F
The sixth letter in the English and Latin alphabets, and the same as the Greek digamma or the ¢ or ph. and the vau of the Hebrew, which has a numerical value of six.
F. . In French Masonic documents the abbreviation of Frére, or Brother. FF. . is the abbreviation of Fréres, or Brethren.
*
FABRE-PALAPRAT BERNARD RAYMOND
The restorer, or, to speak more correctly, the organizer of the Order of the Temple at Paris, of which he was elected Grand Master in 1804. He died at Pau, in the lower Pyrénées, February 18, 1838 (see Temple Order of the).
*
FACULTY OF ABRAC
In the so-called Leland Manuscript. it is said that Freemasons "conceal the way of wynninge the facultye of Abrac." That is, that they conceal the method of acquiring the powers bestowed by a knowledge of the magical talisman that is called Abracadabra (see Abracadabra and Leland Manuscript).
*
FAITH
In the theological ladder, the explanation of which forms a part of the instruction of the First Degree of Masonry, faith is said to typify the lowest round. Faith, here, is synonymous with confidence or trust, and hence we find merely a repetition of the lesson which had been previously taught that the first, the essential qualification of a candidate for initiation, is that he should trust in God. In the lecture of the same Degree, it is said that "Faith may be lost in sight; Hope ends in fruition; but Charity extends beyond the grave, through the boundless realms of eternity And this is said, bee cause as faith is "the evidence of things not seen," when we see we no longer believe by faith but through demonstration; and as hope lives only in the expectation of possession, it ceases to exist when the object once hoped for is at length enjoyed, but charity, exercised on earth in acts of mutual kindness and forbearance, is still found in the world to come, in the sublime form of mercy from God to his erring creatures.
*
FAITHFUL BREAST
See Breast, the Faithful
*
FALK, RABBI DE
A native Israelite of Furth, mho attracted attention in London at the close of the eighteenth century in consequence of his presumed extraordinary powers, acquired through the secrets of the Cabala, as a Thaumaturgist, a worker of wonders. It was alleged. among other surprising stories that he could and did transmute metals, making one into another, and thereby acquired large sums with which he was liberal to the poor. A merry incident is perhaps not familiar to the reader. An invitation was extended by the Baal Shem, the sacerdotal pronouncer of the Holy Name, to the Doctor to call as a visitor for a friendly and philosophical discussion. This was assented to, when the Doctor was asked to fix a time.
He did 80 by taking from his pocket a small taper and, handing it to his new friend, saying: "Light this, sir, when you get home, and I shall be with you as soon as it goes out." This the gentleman did next morning, expecting an early call, but the taper appeared to have a charmed life, and it was deposited in a special closet, where it continued to burn for three weeks, and until in the evening, when the Doctor drove up to the door and alighted, much to the - surprise of the host, who, with wonderment, had watched the bright-burning taper. As soon as his visitor was announced, the light and candlestick disappeared. The Doctor was asked if the candlestick would t)e returned, when he replied, "It is already in the kitchen;" and so it was found. A further incident is mentioned of his leaving upon his death a sealed box to his particular friend, Aaron Goldsmid, stating that to open it portended evil. Aaron could not withstand his curiosity, and one day opened it, and ere the night came Aaron was picked up dead.
Brother Gordon P. G. Hills (Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1913, volume xxvi, pages 93-130) says:
Mackenzie in his Royal Masonic Cyclopedia appears to make three individuals out of the one personality His dates are wrong and he evidently has a suspicion that two of the characters, Rabbi de Falk and Caïn Chenuel Falk, or Falcon, may be the same person as they undoubtedly are, but he further refers to John Freidrich Falk a son of the preceding born at Homburg of Jewish parents, reported to have been the head of the Cabalistic college in London and to have died about 1824. As Doctor Falk had no children this seems another confusion The description would fit Falk himself. But see paper by Doctor Adler (transactions Jewish Historical Society of England, volume v, page 148) entitled the "Baal Shen of London," Baal Shen meaning Master of the Name of God or one able to work miracles through the Name of God.
This expression became a professional designation for a practitioner combining quack doctor, physician and cabalist in his art. Born in Podhayce, in Poodle, a portion of Poland. a territory afterwards included in the Austrian Empire, he came to London in 1742 where he gained a position of notoriety by his practices and strange stories were told of supernatural achievements which evidently lost nothing in the telling. He died on April 17 1782.
*
FALL OF WATER
See Waterfall
*
FAMILY LODGE
A Lodge held especially for the transaction of private and local business of so delicate a nature that it is found necessary to exclude, during the session, the presence of all except members. In France a Lodge when so meeting is said to be en .family, or in the family, a private affair, and the meeting is called a tenue de famille or family session; in Germany such Lodges are called, sometimes, Familien-Logen, but more generally Conferenz-Logen (see Conference Lodges) .
*
FANATICISM
The English interpretation of the name of the second assassin of the Grand Master, or of mankind. The frenzy that over-balances the mind. The Gravelot or Romvel of philosophical Freemasonry.
*
FANOR
The name given to the Syrian Freemason, who is represented in some legends as one of the assassins, Amru and Metusael being the other two.
*
FARRAGUT, ADMIRAL DAVID GLASGOW
famous American Civil War Admiral, born near Knoxville, Tennessee, July 5, 1801; died August 14, 1870. He entered navy at nine. First to possess grade of admiral in United States Navy. He was a Freemason. The Masonic Lodge at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, conducted his burial service (see .New .Age, July, 1994).
*
FASCES
The bundle of rods borne before the Roman magistrates as an ensignia of their authority. In French Freemasonry, faisceau, or fasces, is a term used to denote a number of speeches or records tied up in a roll and deposited in the archives.
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FAST DAYS AND FREEMASONRY
In the earls days of the Lodge "Canongate Kilwinning from Leith," now Saint David, Edinburgh, No. 36 the records of the Lodge occasionally make reference to the adjournment or cancellation of the regular meeting upon account of the date coinciding with that fixed by royal proclamation "as a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer." The Minute of Saint John the Evangelist day, December 27, 1739, concludes as follows:
The Right Worshipful toasted and drunk the usual healths upon this occasion. and the Lodge was closed by the proper officers and adjourned till Thursday the tenth day of January 1740 the Wednesday preceding being a National fast day therefore we could have no meeting as usual. From the Scots Magazine we learn the reason for the observance of this "National fast day" Edinburgh, November 1739. The Reverend Commission of the General Assembly met the beginning of this month and agreed on an act for a national fast, to implore the blessing of God for success to his Majesty's arms, &e.
At the same time. they humbly addressed his Majesty to nominate the day on which it should be observed, and further to interpose his royal authority for that effect. In consequence of this, the King has been pleased. by a proclamation. to order its observance on the 9th day of January next, thro' Scotland; as also in England and Wales.
A reference to the holding of the Fast is contained in the January number of the same magazine: Agreeable to the address of the Commission of the General Assembly, and the royal proclamation consequent thereupon the 9th of January was observed as a May of fasting, humiliation and prayer, to implore the blessing of God on his Majesty's arms, &e. War was declared in October, 1739, between the forces of George II, of Great Britain and Ireland, and of Philip V, of Spain, and only came to an end with the Treaty of Peace signed in October, 1748. In consequence of the war, and the weather, the regular meetings of the Lodge in April and October 1744 were given up altogether. "April 10th, 1744 New Lodge being the day appointed for a National fast." The date, which should really be April 11, was fixed by royal proclamation to be observed as in the former instance "as a fast throughout G. Britain, on account of the war with Spain."
Cannongate Killwinning from Leith 10th of October. 1744 Year of Masonry, 5744. This being the Day immediately after the fast appointed by the Presbytery for the judgment like weather it was thought proper to hold no Lodge but adjourned to the 14th Nov. next.
From what are termed "Poetical Essays" printed in the October number of the Scots Magazine of that y ear we obtain some idea of "the judgment like weather"
ON THE INCLEMENCY OF THE WEATHER
Bye rural swains lament. in plaintive strains,
The dislnal ruins of our wasted plains.
Tempestous winds. in hurricanes. have torn
From 'mongst our reapers hands our richest corn
Strange and impetuous deluges of rain
Have spread a mournful aspect o'er the plain;
While raging Hoods in rapid surges sweep
Our hapless harvest to the foaming deep:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Yet lets resign'dly bear
Those griefs and troubles heav'n assigns us here.
'Tis for our crimes.
The author of these lines appears to have had no doubt as to the cause of the ruined harvest "Tis for our crimes" but as referred to in Graham's Social Life of Scotland in the Eighteenth Century, the folks of these days seemed sometimes to find it very difficult to decide whether a calamity was due to the devil who is vexing a man! or due to Heaven which is punishing him. To quote further from the same book:
In the religious life of Scotland in the early decades of the eighteenth century, the intense religious fervor and faith which characterized the covenanting days retained all its influence and hold over great masses of the people of all classes, and the belief in the constant interference of Providence with every act of existence, however minute, was unbounded.
That there were unbroken, unbreakable laws, a succession of physical cause and effect, inevitable, changeless, passing on their silent course unbending to mortal prayers, unyielding to human needs this, of course, was a conception of the material world unknown to those days, incredible to these men.
When calamaries befell the country it was not easy to discriminate for which or for whose particular sins the wrath was shown. When therefore a Fast and day of humiliation was appointed to avert the hand of Providence, there was always announced a list of various alternative sins for which penitence was due.
When the 'ill years" came with frost and haar, snow and rain, destroying crops and starving the people, the General assembly ordered a Fast. comprehensively "to appease the anger of God for the sins of Sabbath breaking, profanity, drunkenness, uncleanness and infidelity." A. M. Mackay P. M. 36. The above information furnished to us by Past Master A. M. Mackay; Royal Lodge of Saint David, No. 36.
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FATHER AND PROMOTER
A title of affection bestowed on an English Brother, John Maclean, in 1766. The thanks of the Chapter were given to him for his instructions and attendance, and as a mark of the respect of the Brethren he was requested to wear a gold plate suitably engraved in Latin with the following inscription: "The Father of the Society By the gift of the Companions of the Royal Arch stilled the Grand and Royal Chapter of Jerusalem, London, A. L. 5770.
Glory to God in the highest.
In the beginning was the word We have found."
He was also presented with a robe peculiar to the Past Most Excellent Zerubbabel. Note as to year that the Grand Chapter added 4004 to the Christian Era, 1766 (see Origin of the English Rite of Freemasonry, Brother W. J. Hughan, 1913, page 109).
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FAVORITE BROTHER OF SAINT ANDREW
The Ninth Degree of the Swedish Rite
*
FAVORITE BROTHER OF SAINT JOHN
The Eighth Degree of the Swedish Rite
*
FAVORITE OF SOLOMON
The Seventh Degree, Third Division, of the system of the Chapter of the High Degrees of Stockholm (see Thory, Acta Latomorum i, 313).
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FEAST
The convocation of the Craft together at an annual feast, for the laudable purpose of promoting social feelings, and cementing the bonds of brotherly love by the interchange of courtesies, is a time-honored custom, which is unfortunately growing into disuse. The Assembly and Feast are words constantly conjoined in the Book of Constitutions.
At this meeting, no business of any kind, except the installation of officers, was transacted, and the day was passed in innocent festivity. The election of officers always took place at a previous meeting in obedience to a regulation adopted by the Grand Lodge of England, in 1720, as follows: "It was agreed, in order to avoid disputes on the annual feast-day, that the new Grand Master for the future shall be named and proposed to the Grand Lodge some time before the feast" (see Constitutions, 1738, page 111).
*
FEASTS OF THE ORDER
The festivals of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist, June 24 and December 27, are so called.
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FEELING
One of the five human senses, and esteemed
by Freemasons above all the others. For as Anthony Brewer, an
old dramatist, says:
Though one hear, and see, and smell, and taste,
If he wants touch, he is counted but a block
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FEES OF HONOR
In the Grand Lodge of England every Grand Officer, on his election or re-election, is required to pay a sum of money, varying from two to twenty guineas, an amount ranging from say ten to one hundred dollars. The sums thus paid for honors bestowed are technically called Fees of Honor. A similar custom prevails in the Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland; but the usage is unknown in America.
*
FEE, TEST
See Test Fee
*
FEIX-FEAX
A term signifying School of Thought, which is found in the First Degree of the French Adoptive Rite.
*
FIELD LOGE
What is designated in England and America as a Military or Traveling Lodge is called in Germany a Feld Loge. Sometimes, ein ambulance Loge.
*
FELICITAIRES, ORDRE DES
French for the Order of Happy People. An Order established in Paris in 1742 or 1743 by Brother de Chambonnet and several officers of marine. All the emblems of the Order, the ritual and expressions were nautical in character.
The Order, which for a long time conducted its proceedings without reproach, numbered at first many noblemen and distinguished women amongst its members but later the meetings became 80 grossly immoral in character that, within two years of its foundation, it was dissolved, to be succeeded in 1745 by L'Ordre des Chevaliers et Chevaliers de l'Ancre, the latter meaning anchor. The principal features of The Order of Happy People were followed, their four Degrees being Cabin-boy, Captain, Commodore, and Vice-Admiral. Only) the passwords and regalia were changed. The cable was replaced by an anchor, this becoming the jewel of the Order.
*
FELICITY, ORDER OF
An androgynous, or both sexes, secret society, founded in 1743, at Paris. by M. Chambonnet. It was among the first of the pseudo-Masonic associations, or coteries, invented by French Freemasons to gratify the curiosity and to secure the support of women. It had a ritual and a vocabulary which were nautical in their character, and there was a rather too free indulgence in the latitude of gallantry. It consisted of four Degrees, Cabin Boy, Master, Commodore, and Vice Admiral. The chief of the order was called Admiral, and this position was of course occupied by M. Chambonnet, the inventor of the system (Clavel, Historie Pittoresque, page 111).
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FELLOW
The Saxon word for fellow is felaw. Spelman derives it from two words be and toy, which signifies bound in mutual trust a plausible derivation, and not unsuited to the meaning of the world. But Hicks gives a better etymology when he derives it from the Anglo-Saxon folgian, meaning to follow and thus a fellow would be a follower, a companion, an associate. In the Middle Ages, therefore, the Operative Masons were divided into Masters and Fellows. Thus in the Harleian Manuscript, No. 2054, it is said: "Now I will rehearse other charges in singular for Masters & fellows." Those who were of greater skill held a higher position and were designated as Masters, while the masses of the Fraternity, the commonalty, as we might say, were called Fellows. In the Matthew Cooke Manuscript this principle is very plainly laid down. There it is written that Euclid "ordained that they who were passing of cunning should be passing honored, and commanded to call the cunninger Master .... and commanded that they that were less of wit should not be called servant nor subject, but Fellow, for nobility of their gentle blood" (see lines 675-88). From this custom has originated the modern title of Fellow Craft, given to the Second Degree of Speculative Freemasonry; although not long after the revival of 1717 the Fellows ceased to constitute the main Body of the Fraternity, the Masters having taken and still holding that position.
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FELLOW CRAFT
The Second Degree of Freemasonry in all the Pites is that of the Fellow Craft. In French it is called Compagnon; in Spanish, Compañero; in Italian, Compagno; and in German, Gesell: in all of which the radical meaning of the word is a fellow workman, thus showing the origin of the title from an operative institution. Like the Degree of Apprentice, it is only preparatory in the higher initiation of the Master; and yet it differs essentially from it in its symbolism.
For, as the First Degree was typical of youth, the Second is supposed to represent the stage of manhood, and hence the acquisition of science is made its prominent characteristic.
While the former is directed in all its symbols and allegorical ceremonies to the purification of the heart, the latter is intended by its lessons to train the reasoning faculties and improve the intellectual powers.
Before the eighteenth century, the great
Body of the Fraternity consisted of Fellow Crafts, who are designated
in all the old manuscripts as Fellows. After the revival in 1717,
the Fellow Crafts, who then began to be called by that name, lost
their prominent position, and the great body of the brotherhood
was, for a long time, made up altogether of Apprentices, while
the government of the institution was committed to the Masters
and Fellows, both of whom were made only in the Grand Lodge until
1725, when the regulation was repealed, and subordinate Lodges
were permitted to confer these two Degrees (see Middle Chamber
Lecture and the Dew Drop Lecture).
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FELLOW CRAFT PERFECT ARCHITECT
The French expression being Compagnon Parfait Architect. The Twenty-sixth Degree of the Rite of Mizraim. There are several other Degrees which, like this, are so called, not because they have any relation to the original Second Degree of Symbolic Freemasonry, but to indicate that they constitute the second in any particular series of Degrees which are preparatory to the culmination of that series.
Thus, in the Rite of Mizraim, we have the Master Perfect Architect, which is the Twenty-seventh Degree, while the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth are Apprentice and Fellow Craft Perfect Architect. So we have in other rites and systems the Fellow Craft Cohen, Hermetic, and Cabalistic Fellow Craft, where Master Cohen and Hermetic and Cabilistic Master are the topmost Degrees of the different series. Fellow Craft in all these, and many other instances like them, means only the second preparation toward perfection.
*
FELLOWS, COLONEL JOHN
The author of An Exposition of the Mysteries, or Religious Dogmas and Customs of the ancient Egyptians, Pythagoreans, and Druids, also an Inquiry into the Origin, History, and Purport of Freemasonry, New York, 1835. A similar volume published at London in 1857 and followed by other editions in 1860, 1866, 1871, and 1880, was entitled The Mysteries of Freemasonry. Moncure D. Conway, biographer of Thomas Paine, credits Colonel Fellows with the authorship of the preface to Paine's essay on Freemasonry.
*
FELLOWSHIP, FIVE POINTS OF
See Points of Fellowship, Five
*
FELLOWSHIP OF MASONS
See Masons, Company of
*
FEMALE FREEMASONRY
See adoptive Freemasonry
*
FEMALE FREEMASONS
The landmarks of Speculative Freemasonry peremptorily exclude females from any active participation in its mysteries. But there are a few instances in which the otherwise unalterable rule of female exclusion has been made to yield to the peculiar exigencies of the occasion; and some cases are well authenticated where this Salic law has been violated from necessity, and females have been permited to receive at least the First Degree. The Salic regulation, law of the Salian Franks excluded women from the throne of France. Such, however, have been only the exceptions which have given confirmation to the rule (see Aldworth, Beaton, and Yaintrailles).
*
FENCING THE LODGE
The name of an old ceremony in the Scottish Operative Lodges. There was prayer to God for power to impartially deal with what might be brought before the Brethren and there was also a solemn obligation that all the participants should be purged of the evils of prejudice and injustice in making their decisions (see also Purging the Lodge).
*
FENDEURS
More fully in French, L'Ordre des Ferdeurs, meaning the Order of Woodcutters, was a secret society, established at Paris in 1743, by the Chevalier Beauchaine.
The Lodge represented a forest, and was generally held in a garden. It was androgynous, for both sexes, and held secret signs and words, and an allegorical language borrowed from the profession of woodoutting.
The Abbe Barruel (tome ii, page 350, edition of 1797) thought that the Order originated in the forests among the actual woodcutters, and that many intelligent inhabitants of the city having united with them, the operative business of felling trees was abandoned and Philosophic Lodges were established—a course of conversion from Operative to Speculative precisely like that, he says, which occurred in Freemasonry, and this conversion was owing to the number of Fendeurs who were also Freemasons. A complete ritual of the Fendeurs is given in the Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge (volume xxu, pages 37-52).
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FENDEURS, ORDER OF
Ordre des Fendeurs et Fendeuses
Also known as the Forest Masons
A French Order accepting both men and women as members, though
not necessarily connected with the Masonic Fraternity. They traced
their Order back to the time of Alexander the Great. They were,
in all probability, a branch of the Carbonari, or Charcoal Burners,
a political league which made its appearance in the twelfth century.
In 1747 there was a revival of this society and it became popular
with ladies and gentlemen of high rank and distinction. Meetings
were held in rooms decorated to represent a forest or in the summer
time, when the weather permitted, the meetings were held outdoors.
In their ritual they used implements connected with woodcutting,
such as axes, logs, tree stumps, stone cups, whistles, and their
regalia included a carpenter's apron and a russet-colored sash
edged with green. The Master was called Pére Maître
or Parent Master, and the other offices were Cousin Hermit, Cousin
Winedresser, Cousin Bear, Cousin Elm, Cousin Oak, and so forth.
A woman candidate was called a Briquette and a man, Briquet.
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FAMOUS MEN AND MASONS
From the end of World War I to the end of World War II Freemasonry was through no fault of its own drawn into the most public centers of European conflict, and had the misfortune to become, when war was loosed, one of the casus belli; as when one of Hitler's announced reasons for opposing Czechoslovakia was that President Benes was a Freemason; and when, later, Pétain tried over the radio to justify himself as against Daladier on the ground that Daladier was a Mason (see on this latter Pierre van Passen's great book, Days of Our Years; van Passen himself belonged to the Grand Orient of Franee). In consequence of these new world developments the question as to who is and is not a Mason has become more than one of idle curiosity; has indeed become almost a specialty, and apparently has established itself as a regular department in Masonic periodicals and books.
A roster of public men and of men of eminent fame in the arts and sciences of Europe, Britain, and this Continent would fill this whole volume; those here given are selected to show from how many quarters of the compass Masons come; and how Freemasonry appeals to nothing in a man except that he is a man; and that like St. John's New Jerusalem in the skies it opens its gates North, South, East, and West.
In an address to the Duke of Kent, Grand Master of England, April 30, 1941, the Pro Grand Master quoted "words used by the Prime Minister [himself a Freemason] the last time when he broadcast to the nation." (Churchill.) Irving Bacheller, author of Eben Holden, was made a Mason in Kane Lodge, No. 454, December 5, 1899. The Rev. S. Parkes Cadman was raised in Shekomenko Lodge, No. 458, Pleasant Valley, N.Y., June 18, 1892; and from 1909 was a Grand Chaplain, Grand Lodge of New York, until his death, July 12, 1936. Sir Walter Besant, famous for the books he wrote, notably the great series of volumes on the history of London, was made a Mason in Mauritius in 1862; it was Besant who first conceived the idea of forming the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, and suggested it to W. R. Rylands, who started the movement.
Luther Burbank was made a Mason in Santa Rosa Lodge, Calif., August 31, 1921. His great forerunner, Charles Darwin, was not, it is believed, himself a Mason but most of the men in his family were, including his almost equally famous grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin. Rear Admiral Byrd is a member of Kane Lodge, No. 454, New York City; in 1930 the Lodge presented him with its Explorer Medal; he in return presented the Lodge with the U.S. flag he had carried over the South Pole.
William Jennings Bryan was made a Mason in Masonic Lodge, No. 19, Lincoln, Neb., April 15, 1902; he later affiliated with Temple Lodge, No. 247, Miami Fla. Irving Berlin, America's most popular composer, is a Mason; in the New York Masonic Outlook, page 11, September, 1930, he expressed a love and admiration for the Craft.
H. P. H. Bromwell, Colorado's most famous Mason, author of Restoration of Masonic Symbolry, a work of prodigious erudition, was made a Mason in Temperance Lodge, No. 16, Vandalia, Ill., in 1854. Edward Gibbon, historian, was a member of Lodge of Friendship, No. 3, a very old Lodge of which an excellent history has been published, in London; his Grand Lodge Certificate was dated December 19, 1774. Clarence Boutelle, it will satisfy many inquirers to know, author of Man of Mount Moriah, was made a Mason in Rochester Lodge, No. 21, 1885; and was a contributor to Masonic periodicals.
The author of The Last Days of Pompeii, Lord Bulwer-Lytton, w as a Mason, a Rosicrucian, and wrote the poem, "The world may rail at Masonry." Davy Crockett was a Mason the Texas Grand Lodge Magazine published a photograph of his R.A. Apron but his affiliation remains unknown. Bolivar, the George Washington of South Ameriea, was made a Mason in Cadiz, Spain. Gran Martin, who won the independence of the Argentine, was made a Mason in England, founded a Lodge in Rio de Janeiro, and had a copy of the Book of 11, Constitutions translated into Spanish. Edwin Booth, the actor, was a member of New York Lodge, No. 330, N.Y.C. Sibelius, the composer of "Finlandia," is a SIason, and composed a musical accompaniment for the Degrees. Houdini, magician, was made a Mason in the afternoon musicians' and actors' Lodge, St. Cecile, No. 568, New York City, August 21, 1923; he accumulated an expert's library on magic, occultism, ete.; (see The New York Masonie Outlook; March, 1927; page 206; and The Master Mason; April, 1926; page 293).
William F. Kuhn, one of Kansas City's most eminent citizens, a son of Alsatian emigrants, born in Lyons, N.Y., April 15, 1849, grew up in Michigan among the celery farms, graduated from Wittenberg College, Springfield, Ohio, in 1871, taught a while; graduated from Jefferson Medieal College, Phila.; settled in Eldorado, Kans., for four years, then moved to Kansas City, where he practiced, taught medicine, and all the while had his heart in Masonry, having been made a Mason at Belle Center, Ohio; during his three years as General Grand High Priest he evangelized the Craft throughout the country "on the necessity for the Holy Royal Arch." Bro. David Eugene Smith aroused general interest when he presented the Grand Lodge Library of New York with a number of original documents written or signed by famous Eighteenth Century Frenchmen and Masons; one of them, a certificate which belonged to Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin (it is not believed that he invented the guillotin or that it was named for him), carries a constellation of signatures once known over Europe (see The New York Masonic Outlook; February, 1929; frontispiece)- Arthur Nash, famous as the founder of the "Golden Rule Nash Business" in Cincinnati, was a Masonry-made man, became a Mason in Masonic Blue Lodge, in 1909, Waterville, Ohio; he will long be remembered in Cincinnati for the help he gave to the S2,000,000 Temple Fund. Wilbur D. Nesbit, author of the poems "My Flag and Your Flag," and "I Sat in Lodge With You" was a member of Evans Lodge, No. 624, Evanston, III., famous for its Masters' Lectures.
General Douglas D. MacArthur, like his father before him, is a Mason; like President Taft, he was "made at sight," the Grand Master of the Philippine Islands conferring that honor in January, 1936, at Manila, where the General affiliated with Manila Lodge, No. 1, thereby coming under a Grand Jurisdiction which admits Chinese and men of almost every other Asiatic nationality. touch is made of the fact that so many commanders in the Allied armies and navies are Masons, but it calls for no comment; Lodge life means more to army and navy men than to civilians. Thomas R. Marshall, Viee-President for eight years, was a member of the Supreme Council, N.J., from 1911; from the time he retired from the Vice-Presidency until his death in 1925 he devoted the whole of his time to Freemasonry. Captain Frederick Marryat, author of MT. Midshipman Easy, with the British Navy in the War of 1812, became a Mason in Lodge of Antiquity No. 2, one of "The Four Old Lodges," while the Duke of Sussex was W.-.M.-. and Marryat became a Warden; he was in the most distinguished Lodge in the world, which had written in its books the names of Anderson and Desaguliers, and of which William Preston had been Master; Prime Minister George Canning, who fathered the Monroe Doctrine on our President Monroe, and Richard Brinsley Sheridan, were among his Lodge mates the great two-volume history of the Lodge by Bros. Rylands and Firebrace is a gallery of men famous in Masonry as well as in the public life of Britain; Christopher Wren is said to have been a Master of it.
Lord Chesterfield was a Masons as were most of the men in the Stanhope family, and was once asked to be Grand Master of the Antient Grand Lodge; though author of Chesterf eld Ss Letters to his Son, a treatise on diplomatic manners and courtly behavior, there was no effeminancy in him, and he held many high offices of state, being once the Governor General of Ireland. (see Gould's History; Vol. II; page 159.) The Craft in Ireland then (as now) was starred with famous names the Duke of Wellington among them (Lodge No-494; Dec.7,1791), and Laurenee Dermott, creator of the Antient Grand Lodge.
The American Craft, though the fact is overlooked or generally unknown, owes more to Ireland and the Antients, of which it was mother and exemplar, than to the Grand Lodge of 1717, because our rules, customs, and Ritual generally are of Irish origin; and if American students and Research Lodges will turn to the subject they will open up the richest of the unexplored fields of American historical research. When they do they will become acquainted with the author of one of the very few Masonic classics—classic when considered solely as literature the re-written version of the Anderson Constitutions composed by the gifted John Pennell, published by the Grand Lodge of Ireland in 1730; Gould, with a harshness of judgment which too often was his weakness, described it as "little more than Anderson's publication [it was Grand Lodge's, not Anderson's, publication] brought down to date"; but Penned re-wrote the whole of it, and his Irish Brother, Dean Swift, could not have done it better, if as well.
Admiral George W. Baird, once Grand Master of District of Columbia and for years writer of its Foreign Correspondence Report, who had fought in the Mexican War, had supervised the installation of the first electric lighting on an Ameriean Naval vessel, who illustrated his letters with little cartoons in color of an amazing skill, discovered onee where a monument to a Mason had had its Masonie emblems defaced, and then went on to discover that there was at work a general endeavor to erase out of history and other records the Masonie membership of famous Ameriean public and military men; he became so wrathful that he began a nation-wide investigation at his own expense of time and money; it resulted in his publication in The Builder of a long series of "Memorials," which was in part later re-issued as one volume in the Masonic Service Association's Little Masonic Library but he was never able to prepare more than a portion of his overflowing material for print. (The Freemasons, by Eugene Lennhoff, one of the most powerful of Masonic books, is a gallery of hundreds of famous European Masons; Oxford University Press; New York; 1934. Famous Masons, by H. L. Haywood; Masonic History Company; Chicago; 1944, contains short biographies of one hundred famous Masons [famous for their work in the Craft], and long chapters on "Presidents Who Were Masons.")
*
FASCISM AND MASONRY
Benito Mussolini and his collaborators developed a well-rounded philosophy for the Fascist party, which, though never collected or stated in one book, was a unified body of theory; it consisted of a statement of the Fascist program, an exposition of its theories along with a defense of them, an attack on what Mussolini called democracy, liberalism, parliamentarianism, etc. (he had Scarcely more than a vestige of knowledge about the United States or of demoeracy, and little more about England and France; excepting when hiding out in Switzerland he spent his life in middle-class Italian circles); and an attempt to make Fascist theory look like a continuation or fulfillment of what Mussolini believed the "ideology" of Rome to have been.
Regular Freemasonry had never had Lodges in Fascist Italy (there were a large number of irregular Lodges and of political clubs masquerading as Masonry) but Masonic ideas had infiltrated the country; there is no shadow of doubt that Mussolini shaped more than one of his dogmas with an eye on those ideas. (The greatest book, and most brilliantly written, thus far published on Fascism, is Goliath, by G. A. Borgese: Viking Press; N. Y.; 1937. Dr. Borgese is guilty of an error in one of his references to Freemasonry: he says that it has "an Eighteenth Century ideology" Freemasonry was centuries old before 1700. It has no "ideology" neither now nor ever.)
It is one of the pleasures of the warfares of the mind to admire one's enemy. Even Thomas Aquinas paid a soldier's tribute to Avicenna and Averroes. But no Mason can admire the books put out by the Fascist Anti-Masons, either Italian or French, because they are rehashes of three or four old Anti-Masonic books which the Rev.George Oliver reviewed and criticized in 1856. Prof. Robison had a mind like Marshal Pétain's, simple, amiable, and treacherous; the Abbe Barruel was credulous, his book consisting of scraps of gossip picked up in provincial papers. Yet the Abbe Gruber, Nesta Webster, Bernard Fa, Rosenberg the so-called "Black Balt," and the rest bring out the arguments and allegations of Robison and Barruel and state them and print them one after another after they had been stated and printed thousands of times ever since the days, incredibly enough, of our Revolution!
They are flat, stale, and unprofitable, and unutterably wearisome—the Abbe Gruber who had done the same chore of threshing the same straw for the Catholic Encyclopedia privately expressed his disgust, and regretted in his old age that he had not been more honorably-minded in his youth. Even a Mason could think up a better set of arguments against Masonry than the scribes to whom the Fascists paid the salaries, better, and certainly more original, and also a great deal more brilliant.
(A Fascist Anti-Mason is also a man before he is a Fascist and ought to be able to keep hold of his own intellect, and be able to use it a little; the penalty he had paid in the eyes of his foes for failing to do so is the derisive one that his books were reviewed and answered a century before they were written. See The History of Masonic Persecution, edited by the Rev. Kxeorge Oliver; New York; James W. Leonard & Co.; 1850 It will be found as Vol. VIII in the Universal Masonic Library; in Vol. VII of the same collection see list of Anti-Masonic movements active in the 1850's.)
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FELLOW OF THE CRAFT
The word "fellow" derived from early northern languages; the central meaning which persisted from one language or dialect to another was that of associate, one in full and equal membership. There are indications that the word first entered our nomenclature in Scotland, but the status or grade thus named was as old as Freemasonry.
In Medieval Freemasonry an Apprentice served a long period of years as a learner or student. He was under oath to the Lodge to obey its rules and regulations; and he was indentured or bonded to a Master. Data belonging to the Transition period suggest that formal papers of indenture were drawn under seal and signed by the youth's father or guardian—one Scottish Lodge admitted a lawyer for that express purpose. During the years of apprenticeship the youth acted as a servant to his master, lived in a dormitory or in his master's home (whence the old "oaths of chastity," etc.), received food and clothing; but worked without pay, and if an Apprentice's work was sold his master received the money.
At the end of his term, usually of seven years, he was "released from his indentures" and was made a fellow, or full member, of the Craft. As regards his art he was a master mason; as regards his status or grade he was a fellow. He could have an apprentice of his own; was paid wages; had a voice and a vote and could hold office; he could go to other communities or to other countries to work. He was "free of the gild." Such a man was called "journeyman" very frequently.
This word itself may have carried two meanings at once, as words often do: in its French usage it meant "worker by the day" it also probably meant "jour neying Masons," fellows who could travel; and in some periods newly-made fellows made it a rule to travel, working in one place after another in order to perfect their knowledge, during the first two years. The highest positions in the Craft, the best-paid and the most honored, were the officers, the Master of Masons in particular, supervisors, administrators, overseers, etc. Also, one experienced Mason might employ a number of Masons with their apprentices; he was the Master and they were journeymen. The word "master" therefore could mean a workman who had mastered the art, the chief officer of a Lodge, an employer, a supervisor, etc. As regards the art he was on a level with fellows; as regards official standing he was in a grade above them. There was in Medieval Freemasonry a wealth of ritualism, ceremony, symbolism—this could be said with safety even if there were no records, because in the Middle Ages, when almost every special form of work was separately organized, the gilds and fraternities were saturated with ritualism and symbolism even the gilds of yeomen, often consisting of farm laborers, and at the bottom of social classes, had their rites; but in the sense of the word as now used there were no Degrees in Medieval Freemasonry. There were, however, the germs or beginnings of what became Degrees in Speculative Freemasonry; the apprentice was examined, sworn, charged, etc. and it is almost certain that he was again sworn, charged, etc., before his raising to the status of fellow. In the Medieval period there were in the Lodges practices and customs both operative and speculative, with the major emphasis on the former; during the Transition Period the movement was away from the operative to the speculative; after 1717-1735 only the speculative remained. The work of the Lodge was no longer organized primarily for sake of the daily work of the members; it became organized around the teachings, rites, ceremonies, symbols, fellowship. In consequence there came into existence three separate Degrees—in reality they are Lodges, because each meets separately, has its own officers, and conducts its own business, and in the By-laws and Minutes is described as a Lodge.
The first Speculative Lodges went to extreme lengths to conceal their esoteric work; the Grand Lodge kept no Minutes for a number of years, and the Minutes of a local Lodge consisted of only one or two bare entries. Few facts are known about the Ritual of that period. There were, however, at least two parts, or sets of ceremonies, one fot Apprentices, one for Fellows; a Lodge sat first as a Lodge of Appren tices, and then as a Lodge of Fellows.
There could have been no proficiency tests because in thousands of known cases a Candidate received the two ceremonies in one evening. After some fifteen years or so, separate Master's Lodges were set up; apparently these were for Worshipful Masters, Past Masters, and "virtual" Past Masters who had received a ceremony called ''passing the Chair." There was no official, uniform Work. As time passed the "amount of Ritual material" increased, and this must have been especially true f the Ritual of the Masters' Lodges. In the next stage, so the meagre records suggest, this Masters' Ritual was divided in two; one part becoming a separate Master Mason Degree, the other the Royal Arch Degree. The Master Mason Degree, connected faith the first two, came under the jurisdiction of the Lodge; the Royal Arch was made over to the Chapter. It may be that this outline of events was not true of some particular Lodge (a number of them did not have the use of separate Masters' Lodges) but it is a reasonable summarization of the few data and hints which are available.
In the seven or eight centuries of Masonic history the phrase "Fellow of the Craft" has thus had a number of separate meanings: a craftsman free from his indentures of apprenticeship; a full member of the Lodge; a Master of the Mason art; a journeyman Mason (in both senses); in the first period of Speeulative Masonry, a full-fledged Freemason (he had been 'made a Mason"); in the later period, a Mason with a half-way status between Apprentice and Master; and the name of the Second Degree (or, rather, Lodge).
NOTE. The Constitutions of 1723 provided that Apprentices could be made Fellows—and—Masters only in Grand Lodge except by dispensation; this attempt to rob Lodges of their ancient right to make Masons was so vigorously protested that in 1725 Grand Lodge ordained that "particular Lodges" could "make Masters at discretion"; the Grand Lodge itself was then using "fellows" and masters" interchangeably. Scottish Lodges were a full generation behind England in adoptingatri-gradalsystem.
One of the possibilities is that what became the Masters' Degree had been a portion of the Felloweraft Work but that the latter had given it only as a lecture in interpretation of symbols on the Tracing Board, whereas in the Masters' Lodges it was enacted in full, and in costume. In 1764 Old Dundee Lodge Minutes have "made a Mason" and "raised a Master." They unquestionably distinguished between "Mason" and "Master."
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FILLMORE: ANTI-MASON
President Millard Fillmore (1800-1874), a native of Cayuga County, N.Y., was bonded as an apprentice to a cloth-maker, and remained one for a number of years. (Historians of the old apprenticeship system overlook the use of it in America; it was continued here to a time within the memory of men still living.) He was almost wholly self-educated. A lawyer friend, Judge Walter Wood, tought his indentures, and took the young man into his offiee. In 1821 he moved to Aurora, N.Y. (a name to be made familiar in after years by Elbert Hubbard), and in 1823 was admitted to the bar in nearby Buffalo. He vwas married in Aurora, practiced law, and lived there until 1830. It was in that period that he became an Anti-Mason (Morgan disappeared, or was kid1laped, or murdered in 1826) in the political party of which he was to become one of the three national leaders, along with Thurlow Weed and William H. Seward. In 1828 he became a member (thanks to Weed) of the State Assembly, where he belonged to the Anti-Masonie minority. While in the Assembly Fillmore proved himself no mere bigot, and he was one of the men who helped abolish the 18th Century British system of imprisonment for debt (the United States was a long time ridding itself of such anachronisms) and of religious tests for witnesses. In 1833 he was elected to the U. S. Congress; since with Weed and Seward he had by that time helped to vote the Anti-Masonic Party ("the hollow party") out of existence, he went to Washington as a man without a party, but in 1834 joined the Whigs. He sat in the house a total of eight years; as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee he helped to appropriate $30,000 to assist Morse in developing the telegraph.
In 1848 he was elected Vice-President; upon the death of Zachary Taylor he took the oath of office as President, July 10, 1850. He signed the notorious Fugitive Slave Law and the Compromise, both in 1850. Also, he experienced a change of heart about Freemasonry (he had broken with Seward and Weed) for he invited it to lay the corner-stone of the new wing of the Capitol, so that the nation was given the bizarre spectacle of a President originally sent to Washington as an Anti-Mason leading a procession of Masons. In 1852 he lost the Whig nomination, and, to the nation's astonishment, accepted the nomination by the American (or Know-nothing) Party; it was a surprise to see a man who had begun his career as an avowed enemy of secret societies now head the American Party, which was a political secret society. Defeated, he retired from politics, lived in Buffalo (the city which was to become the residence of another President, Grover Cleveland!, was Chancellor of its University, founded the Historical Society there, and died there in 1874.
NOTE. That section of New York in which Fillmore was born must lie not under a star but under a poltergeist, for it has been the cradle of new religions and strange heresies and a number of weird personalities: The Anti-Masonic Movement, the Millerites, Mormonism Spiritualism, hypnotism as a religion, etc.; possibly because for generations it was the cross-roads of the nation for the great movements north and south and east and west and the focus of many conflicting streams of immigration.
John Quincy Adams also was an Anti-Masonic leader but after he left the Presidency, John Adams almost became one in 1801. As it turned out in the end the whole country found that it had formed a wholly erroneous opinion of the Craft, taking it to be something it never was; for this the Craft itself was partly responsible because it published nothing by which the nation could know it character and purposes. Masons who still (a few of them take the grounds that Masonry should maintain a complete silence forget that both a people and a government have a right to know what they are harboring in the form of a powerful society of three million men.
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FOREIGN LANGUAGE LODGES IN LAW
In Masonic principle and in the Landmarks there is nothing to forbid a Lodge from working in any language of its choice Lodges under England, Ireland, Scotland, and almost every American Grand Lodge have done so; but there are circumstances, as in time of war, when the question of the language used is raised because it i8 the language of an enemy people and when it is thus raised it may be carried to court because it may involve a Charter, and a Charter involves property. The classical case in America was that of Schiller Lodge, No. 66, of Newark, N. J. During World War I the Grand Lodge of New Jersey ordered discontinuance of German; Schiller Lodge conformed for a period, then in 19191 and on its own authority, resumed the use of German, whereupon the Grand Lodge revoked its Charter and took possession of its assets valued at $8,000. The Lodge sued; the case was carried to the New Jersey Court of Appeals and Errors, and the Grand Lodge was there sustained. A number of fundamentals in both Masonic and Civil law were recognized, or defined, or employed in the case, among them being:
1. There was a provision in Sehiller's Charter to permit its use of German. A Charter is an official recognition of a Lodge's sovereignty, but that sovereignty is limited; a Grand Lodge can for cause suspend or revoke a Charter; therefore no Charter of itself stands in absolute perpetuity, nor is inalterable, nor releases a Lodge from the superior authority of Grand Lodge.
2. When a Grand Lodge takes due and regular action in governance of Lodges the mandate is one that every Lodge is to obey. Schiller Lodge disobeyed, and for that reason its Charter was revoked, and on that ground the Grand Lodge defended itself in Court; the Lodge raised the general question of language, prejudice, etc., but this was declared irrelevant by the Court.
3. Since the question of language is not covered by any Landmark (except negatively) a Grand Lodge is free to permit, to refuse, and to reverse itself at will if circumstances ordain, or if circumstances change.
4. The Landmark of Peace and Harmony can be invoked on the question of language. If a single Lodge holds out against each and every sister Lodge it, not they, has destroyed Peace and Harmony. The question of the language to be used in Schiller Lodge was decided at the moment of Grand Lodge action; it was not in the power of the Lodge to rescind an action by Grand Lodge, as it itself knew; when therefore it became recalcitrant it disturbed Peace and Harmony.
5. Peace and Harmony is maintained in Freemasonry not by compromise, evasion, indifference, or appeasement but by the even and uncompromising enforcement of the laws, regulations, and rules; when a Grand Lodge revokes the Charter of a recalcitrant Lodge it is not itself destroying Peace and Harmony but is acting to preserve it.
6. In a dissenting opinion Justice F. Minturn took the ground that Schiller's members were Germans, therefore a minority, and he appealed to the right of minorities. The Court held that its members were American citizens, not a minority, and that there can be no "minorities" in Masonry.
7. The dissenting Justice also argued that the property of Schiller belonged to its members; the Court ruled that the members own and use it conditionally; and by the terms on which a Lodge exists its property reverts to Grand Lodge if its Charter is revoked.
8. Students of Masonic jurisprudence find in the Schiller Lodge case a profoundly interesting set of subjects and questions. The most interesting subject is the coincidence at many points of Masonic law and civil law, and the fact that any Masonic law or mill may be a law or a datum in a civil Court; the most interesting question lies in the fact that in this as in almost every other case both the Court and the attorneys were troubled because the Craft has never adopted an official definition of Freemasonry.
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FORT, GEO. FRANKLIN
George Franklin Fort was born in Atlantic County, New Jersey, in a Methodist parsonage, November 20, 1843. When he was eight years of age his uncle, also named Geo. F. Fort, was Governor of New Jersey (from 1851 to 1854); and John Franklin Fort, of the same family, was Governor from 1908-1911. Fort had a range of learning such as no other American scholar then possessed.
There had been learned men before him in Ameriea but they had been specialists; Kiropp Lake, Henry Charles Lea, George Park Baker, Roseoe Pound and other scholars of the same encyclopedic sweep came afterwards. His family reported that he had seventeen languages in addition to his own; learned Europe by traveling over it and by studying its history in the places where the history had occurred; he attended Heidelberg University, studied law, returned home and was admitted to the bar in 1866, and began to practice.
But it was for history, archeology, and antiquarianism, not law, that he had a passion, especially the history of the Middle Ages, which at that time was not the well-explored familiar period of history it is now. He wrote and published treatise after treatise on Medieval subjects; this outpouring by one of the most brilliant and learned men went unnoticed in America because Americans knew almost nothing about the Middle Ages, and felt no need to take an interest in them. The one exception to this national apathy was the Masonic Fraternity, which had spent some four or five centuries of its existence in Medieval times, and in origin, form, and tradition was more Medieval than modern. Had not publishers permitted Fort's books to go out of print he would by this time be a name almost as well known as Mackey, and far better known than Findel whom he surpassed at every point.
Fort was made a Mason in Camden Lodge, No. 15, Camden, New Jersey. Charles S. Peiree, the father of Pragmatism, the philosophy which William James was to make the American philosophy, lived only a short distance away; it would be interesting to know if Peirce was a Mason, because he also was one of the band of men of encyclopedic scholarship whom America has so wholly neglected. In 1870 Fort demitted to help form a new Lodge, Trimble No. 117, at Camden, and was Master the following year. Also he was member of Cyrene Commandery, No. 7; Van Hook Council, No. 8; Excelsior Consistory, Camden; Honorary Member of York No. 236, York, England, and Representative of the United Grand Lodge of England near the Grand Lodge of New Jersey. He published many Masonic treatises, brochures, and books on Operative Architects, Builders Marks, Etc.
But it was into his great Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry that he poured his knowledge of the earlier periods of the Craft. As against Oliver, who had an uncritical mind, and was a reader of books but not a trained scholar, and who could not tell the difference between a fable and a fact, and whose books preceded his, Fort insisted on exact learning and upon not going farther than records and proofs and sound reasons could carry him. As against Gould, Hughan, Lane, etc., who were to follow him, he refused to cut the history of the Craft down to written documents, and saw, as neither Gould nor Hughan ever was able to see, that any history of Freemasonry must be a history of the whole of it, including its philosophy, ritual, symbols, along with Lodge records and Lodge officers; must take in Freemasonry now as well as Freemasonry in the Eighteenth Century, must not omit the two centuries of Freemasonry in America from the scope of it, as Hughan did, and must not set the High Grades to one side as if they had no place in Masonic history.
The only easily available source of information about the biography of Fort is in two articles published in The Builder: "George Franklin Fort, Masonic Historians by his brother, John Henry Fort; June, 1918, page 171. "The Masonic Writings of George Franklin Fort, " by Oliver Day Street, author of 5ymbolis7n of the Three Degrees; July, 1918; page 210.
The Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry, by Geo. F. Fort; Fortescue & Co.; Philadelphia; 1878. This edition contains a weighty treatise by J. F. Garrison on "A Contribution to the History of the Lost Word."
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FOUR OLD LODGES, ONE OF THE
Of the four old Lodges of London known to have met in 1716 to discuss the formation of a Grand Lodge and in 1717 met and elected a Grand Master, two are still active: Lodge of Antiquity (see history of it by Rylands and Firebrace) and the Lodge about which Rev. and Bro. Arnold Whitaker Oxford wrote: No. 4: An Introduction to the History of the Royal So7nerset House and Inverness Lodge (Bernard Quaritch; London; 1928). Other old Lodges still at work were, as Old Dundee Lodge very probably was, of Time Immemorial origin but did not participate (as far as any records show) in the formation of the Grand Lodge. Those which did participate must have agreed among themselves that each Time Immemorial Lodge would ever remain independent in some very real sense; Preston insisted upon this independence for Antiquity when he led a secession of a majority of its members; Bro. Oxford still insists upon it for No. 4. The fact, at least as it is generally believed to have been the fact, that many more old Lodges were at work in London and in England before 1717 than was once believed, makes the place of Antiquity and No. 4 the more distinguished among Lodges; they are the oldest existing Lodges of Speculative Free masonry not only in England but in the whole world where by "Speculative" is meant the Grand Lodge system.
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FRATERNAL ARMY LODGE, NO. 4
On October 17, 1861, Grand Master Coolidge, Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, chartered Fraternal Army Lodge, No. 4. Worshipful Joseph B. Knox, Master of Morning Star Lodge of Boston at the time, was named its Worshipful Master. It was one of many military Lodges in both armies of the Civil War, including local Lodges in the zone of conflict, which faithfully carried into practice the claims of the Mystic Tie; as then, at New Bern, N. C., No. 4 recovered the possessions of St. John's Lodge, No. 3, sent them back to Boston for safe-keeping, and returned them after the war. Innumerable instances of a like kind, carried on through fours years, completely proved the reality of the Masonic spirit; hundreds of civil and military leaders (Wm. McKinley among them) were drawn into the Craft because of it; and it led to such an increase in Masonic growth and influence that the Civil War Period was a turning-point in the history of American freemasonry. Also it drove completely out of the nations memory the stupid allegations made during the craze of Anti-Masonry from 1826 to 1850. (For a detailed history of No. 4 see A Centennial History of Morning Star Lodge, No. 4, by Edward S. Nason; Worcester, Mass.; 1894.)
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FRATERNITY, OPERATIVES
A. In the Middle Ages and until about 1500 the Operative Masons were not organized as Speculative Freemasons are. The builders as a whole, including the numbers of special types of them such as Freemasons, wallers, setters, tilers, quarrymen, etc., were everywhere subject to the general laws of the gild system. In some periods and in some places they had a local gild of their own. If a cathedral (or abbey, or priory of large size) was to be built they formed their organization on the spot; a Master of Masons (called by different titles) would be secured by the foundation or administration behind the building enterprise, and he would sign an agreement; this done he would send out a call for workmen, so many of one sort, so many of another; if houses for them and their families were not available they would build them; they would build a dodge room or building for their own use, and also, in most instances, a second room or building in which plans were drawn, models were made, etc.
The Freemasons among the total number of workmen would have meetings in the Lodge room or building, when the need for one arose, or possibly at fixed times, their officers presiding. From then until the building was completed, in ten, twenty-five, or even fifty years, the Freemasons thus had their own local organization. There is no evidence of any national or general organization with a single center, but there is evidence in Masonic traditions and in the text of labor laws that a local organization would send delegates to assemblies, which appear to have been called only at need.
Yet there was such a thing as Masonry in general. Apprentices received everywhere the same training, same at least in general outline though it is known that in detail it differed an experienced Craftsman could tell a workman's origin by his use of a stone axe. The modes of recognition were such that any regular Freemason could prove himself to be one not only at any place in his own country but also in foreign countries.
If a workman came seeking work, a certain form of ceremony was used to greet him, to examine him, and to employ him; if no employment was to be had he was given hospitality for a night and received advises as to where work could be found. On the whole, and allowing for a certain flexibility in the word, Operative Freemasonry was a fraternity without a single, over-all organization and center. This held true even where local Freemasons became units in a local City Company and where two or three other trades or crafts might be in the same Company; for in such organizations each member craft had its own customs, members, officers, meetings inside the Company. In the period between the dissolution of the gilds and the first Grand Lodge of Speculative Masons in 1717, permanent Lodges became established, each one a center for Freemasons who might work privately, not in organized groups, for shorter or longer period, over a surrounding area. Apprenticeship, the old rules and regulations and customs, modes of recognition, and ceremonies were the same in these separate Lodges, though they had no Grand Lodge. Operative Masons had in use a number of names for themselves, and might call themselves a brotherhood, "the lodge," a society, a company, an assembly, a fraternity, a modality, a corps, etc.; any one of these terms might refer to workmen of every type in architecture as a whole, or it might refer to the Freemasons only.
See The Cathedral Builders in England, by Edward S. Prior; Seeley and Co.; New York; 1905. This is one of the few non-Masonic books in which a historian of Masonry attempts to discover or to describe the general form of organization of the Craftsmen. He accounts for the extraordinary unity of Freemasonry in Britain and Europe together, by their training, modes of recognition, traveling, and believes that much working for the Benedictine Monastic Order also played a part. The unity of monasticism (he could have included the Orders of the Temple and of Malta) may have had a share, but it could not have been a large one because the dissolution of the monastic orders did not affect the unity of the Masonic fraternity.
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FERDINAND X
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FERDINAND IV
This King of the two Sicilies, on the 12th of September, 1775, issued an edict forbidding the meeting of Freemasons in Lodges in his dominions, under penalty of death. In 1777, at the solicitation of his queen, Caroline, this edict was repealed, and Freemasonry was once more tolerated; but in 1781 the decree was renewed.
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FERDINAND VI
In 1751, Ferdinand VI, King of Spain, at the solicitation of Joseph Torrubia, Visitor of the Holy Inquisition, enforced in his dominions the Bull of excommunication of Pope Benedict XIV, and forbade the congregation of Freemasons under the highest penalties of law. In the Journal of Freemasonry, Vienna, 1784 (pages 176-224), will be found a translation from Spanish into German of Torrubia's Act of Accusation, which gave rise to this persecution.
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FERDINAND VII
The King of Spain who bore this title was one of the greatest bigots of his time. He had no sooner ascended the throne in 1814, than he reestablished the Inquisition, which had been abolished by his predecessor, prescribed the exercise of Freemasonry, and ordered the Closing of all the Lodges, under the heaviest penalties. In September following, twenty-five persons, among whom were several distinguished noblemen, were arrested as "suspected of Freemasonry." On March 30, 1818, a still more rigorous edict was issued, by which those convicted of being Freemasons were subjected to the most severe punishments, such as banishment to India and confiscation of goods, or sometimes death by a cruel form of execution. But the subsequent Revolution of 1820 and the abolition of the Inquisition removed these blots from the Spanish records.
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FERNOW, KARL LUDWIG
Painter and author on ancient art, was born on November 19, 1763,
at Pomerania, Germany; was at Rome from 1795 and lectured there
on archaeology; returning to Germany, 1802, he became a professor
of Italian literature at Sena; then in 1804 was librarian for
the Duchess Amalia at Weimar. Fernow was a member of the Lodge
Arrmlia, which honored his memory by a special assembly in 1809,
he having died on December 4, 1808.
FERRY, JULES FRANÇOIS CAMILLE
A French statesman, born at Saint Dié, April 5, 1832, studied law, entered politics at Paris, protested against war of 1870 but administered that city during the siege by the German army. Twice Premier, he had been Minister of Education and Minister of Foreign Affairs; in the latter positions he organized public education on a non-clerical basis and provided for colonial growth. He made elementary education free, obligatory, and non-clerical, and urged the destruction of church control in the University and the removal from religious orders of a right to teach. Violent attacks made upon him ended in his death on March 17, 1893, from a pistol shot. He was an associate of Emile Littré and Leon Gambetta and in company with them affiliated with the Masonic Lodge La Clemente Amitie at Paris on July 8, 1875.
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FERVENCY
From the middle eighteenth century, ardent devotion to duty, fervor or fervency, was taught as a Masonic virtue in the lectures of the First Degree, and symbolized by charcoal, because, as later instructions say, all metals were dissolved by the fervor of ignited charcoal. Subsequently, in further Degrees, fervency and zeal were symbolized by the color scarlet, which is the appropriate tincture of Royal Arch Masonry.
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FESSLER, IGNAZ AURELIUS
A distinguished German writer and Masonic reformer, who was born at Czurendorf, in Hungary, in 1756. He was the son of very poor parents. His mother, who was a bigoted Catholic, had devoted him to a monastic life, and having been educated at the Jesuit School of Raab, he took holy orders in 1772, and was removed to the Capuchin monastery in Vienna. In consequence, however, of his exposure to the Emperor Joseph II of monastic abuses, he incurred the persecutions of his superiors. But the emperor, having taken him under his protection, nominated him, in 1783, as ex-professor of the Oriental languages in the University of Lemberg. But the monks having threatened him with legal proceedings, he fled to Breslau in 1788, where he subsequently was appointed the tutor of the son of the Prince of Corolath. Here he established a secret order, called by him the Evergreen, which bore a resemblance to Freemasonry in its organization, and was intended to effect moral reforms, which at the time he thought Freemasonry incapable of producing. The Order, however, never really had an active existence, and the attempt of Fessler failed by the dissolution, in 1793, of the society. In 1791 he adopted the Lutheran faith, and, having married, settled in Berlin, where until 1806, he was employed as a superintendent of schools. He wrote during this period several historical works, which gave him a high reputation as an author.
But the victorious progress of the French army in Prussia caused him to lose his official position. having been divorced from his wife in 1802, he again married, and retiring in 1803 from Berlin, betook himself to the quietude of a country life. Becoming now greatly embarrassed in pecuniary matters, he received adequate relief from several of the German Lodges, for which he expressed the most lively gratitude. In 1808 he accepted the position of a professor in the University of St. Petersburg, which, however, he was soon compelled to relinquish in consequence of the intrigues of the clergy, who were displeased with his liberal views.
Subsequently he was appointed superintendent of the evangelical community, over nine Russian departments, and Ecclesiastical President of the Consistory at Saratow, with a large salary. In l827, on the invitation of the Emperor Alexander, he removed permanently to St. Petersburg, where, in 1833, he received the appointment of Ecclesiastical Counselor, and died there December 15, 1839, at the advanced age of eighty-three years.
Fessler was initiated in Freemasonry at Lemberg, in 1783, and immediately devoted himself to the study of its science and history. In June, 1796, he affiliated with the Lodge Royal York, zur Freundschaft, in Berlin, and having been made one of its Sublime Council, was invested with the charge of revising and remodeling the entire ritual of the Lodge, which was based on the advanced Degrees of the French system. To the accomplishment of this laborious task, Fessler at once, and for a long time afterward, devoted his great intellect and his indefatigable energies. In a very short period he succeeded in a reformation of the symbolic Degrees, and finding the Brethren unwilling to reject the high Degrees, which were four in number, then practiced by the Lodge, he remodeled them, retaining a considerable part of the French ritual, but incorporated with it a portion of the Swedish system. The work thus accomplished met with general approbation. In his next task of forming a new Constitution he was not so successful, although at length he induced the Royal York Lodge to assume the character and rank of a Grand Lodge, which it did in 1798, with seven subordinate Lodges under its obedience. Again Fessler commenced the work of a revision of the ritual.
He had always been opposed to the high Degree system. He proposed, therefore, the abolition of everything above the Degree of Master. In this, however, he was warmly opposed, and was compelled to abandon his project of reducing German Free masonry to the simplicity of the English system. Yet he was enabled to accomplish something, and had the satisfaction, in 1800, of metamorphosing the Elu, the Ecossais, and the Rose Croix, of the old ritual of the Royal York Lodge into the "degrees of knowledge, " which constitute the System known as the Rite of Fessler. In 1798, Fessler had been elected Deputy Grand Master when there were but three Lodges under the Grand Lodge. In 1801, by his persevering activity the number had been increased to sixteen. Still, notwithstanding his meritorious exertions in behalf of Freemasonry, he met with that ingratitude, from those whom he sought to serve, which appears to be the fate or almost all Masonic reformers. In 1802, wearied with the opposition of his antagonists, he renounced all the offices that he had filled, and resigned from the Grand Lodge. Thenceforth he devoted himself in a more retired way to the pursuits of Freemasonry.
Before Fessler resigned, he had conceived and carried out the scheme of establishing a great union of scientific Freemasons, who should devote themselves to the investigation of the history of Freemasonry. Of this society Mossdorf, Fischer; and many other distinguished Freemasons, were members (see Scientific Masonic Association).
Fessler's contributions to the literature of Freemasonry were numerous and valuable. His chief work was An Atternpt to Furnish a Critical History of Freemasonry and the Masonic Fraternity from the earliest times to the year 1802. This work was never printed, but only loaned in four folio manuscript volumes at the price of £30, say about $135, in present-day ratios, to persons who pledged themselves eventually to return it. It was a mistake to circumscribe the results of his researches within so narrow a field. But he published many other works. His productions were mostly historical and judicial, and made a great impression on the German Masonic mind. His collected works were published in Berlin, from 1801 to 1807, but unfortunately, they have never been translated into English. The object of all he wrote was to elevate Freemasonry to the highest sphere of intellectual character.
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FESSLER, RITE OF
This Rite, which was prepared by Fessler at the request of the Grand Lodge Royal York of Berlin, consisted of nine Degrees, as follows:
1. Entered Apprentice
2. Fellow Craft.
3. Master Mason. These three differ but slightly from the same
Degrees in all the Rites, and are followed by six other Degrees,
which he called the higher knowledge, namely:
4. The Holy of Holies. This Degree is occupied in a critical exposition
of the various hypotheses which have been proposed as to the origin
of Freemasonry; as, whether it sprang from the Templars, from
the Cathedral of Strasburg, from the Rose Croix of the seventeenth
century, from Oliver Cromwell, from the Cathedral of Saint Paul's
at London, from that of the Palace of Kensington, or from the
Jesuits.
5. Justification. Critical examination of the origin of certain
of the advanced Degrees, such as the Ecossais and the Chapter
of Clermont.
6. Celebration. Critical examination of the four following systems:
Rose Croix, Strict Observance, African Architects, and Initiated
Brothers of Asia.
7. True Light. Critical examination of the Swedish System, the
System of Zinnendorf, the Royal Arch of England, of the succession
of the Mysteries, and of all systems and their ramifications.
8. The Country. Examination of the origin of the Mysteries of
the Divine Kingdom, introduced by Jesus of Nazareth; of the exoteric
doctrines communicated by him immediately to his disciples, and
of those which sprang up after his death, up to the time of the
Gnosties. 9. Perfection. A complete critical history of all Mysteries
comprehended in actual Freemasonry.
Both Clavel and Ragon say that the rituals of these Degrees svere drawn up from the work of the Golden Rose Croix, of the Rite of Strct Observance, of the Illuminated Chapter of Sweden, and the Ancient Chapter of Clerrnont. Fessler's Rite was, perhaps, the most abstrusely learned and philosophical of all the Masonic systems; but it did not have a long existence, as it was abandoned by the Grand Lodge, which had at first accepted it, for the purpose of adopting the Ancient York Rite under the Constitutions of England.
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FESTIVALS
All religions have had certain days consecrated to festive enjoyrnent, hence called festivals. Sir Isaac Newton (on Daniel, page 204) says:
The heathen were delighted with the festivals of their gods, and unwilling to part with these delights, and therefore, Gregory Thaumaturgus, who died in 265, and was Bishop of Neocaesarea, to facilitate their conversion instituted annual festivals to the saints and martyrs. Hence it came to pass that, for exploding the festivals of the heathens, the principal festivals of the Christians succeeded in their room: as the keeping of Christmas with joy, and feasting, and playing, and sports, in the room of the Bacchinatia and Satumlia; the celebrating of May day with flowers, in the room of the floral and the keeping of festivals to the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist and divers of the apostles, in the room of the solemnities at the entrance of the sun into the signs of the Zodiac in the old Julian Calendar.
The Freemasons, borrowing from and imitating the usage of the Church, have also always had their festivals or days of festivity and celebration. The chief festivals of the Operatives or Stonemasons of the Middle Ages were those of Saint John the Baptist on June 24, and the Four Crowned Martyrs on the 8th of November. The latter was, however, discarded by the Speculative Freemasons; and the festivals now most generally celebrated by the Fraternity are those of Saint John the Baptist, June 24, and Saint John the Evangelist, December 27. These are the days kept in the United States. Such, too, was formerly the case in England; but the annual festival of the Grand Lodge of England now falls on the Wednesday following Saint George's day, April 23, that Saint being the patron of England. For a similar reason, Saint Andrew's day, November 30, is kept by the Grand Lodge of Scotland. In Ireland the festival kept is that of Saint John on December 27.
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FEUILLANS
An androgynous, both sexes, system, found in Fustier's collection, and governed by the statutes of Saint Bernard.
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FEUILLANTS, or DAMES PHLEIADES
An organization established about the middle of the eighteenth century in Brittany, France. The grip was given by shaking hands with the fingers interlaced three times reciprocally. The sign was made by the hands being raised to a level with the eyes, the palms turned upwards with the fingers interlaced.
The pass-words were
Have you gathered the roses?
The correct response was
Also the grapes.
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FIAT LUX ET LUX FIT
A Latin motto frequently written Sit Lux et Lux Fuit, referring to Genesis(I, 3), "Let there be light, and there was light" (see True Light).
*
FIDELITY
See Fides
*
FIDELITY OF BADEN DURLACH, ORDER OF
Instituted in 1716 by Charles Margrave of Baden Durlach. The members of the Order were knighted, selections being made only from the nobles of ancient family. The reigning princes were hereditary Grand Masters.
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FIDES
In the instruction of the First Degree, it is said that "our ancient Brethren worshiped deity under the name of Fides or Fidelity, which was sometimes represented by two right hands joined, and some times by two human figures holding each other by the right hands." The deity here referred to was the goddess Fides, to whom Numa first erected temples, and whose priests were covered by a white veil as a symbol of the purity which should characterize Fidelity. No victims were slain on her altars, and no offerings made to her except flowers, wine, and incense. Her statues were represented clothed in a white mantle, with a key in her hand and a dog at her feet. The virtue of Fidelity is, however, frequently symbolized in ancient medals by a heart in the open hand, but more usually by two right hands clasped.
Horace calls her Incorrupta Fides, and makes her the sister of Justice; while Cicero says that which is religion toward God and piety toward our parents is fidelity toward our fellow-men. There was among the Romans another deity called Fidius, who presided over oaths and contracts, a very usual form of imprecation or oath being Me dius fidius adjured that is, so help me the God Fidius. Noel (Dictionary of Fables) says that there was an ancient marble at Rome consecrated to the god Fidius, on which was depicted two figures clasping each other's hands as the representatives of Honor and Truth, without which there can be no fidelity nor truth among men. Freemasonry, borrowing its ideals from the ancient poets, also makes the right hand the symbol of Fidelity.
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FIDUCIAL SIGN
That is, the sign of confiding trust, called also the sign of Truth and Hope. One of the signs of the English Royal Arch system, which is thus explained by Doctor Oliver (Dictionary of Symbolic Masonry). The fiducial sign shows us if we prostrate ourselves with our face to the earth, we thus throw ourselves on the mercy of our Creator and Judge, looking forward with humble confidence to his holy promises, by which alone we hope to pass through the Ark of our redemption into the mansion of eternal bliss and glory to the presence of Him who is the great I AM, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the lending, the First and the Last.
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FIELD LODGE, or ARMY LODGE
A Lodge duly instituted under proper authority from a Grand Body of competent jurisdiction, and authorized to exercise during its peripatetic existence all the powers and privileges that it might possess if permanently located. 6 Charters of this nature, as the name implies, are intended for the tented field, and have been of the no greatest service to humanity in its trying hours, when the worst of passions are appealed.
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FIFTEEN
A sacred number symbolic of the name of God, because the letters of the holy name xs, Jah, are equal, in the Hebrew mode of numeration by the letters of the alphabet, to fifteen; for is equal to ten, and n is equal to five. Hence, from veneration for this sacred name, the Hebrews do not, in ordinary computations, when they wish to express the number fifteen, make use of these two letters, but of two others, which are equivalent to nine and six (see also Fourteen).
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FJI ISLANDS
See Oceania
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FINANCES
According to universal usage on Freemasonry, the Treasurer of the Lodge or other Body is the banker or depositary of the finances of the Lodge. They are first received by the Secretary, who receipts for them, and immediately pays them over to the Treasurer. The Treasurer distributes them under the orders of the Master and the consent of the Lodge. This consent can only be known officially to him by the statement of the Secretary, and hence all orders drawn on the Treasurer for the disbursement of money should be countersigned by the Secretary.
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FINCH, WILLIAM
A Masonic charlatan, or fraud, who flourished at the end of the preceding and the beginning of the nineteenth century. Finch was a tailor in Canterbury, who, having been expelled for some misconduct by the Grand Lodge, commenced a system of practical Freemasonry on his own account, and opened a Lodge in his house, where he undertook to initiate candidates and to give instructions in Freemasonry. He published a great number of pamphlets, many of them in a cipher of his own, which he pretended were for the instruction of the Fraternity. Among the books published by him are: A Masonic Treatise, with an Elucidation on the Religious and Moral Beauties of Freemasonry, etc.; printed at Canterbury in 1802. The Lectures, Laws, and Ceremonies of the Holy Arch Degree of Freemasonry, etc., Lambeth, 181. The Origin of Freemasons, etc.; London, 1816.
Finch found many dupes, and made a great deal of money. But having on one occasion been sued bar an engraver named Smith, for money due for printing his plates, Finch pleaded an offset of money due by Smith for initiation and instruction in Freemasonry. Smith brought the brand Secretary and other distinguished Freemasons into court, who testified that Finch was an impostor. In consequence of this exposure, Finch lost credit with the community, and, sinking into obscurity, died sometime after, in abject poverty.
As it is impossible to read Finch's Treatises without a knowledge of the cipher employed by him, the following key will be found useful. We owe it to the researches of Brother H. C. Levander (Freemasons Magazine and Review, 1859, page 490). In the first part of the book the cipher used is formed by reversing the alphabet, writing z for a, by for b, etc. The cipher used the title-page differs somewhat from this, as will be seen from the following:
FOR THE TITLE-PAGE
Cipher. a,b,c,d,e,f,g,h,i,j,k,l,m,n,o,p,q,r,s,t,u,v,w,x,y,z,
Key. b, d, f, h, j. l, n, p, r, t, v, x, z, y, w, u, s, q, o,
m, k, i, g, e, c, a.
FOR THE FIRST PART
Cipher. a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, q, r,
t, u, v, w, x, y, z.
Key. z, y, x, v., v, u, t, s, r, q, p, o, n, m, l, k, j, i, h
f, e, d, c, b, a.
In the second part of the work, a totally different svstem is employed. The words may be deciphered by taking the last letter, then the first, then the last but one, then the second, and so on. Two or three words are also often run into one; for example erectemhdrdoh, is he ordered them. The nine digits, the Arabic numerals, 1 to 9, represent certain words of frequent recurrence, a repetition of the same digit denoting the plural; thus stands for Lodge; 11, for Lodges; 3, Fellow Craft; 33, Fellow Crafts, etc.
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FINDEL. J. G.
A Masonic writer of more than ordinary note, who was admitted in the Lodge Eleusis zur Verschwiegenheit (relating to the secrecy discretely followed at Eleusis, the place in Grecee of the famous Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone), at Baireuth in 1856. He was editor of the Bauhütte, or Craft Lodged an interesting journal, at Leipsic, in 1858, and added materially to Masonic literature in founding the Verein Deutscher Freimaurer, Union of German Freemasons about 1860, and publishing, in 1874, Geist unit Form der Freimaurerei, Genius and Form of Freemasonry.
His best known and most important work is his Geschichte der Freimaurerei or General History of Freemasonry, published in 1861, which has been translated into English, Freneh, and other languages, and was the first attempt at a critical history of the Craft. He died in 1905.
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FINES
Fines for nonattendance or neglect of duty are not now usually imposed in Masonie Bodies, because each member is bound to the discharge of these duties by a motive more powerful than any that could be furnished by a pecuniary penalty. The imposition of such a penalty would be a tacit acknowledgment of the inadequacy of that motive, and would hence detract from its solemnity and its binding nature. It cannot, however, be denied that the records of old Lodges show that it was formerly a common custom to impose fines for a violation of the rules.
*
FIRE
*
FIRE
The French, in their Table Lodges, called the drinking of 3 toast, fee or fire. The word is also applied to the action immediately following the drinking of a toast in British Lodges when a quaint little ceremonial is observed by all the Brethren.
*
PHILOSOPHERS
See Theosophists
*
FIRE, PILLAR OF
See Pillars of Cloud arms Fire
*
FIRE, PURIFICATION BY
See Purification
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FIRE-WORSHIP
Of all the ancient religions, fire-worship was one of the earliest next to Sabaism; the worship of the heavenly bodies, and even of this it seems only have been a development, as with the Sabaists the sun was deemed the Universal Fire. "Darius," says Quintus Curtius, "invoked the sun as Mithras, the sacred and eternal fire." It was the faith of the ancient Magi and the old Persians, still retained by their modern descendants the Parsees. But with them it was not an idolatry. The fire was venerated only as a visible symbol of the Supreme Deity, of the Creative Energy, from Whom all things come, and to Whom all things ascend. The flame darting upward to meet its divine original, the mundane fire seeking an ascension to and an absorption into the celestial fire, or God Himself, constituted what has been called the lame-secret of the fire-worshipers. This religion was not only ancient, but also universal. From India it passed over into Egypt, and thence extended to the Hebrews and to the Greeks, and has shown its power and prevalence even in modern thought. On the banks of the Nile, the people did not, indeed, fall down like the old Persians and worship fire, but they venerated the fire-secret and its symbolic teaching. Hence the Pyramids, pyr is Greek for fire, the representation of ascending flame; and Hargrave Jennings shrewdly says that what has been supposed to be a tomb, in the center of the Great Pyramid, was in reality a depository of the sacred, ever-burning fire. Monoliths were everywhere in antiquity erected to fire or to the sun, as the type of fire. Among the Hebrews. the sacred idea of fire, as something connected with the Divine Being, was very prominent. God appeared to Moses in a flame of fire; he descended on Mount Sinai in the midst of flames; at the Temple the fire ascended from heaven to consume the burnt offering. Everywhere in Scripture, fire is a symbol of the holiness of God. The lights on the altar are the symbols of the Christian God. The purifying power of fire is naturally deduced from this symbol of the holiness of the element. And in the advanced Degrees of Freemasonry, as in the ancient institutions, there is a purification by fire, coming down to us insensibly and unconsciously from the old Magian cultus. In the Medieval ages there was a sect of fire-philosophers hilosophi per ignem who were a branch of offshoot of Rosicrucianism, with which Freemasonry has so much in common. These fire-philosophers kept up the veneration for fire, and cultivated the fire-secret, not as an idolatrous belief, but modified by their hermetic notions. They were also called theosophists, and through them, or in reference to them, we find the theosophic Degrees of Freemasonry, which sprang up in the eighteenth century. As fire and light are identical, so the fire, which was to the Zoroastrians the symbol of the Divine Being, is to the Freemason, under the equivalent idea of light, the symbol of Divine Truth, or of the Grand Architect.
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FIRRAO, JOSEPH
A cardinal priest who, in 1738, published the edict of Pope Clement XII against Freemasonry.
*
FIRST MASONIC OPERA
See Generous Freemason
*
FISH
The Greek word for fish is IZ0T2. Now these five letters are the initials of the five words X ous Xp~vros Leon TLos Zxrr/p, that is, Jesus Christ the Son of God, the Savior. Hence the early Christians adopted the fish as a Christian symbol; and it is to be found on many of their tombs, and was often worn as an ornament. Clement of Alexandria, in writing of the ornaments that a Christian may constantly wear, mentions the fish as a proper device for a ring, as serving to remind the Christian of the origin of his spiritual life, the fish referring to the waters of baptism. The Vesica Piscis, which is an oval figure, pointed at both ends, and representing the air bladder of a fish, was adopted, and is still often used as the form of the seal of religious houses and con-fraternities, Margoliouth (Vestiges of General Freemasonry, 45) says: "In former days, the Grand Master of our Order used to wear a silver fish on his person; but it is to be regretted that, amongst the many innovations which have been of late introduced into the Society to conciliate the prejudices of some who cannot consistently be members of it, this beautiful emblem has disappeared "
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FITS; PETER, GEOFFREY
Anderson, 1738, shows this English Chief Justice as Deputy Grand Master, or Chief Surveyor, under Peter de Rupibus, Bishop of Dorchester, Grand Master, in the reign of King John of England, until the death of Geoffrey, 1213.
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FIVE
Among the Pythagoreans five was a mystical number, because it was formed by the union of the first even number and the first odd, rejecting unity; and hence it symbolized the mixed conditions of order and disorder, happiness and misfortune, life and death. The same union of the odd and even, or male and female, numbers made it the symbol of marriage. Among the Greeks it was a symbol of the world, because, says Diodorus, it represented ether and the four elements. It was a sacred round number among the Hebrews.
In Egypt, India. and other Oriental nations says Gesenius, the five minor planets and the five elementary powers were accounted sacred. It was the pentas of the Gnosties and the Hermetic Philosophers; it was the symbol of their quintessence, the fifth or highest essence of power in a natural body. In Freemasonry, five is a sacred number, inferior only in importance to three and seven. It is especially significant in the Fellow Craft's Degree, where five are required to hold a Lodge, and where, in the winding stairs, the five steps are referred to the orders of architecture and the human senses. In the Third Degree we find the reference to the five points of fellowship and their Symbol, the five-pointed star. Geometry, too, which is deemed synonymous with Freemasonry, is called the fifth science; and, in fact, throughout nearly all the Degrees of Freemasonry, we find abundant allusions to five as a sacred and mystical number.
*
FIVE-POINTED STAR
The five-pointed star, which is not to be confounded with the blazing star, is not found among the old symbols of Freemasonry; indeed, some writers have denied that it is a Masonic emblem at all. It is undoubtedly of recent origin, and was probably introduced by Jeremy Cross, who placed it among the plates in the emblems of the Third Degree prefixed to his Hieroglyphic Chart. It is not mentioned in the ritual or the lecture of the Third Degree, but the Freemasons of the United States have, by tacit consent, referred to it as a symbol of the Five Points of Fellowship. The outlines of the five-pointed star are the same as those of the pentalpha of Pythagoras, which was the symbol of health. M. Jomard, in his Description de L'Egypte (tome viii, page 423) says that the star engraved on the Egyptian monuments, where it is a very common hieroglyphic, has constantly five points. never more nor less.
*
FIVE POINTS
See Chromatic Calendar
*
FIVE POINTS OF FELLOWSHIP
See Points of Fellowship, Five
*
FIVE SENSES
The five senses of Hearing, Seeing, Feeling, Tasting, and Smelling are introduced into the lecture of the Fellow Craft as a part of the instructions of that Degree (see each word in its appropriate place). In the earlier lectures of the eighteenth century, the five senses were explained in the First Degree as referring to the five who make a Lodge. Their subsequent reference to the winding stairs, and their introduction into the Second Degree, were modern improvements. As these senses are the avenues by which the mind receives its perceptions of things exterior to it, and thus becomes the storehouse of ideas, they are most appropriately referred to that Degree of Freemasonry whose professed object is the pursuit and acquisition of knowledge.
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FIXED LIGHTS
In the old lectures of the eighteenth century, the fired lights were the three windows always supposed to exist in the East, South, and West. Their uses were, according to the old instructions "to light the men to, at, and from their work." In the modern lectures they have been omitted, and their place as symbols supplied by the lesser lights.
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FLAG CEREMONY
A formal reception of the National Flag was especially frequent in all fraternal Bodies during the World War and ceremonies of most impressive character were noted in leading Masonic organizations as in the Grand Lodges of Iowa, Indiana, and elsewhere.
The making of the first "Stars and Stripes" is credited to Mrs. Elizabeth Ross of Philadelphia. We have seen on the door posts of the old ancestral home of the Washington's at Sulgrave Manor, England, two shields each bearing three stars surmounting a horizontal bar or stripe. Doubtless this had a suggestive force in designing the new flag.
When the National Flag is hung either horizontally or vertically across a wall, the union (the stars on the blue field or background) should be uppermost and to the flag's own right, that is to the observer's left. When displayed from a staff projecting horizontally or at an angle from a window sill or the front of a building, the same rule should be followed. The union should go down to the truck (as the peak or point of the staff is called) unless the flag is at half-mast position. A Service Flag was designed by Brother Robert L. Queisser, Captain, Fifth Ohio Machine Gun Company, in honor of those in the military or naval service. This flag was much used in the United States during the World War. The flag had a center field of white with a red border. On the white field blue stars were placed for those in service, gold stars for the dead.
At the fifty-fourth annual session held at Miami, Florida, May 1-3, 1928, of the Imperial Council, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, the Committee on Revision of Ritual reported that some Temples were using elaborate and beautiful flag ceremonies. In a great many cases bugle calls were used in connection with the activities of the Color Guard and bands rendered patriotic airs in keeping with the spirit of the occasion. Usually the National Anthems were sung by the entire membership present. The Committee submitted a minimum requirement to be made applicable to all the Temples of the Order with the understanding that the following simple ceremony might be developed and elaborated:
When the Color Guard, or Marshal, with his assistants presents the Colors at the altar after the Temple has been duly opened. the Potentate win cause the Nobility to come to attention and salute. After the salute is rendered, the following pledge will be recited in concert: "I pledge allegiance to my flag, to the principles for which it stands. one Brotherhood indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
The Color Guard will then escort the Colors to their proper position while the Nobility continue at attention. The Color Guard will then return to the altar and the Potentate will seat the Temple. The suggestion of the Committee was recommended to the Subordinate Temples.
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FLAMING SWORD
A sword whose blade is of a spiral or twisted form is called by the heralds a flaming swords from its resemblance to the ascending curvature of a flame of fire. Until very recently, this was the form of the Tiler's sword. Carelessness or ignorance has now in many Lodges substituted for it a common sword of any form. The flaming sword of the Tiler refers to the flaming sword which guarded the entrance to Paradise, as described in Genesis (iii, 4): "So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim's and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life;" or, as Raphall has translated it, "the flaming sword which revolveth, to guard the way to the tree of life." In former times, when symbols and ceremonies were more respected than they are now; when collars were worn, and not ribbons in the buttonhole; and when the standing column of the Senior Warden, and the recumbent one of the Junior during labor, to be reversed during refreshment, were deemed necessary for the complete furniture of the Lodge, the cavalry sword was unknown as a Masonic implement, and the Tiler always bore a flaming sword. It were better if we could get back to the old customs.
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FLEMING. DR. WALTER MILLARD
Established the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine in the United States. In 1867 Brother William J. Florence made a trip to the Old World and is reported to have secured there useful information for the introduction and establishment of the Shrine.
When he returned to the United States with all the data obtainable he communicated the particulars to Doctor Fleming, and thereby after further consultation with Brother Charles T. McClenachan and other able Masonic ritualists, they prepared the way to establish the Shrine in the United States. On June 16, 1871, Doctor Fleming, assisted by Brother Florence, conferred the Degrees upon four Knights Templar and seven members of Aurora Grata Consistory, Thirty-second Degree, and September 96, 1872, the organization was effected and officers elected.
Doctor Fleming was born on June 13, 1838, in Portland, Maine, and died at Mount Vernon, New York, September 9, 1913, being buried in Kensico Cemetery. He was a prominent medical man; joined the Masonic Fraternity February 13, 1869; was raised in Rochester Lodge No. 660 of Rochester, New York. He removed his office and residence to New York City and associated himself with Aurora Grata Lodge of Perfection in 1870; received the Degrees of the Consistory up to and including the Thirty-second Degree on May 31, 1871, and was given, on September 19, 1872, his Thirty-third Degree. December 3, 1872, he affiliated with New York Lodge, No. 330, of New York City, he having demitted from his Rochester Lodge. He was exalted in Lafayette Chapter, No. 207, Royal Arch Masons; became a member of Adelphic Council, No. 7, Royal and Select Masters; was knighted in Columbia Commandery No. 1, Knights Templar of New York City, March 19, 1872, and was unanimously elected Eminent Commander at the succeeding Conclave, April 15, 1872, which office he retained four successive years. He founded and served as Illustrious Potentate the Mecca Temple, originally named Gotham, which was the first Temple established by the Shrine.
Mecca Temple received its Charter on September 26, 1872, and Brother Fleming held his original office from the time of its inception until December, 1887. Re was elected Grand Imperial Potentate at the first Session of the Imperial Grand Council of the Order, June 6, 1876, and retained this office until June 14, 1886. The name Grand was after a time dropped from the titles (see Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry, pages 1973-83, for a detailed account of the Order of the Mystic Shrine. See also Florence, William Jermyn, and Shrine).
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FLOATS
Pieces of timber, made fast together with rafters, for conveying burdens down a river with the stream. The use of these floats in the building of the Temple is thus described in the letter of King Hiram to Solomon: "And we will cut wood out of Lebanon, as much as thou shalt need: and we will bring it to thee in flotes by sea to Joppa; and thou shalt carry it up to Jerusalem" (Second Chronicles ii, 16).
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FLOCQUET
French Freemason and musician; composer of the Te Deum (a term based on the opening words in Latin of an early hymn, Te Deum Laudamus, we Praise Thee, O God, and often applied to any thanksgiving song or service), which; the Mother Lodge of the Scottish Philosophic Rite sang in 1781 at the Church of Notre Dame, Paris, in honor of the birth of the Dauphin, the first-born son of the King of France.
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FLOOR
The flour of a properly constructed Lodge-room should be covered with alternate squares of black and white, to represent the Mosaic pavement which was the ground floor of King Solomon's Temple.
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FLOOR-CLOTH
A framework of board or canvas, on which the emblems of any particular Degree are inscribed, for the assistance of the Master in giving a lecture. It is so called because formerly it was the custom to inscribe these designs on the floor of the Lodge-room in chalk, which were wiped out when the Lodge was closed. It is the same as the Carpet, Or Tracing-Board.
The washing out of the designs chalked upon the floor is seen in the early caricatures of the Craft where a mop and pail are illustrated. These would soon be put aside when Lodges met in carpeted rooms. Then the symbols were shown by marking out the Lodge with tape and nails or shaping the symbols in wood or metal to be laid upon the floor or table or pedestal as the case might be in the Lodge. Such use of separate symbols we have seen in English Lodges, as at Bristol, where the ancient ceremonies are jealously and successfully preserved.
An easy development would be to picture the designs on a cloth to be spread out on floor when in use or folded up for storage. Then there would be the further movement to the stereopticon slides of a similar character, and which find frequent use in the United States. Brother John Harris in 1820 designed and made a set of Tracing Boards for the three Degrees. These designs were never authorized by the Grand Lodge of England, the individual Lodges employed their own artists and the results varied accordingly, though the influence of Brother Harris tended to the uniformity that practically now prevails among Tracing-Board makers. Articles of much interest and value on the subject are "Evolution and Development of the Tracing or Lodge Board," by Brother E. H. Dring (Transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1916, volume xxix, pages 243 and 275), and "Some Notes on the Tracing Board of the Lodge of Union, No. 3S," bar Brother O. N. Wvatt (Transactions Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1910, volume xxiii, page 191). The latter article refers particularly to the work of Brother Josiah Bowring, a portrait painter of London, also painted the Boards for the Chichester Lodge in 1811, himself being initiated in 1795.
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FLOORING
The same as Floor-cloth, which see
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FLORENCE, WILLIAM J.
William J., or Billy, Florence was the professional name used by William Jermyn Conlin, a popular actor, and a Freemason whose name is romantically as well as practically associated with the founding of the Ancient and Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. This organization was doubtless erected upon a ritual and ceremonies established and brought into being by Brother Florence and his coworker, Dr. Walter M. Fleming, with their immediate Masonic friends. Little of the actual detail of the work at headquarters w as done by Florence himself, that being left to Doctor Fleming, due to Brother Florence's enforced long absences awhile touring the United States or foreign lands in following his profession. He, however, lent his popular name to the cause and enthusiastically contributed what assistance he could to the propagation of the Order.
Brother Florence was born July 26, 1831, at Albany, New Work. Adopted the stage as a profession and met with immediate success and continuous popularity until the time of his death, which occurred at the Continental Hotel, Philadelphia, November l9, 1891. His body was interred in Greenwood Cemetery ,Protestant, in Brooklyn, in a plot which Florence had purchased years before and which was the burial place of his mother, although his wife was a Roman Catholic who had the last rites performed over him by the priesthood of her choice in Saint Agnes Church. Brother Charles Thomas McClenachan, Thirty-third Degree, and closely associated with Brothers Florence and Fleming in the founding of the Mystic Shrine, conferred the Scottish Rite up to and including the Thirty-second Degree upon Brother Florence at the Metropolitan Hotel, New York Cites April 21, 1867. This was just prior to Florence s departure for Europe, on which trip he is said to haste been received into several organizations similar to the Shrine both in France and Algiers. These visits of his M ere highly colored by the imaginative Doctor Flemin, and used in the ritual which was finally perfected, replete with oriental atmosphere and "regal splendor," as he termed it. Frequent assertions even by Masonic authorities, have been made that Brother Florence was not a Freemason. The facts are that he was initiated into the Masonic Order in Philadelphia (see also One Hundred) ears of Aurora Grata, 1808-1908, page 47). Brethar Charles A. Brockaway writes that he was a member of Mount Moriah Lodge, No. 155, Philadelphia; Initiated, Crafted, and Raised October 12, 1853. Zerubbabel Chapter, No. 162, 1854. Pittsburgh Commandery, No. 1, 1854. Brother Brockaway copies the following from the Minutes of Aurora Grata Lodge of Perfection, Brooklyn, New York, of which he was Thrice Potent Master:
At a special communication of Aurora Grata Lodge of Perfection held at their rooms, Halsey's building, on Tuesday evening, April 16, 67, Illustrious Brother C. T. McClenachan, Thirty-third Degree, proposed Brother lV. J. Florence, Age 40, Occupation Actor, Residence Metropolitan Hotel. Refers to Illustrious Brother McClenachan and Illustrious Charles brown M.D., which was on motion received and referred to lliustriols Brothers Willets, Smith and McClennchan for investigation, who immediately reported favorably and recommended his election. The T.P.G . M . then ordered a ballot and Brother Florence was declared duly elected. Brother Florence being about to depart for Europe and wishing to receive the Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Rite, permission was given Illustrious Brother McClenachan to confer the Degrees upon him as soon as convenient and wherever his judgment might dictate.
Noble Florence conferred the Degrees of the Shrine upon Sam Briggs, who was Potentate of Al Ivoran Temple from 1876 to 1901, and Imperial Potentate from 1886 to 1899, as well as on Brenton D. Babcock and three other Clevelanders at the Opera House and at the Rennard Hotel on October 91 and 00, 1876. When the Al Koran Temple of Cleveland was instituted, Florence was an honored visitor, he having suggested its name.
William Winter's Wallat of Time, a history of the American stage, contains a beautiful eulogy upon Florence, stating that he was "in art admirable; in life gentle; he was widely known, and he was known only to be loved.
By Virtue cherished, by Affeetion mourned
By Honor hallowed and by Fame adorned
Here Florenee sleeps, and o'er his sacred rest
Each word is tender and each thought is blest.
Long, for his loss, shall pensive Memorv show,
Through Humor's mask, the visage of her woe
Dale breathe a darkness that no sun dispels,
And Night be full of whispers and farewells;
While patient Kindness shadow-like and dim
Droops in its loneliness, bereft of him
Feels its sad doom and sure decadence high
For how should Sindness live, when he could die!
The eager heart, that felt for every grief;
The bounteous hand, that loved to give relief
The honest smile, that blest where'er it lit
The dew of pathos and the sheen of wit:
The sweet, blue eyes, the voice of melting tone
That made all hearts as gentle as his own;
The aetor's charm, supreme in royal thrall
That ranged through every field and shone in all—
For these must Sorrow make perpetual moan
Bereaved, benighted, hopeless and alone9
Ah, no! for Nature does not aet amiss
And Heaven were lonely but for souls like this.
Doctor Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry contains further details of this Brother and of the Shrine (see chapter 107).
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FLORIAN, SQUIN DE
The first accuser of Grand Master Jacques deMolay and the Knights Templar. He was subsequently assassinated.
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FLORIDA
The Grand Lodge of Scotland was petitioned in March, 176S, for a Charter for Grants East Florida Lodge. When this was issued Governor James Grant was appointed Provincial Grand Master over the Lodges in the Southern District of North America. This Grand Lodge, however, became extinct with the Spanish succession at St. Augustine in 1786. Saint Andrew's Lodge, No. 1 then applied for authority to the Grand Lodge of Philadelphia to continue the work;. In 1783 this Lodge came under the jurisdiction of South Carolina, but in 1790 it became dormant and dropped from the roll. On July 5, 1830, Jackson, Washington and Harmony Lodges sent representatives to a Convention for forming a Grand Lodge of Florida. .A Constitution was framed and adopted on the following day and the Grand Cheers elected and installed. Two Chapters, Magnolias No. 16, and Florida, No. 32, were chartered in Florida by the Grand Chapter of Virginia. and one at St. Augustine by the Grand Chapter of South Carolina. Delegates from these three Chapters met on January 11, 1847, and resolved to form a Grand Chapter for Florida. On the 2lst of the month they elected officers and organized the Grand Chapter. After some delay, due to their not having furnished particulars of the Chapters who took part in the Convention, the General Grand High Priest was authorized in 1856 to recognize the Grand Chapter of Florida.
For some years the Council Degrees were conferred in the Chapters. Companion Albert G. Mackey then organized a Council of Royal and Select Masters, Columbia Council at Lake City. The records of this and of the