 1850, and a Charter was granted to it, September 13, in the same year. Three Chapters, San Francisco, No. l, Sonora, No. 2, and Sacramento, No. 3, sent delegates to a Convention held on May 6, 1854, at Sacramento for the purpose of organizing a Grand Chapter. The meeting was adjourned, after three days' session, and met again at San Francisco, July 18, 1854. A Constitution was adopted and the Grand Lodge opened. Companion Charles M. Radeliff, of Sonora Chapter, No. 2, was the first Grand High Priest; Companion John D. Creigh, of San Francisco, No. l, Deputy Grand High Priest, and Companion Townsend A. Thomas, of Sacramento Chapter, No. 3, Grand Secretary.
Charters were granted by the Grand Council of Alabama to two Councils in California. One was chartered by the Grand Council of Tennessee and one by the Grand Council of Texas. By representatives of these four Councils the Grand Council of California was organized on June 26, 1860.
A Commandery of Knights Templar, San Francisco, No. l, was formed on November 10, 1852, and was chartered on November 1, 1853. Under the Warrant of Sir William Hubbard, who was then Grand Master of the Grand Encampment of the United States, the Grand Commandery of California was established, August 10 and 11, 1858, in the Asylum of San Francisco Commandery, No. 1.
A Lodge of Perfection, King Solomon, No. 3, was established by a Charter dated January 3, 1866; Robert Bruce, No. 3, a Chapter of Rose Croix, January 13, 1886; Hugues de Payens, Council of Kadosh, No. 3, January 7, 1886, and Los Angeles Consistory, No. 3, October 22, 1888. These four Bodies of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite labored in South California. In North California a Chapter of Rose Croix and a Lodge of Perfection, both by name San Francisco, No. l, were chartered in 1868, the first on June 15, the second on July 13. A Council of Kadosh and a Consistory, also of the same name, were granted Charters on September 17, 1868, and June 30, 1897, respectively.
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CALLING OFF
A technical term in Freemasonry which signifies the temporary suspension of labor in a Lodge without passing through the formal ceremony of closing. The full form of the expression is to call from labor to refreshment, and it took its rise from the former custom of dividing the time spent in the Lodge between the work of Freemasonry and the moderate enjoyment of the banquet. The banquet formed in the eighteenth century an indispensable part of the arrangements of a Lodge Communication. "At a certain hour of the evening," says Brother Oliver, "with certain ceremonies, the Lodge was called from labor to refreshment, when the Brethren enjoyed themselves with decent merriment." That custom no longer exists; and although in England almost always, and in the United States occasionally, the labors of the Lodge are concluded with a banquet; yet the Lodge is formally closed before the Brethren proceed to the table of refreshment.
Calling off in American Lodges is now only used, in a certain ceremony of the Third Degree, when it is desired to have another meeting at a short interval, and the Master desires to avoid the tediousness of dosing and opening the Lodge.
Thus, if the business of the Lodge at its regular meeting has so accumulated that it cannot be transacted in one evening, it has become the custom to call off until a subsequent evening, when the Lodge, instead of being opened with the usual ceremony, is simply "called on," and the latter meeting is considered as only a continuation of the former.
This custom is very generally adopted in
Grand Lodges at their Annual Communications, which are opened
at the beginning of the session, called off from day to day, and
finally closed at its end. We do not know that any objection has
ever been advanced against this usage in Grand Lodges, because
it seems necessary as a substitute for the adjournment, which
is resorted to in other legislative bodies, but which is not admitted
in Freemasonry. But much discussion has taken place in reference
to the practice of calling off in Lodges, some authorities sustaining
and others condemning it. Thus, many years ago, the Committee
of Correspondence of the Grand Lodge of Mississippi proposed this
question : ''In case of excess of business, cannot the unfinished
be laid over until the next or another day, and must the Lodge
be closed in form, and opened the next, or the day designated
for the transaction of that business?" To this question some
authorities, and among others Brother C. W. Moore (Freemasons
Monthly Magazine, volume xii, No,10), reply in the negative, while
other equally good jurists differ from them in opinion.
The difficulty seems to be in this, that if the regular meeting
of the Lodge is closed in form, the subsequent meeting becomes
a special one, and many things which could be done at a regular
communication cease to be admissible. The recommendation, therefore,
of Brother Moore, that the Lodge should be closed, and, if the
business be unfinished, that the Master shall call a special meeting
to complete it, does not meet the difficulty, because it is a
well settled principle of Masonic law that a special meeting cannot
interfere with the business of a preceding regular one. As, then,
the mode of briefly closing by adjournment is contrary to Masonic
law and usage, and cannot, therefore, be resorted to, as there
is no other way except by calling off to continue the character
of a regular meeting, and as, during the period that the Lodge
is called off, it is under the government of the Junior Warden,
and Masonic discipline is thus continued, Doctor Mackey, for the
reasons cited by him in regard to Brother Moore, was clearly of
opinion that calling off from day to day for the purpose of continuing
work or business is, as a matter of convenience, admissible.
The practice may indeed be abused. But there is a well-known legal maxim which says, Ez abusu non arguitur in usum. "No argument can be drawn from the abuse of a thing against its use. " Thus, a Lodge cannot be called off except for continuance of work and business, nor to an indefinite day, for there must be a good reason for the exercise of the practice, and the Brethren present must be notified before dispersing of the time of reassembling; nor can a Lodge at one regular meeting be called off until the next, for no regular meeting of a Lodge is permitted to run into another, but each must be closed before its successor can be opened.
*
CALLING ON
When a Lodge that is called off at a subsequent time resumes work or business, it is said to be called on. The full expression is called on from refreshment to labor.
*
CALUMNY
See Back
*
CALVARY
Mount Calvary is a small hill or eminence, situated due west from Mount Moriah, on which the Temple of Solomon was built. It was originally a hillock of notable size, but has, in more modern times, been greatly reduced by the excavations made in it for the construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
There are several coincidences which identify Mount Calvary with the small hill where the "newly made grave," referred to in the Third Degree, was discovered by the weary Brother. Thus, Mount Calvary was a small hill ; it was situated in a westward direction from the Temple, and near Mount Moriah; and it was on the direct road from Jerusalem to Joppa, and is the very spot where a weary brother, traveling on that road, would find it convenient to sit down to rest and refresh himself; it was outside the gate of the Temple; it has at least one cleft in the rock, or cave, which was the place which subsequently became the sepulcher of our Lord. Hence Mount Calvary has always retained an important place in the legendary history of Freemasonry, and there are many traditions connected with it that are highly interesting in their import.
One of the traditions is, that it was the burial place of Adam, in order, says the old legend, that where he lay, who effected the ruin of mankind, there also might the Savior of the world suffer, die, and be buried. Sir R. Torkington, who published a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1517, says that ''under the Mount of Calvary is another chapel of our Blessed Lady and St. John the Evangelist, that was called Golgatha; and there, right under the mortise of the cross, was found the head of our forefather, Adam." Golgotha, it will be remembered, means, in Hebrew, the place of a skull ; and there may be some connection between this tradition and the name of Golgotha, by which, the Evangelists inform us, in the time of Christ, Mount Calvary was known. Calvary, or Calvaria, has the same signification in Latin.
Another tradition states that it was in the bowels of Mount Calvary that Enoch erected his nine-arched vault, and deposited on the foundation-stone of Freemasonry that Ineffable Name, whose investigation, as a symbol of Divine truth, is the great object of Speculative Freemasonry. A third tradition details the subsequent discovery of Enoch's deposit, by King Solomon, whilst making excavations in Mount Calvary during the building of the Temple.
On this hallowed spot was Christ the Redeemer slain and buried. It was there that, rising on the third day from his sepulcher, He gave, by that act the demonstrative evidence of the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul.
And it is this spot that has been selected, in the legendary history of Freemasonry, to teach the same sublime truth, the development of which by a symbol evidently forms the design of the Third or Master's Degree.
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CAMORRA
A secret society of gangsters organized about 1820 at Naples. The name is a Spanish word meaning quarrel and similar societies are reported as active in Spain before they were heard of in Italy. From local organized criminals the society grew to revolutionary power in elections and from 1848 exercised a control only broken by the government in 1877. Still powerful in defeat, the municipality of Naples as recently as 1900 was set aside by a Royal Commission.
A double murder in 1911 resulted in the arrest and trial of forty conspirators, several condemned to long imprisonment. The initiation is said to have required the candidate to pick up a coin while the others present struck at it with daggers.
Later there was a fight or duel instead of this. Training of new members lasted three years and at reception the initiate was pledged to loyalty by an oath repeated while his uplifted hand was wet with his own blood. Today the Camorra is curbed, but mysterious crimes in other lands and at home are sometimes credited to its venom (see Carbonari, Mafia, and Secret Societies).
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CAMP
A portion of the paraphernalia decorated with tents, flags, and pennons of a Consistory of Sublime Princes of the Royal Secret, or Thirty-second Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
It constitutes the Tracing Board and is worn on the apron of the degree. It is highly symbolic, and represents an imaginary Masonic camp. Its symbolism is altogether esoteric.
*
CAMPE, JOACHIM HEINRICH
A Doctor of Theology, and Director of Schools in Dessau and Hamburg, who was born in 1746 and died October 22, 1818. He was the author of many works on philosophy and education, and was a learned and zealous Freemason, as is shown in his correspondence with Lessing.
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CANADA
Upon the advent of Confederation, July 1, 1867, local control in each Province for the government of the Masonic Fraternity of the Dominion took a strong hold as a predominant idea, and prevailed. Each Province has now a Grand Lodge, and in order of their organization are as follows:
Canada, having jurisdiction only in Ontario, 1855; Nova Scotia, 1866; New Brunswick, 1867; Quebec, 1869; British Columbia, 1871; Manitoba, 1875; Prince Edward Island, 1875; Alberta, 1905; Saskatchewan, 1906. Brother Will H. Whyte, P. G. M., says the first marks of the ancient craftsmen have been found in Nova Scotia A mineralogical survey in 1827 found on the shore of Goat Island in the Annapolis Basin, partly covered with sand, a slab of rock 2,5 by 2 feet, bearing on it those well-known Masonic emblems, the Square and Compasses, and the date 1606. Brother Whyte concluded that who were the craftsmen and how the stone came there, must be left to conjecture.
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CANAL ZONE
Sojourners Lodge was originally constituted by the Grand Lodge of Scotland in the Republic of Panama. When the Canal Zone was acquired by the Government of the United States of America this Lodge, in I912, came under the control of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts in 1912. In 1915 the Canal Zone Lodges were erected into a District Grand Lodge. A treaty was concluded in 1917 between the Grand Lodges of Massachusetts and Panama whereby the former had sole jurisdiction over the Canal Zone. In 1921, the Canal Zone District Grand Lodge comprised six Lodges: Sojourners at Cristobal, Canal Zone at Ancon, Army at Corozal, Isthmian at Paraiso, Darien at Balboa and Sibert at Gatun.
On February 9, 1911, a Dispensation was issued by the General Grand Council to a Council in the Canal Zone at Ancon. This was chartered as Canal Zone Council, No. l, on September 12, 1912. The Grand Encampment of the United States authorized the Canal Zone Commandery, No. l, at Ancon, Panama, on August 14, 1913.
The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was first established here when Panama, No. l, at Cristoal, was constituted a Consistory, a Council of Kadosh, a Chapter of Rose Croix, and a Lodge of Perfection by Charters from the Supreme Council, Southern Jurisdiction, dated October 22, 1915.
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CANCELLARIUS
An office of high rank and responsibility among the Knights Templar of the Middle Ages, performing the duties of, or similar to, the Chancellor.
*
CANDIDATE
An applicant for admission into Masonry is called a candidate. The Latin candidatus means one who is clothed in white, candidis vestibus indutus. In ancient Rome, he who sought office from the people wore a white shining robe of a peculiar construction, flowing open in front, so as to exhibit the wounds he had received in his breast. From the color of his robe or toga candida, he was called candidatus, whence the word candidate. The derivation will serve to remind the Freemason of the purity of conduct and character which should distinguish all those who are candidates for admission into the Order.
The qualifications of a candidate in Freemasonry are somewhat peculiar. He must be free-born-under the English Constitution it is enough that he is a Freeman, under no bondage, of at least twenty-one years of age, in the possession of sound senses, free from any physical defect or dismemberment, and of irreproachable manners, or, as it is technically termed, under the tongue of good report. No atheist, eunuch, or Woman can be admitted. The requisites as to age, sex, and soundness of body have reference to the operative character of the Institution. We can only expect able workmen in able-bodied men.
The mental and religious qualifications refer to the duties and obligations which a Freemason contracts. An idiot could not understand them, and an atheist would not respect them. Even those who possess all these necessary qualifications can be admitted only under certain regulations which differ under the several Masonic Constitutions.
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CANDIDATES, ADVANCEMENT OF
See Advancement, Hurried
*
CANDLESTICK, GOLDEN
The golden candlestick of seven branches, which is a part of the furniture of a Royal Arch Chapter, is derived from the holy candlestick which Moses was instructed to construct of beaten gold for the use of the tabernacle.
Smith (Dictionary of the Bible) thus abbreviates Lightfoot's explanation of the description given in Exodus:
"The foot of it was gold, from which
went up a shaft straight, which was the middle light. Near the
foot was a golden dish wrought almondwise; and a little above
that a golden knop, and above that a golden flower. Then two branches
one on each side bowed,- and coming up as high as the middle shaft.
On each of them were three golden cups placed almondwise, in sharp,
scallop-shell fashion; above which was a golden knop, a golden
flower, and the socket. Above the branches on the middle shaft
was a golden boss, above which rose two shafts more, above the
coming out of these was another boss and two more shafts, and
then on the shaft upwards were three golden scallop-cups, a knop,
and a flower, so that the heads of the branches stood an equal
height."
In the tabernacle, the candlestick was placed opposite the table
of shewbread, which it was intended to illumine, in an oblique
position, so that the lamps looked to the east and south. What
became of the candlestick between the time of Moses and that of
Solomon is unknown. The first Temple was lighted by ten golden
candlesticks similarly embossed, which were connected by golden
chains and formed a sort of railing before the veil.
These ten candlesticks became the spoil of the Chaldean conqueror at the time of the destruction of the Temple, and could not have been among the articles afterward restored by Cyrus; for in the second Temple, built by Zerubbabel, we find only a single candlestick of seven branches, like that of the tabernacle. Its form has been perpetuated on the Arch of Titus, on which it was sculptured with other articles taken by that monarch, and carried to Rome as special plunder, spolia opima, after he had destroyed the Herodian Temple. This is the candlestick which is represented as a decoration in a Royal Arch Chapter.
In Jewish symbolism, the seven branches were supposed by some to refer to the seven planets, and by others to the seventh day or Sabbath. The primitive Christians made it allusive to Christ as the Light of the World, and in this sense it is a favorite symbol in early Christian art.
Brother C. C. Hunt, Grand Secretary of Iowa, instructively discussed this subject in the Quarterly Bulletin, January, 1924, and says, in part: "The use of the seven-branched candlestick in the Most Excellent Degree is correct according to the General Grand Chapter ritual, and has, I believe, an important symbolical reference in the work of that degree.
There is no reason why the seven-branched candlestick should not be used in the Most Excellent Degree as well as in the Royal Arch. It is not necessary to duplicate the elaborate furniture of the Temple in our Most Excellent Degree. The single table and candlestick of the Tabernacle and the second Temple has the same symbolism as the ten of the first Temple. It is true that no symbolic meaning is attached to the candlestick in the ritual, but the very fact that it is used as part of the furniture of the degree indicates that it has the same symbolism there that it had in its place in the Temple, which is, that the seven lights represent the seven planets, which, regarded as the eyes of God, behold everything.
The light in the center signifies the sun, the chief of the planets. The other six planets represented by the three lamps on each side of the central light are Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Uranus was first recognized as a planet by Sir William Herschel in 1781 A.D. and the earth was looked upon as receiving light from the planets instead of being considered a planet itself. The seven-branched candlestick was especially holy, and it was forbidden to make copies of it for general purposes.
The fourth chapter of Zechariah gives a symbolical meaning to the seven branched candlestick which is very appropriate to our Chapter work. In fact, part of this very Chapter is quoted in the work of the Degrees. How fitting it is that this candlestick, the symbol of the spirit of the Lord and the light of his countenance shining upon us through his eyes beholding and encouraging us in the noble and glorious work of fitting ourselves as living stones for the spiritual building which is to be our eternal dwelling place, should have a place in the ceremonies of the Most Excellent Master's Degree, the degree which symbolizes the completion of that work and the dedication of the Temple to the service of the only true and living God."
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CANNING, GEORGE
English statesman and orator, born April 4, 1770; died August 8, 1827; member of Parliament, 1793 ; Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1807; Prime Minister of England, 1827. Brother Canning was made a Freemason in Prince of Wales Lodge, London, in 1810 (see New Age, August, 1924).
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CANOPY
Oliver says that in the Masonic processions of the Continent the Grand Master walks under a gorgeous canopy of blue, purple, and crimson silk, with gold fringes and tassels, borne upon staves, painted purple and ornamented with gold, by eight of the oldest Master Masons present ; and the Masters of private Lodges walk under canopies of light blue silk with silver tassels and fringes, borne by four members of their own respective companies.
The canopies are in the form of an oblong
square, and are in length six feet, in breadth and height three
feet, having a semicircular covering. The framework should be
of cedar, and the silken covering ought to hang down two feet
on each side. This is, properly speaking, a Baldachin (see Baldachin).
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CANOPY, CELESTIAL
Ritualists seem divided in the use of the terms Clouded Canopy and Celestial Canopy in the Entered Apprentice Degree (for the former, see Canopy, Clouded, and Covering of the Lodge). It would seem that the unclouded grandeur of the heavens should not be without advocates. Sir John Lubbock gives the following description of the heavens filled with stars in connection with the latest discoveries: "Like the sand of the sea, the stars of heaven are used as a symbol of numbers. We now know that our earth is but a fraction of one part of, at least 75,000,000 worlds. But this is not all.
In addition to the luminous heavenly bodies, we cannot doubt there are countless others invisible to us from their great distance, smaller size, or feebler light; indeed, we know that there are many dark bodies which now emit no light, or comparatively tittle.. Thus the floor of heaven is not only 'thick , inlaid with patinas of bright gold,' but studded also with extinct stars, once probably as brilliant as our own sun."
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CANOPY, CLOUDED
The clouded canopy, or starry-decked heaven, is a symbol of the Entered Apprentice Degree, and is of such important significance that Lenning calls it a "fundamental symbol of Freemasonry." In the lectures of the York Rite, the clouded canopy is described as the covering of the Lodge, teaching us, as Krause says, "that the primitive Lodge is confined within no shut up building, but that it is universal, and reaches to heaven, and especially teaching that in every clime under heaven Freemasonry has its seat." Gädieke says, "Every Freemason knows that by the clouded canopy we mean the heavens, and that it teaches how widely extended is our sphere of usefulness. There is no portion of the inhabited world in which our labor cannot be carried forward, as there is no portion of the globe without its clouded canopy."
Hence, then, the German interpretation of the symbol is that it denotes the universality of Freemasonry, an interpretation that does not precisely accord with the English and American systems, in which the doctrine of universality is symbolized by the form and extent of the Lodge. The clouded canopy as the covering of the Lodge seems rather to teach the doctrine of aspiration for a higher sphere; it is thus defined in this work under the head of Covering of the Lodge, which see.
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CANZLER, CARL CHRISTIAN
A librarian of Dresden, born September 30, 1733, died October 16, 1786. He was an earnest, learned Freemason, who published in a literary journal, conducted by himself and A. G. Meissner at Leipsic, in 1783-5, under the title of Für ältere Litteratur und neuere Lectüre, many interesting articles on the subject of Freemasonry.
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CAPE COLONY
In the days when this district belonged to the Dutch two Lodges were established by them, both of which have had successful careers.
The first of these, Lodge of Good Hope, dates from ,1772. The Grand Lodge of England established British Lodge in 1811 and the Athol Grand Lodge followed suit iu 1812 with a Lodge attached to the Tenth Battalion of the Royal Artillery.
The first Lodge erected in 1821 after the arrival of the English colonists was Hope, No. 727. South Africa is divided into Provinces, the Eastern, Western and Central Divisions, Natal and the Transvaal, by the first two of which Freemasonry in Cape Colony is controlled. There are also Provincial Grand Lodges under the Scotch, Irish and Dutch Jurisdictions. Throughout the history of the Colony there has been no antagonism between the Dutch and English Freemasons and many Brethren attend Lodges under both systems. The first Provincial Grand Master under the English Constitution was the Deputy Grand Master of the Netherlands who continued to hold both offices until he died.
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CAPE VERDE ISLANDS
Praia and St. Vincent each has possessed a Lodge, chartered by the Grand Orient of Portugal.
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CAPITULAR DEGREES
The degrees conferred under the charter of an American Royal Arch Chapter, which are Mark Master, Past Master, Most Excellent Master, and Royal Arch Mason. The Capitular Degrees are almost altogether founded on and composed of a series of events in Masonic history. Each of them has attached to it some tradition or legend which it is the design of the degree to illustrate, and the memory of which is preserved in its ceremonies and instructions. Most of these legends are of symbolic signification. But this is their interior sense. In their outward and ostensible meaning, they appear before us simply as legends.
To retain these legends in the memory of Freemasons appears to have been the primary design in the establishment of the advanced Degrees; and as the information intended to be communicated in these Degrees is of a historical character, there can of course be but little room for symbols or for symbolic instruction; the profuse use of which would rather tend to an injury than to a benefit, by complicating the purposes of the ritual and confusing the mind of the aspirant. These remarks refer exclusively to the Mark and Most Excellent Master's Degree of the American Rite, but are not so applicable to the Royal Arch, which is eminently symbolic. The legends of the second Temple, and the lost word, the peculiar legends of that degree, are among the most prominent symbols of the Masonic system.
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CAPITULAR MASONRY
The Freemasonry conferred in a Royal Arch Chapter of the York and American Rites. There are Chapters in the Ancient and Accepted, Scottish, and in the French and other Rites ; but the Freemasonry therein conferred is not called capitular.
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CAPRIPEDE RATIER ET LUCIFUGE
A burlesque dining degree, mentioned in the collection of Fustier. The title is a significant allusion to the goat-footed horned satyrs, minor deities of the Roman mythology, companions of Bacchus, living in the depths of the forest, shunning the light (see Thory, Acta Latomorum,1, 298).
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CAPSTONE
or, as it might be called, the cope-stone, the topmost brick or stone in building (but the former word has been consecrated to us by universal Masonic usage), is the topmost stone of a building. To bring it forth, therefore, and to place it in its destined position, is significative that the building is completed, which event is celebrated, even by the Operative Freemasons of the present day, with great signs of rejoicing.
Flags are hoisted on the top of every edifice by the builders engaged in its construction, as soon as they have reached the topmost post, and thus finished their labors. This is the celebration of the capstone---the celebration of the completion of the building----when tools are laid aside, and rest and refreshment succeed, for a time, labor. This is the event in the history of the Temple which is commemorated in the Degree of Most Excellent Master, the sixth in the American Rite. The day set apart for the celebration of the capstone of the Temple is the day devoted to rejoicing and thanksgiving for the completion of that glorious structure.
Hence there seems to be an impropriety in the ordinary use of the Mark Master's keystone in the ceremonies of the Most Excellent Master. That keystone was deposited in silence and secrecy; while the capstone, as the legend and ceremonies tell us, was placed in its position in the presence of all the Craft.
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CAPTAIN-GENERAL
The third officer in a Commandery of Knights, Templar. He presides over the Commandery in the absence of his superiors, and is one of its representatives in the Grand Commandery. His duties are to see that the Council Chamber and Asylum are duly prepared for the business of the meetings, and to communicate all orders issued by the Grand Council. His station is on the left of the Grand Commander, and his jewel is a level surmounted by a cock or rooster (see Cock).
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CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD
The sixth officer in a Council of Royal and Select Masters. In the latter degree he is said to represent Azariah, the son of Nathan, who had command of the officers of the king's household (First Kings iv, 5). His duties correspond in some measure with those of a Senior Deacon in the primary. degrees. His post is, therefore, on the right of the throne, and his jewel is a trowel and battle-ax within a triangle.
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CAPTAIN OF THE HOST
The fourth officer in a Royal Arch Chapter. He represents the general or leader of the Jewish troops who returned from Babylon, and who was called Sar el hatzba, and was equivalent to a modern general. The word Host in the title means army. He sits on the right of the Council in front, and wears a white robe and cap or helmet, with a red sash, and is armed with a sword. His jewel is a triangular plate, on which an armed soldier is engraved.
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CAPTIVITY
The Jews reckoned their national captivities as four: the Babylonian, Medean, Greeian, and Roman.
The present article will refer only to the first, when there was a forcible deportation of the inhabitants of Jerusalem by Nebuzaradan, the general of King Nebuchadnezzar, and their detention at Babylon until the reign of Cyrus, which alone is connected with the history of Freemasonry, and is commemorated in the Royal Arch Degree.
Between that portion of the ritual of the Royal Arch which refers to the destruction of the first Temple, and that subsequent part which symbolizes the building of the second, there is an interregnum or halt, if we may be allowed the term, in the ceremonial of the degree, which must be considered as a long interval in history, the filling up of which, like the interval between the acts of a play, must be left to the imagination of the spectator. This interval represents the time passed in the captivity of the Jews at Babylon. That captivity lasted for seventy years-from the reign of Nebuchadnezzar until that of Cyrus-although but fifty-two of these years are commemorated in the Royal Arch Degree. This event took place in the year 585 B.C. It was not, however, the beginning of the '"seventy years' captivity," which had been foretold by the prophet Jeremiah, which commenced eighteen years before.
The captives were conducted to Babylon. What was the exact number removed we have no means of ascertaining.
'We are led to believe, from certain passages of scripture, that the deportation was not complete. Calmet says that Nebuchadnezzar carried away only the principal inhabitants, the warriors and artisians of every kind, and that he left the husbandmen, the laborers, and in general, the poorer classes, that constituted the great body of the people. Among the prisoners of distinction, Josephus mentions the high priest, Seraiah, and Zephaniah, the priest that was next to him, with the three rulers that guarded the Temple, the eunuch who was over the armed men, seven friends of Zedekiah, his scribe, and sixty other rulers. Zedekiah, the king, had attempted to escape previous to the termination of the siege, but being pursued, was captured and carried to Riblah, the headquarters of Nebuchadnezzar, where, having first been compelled to behold the slaughter of his children, his eyes were then put out, and he was conducted in chains to Babylon. A Masonic tradition informs us that the captive Jews were bound by their conquerors with triangular chains, and that this was done by the Chaldeans as an additional insult, because the Jewish Freemasons were known to esteem the triangle as an emblem of the sacred name of God, and must have considered its appropriation to the form of their fetters as a desecration of the Tetragammaton.
Notwithstanding the ignominious mode of their conveyance from Jerusalem and the vindictiveness displayed by their conqueror in the destruction of their city and Temple, they do not appear, on their arrival at Babylon, to have been subjected to any of the extreme rigors of slavery. They were distributed into various parts of the empire, some remaining in the city, while others were sent into the provinces.
The latter probably devoted themselves to agricultural pursuits, while the former were engaged in commerce or in the labors of architecture. Smith says that the captives were treated not as slaves but as colonists. They were permitted to retain their personal property, and even to purchase lands and erect houses. Their civil and religious government was not utterly destroyed, for they kept up a regular succession of kings and high priests, one of each of whom returned with them, as will be seen hereafter, on their restoration. Some of the principal captives were advanced to offices of dignity and power in the royal palace, and were permitted to share in the councils of state.
Their prophets, Daniel and Ezekiel, with their associates, preserved among their countrymen the pure doctrines of their religion. Although they had neither place nor time of national gathering, nor temple, and therefore offered no sacrifice, yet they observed the Mosaic laws with respect to the rite of circumcision. They preserved their tables of genealogy and the true succession to the throne of David.
The rightful heir was called the Head of the Captivity. So says the Talmud, but Smith, Dictionary of the Bible, affirms that the assertion is unsupported by proof. The Masonic legends conform to the Talmudic statement. However that may be, Jehoiachin, who was the first king of Judea carried captive to Babylon, was succeeded by his son Shealtiel, and he by his son Zerubbabel, who was the Head of the Captivity, or nominal prince of Judea at the close of the captivity, The due succession of the highpriesthood was also preserved, for Jehosadek, who was the high priest carried by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon, where he died during the captivity, was succeeded by his eldest son, Joshua.
The Jewish captivity terminated in the first year of the reign of Cyrus, 536 B.c. Cyrus, from his conversations with Daniel and the other Jewish captives of learning and piety, as well as from his perusal of their sacred books, more especially the prophecies of Isaiah, had become imbued with a knowledge of true religion, and hence had even publicly announced to his subjects his belief in the God "which the nation of the Israelites worshipped." He was consequently impressed with an earnest desire to fulfil the prophetic declarations of which he was the subject, and to rebuild the Temple of Jerusalem. Cyrus therefore issued a decree by which the Jews were permitted to return to their country. According to Milman, 42,360, besides servants, availed themselves of this permission, and returned to Jerusalem under Zerubbabel, their prince, and Joshua, their high priest, and thus ended the first or Babylonian captivity, the only one which has any connection with the legends of Freemasonry as commemorated in the Royal Arch Degree.
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CAPUCHIN
one of the monks of the order of ST Frances. They went barefoot,
were longbearded, and wore a gown or cloak of dark color made
like a woman's garment with a hood.
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CARAUSIUS
A Roman emperor, who assumed the purple 287 A.D. Of him Preston gives the following account, which may or may not be deemed apocryphal, according to the taste and inclination of the reader: "By assuming the character of a Freemason, he acquired the love and esteem of the most enlightened part of his subjects.
He possessed real merit, encouraged learning and learned men, and improved the country in the civil arts. In order to establish an empire in Britain, he brought into his dominions the best workmen and artificers from all parts ; all of whom, under his auspices, enjoyed peace and tranquillity. Among the first class of his favorites he enrolled the Freemasons: for their tenets he professed the highest veneration, and appointed Albanus, his steward, the principal superintendent of their assemblies. Under his patronage, Lodges and Conventions of the Fraternity were formed, and the rites of Freemasonry regularly practiced. To enable the Freemasons to hold a general council, to establish their own government and correct errors among themselves, he granted to them a charter, and commanded Albanus to preside over them in person as Grand Master" (see Illustrations, edition of 1812, page 142).
Anderson also gives the legend of Carausius in the second edition of his Constitutions, and adds that "this is asserted by all the old copies of the Constitutions, and the old English Masons firmly believed it" (Constitutions, 1738, page 57). But the fact is that Anderson himself does not mention the tradition in his first edition, published in 1723 nor is any reference to Carausius to be found in any of the old manuscripts now extant. The legend is, it is true, inserted in Krause's Manuscript ; but this document is of Very little authority, having been, most probably, a production of the early part of the eighteenth century, and of a contemporary of Anderson, written perhaps between 1723 and 1738, which would account for the omission of it in the first edition of the Book of Constitutions, and its insertion in the second.
The reader may hence determine for himself what authenticity is to be given to the Carausian legend.
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CARBONARI
The name in Italian means Charcoal Burners, applied to some revolutionary secret societies particularly active in Italy and France, having their principal inspiration during the reign of King Joachim Murat of Naples, and aiming to free themselves from foreign rule and establish democratic government. Murat, a Frenchman and a Freemason, the dashing cavalry leader of Napoleon's army, was rewarded with the throne. Luigi Villari says (Encyclopedia Britannica): ''The Carbonari were probably an offshoot of the Freemasons, from whom they differed in important particulars," a suggestion and admission meaning little more than similarity, both being secret societies. However, the Carbonari had its significant words: a Lodge was baracca or a hut; an ordinary meeting was venidita, a sale; an important meeting, alta vendita; God was Grand Master of the Universe. The ritual had four grades and the ceremonies had typical allusions, as "clearing the forest of wolves" was said to be the aim, and there were references to the 1amb torn by wild animals, tyranny. Carbonarism was declared high treason by 1821. While many prominent persons were members, Lord Byron of England and Louis, afterwards Napoleon III, of France, yet the strength of the movement waned and died in France about 1830, and soon afterwards a like end came to it in Italy, the Camorristi in the former country accepting generally the government then at work, and in the latter instance associating with Mazzini and his followers (see Camorra, Mafia, and Secret Societies).
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CARBUNCLE
In Hebrew, baw-rek-ath, the third stone
in the first row of the high priest's breastplate, according to
the authorized version, but the first stone in the second row,
according to the Septuagint. Braun, a writer on the sacerdotal
vestments of the Hebrews, Amsterdam, 1680 supposes that the baw-rek-ath
was a smaragd.us or emerald, which view is sustained by Kalisch,
and is in accordance with the Septuagint translation. The Talmudists
derive baw-rek-ath from a word signifying to shine with the brightness
of fire, which would seem to indicate some stone of a coruscate
or sparkling color, and would apply to the bright green of the
emerald as well as to the bright red of the carbuncle. The stone,
whatever it was, was referred to the tribe of Judah.
The carbuncle in Christian iconography signifies blood and suffering,
and is symbolical of the Lord's passion. Five carbuncles placed
on a cross symbolize the five wounds of Christ.
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CARDINAL POINTS
The North, West, East and South are so called from the Latin cardo, meaning a hinge, because they are the principal points of the compass on which all the others hinge or hang.
Each of them has a symbolic signification in Freemasonry which will be found under their respective heads. Doctor Brinton, in an interesting Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America, has a chapter on the sacred number four; the only one he says, that has any prominence in the religious of the red race, and which he traces to the four cardinal points. The reason, he declares, is to be "found in the adoration of the cardinal points," and he attributes to this cause the prevalence of the cross as a symbol among the aborigines of America, the existence of which so surprised the early missionaries that they "were in doubt whether to ascribe the fact to the pious labors of Saint Thomas or the sacrilegious subtlety of Satan."
The arms of the cross referred to the cardinal points, and represented the four winds, the bringers of rain. The theory is an interesting one, and the author supports it with many ingenious illustrations. In the symbolism of Freemasonry each of the cardinal points has a mystical meaning. The East represents Wisdom ; the west, Strength; the South, Beauty and the North, Darkness.
*
CARDINAL VIRTUES
The pre-eminent or principal virtues on which all the others hinge or depend.
They are temperance, fortitude, prudence, and justice.
They are referred to in the ritual of the Entered Apprentice Degree, and will be found in this work under their respective heads. Oliver says (Revelations of a Square, chapter 1) that in the eighteenth century the Freemasons delineated the symbols of the four cardinal virtues by an acute angle variously disposed.
Thus, suppose you face the east, the angle
symbolizing temperance will point to the south.
It was called a Guttural.
Fortitude was denoted by a saltire, or Saint Andrew's Cross, X. This was the Pectoral.
The symbol of prudence was an acute angle pointing toward the southeast, and was denominated a Manual; and justice had its angle toward the north, and was called a Pedestal or Pedal.
The possession of cardinal virtues is no special distinction of Freemasons, for other societies have had them.
They are in evidence in the Christian church.
The fifteen cardinal virtues, in mosaic, in the dome of Ascension of Saint Mark's at Venice is a famous example.
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CARIBBEE ISLANDS OR LESSER ANTILLES
A name sometimes applied to the whole of the West Indies, strictly comprising only the chain of islands from Porto Rico to the Venezuelan coast of South America. Three Lodges were at work in 1739 at Antigua. Others had been chartered and were on the Grand Lodge Books but they had ceased to exist and were dropped from the Register.
In 1738 Governor Matthews was appointed by the Grand Lodge of England Provincial Grand Master of the Leeward Islands. A Masonic Province was also established by Scotland in 1769. A Provincial Grand Lodge was opened at the Windward Islands in 1740 and Brother Thomas Baxter was first Provincial Grand Master.
In the same year the "Moderns" Grand Lodge of England authorized Lodge No. 186. The Grand Lodge of Ireland established another Provincial Grand Lodge at Barbados, but it was soon abandoned.
A Lodge, Albion, was opened at Bridgetown, Barbados, in 1790 by the "Ancient" and it remained in existence although three others warranted by the same authority' soon ceased work. Other Lodges were chartered in the Islands by the Grand Lodges of England, Holland, France, Pennsylvania, etc.
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CARLILE, RICHARD
A printer and bookseller of London, who in 1819 was fined and imprisoned for the publication of Paine's Age of Reason, and Palmer's Light of Nature.
He also wrote and published several pretended expositions of Freemasonry, which, after his death, were collected, in 1845, in one volume, under the title of a Manual of Freemasonry, in three parts.
Carlile was a professed atheist, and, although a fanatical reformer of what he supposed to be the errors of the age, was a man of some ability.
His Masonic works are interspersed with considerable learning, and are not as abusive of the Order as expositions generally are. He was born in 1790, and died in 1843, in London. For ten years before his death his religious opinions had been greatly modified.
*
CARMELITES
Monks of an Order established on Mount Carmel, in Syria, during the twelfth century. They wore a brown scapular passing over the shoulder and diagonally across the back and body, thus crossing the gown from right to left.
*
CARNARVON, MARQUIS OF
Grand Master of England, March, 1754, to May 18, 1757. Afterwards known as Duke of Chandos.
*
CARPENTERS, ORDER OF
An organized body in Holland and Belgium, with central point of assembly at Antwerp. Their gatherings were at night in some neighboring forest.
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CARPET
The chart or Tracing Board on which the emblems of a degree are depicted for the instruction of a candidate.
Carpets were originally drawn on the floor with chalk or charcoal, and at the close of the Lodge obliterated by the use of a mop and pail.
To avoid this trouble, they were subsequently painted on cloth, which was laid on the floor ; hence they were called carpets.
Carpets, or charts, as they are at the present time commonly designated, are now generally suspended from the wall, or from a framework in the Lodge (see Steps on Master's Carpet).
*
CARSON, ENOCH TERRY
Initiated in 1846 and became Past Master of Cynthia Lodge No. 155, as well as founder and First Worshipful Master of Kilwinning Lodge, No. 356, warranted in 1865, both Lodges being at Cincinnati, Ohio, and he was active and scholarly in all branches of the Fraternity. He printed at his own expense several important works of interest and value to the Fraternity.
The first facsimile of the Book of Constitutions of 1723 was published by him in 1855 from the copy in his own library and in the same year he had a catalog of his collection printed in the American Freemason at Louisville.
Doctor Oliver's Historical Landmarks was also issued in like manner in 1855.
He established the Masonic Archeological Society, of wich he was really the whole organization and mainspring and which did good work, producing the very rare works, the Grand Mystery of1724 and Prichard's Masonry Dissected, of 1730, and publishing them iu 1868.
Eight years later, what is known as Mrs. Dodds Manuscripts of 1739 was issued. In 1889 an artistic facsimile reproduction of the very valuable engraved list of 1736 by Pine was published by him and from 1872 he was at work on the production of a sumptuous catalog of his Masonic library, which was begun in the Masonic Review of Cincinnati and then reprinted in book form from 1874.
It was not completed, however, much to the regret of his many friends, the important bibliography ending with No. 1134 Picart, pages 1 to 224.
Brother Carson also wrote and published much other material respecting the Craft, and, as with the previously mentioned books, all was at his own expense; the whole of the works being presented to his literary friends and Brethren.
He died on February 23, 1899.
His fine library is now, through the generosity of General Lawrence, possessed by the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts.
*
CARSON, KIT
Famous American scout, born in Madison County, Kentucky, December 24, 1809. In his childhood, his parents moved to Missouri.
Carson became guide and hunter, accompanied the Fremont expeditions, took part in the Mexican War, and become Indian Agent at Taos, New Mexico, in 1854.
Made a Master Mason on December 26, 1854, in Montezuma Lodge at Santa Fe, in what was then a Territory but is now the State of New Mexico, Montezuma Lodge was No, 109 on the roster of the Grand Lodge of Missouri and was one of the Lodges organizing the Grand Lodge of New Mexico in 1877.
He demitted from this Lodge on April 30, 1860, but affiliated again a few years later and remained a member until his death which occurred, May 24, 1868, at Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Grand Lodge of Arizona has taken charge of the grave lot and the monument which was erected to this early American, pioneer (see also New Age Magazine, May, 1925).
*
CARTHUSIANS
A religious Order founded by Bruno in 1080, and named from Chartreux, in France, the place of their institution.
They were noted for their austerity.
*
CARTULARY
An officer who has charge of the register or other books of record.
*
CARYSFORT, JOHN PROBY, LORD
Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England, March 10, 1752, to 1754
*
CASANOVA DE SEINGALT, GIOVANNI JACOPO
Usually mentioned by the word Casanova An Italian adventurer, born at Venice, 1725, died in Bohemia 1798, noted particularly for his Memoirs, a spirited boastful autobiography so romantic and improbable in his numerous detailed successes among the opposite sex that doubt attaches to almost all his claims. Allowing freely for the widespread social evils of his day, we shall the better understand his sneering frankness about vice. Several reliable authorities agree that his eleven writings are trustworthy accounts of the morals and manners of the society he usually frequented.
Among his acquaintances were the most notable people, Rousseau, D'Eon, Frederick the Great, Suvaroff, Empress Catherine of Russia, Voltaire, Cagliostro, and as a prominent Roman Catholic, he received from the Pope the distinction of the Order of the Golden Spur.
Expelled from school, he entered the service of Cardinal Acquavisa, began his travels; returning to Venice in 1755, was denounced as a spy and imprisoned; escaped to Paris and gained a fortune directing the State Lotteries, again traveled to Florence; whence he was banished, thence to Rome.
After further journeys he was. forced to flee from. Poland.
Arriving at Paris he found a warrant for his arrest awaiting him and he took refuge in Spain, but was ejected from Madrid in 1769, and going again to Italy was exiled from Venice, ending his turbulent career as librarian from 1785 to his death in 1798 at Dux in Bohemia. Here he wrote his famous Memoirs, published first in twelve volumes at Leipzig and then in eight at Paris.
Brilliant as any romantic fiction, their worth as sober truth has not been above suspicion and his acknowledged exploits in knavery demonstrate that anything he said or did was subject to question.
Casanova claims to have been initiated in the latter part of 1750 at Lyons, on his way to Paris, where he was made a Master Mason.
At Venice in 1755 he was arrested on charges of sorcery and of being a Freemason, his Masonic clothing being found by police and deemed incriminating.
Not only does he tell of meeting prominent Freemasons in various countries but in Rome itself he asserts that several prelates and cardinals were secretly members of the Craft.
References to the Craft are sprinkled freely through his Memoirs, one of them (pages 276-9, Librarie Garnier Freres edition in French, Paris, tome II, chapter xiii) we translate as follows:
At Lyons there was an estimable personage with whom I became acquainted through M. de Rochebaron, and who obtained the favor for me of being admitted to participate in the sublime trifles of Freemasonry. Arriving as an Apprentice at Paris, some months afterwards, I there planned to become a Fellow Craft and Master.
The Master is certainly the supreme degree of Freemasonry, for all the others that are in the series taken by me are only pleasing inventions which, good enough in symbolism, add nothing to the dignity of Master.
There is no one person in the world who may succeed in knowing everything, but men sensible of their faculties and who know how to take account the more closely of their moral powers, should seek to know all that is possible. A young man, well born, who plans to travel and acquaint himself with the world, and what we call society, who does not wish to find himself in certain circumstances the inferior of his equals and to be excluded from participation in all their pleasures, ought to have himself initiated into what they call Freemasonry, even though it would only be to know superficially what it is.
Freemasonry is an Institution of Benevolence which, in certain times and in certain places, may serve as a pretext for plots criminal and subversive of good order; but good God, what has not been abused? Have not the Jesuits been seen, under the sacred guise of religion, to furnish weapons for the parricidal arms of blind enthusiasts to strike Kings'? All men of some importance, I wish to say those whose social existence is marked by merit, knowledge or fortune, should be Freemasons, and a great number are ; why infer that the democratic communications, where the members impose on themselves the law of never speaking intramuros (within the walls in a tiled place) neither of politics, religion, nor government, who only converse about emblems, or morals, or puerilities; why infer, I say, that these reunions where the governments may have their creatures, can offer such dangers that Sovereigns forbid therein and that popes entertain themselves by excommunicating?
Besides that it is a failure of purpose and the Pope, notwithstanding his infallibility, trips up himself by the persecutions, giving only to Freemasonry an importance that it would never perhaps have acquired without them. Mystery is in the nature of man, and all that presents itself to the crowd under a mysterious aspect always excites curiosity and will be sought, many convinced that there something substantial awaits them. though the veil often hides but a zero. After all, I advise every well-born young man who wishes to see the world to be accepted a Freemason, but I urge him to choose well the Lodge; for, although bad company cannot work in the Lodge, it may however be found there, and the candidate ought to guard himself from dangerous associations.
Men who only plan to be accepted as Freemasons, with the purpose of coming to know the secret of the Order, run great risk of growing old under the trowel without ever attaining their object. However, there is a secret but it is so inviolable that it has never been told nor confided to anyone.
Those who grasp at the superficiality of things believe that the secret consists in words, signs and grips, or that in the final analysis it is the grand word of the last degree. A mistake!
He who discovers the secret of Freemasonry, for they never know where they are finding it, will not arrive at that knowledge by reason of frequenting Lodges.
He gains it only by the strength of reflecting, of reasoning, of comparing, and of deducing. He will not confide it to his best friend in Freemasonry, for he knows that if that brother does not find it for himself as did he, the friend will not have the talent to extract the means to do so from what shall be said in the ear.
He who has it remains silent and this secret is always secret.
All that is done in the Lodge ought to be secret; but those who by dishonest indiscretion make no scruple of revealing what is done there, have never revealed the essential: they do not know. it; and if they have not known, truly they cannot reveal the ceremonies.
The sensation experienced today by the profane, that is to say by those who are not Freemasons, is of the same kind as that experienced in times of yore by those who were not admitted to the mysteries that were celebrated at Eleusis in honor of the goddess Cérés. But the mysteries of Eleusis interested all Greece, and all they had there of eminence then in society aspired to be made a party to them : so it is with Freemasonry., in the midst of a great number of men of premier merit, enclosed by a crowd of scamps that no society would acknowledge, because they are the rubbish of the human species under the moral accounting.
In the mysteries of Cérés they long kept an impenetrable silence to cause the reverence of which these mysteries were the object.
Moreover, what could they reveal? The three words that the hierophant said to the initiates! But to what would that lead? To the dishonor of the indiscreet, because he would only reveal barbarous language unknown by the vulgar, the common herd.
I have read somewhere what is meant by the three sacred and secret words of the mysteries of Eleusis : Be watchful and do nu evil.
The sacred and secret words of the several Masonic degrees are nearly all as criminal!
The Eleusian initiation lasted nine days; the ceremonies very impressive, and the company very respectable. Plutarch informs us that Alcibiades was condemned to death and all his goods confiscated for having dared in company with Polition and Theodore against the Eumolpides to turn into ridicule the great mysteries.
They even intended that Alcibiades should be cursed by the priests and priestesses.
But the curse was never uttered because a priestess opposed it, saying. " I am a priestess for blessing, not cursing." Sublime words!
Here is a lesson of morality and of wisdom that the Pope despises, but the Gospels taught and the Savior of the world ordained.
There is an allusion (page 286, tome VIII,
chapter xi) to the prominent Roman Catholics of the eighteenth
century ignoring privately in practice what they said publicly
and officially against Freemasonry.
Of course there are instances of Roman Catholics of prominence
being admitted openly into Masonic Lodges during that century-
and later. Daniel O'Connell, the Liberator, as he was called,
also active in the Grand Lodge of Ireland, found the two pursuits,
Roman Catholicism and Freemasonry, were deemed inconsistent and
he eventually resigned his membership in the Craft. But others,
as the Abbe Cordier at Paris, a leader in the famous Lodge of
the Nine Sisters, and with Benjamin Franklin, supporting Voltaire
when he was initiated, paid little or no heed to the threats from
the head of the Roman Catholic Church against Freemasonry.
'What Casanova says gives a hint as to the position of those attempting to be on both sides of the fence and his introduction of a Prince of the Roman Catholic Church as a Freemason is a curious commentary on the situation in question:
The first day of the year 1772, I presented myself to the Cardinal Brancafarte, Legate of the Pope, who I had known at Paris twenty years previously when he was sent by Benoit (Benedict XIV) to carry the blessed linen clothes to the new-born Duke de Bourgoyne. We had been together in a Lodge of Freemasons, for the members of the Sacred College who thundered against the Freemasons knew well that their anathemas (solemn curses) impressed only the weak, whom a too lively light might dazzle.
*
CASMARAN
The Angel of Air. Referred to in the Degree of Scottish Knight of Saint Andrew. The etymology is uncertain.
*
CASSIA
A corruption of acacia, which undoubtedly arose from the common habit, among illiterate people, of sinking the sound of the letter A in the pronunciation of any word of which it constitutes the initial syllable, as pothecary for apothecary, and prentice for apprentice, The word prentice, by the way, is almost altogether used in the old records of Freemasonry, which were, for the most part, the productions of uneducated men. Unfortunately, however, the corruption of acacia into cassia has not always been confined to the illiterate; but the long employment of the corrupted form has at length introduced it, in some instances, among a few of our writers. Even Doctor Oliver has sometimes used the objectionable corruption, notwithstanding he has written so much upon the symbolism of the acacia.
He refers to the Sprig of Cassia in Revelations of a Square (page 113).
There is a plant which was called by the ancients cassia, but it is entirely- different from the acacia.
The acacia was a sacred plant; the caisson ignoble plant, having no sacred character. The former is in Freemasonry profoundly symbolic; the latter has no symbolism whatever.
The cassia is only three times mentioned in Scripture, but always as an aromatic plant forming a portion of some perfume.
There is, indeed, strong reason for believing that the cassia was only a coarse kind of cinnamon, and that it did not grow in Palestine, but was imported from the East.
Casia, therefore, has no rightful place in Masonic language, and its use should be avoided as a vulgar corruption.
*
CASTELLAN
In Germany, the Superintendent or Steward
of a Lodge building, in which he resides.
He is either a serving brother or an actual member of the Lodge,
and has the care of the building and its contents.
*
CASTING VOICE or VOTE
The twelfth of the thirty-nine General Regulations prescribes that "All matters are to be determined in the Grand Lodge by a majority of votes, each member having one vote and the Grand Master having two votes" (see Constitutions, 1723, page 61). From this law has arisen the practice of giving to the Master of the Lodge a costing vote in addition to his own when there is a tie.
"The custom is so universal, and has been so long practiced, that, although I can find no specific law on the subject, the right may be considered as established by prescription" says Doctor Mackey.
But there are exceptions.
These are given in the revised edition of Doctor Mackey's Jurisprudence of Freemasonry (chapter iii).
It may be remarked that the Masonic usage is probably' derived from the custom of the London Livery Companies or Gilds, where the casting vote has always been given by the presiding officers in all cases of equality, a rule that has been recognized by Act of Parliament.
*
CATACOMB
A grotto for burial; a sepulchral vault.
A subterranean place for the burial of the dead, consisting of galleries or passages with recesses excavated at their sides for tombs.
Later applied in the plural to all the subterranean cemeteries lying around Rome which, after having been long covered up and forgotten, were fortuitously discovered in 1578.
They are found elsewhere, as, at Naples, at Syracuse, in Egypt, at Paris, etc.
The term is chiefly applied to those lying about Rome, the principal ones lying along the Appian Way.
The accompanying engraving shows a small portion of the Northern section of the Catacomb of Saint Calixtus.
There seems to have been no plan for these excavations, for they shoot off in the most unexpected directions, forming such a labyrinth of connected passages that persons often have been lost for several days at a time, giving the monk attendants much trouble.
They are several miles in extent.
Those about Rome are under the care of various monks of the church, and are a source of considerable revenue from tourists.
They are now entered by narrow passages and some, as in the case of Saint Calixtus, descend to considerable depth.
Along the passages are small chambers at the sides for tombs, one above another, each of which generally closed by a slab of stone on which was placed the letters D. M., the initials of Dea Maximo, or X. P., the Greek letters for Christ. Tombs of saints bore inscriptions of identification.
The passages are generally three or four feet wide and were at intervals along their course enlarged into chambers, usually square or rectangular, that were used for worship. One in Saint Calixtus was an irregu1ar semicircle and about thirty-two feet in diameter.
In these chambers is usually found a stone
bench or chair for the bishop or teacher.
They were ventilated and partially fighted by shafts that extended
to the surface of the ground. Some frescoes were found on the
walls.
Many catacambs were destroyed and traces of them lost when the Goths, Lombards, and others besieged Rome at various times.
The foregoing would not justify a place in a work of this character, were it not for the influence it sheds on the beginning of Christian architecture, as for three centuries Pagan Rome would not permit Christians to meet above ground.
The Twenty-sixth Degree in the Ancient and Accepted Rite refers to catacombs (see also Labyrinth).
*
CATAFALQUE
From an Italian word meaning scaffold. A temporary structure of wood, appropriately decorated with funereal symbols and representing a tomb or cenotaph. It forms a part of the decorations of a Sorrow Lodge, and is also used in the ceremonies of the Master Mason's Degree in Lodges of the French Rite.
*
CATCH QUESTIONS
Questions not included in the Catechism, but adopted from an early period to try the pretensions of a stranger, such as this used by American Freemasons: "Where does the Master hang his hat?" and by the French, "Comment êtes vous entré dans le Temple de Salomon (how are -you admitted into the Temple of Solomon)?"
Such as these are of course unsanctioned by authority.
But Doctor Oliver, in an essay on this subject preliminary to the fourth volume of his Golden Remains, gives a long list of these "additional tests," which had been reduced to a kind of system, and were practiced by the English Freemasons of the eighteenth century. Among them were such as these : "What is the punishment of a cowan?" "What does this stone smell of?" "If a brother were lost, where would you look for him?" "How blows a Mason's wind?" and many others of the same kind.
Of these tests or catch questions, Doctor Oliver says "that they were something like the conundrums of the present day-difficult of comprehension; admitting only of one answer, which appeared to have no direct correspondence with the question, and applicable only in consonance with the mysterious terms and symbols of the Institution."
Catch questions in the United States, at least, seem to be getting out of use, and some of the most learned Freemasons at the present day would find it difficult to answer them.
*
CATECHISM
From the earliest times the oral instructions of Freemasonry have
been communicated in a catechetical form.
Each degree has its peculiar catechism, the knowledge of which constitutes what is called a bright Freemason.
The catechism, indeed, should be known to every Freemason, for every aspirant should be thoroughly instructed in that of the degree to which he has attained before he is permitted to make further progress.
The rule, however, is not rigidly observed; and many Freemasons, unfortunately, are very ignorant of all but the rudimentary parts of their catechism, which they derive only from hearing portions of it communicated at the opening and closing of the Lodge, or from careless Brethren freely using Masonic expressions publicly.
*
CATECHUMEN
One who had attained the Second Degree of the Essenian or early Christian Mysteries and assumed the name of Canstans.
There were three degrees in the ceremonies, which, to a limited extent, resembled the Pagan services.
Of the three classes, the first were Auditors, the second Catechumens, and the third the Faithful.
The Auditors were novices, prepared by ceremonies and instruction to receive the dogmas of Christianity.
A portion of these dogmas was made known to the Catechumens, who, after particular purifications, received baptism, or the initiation of the theogenesis Divine regeneration; but in the grand mysteries of that religion-the incarnation, nativity, passion, and resurrection of Christ-none were initiated but the Faithful.
The Mysteries were divided into two parts -the first, styled the Mass of the Catechumens; the second, the Mass af the Faithful.
Many beautiful ceremonies and much instruction touching these matters will be found in that most enticing Degree called Prince of Mercy, and known as the Twenty-sixth in the Scottish Rite services.
*
CATENARIAN ARCH
If a rope be suspended loosely by its two ends, the curve into which it falls is called a catenarian curve, and this inverted forms the catenarian arch, which is said to be the strongest of all arches. As the form of a symbolic Lodge is an oblong square, that of a Royal Arch Chapter, according to the English Ritual, is a catenarian arch.
*
CATHARINE II
Catharinc the Great, Empress of Russia, in 1762, prohibited by an edict all Masonic meetings in her dominions.
But subsequently better sentiments prevailed, and having learned the true character of the Institution, she not only revoked her order of prohibition, but invited the Freemasons to re-establish their Lodges and to constitute new ones, and went so far in 1763 as to proclaim herself the Protectress of the Order and Tutrice of the Lodge of Clio at Moscow (see Thory, Acta Latamorum, 1, 82),
During the remainder of her reign Freemasonry was in a flourishing condition in Russia, and many of the nobles organized Lodges in their palaces. But in 1794 her feelings changed and she became suspicious that the Lodges of Moscow were intriguing against the Court and the Ministers ; this idea, coupled with the horrors of the French Revolution and other crimes said to be due to secret societies, caused her to cease to protect the Order, and without any express prohibition emanating from her, the Lodges ceased to work (see Thory, Acta Latomorum, 1, 195). She died November 6, 1796, and in 1797 her successor, Paul I, forbade all secret societies in Russia.
*
CATHEDRAL
"The use of the word Cathedral is improper as applied to Scottish Rite buildings. It is only in recent years that the word has come into use in this Jurisdiction, presumably from the purchase of some church building by Scottish Rite Bodies, and remodeling it to Scottish Rite uses.
Strictly speaking, the Cathedral is the Bishop's Church ; that is, there may be many Churches in the diocese of a Bishop, but the one he uses to preach in regularly is called the Cathedral."-John H. Cowles, Sovereign Grand Commander, Transactions of the Supreme Council, Southern Jurisdiction (page 99) of 1923.
*
CATHEDRAL BUILDERS
Some Masonic students have thought, although the opposition holds that there does not seem to be any specific documentary evidence to warrant such belief, that in the Middle Ages there was a separate class of Freemasons known as Cathedral, or Church, Builders who worked on ecclesiastical structures only and were distinct from the town guilds or companies.
These students are of the opinion that the so-called Old Charges were originally intended as rules for use among this church building class of Freemasons.
Leader Scott (the pen name of the author, Mrs. Baxter of Florence, Italy) has in her book, Cathedral Builders, unearthed from Muratori's collection of ancient manuscripts an edict signed by King Rotharis of November 22, 643, containing the following clauses:
If the Comacine Master with his colleagues shall have contracted to restore or build the house of any person whatsoever, the contact far payment being made, and it chances that some one shall die by the fall of the said house, or any material or stones from it, the owner of the said house shall not be cited by the Magister Comacinus or his brethren to compensate them for homicide or injury ; because having for their own gain contracted for the payment of the building, they must sustain the risks and injuries thereof. If any person has engaged or hired one or more of the Comacine Masters to design a work (conduxerit ad operam dictandam), or to daily assist his workmen in building a palace or a house, and it should happen that by reason of the house some Comacine should be killed, the owner of the house is not considered responsible; but if a pole or a stone shall kill or injure any extraneous person, the Master builder shall not bear the blame, but the person who hired him shall make compensation.
Mrs. Baxter says: "These laws prove that in the seventh century the Magistri Comacini were a compact and powerful guild, capable of asserting their rights, and that the guild was properly organized, having degrees of different ranks; that the higher orders were entitled Magistri, and could 'design' or 'undertake' a work; i.e., act as architects; and that the colleagues worked under, or with them.
In fact, a powerful organization altogether; so powerful and so solid, that it speaks of a very ancient foundation" (see Cathedral Builders, the Story of a Great Masonic Guild, 1899, London, pages 5-7, 423-6; also the Comacines, their Predecessors and their Successors, Brother W. Ravenscroft, 1910, London, pages 54-64, and the astride on Comacine Masters in this work).
*
CAUTION
It was formerly the custom to bestow upon an Entered Apprentice, on his initiation, a new name, which was Caution.
The custom is now very generally discontinued, although the principle which it inculcated should never be forgotten. Similar instruction is still given in the Bristol Working but without the foregoing name.
The Old Charges of 1723 impress upon a Freemason the necessity, when in the presence of strangers not Freemasons, to be "cautious in your words and carriage, that the most penetrating stranger shall not be able to discover or find out what is not proper to be intimated''; as these Charges were particularly directed to Apprentices, who then constituted the great body of the Fraternity, it is possible that the "new name" gave rise to the Charge, or, more likely, that the Charge gave rise to the "new name."
*
CAVERN
In the Pagan mysteries of antiquity the initiations were often performed in caverns, of which a few, like the cave of Elephanta in India, still remain to indicate by their form and extent the character of the rites that were then performed.
The Cavern of Elephanta, which was the most gorgeous temple in the world, is one hundred and thirty feet square, and eighteen feet high. It is supported by four massive pillars, and its walls are covered with statues and carved symbolic decorations.
The sacellum, or sacred place, which contained the phallic symbol, was in the western extremity, and accessible only to the initiated.
The caves of Salsette greatly exceeded in magnitude that of Elephanta, being three hundred in number, all adorned with symbolic figures, among which the phallic emblems were predominant, which were placed in the most secret recesses, accessible only by private entrances.
In every cave was a basin to contain the consecrated water of ablution, on the surface of which floated the sacred lotus flower.
All these caves were places of initiation into the Hindu mysteries, and every arrangement was made for the performance of the most impressive ceremonies.
Faber (Dissertatian an the Mysteries af the Cabiri, ii, 257) says that "wherever the Cabiric Mysteries were practiced, they were always in some manner or other connected with caverns," and he mentions, among other instances, the cave of Zirinthus, within whose dark recesses the most mysterious Rites of the Samothracian Cabiri were performed.
Maurice (Indian Antiquities, iii, 536), speaking of the subterranean passages of the Temple of Isis, in the island of Phile in the river Nile, says "it was in these gloomy caverns that the grand and mystic arcana of the goddess were unfolded to the adoring aspirant, while the solemn hymns of initiation resounded through the long extent of these stony recesses."
Many of the ancient orates, as, for instance, that of Trophonius in Boeotia, were delivered in caves.
Hence, the cave - subterranean, dark, and silent - was mingled in the ancient mind with the idea of mystery.
In the ceremonies of Freemasonry, we find the cavern or vault in what is called the Cryptic Freemasonry of the American Rite, and also in the advanced Degrees of the French and Scottish Rites, in which it is a symbol of the darkness of ignorance and crime impenetrable to the light of truth.
In reference to the practical purposes of the cavern, as recorded in the legend of these Degrees, it may be mentioned that caves, which abounded in Palestine in consequence of the geological structure of the country, are spoken of by Josephus as places of refuge for banditti; and Phillott says, in Smith's Bible Dictionary, that it was the caves which lie beneath and around so many of the Jewish cities that formed the last hiding-places of the Jewish leaders in the war with the Romans.
*
CAYENNE or FRENCH GUIANA
A country in South America. Lodge No. 204, L'Anglaise, at Bordeaux, France, warranted a Lodge at Cayenne in 1755 and gave it its own name. Other Lodges were organized by French authority, both of the Grand Lodge and the Grand Orient, at different times throughout the years.
*
CEDARS OF LEBANON
In Scriptural symbology, the cedar-tree, says Wemyss (Symbolic Language of Scripture), was the symbol of eternity, because its substance never decays nor rots.
Hence, the Ark of the Covenant was made of cedar; and those are said to utter things worthy of cedar who write that which no time ought to obliterate.
The Cedars af Lebanan are frequently referred to in the legends of Freemasonry, especially in the advanced Degrees; not, however, on account of any symbolical signification, but rather because of the use made of them by Solomon and Zerubbabel in the construction of their respective Temples.
Phillott (Smith's Bible Dictionary) thus describes the grove so Celebrated in Scriptural and Masonic history:
"The grove of trees known as the Cedars of Lebanon consists of about four hundred trees, standing quite alone in a depression of the mountain with no trees near, about six thousand four hundred feet above the sea, and three thousand below the summit.
About eleven or twelve are very large and old, twenty-five large, fifty of middle size, and more than three hundred younger and smaller ones.
The older trees have each several trunks and spread themselves widely round, but most of the others are of cone-like form, and do not send out wide lateral branches.
In 1550 there were twenty-eight old trees, in 1739, Pococke counted fifteen, but the number of trunks makes the operation of counting uncertain.
They are regarded with much reverence by the native inhabitants as living records of Solomon's power, and the Maronite patriarch was formerly accustomed to celebrate there the festival of the Transfiguration at an altar of rough stones."
*
CELEBES
An island in the East Indies
The Grand Lodge of Holland chartered a Lodge at Macassar in 1883 called Arbeid Adelt (Ennobled Labor).
*
CELEBRATION
The Third Degree of Fessler's Rite (see Fessler, Rite of)
*
CELESTIAL ALPHABET
See Alphabet, Angels
*
CELTIC MYSTERIES
See Druidical Mysteries
*
CELTS
The early inhabitants of Italy, Gaul, Spain, and Britain.
They are supposed to have left Asia during one of the Aryan emigrations, and, having traveled in a westerly direction, to have spread over these countries of Europe. The Celtic Mysteries or the Sacred Rites which they instituted are known as Druidical Mysteries, which see.
*
CEMENT
The cement which in Operative Freemasonry is used to unite the various parts of a building into one strong and durable mass, is borrowed by Speculative Freemasonry as a symbol to denote that brotherly love which binds the Freemasons of all countries in one common brotherhood. As this brotherhood is recognized as being perfected among Master Masons only, the symbol is very appropriately referred to the Third Degree.
*
CEMETERIES, MASONIC
The desire to select some suitable spot wherein to deposit the remains of our departed kindred and friends seems almost innate in the human breast.
The stranger's field was bought with the accursed bribe of betrayal and treason, and there is an abhorrence to depositing our loved ones in places whose archetype was so desecrated by its purchase-money.
The churchyard, to the man of sentiment, is as sacred as the church itself.
The cemetery bears a hallowed character, and we adorn its graves with vernal flowers or with evergreens to show that the dead, though away from our presence visibly, still live and bloom in our memories.
The oldest of all the histories that time has saved to us contains an affecting story of this reverence of the living for the dead, when it tells us how Abraham, when Sarah, his beloved wife, had died in a strange land, reluctant to bury her among strangers, purchased from the sons of Heth the cave of Machpelah for a burial-place for his people.
It is not, then, surprising that Freemasons, actuated by this spirit, should have been desirous to consecrate certain spots as resting-places for themselves and for the strange Brethren who should die among them
A writer in the London Freemason's Magazine for 1858 complained that there was not then in England a Masonic cemetery, nor portion of an established cemetery especially dedicated to the interment of the Brethren of the Craft. This neglect cannot be charged against the Freemasons of America, for there is scarcely a city or town of considerable size in which the Freemasons have not purchased and appropriated a suitable spot as a cemetery to be exclusively devoted to the use of the Fraternity.
These cemeteries are often, and should always be, dedicated with impressive ceremonies; and it was long to be regretted that our rituals provided no sanctioned form of service for these occasions.
*
CENSER
A small vessel of metal fitted to receive burning coals from the altar, and on which the incense for burning was sprinkled by the priest in the Temple. Among the furniture of a Royal Arch Chapter is to be found the censer, which is placed upon the altar of incense within the sanctuary, as a symbol of the pure thoughts and grateful feelings which, in so holy a place, should be offered up as a fitting sacrifice to the great I AM.
In a similar symbolic sense, the censer under the name of the pot of incense, is found among the emblems of the Third Degree (see Pot of Incense).
The censer also constitutes a part of the Lodge furniture in many of the advanced Degrees.
*
CENSOR
Gädicke says he is not an officer, but is now and then introduced into some of the Lodges of Germany.
He is commonly found where the Lodge has its own private house, in which, on certain days, mixed assemblies are held of Freemasons and their families and friends. Of those assemblies the Censor has the superintendence.
*
CENSURE
In Masonic Law, the mildest form of punishment that can be inflicted, and may be defined to be a formal expression of disapprobation, without other result than the effect produced upon the feelings of him who is censured. It is adopted by a resolution of the Lodge on a motion made at a regular communication; it requires only a bare majority of votes, for its passage does not affect the Masonic standing of the person censured, and may be revoked at any subsequent regular communication.
*
CENTAINE, ORDER OF
A mystical society of the eighteenth century which admitted females.
It was organized at Bordeaux in 1735 (see Thory, Acta Latamorum 1, 298).
*
CENTENARY JEWELS AND WARRANTS
In England when a Lodge celebrates the hundredth year of its anniversary it is permitted to choose a special jewel for the occasion.
In 1867 the particular design to be used was authorized and illustrated for the first time in 1871 when the Book of Constitutions was issued.
Before that time each Lodge was permitted to select its own design, securing the approval of the Grand Master before using the jewel.
As a result of this method there are forty-two of the older Lodges now in possession of Special Centenary Jewels of different designs and which may, be worn by all subscribing members of the particular Lodge.
Many Centenary Warrants were issued before 1871 but it is during that year that the first special provision was made for them. In order to secure one of the Warrants a Lodge must prove uninterrupted existence for one hundred years.
The English Royal Arch Chapters come under this same ruling.
CENTENNIAL
That which happens every hundred years.
Masonic Bodies that have lasted for that period very generally celebrate the occasion by a commemorative festival.
On the 4th of November, 1852, almost all of the Lodges of the United States celebrated the centennial anniversary of the initiation of George Washington as a Freemason.
*
CENTER, OPENING ON THE
In the English instructions, a Master Mason's Lodge is said to be opened on the center, because the Brethren present, being all Master Masons, are equally near and equally distant from that imaginary central point which among Freemasons constitutes perfection.
Neither of the preliminary Degrees can assert the same conditions, because the Lodge of an Entered Apprentice may contain all the three classes, and that of a Fellow Craft may include some Master Masons; and therefore the doctrine of perfect equality is not carried out in either. An attempt was made, but without success, in the Trestle Board, published under the sanction of the Baltimore Masonic Convention, to introduce the custom into the American Lodges.
*
CENTRALISTEN
Meaning Centralists. Lenning says such a society existed in Europe between 1770 and 1780, pursuing alchemical, political and religious studies and operating under Masonic forms.
*
CENTRALISTS
A society which existed in Europe from 1770 to 1780. It made use of Masonic forms at its meetings simply to conceal its secrets.
Lening calls it an alchemical association,
but says that it had religious and political tendencies.
Glädicke thinks that its object was to propagate Jesuitism.
*
CENTRAL POINT
See Point within a Circle
*
CEPHAS
A word which in the Syriac signifies a rock or stone, and is the name which was bestowed by Christ upon Simon, when he said to him, "Thou art a rock," which the Greeks rendered by nirpo, and the Latins by Petrus, both words meaning a rock.
It is used in the Degree of Royal Master, and there alludes to the Stone of Foundation, which see.
*
CEREMONIESThe outer garments which cover and adorn Freemasonry as clothing does the human body. Although ceremonies give neither live nor truth to doctrines or principles, yet they have an admirable influence, since by their use certain things are made to acquire a sacred character which they would not otherwise have had; and hence, Lord Coke has most wisely said that "prudent antiquity did, for more solemnity and better memory and observation of that which is to be done, express substances under ceremonies. "
*
CEREMONIES, MASTER OF
See Master of Ceremonies
*
CERES
Among the Romans, the goddess of agriculture; but among the more poetic Greeks she was worshiped under the name of Demeter, as the symbol of the prolific earth.
To her is attributed the institution of the Eleusinian Mysteries in Greece, the most popular of all the ancient initiations.
*
CERIDWEN
The Isis of the Druids
*
CERNEAU, JOSEPH
A jeweler, born at Villeblevin, in Yonne, a department of central France. A register of the Lodge Reunion des Coeurs at Port Republican (Port-au-Prince) in Santo Domingo, West Indies, was in the possession of General Albert Pike ,and in 1886 he quotes from it in publishing the report to him of the Supreme Council of France in regard to Joseph Cerneau (see page 29): "Joseph Cerneau appears on the same (the register for 1801) as Keeper of the Seals and Archives, the entry as to him, signed manu propria (by his own hand) being 'Garde de Sceaux et Archives: Joseph Cerneau, Marchand Orfevre, ne a Villeblerin, age de 37 ans R. .A. .R. . (i. e. Royal Arch (of Heredom) and Rose Croix)'" the other words not commented upon specifically by Brother Pike meaning Joseph Cerneau, merchant goldsmith, born at Villeblerin (the v in this word being copied as r), aged 87 years, etc. Cerneau was active in Cuba later on and we find that on December 17, 1804, the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania received a petition from several Brethren for a Warrant to hold a Lodge at Havana and that Brother Joseph Cerneau might be named Master, a request which was granted on that date, the "Petition being duly recommended according to the Regulations of this Grand Lodge."
Antonie-Mathieu Dupotet was Master of Lodge No. .47, Reunion des Coeurs, and in the register of that Lodge his name is followed by the same initials of Degrees or titles as in the case of Cerneau, but with this important addition "et P. . du R. . S. .," meaning and Prince af the Royal Secret.
Brother Pike in his Memoir, af Cerneauism (page 6, Supplement, 1885) says. "
In July, 1806, he (Dupotet) gave Cerneau, at Baracoa, in Cuba, the Degrees of the Rite of Heredom à Perfection, from 19 to 25.''
The Appendix to this Memoir, contains a copy of the Patent of the Twenty-fifth Degree to Joseph Cerneau, 16 July, 1806, signed by Dupotet, giving him power for the Northern part of the Island of Cuba to initiate and promote Brother Masons from the fourth to the twenty-fourth, and on one only a year the remaining Degree was perrnitted.
The Patent was said by General Pike in this Memoir to be " from papers belonging to Bro. . Charles Laflon de Ladebat, who was, prior to 1857, a member of the Supreme Council for the State of Louisiana, at New Orleans (claiming to be the Hicks-Laurent United Sup. Council continued), of which Jacques Foulhouze had been Grand Commander."
The Patent not only specifically restricted the conferring of Degrees by Joseph Cerneau as Deputy Grand Inspector to the northern part of the Island of Cuba and only to such in the series as are enumerated, namely from the fourth to the twenty-fourth and once a year not more than one in the twenty-fifth, but provides further that these candidates " shall have been officers of a Lodge regularly constituted and recognized, and in places only where there may not be found Sacred and Sublime and regularly constituted Asyla."
Dr. Robert B. Folger, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, 1881 (page 337) says "Joseph Cerneau established his Sovereign Grand Consistory, in New York City in 1807.
He pretended to no more than the Rite of
Perfection in Twenty-five degrees.''
There is another allusion by the author (page 157), "
It will be found that the name of The Most Potent Sovereign Grand Consistory of Supreme Chiefs of Exalted Masonry, according to the Ancient Constitutional Scottish Rite of Heredom was continued up to the end of the time---viz., 1827."
Doctor Folger mentions the activity of Cerneau in promoting various branches of the Masonic Institution and says in his history, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (second edition, 1881, page 128), " Mr. Cerneau also established a Degree called Aaron's Band which continued to be worked as a detached Degree for many years, in a separate Body; but eventually about the year 1825, was stopped by the interference of the Grand Chapter, which Body stated that it was an infringement upon the Degree of High Priesthood."
We may fix the time when Cerneau came to New York from Cuba by a report made by Brother Duplessis, the proxy of Lodge No. 103 at Havana, to the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania on January 5, 1807. In this statement (see page 244, Reprint of the Minutes, volume 11, 1801-10), "It appears from said papers that difficulties of the highest importance had happened in that Lodge.
That unworthy Brethren had denounced the Lodge to the Governor of Havana and that Bro. Cerneau had been Ordered to quit the Island and was arrived at New York in the beginning of November last with his Family. That the worthy Brethren of the said Lodge No. 103, had proceeded to the choice of New Officers agreeably to the Communications and Returns aforesaid, and were Obliged to use the greatest caution in their work, &c.; that the Lodge had lost above Three Thousand Dollars by the unfortunate circumstance aforesaid, and our worthy Brother Cerneau had also met with a heavy loss by his being obliged to remove with his Family, though he had received from the Governor every mark of regard that could be expected by the most respectable Character, &c., and that the said Bro. Cerneau had previous to his departure given to the Brethren the most wholesome advice and Assisted them in reorganizing the said Lodge, which now consists of the most respectable Characters of the Island."
We find later on, April 6, 1807, the Grand Lodge authorizing a letter of sympathy to the " late and present Worshipful Masters and Worthy Brethren of Lodge No. 103.'' Brothers Emanuel De La Motta, M. J. Maduro Peixotto, J. J. J. Gourgas and Sampson Simson, the first being Treasurer-General of the Supreme Council having its Grand East at Charleston, South Carolina, visited Joseph Cerneau in New York on September 14, 1813, and as a result of that investigation he was denounced and he and his associates declared expelled from every lawful Degree or Masonic Society in which they may have been received or admitted (see page 25, Documents, Joseph M'cosh).
Joseph M'cosh states in Documents upon sublime Freemasonry in the United States of America (page vii), " Of J. C.'s Masonic conduct in Havana de Cuba, we have many facts before us which would blacken any thing we have before communicated.
His labors were conduced by his being expelled from the island by the governor, at the request of the fraternity who resided there."
There is in the report of the Supreme Council for France, published in 1886, a reference that would indicate action against Joseph Cerneau had been taken by the Masonic authorities in Cuba as well as in the United States.
The item mentioning the decree issued at Charleston in 1813, says (page 31).
It declares him unworthy to be a Mason, annuls as irregular his Masonic operations, and demolishes the Consistories and Councils which he may have established. It thus approves the Masonic decisions made in 1805, by the Metropolitan Grand Lodge of Havana, Island of Cuba, against this Ver I1l:. Brother."
In the business recorded of the Adjourned Grand Quarterly Communication at Philadelphia on January 16, 1809 (page 381, Reprint) the Grand Secretary "Brother Baker stated that he had been informed that Bro. Joseph Cerneau, formerly J. G. W. of the Provincial Lodge of St. Domingo and afterwards Master of Lodge No. 103, held at Havannah, and now residing in the City of New York, had been Guilty of Un-masonic Conduct.
Whereupon, On Motion made and Seconded, Resolved, that Brothers Duplessis, Chaudron and Baker be a Committee to Examine respecting the premisses and make Report thereon. "
But the details of this affair must be left to conjecture as we do not discover the Committee to have brought in any report.
In a footnote by General Pike to the report of the Supreme Council for France, July 7, 1886, published at Washington by the Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States (page 29), we read of Cerneau's claims.
" He did not style himself to be an Inspector-General 'of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.' The Body that he established did not pretend to be a body, and he did not pretend to be an Inspector; of that Rite; but of 'the Ancient Constitutional Rite of Heredom.
He went back to France in December, 1827, and was no more heard of: and no Body claiming to be a Supreme Council of the 33d Degree, with any powers, was established by him until November 28, 1827.
Before then the 32ds of his Grand Consistory elected 33ds from among themselves, the title being merely honorary, and with no powers attached." As to the date when Joseph Cerneau left New York for France there is some uncertain, Doctor Folger intimating a later time than General Pike. Doctor Folger alludes in his History, 1881, to his personal acquaintance with Joseph Cerneau and in regard to his circumstances and movements in later years has this to say (page 117), " For, in the latter part of the time - from 1832 onward - he was in poor circumstances, and made application to the Supreme Council for assistance.
That body made some considerable purchases of him, which relieved his necessities. He returned to his native land in comparative poverty, and died there, between the years 1840 and 1845, while filling a small public office, under wretched pay."
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CERTIFICATE
A Diploma issued by a Grand Lodge or by a subordinate Lodge under its authority, testifying that the holder thereof is a true and trusty Brother, and recommending him to the hospitality of the Fraternity abroad. The character of this instrument has sometimes been much misunderstood. It is by no means intended to act as a voucher for the bearer, nor can it be allowed to supersede the necessity of a strict examination. A stranger, however, having been tried and proved by a more unerring standard, his Certificate then properly comes in as an auxiliary testimonial, and will be permitted to afford good evidence of his correct standing in his lodge at home; for no Body of Freemasons, true to the principles of their Order, would grant such an instrument to an unworthy Brother, or to one who, they feared, might make an improper use of it.
But though the presence of a Grand Lodge
Certificate be in general required as collateral evidence of worthiness
to visit, or receive aid, its accidental absence, which may arise
in various ways, as from fire, captivity, or shipwreck, should
not debar a strange Brother from the rights guaranteed to him
by our Institution, provided he can offer other evidence of his
good character.
The Grand Lodge of New York has, upon this subject, taken the
proper stand in the following regulation: ''
That no Freemason be admitted to any subordinate Lodge under the jurisdiction of this Grand Lodge, or receive the charities of any Lodge, unless he shall, on such application, exhibit a Grand Lodge certificate, duly attested by the proper authorities, except he is known to the Lodge to be a worthy brother."
The Certificate system has been warmly discussed by the Grand Lodges of the United States, and considerable opposition to it has been made by some of them on the ground that, it is an innovation.
If it is an innovation, it certainly is not one of the present day, as we may learn from the Regulations made in General Assembly of the Masons of England, on Saint John the Evangelist's day, 1663, during the Grand Mastership of the Earl of St. Albans, one of which reads as follows: "That no person hereafter who shall be accepted a Freemason shall be admitted into any Lodge or Assembly, until he has brought a certificate of the time and place of his acceptation from the Lodge that accepted him, unto the Master of that limit or division where such Lodge is kept" (see Constitution, 1738, page 101).
Among the General Regulations " made at a Grand Lodge held in Corke, on Saint John ye Evangelist's Day, 1728," is the following:
" That no person pretending to be a Mason shall be considered as such within ye precincts of our Grand Lodge or deemed duly matriculated into ye Society of Freemasons, until he hath subscribed in some Lodge to these regulations and obliged himself to sign ye before mentioned Duplicate (a copy of the General Regulations possessed by all Lodges), at which time he shall be furnished with proper means to convince the authentic Brethren the hath duly complied."
Brother WT. J. Chetwode Crawley (Caementaria
Hibernica, Fasciculus1, pages 11 and 12), says further that "In
this clause we descry the germ of the Certificate now issued to
every Master Mason. '
The proper means to convince the authentic Brethren' supplies
the earliest intimation in the history of the Craft of a practice
which, originating with the Grand Lodge of Munster, has been adopted
by every Grand Lodge in the World.
The first Grand Lodge Certificate ever heard of in England seems to have been that brought with him to England by Lawrence Dermott, and proudly exhibited by hirn to his Grand Lodge (see the Minutes of the Grand Lodge of the Ancient for March 2, 1757, as given in Brother Sadler's Masonic Facts and Fictions).
The Premier Grand Lodge (Moderns) borrowed the practice from Lawrence Dermott and began to make use of Certificates in the year 1755."
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CEYLON
An island in the Indian Ocean. In 1771 Freemasonry was introduced to Ceylon with the establishment by the Grand Lodge of Holland of Fidelity Lodge at Colombo, the capital of the island, in 1771. Sir Alexander Johnston was appointed Provincial Grand Master by the Grand Lodge of England in 1810. Oliver Day Street says of Ceylon in his Report on Correspondence to the Grand Lodge of Alabama in 1922 :
"On this island are nine Lodges subject to the Grand Lodge of England and three subject to that of Ireland.
Four of these are at Colombo and one each at Badulla, Galle, Halton, Kandy, Kurunegala, Nuwara Ebya, and Tolowakello."
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CHAILLOU DE JOINVILLE
He played an important part in the Freemasonry of France about the middle of the eighteenth century, especially in the schisms which at that time existed in the Grand Lodge. In 1761, he was an active member of the Council of Emperors of the East and West, or Rite of Perfection, which had been established in 1758.
Under the title of Substitute General of the Order, Venerable Master of the First Lodge in France, called Saint Anthony's, Chief of the Eminent Degrees, Cammander, and Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, etc.,etc., etc., he signed the Patent of Stephen Morin, authorizing him to extend the Royal Order in America, which was the first step that subsequently led to the establishment of the Ancient and Accepted Rite in the United States.
In 1762, the Prince of Clermont, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France, removed the dancing-master Lacorne, whom he had previously appointed his Substitute General and who had become distasteful to the respectable members of the Grand Lodge, and put Chaillau de Jainville in his place.
This action created a schism in the Grand Lodge, during which De Jainville appears to have acted with considerable energy, but eventually he became almost as notorious as his predecessor, by issuing irregular charters and deputations.
On the death of the Prince of Clermont, in 1771, the Lacornists regained much of their influence, and De Jainville appears quietly to have passed away from the field of French Freemasonry and Masonic intrigues.
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CHAIN, MYSTIC
To form the Mystic Chain is for the Brethren to make a circle, holding each other by the hands, as in surrounding a grave, etc.
Each Brother crosses his arms in front of his body, so as to give his right hand to his left-hand neighbor, and his left hand to his right-hand neighbor.
The French call it Chaine d'Union. It is a symbol of the close connection of all Freemasons in one common brotherhood.
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CHAIN OF FLOWERS
In French Freemasonry, when a Lodge celebrates the day of its foundation, or the semicentennial membership of one of the Brethren, or at the initiation of a louveteau (which see) the room is decorated with wreaths oi flowers called chaine de fleurs.
*
CHAIN OF UNION
See Chain, Mystic
*
CHAIN, SOCIETY OF THE
In German, Gessellschaft der Kette.
Also known as Order of the Chain of the Pilgrims. A German society
of both sexes, founded, 1758, in Hamburg.
Comprised persons of high social position and among its benevolent work was an Institute for the Blind.
The letters W, . B and S were used by the members as signs of recognition, signifying the German equivalents for the words Camplaisance, Constancy and Silence.
The jewel was a chain of three links with the three letters W, B and S, and the members were called Knights of the Chain; their meetings were called Unions and the assembled members were known as Favorites.
There was a similar society founded in Denmark in 1777.
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CHARGES OF A FREEMASON
These Charges or Regulations, published in1723, have been adopted by various Grand Lodges and made a part of their Constitutions:
*
THE CHARGES OF A FREE MASON
Extracted from The Ancient Records of Lodges beyond Sea, and of those in England, Scotland, and Ireland, for the use of the Lodges in London : 'To be read
AT THE MAKING OF NEW BRETHREN OR WHEN THE MASTER SHALL ORDER IT
The General Heads, Viz.:
1 In the Lodge while Constituted.
2 Behavior after the Lodge is over
3 Behavior when Brethren meet without Strangers,
4 Behavior in presence of Strangers not Masons.
5 Behavior at Home, and in your Neighborhood.
6 Behavior towards a strange Brother.
*
i CONCERNING GOD AND RELIGION
A Mason is obliged by his Tenure, to obey the moral law ; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid ATHEIST, nor an irreligious LIBERTINE.
But though in ancient Times Masons were charged in every Country to be of the Religion of that Country or Nation, whatever it was, yet 't is now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that Religion in which all Men agree, leaving their particular Opinions to themselves; that is, to be .good Men and true, or Men of Honor and Honesty, by whatever Denominations or Persuasions they may be distinguished ; whereby Masonry becomes the Center of Union, and the Means of conciliating true Friendship among Persons that must have remained at a perpetual Distance.
ii. OF THE CIVIL MAGISTRATE SUPREME AND SUBORDINATE
A Mason is a Peaceable Subject to the Civil Powers, wherever he resides or works, and is never to be concerned in plots and Conspiracies against the Peace and welfare of the Nation, nor to behave himself undutifully to inferior Magistrates ; for as Masonry hath been always injured by War, Bloodshed and Confusion, so ancient Kings and Princes have been much disposed to encourage the Craftsmen, because of their Peaceableness and Loyalty, whereby they practically, answered the Cavils of their Adversaries, and promoted the Honor of the Fraternity, who ever flourished in Times of Peace. So that if a Brother should be Rebel against the State, he is not to be countenanced in his Rebellion, however he may be pitied as an unhappy Man ; and if Convected of no other Crime, though the Royal Brotherhood must and ought to disown his Rebellion, and give no Umbrage or Ground of Political Jealousy to the Government for the time being, they can not expel him from the Lodge, and his relation to it remains indefeasible.
iii. OF LODGES
A Lodge is a Place where members assemble and work ; Hence that Assembly, or duly organized Society of Masons, is called a Lodge and every Brother ought to belong to one, and to be subject to its By-Laws and the General Regulations.
It is either particular or general, and will be best understood by attending it, and by the Regulations of the General or Grand Lodge hereunto annexed.
In ancient Times, no Master or Fellow could be absent from it, especially when warned to appear at it, without incurring a severe Censure, until it appeared to the Master and Wardens, that pure Necessity hindered him.
The Persons admitted Members of a Lodge must be good and true Men, free-born and of mature and discreet Age, no Bondmen, no Women, no immoral or scandalous Men, but of good Report.
iv. OF MASTERS, WARDENS, FELLOWS, AND APPRENTICES
All preferment among Masons is grounded upon real Worth and Personal Merit only; that to the Lords may be well served, the Brethren not put to Shame, nor the Royal Craft despised : Therefore no Master or Warden is chosen by Seniority, but for his Merit. It is impossible to describe these things in writing, and every Brother must attend in his Place, and learn them in a way peculiar to the Fraternity : Only Candidates may know, that no Master should take an Apprentice, unless he has sufficient Employment for him, and unless he be a perfect Youth, having no Maim or Defect in his body, that may render him incapable of learning the Art, of serving his Master's Lord, and of being made a Brother, and then a Fellow-Craft in due time, even after he has served such a Term of Years, as the Custom of the Country directs; and that he should be descended of honest Parents; that so, when otherwise qualified, he may arrive to the Honor of being the Warden, and then the Master of the Lodge, the Grand Warden, and at length the Grand-Master of all the Lodges, according to his Merit.
No Brother can be a Warden until he has passed the part of a Fellow-Craft; nor a Master until he has acted as a Warden, nor Grand Warden until he has been Master of a Lodge, nor Grand Master unless he has been a Fellow-Craft before his election, who is also to be nobly-born, or a Gentleman of the best Fashion, or some eminent Scholar, or some curious Architect, or other Artist, descended of honest Parents, and who is of singular great Merit in the Opinion of the Lodges.
And for the better, and easier, and more
honorable discharge of his Office, the Grand-Master has a Power
to cause his Deputy Grand-Master, who must be then, or must have
been formerly, the Master of a particular Lodge, and has the Privilege
of acting whatever the Grand Master, his Principal, should act,
unless the said Principal be present, or interpose his Authority
by a Letter.
These Rulers and Governors, Supreme and Subordinate, of the ancient
Lodge, are to be obeyed in their respective Stations by all the
Brethren, according to the old Charges and Regulations, with all
Humility, Reverence, Love and Alacrity.
v. OF THE MANAGEMENT OF THE CRAFT IN WORKING
All Masons shall work honestly on working
Days, that they may live creditably on Holy Days; and the time
appointed by the Law of the Land, or confirmed by Custom, shall
be observed.
The most expert of the Fellow-Craftsmen shall be chosen or appointed
the Master or Overseer of the Lord's Work; who is to be called
Master by those that work under him. The Craftsmen are to avoid
all ill Language, and to call each other by no disobliging Name,
but Brother or Fellow; and to behave themselves courteously within
and without the Lodge.
The Master, knowing himself to be able of Cunning, shall undertake the Lord's Work as reasonable as possible, and truly dispense his Goods as if they were his own ; nor to give more Wages to any Brother or Apprentice than he really may deserve.
Both the Master and Masons receiving their Wages justly, shall be faithful to the Lord, and honestly finish their Work, whether Task or Journey ; nor put the Work to Task that hath been accustomed to Journey.
None shall discover Envy at the Prosperity of a Brother, nor supplant him, or put him out of his Work, if he be capable to finish the same ; for no Man can finish another's Work so much to the Lord's Profit, unless he be thoroughly acquainted with the Designs and Droughts of him that began it.
When a Fellow-Craftsman is chosen Warden of the Work under the Master, he shall be true both to Master and Fellows, shall carefully oversee the Work in the Master's Absence to the Lord's Profit; and his Brethren shall obey him.
All Masons employed shall meekly receive their Wages without murmuring or Mutiny, and not desert the Master till the work is finished.
A younger Brother shall be instructed in working, to prevent spoiling the Materials for want of Judgment, and for increasing and continuing of Brotherly Love.
All the Tools used in working shall be approved by the Grand Lodge.
No Laborer shall be employed in the proper work of Masonry; nor shall Free Masons work with those that are not free, without an urgent Necessity; nor shall they teach Laborers and unaccepted Masons, as they should teach a Brother or Fellow.
vi. OF BEHAVIOR
1 In the Lodge while Constituted.
2 BEHAVIOR after the Lodge is over
3 BEHAVIOR when Brethren meet without Strangers,
4 BEHAVIOR in presence of Strangers not Masons.
5 BEHAVIOR at Home, and in your Neighborhood.
6 BEHAVIOR towards a strange Brother.
1. In the Lodge while constituted.
You are not to hold private Committees, or separate Conversation, without Leave from the Master, nor to talk of any thing impertinent or unseemly, nor interrupt the Master or Wardens, or any Brother speaking to the Master; nor behave yourself ludicrously or jestingly while the Lodge is engaged in what is serious and solemn ; nor use any unbecoming Language upon any Pratense whatsoever; but to pay due Reverence to your Master, Wardens, and Fellows, and put them to worship.
If any Complaint be brought, the Brother found guilty shall stand to the Award and Determination of the Lodge, who are the proper and competent Judges of all such Controversies, (unless you carry it by Appeal to the Grand Lodge,) and to whom they ought to be referred unless a Lord's Work be hindered the mean while, in which case a particular Reference may be made; but you must never go to Law about what concerneth Masonry, without an absolute Necessity apparent to the Lodge.
2. BEHAVIOR after the Lodge is over and the Brethren not gone.
You may enjoy yourselves with innocent Mirth, treating one another according to Ability, but avoiding all Excess, or forcing any Brother to eat or drink beyond his Inclination, or hindering him from going when his Occasions call him, or doing or saying anything offensive, or that may forbid an easy and free Conversation; for that would blast our Harmony, and defeat our Laudable Purposes.
Therefore no private Piques or Quarrels must be brought within the Door of the Lodge, far less any Quarrels about Religion, or Nations, or State Policy, we being only, as Masons of the Catholic Religion above-mentioned ; we are also of all Nations, Tongues, Kindreds, and Languages, and are resolved against all Politicks, as what never yet conduced to the Welfare of the Lodge, nor ever will.
This charge has been always strictly enjoined and observed, but especially ever since the Reformation in Britain, or the Dissent and Secession of these Nations from the Communion of Rome.
3. BEHAVIOR when Brethren meet without Strangers, but not in a Lodge formed.
You are to salute one another in a courteous manner. as you will be instructed, calling each other Brother.
freely giving mutual Instruction as shall be thought expedient, without being overseen or overheard, and without encroaching upon each other or derogating from that Respect which is due to any Brother, were he not a Mason : For though all Masons are an Brethren upon the same Level, yet Masonry takes no Honor from a Man that he had before; nay rather it adds to his Honor, especially if he has deserved well of the Brotherhood, who must give Honor to whom it is due, and avoid ill manners.
4. BEHAVIOR in presence of Strangers not Masons.
You shall be cautious in your Words and Carriage, that the most penetrating Stranger shall not be able to discover or find out what is not proper to be intimated ; and sometimes you shall divert a discourse, and manage it prudently for the Honor of the worshipful Fraternity.
5. BEHAVIOR at Home, and in your Neighborhood.
You are to act as becomes a moral and wise Man ; particularly, not to let your Family, Friends, and Neighbors know the Concerns of the Lodge, &c., but wisely to consult your own Honor, and that of the ancient Brotherhood, for Reasons not to be mentioned here.
You must also consult your health, by not continuing together too late, or too long from home, after Lodge Hours are past; and by avoiding of Gluttony or Drunkenness, that your Families be not neglected or injured, nor you disabled from working.
6. BEHAVIOR towards a strange Brother.You are cautiously to examine him, in such a method as prudence shall direct you, that you may not be imposed upon by an ignorant false Pretender, whom you are to reject with Contempt and Derision, and beware of giving him any Hints of Knowledge.
But if you discover him to be a true and
Genuine Brother, you are to respect him accordingly; and if he
is in want, you must relieve him if you can, or else direct him
how he may be relieved.
You must employ him some Days, or else recommend him to be employed.
But you are not charged to do beyond your Ability, only to prefer a poor Brother, that is a good Man and true, before any other poor People in the same Circumstances.
Finally, all these Charges you are to observe, and also those that shall be communicated to you in another way ; cultivating Brotherly-Love, the foundation and Capstone, the Cement and Glory of this ancient Fraternity, avoiding all Wrangling and Quarreling, all Slander and Backbiting, nor permitting others to slander any honest Brother, but defending his Character, and doing him all good offices, as far as is consistent with your Honor and Safety, and no farther.
And if any of them do you Injury, you must apply to your own or his Lodge, and from thence you may appeal to the Grand Lodge at the Quarterly Communication, and from thence to the annual Grand Lodge ; as has been the ancient laudable Conduct of our Forefathers in every Nation; never taking a legal Course but when the Case cannot be otherwise decided, and patiently listing to the honest and friendly Advice of Master and Fellows, when they would prevent you going to Law with Strangers, or would excite you to put a speedy Period to all Law Suits, that so you may mind the Affair of Masonry with the more Alacrity and Success ; but with respect to Brothers or Fellows at Law, the Master and Brethren should kindly offer their Mediation, which ought to be thankfully submitted to by the contending Brethren, and if that submission is impracticable, they must however carry on their Process, or Law-suit, without Wrath and Rancor (not in the common way), saying or doing nothing which may hinder Brotherly Love, and good Offices to be renewed and conducted; that all may see the benign Influence of Masonry, as all true Masons have done from the Beginning of the World, and Will do to the End of Time.
Amen so mote it be.
*
CHARGES OF 1722
The . Fraternity had long been in possession of many records, containing the ancient regulations of the Order; when, in 1722, the Duke of Montague being Grand Master of England, the Grand Lodge finding fault with their antiquated arrangement, it was directed that they should be collected, and after being properly digested, be annexed to the Book of Constitutions, then in course of publication under the superintendence of Dr. James Anderson.
This was accordingly done, and the document now well known under the title of The Old Charges of the Free and Accepted Masons, constitutes, by universal consent, a part of the fundamental law of our Order.
The charges are divided into six general heads of duty, as follows:
1. Concerning God and religion.
2. Of the civil magistrate, supreme and subordinate.
3. Of Lodges.
4. Of Masters, Wardens, Fellows, and Apprentices.
5. Of the management of the Craft in working.
6. Of behavior under different circumstances and in various conditions.
These charges contain succinct directions for the proper discharge of a Freemason's duties, in whatever position he may be placed, and are as modern researches have shown, a collation of the charges contained in the Old Records and from them have been abridged, or by them suggested, all those well-known directions found in our monitors, which, Masters are accustomed to read to candidates on their reception (see Records, Old).
*
CHARGES, OLD
The Freemasons' Constitutions are old records, containing a history, very often some-what apocryphal, that is of doubtful authority, of the origin and progress of Freemasonry, and regulations for the government of the Craft. These regulations are called Charges, and are generally the same in substance, although the differ in number, in the different documents.
These charges are divided into Articles and Points; although it would be difficult to say in what the one section differs in character from the other, as each details the rules which should govern a Freemason in his conduct toward his Lord, or employer, and to his Brother workmen.
The oldest of these charges is to be found in the York Constitutions, if they are authentic, and consists of Fifteen Articles and Fifteen Points.
It was required by the Constitutions of the time of Edward III, ''that, for the future, at the making or admission of a brother, the constitutions and charges should be read."
This regulation is still preserved in form, in modern Lodges, by the reading of the charge by the Master to a candidate at the close of the ceremony of his reception into a degree (for a list of the Old Charges, see Manuscripts, Old).
*
CHARITY
"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing" (First Corinthians xiii,1-2).
Such was the language of an eminent apostle of the Christian church, and such is the sentiment that constitutes the cementing bond of Freemasonry. The apostle, in comparing it with faith and hope, calls it the greatest of the three, and hence in Freemasonry it is made the topmost round of its mystic ladder.
We must not fall into the too common error that charity is only that sentiment of commiseration which leads us to assist the poor with pecuniary donations.
Its Masonic, as well as its Christian application, is more noble and more extensive.
The word used by the apostle is, in the original, love, a word denoting that kindly state of mind which renders a person full of good-will and affectionate regard toward others.
John Wesley expressed his regret that the Greek had not been correctly translated as love instead of charity, so that the apostolic triad of virtues would have been, not "faith, hope, and charity," but "faith, hope, and love."
Then would we have understood the comparison made by Saint Paul, when he said, "Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing."
Guided by this sentiment, the true Freemason will "suffer long and be kind."
He will be slow to anger and easy to forgive.
He will stay his falling Brother by gentle admonition, and warn him with kindness of approaching danger, He will not open his ear to the slanderers, and will lose his lips against all reproach.
His faults and his follies will be locked in his breast, and the prayer for mercy will ascend to Jehovah for his Brother's sins.
Nor will these sentiments of benevolence be confined to those who are bound to him by ties of kindred or worldly friendship alone; but, extending them throughout. the globe, he will love and cherish all who sit beneath the broad canopy of our universal Lodge.
For it is the boast of our Institution,
that a Freemason, destitute and worthy, may. find in every clime
a Brother, and in every land a home.
Colonel Edward M L. Ehlers, a soldier of the Civil War in which
he was severely wounded, was subsequently and at his death the
Grand Secretary of New York.
To his courtesy and promptness the Revisor of this work is much indebted for many favors and there is a distinct satisfaction in submitting here one of the eloquent addresses to initiates that so often heartened his hearers (see Definitions of Freemasonry).
My Brother: With this right hand I welcome you to the fellowship of our Lodge and to the ranks of our ancient and honorable Fraternity whose cornerstone is Charity.
Charity is the brightest jewel in the Masonic crown.
Charity is the Corinthian pillar whose entablature adds strength, beauty and grace to the Masonic fabric.
Charity is the radiant spark emanating from God, the inexhaustible source of love.
If we attempt to eulogize its charms, the cooler powers of the mind melt into ecstasy, the heart is at empire, and every discordant passion bows before its lenient sovereignty.
Not the Charity circumscribed by the narrow limits of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, binding up the wounds of the afflicted, but that broader nobler Charity that regards all men as Brothers.
The Charity that is swift of foot, ready of hand, in the cause of a common humanity.
The Charity that writes a Brother's vices in water and his virtues in enduring brass.
The Charity of which He who spake as never man spake was the illustrious exemplar.
Let this, the Mason's Charity, burn upon the altar of your heart a living fire.
This Charity whose superstructure is friendship, morality, brotherly love; whose capstone is holiness to the Lord. Liturgies and creeds, articles of faith and rules of discipline, stain the rubric pages of history, and speculative points of doctrine have occasioned more misery in the world than all the crimes for which nations have been punished and recalled to their duty.
We arraign no man's political opinions, nor do we interfere with his religious creed.
To himself and his country we leave the one, and to his conscience and his God we commit the other. To the altar of Masonry, all men bring their votive offerings. Around it all men, whether they have received their teachings from Confucius, Moses, Zoroaster, Mahomet, or the Founder of the Christian religion; if they believe in the universality of the Fatherhood of God and of the universality of the brotherhood of man, here meet on a common level.
The rich man, the poor man, the sovereign, the subject, are lost in the common Brother. The Christian returns to his Temple, the Jew to his Synagogue, the Mohammedan to his Mosque, each better prepared to perform the duties of life by the association of this universal brotherhood. It is to this Institution, born of heaven in the gray of the world's morning, before poets sang or historians wrote, that I am privileged to accord you a Craftsman's greeting.
And I charge you, by the noblest instincts of your manhood, by all that you are and revere, by the ties that bind you to earth, by your hope of heaven, so to live and so to act that your Masonic life may be an open book known and read of all men.
Finally, my Brother, I do assure you that whatever good you do is but duty done.
If a sorrow you have lightened or a tear wipe away, if of poverty"s load you have taken a share from some weary burdened soul, if you have lifted a cup of cold water to the lips of a famishing mortal, then to far have you illustrated the divine teachings of Masonry, then in so far have you done as the Master commanded.
May He, without whose knowledge not even a sparrow falls, bless your fellowship in our Lodge, and to His great name shall be all the praise.

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