G
In the Hebrew, represented by :. The seventh letter of the English, Latin, and Romanic alphabets. In the Greek and many other alphabets it is the third in place; in the Russian, Wallachian, and some others it is the fourth; in the Arabic the fifth, and in the Ethiopian the twentieth. In Hebrew it is called Gheé-mel, is of the numerical value of three, and its signification is camel. It is associated with the third sacred name of God, in Hebrew, in: GlwWdot, or in Latin magnus, the Mighty. In Freemasonry it is given as the initial of the word God. The Masonic use of the letter tends to the belief of a modern form in the ceremony of the Fellow Craft Degree. (see G. O. D.) As in all Roman Catholic and in many Protestant churches the cross, engraved or sculptured in some prominent position, will be found as the expressive symbol of Christianity, so in every Masonic Lodge a letter G may be seen in the East, either painted on the wall or sculptured in wood or metal, and suspended over the Master's chair. This is, in fact, if not the most prominent, certainly the most familiar, of all the symbols of Freemasonry. It is the one to which the poet, Brother Robert Burns, alluded in those well known and often-quoted lines, in which he speaks of . . . that hieroglyphic bright
Which none but Craftsmen ever saw;" that is to say, ever saw understandingly ever saw, knowing at the same time what it meant. There if an uncertainty as to the exact time when this symbol was first introduced into Speculative Masonry. It was not derived, in its present form, from the Operative Masons of the Middle Ages, who bestowed upon Freemasonry so much of its symbolism, for it if not found among the architectural decorations of the old cathedrals. Doctor Oliver says it was in the old lectures; but this is an uncertain expression. From Prichard's Masonry Dissected, which was published in 1730, it would seem that the symbol was not in use at that date. But it may have been omitted. If Tubal Kain, which was published in 1767, is, as it purported to be, identical with Prichard's purpose, the question is settled; for it contains the lecture on the letter G. to which reference will directly be made.
However, it is certain that the symbol was well known and recognized in 1766, and some few years before. The book entitled Solomon in all has Glory, the first edition of which appeared in that year, and which is a translation of Le Maçon demasque, contains the reference to and the explanation of the symbol. The work contains abundant internal evidence that it is a translation, and hence the symbol may, like some others of the system subsequent to 1717, have been first introduced on the Continent, and then returned in the translation, all of which would indicate a date some years prior to 1776 for the time of its adoption.
In the ritual contained in Tubal Kain (page 18), or, if that be only a reprint, in Masonry Dissected, that is to say, in 1768 or in 1730, there is a test which is called The Repeating the Letter G, and which Doctor Oliver gives in his Landmarks (I, 454) as a part of the old lectures. It is doggerel verse, and in the form of a catechism between an examiner and a respondent, a form greatly affected in these old lectures, and is as follows, the Resp. meaning Response, and the Ex., Examiner:
RESP. In the Midst of Solomon's
Temple there stands a G
A letter for all to read and see;
But few there be that understand
What means the letter G.
Ex. My friend, if you pretend to be
Of this Fraternity
You can forthwith and rightly tell
What means that letter G.
RESP. By sciences are brought about
Bodies of various kinds,
Which do appear to perfect sight
But none but males shall know my
Ex. the Right shall
RESP. If Worshipful.
Ex. Both Right and Worshipful I am;
To nail you I have command,
That you forthwith let me know,
As I you may understand.
RESP. BY letters four and science five
This G aright doth stand,
In a due art and proportion
You have your answer, Friend.
And now as to the signification of the symbol. We may say, in the first place, that the explanation is by no means, and never has been, esoteric. As the symbol itself has always been exposed to public view, forming, as it does, a prominent part of the furniture of a Lodge, to be seen by everyone, so our Masonic authors from the earliest times, have not hesitated to write, openly and in the plainest language, of its signification. The fact is, that the secret instruction in reference to this symbol relates not to the knowledge of the symbol itself, but to the mode in which, and the object for which that knowledge has been obtained.
Hutchinson, who wrote as early as 1776, says, in his Spirit of Masonry (Lecture viii):
It is new incumbent on me to demonstrate to you the great signification of the letter G. wherewith Lodges and the medals of Masons are ornamented. To apply its signification to the name of God only is depriving it of part of its Masonic import; although I have already shown that the symbols used in lodges are expressive of the Divinity's being the great object of Masonry, as Architect of the world. This significant letter denotes Geometry, which, to artificers, is the science by which all their labors are calculated and formed; and to Masons, contains the determinations definition, and proof of the order, beauty, and wonderful wisdom of the power of God in His creation.
Again, Dr. Frederick Dalcho, a distinguished Freemason of South Carolina, in one of his orations delivered and published in 1801, uses the following language (page 27):
The letter G. which ornaments the Master's Lodge, is not only expressive of the name of the Grand Architect of the universe. but also denotes the science of Geometry, so necessary to artists. But the adoption of it by Mesons implies no more than their respect for those inventions which demonstrate to the world the power, the wisdom, and beneficence of the Almighty Builder in the works of the creation.
Lastly, Doctor Oliver has said, in his Golden Remains of she Early Masonic Writers, that "the term G. A. O. T. U. is used among Masons for this great and glorious Being, designated by the letter G. that it may be applied by every brother to the object of his adoration." More quotations are unnecessary to show that from the earliest times, since the adoption of the letter as a symbol, its explanation has not been deemed an esoteric or secret part of the ritual. No Masonic writer has hesitated openly to give an explanation of its meaning. The mode in which, and the purpose for which, that explanation was obtained are the only hidden things about the symbol.
It is to be regretted that the letter G. as a symbol, was ever admitted into the Masonic system. The use of it as an initial would necessarily confine it to the English language and to modern times. It wants therefore, as a symbol, the necessary characteristics of both universality and antiquity. The Greek letter gamma is said to have been venerated by the Pythagoreans because it was the initial of af«,uerpzQ, or Geometry. But this veneration could not have been shared by other nations whose alphabet had no gamma, and where the word for geometry was entirely different.
There can be no doubt that the letter G is a very modern symbol, not belonging to any old system anterior to the origin of the English language. It is, in fact, a corruption of the old Hebrew Cabalistic symbol, the letters 1yod, by which the sacred name of God—in fact, the most sacred name, the Tetragrammaton is expressed. This letter yod is the initial letter of the word ;ll;r, or Jehovah, and is constantly to be met with among Hebrew writers, as the abbreviation or symbol of that most holy name, which, indeed, was never written at length. Now, as G is in like manner the initial of God, the English equivalent of the Hebrew Jehovah, the letter has been adopted as a symbol intended to supply to modern Lodges the place of the Hebrew symbol. First adopted by the English ceremony makers, it has without remark, been transferred to the Freemasonry of the Continent, and it is to be found as a symbol in all the systems of Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, and every other country where Freemasonry has been introduced; although in Germany only can it serve, as it does in England, for an intelligent symbol. The letter G. then has in Freemasonry the same force and signification that the letter god had among the Cabalists. It is only a symbol of the Hebrew letter, and, as that is a symbol of God, the letter G is only a symbol of a symbol. As for its reference to geometry, Kloss, the German Masonic historian, says that the old Operative Masons referred the entire science of geometry to the art of building, which gave to the modern English Freemasons occasion to embrace the whole system of Freemasonry under the head of Geometry, and hence the symbol of that science, as well as of God, was adopted for the purpose of giving elevation to the Fellow Craft's Degree.
Indeed, the symbol, made sacred by its reference to the Grand Geometrician of the universe, was well worthy to be applied to that science which has, from the remotest times, been deemed synonymous with Freemasonry.
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GABAON
A significant word in the advanced Degrees. Oliver says (Landmarks i, 335), "in philosophical Masonry, heaven, or, more correctly speaking, the third heaven, is denominated Mount Gabaon, which is feigned to be accessible only by the seven degrees that compose the winding staircase. These are the degrees terminating in the Royal Arch." Gabaon is defined to signify a high place. It is the Septuagint and Vulgate form of lip::, Gibeon, which was the city in which the tabernacle was stationed during the reigns of David and Solomon. The word means a city built on a hill, and is referred to in Second Chronicles (i, 3). "So Solomon, and all the congregation with him, went to the high place that was at Gibeon; for there was the tabernacle of the congregation of God." In a ritual, middle of the eighteenth century, it is said that Gabanon is the name of a Master Mason. This word is a striking evidence of the changes which Hebrew words have undergone in their transmission to Masonic ceremonies, and of the almost impossibility of tracing them to their proper root. It would seem difficult to find a connection between Gabanon and any known Hebrew word. But if we refer to Guillemain's Ritual of Adonhiramite Masonry (page 95) we will find the following passage:
How is a Master called?
Gabaon, which is the name of the place where
the Israelites deposited the ark in the time of trouble.
What does this signify?
That the heart of a Mason ought to be pure enough to be a temple suitable for God.
There is abundant internal evidence that these two rituals came from a common source, and that Gabaon is a French distortion, as Gabanon is an English one, of some unknown word connected, however, with the Ark of the Covenant as the place where that article was deposited. Now, we learn from the Jewish records that the Philistines, who had captured the ark, deposited it "in the house of Abinadab that was in Gibeah;" and that David, subsequently recapturing it, carried it to Jerusalem, but left the tabernacle at Gibeon. The ritualist did not remember that the tabernacle at Gibeon was without the ark, but supposed that it was still in that sacred shrine. Hence Gabaon or Gabanon must have been corrupted from either Gibeah or Gibeon, because the ark was considered to be at some time in both places. But Gibeon had already been corrupted by the Septuagint and the Vulgate versions into Gabaon; and this undoubtedly is the word from which Gabanon is derived, through either the Septuagint or the Vulgate, or perhaps from Josephus, who calls it Gabao.
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GABAONNE
In French Masonic language the widow of a Master Mason. Derived from Gabaon.
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GABOR
Hebrews n::, strong. A significant word in the advanced Degrees.
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GABRIEL
Hebrew, 9, a man or hero of God. The name of one of the archangels, referred to in some of the advanced Degrees. He interpreted to Daniel the vision of the ram and the he-goat, and made the prophecy of the "seventy weeks" (Daniel viui and ix); he announced the future appearance of the Messiah (Daniel ix, 21-7). In the New Testament he foretold to Zacharias the birth of John the Baptist (Luke i, 19), and to Mary the birth of Christ (Luke i, 26). Among the Rabbis Gabriel is entrusted with the care of the souls of the dead, and is represented as having taught Joseph the seventy languages spoken at Babel. In addition, he was the only angel who could speak Chaldee and Syriac. The Talmud speaks of him as the Prince of Fire, the Spirit presiding over thunder. The Mohammedans term him the Spirit of Truth, and believe that he dictated the Koran to Mohammed.
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GAEDICKE, JOHANN CHRISTIAN
A bookseller of Berlin, born on the 14th of December, 1763, and initiated into Freemasonry in 1804. He took much interest in the Order, and was the author of several works. the most valuable and best known of which is the Freimaurer-Lexicon, or Freemasons Lexicon, published in 1818; which, although far inferior to that of Lenning, which appeared four years afterward, is, as a pioneer work, very creditable to its author. The Lexicon was translated into English and published in the London Freemasons Magazine.
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GAGE AND GAUGE
See Twenty-four-Inch Gage
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GALAHAD
Also spelled Galaad. Most probably in Doctor Mackey's opinion, the latter is a corruption of Gilead. The name of a pure and noble Knight, Sir Galahad, of the Round Table who sought the Holy Grail (see Idylls of the King by Tennyson, Quest of the Holy Grail, by Map, and High History of the Holy Grail, by Evans). Sir Galahad was the ideal knight of the legends of romance. The Holy Grail was reputed in several legends to be the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, and in its preservation to have been the medium of many miracles and thus was especially sought by the Knights of King Arthur, Sir Galahad a leader in the quest. Said by the old ritualists to have been the Keeper of the Seals in the Scottish Degree of Knights of the Ninth Arch or Sacred Vault of James VI.
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GAMBETTA, LEON
French statesman, born at Cahors on April 2, 1838, the son of a Genoese grocer and a Frenchwoman. Studied for the law at Paris and although hindered by the accidental loss of an eye, his energy won for him prominence. Opposing the rupture with Germany in 1870, he patriotically gave every aid to France during the war, escaped in a balloon from the besieged Paris, raised another army, fighting to the finish. He founded the influential journal, La République française, succeeded in the adoption of a new constitution, massed an effective opposition to the restoration of the Pope's temporal power, became memorable as president of the Chamber of Deputies, formed a ministry, sought to establish friendly relations between France and former foes, and was ever powerful, progressive, and persevering in public service. His career was cut short at the age of forty-four by the accidental discharge of a revolver in his home at Ville d'Avray near Sevres on December 31, 1882. He was initiated in a Masonic Lodge at Bordeaux and on July 8,1875, with Emile Littré and Jules Ferry affiliated with the Lodge La Clemente Amitie at Paris.
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GANGLER
The title given to the candidate in the Scandinavian Mysteries, signifying wanderer. The application is also made to the sun.
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G.·.A.·.O.·.T.·.U.·.
An abbreviation of Grand Architect of the Universe (see Great Archit of the Universe).
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GARIBALDI, GIUSEPPE (JOSEPH)
Renowned Italian patriot, born at Nice, July 4, 1807, died June 2,1882, at Caprera, a small island off the north coast of Sardinia in the Mediterranean Sea. Son of a sailor, he commanded a vessel in 1830; was condemned to death in 1834 as a revolutionist but escaped to South America; his limbs were dislocated by torture while the prisoner in the revolt against Brazil, and regaining his liberty he enabled Uruguay to secure independence and returned to Italy, refusing any recompense. Forming a new army he was pursued by the forces of France, Spain, Austria, and Naples, lost his wife and most of his followers by death and escaped to New York, where he prospered, and returned to Italy in 1854.
Took command of Alpine infantry in war of 1859 and was from that time successfully engaged in the many struggles for a united Italy. His biography in the books by G. M. Trevelyan is most exhilarating reading. As a Freemason he was Grand Master at Palermo, 1860, and called a convention in 1867 to unite all the Italian Bodies, a project not then fully successful. Through the courtesy of Brother Melvin M. Johnson, Past Grand Master, Massachusetts, an incident relating to General Garibaldi was verified for us. Brother Curtis Guild, Jr., died in 1915, had been governor of Massachusetts for three years and later was Ambassador to Russia, his last year as Governor was also the first of his two years as Thrice Potent Master of Boston Lafayette Lodge of Perfection.
He had a sister and brother, Courtenay Guild, 32 . The account that follows is as both remember their father telling it a number of times:
My father, Curtis Guild, who died in 1911, was a Knight Templar, 32 Mason, and Past Thrice Potent Master of Boston Lafayette Lodge of Perfection. My brother, Curtis build, who died in l915, was a Knight Templar, 33 Mason and Past Thrice Potent Master of Boston Lafayette Lodge of Perfection. The story of my father's meeting with Garibaldi was told by my father and by my brother at various Masonic meetings and the desire to preserve an accurate record of the incident is my reason for writing out the story that I heard many times from the lips of my father. In 1867 my father and mother made their first visit to Europe, and after travel in England, France and Switzerland had arrived in Florence, with the intention of continuing the journey to Rome. It was summer, and there was some talk of an epidemic of cholera in Rome although little was said about the scourge in the newspapers. If there were an actual epidemic of cholera in Rome it would be most imprudent for American travelers to visit the city, but how could one learn the truth? General Giuseppe Garibaldi, with his army of redshirted soldiers, was preparing his campaign for a united Italy, that achieved success in 1870, and his headquarters were established in Florence. General Garibaldi was at one time Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Italy. Wry father knew him to be a Mason, and had doubtless sat in a Lodge with him during one of his visits to America, so he decided to call on the General and ask his advice.
The idea of an American traveler making
a social call on the chief of a revolutionary army was ridiculed,
but this traveler felt that he had the benefit of a pass that
would gain him admission. He went to the General's headquarters
where there were about twenty men before him awaiting an audience.
On his card that he handed to the Orderly were these words:
Curtis Guild,
Boston, America 32
It was a surprise to the traveler as well as to the others when the Orderly returned from an inner room and said that the General would receive the American gentleman at once. The General spoke excellent English. "What can I do for you, Mr. Guild?" were his first words after greetings had been exchanged, and in answer to the inquiry about the cholera he said: "Don't go to Rome. The local government tries to keep the facts out of the papers, but there are a hundred new cases of cholera a day there, and there is a better reason why you should not go to Rome. Under pledge of Masonic secrecy I tell you that you might find it easier to get into Rome than to get out." My father thanked the General and could only say to his wife and friends that he had decided not to go to Rome. The following week the army of Garibaldi besieged Rome, and many American travelers in the city were shut up there and delayed so that they missed the steamers on which they had engaged rooms for the return journey to America. The pledge of secrecy was, of course, removed after the siege of Rome was begun, and my father used to enjoy telling the story when anybody asked, " What's the use of Masonry? "
In 1920 Miss Italia Anita Garibaldi, granddaughter of the General, visited America and delivered a number of lectures for the benefit of her family. Hearing her speak before a club in Boston, I was permitted after the lecture to tell to her and to the club my father's adventure. In connection with subsequent lectures it was a pleasure to me to be able to render service of some value to this daughter, granddaughter, and sister of Masons, in recognition of the favor to my parents fifty-three years before.
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GARINUS
Said in an old explanation of the Degree of Knights of the East and West to have been the Patriarch of Jerusalem, between whose hands the first Knights of that Order took, in 1182, their vows. It is a corruption, by the French ritualists, of Garimond or Gartmund, Patriarch of Jerusalem before whom the Hospitalers took their three vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty.
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GARTNERINNEN, ORDEN DER
Order of the Female Gardeners, an Italian political order whose members were women, founded in Naples, 1820. Its emblems were flowers. The Italian name was Ordine della Giardiniere.
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GASSICOURT, CADET DE
An apothecary of Paris, who, in the year 1796, published a work entitled Le Tounbeau de Jacques Molai, ou histoire secrete et abrade des initiés anciens et modernes (meaning, Sepulcher of Jacques Moray, or secret and abridged history of ancients and modern initiates). In this book, which embraced all the errors of Barruel and Robison, he made the same charges of atheism and conspiracy against the Fraternity, and loaded the Chevalier Ramsay with the most vehement indignation as a libertine and traitor. But De Gassicourt subsequently acknowledged his folly in writing against a Society of which he really knew nothing. In fact, in 1805, he solicited admission into the Order, and was initiated in the Lodge l'Abeille, at Paris, where, in the various offices of Orator and Master, which he filled, he taught and recommended that Institution which he had once abused; and even on a public occasion pronounced the eulogy of that Ramsay whom he had formerly anathematized.
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GASTON, JOHN
Grand Duke of Tuscany; in 1737 he inaugurated a persecution against the Freemasons in his dominions.
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GATES OF THE TEMPLE
In the system of Freemasonry, the Temple of Solomon is represented as having a gate on the east, west, and south sides, but none on the north. In reference to the historical Temple of Jerusalem, such a representation is wholly incorrect. In the walls of the building itself there were no places of entrance except the door of the porch, which gave admission to the house. But in the surrounding courts there were gates at every point of the compass. The Masonic idea of the Temple is, however, entirely symbolic. The Temple is to the Speculative Freemason only a symbol, not a historical building, and the gates are imaginary and symbolic also. They are, in the first place, symbols of the progress of the sun in his daily course, rising in the East, culminating to the meridian in the South, and setting in the West. They are also, in the allegory of life, which it is the object of the Third Degree to illustrate, symbols of the three stages of youth, manhood, and old age, or, more properly, of birth, life, and death.
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GAUDINI, THEOBALD DE
Known as the Monk Gaudini. Elected Grand Master of Templars, 1291; died 1301
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GAUGE
See Twenty-four-Inch Gave
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GAUNTLETS
Gloves formerly made of steel and worn by knights as a protection to their hands in battle. They have been adopted in the United States, as a part of the costume of a Knights Templar, under a regulation of the Grand Encampment, which directed them to be "of buff leather, the flap to extend four inches upwards from the wrist, and to have the appropriate cross embroidered in gold, on the proper colored velvet, two inches in length." As to uniforms of the Order, see The Habit of a Templar Knight, by Brother Ray V. Denslow for the Grand Commandery of Missouri, a valuable and stimulating report.
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GAVEL
The common gavel is one of the working tools of an Entered Apprentice. It is made use of by the Operative Mason to break off the corners of the rough ashlar, and thus fit it the better for the builder's use, and is therefore adopted as a symbol in Speculative Freemasonry, to admonish us of the duty of divesting our minds and consciences of all the vices and impurities of life, thereby fitting our bodies as living stones for that spiritual building not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. It borrows its name from its shape, being that of the gable or gavel end of a house; and this word again comes from the German gipfel, a summit, top, or peak the idea of a pointed extremity being common to all.
The true form of the gavel is that of the stonemasons hammer. It is to be made with a cutting edge, as in the engraving, that it may be used to break off the corners of rough stones, an operation which could never be effected by the common hammer or mallet. The gavel thus shaped will give, when looked at in front, the exact representation of the gavel or gable end of a house, whence, as has been already said, the name is derived.
The gavel of the Master is also called a Hiram, because, like that architect, it governs the Craft and keeps order in the Lodge, as he did in the Temple (see Hiram).
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GEBAL
A city of Phenicia, on the Mediterranean, and under Mount Lebanon. It was the Byblos of the Greeks, where the worship of Adonis, the Syrian Thammuz, was celebrated. The inhabitants, who were Giblites or, in Masonic language, Giblemites, are said to have been distinguished for the art of stone-carving and are called in the First Book of Kings (v, 18) stone-squarers (see Giblim).
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GEDALIAH
The second officer in a Council of Super-Excellent Masters represents Gedaliah the son of Pashur. A historical error has crept into the ritual of this degree in reference to the Gedaliah who is represented in it. Brother Mackey sought to elucidate the question in his work on Cryptic Masonry in the following manner:
There are five persons of the name of Gedaliah who are mentioned in Scripture but only two of them were contemporary with the destruction of the Temple.
Gedaliah the son of Pashur is mentioned by the Prophet Jeremiah (xxxviii, 1) as a prince of the court of Zedekiah. He was present at its destruction and is known to have been one of the advisers of the King. It novas through his counsels, and those of his colleagues, that Zedekiah was persuaded to deliver up the Prophet Jeremiah to death, from which he was rescued only by the intercession of a eunuch of the palace.
The other Gedaliah was the son of Ahikam. He seems to have been greatly in favor with Nebuchadnezzar, for after the destruction of Jerusalem, and the deportation of Zedekiah, he was appointed by the Chaldean monarch as his Satap or Governor over Judea. He took up his residence at Mizpah, where he was shortly afterward murdered by Ishmael, one of the descendants of the house of David.
The question now arises, which of these
two is the one referred to in the ceremonies of a Council of Super
Excellent Masters? I think there can be no doubt that the founders
of the Degree intended the second officer of the Council to represent
the former, and not the latter Gedaliah the son of Pashur, and
not Gedaliah the son of Ahikam; the Prince of Judah, and not the
Governor of Judea.
We are forced to this conclusion, continues Brother Mackey, by
various reasons. The Gedaliah represented in the Degree must have
been a resident of Jerusalem during the siege, and at the very
time of the assault, which immediately preceded the destruction
of the Temple and the city. Now, we know that Gedaliah the son
of Pashur was with Hezekiah as one of his advisers. On the other
hand, it is most likely that Gedaliah the son of Ahikam could
have been a resident of Jerusalem, for it is not at all probable
that Nebuchadnezzar would have selected such a one for the important
and confidential office of a Satrap or Governor. We should rather
suppose that Gedaliah the son of Ahikam had been carried away
to Babylon after one of the former sieges; that he had there,
like Daniel, gained by his good conduct the esteem and respect
of the Chaldean monarch; that he had come back to Judea with the
army; and that, on the taking of the city, he had been appointed
Governor by Nebuchadnezzar. Such being the facts, it is evident
that he could not have been in the Council of King Zedekiah, advising
and directing his attempted escape. The modern revivers of the
Degree of Super-Excellent Master have, therefore, been wrong in
supposing that Gedaliah the son of Ahikam, and afterward Governor
of Judea, was the person represented by the second officer of
the Council. He was Gedaliah the son of Pashur, a wicked man,
one of Zedekiah's princes, and was most probably put to death
by Nebuchadnezzar, with the other princes and nobles whom he captured
in the plains of Jericho.
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GEMARA
See Talmud
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GEMATRIA
Means in Hebrew to reckon by letters as well as numbers, a cabalistic method of interpreting the Scriptures by interchanging words whose letters have the same numerical value when added (see Numbers).
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GENERAL ASSEMBLY
See Assembly
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GENERAL GRAND CHAPTER
Until the year 1797, the Royal Arch Degree and the Degrees subsidiary to it were conferred in America, either in irresponsible Bodies calling themselves Chapters, but obedient to no superior authority, or in Lodges working under a Grand Lodge Warrant. On October 24, 1797, a Convention of Committees from three Chapters, namely, the Saint Andrew s Chapter of Boston, Temple Chapter of Albany, and Newburyport Chapter, was held at Boston, which recommended to the several Chapters within the States of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, and New York to hold 8 Convention at Hartford on the fourth Wednesday of January ensuing, to form a Grand Chapter for the said States.
Accordingly, on January 24, 1798, delegates from Saint Andrew's Chapter of Boston, Massachusetts; King Cyrus Chapter of Newburyport, Massachusetts; Providence Chapter of Providence, Rhode Island; Solomon Chapter of Derby, Connecticut; Franklin Chapter of Norwich, Connecticut, and Hudson Chapter of Hudson, New York; to which were the next day added Temple Chapter of Albany, New York, and Horeb Chapter of Whitestown, New York, assembled at Hartford in Convention and, having adopted a Constitution organized a governing Body which they styled The Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the. Northern States of America. This Body assumed in its Constitution jurisdiction over only the States of New England and New York, and provided that Deputy Grand Chapters, subject to its obedience, should be organized in those States. Ephraim Kirby, of Litchfield, Connecticut, was elected Grand High Priest; and it was ordered that the first meeting of the Grand Chapter should be held at Middletown, Connecticut, on the third Wednesday of September next ensuing.
On that day the Grand Chapter met, but the Grand Secretary and Grand chaplain were the only Grand Officers present. The Grand King was represented by a proxy. The Grand Chapter, however, proceeded to an election of Grand Officers, and the old officers were elected. The Body then adjourned to meet in January, 1799, at Providence, Rhode Island.
On January 9, 1799, the Grand Chapter met at Providence, the Deputy Grand Chapters of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New York being represented. At this meeting, the Constitution was very considerably modified, and the Grand Chapter assumed the title of The General Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons for the six Northern States enumerated in the preamble. The meetings were directed to be held septennial; and the Deputy Grand Chapters were in future to be called State Grand Chapters. No attempt was, however, made in words to extend the jurisdiction of the General Grand Chapter beyond the States already named. On January 9, 1806, a meeting of the General Grand Royal Arch Chapter was held at Middletown, representatives being present from the States of Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, and New York. The Constitution was again revised. The title was for the first time assumed of The General Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons for the United States of America, and jurisdiction was extended over the whole country. This year may, therefore, be considered as the true date of the establishment of the General Grand Chapter.
In 1826 the sentential meetings were abolished, and the General Grand Chapter has ever since met triennially. The General Grand Chapter consists of the present and past Grand High Priests, Deputy Grand High Priests, Grand Kings and Scribes of the State Grand Chapters, and the Past General Grand Officers. The officers are a General Grand High Priest, Deputy General Grand High Priest, General Grand King, General Grand Scribe, General Grand Treasurer, General Grand Secretary, General Grand Chaplain, General Grand Captain of the Host, and General Grand Royal Arch Captain. It originally possessed large prerogatives, extending even to the suspension of Grand Chapters; but by its present organization it has "no power of discipline, admonition, censure, or instruction over the Grand Chapters, nor any legislative powers whatever not specially granted" by its Constitution. It may, indeed, be considered as scarcely more than a great Masonic Congress meeting every three years for consultation. But even with these restricted powers, it is capable of doing much good.
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GENERAL GRAND HIGH PRIEST
The presiding officer of the General Grand Chapter of the United States of America. He is elected every third year by the General Grand Chapter. The title was first assumed in 1799, although the General Grand Chapter did not at that time extend its jurisdiction beyond six of the Northern States.
*
GENERALISSIMO
The second officer in a Commandery of Knights Templar, and one of its representatives in the Grand Commandery. His duty is to receive and communicate all orders, signs, and petitions; to assist the Eminent Commander, and, in his absence, to preside over the Commandery. His station is on the right of the Eminent Commander, and his jewel is a square, surmounted by a paschal lamb. The use of the title in Templarism is of very recent origin, and peculiar to America. No such officer was known in the old Order. It is, besides, inappropriate to a subordinate officer, being derived from the French géneralissime, and that from the Italian generalissimo, both signifying a Supreme Commander. Strictly speaking, it has the same meaning in English.
*
GENEROUS FREEMASON
The first Masonic opera, the libretto written by Brother William Rufus Chetwood, prompter at Drury Lane Theater, London, for eighteen years, beginning 1722. Sixty-one years before Brother Mozart composed his Masonic opera known as The Manic Flude, Brother Chetwood's work was first performed in public. The following advertisement appeared in the Daily Post, August 20, 1730:
At Oates and Fielding's Great Theatrical Booth at the George Inn Yard in Smithfield, during the time of Bartholomew Fair, will be presented an entire new opera called The Generous Freemason, or the Constant Lady, with the comical humors of Squire Noodle and his man Doodle by Persons from both Theaters. The part of the King of Tunis by Mr. Bareoek, Mirza Mr. Paget; Sebastian, Mr. Oates; Clermont, Mr. Fielding; Sir Jasper, Mr. Burnett; Squire Noodle, Mr. Berry Doodle, Mr. Smith; Davy, Mr. Excell; Captain, Mr. Brogden; the Queen, Nirs. Kilby; Maria, Miss Oates; Celia, Mrs. Grace- Jacinta, Miss Williams- Jenny, the chambermaid, Mrs. Stevens; Lettiee, Mrs. Roberts. All characters newly dressed. With several entertainments of dancing by Monsieur de St. Luee, Mlle. de Lorme, and others, particularly the Wooden Shoe Dance, the Pierrot and Pierrette, and the Dance of the Black Joke. Beginning every day at 2 o'clock.
The two theaters mentioned were Drury Lane and Covent Garden The opera was billed as "a tragicomi-farcical ballad opera" and published by "J. Roberts in Warwick Lane, and sold by the Booksellers of London and Westminster," the third page bearing the following dedication: To the Right Worshipful the Grand Master, Deputy Grand Master, Grand Wardens, and the rest of the Brethren of the Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons, this opera is humbly inscribed by Your most obedient and devoted Servant, The Author, a Free-Mason. The two leading characters in the play are Maria, an English lady, and Sebastian, an English gentleman, who are secretly engaged to each other. When it is proposed that she marry someone else, Maria agrees to elope with Sebastian to Spain where he has a wealthy uncle. Sebastian expresses his regret at leaving England in these words:
But yet one pang I feel thro' all my joy,
That from my noble Brethren I must part;
Those men whose lustre spreads from Pole to Pole
Possessing every virtue of the Soul.
But yet all climes the Brotherhood adorn,
As smiling Phoebus gilds the rosie morn!
Let I,ove and Friendship then our cares confound,
And halcyon days be one eternal round.
During the journey to Spain their vessel is chased by a ship commanded by "the bravest Moor that ploughs the sea," the High Admiral of King Amuranth of Tunis known as Mirza. The captain of the lovers' ship thinks it advisable to surrender but is prevented by Sebastian who declares: "We will for battle instantly prepare: a Briton and a Mason cannot fear." Their brave action is however, all in vain and they are captured, thrown into prison and condemned to die. King Amuranth in the meantime has taken a fanny to Maria and his wife, Queen Zelmana, conceives a like affection for Sebastian. The death sentence is therefore delayed, giving Sebastian an opportunity to give the Masonic signal of distress to Mirza who recognizes him as a Brother and releases the two prisoners, saying to Sebastian: "Come to my arms, thou unexpected Joy, and find in me a Brother and a friend." Mirza accompanies the lovers on a vessel bound for England and Sebastian expresses his Brotherly affection to which Mirza, the generous Freemason replies: v What I have done was in firm Virtue's cause, Thou art my Brother by the strictest laws; A chain unseen fast binds thee to my heart A tie that never can from Virtue part.
After this, "Neptune rises to a symphony of soft musick, attended by Tritons," and the play closes with a song from him praising Freemasonry. The opera was revived at the Haymarket Theater in 1731 and Brother Chetwood, 1733, at the theater in Goodman's Fields rearranged it and produced it in the form of a one-act operetta, entitled The Mock Mason, retaining only the comic phases of the original play. In 1741 The Generous Freemason, in original form, was again given with great popularity. The music for the opera was supplied by three composers, the musical score having been written by Henry Carey known as the author and composer of Sally in our Alley. Richard Charke, a violinist and member of the Drury Lane Theater company, and John Sheeles, a famous teacher of the harpsichord, were the other two responsible for the Iyrics in the opera. Two copies of the opera are at present in the possession of the British Museum and these give the airs of some of the songs without accompaniment, which was the usual method at that time. We are indebted to Brother Richard Northcott, Fellow of the Roval Philharmonic Society, England, for the details given here.
*
GENTLEMAN MASON
In some of the old lectures of the eighteenth
century this title is used as equivalent to Speculative Freemason.
Thus they had the following catechism:
What do you learn by being a Gentleman Mason?
Secrecy, Morality, and Good-Fellowship.
What do you learn by being an Operative Mason?
Hew, Square, Mould stone, lay a Level, and raise a Perpendicular.
Hence we see that Gentleman Mason was in contrast with Operative
Mason.
*
GENUFLECTION
Bending the knees has, in all ages of the world, been considered as an act of reverence and humility, and hence Pliny, the Roman naturalist, observes, that "a certain degree of religious reverence is attributed to the knees of a man." Solomon placed himself in this position when he prayed at the consecration of the Temple; and Freemasons use the same posture in some portions of their ceremonies. as a token of solemn reverence. In Ancient Craft Masonry, during prayer, it is the custom for the members to stand, but in the advanced Degrees, kneeling, and generally on one knee, is the more usual form.
*
GEOMATIC
See Domatic
*
GEOMETRICAL MASTER MASON
A term in use in England during the eighteenth and early in the following century. By the primitive regulations of the Grand Chapter, an applicant for the Royal Arch Degree was required to produce a certificate that he was "a Geometrical Master Maeon," and had Paseed the Chair. The word Geometrical was, in Doctor Mackey's opinion, thus synonymous with Speculative. Later researches proved that there was actually a Degree of this name. Brother George W. Speth in 1899 (Transactions, Quatour Coronati Lodge, volume xii, page 205) mentions the ritual of the Most Excellent Order of Geometrical Master Masons as being about 1819 to 1820 but that the Degree is probably much older. He says there are nine Lectures. Much of the ritual is in very rough verse, archaic, containing allusions to matters which were in use early in the eighteenth century, such as the broached thurnell, which had disappeared from Craft Masonry long before the nineteenth century. On the other hand, much of it will be recognized by members of so-called Higher Degrees as at present in use. The Degree was given apparently after the Three Craft Degrees but is unconnected with the Royal Arch. It was conferred in a Chapter, not in a Lodge, and is Christian throughout. Both Doctor Mackey and Brother Woodford give the name Geometrical Master Masons in the Encyclopedias for which they are responsible, but neither seems to have realized that it represented an actual Degree.
*
GEOMETRIC POINTS
In the language of French Freemasonry, this name is given to the four cardinal points of the compass, because they must agree with the four sides of a regular Temple or Lodge. They form a symbol of regularity and perfection.
*
GEOMETRY
In the modern instructions, geometry is said to be the basis on which the super6trueture of Freemasonry is erected; and in the Old Constitutions of the Medieval Freemasons of England the most prominent place of all the sciences is given to geometry, which is made synonymous with Freemasonry. Thus, in the Regius Manuscript, which dates not later than the latter part of the fourteenth century. the Constitutions of Freemasonry are called "the Constitutions of the art of geometry according to Euclid," the words geometry and Masonry being used indifferently throughout the document; and in.
In the Harlefan Manuscript, No. 2054, it is said, "thus the craft Geometry was governed there, and that worthy Master (Euclid) gave it the name of Geometry, and it is called Mosonne in this land long after." In another part of the same manuscript, it is thus defined: "The fifth science is called Geometry, and it teaches a man to mete and measure of the earth and other things, which science is Masonry."
The Egyptians were undoubtedly among the first who cultivated geometry as a science. "It was not less useful and necessary to them," as Goguet observes (Origine des Lois, Origin of the Laws, I, iv, 4), "in the affairs of life, than agreeable to their speculatively philosophical genius." From Egypt, which was the parent both of the sciences and the mysteries of the Pagan world, it passed over into other countries; and geometry and Operative Masonry have ever been found together, the latter carrying into execution those designs which were first traced according to the principles of the former.
Speculative Freemasonry is, in like manner, intimately connected with geometry. In deference to our operative ancestors, and, in fact, as a necessary result of our close connection with them, Speculative Freemasonry derives its most important symbols from this parent science. Hence it is not strange that Euclid, the most famous of geometricians, should be spoken of in all the Old Records as a founder of Freemasonry in Egypt, and that a special legend should have been invented in honor of his memory.
*
GEORGE IV
Born 1762; died 1830. King of Great Britain. February 6, 1787, in a Special Lodge, the Duke of Cumberland, Grand Master, made George IV, then Prince of Wales, a Freemason. The Duke of Cumberland died in 1790 and the Prince of Wales was elected Grand Master on November 24. Lord Moira became Pro Grand Master. In 1805 George was elected Grand Master of Scotland. He became King in 1811 and the Duke of Sussex was elected Grand Master of England, the King taking the title of Patron.
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GEORGIA
Major-General James Edward Oglethorp, founder of the Colony of Georgia on February 12, 1733, also founded on February 10, 1734, the Masonic Lodge now known as Solomon's Lodge No. 1, at Savannah, the name being so attached in 1776. To Past Master William B. Clarke's Early and Historic Freemasonry of Georgia we are indebted for definite light upon the old traditions of the Craft. The present Charter of this old Lodge, granted by the Grand Lodge of Georgia in 1786, states that Roger Lacey was granted a Warrant as the first Provincial Grand Master of Georgia in 1735 by Viscount Weymouth, Grand Master of England. Unity Lodge was constituted in 1774, and Grenadier's Lodge in 1775. During these years and up to 1786 a Provincial Grand Lodge existed and in the revolutionary period acted independently, formal reconstruction being made on December 21, 1786, when the permanent appointments under England were abolished and annual elections adopted. Major-General Samuel Elbert resigned the chair and William Stephens was elected Grand Master with other officers for 1787.
Solomon's Lodge at Savannah possesses an apron worn by Worshipful Master Benjamin Sheftall in 1758. The flap bears the emblem of the Royal Arch Degree and this suggests that at that time this ceremony was conferred in the Lodge where the Master himself was initiated. Georgia Chapter of Savannah worked under a Dispensation from the General Grand Chapter, December 1, 1802, and a Warrant was granted, January 9,1806. Union Chapter at Louisville received a Charter, from the General Grand Chapter, June 6, 1816; Augusta Chapter, December 6, 1818; Mechanics Chapter at Lexington, June 10, 1820; Webb Chapter at Sparta, November 16, 1921. A Grand Chapter was organized on February 4, 1822.
The first document mentioning the Degree of Select Masons in Georgia was a Diploma from Brother Cohen in possession of Brother Jacobs. In May, 1792, the latter was in Savannah and was invited to go to Augusta and confer the Degrees. The first Council, Adoniram Council, No. 1, of Augusta, was probably organized by Companion Webb or Companion Cross. On May 2, 1826, this Council took part in constituting the Grand Council of Georgia. Savannah Council, No. 2; Eureka Council, No. 3; Georgia Council, No. 4, and Hancock Council were also represented at the meeting. Soon after May 7, 1827, however, the activities of this Grand Council ceased for nearly fifteen years. On June 22, 1841, delegates from three Councils met at Augusta and again organized the Grand Council of Georgia.
Georgia Encampment, No. 1, at Augusta received a Dispensation dated 1823, and was chartered on May 5. Three other Commanderies, namely Saint Omar, No. 2, Saint Aldemar, and Coeur de Lion, were chartered before the Grand Commandery was organized on April 25, 1860. The year 1888 saw the establishment of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, at Savannah when Alpha, No. 1, a Lodge of Perfection, was granted a Charter on October 17. On the following day Temple, No. 1, a Chapter of Rose Croix, was chartered and on October 23, two years later, a Council of Kadosh, Gethsemane, No. 1, and a Consistory, Richard Joseph Nunn, No. 1, were also granted Charters.
*
GERBIER, DOCTOR
An energetic Freemason, and, as mentioned in the Royal Masonic Cyclopedia, one of the removable Masters of the ancient Grand Lodge of France. He is said to have fabricated the title of the Metropolitan Chapter of France, which it was pretended had emanated from Edinburgh, in 1721.
*
GERMAN FREEMASONS, UNION OF
See Herein deutscher Freimaurer
*
GERMAN RITUAL
The principal systems of ritual or wodung
in Germany are:
1. The old English as remodeled by Schroeder and used by the Grand
Lodge of Hamburg, most of the Lodges under the Grand Lodge of
Saxony and all of the Hanoverian Lodges which belong to the Grand
Lodge Royal York, and the Five Independent Lodges.
2. Rectified Strict Observance, or Scottish, by the Three Globes,
Berlin. The Ritual of the Saint John's Lodge is, we understand,
that of Fessler, as revised by Zoellner
3. Swedish, by the Grand National Lodge, Berlin.
4. Fesslerts, differing slightly from that of Schroeder. The Grand
Lodge of the-*Sun, at Bayreuth, and the Grand Lodge Royal York
use this ritual. Great freedom is accorded the daughters of the
Grand Lodge of the Sun, the only requirement being that once each
year they are to work according to a common Ritual
5. Modern English Eclectic, in the Grand Lodge of Frankfort and
Darmstadt. The Ritual is reported to be Sightly mixed with other
ceremonies under the latter Grand Lodge.
The most complicated of all of these forms of working is the Swedish system, see No. 3 above. No. 1 or the Schroeder system is the simplest. The entire apparatus of the ceremonies just as gone through in ancient times is displayed at the initiations in the Swedish Ritual—that is, terrors, threats, and so forth. However, in Fessler's system these likenesses gradually disappear just as they do in the Grand Lodge, Kaiser Frederick, where they are only inferred indirectly in the declared historical reminiscences. The work in England appertaining to portions of the First and Second Degrees has been transposed in Germany so that an Entered Apprentice from America or England if visiting in Germany would not be able to work his way into the Lodge in the First Degree.
*
GERMAN SOUTHWEST AFRICA
Three German Lodges exist here, at Lüderitzbucht, Swakopmund and Windhuk, the Kaiser Friedrich III Lodge from 1910, Zur Hoffnung Lodge from 1908, and the Kranzchen zur Kreuz des Sudens, 1909. Following the World War this German colonial possession became subject to the British Empire as the Protectorate of Southwest Africa.
*
GERMAN UNION OF TWO AND TWENTY
A secret society founded in Germany, in
1786, by Doctor Bahrdt, whose only connection with Freemasonry
was that Bahrdt and the twenty-one others who founded it were
Freemasons, and that they invited to their co-operation the most
distinguished Freemasons of Germany. The founder professed that
the object of the association was to diffuse intellectual light,
to annihilate superstition, and to perfect the human race. Its
instruction was divided into six Degrees, as follows:
1. The Adolescent
2. The Man
3. The Old Man
4. The Mesopolite
5. The Diocesan
6. The Superior
The first three Degrees were considered a preparatory school for the last three, out of which the rules of the society were chosen. It lasted only four years, and was dissolved by the imprisonment of its founder for a political libel, most of its members joining the Illuminati. The publication of a work in 1789 entitled Mehr Noten als Text, etc., meaning More Notes than Text, or The German Union of XXII, which divulged its secret organization, tended to hasten its dissolution (see Bahrdt).
*
GERMANY
Of all countries Germany plays the most important part in the history of ancient Freemasonry, eince it was there that the gilds of Operative Stone-Masons first assumed that definite organization which subsequently led to the establishment of Speculative Freemasonry. But it was not until a later date that the latter institution obtained a footing on German soil. Findel in his History (page 238) says that as early as 1730 temporary Lodges, occupied only in the communication of Masonic knowledge and in the study of the ritual, were formed at different points. But the first regular Lodge was established at Hamburg, in 1733, under a Warrant of Lord Strathmore, Grand Master of England; which did not, however, come into active operation until four years later. Its progress was at first slow; and nowhere is Freemasonry now more popular or more deserving of popularity. Its scholars have brought to the study of its antiquities and its philosophy all the laborious research that distinguishes the Teutonic mind, and the most learned works on these subjects have emanated from the German press. The detailed history of its progress would involve the necessity of no ordinary volume (see Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry published by the Masonic History Company, Chicago, pages 746-94, and 2242-53, also references in this work to Masonic leaders and society of Germany).
William Preston's Illustrations of Masonry state that in 1733 the Earl of Strathmore warranted a Lodge at Hamburg. It has been said also that Doctor Jaenisch was appointed Provincial Grand Master between 1718 and 1720, but there is no record, either of his name or of the Lodge at Hamburg, in the Minutes of the Grand Lodge. In 1741 a Lodge was established at Leipzig by seven Brethren who had held informal meetings during the five previous years.
Brother H. W. Marschall had been appointed Provincial Grand Master of Upper Saxony in 1737, and thereafter many other Provincial Grand Lodges were opened.
In August, 1738, although the King was opposed to Freemasonry, the Crown Prince Frederick was secretly initiated at Brunswick, August 15,1736, and always afterwards ardently supported the Fraternity.
A curious feature of the growth of the Craft in Germany is the number of independent Masonic Bodies which, with or without special authority, exercise control over other Lodges. There are also several independent Lodges in existence. The first of these Grand Lodges was probably the Zu den drei Weltkugeln (Three Globes) Lodge, opened at Berlin by the command of Frederick, who afterwards assumed the position of Grand Master as often as his military duties permitted. Of these bodies there has been a marked tendency in the more modern times to confine the ritual to the exemplification of the first three Degrees. But the earlier records show that other ceremonies were practiced. A Lodge, Three Doves, instituted in 1760, by a Warrant from the "Three Globes," also of Berlin, is recorded that in 1763 other Degrees were employed, including some if not all of the following: Elect of Nine, Elect of Fifteen, Elect of Perpigan, Red Scots Degree, Saint Andrew's Scot, Knight of the East, Knight of the Eagle or Prince Sovereign Rose Croix, a Supreme Council being formed of members of this last Degree to govern the others. This use of the supplementary grades at so early a period is in marked contrast with the later conditions when they were in Germany less favorably pursued.
Students will not overlook the building of the old cathedrals in Germany, especially those of Cologne and Strasburg, and the associations of the Craftsmen that grew with these stately structures, fraternities whose exploits and government are described in Doctor Mackey's History of Freemasonry. Their rules have a peculiar resemblance to our modern regulations. Mention must also be made here of the Verein deutscher Freimaurer, Association of Gerrrzan Freest massns founded on May 19, 1861, at Potsdam with the object of laboring for the development of Masonic ideals and for promoting their advancement, to respond to the requirements of Masonic science, to cultivate Masonic endeavor, to encourage fraternal relief in Lodges, and the exercise of discreet charity. The Association publishes a periodical, Zwanglosen Mitteilungen, every other month, holds yearly conventions of the membership, and also prints various pamphlets and books of value to Freemasons everywhere. The headquarters are at Leipzig.
Among various interesting enterprises is that of the Grand Lodge of the Sun, Zur Sonne, for facilitating the exchange from one Masonic family to another of young people, say from eleven to twenty years of age, principally during the holiday months of the year or at other times as may be desired. These youngsters were preferably to be placed in surroundings corresponding to those of their own homes.
*
GHEMOUL BINAH THEBOUNAH
Hebrew, meaning, as usually explained, Prudence in the midst of vicissitude. The Hebrew characters are: ..The name of the seventh step of the mystical Kadosh Ladder of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
*
GHIBLlM
The form in which Doctor Anderson spells Giblim. In the Book of Constitutions, 1738 (page 70) it is stated that in 1350 "John de Spoulce, called Master of the Ghiblim," rebuilt Saint George's chapel.
*
GIBALIM
A Masonic corruption of Giblim, the Giblites, or men of Gebal (see Giblim).
*
GIBBON, EDWARD
English historian, author of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Made a Freemason in Friendship Lodge No. 6, London, in March, 172'5, Born April 27, 1737; died 1794 (see New Age Magazine, March 1925).
*
GIBEAH
A Hebrew word signifying a hill, and giving name to several towns and places in ancient Palestine. The only one requiring special mention is Gibeah of Benjamin, a small city about four miles north of Jerusalem.
It was the residence, if not the birthplace, of King Saul. In the French Rite the word symbolically refers to the Master, who must be pure in heart, that the High and Holy One may dwell therein.The word is also used in the Swedish Rite.
*
GIBLIM
Hebrew, oh. A significant word in Freemasonry.
It is the plural of the noun Gibli, the g pronounced hard, and means, according to the idiom of the Hebrew, Giblites, or inhabitants of the city of Gebal.
The Giblim, or Giblites, are mentioned in Scripture as assisting Solomon's and Hiram's builders to prepare the trees and the stones for building the Temple, and from this passage it is evident that they were clever artificers.
The passage is in First Kings (v, 18) and, in our common version, is as follows: "And Solomon's builders and Hiram' s builders did hew them, and the stone-squarers; so they prepared timber and stones to build the house," where the word translated in the authorized version by stone-squarers is, in the original, Gblim.
It is so also in that translation known
as the Bishop's Bible. The Geneva version has Masons.
The French version of Martin has tailleurs de pierres following
the English meaning; but Luther, in his German version retains
the original word Giblim (see Ghiblim).
It is probable that the English translation
followed the Jewish Targum, which has a word of similar import
in this passage. The error has, however, assumed importance in
the Masonic instructions, where Giblim is supposed to be synonymous
with a Freemason. And Sir Wm.
Drummond confirms this by saying in his origins (volume iii, book
v, chapter iv, page 129) that " the Gibalim were Master Masons
who put the finishing hand to King Solomon's Temple (see Gebal).
*
GILDS
The word gild, guild, or geld, from the Saxon gildan, to pay, originally meant a tax or tribute, and hence those fraternities which, in the early ages, contributed sums to a common stock, were called Gilds. Cowell, the old English jurist, defines a Gild to be "a fraternity or commonalty of men gathered together into one combination, supporting their common charge by mutual contributions. " Societies of this kind, but not under the same name, were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and their artificers and traders were formed into distinct companies which occupied particular streets named after them. But according to Dr. Lujo Brentano, who published, in 1870, an essay on The History and Development of Gilds, England is the birthplace of the Medieval Gilds from whom he says that the modern Freemasons emerged. They existed, however, in every country of Europe, and we identify them in the Compagnons de la Tour of France, and the Baucorporationen of Germany.
The difference, however, was that while they were patronized by the municipal authorities in England, they were discouraged by both the Church and State on the Continent.
The Gilds in England were of three kinds, Religious Gilds, Merchant Gilds, and Craft Gilds, specimens of all of which still exist, although greatly modified in their laws and usages. The Religious or Ecclesiastical Gilds are principally found in Roman Catholic countries, where, under the patronage of the Church, they often accomplish much good by the direction of their benevolence to particular purposes. Merchant Gilds are exemplified in the twelve great Livery Companies of London. And the modern Trades Unions are nothing else but Craft Gilds under another name. But the most interesting point in the history of the Craft Gilds is the fact that from them arose the Brotherhoods of the Freemasons.
Brentano gives the following almost exhaustive account of the organization and customs of the Craft Gilds: The Craft Gilds themselves first sprang up amongst the free craftsmen, when they were excluded from the fraternities which had taken the place of the family unions, and later among the bondmen, when they ceased to belong to the Namibia of their lord. Like those Frith Gilds, the object of the early Craft Gilds was to create relations as if among brothers; and above all things, to grant to their members that assistance which the member of a family might expect from that family. As men's wants had become different, this assistance no longer concerned the protection of life, limbs, and property, for this was provided for by the Frith Gilds now recognized as the legitimate authority; but the principal object of the Craft Gilds was to secure their members in the independent, unimpaired, and regular earning of their daily bread by means of their craft.
The very soul of the Craft Gild was its meetings, which brought all the Gild brothers together every week or quarter. These meetings were always held with certain ceremonies, for the sake of greater solemnity. The box having several locks like that of the Trade Unions, and containing the charters of the Gild, the statutes, the money, and other valuable articles, was opened on such occasions, and all present had to uncover their heads. These meetings possessed all the rights which they themselves had not chosen to delegate. They elected the presidents, originally called Aldermen, afterwards Masters and Wardens, and other officials, except in those eases already mentioned in which the Master was appointed by the King, the Bishop, or the authorities of the town.
As a rule, the Gilds were free to choose their Masters, either from their own members, or from men of higher rank though they were sometimes limited in their choice to the former.
The Wardens summoned and presided at the meetings, with their consent enacted ordinances for the regulation of the trade, saw these ordinances properly executed, and watched over the maintenance of the customs of the Craft. They had the right to examine all manufactures and a right of search for all unlawful tools and products. They formed, with the assistance of a quorum of Gild brothers, the highest authority in all the concerns of the Gild. No Gild member could be arraigned about trade matters before any other judge. We have still numerous documentary proofs of the severity and justice with which the Wardens exercised their judicial duties. Whenever they held a court, it was under special forms and solemnities; thus, for instance, in 1275 the chief Warden of the masons building Strasburg cathedral held a court sitting under a canopy.
Besides being brotherhoods for the care of the temporal welfare of their members, the Craft Gilds were, like the rest of the Gilds, at the same time religious fraternities. In the account of the origin of the Company of Grocers, it is mentioned that at the very first meeting they fixed a stipend for the priest, who had to conduct their religious services and pray for their dead. In this respect the Craft Gilds of all countries are alike; and in reading their statutes, one might fancy sometimes that the old craftsmen eared only for the well-being of their souls. All had particular saints for patrons, after whom the society was frequently called- and, where it was possible, they chose one who had some relation to their trade. They founded masses, altars, and painted windows in cathedrals; and even at the present day their coats of arms and their gifts range proudly by the side of those of kings and barons. Sometimes individual Craft Gilds appear to have stood in special relation to a particular church, by virtue of which they had to perform special services, and received in return a special share in all the prayers of the clergy of that church. In later times, the Craft Gilds frequently went in solemn procession to their churches.
Be find innumerable ordinances also as to the support of the sick and poor- and to afford a settled asylum for distress, the London Companies early built dwellings near their halls. The chief care, however, of the Golden was always directed to the welfare of the souls of the dead. Every year a requiem was sung for all departed Gild brothers, when they were all mentioned by name; and on the death of any member, special services were held for his soul, and distribution of alms was made to the poor, who, in return, had to offer up prayers for the dead, as is still the custom in Roman Catholic countries.
In a History of the English Guilds, edited by Toulon Smith from old documents in the Record Office at London, and published by the Early English Text Society, we find many facts confirmatory of those given by Brentano, as to the organization of these Gilds.
The testimony of these old records shows that a religious element pervaded the Gilds, and exercised a very powerful influence over them. Women were admitted to all of them, which Herbert (Livery Companies v, 83), thinks was borrowed from the Ecclesiastical Gilds of Southern Europe; and the Brethren and Sisters were on terms of complete equality There were fees on entrance, yearly and special payments, and fines for wax for lights to burn at the altar or in funeral rites. The Gilds had set days of meeting, known as morning speeches, or days of spekynggess totiedare for here commune profit, and a grand festival on the patron saint's day, when the members assembled for worship, almsgiving, feasting, and for nourishing of brotherly love. Mystery plays were often performed.
They had a treasure-chest, the opening of which was a sign that business had begun. While it remained open all stood with uncovered heads, when cursing and swearing and all loose conduct were severely punished. The Gild property consisted of land, cattle, money, etc. The expenditure was on the sick, poor and aged, in making good losses by robbery, etc. Loans were advanced, pilgrims assisted, and, in one city, "any good girl of the Gild" was to have a dowry on marriage, if her father could not provide it.
Poor travelers were lodged and fed. Roads
were kept in repair, and churches were Unstained and beautified.
They wore a particular costume, which was enforced by their statutes,
whence come the liveries of the London Companies of the present
day and the clothing of the Freemasons.
An investigation of the usage's of these Medieval Gilds, and a
comparison of their regulations with the old Masonic Constitutions,
will furnish a fertile source of interest to the Masonic archeologist,
and will throw much light on the early history of Freemasonry
(see Gilds, Encyclopedia Britannic, also the Hole Craft and Fellowship
of Masonry, Edward Conder Jr.. and the Liber Albus, the White
Book of the City of London, compiled in 1419 A.D., and reprinted
in 1861).
As showing the spirit of the old Brethren we give here the pledge or oath of the Masters and Wardens of the Crafts or Mysteries, as then they were called, from page 451 of the Liber Albus, presumably the one ape proved by law in the reign of Henry IV of England but probably in use even before that time, 1367-1413: You shall swear, that well and lawfully you shall over look the Art or Mystery of which you are Masters, or Wardens, for the year elected. And the good rules and ordinances of the same Mystery, approved here by the Court, you shall keep and shall cause to be kept.
And all the defaults that you shall find therein, done contrary thereto, you shall present unto the Chamberlain of the City, from time to time, sparing no one for favor, and aggrieving no one for hate. Extortion or wrong unto no one, by color of your office, you shall do- nor unto anything that shall be against the estate and peace of the King, or of the City, you shall consent. But for the time that you shall be in office, in all things pertaining unto the said Mystery, according to the good laws and franchises of the said city, well and lawfully you shall behave yourself. So God you help, and the Saints.
*
GILEAD
See Galahad
*
GILGUL, DOCTRINE OF
We learn from Brother Kenneth R. H. Mackenzie's Royal Masonic Cyclopoedia that Certain of the learned Jews have believed, for man centuries, in the doctrine of Gilgul, according to which the bodies of Jews deposited in foreign tombs contain within them a principle of soul which cannot rest until by a process called by them "the whirling of the soul.' the immortal particle reaches once more the sacred soil of the Promised Land. This whirling of souls was supposed to be accomplished by a process somewhat similar to that of the metempsychoses of the Hindus, the psychical spark being conveyed through bird, beast, or fish, and sometimes, the most minute insect. The famous Rabbi Akiba, followed by the Rabbis Judah and Meir, declared that none could come to the resurrection save those of the Jews who were buried in the Holy Land, or whose remains were, in the process of ages, gradually brought thither. In Picart's wonderful and laborious work there are many references to this doctrine. The learned may consult further authorities on this curious subject in the Cabana Denudata (or Uncovered), of Heinrich Khunrath, 1677.
*
GILKES. PETER WILLIAM
Surname spelled in some old Masonic records as Jilks and so pronounced. An English Freemason who devoted practically his entire life to the dissemination of knowledge retarding the ceremonies of the Craft and the teaching of the ritual of the Grand Lodge of England, acknowledged by all as an authority on Masonic regulations. Born in London, May 1, 1765, and died on December 11, 1833. Initiated at the age of twenty-one in British Lodge, No. 4, now No. 8, in 1786 This record is not in accord with the Grand Lodge Register which gives the year as 1794 but the general choice is for 1786 (see Peter Gilkes, by Brother A. F. Calvert, 1916, pare 4). Little is known of the early history of Brother Gilkes except that he carried on, after the death of his father, a small retail establishment near Carnaby Market and Great Marlborough Street, London. In Dixon's History of Freemasonry in Lincolnshire we note that in August, 1820, in recognition of the "very polite manner in which he has always shown himself towards this Lodge in giving to the Brethren the instruction in Masonry as laid down by the United Lodge of Promulgation," a vote of thanks was passed to "Brother P. Jilks, Greengrozer, Carnaby Market, London." It is certain that Brother Gilkes did not pursue this long after the death of his mother but, "Finding himself independent and being of an unambitious nature, he determined to retire from business and devote himself to pursuits more genial to his disposition.
His accounts were soon closed, he engaged a single room which he furnished plainly, and arranged with Hannah, an old faithful servant of his late mother to attend to his apartment and prepare the frugal meals," he remaining a bachelor his entire life.
Brother Gilkes maintained and taught daily a class of Freemasons without making any charge for his service. The Freemasons Quarterly Renew, of 1834, said: "Although universally held in esteem amongst Masons his conduct was always characterized by good sense; he never aspired beyond his station in life, and declined the honor of an office in the Grand Lodge because he considered that his circumstances in life were not equal to the appointment." An entertaining old book by Dr. George Oliver is entitled The Discrepancies of Freemasonry examined during a week's gossip with the late celebrated Brother Gilkes and other eminent Masons. Page 32 tells of questions of Masonic importance discussed by Brothers Oliver and Gilkes in 1825 and the book shows clearly the high esteem in which the latter was held for his thorough knowledge of the Craft. Peter Gilkes attended and was prominent from the first meeting when the Emulation Lodge of Improvement for Master Masons was founded on October 2, 1823. This group believed in the regulation of all ceremonial by Grand Lodge and also desired that United Grand Lodge should extend its control to the three Lectures explaining the ceremonies.
The form of government they adopted was to enable Emulation Lodge "to hand down the Ceremonies and Lectures unaltered and unchanged from generation to generation." After frequent visits to this Lodge, Peter Gilkes became a joining member and leader of its Committee in May, 1825. This Lodge "differed from all other Lodges of Instruction in being designed for Master Masons only and therefore gave as much attention to the Third and Second as it gave to the First Ceremony, preference being given to the Third.
"An account of Brother Giles activities in various Masonic Lodges would fill many paged Briefly, he was a member of British Lodge, where he was initiated, Royal York Lodge of Perseverance, Lodge of Hope, Globe Lodge, Lodge of Unity, Cadogan Lodge, Old Concord Lodge, Saint James' Union Lodge, Lodge of Good Intent, Saint Michael's Lodge, Hope and Unity Lodge, and Lodge of Unions. Of ten Lodges he is said to have occupied the chairs. His visits to other Lodges were frequent.
Never a subscribing member of the Percy Lodge "he often conducted the ceremonies," says the history of the Lodge, and is recorded as present on eighty-five occasions from 1817 to 1833. While attending Lodges in this way he frequently instructed the Brethren and in one case Brother Calvert in his biography (page 13) records "Giles, while only attending the meetings as a visitor, occupied the chair on every occasion for three years running." Then he joined the Lodge and was elected Worshipful Master for the ensuing year.
Brother Giles' London pupils presented him in 1822 with a Past Master's jewel, profusely embellished with diamonds, handsomely designed by Brother John Harris and costing one hundred guineas, over $500. This was only one of a number of tokens of respect and admiration received by Brother Giles during his life. This jewel is possessed by the Percy Lodge.
A year after his death plans were made for the erection of a monument to his memory. His friend and pupil, Stephen Barton Wilson, one of the three instructors responsible for carrying on the work of their preceptor, was commissioned to execute the tablet. This beautiful memorial erected in 1834, is in Saint James Church, Piccalilli, London.
The activities of Brother Giles are intimately bound up with the story of Emulation Lodge of Improvement which should be read in Some Account of the Ritual, by Brother G. J. V. Rankin, 1925, and the Illustrated History of the Emulation Lodge of Improvement, by Brother Henry Sadler.
*
GIRARD, STEPHEN
A wealthy Freemason, widely known for his philanthropies. Born in France, May 20, 1750. Visited New York in 1774, in the meantime a sea captain, and began a trade to and from New Orleans and Port au Prince. Settled in Philadelphia in 1776, married, and established himself as a merchant. Ahiman Rezon, Pennsylvania, shows Stephen Girard was initiated September 7, 1778 in Lodge No. 3, Philadelphia; crafted October 1, 1778; raised November 23, 1778. An old copy of the by-laws of Lodge No. 3, 1844, gives these dates. In 1810 Brother Girard lent the Government of the United States much assistance in establishing and maintaining their credit with foreign countries, placing at the disposal of the Government, by the purchase of stock in the Bank of the United States, one million dollars. In 1812 he opened the Bank of Stephen Girard and in 1814 he personally subscribed for about 95 per cent of the Government's entire war loan. Brother Girard was appointed in 1809 to the Board of Trustees of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, this Grand Lodge having just completed the building of a large and expensive Masonic Hall. He subscribed the final five thousand dollars necessary to relieve this Institution of debt for the Hall. Stephen Girard was active in many public benefits, personally contributed his services and resources of the public hospital in 1793 when Philadelphia was suffering from an epidemic of yellow fever. Again in the yellow fever epidemic of 1797 to 1798 he gave generously of his time and money.
At his death, February 26, 1831, due to an accident when he was injured in the street by a truck, he had amassed a larger fortune than had ever been known in the United States up to that time. His will included numerous and generous contributions to various charitable and civic enterprises. Practically his entire fortune, amounting to some thirty-five million in 1908, was devoted to charitable purposes, and he founded one school in particular and provided funds for the continued maintenance of it.
His will reads that this is to be used "to provide for such a number of poor male white orphan children . . . a better education as well as a more comfortable maintenance than they usually receive from the application of public funds." Another indication of the eccentricities of Brother Girard is the fact that he also states in the will above quoted that "I enjoin and require that no ecclesiastic, missionary or minister of any sect whatsoever, shall ever hold or exercise any duty whatsoever in the said college; nor shall any such person ever be admitted for any purpose, or as a visitor, within the premises appropriated to the purposes of said college.... I desire to keep the tender minds of the orphans .... free from the excitements which clashing doctrines and sectarian controversy are so apt to produce." Girard's heirs-at-law hotly contested this will, and, although Daniel Webster made a famous plea for the Christian religion in the effort to set aside the will, it was sustained by the Court.
The Masonic fund, known as the Stephen Girard Charity Fund, amounting to $90,000.00 in 191S, is handled by the Fraternity and has done much to alleviate poverty and hardship among the poor.
Two days after the death of Brother Girard a general invitation to his funeral appeared in the public newspapers and this invitation requested the attendance of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania and of the subordinate Lodges and listed as well a number of other benevolent associations in which he had been interested. Almost four hundred members of the Fraternity assembled at the Masonic Hall and attended the funeral, which was held in the German Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Trinity and the body being interred in a vault adjoining the Church. There was some difficulty when the Brethren entered the Church, which they did without their aprons in order to avoid any criticism, and it is recorded that the Roman Catholic clergy Left the Church in a body and therefore the funeral services were not performed. The Brethren waited some time and then removed the body from the Church and placed it in the vault as had been desired by Brother Girard.
It has been said that when Brother Girard was found to be near death he consented, at the request of his sister, to see a Catholic priest and this has been construed to mean that this intention had been to become reconciled to the Church in which he had been baptized, although by the time the priest arrived Brother Girard was dead. Under the circumstances, however, the Bishop of the Catholic Church consented to the body being admitted into the Church. The following is taken from Bishop Francis Patrick Henrick's diary written at the time:
The body of Stephen Girard was brought with much funeral pomp, attended by many Free Masons marching in procession in scarfs and ornaments, as a tribute of respect to their deceased companion, to the church of the Holy Trinity. When, therefore, I saw these enter the Church to have the funeral rites gone through, no priest assisting, I ordered the body taken away for burial I allowed it to have Christian burial for the potent reason that the deceased was baptized in the church and never left it, and when death came his illness was such that he did not perceive its approach. In January, 1851, when the buildings of the College for orphans had reached sufficient completion to receive it, the body of Brother Girard was removed by the City Councils and the Board of Commissioners of the Girard Estate from the Church and the body was finally reentered in the marble tomb which had been prepared for it within the grounds of the College in September, 1851, and this ceremony was participated in by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania at the express request of the Commissioners of the Girard Estates, the coffin being borne by eight Past Masters of the Order. A very impressive ceremony was held, about three hundred of the small orphans being present and the Masonic dirge having been expressly composed for the occasion. The heirs of Brother Girard objected to the removal of the remains from the Church by the city officials but the Courts ruled against them.
*
GIRDLE
In ancient symbology the girdle was always considered as typical of chastity and purity. In the Brahmanical initiations, the candidate was presented with the Zennar, or sacred cord, as a part of the holy garments; and Gibbon says that "at the age of puberty, or maturity, the faithful Persian was invested with a mysterious girdle; fifteen genuflections, or kneelings, were required after he put on the sacred girdle." The old Templars assumed the obligations of poverty, obedience, and chastity; and a girdle was given them, at their initiation, as a symbol of the last of the three vows. As a symbol of purity, the girdle is still used in many chivalric initiations, and may be properly considered as similar to the Masonic apron in its message.
*
GLAIRE, PETER MAURICE
A distinguished Freemason, who was born in Switzerland in 1743, and died in 1819. In 1764, he went to Poland, and became the intimate friend of King Stanislaus Poniatowski, who confided to him many important diplomatic missions. During his residence in Poland, Glaire, greatly patronized the Freemasons of that kingdom and established there a Rite of seven Degrees. He returned to Switzerland in 178S, where he continued to exercise an interest in Freemasonry, and in 1810 was elected Grand Master for three years, and in 1813 for life, of the Grand Orient of Helvetia, which Body adopted his Rite.
*
GLASTONBURY, HOLY THORN OF
There is an ancient market town in Somersetshire, England, which owes its origin to a celebrated abbey, founded, according to tradition, in 60 A.D. We are further told that Joseph of Arimathea was the founder, and the "miraculous thorn" which flowered on Christmas day as believed by the common people to be the veritable staff with which Joseph aided his steps from the Holy Land. The tree was destroyed during the civil wars, but grafts flourish in neighboring gardens. Glastonbury has the honor of ranking Saint Patrick, 415 A.D., and Saint Dunstan, 940 A. D, among its abbots. In 1539 Henry VIII summoned Abbot Whiting to surrender the town and all its treasures, and on his refusal condemned him to be hanged and quartered, and the monastery confiscated to the king's use, which sentence was immediately carried into execution. King Arthur is said to be buried in this place.
*
GLEASON, BENJAMIN
Masonic ritualist. Graduated at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, in 1802, and was a public lecturer on geography and astronomy. About 1801 received the Preston Lectures from Thomas Smith Webb and in 1805 was appointed Grand Lecturer of the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, which office he held until 1842. A member of Mount Lebanon Lodge in Massachusetts in 1807. Visited England and exemplified the Lectures before the Grand Lodge there. He died in Concord, Massachusetts, 1847, at seventy years of age (see Notes on the Ritual, Silas H. Shepherd, Research Pamphlet No. 19, 1924).
*
GLOBE
In the Second Degree, the celestial and terrestrial globes have been adopted as symbols of the universal extension of the Order, and as suggestive of the universal claims of brotherly love. The symbol is a very ancient one, and is to be found in the religious systems of many countries. Among the Mexicans the globe was the symbol of universal power. But the Masonic symbol appears to have been derived from, or at least to have an allusion to, the Egyptian symbol of the winged globe. There is nothing more common among the Egyptian monuments than the symbol of a globe supported on each side by a serpent, and accompanied with wings extended wide beyond them, occupying nearly the whole of the entablature above the entrance of many of their temples. We are thus reminded of the globes on the pillars at the entrance of the Temple of Solomon. The winged globe, as the symbol of Kneph, the Creator Sun, an Egyptian myth of a god having the body of a man and the head of a ram, was adopted by the Egyptians as their national device, as the Lion is that of England, or the Eagle of the United States. In Isaiah (xvi i, 1) where the authorized version of King James s Bible has "Woe to the land shadowing with wings," Lowth, after Bochart, translates, "Ho! to the land of the winged cymbal," supposing the Hebrew xxx to mean the sistrum, which was a round instrument, consisting of a broad rim of metal, having rods passing through it, and some of which, extending beyond the sides, would, says Bishop Lowth, have the appearance of wings, and be expressed by the same Hebrew word.
But Rosellini translates the passage differently, and says, " Ho, land of the winged globe." Dudley, in his Naology (page 18), says that the knowledge of the spherical figure of the earth was familiar to the Egyptians in the early ages, in which some of their temples were constructed. Of the round figure described above, he says that although it be called a globe, an egg, the symbol of the world was perhaps intended; and he thinks that if the globes of the Egyptian entablatures, were closely examined, they would perhaps be found of an oval shape, figurative of the creation, and not bearing any reference to the form of the world.
The interpretation of the Masonic globes, as a symbol of the universality of Freemasonry, would very well agree with the idea of the Egyptian symbol referring to the extent of creation. That the globes on the pillars, placed like the Egyptian symbol before the temple, were a representation of the celestial and terrestrial globes, is a very modern idea. In the passage of the Book of Kings, whence Freemasonry has derived its ritualistic description, it is said (First Icings vii, 16), "And he made two chapters of molten brass, to set upon the tops of the pillars.`' In some Masonic instructions it is said that "the pillars were surmounted by two pomels or globes." Now pomel, xxxxx, is the very word employed by Rabbi Solomon in his commentary on this passage, a word which signifies a globe or spherical bodice The Masonic globes were really the chapiters described in the Book of Kings.
Again it is said (First Kings vii, 92), "Upon the top of the pillars was lily work." We now know that the plant here called the lily was really the lotus, or the Egyptian water-lily. But among the Egyptians the lotus was a symbol of the universe; and hence, although the Freemasons in their lectures have changed the expanded flower of the lotus, which crowned the chapiter and surmounted each pillar of the porch, into a globe, they have retained the interpretation of universality. The Egyptian globe or egg and lotus or lily and the Masonic globe are all symbols of something universal, and the Masonic idea has only restricted by a natural impulse the idea to the universality of the Order and its benign influences. But in Brother Mackey's opinion it is a pity that Masonic ritualists did not preserve the Egyptian and Scriptural symbol of the lotus surrounding a ball or sphere, and omit the more modern figures of globes celestial and terrestrial.
*
GLOBES, THE
It happens that unlike the majority of symbols and rites a certain number of written data are in existence about the origin of the symbolism's of the two Globes.
The oldest Lodges did not have them. Notices of them appear in the Minutes of one Lodge, some years later in the Minutes of another; they are shown in some of the oldest tracing boards and not shown in others; these facts show that the use of the Globes came slowly into use in the first half of the Eighteenth Century. In one Lodge record it is stated in so many words that "they illustrate the universality of the Craft" anywhere under heaven, anywhere in the earth, there is the home of Freemasonry! In the beginning of the Speculative system with the first Grand Lodge in London in 1717 it was expected that Grand Lodge would warrant Lodges only in London and inside a radius of ten miles from the City; it was not until the period of 1725 to 1730 that Warrants began to be issued (and then usually to men who had been made Masons in London) for "Lodges oversee." It is reasonable to assume that this planting of Freemasonry on the Continent and in faraway America must have inspired and stimulated Masons in and around London, must have given them a new emotion, because their horizons were unexpectedly pushed outwards over the rim of the world; if that assumption is valid it follows that the use of Globes began to spread among the Lodges in the period between 1730 to 1750. Globes were hand-made in 1725, and therefore were costly, especially those of glass or silver; in one Lodge book a set is inventoried at £100. Many Lodges received them as gifts from well-to-do members.
In the "Legend of the Craft" included in the Old Charges it is said that the secrets of the Liberal Arts and Sciences were preserved through Noah's Flood in two pillars. It is probable that early Speculative Masons pictured them as having been pedestals rather than pillars, similar to the pedestals they had in Lodge and in which regalia and the Secretary's records were stowed. These two ancient pedestals of the Old Charges were replaced by the two Great Pillars of Solomon's Temple, J and B. It appears that when the Globes first came into use they were placed in whatever spot was most convenient. Certainly there were not two globes on the Diluvian pillars. Solomon's Pillars were surmounted by Chapiters, and archeologists believe that they were made of strips of metal and shaped like baskets, and that resinous wood was piled in them for giving light after dark.
The replacing of the Chapiters by Globes on top of the Great Pillars may have come about for any one or more of at least three reasons: Globes were more convenient when thus off the floor and out of the road; they made the Pillars more pleasing to the eyes; the symbolism of the Globes and of the Pillars combined naturally and easily, etc.
Archeologists found near Herculaneum a villa in which the dining room had an astronomical ceiling which could be turned to make the painted stars inside correspond on any night with the actual stars outside. There are hints that the Egyptians had globes they had spherical geometry and astronomy. In the late Middle Ages globes were so common that the phrase "Terrestrial and Celestial Globes" passed into current speech. This has been used as an argument to prove that before Columbus set sail men knew of the sphericity of the earth; a few men unquestionably did know of it, but the Globes themselves prove nothing. Men who believed the earth to be fiat could have had maps of the flat earth put on a globe because it was more convenient; we print maps on flat paper but it does not prove that we believe the earth to be flat. It is probable that the Speculative Masons used their Globes for no other purpose than maps; nothing is hinted in their Minutes of esoteric or occultistic meanings; but to them the mere map of the whole earth and the whole sky was something to excite the mind because it kept them alive to the fact that their Fraternity which had only a few years before confined itself to so modest a territory, had unexpectedly and almost miraculously burst its bonds, and was extending itself over the world. The Globes belong to the subject-matter of the philosophy of Masonry, but thus far have received meager attention from those who specialize in that branch of Masonic studies, though why this is true it is difficult to know, because that which the Globes symbolize is as massively overwhelming a fact as a range of the Himalayas.
Suppose that speculative Masonry had been confined, as it was first intended to a radius of ten miles from the center of London; if it had, it could easily have limited its membership to London citizens, of the white race, and members of some Christian church; when it became universal, as the Globes symbolize, such localism became impossible. It could not become universal without expanding to other countries, it therefore could not be confined to England, and other countries would stand on a par with England. It could not be confined to one race if it became universal because the world is occupied by three races with some sixty or so branches. It could not be confined to one religion, because there are scores of great religions in the world. This transformation of a local Craft into a world-wide Fraternity was an epochal event in the history of Freemasonry, and none more so; and since it is represented by the Globes they have a scope and power of meaning far outreaching the small attention they have thus far received.
Note. See History of the Lodge of Amity No. 137; by Harry P. Smith; published by the Lodge, Poole, England, 1937, and printed by J. Looker. This is a book excellently to be recommended because in the Minutes quoted by it are so many descriptions of Ritual, customs, etc. written at the time. On page 47 it is told that during a Degree there were exhibited "a pair of 18-in. globes, the perfect ashlar suspended from a Lewis [a species of clamp] and affixed to a winch, an armillary sphere, and a small philosophical [scientific] apparatus, as well as the usual ornaments furniture and jewels." The author makes it clear that in the earliest days symbols had been drawn on the floor with chalk; that later the same symbols were painted permanently on a cloth, or board, or were inlaid in wood or stone. By about 1765 actual objects were used in place of drawn figures. The same impulse which substituted actual objects for drawn figures, led to substituting acted out ceremonies in lieu of what had been an oral lecture. The reference to the two "18-inch globes" is one of many Minutes or other records which substantiate what was said in a paragraph above about the placing of the Globes.
The present Ritual with its Ceremonies, Rites and Symbols can be explained only in the light of its history and in this Supplement that history—as just above—has been drawn from Lodge records, most of them of the Eighteenth Century, and of these the majority are of English Lodges. Records and Minutes of early American Lodges would naturally have been preferred for the present purpose but they unfortunately are few in number.
*
"GOLDEN BOOK," ST. LAURENT'S
The "Golden Book" is a manuscript of 198 sheets of letter paper, 8 x 10, in a number of tints, bound in crimson morocco, preserved in the Archives of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania. It is printed in full at page 192 ff. in Ancient Documents Relating to the A. and A. Scottish Rite, edited by Juleps F. Sachse; Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania; Philadelphia; 1915. It was written by Count De St. Laurent, a native of Bogota; and was found in Northern France. In it is his own record of his attempt to found a Supreme Council for the Western Hemisphere, in 1832, in a period when Scottish Rite Masonry in America was, like Ancient Craft Masonry, broken by the Anti-Masonic Crusade.
A number of other documents were afterwards copied into the manuscript. These latter are now infinitely more interesting than the Count's grandiose dream of becoming the head of the Scottish Rite for half the world, because among them are three of the very few written documents relating to the Masonic membership of Lafayette:
1. A translation of the letters patent by
which the Thirty-third Degree was conferred upon him.
2. The Certificate of Lodge Lafayette.
3. A note in his own handwriting under the letters patent expressing
his gratitude for the honor conferred. "This note is upon
page 80 in the 'Golden Book' and is the only known Masonic autograph
letter of Brother General Lafayette. It will be noted that this
note was written by Brother Lafayette, May 10, 1834, just ten
days before his death." (The document in full is given by
Sachse on page 288.)
Because no record of General Lafayette's Initiation has been found, a number of writers (among them a few Masonic writers) have denied that he was ever regularly made a Mason. It is difficult to understand this reasoning. On October 6, 1824, the Grand Lodge of Delaware received him with a long procession and Grand Honors; on June 27, 1825, it made him an Honorary Member; in a return visit on July 25 to receive the honor he mentioned in his address that he had visited twenty-four Grand Lodges.
He had visited Illinois Masons at Kaskaskia, on April 20, of that same year. six days before that he had visited the Grand Lodge of Louisiana. In 1824 he had visited the Grand Lodge of Maine (for the text of his speech see Maine Proceedings; Vol. I, page 121). on October 8, 1824, he was made Honorary Member of the Grand Lodge of Maryland, and was accompanied by his son, Bro. George Washington Lafayette it was on that visit that the Legislature made him and his heirs citizens of Maryland for ever. In the same year he made a Masonic tour of New Jersey He visited the Grand Lodge of South Carolina in 1825. May 4, 1825, he visited the Grand Lodge of Tennessee, was made Honorary Member, and was entertained by Past Grand Master Andrew Jackson. His tour from beginning to end was a prolonged Masonic visit, and in all the branches of the Craft: to question his membership in the Order ceases to have any weight against the mass of so much Grand Lodge testimony.
Note. In his comments quoted on the Lafayette notation in the Golden Book Bro. Sachse describes it as "the only known Masonic autograph letter of Brother General Lafayette." [It is not a "letter."] It is difficult to believe that in almost a year spent in visiting Masonic bodies over the nation Bro. Lafayette wrote no letter to any Mason, or about his Masonic plans. Somewhere a few of them must be in existence. The Laurent "Golden Book" is not to be confused with another "Scottish Rite Golden Book" one described by Folger.
*
GOLDEN CIRCLE, KNIGHTS OF THE
About 1835 there were in the South an undetermined number of "Southern Rights" Clubs set up to send out slavers, to protect, and uphold, and to proclaim the slaveholding system. After they had flourished in separate centers, taking different forms, there crystallized out of them in 1855 a secret society entitled Knights of the Golden Circle, and the name of George C. Bickley, a native of Indiana, and later a resident of Cincinnati, Ohio, was prominently connected with it. It appears to have in part been designed as a foil to the Know Nothing Party, the most ambitious of the impossible attempts to organize in America a political party in the form of a secret society. The first of the professed aims of the Knights was to protect slavery; its second, was to snake the South an independent nation; its third was to conquer Cuba and Mexico.
Its historian says that it furnished the means for "General" Walker to conduct his once-notorious filibuster in Nicaragua an episode Americans have forgotten because it is too painful to remember. The Knights did not stop with dreaming of an independent Confederacy in the South; they envisaged it as the maker of an empire which would expand to include Mexico, the West Indies, and countries to the Isthmus.
The society came to an end (apparently) with the Civil War; historians, if they will search its local minutes, will find there recorded month by month a procession of ideas and ambitions and schemes which illuminate one or two corners in the Civil War period; otherwise the Circle belongs to the archeology of dead and forgotten secret movements. There was never any connection with Freemasonry; Grand Lodges both North and South, as hundreds of Lodge minutes shows kept themselves remarkably free from involvement in secret conspiracies; so free that they maintained much Fraternal comity during the War, and resumed the whole of it immediately after the War. (See the rare little book, a collector's item: An authentic Exposition of the Knights of the Golden Circle, by a member of the Order; Indianapolis; C. O. Perrins; 1861.)
*
GOTHIC STYLE, THE
An architectural style is a set, or system, of principles which include within themselves a structural form, and a mode of ornamentation; the last named never being added on, as by an afterthought but belonging to the principles. To discover a new set or system of architectural principles is so difficult, and is achieved so seldom, that it is doubtful if more than a score or so of styles of architecture have been discovered in the history of the whole world. Oftentimes what is called a style is not a style, but a modification of one, or is the use of some detail of one (Greek pillars, for example), or, like the gables on New England houses, is nothing more than a local fancy—a carpenter's trick and not an architectural principle.
Before the period of about 1140 A.D. in northern France churches and other public buildings (every people's architecture has been a style or mode or customary design of public, or communal, or monumental buildings) were constructed in Romanesque. The origin of this type was the old Roman town hall, or basilica, and it had been adapted for use in churches by employing flattened round arches, often set in colonnades. These Romanesque churches w ere made of white stone, and there were so many of them in France that a chronicler once described them as "the white cloak of churches," a phrase repeated countless times.
Suddenly—in fact, very suddenly—and beginning at a point in or near Paris, this Romanesque type was replaced by the Gothic style, which until Petrarch's time was called the French style. This Gothic became an enthusiasm, almost an obsession, and between (roughly) 1140 A.D. and 1250 A.D. no fewer than eighty cathedrals and some 500 large churches were built in it in France alone—one bishop even tore down a great basilica church (St. Peter's at Rome was then a basilica) only fifty years old, because his people demanded the wonderful new Gothic.
This was not a gradual piecemeal development of one detail after another out of Romanesque, but the discovery of a new formula, which itself was a single unity of principles, and bad to be understood as a whole or not at all. A comparable discovery, one making it easier to grasp the point of the Gothic discovery, was made here in America by Wilbur and Orville Wright, of Dayton, Ohio, during the first decade of the Twentieth Century. Their discovery was not aimed at by first modifying one piece of machinery and then another, nor did it come as the end result of a large number of experiments one after the other, but z as a feat of thought, and was discovered at once and as a whole.
This discovery was the aero-dynamic formula; and it seas in essence not a mechanical one but a mathematical one, and neither of the men w as a mechanic. Whoever it was who found out the Gothic style, one man or a group, at one stroke or over ten or twenty years, similarly discovered a formula, the Gothic formula; and just as airplane designers, once they had the aero-dynamic formula to work with could make planes of any possible size, speed, power, and for any possible purpose, so could the possessors of the Gothic formula design buildings large or small; cathedrals or churches or monasteries or halls.
If histories of architecture in four or five modern languages be placed side by side on a series of shelves, and if their contents be compared one with another, it will be found that they are concerned with public and monumental structures, capitols, churches, libraries, museums, hospitals, palaces, etc. and that they describe or discuss these public and monumental structures in the terms of the architectural styles they embody. The building of such structures is one of the fine arts.
That fine art is always what historians mean by architecture. This distinction between a building which only a trained artist can erect and the simple structures which any workman can construct was as clear to men in the Middle Ages as it is now. Medieval men had numberless simple homes, cottages, barns, storehouses, factories, shops, sheds, bridges; in every village were carpenters, stone-masons, wailers, and bricklayers able to build them. But these local workmen were not then, any more than now, architects. To build a church, cathedral, gildhall, castle, town hall it was necessary to call in from outside builders trained and skilled in architecture, or building as a fine art. The evidences everywhere indicate that these latter workmen were called Freemasons; they indicate also that these Freemasons were in gilds or fraternities apart from the small gilds of local workmen, just as at the present time local carpenters and bricklayers are not members of the American Society of Architects.
In another respect, however, the art of architecture of the present time differs fundamentally from Medieval architecture. The present day architect begins with schooling instead of with apprenticeship.
He goes to college to study geometry, mechanics, draftsmanship, design, the history of his art, etc., and remains there until he has mastered a set of abstract formulae and general principles of construction; after he has set up his own office he is free to make his choice among five or six architectural styles when designing a building. In the Middle Ages the beginner was not sent to a school but was indentured in an apprenticeship; he was not educated in abstract principles and formulae but was manually trained to produce given pieces of work, and wherever he might go, he knew he would have those same given pieces of work to do. From the middle of the Twelfth Century until about the time of Henry VII the only style, or type of building, known to either architects or the public, was the Gothic. No two Gothic buildings were ever exactly the same, but their component parts were always made the same way—the pointed arch, the buttress, the column, the rose window, the fan vault, the tower, etc.; therefore the training of an apprentice consisted of drilling him in the knowledge and skill of making or designing those particular component parts of a Gothic building.
In the Middle Ages each trade or craft was locally organized as a gild, fraternity, society, etc.; in each instance the technologies, or making or mixing of materials, use of tools, etc., were a trade secret. The local stone-masons, carpenters, wailers, paviors, roofers likewise had their own local organizations, and in them preserved their own trade secrets. The Freemasons had societies, fraternities, lodges of their own, apart from local builders; the methods and principles of architecture, which at that time was necessarily Gothic architecture, were their great trade secret. To call them Gothic builders is therefore only another way of saying that they were architects, though the latter term was not then used.
The Gothic builder was trained in one style only, and would therefore have been at a disadvantage in competition with a modern architect, who had been educated to understand the principles of design in each and every established style. But the scope for a Gothic builder's ingenuity, talent, and skill was not therefore a narrow one; because the Gothic itself, above any other style ever discovered, was unbelievably fertile, flexible, comprehensive, and difficult; so much so that it overflowed, and elements of it were adopted by local builders, and even by designers of gold work, cloth designing, and even in writing. The mastering of it called for such an amount of knowledge that Gothic builders stood in a class apart, not in respect of their art alone but as men of great attainments in things of the mind, of characters of independence, of culture. Such men as Suger, Arnolfo, William of Sens, Henry Yevele were among the most eminent of great men of their own or any other time.
The local masons, carpenters, and other workmen in the building trades were illiterate, parochial, thoroughly trained but trained only for simple types of work; it would be impossible to believe that Speculative Freemasonry with its philosophy and its arts and sciences ever could have arisen among them; and as a matter of fact there is nothing to indicate that anything belonging to culture, science, thought was ever produced by them. It was among the Freemasons, or Gothic builders, that Speculative Freemasonry arose; it was they in particular, and not masons or builders in general, who are denoted by our use of the phrase "Operative Masons."
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GOULD'S HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY
Gould's History of Freemasonry, by Robert Freke Gould; Revised by Dudley Wright; under the supervision of Melvin M. Johnson and J. Edward Allen; Charles Seribner's Sons; New York, N. Y.; six volumes; blue cloth; full page illustrations, a number in full color; volumes separately paginated; general index in Volume VI; 2587 pages.
The frontispiece of the work is a reproduction in full color of George Washington in his regalia as Worshipful Master, by John Ward Dunsmore, one-time President of the National Academy, the original of which was painted on commission from the Board of General Activities, Grand Lodge of New York: it is a document as well as a painting because the artist posed his model in the actual regalia and on the dais of the Alexandria-Washington Lodge room, Alexandria, Va., of which Washington was Master at the time of his first Inauguration. In its binding, format, paper, and press-work the History is another of the solid, dignified masterpieces of the printer's art for which Scribner's have long been famous.
In the original Edition Gould himself wrote
a chapter on the Masonic history of each of the States in America.
These chapters were as sound as a writer working in London and
with only a bare outline knowledge of American Masonry could make
them; but they were never satisfactory, and as new data were discovered
here they became increasingly unsatisfactory as years passed.
Brothers Wright, Johnson and Allen deleted Gould's own chapters
wholly, and in their places had new histories prepared by living
American writers, one for each State. As far as American Masons
are concerned this makes the History a new work. (Thomas Jefferson
is included in the portrait gallery of Masonic Presidents; there
is no known evidence of his having been a Mason, and there is
much evidence in his private correspondence of his dislike of
secret societies and fraternities.)
The History was completed and published by Gould (and his collaborators)
in 1887; his reading for it must therefore have begun as early
as 1875, or even 1870.
At that time what little was known about the Ancient Mysteries, the Collegia, the Essenes, and the (Duldees was confined to a few scattered references in ancient writings, most of them Greek or Roman. Since that time archeologists have unearthed hundreds of thousands of inscriptions and thousands of manuscripts, in consequence of which the history of those subjects has been wholly re-written; and Gould's first chapter is out of date. Thus, his three pages on the important subject of the Roman Collegia are based on Massman and Coote: the former published his Libellus in 1840, the latter his Romfans of Britain in 1878; neither is any longer of worth. Chapter 4 of Volume I on "The Craft Guilds of France" likewise has lost much of its weight by subsequent discoveries in historical research; these have been so revolutionary that the picture of the French gilds as painted by Gould has been altered out of recognition.
Gould did not have a true sense of proportion. Of six volumes only one is devoted to the general history of Freemasonry properly so called; Gould himself explained that this was for lack of space; if so it is difficult to see why he devoted one whole chapter to "The Quatuor Coronati" and spent more than sixty pages trying to prove that Wren was not a Mason, when neither subject was worth more than a footnote. He omitted almost the whole of the very important history of Freemasonry in the West Indies, in the French and Indian War, and his few pages on the history of Colonial Freemasonry in America are too slight a sketch to have any usefulness for American students.
Worse still (in the sense of a lack of proportion) he built his account of the origin and early development of Speculative Freemasonry around the single Grand Lodge of 1717, as if the Antient Grand Lodge, the Grand Lodge of Ireland, and early American Masonry had been of secondary importance.
Gould himself was not an expert on manuscripts or on the general archeology of documents, and his judgment therefore is sometimes faulty, and at other times uncertain, many of his paragraphs concealing a confusion of thought under sentences dogmatic in form.
One instance is found in his pages on early Freemasonry in Scotland; another is foun