W
The twenty-third letter of the English alphabet, which originated in the Middle Ages, is a double V, and is peculiar to the English, German, and Dutch alphabets.
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W
An abbreviation of Worshipful, of Wrest, of Warden, and of Wisdom.
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WAECHTER, EBERHARD, BARON VON
Lord of the Chamber to the King of Denmark, and Danish Ambassador at Ratisbon; was born in 1747. He was at one time a very active member of the Rite of Strict Observance, where he bore the characteristic Knighthood name of Eques a ceraso, and had been appointed as Chancellor of the German Priories of the 7th Province.
When the spiritual schism of the Order made its vast pretensions to a secret unaccountably derived from unknown superiors, whose names they refused to divulge, Von Waechter was sent to Italy by the old Scottish Lodge of which Duke Ferdinand was Grand Master, that he might obtain some information from the Pretender, and from other sources, as to the true character of the Rite. Von Waechter was unsuccessful, and the intelligence which he brought back to Germany was unfavorable to Von Hund, and increased the embarrassments of the Strict Observance Lodges. But he himself lost reputation.
A host of enemies attacked him. Some declared that while in Italy he had made a traffic of Freemasonry to enrich himself; others that he had learned and was practicing magic; and others again that he had secretly attached himself to the Jesuits. Von Waechter stoutly denied these charges; but it is certain that, from being in very moderate circumstances, he had, after his return from Italy, become suddenly and unaccountably rich. yet Mossdorf says that he discharged his mission with great delicacy and judgment.
Thory, quoting the Beytrag zur neuesten Geschicte, or the Bearer of New History (page 150) says that in 1782 he proposed to give a new organization to the old Templar system of Freemasonry, on the ruins, perhaps, of both branches of the strict Observance, and declared that he possessed the true secrets of the Order. His proposition for a reform was not accepted by the German Freemasons because they suspected that he was an agent of the Jesuits (ActaLatomorum i, page 152).
Kloss (Bibliographie, No. 622b) gives the title of a work published by him in 1822 as Worte der Wahrheit an die Menschen, meine Brüder, Word of Truth on Humanity, my Brethren. He died May 25, 1825, one, perhaps, of the last actors in the great Masonic drama of the Strict Observance.
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WAGES
The whole period of the Middle Ages in England was in one aspect of it a struggle of barbarism against civilization, but on the question of wages it would be paying them a tribute to describe them as barbaric; wages were savage, savagely low and savagely cruel, and next only after war were the ruling class's most brutal weapon of subjugation, and that remains true after every possible allowance is made between the purchasing power of a shilling then and a shilling now. A bookkeeper in the reign of Edward I records "that one Master Mason was paid 6d per day, and five Masons were paid 4d per day."
Bro. Edward Conder, from whose Hole Craft these figures are being taken, notes that in 1336 a Mason received one shilling a day. In 1342-1400 typical wages for Freemasons working on Westminster Abbey ran 4d; 10/6 for two Masons for 21 days; two Masons at 2 shillings per week; two for two weeks 6 shillings; for "Master Yevele Chief Mason, " one of the greatest of architects, "100 shillings per annum" etc.
In 1402 Henry IV forbade Masons to work by the week, or to receive pay on feast days, and ordained that on a day before a holiday when they stopped at 3 P.M. they were to receive only one-half day's pay—"in ye name of Godde." One Royal Act forbade Freemasons to be paid more than 5' shillings per day. In 1495 a statute fixed visages for Freemasons at 4d with meals furnished, 6d without meals during the long-day half of the year, 3d and 5d respectively during the other half; the fad a day began at 5 A.M. In Henry VIII's time a Master received 12d a day; a Warden 5d a week; setters 3 8d per week; clerk of the works, 8d per day; under-clerks, 6d per day. At page 93 of his Gleanings Frown Westminster (Oxford London; 1861) George Gilbert Scott prints a number of specimens of the Westminster Fabric Rolls, the oldest being for 1253 A.D. In that year the average wage for Masons was 1 10d per week. In 1271 an expert Master Mason received 2' 6d per week.
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WAGES OF A MARK MASTER
See Mark Master's Wages
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WAGES OF A MASTER MASON, SYMBOLIC
See Foreign Country
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WAGES OF OPERATIVE MASONS
In all the Old Constitutions praise is given to Saint Alban because he raised the wages of the Freemasons. Thus the Edinburgh-Kilwinning Manuscript says: "Saint Albans loved Masons well and cherished them much, and made their pay right good, standing by as the realm, did, for he gave them iis. a week, and 3d. to their cheer; for before that time, through all the land, a Mason had but a penny a day and his meat, until Saint Alban amended it."
We may compare this rate of wages in the third century with that of the fifteenth, and we will be surprised at the little advance that was made.
In Grosse and Astle's Antiquarian Repertory (iii, page 58), will be found an extract from the Rolls of Parliament, which contains a Petition, in the year 1443, to Parliament to regulate the price of labor. In it are the following items:
And from the Fest of Mighelmasse unto Ester, a free Mason and a maister carpenter by the day iiiid. with mete and drynk, withoute mete and drink iiid., ob.
Tyler or Sclatter, rough mason and meen carpenter, and other artificers concernyng beldyng, by the day iiid., with mete and drynk, and withoute mete and drynke, iiid., ob. And from the Fest of Mighelmasse unto Sister, a free Mason and a maister carpenter by the day iiid with mete and drynk, without mete and drink, iiid., ob.
Tyler, meen carpenter, rough mason, and other artificers aforesaid, by the day iid., ob, with mete and drynk, withoute mete and drynk iiid.., and every other werkeman and laborer by the day id., ob, with mete and drynk and withoute mete and drink iiid., and who that lasse deserveth, to take lasse.
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WAGES OF THE WORKMEN AT THE TEMPLE
Neither the Seriptures, nor Josephus, give us any definite statement of the amount of wages paid, nor the manner in which they were paid, to the workmen who were engaged in the erection of King Solomon's Temple. The cost of its construction, however, must have been immense, since it has been estimated that the edifice alone consumed more gold and silver than at present exists upon the whole earth; so that Josephus very justly says that "Solomon made all these things for the honor of God, with great variety and magnificence, sparing no cost, but using all possible liberality in adorning the Temple."
We learn, as one instance of this liberality, from the Second Book of Chronicles, that Solomon paid annually to the Tyrian Freemasons, the servants of Hiram, "twenty thousand measures of beaten wheat, and twenty thousand measures of barley, and twenty thousand baths of wine, and twenty thousand baths of oil." The bath was a measure equal to seven and a half gallons wine measure; and the cor or chomer, which we translate by the indefinite word measures contained ten baths; so that the corn, wine, and oil furnished by King Solomon, as wages to the servants of Hiram of Tyre, amounted to one hundred and ninety thousand bushels of the first and one hundred and fifty thousand gallons each of the second and third. The sacred records do not inform us what further wages they received, but we elsewhere learn that King Solomon gave them as a free gift a sum equal to more than thirty-two millions of dollars. The whole amount of wages paid to the Craft is stated to have been about six hundred and seventy-two millions of dollars; but we have no means of knowing how that amount was distributed; though it is natural to suppose that those of the most skill and experience received the highest wages.
The Harodim, or chiefs of the workmen, must have been better paid than the Ish Cabal, or mere laborers. The legend-makers of Freemasonry have not been idle in their invention of facts and circumstances in relation to this Subject, the whole of which have little more for a foundation than the imaginations of the inventors. They form, however, a part of the legendary history of Freemasonry, and are interesting for their ingenuity, and sometimes even for their absurdity (see Penny).
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WAHABITES
A Mohammedan sect, established about 1740, dominant through the greater part of Arabia. Their doctrine was reformatory, to bring back the observances of Islam to the literal precepts of the Koran. Mecca and Medina were conquered by them. The founder of Ibn-abd-ul-Wahab, son of an Arab Sheila, born in the latter part of the seventeenth century, and died 1787. Their teachings were received by the Mussulrnan population of India, and much uneasiness has been feared therefrom.
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WAITE, ARTHUR EDWARD
Arthur Edward Waite: A Check list of his Writings, by Harold V. B. Voorhis, privately printed; Red Bank, New Jersey; 1932, is an exhaustive but not wholly complete list of works possessed by Voorhis of which Waite was "either the author, the compiler, the translator, the editor, or the writer of the preface or foreword. " Bro. Waite himself assisted Bro. Voorhis to make the collection as complete as possible; after Bro. Waite's death Bro. Voorhis installed his collection in the Iowa Masonic Library, Cedar Rapids, Ia., where it is housed in a special case and named the Waite Collection; the magnanimity of that act is genuinely appreciated by Bro. Voorhis many American friends and colleagues.
In the Check List the titles are: Alchemical Writings of Edward Kelly. Azoth, or the Star in the East. Belle and the Dragon. Book of Black Magic and of Pacts. Book of the Holy Grail. Braid on IIypnotism—Neurhynology. Brotherhood of the Rosv Cross. Cloud Upon the Sanctuary. Collectanea Chemica. Collected Poems Compendium of Alchemical Processes. Deeper Aspects of Masonic Symbolism. Devil Worship in France Doctrine and Literature of the Rat balah. Elfin Music: An Antholog-v of English Fairy Poetry. Emblematic Freemasonry General Bool; of the Tarot. Gift of the Spirit. Gift of Understandings Golden and Biessed Casket of Nature's Marvels. Golden Stairs. Harmonical Philosophy. Hermetic and Alchemical M ritP ings of Paracelsus. Hermetic Museum.
Hidden Church of the Holy Graal. History of Magic. Holy Kabbalah. Horlich's Magazine. Israfel, Letters Visions and Poems. Key to the Tarot. Lamps of Western Mvstieism. Lexicon of Alchemy. Life of Louis Claude de Saint-Martin. Lives of Alchemvstical Philosophers. Lucasta, Parables and Poems. Lumen de Lumine. Lyric of the Fairyland. Magical Writings of Thomas Vaughan. Mysteries of hIagie. New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry. View Pearl of Great Price. Obermann. Occult Sciences. Ode to Astronomy and Other Poems. Pictorial Key to the Tarot. Prentice Mulford's Story. Prince Starbeam Psyche.
Quest of the Golden Stairs. Raymond Lully. Real History of the Rosicrucians. Saint-Martin. Secret Doctrine in Israel. Secret Tradition in Alchemy. Secret Tradition in Freemasonry. Some Characteristics of the Inner Church. Songs and Poems of the Inner Church. Songs and Poems of Fairyland. Soul's Comedy. Steps to the Crown. Strange Houses of Sleep. Studies in Mysticism. Tarot of the Bohemians. Transcendental Magic. Triumphal Chariot of Antimony.
Turba Philosophorum. Unknown World. Way of Divine Union. Works of Thomas Vaughan. World's Great Religious Poetry. Zodiac of Life. Magazine articles in Horliek's Magazine; Psyche; The Master Mason; The Builder (five); Light; Occult Review; Transactions of the Society Rosicruciana in Anglia.
Waite was not interested in Masonic History properly so called, and as represented by Mackey, Gould and Hughan; in fact, as his private correspondence and his published works prove, he was wholly mis taken about the point and purpose of it, as when he insisted that Gould had tried to prove that a few illiterate stone-masons had fathered Speculative Freemasonry. Moreover when his specifically Masonic writing is sifted out of the mass of his writings it is of surprisingly slender volume even his New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry is less about Masonry than about occultism; and the amount of history in his Emblematic Masonry is scarcely more than a trifle. His theory was that a few occultists like Ashmole and Fludd were bearers of the "Secret Tradition," brought it into Masonry, and by means of doing so were the instruments by which the Operative Craft was made over into the Speculative Fraternity. He gives very little data and no proof for this theory, which has not been accepted; and it has made so little impression that in Ars Quauor Coronatorum and the Transactions of other Lodges of Research his name is seldom referred to, and his theory is not discussed.
It is in the fields of occultism and of mysticism and in the borders between the two that his massive and permanent fame will always rest; his works on the Rose Cross and on the Grail are his own masterpieces, and at the same time are masterpieces of the whole literature which they dominate. (American Masons Will find a surprise in this paragraph from Bro. Voorhis's brochure, page 1: "Born in Brooklyn, New York~ U. S. A., in the year 1857, of Connecticut paternal ancestry, his English mother took him to England at the age of two, following the death of his father, and he has never returned to America. ")
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WALES
The earliest Lodges in Wales were two at Chester and one at Congelton, all three established in 1724, and Doctor Anderson records that Grand Master Inchiquin granted a Deputation, May 10, 1727, to Hugh Warburton, to be Provincial Grand Master of North Wales, and another, June 24th in the same year, to Sir Edward Mansel, to be Provincial Grand Master of South Wales (Constitutions, 1738, page 191). Wales forms a part of the Masonic obedience of the Grand Lodge of England, and the Fraternity there has been directly governed by four Provincial Grand Lodges, namely, North Wales, South Wales, Eastern Division, and Western Division.
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WALES, PRINCES OF
From 1737 no less than nineteen princes of Great Britain and Ireland have been admitted as Freemasons, four being Princes of Wales:
Frederick Lewis, 20th Prince of Wales, was initiated at the Palace of Kew, November 5, 1737 by Doctor Desaguliers, and the Book of Constitutions of 1737 was dedicated to him. February 6, 1787, George Augustus Frederick, 22nd Prince of Wales, was made a Freemason in London by the Most Worshipful Grand Masters the Duke of Cumberland. The Prince of Wales was elected Grand Master in 1790. There is in the museum at Washington, District of Columbia, of the Supreme Council, Ancient and Accepted ,Scottish Rite, a copper medal or token bearing the date November 24, 1790, and the inscription "Prince of Wales was elected G. M." with the motto "Amor, Honor et Justicia" (Love, Honor and Justice) commemorating the election of the Prince of Wales as Grand Master. He was installed in 1792; but on assuming the Regency, 1812, the office was vacated, and he became Patron. As George IV, he accepted the title of Grand Patron from 1820; and whilst Prince of Wales, 1787-1820, was Worshipful Master of the Prince of Wales Lodge, London, Sir Samuel Hulse being the Deputy Master for that period.
Albert Edward, 23rd Prince of Wales, later
King Edward VII, was initiated at Stockholm by the King of Sweden,
in 1868. The rank of Past Grand Master of England was conferred
upon him in 1870, but on the resignation of the Marquis of Ripon,
he accepted the chair, and was installed as Most Worshipful Grand
Master at the Albert Hall, London, by the Earl of Carnalaron,
April 28, 1875 idle served as Worshipful Master in the Apollo
University Lodge, Oxford, the Royal Alpha Lodge, London, and from
1874 was Worshipful Master of the famous Prince of Wales Lodge,
No. 259. In the Grand Lodges of Scotland and Ireland he was a
Patron and all honorary member of the Lodge of Edinburgh, No.
1, and also a member and Patron of the Supreme Council of the
33rd Degree for England, as well as Grand Master of the Convent
Central of Knights Templar.
On Clay 2, 1919, H. R . Edwald A. C. G. 24th Prince of Wales,
was initiated at an Emergency Meeting of the Household Brigade
Lodge No, 2614, London, and raised a Master Mason on June 24,
1919, installed as Senior Grand Warden of the United Grand Lodge
of England, October 25, 1922, and as Provincial Grand Master of
Surrey, July, 1924.
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WALLACE, GENERAL LEWIS
American writer and soldier in the Mexican and Civil Wars. Corn April 10, 1827; died February 15, 1905. Member of Montgomery Lodge No. 50, Crawfordsville, Indiana (see New Age Magazine, February,1924) . Author of the famous novel, Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ. Governor of New Mexico, 1880; Minister to Turkey, 1881-5.
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WALLACE KEATON MANUSCRIPT
Brother Wallace Keaton of London in 1926 discovered this manuscript, of the period from 1695 to 1715, which bears his name and is now possessed by the Grand Lodge of England. A description of it by brother H. Poole was published in the Masonic Record, beginning July, 1927 (page 192). There are six strips of parchment sewn into a roll about fourteen feet long and some seven inches wide. The text is in the main of normal style but Brother Poole notes a most interesting feature in that this version contains the peculiar variations of the Dowland Manuscript.
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WALLACHIA, GRAND SCOTTISH DEGREE OF
Found in Fustier's lists
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WALLERS AS MASONS
Operative Freemasonry had in the large a uniform system of organization, grades, customs, but this is a generalization against which must be charged a long list of exceptions or provisoes, and it is never safe to generalize about the whole of Masonry from any one record, set of rules, or lodge. This proviso holds of the subject of wailers. According to a set of still-existing records wallers were Masons who hewed and laid stone in walls; in contrast to them, the Masons who could work in finer stone, or free-stone, could shape and carve it, were called free-stone Masons—one of the origins, probably, of the name Freemason. A set of rules were set up for Masons in London in 1356; they were compiled by a commission of six free-stone Masons and a commission of six wailers in a joint conference. This indicates a recognized distinction between the two types of Masons, and suggests that they may have had separate organizations. Such a distinction would be in consonance with the records of the incorporated City Companies; in them Masons often were put into the same Company with trades having no connection with building, although each trade would usually maintain its own organization as a fraternity, association, or society apart from the Company.
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WANAMAKER, JOHN
Famous American merchant, giving employment in two stores to more than 12,000 people. Born July 11, 1838; died December 12, 1922. U. S. Postmaster-General, 1889-93. He was made a Freemason "at sight" on March 30, 1898, by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, and later received the Thirty-third Degree (see New Age, March 1925).
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WANDERING SCHOLARS, MINSTRELS, ETC.
Even as early as the Twelfth Century there were a few universities in Europe, and by the Thirteenth these had grown to such a number, including Oxford and Cambridge in England, and also in size (one or two might have as many as 35,000 students enrolled), that their faculties ranked in power and intrust in the general intellectual life second only to the Church. With few roads and fewer ships to travel by, students had to walk for weeks or months through the country to reach a desired school; and since many students, young men or grown men, would go to one school to sit under one or two famous masters and then to another, and usually distant, school to sit under others, any given student might pass one-third or one-half his time on the roads, begging or working his way along, or earning a week's lodging in some manor or castle by tales, recitations, and songs.
These wandering scholars, as they came to be called, developed in time an esprit de corps, had their unwritten rules, and by the end of the Middle Ages had become almost an organized fraternity. Like the Fellowship of Freemasons they had their legend, the core of which was a set of tales about a certain Golias, or Goliath, who was a sort of Paul Bunyan of scholarship, and very possibly was the germ out of which Rabelais's abounding fancy developed the first idea for his tales of Gargantua and Pantagruel. For this reason the wandering scholars called themselves "Disciples of Golias," or Goliards, or Gollerds, or Gollyers (the name is spelled in many forms); and they were often called vagans, though, as paragraphs below will show, that cognomen properly belonged to another fraternity.
The Goliardi reached their apogee about 112S1130 A few scholars among them became famous not only as scholars in their own right but as heroes among the Disciples of Golias; Hugh, whom they called their Primate (they tended to be derisive of the Church hierarchy), was a canon of Orleans about l 14U; their "Archpoet was in the court of Frederiek Barbarossa (that Medici before the Medicis), was a knight, and was author of a literary masterpiece entitled Confession of Goluls (circa 1161-65). The great name of Walter Map, an Arehdeacon at Oxford under Henry II, occurs in many Goliardi MSS.
Men who have pictured the Middle Ages as a block of orthodox belief, solid with saints and a somewhat self-abasing piety, and without any Lucian or Voltaire anywhere in sight, will take a second thought after reading a history of the Goliardi, they and their writings together. They were free minds, witty, ironic, scornful of saints miracles, disgusted by relic worship, and arrogant to priests, monks, and other illiterates. They carried Latin over Europe and Britain; composed masterpieces in verse and prose: kindled a love for the other fine arts; were among the first to spread the good news of the new style of Gothic art and architecture at Paris; lit in remote places a lamp of learning; and helped to knit together the disrupted communities of Europe.
Helen Waddell, one of the most brilliant of modern women scholars, wrote a now famous book about them entitled Wandering Scholars in which her translations of Goliardi poems and songs are gem-like. For a shorter history and a fuller bibliography see chapter VI, in The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, by Charles Homer Haskins, one of the ripest works of American scholarship.
Also, it is rewarding to trace down references to the wandering scholars in the many works on the Middle Ages by the present doyen on that subject, Professor G. G. Coulton, whose autobiography, being published as these lines are written, it is a pious duty of every student of Medievalism to read: certainly, every Masonic student, because no Mason can ever quite fully understand the shape and color of the Fraternity when it first emerged in the early Middle Ages without a knowledge of such forces and influences as were at work in and around it as the Goliardi.
There was also in the Middle Ages another and different kind of society of wanderers. The old Latin vagus, wandering, appears in English speech as a root from which a constellation of words have had their rise, vagabond, vagary, vagrant, and Vwhmc among them; and other languages, also of Sanskrit-Latin origins, have the same words in their corresponding forms, and have had them for thousands of years, suggesting that always there is here and there a man who chooses to live on the road, not as a highway but as home and as a means of livelihood. The road was more of a temptation in the Middle Ages than now. Villages were isolated, towns were walled in; to the men in one community, men in another center only five miles away were "foreigners," and were viewed with suspicion, sometimes with alarm, we with our papers, telephone, radio, and automobiles do not suffer from village claustrophobia, and therefore cannot picture to ourselves how often a Medieval man was seized by a craving, almost a craze, to get away, to take to the road, to see the world. In consequence there arose that strangely romantic Society of Beggars, or Vagrants, who move and appear and reappear in Medieval romances and legends for a thousand years.
It became in time an organized secret society, with officers, assemblies, and (usually three) degrees, along with modes of recognition and a language, or patois, of its own.
This last was called " cant"; sometimes, "thieves' Latin." It had female side orders (what large and permanent society ever has not!), and like the Goliardi belongs to that mileu in which early Freemasonry took its shape. The Vagantes were the heroes, and points of reference, for Gay's great "Beggars' Opera." Cervantes wrote his novel Rinconete y Costidilla about them (Spain was a homeland of the Vagantes as it was of the Gypsies because they went along with the Spanish Church's worship of poverty and theological virtue of almsgiving). A modern Spaniard, Ibanez, wrote La Barraca about them.
They have a large role in Victor-Hugo's Notre Dame. A clear and concise account of them is available, for short reference, in Famous Secret Societies, by John Herron Lepper; Sampson, Low, Marston & Co.; London. Almost every one of the many, and often many-volumed, histories of the social life of the Middle Ages has at least one chapter about them.
A lawyer student will find them much in evidence among Medieval statutes, so many of which were so wrathfully butso ineffectually aimed at the liquidation of "sturdy beggars." (Adolf Hitler was a "house vagante" in Vienna for some three years.)
Men, women, and children of the Middle Ages were so fond of music, dancing, games, and feasts that they took (depending on the district) as many as from 50 to 150 holidays every year for merry-making, for processions, for which they had a passion, and for social occasions which called for musicians. Out of this developed the craft, or mystery, or profession of trained musicians. But since in any one small town or village there was not enough work to support a troupe of them they also, like the Goliardi, were gentlemen and ladies of the road, who went here and there upon invitation.
They must have become organized as early as the Twelfth Century, and had gilds, officers, and rites, traditions, rules and an apprenticeship of their own; they even had oaths, constitutions, and non-operative members, the last named being gentlemen who did not practice the calling for a livelihood but sought to be accepted because of the honor, or because they were patrons or students of the art. The oldest existing written charter is dated 1469.
For a detailed and charming history see The Worshipful Company of Musicians (2nd Edition); private circulation, London; 1905. (Worshipful was in almost as common and as familiar use throughout Medieval times as our own Mr. or Sir; it meant "respectable; accepted; recognized; entitled to respect," and in its early use by Freemasons had no significance peculiar to the Fraternity.)
Readers who belong to the senior brackets of age will recall the learned, brilliant, and much-loved J. J. Jusserand, France's Ambassador to Washington during the Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, and his work on pilgrims and wanderers of the Middle Ages; it is no longer as fresh as it was, nor is it as sparkling as the books by Waddell and Haskins and Coulton, but for all that is the best all-round story of the people of the Medieval highway. (See also The Medieval Mind, by Henry Osborn Taylor; II Idol Macmillan; 1927. Medieval Europe, by Lynn Thorn dike; George G. Harrap & Co.; London; 1920. Medieval Italy, by H. B. Cotterill; also published by Harrap; 1915.)
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WANDS
Doctor Oliver, under this title in his Dictionary, refers to the three scepters which, in the Royal Arch system of England, are placed in a triangular form beneath the canopy in the East, and which, being surmounted respectively by a crown, an All-seeing eye, and a miter, refer to the regal, the prophetical, and the sacerdotal offices.. In his Landmarks he calls them scepters. But rod or wand is the better word, because, while the scepter is restricted to the insignia of Kings, the rod or wand was and still is used as an indiscriminate mark of authority for all offices.
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WAR AND FREEMASONRY
In the Middle Ages a "war" was a personal or family quarrel, with small forces officered by a few knights and composed of retainers and peasants. In the period of the Renaissance, armies were a form of private business, like a factory, which would sign a contract to fight for the highest bidder, and according to agreed rules; collusion among private armies, as among modern managers of prize fighters, was common, and oftentimes the decision was agreed on beforehand— Machiavelli's appeal to Florence to stop this farce, in which not one man would be killed in "battle," and substitute for it an army of citizens, stirred Europe far more than his mephistophelean theory of government.
When the countries became nationalized, so did armies; they were composed of local levies of men, or cadres, or of impressed or conscripted troops, and a man could buy his way into or out of an officership —the Ironmongers Company in London was twice levied for money by each side in the English Civil War. As in China, common soldiers were looked down on as belonging to the lowest order, and sailors were treated with even more contempt. Back of the system was the idea that an army was a nation's champion; while the English champion was fighting the French champion, the English and French peoples went about their affairs as usual, willing to abide by the verdict of a remote contest. Our own Civil War was the first "modern war"; in it the army no longer was a champion but was the people itself, and the home front was as much a part of the struggle as the military front; carried to its inevitable outcome this became the present-day total war in which two or more whole peoples are conscripted into a single armed effort with themselves, their property, and their country at stake.
In articles on other pages of this supplement on RELIGION AND FREEMASONRY and on POLITICS AND FREEMASONRY it is shown that Freemasonry is among those arts and sciences which are inalterable by theological and political doctrines, and therefore it stands apart and unaffected by alterations in them. This is equally true as regards war; just as the old arts of farming, or the old sciences of physics and astronomy, or the old disciplines of mathematics, or philosophy, or history, or the plastic arts, cannot commit themselves to war, or be altered or revolutionized by war, so a Masonic Lodge has nothing in its Landmarks or its purposes which can take part in armies as men, its members may tremble with apprehension or flame with patriotism or may seize arms; as Masons they are, like Christianity or medicine or education, non-belligerent; even if in any given war, as in the war between the Government of Spain and the Id Phalangist rebels, the future existence of the Frater city lies in the balance, still it has in itself no means to arm itself; and as it is not so organized as to take any place in an army neither is it organized to take any part in the diplomatic activities which precede a war, or write a peace, or act to prevent wars.
A Mason's one interest (as a Mason) is at the point where the history of Masonry intersects the history Of Near. In Medieval Freemasonry one large and important branch of Craftsmen specialized in military architectures in building castles, fortresses, and fortified city walls—castle building was so specialized that it almost comprised a separate species of Masonry. During the hundreds of wars in Britain and on the Continent during the long period of Operative Masonry, there is no evidence that the Masonic fraternities gilds, or lodges ever took part in them as such; in the midst of war the gilds went on with their work as best they could, as farmers, sailors, teachers, churches did. In 1732 the Grand Lodge of Ireland hit upon the expedient of granting Warrants for military Lodges (or regimental, or naval, or sea and field) under ambulatory or traveling Charters.
As one Grand Lodge after another adopted the custom these military bodies multiplied into the hundreds, and helped to carry Freemasonry about the world; but this was not a war measure, made to support one side as against another, but was for the sole purpose of according the privileges of the Craft to men away from home; the same Grand Lodge Chartered Lodges in two or three armies, as in America where there were military Lodges in both conflicting armies and under the same Grand Lodge! During that war, as they were to do so again in 1812 and in 1861-5, Masons from both sides oftentimes attended the same Lodge, and did so not out of "the emotions of the battle field" but because they knew that Lodges stand outside the militant struggle.
NOTE. In his article on page 1089 Bro. Robert I. Clegg discusses the action taken by Scottish Lodges in 1777, in offering bounties to men who would enlist for the war in America. The action taken by the Grand Lodge of Scotland the following year to condemn this un-Masonic practice bears out what was said in the above paragraphs. _ The majority of those Scottish Lodges at the time had patrons in tact is not in name; it is probable that they ware urged on by the patrons. The same thing had been attempted years before when patrons made use of a few Lodges as recruiting centers for immigrants willing to move to the Colonies. One act was as un-Masonic as the other.
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WAR II, WORLD, AND FREEMASONRY IN EUROPE
After he declared a world-wide war on Freemasonry Pope Leo XIII set up the headquarters of his international anti-Masonic bureaus in France, in 1896, as described on another page of this Supplement in an article on Leo Taxil, and utilized for the purpose the machinery of persecution and accusation which already had long been in operation against the Jews: Masons were accused of being devil-worshiper, atheists, enemies of the family, humanitarians, democrats, Protestants, etc. This anti-Masonry was consolidated with the Church's attack on the Republic of France, which it had carried on since the Franco-Prussian war in an attempt to restore the monarchy to the country. French Masonry never was large, having from 300 to 400 Lodges, and from 30,000 to 40,000 members under a Grand Lodge and a Grand Orient, but it more than made up in influence and prestige what it lacked in numbers. As against Roman Catholicism it continued a more-or-less passive resistance, but as against the schemes to destroy the French Republic it worked in the open, not as a member or champion of any one of the numerous political parties, but on the ground that freedom in state, society, and religion and the maintenance of a public school system are right and just.
The paramount social purpose of French Masonry mas to help establish a permanent peace in Europe. Long before Woodrow Wilson's presidency it held conferences for discussing a League of Nations. Early in 1914, the first year of World War I, it sponsored a conference of German and French parliamentarians at Berne, Switzerland. Between the two Wars it worked continuously to establish a friendlier feeling between French and German peoples. It became identified in the public mind with liberty, education, and peace, and so much so that when on December 28, 1935, a clique of Roman Catholic members of the House of Deputies introduced an amendment to abolish Freemasonry they were defeated by a vote of 370 to 91, which in the tangle of the many political parties was tantamount to a unanimous defeat.
When the Nazis set up their Fifth Column in France under Otto Abetz at about that time, they provided for a special division to plan means to undermine and destroy the Fraternity, that work being placed under the direction of Bernard Fa. This brought the Roman Catholics, royalists, and Nazis (or Fascists) into a single front against a Fraternity which had no army, possessed no governmental offices or powers, had no newspapers, no gendarmerie, and no hundreds of millions of francs,—a tribute to the power and vitality of the Masonic ideal! This combined anti-Masonic bloc also was used as under-cover machinery for attacking the United States and explains why upon the fall of France, Americans there were shocked to discover so much hatred of themselves; and why in his last radio address to the nation before he fled from Paris, Premier Renaud laid the blame for "France's defeat" on President Roosevelt!
Upon their entrance into Paris the Germans confiscated Masonic property, looted Lodge funds, burned Masonic buildings, carried the great Masonic Library off to Berlin, opened up a derisive "Masonic exposition" (which fell flat, and was a pitiable spectacle in which grown men who had graduated from the German universities acted and tallied like morons), shot some hundreds of Masons, imprisoned thousands of others, and sent other thousands to labor camps in the Reich. Almost as soon as he took control of Unoccupied France at Vichy, Pétain announced over the radio in one of his mumbled speeches that no Masonic dignitary (from a Worshipful Master up) could hold office or retain army commissions.
He removed some forty or more generals for having been Masons, and took the Legion of Honor away from many other Masons prominent in the army and in public life, among the latter being Pierre Comert, Alexis Leger, and Col. Charles Felix Pijeard, and denounced a number of members of the House of Deputies. He ordered Masonic property to be auctioned. Freemasonry was introduced into Italy about 1733, began to work under the best of auspices, and was led by men most eminent in the nation.
After the Popes began their crusade against it with the Bull by Clement XII in 1738, it had an honorable though checkered career, and in the Regiment numbered such Masons in its membership as Cavour, Mazzini, and Garibaldi, the last named a Grand Master. But Freemasonry was disturbed by the rise of the Carbonari with its endless branches and off-shoots, and often found itself compromised in the public eye by political secret societies falsely calling themselves Masonic. In self-defense some Lodges engaged in political work, thereby cutting themselves off from English-speaking Freemasonry; others refused to. The confusion became more confounded after World War I, and it was only when Torrigiani gained leadership, aided by the moral support of the Grand Lodge of New York (interested because of its own large Italian membership), that the Italian Craft began to regularize itself and to weed out false and clandestine bodies.
A short time before the so-called March on Rome (it had the King's knowledge and consent; Mussolini traveled in a Pullman sleeper) the Grand Fascist Council on February 13, 1923, resolved, among other things, that since "Freemasons pursue a program and employ methods contrary to those which inspire the whole activity of Fascism, the Council calls upon those Fascists who are Freemasons to choose between membership of the National Fascist Party and Freemasonry." Only a few days before, the Grand Orient, with Grand Master Torrigiani presiding, had proclaimed "that Freemasonry can never become a political party, and that, in the interests of national thought, it must be above all parties." Among the Masonic leaders who chose Freemasonry as against Fascism was General Luigi Capello. Among those who deserted Masonry were Rossi, Balbo, and Acerbo.
Late in 1923 young Fascist toughs began to burn, loot, and destroy Lodge rooms and their furniture— even in Milan. On January 10, 1925, the Parliament outlawed the Fraternity. In a debate on the Bill, Mussolini thundered: "The Bill will demonstrate that Freemasonry is out of date and no longer has the right to exist in the present century." For the sake of national peace Torrigiani declared the cessation of Masonic activity in Italy.
Then, about Nov. 5, 1926, the great bombshell exploded ! on a trumped-up charge manufactured out of the whole cloth, General Capello was arrested and accused of conspiring to assassinate Mussolini. This charge against a national hero who had given fifty years of his life to the Italian army covered the whole nation with gloom, because everybody knew he was innocent and his "trial" therefore showed the people by what means the Fascists would rule. He was brought to "trial" in the Spring of 1927, and sentenced to an imprisonment of thirty years, the first six to be in solitary confinement. Almost immediately secret police arrested Grand Master Torrigiani, "tried" him in secret court, and banished him to starve to death on one of the Lipari islands, to be followed later by some hundreds of other Masons. Torrigiani first went blind, or nearly 80, and then dsessene attempt after another was made from New York City to send food and medicines to those men on the little rock islands in the Mediterranean, but without much success. How many died from hunger and exposure may never be known. By the time Mussolini opened World War II with the rape of Abyssinia, Italian Freemasonry had become completely obliterated—for the time being.
General Ludendorff and his wife began the Nazi crusade against the Fraternity in Germany immediately after the end of World War I, and in the beginning tool; over enbloc the technique of anti-Masonry which had been used in France, which was character assassination coupled with a device for transferring to Masons the century-old Roman Catholic hatred of the Jews. (Ludendorff was a Nazi before Hitler was, and marched in the punch at hiunich)
In Mein Kamp Hitler wrote that the pacification of men and nations, that is, their civilization, which would destroy Germany's "Germanness," had been "introduced into the circles of the so-called 'intelligentsia' by Freemasonry," and from them "is transmitted to the great masses but above all to the bourgeoisie, by the activity of the great press, which today is always Jewish." (Hitler was startlingly ignorant, one of the most ignorant of a line of despots which always has hated "intellectuality"—and with good reason; he borrowed "bourgeoisie" at second hand from Karl Marx and often used it, but never understood its meaning.) Dr. Alfred Rosenberg, the "philosopher" of the Nazi Party (not a German, but a Balt, and psychopathic throughout his life), wrote at greater length in his Masonic Work Polmes, and with equal ignorance, even to the extent, and in defiance of his own claim to great learning, of accepting and promulgating the fable of the Protocol of the Elders of Zion.
In 1933, and in almost one of his first utterances as Prime Minister of Prussia, Hermann Goering declared that "in National Socialist Germany there is no place for Freemasonry." In 1927 Joseph Goebbels set up an "exposition" in Berlin to display regalia, furniture, books, etc., taken from Masonic Lodge rooms. At the outbreak of the war in 1939 there were (or had been) about 700 Lodges in Germany, with some 100,000 members. (In a Brown Shirt Berlin street parade so an eye-witness reported in a letter to the writer—Masons were hauled through the streets in a cage like animals.) How many Masons were mobbed, beaten to death, murdered, executed, or sent to concentration camps in Germany may never be know.
In Spain the sufferings of Masons were more terrible than in any other country. What was called Fascism in Italy, Naziism in Germany, Vichyism in France, was called The Falange, or Falangism, there. It was headed by the hierarchy of the Roman Church, the landlords, the higher officers in the army, by royalists, by local representatives of international finance, and was armed, accounted, and financed by Italy and Germany. Under Falangist rule membership in a Lodge automatically called for imprisonment for ten years, later changed to twelve years. In one town during the Franco Rebellion 80 men were garroted on six scaffolds for being Masons; in another 50 were made to dig a trench and then were shot and buried in it.
Savages from Morocco were turned loose on Masons' families; thousands of Masons were hanged shot, stabbed, burned, beaten to death for no other crime than Masonry; not in a Nazi crematory in Poland was there such an amount of savagery, bloodlust, brutality, murder, and unbelievable cruelty. (See an eye-witness account in Pierre van Paasen's The Days of our Years.) Prior to the Franco Rebellion Spain had two Grand Lodged some 175 Lodges, and a membership of about 10,000.
Freemasonry in Austria had a very old and proud history but by 1938, the year of the annexation of Austria it was reduced to one Grand Lodge, some 20 Lodgers and 1500 members. Hitler immediately abolished it and sent some 9000 of the Masons to the concentration camp at Dachau, or had them shot.
Belgium had one Grand Lodge, 24 Lodges, and 4000 members, but possessed an influence out of proportion to its size. Immediately the Germans entered Belgium in April, 1940, the Lodges were closed, their properties were confiscated, and their members, most of them, were imprisoned.
Before 1938 Czechoslovakia had two Grand Lodges, 60 Lodges, and 2600 members—Masaryk and Benes both were Masons. Hitler closed the Lodges, confiscated the property, imprisoned Masons, and shot many leaders.
Greece had before the War one Grand Lodge, 70 Lodges, 6000 members. King George was a Past Masters The Germans obliterated the Fraternity— perhaps the Greeks suffered more frightfully than any other Masons except in Spain.
Freemasonry was strong in Holland before the War with one Grand Lodge, 151 Lodges, and 10,000 members. In April, 1940, the Germans closed the Lodges, confiscated real estate, used jewels and leather aprons for making military goods, and arrested hundreds of Masons, among whom a number of Grand Officers committed suicide under torture.
Norway had one Grand Lodge, 30 Lodges, 11,500 members; Quisling and the Germans obliterated the Craft, following the usual program. Poland had one Grand Lodge, 12 Lodges, and 1,000 members. Roumania had two Grand Lodges, 40 Lodges, 1700 members. Yugoslavia had one Grand Lodges, 20 Lodges, 800 members. Denmark had one Grand Lodge (the King is Grand Master), 30 Lodges, 8,000 members. In each of these countries the Germans carried out the same program of suppression, confiscation, imprisonment, torture, execution, and the terrorism often was extended to Masons' families. As with the Germans so with the Japanese: in Japan, China, Philippine Islands, Singapore, Malaya, Burma, Thailand, and Indo China they destroyed Masons and Masonic buildings with the same ferocity as their Teutonic allies.
Within a space of less than five years more than 200,000 men overt martyred for being Masons, their properties confiscated, their families broken, themselves tortured, imprisoned, or shot. The Masonic Fraternity has a long memory, as long a memory as has the Roman Church; but it has nowhere in its memory any martyrdom such as that of those years; and it is hoped it never will have again; but it will carry a long memory into the future also, and a thousand years from now it will not have forgotten Spain, and Greece, and Holland, and France, and Italy of 1940 A.D.
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WAR, FREEMASONRY IN
The question how Freemasons should conduct themselves in time of war, when their own country is one of the belligerents, is an important one. Of the political Course of a Freemason in his individual and private Capacity there is no doubt. The Charges declare that he must be "a peaceable subject to the civil powers, and never be concerned in plots and conspiracies against the peace and welfare of the nation" (Constitutions, 1723, page 50). But so anxious is the Order to be unembarrassed by all political influences, that treason, however discountenanced by the Craft, is not held as a crime which is amenable to Masonic punishment.
For the same Charge affirms that "if a Brother should be a rebel against the State, he is not to be countenanced in his rebellion, however he may be pitied as an unhappy man; and if convicted of no other crime, though the loyal brotherhood must and ought to disown his rebellion and give no umbrage or ground of political jealousy to the government for the time being, they cannot expel him from the Lodge, and his relation to it remains indefeasible."
The Freemason, then, like every other citizen, should be a patriot. He should love his country with all his heart; should serve it faithfully and cheerfully; obey its laws in peace; and in war should be ever ready to support its honor and defend it from the attacks of its enemies. But even then the benign principles of the Institution extend their influence, arid divest the contest of many of its horrors. The Freemason fights, of Course, like every other man, for victory; but when the victory is won, he will remember that the conquered foe is still his Brother.
On the occasion, of a Masonic banquet given immediately after the close of the Mexican War to General Quitman by the Grand Lodge of South Carolina that distinguished soldier and Freemason remarked that, although he had devoted much of his attention to the nature and character of the Masonic Institution, and had repeatedly held the highest offices in the gift of his brethren, he had never really known what Freemasonry was until he had seen its workings on the field of battle.
But as a collective and organized body—in its Lodges and its Grand Lodges—it must have nothing to do with war. It must be silent and neutral. The din of the battle, the cry for vengeance, the shout of victory, must never penetrate its portals. Its dogmas and doctrines all teach love and fraternity; its symbols are symbols of peace; and it has no place in any of its rituals consecrated to the inculcation of human contention.
Brother C. W. Moore, in his Biography of Thomas Smith Webb, the great American ritualist, mentions a Circumstance which occurred during the period in which Webb presided over the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island, and to which Moore, in the opinion of Doctor Mackey, inconsiderately has given his hearty commendation. The United States was engaged at that time in a war with England. The people of Providence having commenced the erection of fortifications the Grand Lodge volunteered its Services; and the members, marching in procession as a Grand Lodge to the southern part of the town, erected a breastwork, to which was given the name of Fort Hiram (see Fort Masonic). Doctor Mackey doubted the propriety of the act. While, to repeat what has been just said, every individual member of the Grand Lodge as a Freemason, was bound by his obligation to be "true to his government " and to defend it from the attacks of its enemies, it was, says Doctor Mackey, unseemly, and contrary to the peaceful spirit of the Institution, for any organized body of Freemasons, organized as such to engage in a warlike enterprise. But the patriotism, if not the prudence of the Grand Lodge, Cannot be denied.
Since writing this paragraph, Doctor Mackey met in brother Murray Lyon's History of the Lodge of Edinburgh (page 83) with a record of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, which in his judgment sustained the view that he has taken. In 1777, recruits were being enlisted in Scotland for the British army, which was to fight the Americans in the War of the Revolution, which had just begun. Many of the Scotch Lodges offered, through the newspapers, bounties to all who should enlist But on February 2, 1778, the Grand Lodge passed a resolution which was published on the 12th, through the Grand Secretary, in the following circular:
At a quarterly meeting of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, held here the Second instant, I received a charge to acquaint all the Lodges of Scotland holding of the Grand Lodge that the Grand Lodge has seen with concern advertisements in the public newspapers, from different Lodges in Scotland, not only offering a bounty to recruits who may enlist in the new levies, but with the addition that all such recruits shall be admitted to the freedom of Masonry.
The first of these they consider as an improper alienation of the funds of the Lodge from the support of their poor and distressed Brethren, and the second they regard as a prostitution of our Order, which demands the reprehension of the Grand Lodge What ever share the Brethren may take as individuals in aiding these levies, out of zeal to serve their private friends or to promote the public service, the Grand Lodge considered it to be repugnant to the spirit of our Craft that any Lodge should take a part in such a business as a collective Body.
For Masonry is an Order of Pease ant it looks on all mankind to be Brethren as Masons, whether they be at peace or at war with each other as subjects of contending countries The Grand Lodge therefore strongly enjoins that the practice may be forthwith discontinued. By order of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. W. Mason, Gr Sec.
Of all human institutions, Freemasonry is the greatest and purest Peace Society. And this is because its doctrine of universal peace is founded on the doctrine of a universal brotherhood.
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WARDENS
In every Symbolic Lodge, there are three principal officers, namely, a Master, a Senior Warden, and a Junior Warden. This rule has existed ever since the revival, and for some time previous to that event, and is so universal that it has been considered as one of the landmarks. It exists in every country and in every Rite The titles of the officers may be different in different languages, but their functions as presiding over the Lodge in a tripartite division of duties, are everywhere the same. The German Masons call the two Wardens erste and zweite Aufseher; the French, premier and second Surveillant; the Spanish, primer and segundo Vigilante; and the Italians, primo and secondo Sorvegliante.
In the various Rites, the positions of these officers vary. In the American Rite, the Senior Warden sits in the West and the Junior in the South. In the French and Scottish Rites, both Wardens are in the West, the Senior in the Northwest and the Junior in the Southwest; but in all, the triangular position of the three officers relatively to each other is preserved; for a triangle being formed within the square of the Lodge, the Master and Wardens will each occupy one of the three points.
The precise time when the presidency of the Lodge was divided between these three officers or when they were first introduced into Freemasonry, is unknown. The Lodges of Scotland, during the Operative regime, or era, were governed by a Deacon and one Warden. The Earl of Cassilis was Master of Kilwinning in 1670, though only an Apprentice. This seems to have been not unusual, as there were cases of Apprentices presiding over Lodges. The Deacon performed the functions of a Master, and the Warden was the second officer, and took charge of and distributed the funds. In other words, he acted as a Treasurer.
This is evident from the Minutes of the Edinburgh Lodge, published by Brother Lyon. But the head of the Craft in Scotland at the same time was called the Warden General. This regulation, however, does not appear to have been universal even in Scotland, for in the Mark Book of the Aberdeen Lodge, under date of December 27, 1670, which was published by Brother W. J. Hughan in the Voice of Masonry, February, 1872, we find there a Master and Warden recognized as the presiding officers of the Lodge in the following Statute: "And likewise we all protest, by the oath we have made at our entry, to own the Warden of our Lodge as the next man in power to the Master, and in the Master's absence he is full Master."
Some of the English manuscript Constitutions recognize the offices of Master and Wardens. Thus the Harleian Manuscript, No. 1942, whose date is supposed to be about 1670, contains the "new articles" said to have been agreed on at a General Assembly held in 1663, in which is the following passage: "That for the future the said Society, Company and Fraternity of Free Masons shall be regulated and governed by one Master & Assembly & Wardens, as ye said Company shall think fit to chose, at every yarely General Assembly."
As the word Warden does not appear in the earlier manuscripts, it might be concluded that the office was not introduced into the English Lodges until the latter part of the seventeenth century. Yet this does not absolutely follow. For the office of Warden might have existed, and no statutory provision on the subject have been embraced in the general charges which are contained in those manuscripts, because they relate not to the government of Lodges, but the duties of Freemasons. This of course, is conjectural; but the conjecture derives weight from the fact that Wardens were officers of the English Gilds as early as the fourteenth century. In the Charters granted by Edward III, in 1354, it is permitted that these companies shall yearly elect for their government "a certain number of Wardens."
To a list of the Companies of the date of 1377 is affixed what is called the Oath of the Wardens of Crafts, of which this is the commencement: "Ye shall Were that ye shall wele and treuly oversee the Craft of— whereof ye be chosen Wardeyns for the year. It thus appears that the Wardens were at first the presiding officers of the Gilds.
At a later period, in the reign of Elizabeth, we find that the chief officer began to be called Master; and in the time of James I, between 1603 and 1625, the Gilds were generally governed by a Master and Wardens.
An ordinance of the Leather-Sellers Company at that time directed that on a certain occasion "the Master and Wardens shall appear in state."
It is not, therefore, improbable that the government of Masonic Lodges by a Master and two Wardens was introduced into the regulations of the Order in the Seventeenth century, the "new article" of 1663 being a statutory confirmation of a custom which had just begun to prevail.
Senior Warden. He is the second officer in a Symbolic Lodge, and governs the Craft in the hours of labor. In the absence of the Master he presides over the Lodge, appointing some brothers not the Junior Warden, to occupy his place in the attest. His jewel is a level, a Symbol of the equality which exists among the Craft while at labor in the Lodge. His seat is in the West, and he represents the column of Strength. He has placed before him, and carries in all processions, a column, which is the representative of the right-hand pillar that stood at the porch of King Solomon's Temple. The Junior Warden has a similar column, which represents the left-hand pillar. During labor the Column of the Senior Warden is erect in the Lodge, while that of the Junior is recumbent. At refreshment, the position of the two columns is reversed.
Junior Warden. The duties of this officer have already been described (see Junior Warden). There is also an officer in a Commandery of Knights Templar, the fifth in rank, who is staled Senior Warden. He takes an important part in the initiation of a candidate. His jewel of office is a triple triangle, the emblem of Deity.
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WARDENS' COLUMNS
See articles on Columns and Columns, The Wardens'
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WARDENS, GRAND
See Grand Wardens
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WARDER
The literal meaning of Warder is one who keeps watch and ward. In the Middle Ages, the Warder was stationed at the gate or on the battlements of the castle, and with his trumpet sounded alarms and announced the approach of all comers. Hence the Warder in a Commandery of Knights Templar bears a trumpet, and his duties are prescribed to be to announce the approach and departure of the Eminent Commander, to post the sentinels, and see that the Asylum is duly guarded, as well as to announce the approach of visitors. His jewel is a trumpet and crossed swords engraved on a square plate.
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WARLIKE INSTRUMENT
In the ancient initiations, the aspirant was never permitted to enter on the threshold of the Temple in which the Ceremonies were conducted until, by the most solemn warning, he had been impressed with the necessity of secrecy and caution Thus the use, for this purpose, of a Warlike Instrument in the First Degree of Freemasonry, is intended to produce the same effect A sword has always been employed for that purpose; and to substitute the point of the compasses, taken from the altar at the time, is an improper sacrifice of Symbolism to the convenience of the Senior Deacon The Compasses are peculiar to the Third Degree In the earliest instructions of the eighteenth century it is Said that the entrance is "upon the point of a sword, or spear, or some warlike instrument."
Krause (Kurlsturkunden ii, page 142), in commenting on this expression, has completely misinterpreted its signification He supposes that the sword was intended as a sign of jurisdiction now assumed by the Lodge. But the real object of the ceremony is to teach the neophyte that as the sword or warlike instrument will wound or prick the flesh, so will the betray al of a trust confided wound or prick the conscience of him who betrays it.
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WARRANT OF CONSTITUTION
The Document which authorizes or gives a Warrant to certain persons therein named to organize and constitute a Lodge, Chapter, or other Masonic Body, and which ends usually with the formula, "for which this shall be your sufficient Warrant."
The practice of granting Warrants for the Constitution of Lodges, dates only from the period of the Revival of Freemasonry in 1717 Previous to that period "a sufficient number oƒ brethren," says Preston (Illustrations, edition of 1792, page 248), "met together within a certain district, had ample power to make Masons, and discharge every duty of Masonry without a Warrant of Constitution " But in 1717 a regulation was adopted "that the privilege of assembling as Masons, which had been hitherto unlimited, should be vested in certain Lodges or assemblies of Masons convened in certain places; and that every Lodge to be hereafter Convened, except the four old Lodges at this time existing, should be legally authorized to act by a Warrant from the Grand Master, for the time being, granted to certain individuals by petition, with the Consent and approbation of the Grand Lodge in communication; and that without such Warrant no Lodge should be hereafter deemed regular or Constitutional."
Consequently ever Since the adoption of that regulation, no Lodge has been regular unless it is working under such an authority The Word Warrant is appropriately used, because in its legal acceptation it means a document giving authority to perform some Specified act In England, the Warrant of Constitution emanates frown the Grand Master; in the United states from the Grand Lodge in America, the Grand Master grants only a dispensation to hold a Lodge, which may be revoked or confirmed by the Grand Lodge; and in the latter case, the Warrant will then be issued The Warrant of Constitution is granted to the Master and Wardens, and to their successors in office.
It continues in force only during the pleasure of the Grand Lodge, and may, therefore, at any time be revoked, and the Lodge dissolved by a vote of that Body, or it may be temporarily arrested or suspended by an edict of the Grand Master This will, however, never be done, unless the Lodge has violated the ancient landmarks or failed to pay due respect and obedience to the Grand Lodge or to the Grand Master At the formation of the first Lodges in a number of the States in the South and Middle West, the Grand Lodges of other States granted both Dispensations and Charters When a Warrant of Constitution is revoked or recalled, the jewels furniture, and funds of the Lodge revert to the Grand Lodge.
Lastly, as a Lodge holds its communications only under the authority of this Warrant of Constitution, no Lodge can be opened, or proceed to business, unless it be present if it be mislaid or destroyed, it must be recovered or another obtained; and until that is done, the Communications of the Lodge must be suspended; and if the Warrant of Constitution be taken out of the room during the session of the Lodge, the authority of the Master instantly ceases Some pertinent Comments upon the early use of Significant and frequently employed words to be found in the documents of Freemasonry are discussed by Brother W J Chetwode Crawley (see Caementaria Hiberica, Fasciculus ii). we condense these herewith on the word Warrant, Constitution, Deputation, and Regular. The earliest mention of the word Warrant in connection with Grand Lodge is found in Number VIII of the General Regulations of 1721, comprised in doctor Anderson's Constitutions, 1723, where the Brethren are warned that "they must obtain the Grand Master's Warrant to join in forming a new Lodge, and that he must approve of them by his Warrant, which must be signified to the other Lodges " The provision is in the first Irish Code, 1730, hut condensed by the Grand Secretary, Brother John Pennell.
The Minutes of the Grand Lodge of Munster for John the Baptist's Day, 1730, show that Grand Lodge considered the petitions of Brethren at Waterford and Clonmell "to have a Warrant from our Grand Lodge for assembling and holding Regular Lodges " Both passages and context allow no doubt that the word Warrand is used in its etymological Sense of permission, and not in its secondary sense of a permanent document embodying that authorization. This permission was involved in the formal Constitution of the Lodge by the Grand Master, or, failing him, by a brothers to whom he issued a written Deputation for the purpose This document has often and mistakenly been called the Warrant, or Charter, by brethren familiar with the legal qualities that form a Charter, and who were unable to distinguish between a Warrant or general authorization of 1723, and Warrant or permanent documents of today.
The words Constitution and Deputation had similar development The Constitution and Deputation of 1723 meant a ceremony; the Constitution of fifty years later often, not always, meant a document. The Deputation of 1723 meant entrusting duties to one who stood for the Grand Master; the Deputation displayed today, with just pride, in certain old Lodges, is a document delegating those temporary duties.
The word Regular, too, has had a modern connotation attributed to it that has helped to increase the confusion. It simply meant, in the first instance, that the Lodge to which it was applied had come under the jurisdiction—sub regula —of the Grand Lodge, in contradistinction to Lodges which had not so submitted themselves. These latter Lodges were not necessarily clandestine or irregular. They were only non-regular in that they were outside the jurisdiction of the recently formed Grand Lodge but many, with hasty judgment, have assumed that all Brethren who, in those early days, were not regular, must be irregular a judgment far from truth. Evidence of the existence of legitimate non-regular Lodges has multiplied of late years.
The Lodge at Warrington, in which Elias Ashmole was initiated in 1646, once stood well-nigh alone as an accredited example. Today we have even more striking examples in the Lodge discovered by Brother Edward Condor to have been held in 1636 under the auspices of the Masons Company, in London, and in the Lodge at Chester, to which Randle Holme belonged in l688, and which Brother W. H Rylands has proved to have been a Speculative Lodge. The Irish Lodge, traditionally held at Donneraile, in which the honorable Elizabeth Saint Leger was initiated before 1713, belonged to the same category.
The old Lodge at Alnwick, apparently an Operative survival, has left By-laws dated 1701, and Minutes dated 1703 The Lodge at Swalwell, in Durham, possessing records from 1725, did not become Regular by exhibiting a Constitution from the Grand Lodge of England until 1735 Evidence is not wanted of similar neighboring Lodges which failed to follow the Lodge at Swalwell even in this tardy submissions to the Grand Lodge in London. When we passed in review the series of Masonic Manuals published by Brother William Smith in 1735 and 1736, we find a flourishing Lodge at Hexhan mentioned in the Book M (see introduction to the Pocket Companion, 1735) This Lodge according to Brother John Lane, never became Regular by coming under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of England Similarly, Doctor Stukely's Lodge at Grantham, in Lincolnshire, never became Regular, though we knew from his Diary that it existed under his tutelage from 1796 to 1730.
As a matter of history all Lodges before 1717 existed under like conditions Those Time Immemorial Lodges continuing work after Grand Lodge was founded, came gradually and voluntarily under its jurisdiction, if they did so at all. Such of them as remained aloof did not forfeit their right to be regarded as Lodges of Freemasons.
They were Non-Regular Lodges. Reference to the ecclesiastical use of the word Regular will help to make its original Masonic use clear. In the Roman Catholic Church the clergy were divided into two great sections—the Monastic and the Parochial. The Monastic clergy are alone entitled to be styled Regular, as being under the Rule— sub regula—of their special Order. Parochial clergy are styled Non-Regular, or Secular It would be the height of inconsequence to style them Irregular. Each of these verbal misconceptions is trifling in itself, and obvious when pointed out in the aggregate, they have generally helped to obscure the origin of the now universal practice of holding no Lodge to be Regular unless it possesses a permanent Charter embodying its rights This is the Irish use.
We have seen that the issuing of permanent Warrants or Charters to its supporting Lodges formed no part of the theory of Constitution contemplated by the Grand Lodge of England When the first Warrant was issued by the Grand Lodge of Ireland, the step was along a new path .No precedent could be discerned in the Sister Grand Lodge of England for either the theory or the practice The growth of our mother tongue has been almost imperceptible during the generations that have passed since the first book of Constitutions was published by Brother James Anderson Yet the interval has been long enough to impart confusion into the terminology of our history. No student can afford to be ignorant or careless of the ceaseless changes of meaning in the words of a living language The words Warrant, Constitution and Regular connote many things today which our forefathers had not in view at the Revival of 1717.
*
WAR RELIEF ASSOCIATION, MASONIC
An early organized Body inspired by Brother William B. Melish, Cincinnati, Ohio, who during the World War, November 14, 1914, to June 1, 1920, collected $140,011 29 for the relief of widows and orphans of Freemasons of the foreign nations and disbursed the fund through the Masonic authorities in France, England, Belgium, Italy, Serbia, Switzerland, and Greece, and mainly to Masonic orphanages of France, Belgium and Serbia The cost of administration was less than the savings bank interest earned and the officers and trustees served without salaries From this fund was contributed $5,000 to the rebuilding of a public hospital at Jerusalem, to which a like sum was given by the Grand Priory, Order of the Temple, England. American Knights Templar while expending $150,000 on foreign orphans, also contributed $20,783 91 to Brother Melish's fund, twenty-seven Grand Lodges gave $52,120.61; Royal Arch Masons, $27,363.68; Mystic Shrine, $29,557.91, and others were also generous (see Proceedings, Imperial Council, 1920, page 284).
*
WARREN, GENERAL JOSEPH
Grand Master of Massachusetts from December 27, 1759, to June 17, 1775, a statesmen of foresight and judgment, President of the Provincial Congress and Major General in the Revolutionary War. Born June 11, 1741, Roxbury, Massachusetts; graduated from Harvard College in 1759; began the practice of medicine in 1763, noted for his success in the smallpox epidemic at Boston in 1764. In 1774, sent to the Provincial Congress to represent the City of Boston and elected President in 1775. This Provincial Congress offered him the appointment of Surgeon General, which he declined. He accepted a Commission as Major General, which was dated three days before the Battle of Bunker Hill. General Warren presided at the meeting of the Colonial Congress, June 16, 1775, which lasted almost the entire night and immediately left for Charlestown, arriving just a few moments before the first attack of the British troops at Bunker Hill.
Here Putnam and Prescott offered him command but he, refusing, seized a musket and fought in the ranks. During this encounter he received a bullet in the head and was instantly killed, being buried in a hastily prepared grave on the battle-field. Joseph Warren was Initiated September 30, 1761, in Saint Andrew Lodge of Boston; Passed, November 2, but no record is extant of his being Raised. Earl of Dalhousie, Grand Master of Masons in Scotland, sent Brother Warren a Commission, dated May 30, 1769, appointing him Grand Master of Masons in Boston and within one hundred miles of the same. This communication was received in December of 1769. He received another Commission, 1773, from the Earl of Dumfries, then Grand Master of Scotland. This Commission was dated March 3, 1772, and extended Brother Warren's Jurisdiction to the entire Continent of America.
He was assiduous in his Masonic duties, giving constant attendance to the Committees of the Fraternity and taking care of manifold duties with a minute attention remarkable, considering his activity in public causes. The Masonic Brotherhood removed Brother Warren's body from the shallow grave in the battle-field as soon as possible after the evacuation of Boston, April 6, 1776; held a Masonic funeral service over it and placed it in a tomb in the Granary Burying Ground. Since then the body has been moved several times and now lies in Forest Hills Cemetery. King Solomon's Lodge, then of Charlestown, erected and dedicated a monument to his memory and later voted to present the land and monument to the Bunker Hill Monument Association and an exact model in marble of the original is now placed within the Bunker Hill Monument.
The completion of the monument was celebrated
June 17, 1843, King Solomon's Lodge, then of Charlestown, conducting
the Masonic funeral rites. On this occasion the Masonic Apron
of Brother Warren was worn by Past Grand Master Benjamin Russell,
a soldier of the Revolution. A statue of General Warren was inaugurated
lacy the Brethren June 17, 1857, in the presence of the Grand
Officers. See Bylaws of Saint Andrews Royal Arch Chapter, Boston
(1866, page 85)
Proceedings, Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, 1916 (page 246); also
Mackey's revised History of Freemasonry, volumes v and vi (pages
1572, 1573, 1669, 2016, 2022 and 2025), and Leaflets of Masonic
Biography, by C. Moore, 1863 (pages 9 to 48).
*
WASHING HANDS
See Lustration
*
WASHINGTON, A MARK MASON
Norton Sketch of the Lodge of Antiquity, A. F. V. A. M., I. G. R. C., by J. Beamish Saul, Past Master, Past D. D. G. M. (Montreal, 1903), quotes on page 8 a letter from Lieutenant Colonel W. Lacy, who subsequently was Master of the Lodge, which was "Formerly Lodge of Social and Military Virtues, No. 227 G. R. I., Instituted 4th March, 1752, in the 46th British Regiment, now the 2nd Battalion Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry."
"Soon after my initation, being a member of the mess committee [of the regiment], I found in the store rooms a bullock trunk with brass mountings, engraved N o. 227 L. S. M. V. I learned that it belonged to the Masons of the corps, and, being permitted to remove it to my bungalow, I found the lock had been broken, some of the jewels lost. It contained the Record book, some jewels, several books of the by-laws, the Bible and Charter, almost dilapidated. On the fly-leaf of the books of By-laws was printed: 'This Bible belonging to Lodge No. 227, was that on which Washington received a degree of Masonry, That during the war of Independence in America it was taken by the enemy, w ho returned it with a flag of truce, and again it was taken by the French in their attack on the island of Dominica, together with the Lodge jewels and mess plate of the officers, who returned it with the Lodge jewels under a {lag of truce, keeping the mess plate."' The Lodge was then in India.
Brother Beamish Saul summarizes another entry from the Lodge Minutes: "The bullock trunk containing the lodge's regalia and other effects accompanied the regiment when practical, but in some cases, for want of transport it, with other baggage had to follow. On one of these occasions the trunk fell into the hands of the Americans, but this fact coming to the knowledge of Washington, he immediately ordered it to be returned under 3 flag of truce and escorted by a guard of honor; it being also stated the regiment opened up its ranks, the guard of honor marching in, to the cheering music of the pipe and drum band."
In 1833 Captain Lacy carried the Lodge chest with him when the 46th returned to England from India. The Lodge then went to Ireland; in 1846 it returned to Canada. In 1857 the Lodge affiliated with the Grand Lodge of Canada! changing its name to Lodge of Antiquity; in 1869 it affiliated with the Grand Lodge of Quebec.
"Of the precious volume of the Sacred Law already spoken of," writes Bro. Beamish, "the Lodge now possesses a bound photo zincographic copy [presented by Col. Lacy of the title page and about a dozen other principal pages, and containing also certain records of the West family and others who lived in the Jersevs at that time. The Bible itself is now kept in the officers mess room at Newsby in a walnut case on which is engraved: 'On this Sacred Volume Washington received a Degree of Masonry . . . Washington having been made, passed, and raised in Fredericksburg Lodge, in Virginia, at a much earlier date than when the 46th was in winter quarters near Philadelphia, tradition and the general consensus of opinion says it was the Mark Degree which was conferred. "
It is most reasonable to take it that the Degree was the Mark, since Washington already had been exalted to the Royal Arch at Fredericksburg in 1753; and that it was conferred at Philadelphia in or near 1777 at a time of truce, when Lodges were opened and visited by Masons from both sides of the line. "The Bible had been the property of the West family, who lived in Jerseys in 1776, many of the names of the births and deaths being` recorded up to 1769. The 46th were in the Jerseys in 1776."
*
WASHINGTON AT CHARLES TOWN
To the data in the article on George Washington beginning at page 1093 should be added the tradition that he once attended and presided over Lodge meetings held in a cavern at Charles Town, W. Va. This tradition has been preserved in the Washington family, and there is no ground for questioning it.
Charles Town, then in Virginia, was a secondary home of the Washingtons when George Washington was living at Mt. Vernon. It was named after his brother Charles, who built there a home called Maudington. Samuel, another brother, built Hareyrood, which is still owned by descendants (James and Dolly Madison were married in it.) The population of about 2500 contains more descendants of the Washington and Custis families than any other American community.
*
WASHINGTON
Washington was separated from Oregon by Act of Congress on March 2, 1853. There were at the time four chartered Lodges in the new Territory, all of which gave allegiance to Oregon, namely, Olympia, No. 5, chartered in 1853 and the first Lodge to be established north of the Columbia River and west of the Rocky Mountains; Steilacoom, No. 8; Grand Mound, No. 21, and Washington, No. 22. A Convention was held on December 6, 1858, at which Brother Charles Byles presided to consider the formation of a Grand Lodge of Washington. At a meeting held on December 8, 1858, a Constitution was adopted and a Lodge of Master Masons was opened. Grand Officers were elected as follows; Grand Master, T. F. McElroy; Deputy Grand Master, James A. Graham; Senior Grand Warden, James Byles; Junior Grand Warden, Levi Farnsworth; Grand Treasurer, J. M. Bachelder, and Grand Secretary, Thomas M. Reed. The Grand Master was then installed and on the following day the Grand Lodge was opened with due ceremony in Ample Form.
Seattle Chapter, No. 1, was granted a Dispensation November 1, 1869, but did not have a prosperous career and its Charter was declared forfeited on August 27, 1880. Its number was given to Walla Walla Chapter which had been given a Dispensation February 13, 1871, and a Charter at the same time as Seattle Chapter on September 20, 1871. By authority of the General Grand High Priest a Convention was held at Walla Walla on October 2, 1884, by the three Chapters, Walla Walla, No. 1; Spokane, No. 2; Seattle, No. 3, and arrangements for a Grand Chapter were completed.
Tacoma Council, No. 1, at Tacoma was warranted on February 9, 1891, and chartered July 21, 1891. By Dispensation of the General Grand Master, dated May 31, 1895, a Convention was held at Tacoma to organize a Grand Council. It met on June 5, adopted a Constitution and elected Grand Officers who were installed by the Special Deputy, Elijah M. Beatty. Washington Commandery, No. 1, was organized by Dispensation issued April 19, 1882, at Walla Walla. Its Charter was dated August 23, 1883. This, with three other constituent Commanderies, Seattle, No. 2; Cataract, No. 3, and Ivanhoe, No. 4, came under the control of the Grand Commandery of the Territory when it was organized on June 2, 1887. On March 13, 1872, three Charters were granted to Bodies of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, Southern Jurisdiction, at Seattle, namely, Washington Lodge of Perfection, No. 1; Washington Chapter of Rose Croix, No. 1, and Washington Council of Kadosh, No. 1. Lawson Consistory, No. 1, was chartered, also at Seattle, on November 11, 1883.
*
WASHINGTON, CONGRESS OF
A Congress of American Freemasons was convoked at the City of Washington, in the year 1822, at the call of several Grand Lodge, for the purpose of recommending the establishment of a General Grand Lodge of the United States. The result was an unsuccessful one.
*
WASHINGTON, GEORGE.
Born at Bridges Creek, Westmorland County, Virginia, February 22, 1732, of the present calendar, but February 11, 1731/2 of the birth record and on December 14, 1799, he died at Mount Vernon, Fairfax County, Virginia, about fifteen miles from Washington, District of Columbia. At sixteen he became surveyor on the estate of Lord Fairfax, then joined the army and later was on the staff of General Braddock.
Delegate to First and Second Continental Congresses. Unanimously chosen in 1775 as Commander-in-Chief of Colonial Army and his Yorktown campaign ended the war on October 19, 1781, with the surrender of Lord Comwallis and his British Army. Washington presided at the Federal Convention in Philadelphia, May, 1787, for the framing of the Constitution, and then was elected President, and in 1792 reelected, refusing a third term. He was recalled from his retirement in 1798 to again serve as Commander-in- Chief but the prospect of war with France did not w materialize.
The Oath of office as President of the United States was administered on April 30, 1789, New York City, to General Washington, by Brother Robert R. Livingston, Chancellor of the State of New York, and who was also the Grand Master of Free and Accepted Masons.
The name of Washington occupies a prominent place in Masonic biography, not perhaps so much because of any services he has done to the Institution either as a worker or a writer, but because the fact of his connection with the Craft is a source of pride to every American Freemason, at least, who can thus call the "Father of his Country" a Brother. There is also another reason. While the friends of the Institution have felt that the adhesion to it of a man so eminent for virtue was a proof of its moral and religious character, the opponents of Freemasonry, being forced to admit the conclusion, have sought to deny the premises, and, even if compelled to admit the fact of Washington's initiation, have persistently asserted that he never took any interest in it, disapproved of its spirit, and at an early period of his life abandoned it. The truth of history requires that these misstatements should be met by a brief recital of his Masonic career.
Washington was initiated, in 1752, in the Lodge at Fredericksburg, Virginia, and the records of that Lodge, still in existence, present the following entries on the subject. The first entry is thus: "Nov. 4th. 1752. This evening Mr. George Washington was initiated as an entered Apprentice", receipt of the entrance fee, amounting to £2 3s., was acknowledged, F.C. and M.M. March :3 and August 4, 1753.
On March 3 in the following year, "Mr. George Washington" is recorded as having been passed a Fellow Craft; and on August 4, same year, 1753, the record of the transactions of the evening states that "Mr. George Washington," and others whose names are mentioned, have been raised to the Sublime Degree of Master Mason.
Curiously enough each of the days when Washington attended Lodge was Saturday, the dates already mentioned falling on that day, and he was last in the Lodge at Fredericksburg on Saturday, January 4, 1755. Brother Franklin Stearns, Past Master of Fredericksburg Lodge, says that Washington paid his fees November 6, 1752 and that no further fees appearing in this connection he has arrived at the conclusion that £2 3s was paid for all three Degrees.
For five years after his initiation, he was engaged in active military service, and it is not likely that during that period his attendance on the communications of the Lodge could have been frequent. Some English writers have asserted that he was made a Freemason during the old French War, in a military Lodge attached to the 46th Regiment. The Bible on which he is said to have been obligated claimed to be still in existence, although the Lodge was many years ago dissolved, at Halifax, Nova Scotia. The records of the Lodge are, or were, extant, and furnish the evidence that Washington was there, and perhaps received some Masonic Degree. It is equally clear that he was first initiated in Fredericksburg Lodge, for the record is still in possession of the Lodge.
Three methods have been adopted to reconcile this apparent discrepancy. Brother Hayden, in his work on Washington and his Masonic Compeers (page 31), suggests that an obligation had been administered to him as a test-oath when visiting the Lodge, or that the Lodge, deeming the authority under which he had been made insufficient, had required him to be healed and reobligated. Neither of these attempts to solve the difficulty appears to have any plausibility. Brother C. W. Moore, of Massachusetts in the Freemasons Monthly Magazine (volume xi, page 261), suggests that, as it was then the custom to confer the Mark Degree as a side Degree in Masters' Lodges, and as it has been proved that Washington was in possession of that Degree, he may have received it in Lodge No. 227, attached to the 46th Regiment.
Brother C. C. Hunt, Grand Secretary of Iowa, has prepared an article dealing with the probable initiation of Washington into Royal Arch Masonry. The first mention in the Minutes of a Lodge to the Royal Arch Degree being actually worked is the reference in the records of Frederieksburg Lodge for December 22, 1753. In that Virginian Lodge on August 4, 1753, George Washington was raised a Master Mason, the Royal Arch Degree being worked four months and eighteen days previously. When he was initiated Washington was twenty years old; six feet three inches tall; a Major and Adjutant-General for the Colony. By the time he had taken the Master Mason's Degree he had been appointed a Colonel. He was Commander of the Northern Military District of Virginia at the outbreak of the French and Indian War, in May, 1754. Brother Cyrus Field Willard points out that an examination of this record would indicate that this wealthy young man must have gone on and taken his Royal Arch Degree as others did who were initiated in the Lodge with him and appear later as officers of the Royal Arch.
Naturally Washington would follow this example so far as receiving the Degree was concerned in order that he might be fully prepared for his military career, many Brethren having done exactly the same thing for a like purpose, as one may readily eat to mind in thinking over the initiation in the days of War. Brother Willard has made a study of the precedence of the various Brethren upon the records of the Lodge, which precedence does not seem to be determined altogether by the dates when they were given the three first Degrees of the Lodge, and he says that it is hard to determine what occasioned this precedence if it were not membership in the Royal Arch. He explains the fact that the Secretary does not mention the conferring of the Royal Arch Degree upon Washington as this probably took place before Secretary Woodrow had himself received that Degree.
However, the Worshipful Master of the Lodge at Fredericksburg said in a speech of welcome to Lafayette on November 28, 1824 "Our records assure us that on the 4th day of November, A. L. 5752, the light of Masonry here first burst upon his (Washington's) sight, and that within the pale of this Lodge he subsequently sought and obtained further illumination" (see pages 33-34 Historical Sketch of Fredencksburg Lodge by Brother S. J. Quinn, Past Master, 1890). Of course this may refer simply to the further illumination of the Second and Third Degrees. A more significant reference is the one stressed by Brother Hunt. He calls particular attention to the presentation by General Lafayette in August, 1784, forty years previous to the occasion of the above address of welcome to Brother Lafayette on his second visit to the United States. Brother Hunt is especially impressed with the Masonic Apron presented by General Lafayette to Brother Washington, a gift embroidered in colored silks by Madame La fayette with the emblems of the Holy Royal Arch.
On the flap of the apron are the letters H.T.W.S.S.T.
K.S. arranged in the form of a circle familiar to Chapter Freemasons. Within the circle is a beehive seemingly indicating the Mark selected by the wearer. As this apron was made especially for Brother Washington it is pointed out by Brother Hunt that it is not likely that General Lafayette would have had this emblem placed on the apron had the facts been otherwise, and that certainly the beehive as an emblem of industry was a proper mark for Washington to select. We must also remember that at this time the Royal Arch Degree was conferred in Masters Lodges and under a Lodge Warrant.
There is ample evidence that during the Revolutionary War, while he was Commander-in-Chief of the American armies, he was a frequent attendant on the meetings of military Lodges. Years ago, Captain Hugh Maloy, a revolutionary veteran, then residing in Ohio, declared that on one of these occasions he was initiated in Washington's marquee, the chief himself presiding at the ceremony.
Brother Scott, a Past Grand Master of Virginia, asserted that Washington was in frequent attendance on the Communications of the Brethren. The proposition made to elect him a Grand Master of the United States, as will be hereafter seen, affords a strong presumption that his name as a Freemason was familiar to the Craft. In 1777, the Convention of Virginia Lodges recommended Washington as the most proper person to be elected Grand Master of the Independent Grand Lodge of that Commonwealth. Brother Dove has given in his Text-Book the complete records of the Convention; and there is therefore no doubt that the nomination was made. It was, however, declined by Washington. Soon after the beginning of the Revolution, a disposition was manifested among American Freemasons to dissever their connection, as subordinates, with the Masonic authorities of the mother country, and in several of the newly erected States the Provincial Grand Lodges assumed an independent character.
The idea of a Grand Master of the whole of the United States had also become popular. On February 7, 1780, a Convention of delegates from the military Lodges in the Army was held at Morristown, in New Jersey, when an address to the Grand Masters in the various States was adopted, recommending the establishment. of "One Grand Lodge in America, " and the election of a Grand Master. This address was sent to the Grand Lodges of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Virginia; and although the name of Washington is not mentioned in it, those Grand Lodges were notified that he was the first choice of the Brethren who had framed it.
While the proceedings were in progress, the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania had taken action on the same subject. On January 13, 1780, it had held a session, and it was unanimously declared that it was for the benefit of Freemasonry that "a Grand Master of Masons throughout the United States" should be nominated; whereupon, with equal unanimity, General Washington was elected to the office. It was then ordered that the Minutes of the election be transmitted to the different Grand Lodges in the United States, and their concurrence therein be requested. The Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, doubting the expediency of electing a General Grand Master declined to come to any determination on the question and so the subject was dropped.
This will correct the error into which many foreign Grand Lodges and Masonic writers have fallen, of supposing that Washington was ever a Grand Master of the United States. The error was strengthened by a medal contained in Merzdorf's Medals of the Fraternity of Freemasons, which the editor states was struck by the Lodges of Pennsylvania. This statement is, however, liable to great doubt. The date of the medal is 1797. On the obverse is a likeness of Washington, with the device, "Washington, President, 1797." On the reverse is a tracing-board and the device, "Amor, Lelonor, et Justitia, or Love, Honor and Justice. G. W., G. G. M."
French and German Masonic historians have been deceived by this medal, and refer to it as their authority for asserting that Washington was a Grand Master. Leaning and Thory, for instance, place the date of his election to that office in the year in which the medal was struck. More recent European writers, however, directed by the researches of the American authorities, discovered and corrected the mistake.
We next hear of Washington's official connection in the year 1788. Lodge No. 39, at Alexandria, which had hitherto been working under the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, in 1788 transferred its allegiance to Virginia. On May 29 in that year the Lodge adopted the following resolution: "The Lodge proceeded to the appointment of Master and Deputy Master to be recommended to the Grand Lodge of Virginia, when George Washington, Esq., was unanimously chosen Master; Robert McCrea, Deputy Master; Wm. Hunter, Jr., Serliur Warden; John Are, Junior Warden. It was also ordered that a committee should wait on general Washington, "and inquire of him whether it will be agreeable to him to be named in the Charter." What was the result of that interview, we do not positively know. But it is to be presumed that the reply of Washington was a favorable one, for the application for the Charter contained his name, which would hardly have been inserted if it had been repugnant to his wishes. And the Charter or Warrant under which the Lodge is still working is granted to Washington as Master.
The appointing clause is in the following words:
"Know ye that we, Edmund Randolph, Esquire, Governor of the Commonwealth aforesaid, and Grand Master of the Most Ancient and Honorable Society of Freemasons within the same, by and with the consent of the Grand Lodge of Virginia, do hereby constitute and appoint our illustrious and well beloved Brother, George Washington, Esquire, late General and Commander-in-Chief of the forces of the United States of America, and our worthy Brethren Robert McCrea, William Hunter, Jr., and John Allison, Esqs., together with all such other Brethren as may be admitted to associate with them, to be a 'first, true, and regular Lodge of Freemasons, by the name, title, and designation of the Alexandria Lodge, No. 22."'
In 1805, the Lodge, which continued in existence, was permitted by the Grand Lodge to change its name to that of "Alexandria Washington," in honor of its first Master.
The evidence, then, is clear that Washington was the Master of a Lodge. Whether he ever assumed the duties of the office, and, if he assumed, how he discharged them, we know only from the testimony of Timothy Bigelow, who, in a Eulogy delivered before the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, two months after Washington's death; eleven years after his appointment as Master, made the following statement:
"The information received from our Brethren who had the happiness to be members of the Lodge over which he presided for many years, and of which he died the Master, furnishes abundant proof of his Persevering zeal for the prosperity of the Institution Constant and punctual in his attendance, scrupulous in his observance of the regulations of the Lodge, and Solicitous, at all times, to communicate light and instruction, he discharged the duties of the Chair with uncommon dignity and intelligence in all the mysteries of our art. "
There is also a very strong presumption that Washington accepted and discharged the duties of the Chair to the satisfaction of the Lodge. At the first election held after the Charter had been issued, he was elected, or we should rather say reelected, Master. The record of the Lodge, under the date of December 20, 1788, is as follows: "His Excellency, General Washington, unanimously elected Master; Robert McCrea, Senior Warden; Wm. Hunter, Jr., Junior Warden; Wm. Hodgson, Treasurer; Joseph Greenway, Secretary; Doctor Frederick Spanbergen, Senior Deacon; George Richards, Junior Deacon."
The subordinate officers had undergone a change: McCrea, who had been named in the Petition as deputy Master, an officer not recognized in the United States, was made Senior Warden; Wm. Hunter, who had been nominated as Senior Warden, was made Junior Warden; and the original Junior Warden, John Allison, was dropped. But there was no change in the office of Master. Washington was again elected. The Lodge would scarcely have been so persistent without his consent; and if his consent was given, we know, from his character, that he would seek to discharge the duties of the office to his best abilities. This circumstance gives, if it be needed, strong confirmation to the statement of Brother Bigelow. Grand Secretary James M. Clift of Virginia says the records of blle Lodge show that during his year as Worshipful Master he presided at several meetings.
But incidents like these are not all that are left to us to exhibit the attachment of Washington to Freemasonry. On repeated occasions he has announced, in his letters and addresses to various Masonic Bodies, his profound esteem for the character, and his just appreciation of the principles, of that Institution into which, at so early an age, he had been admitted. And during his long and laborious life, no opportunity was presented or which he did not avail himself to evince his esteem for the Institution.
Thus, in the year 1797, in reply to an affectionate address from the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, he says: "My attachment to the Society of which we are members will dispose me always to contribute my best endeavors to promote the honor and prosperity of the Craft." Five years before this letter was written, he had, in a communication to the same Body, expressed his opinion of the Masonic Institution as one whose liberal principles are founded on the immutable laws of "truth and justice," and whose "grand object is to promote the happiness of the human race."
Answering an address from the Grand Lodge of South Carolina in 1791, he says: "I recognize with pleasure my relation to the Brethren of your Society," and "I shall be happy, on every occasion, to evince my regard for the Fraternity." And in the same letter he takes occasion to allude to the Masonic Institution as "an association whose principles lead to purity of morals, and are beneficial of action."
Writing to the officers and members of Saint David's Lodge at Newport, Rhode Island, in the same year, he uses this language: "Being persuaded that a just application of the principles on which the Masonic fraternity is founded must be promotive of private virtue and public prosperity, I shall always be happy to advance the interests of the Society, and to be considered by them as a deserving Brother."
And lastly, for we will not further extend these citations, in a letter addressed in November, 1798, only thirteen months before his death, to the Grand Lodge of Maryland he has made this explicit declaration of his opinion of the Institution: "So far as I am acquainted with the doctrines and principles of Freemasonry, I conceive them to be founded in benevolence, and to be exercised only for the good of mankind. I cannot, therefore, upon this ground, withdraw my approbation from it."
So much has been said upon the Masonic career and opinions of Washington because American Freemasons love to dwell on the fact that the distinguished patriot, whose memory is so revered that his unostentatious grave on the banks of the Potomac has become the Meeca of America, was not only a Brother of the Craft, but was ever ready to express his good opinion of the Society. They feel that under the panoply of his great name they may defy the malignant charges of their adversaries. They know that no better reply can be given to such charges than to say, m the language of Clinton, "Washington would not have encouraged an Institution hostile to morality, religion, good order, and the public welfare."
Brother Charles U. Callahan, Past Grand Master of Virginia, has written a splendid story of Washington, The Man and the Mason, 1913, for the George Washington Masonic National Memorial Association; Brother Sidney Hayden wrote Washington and his Masonic Coxnpeers, 1866; Julius F. Sachse, for the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, dealt with the Masonic Correspondence of Washington, 1915, as found among the papers in the Library of Congress; Brothers C. C. Hunt and B. Shimek of the Research Committee, Grand Lodge of Iowa, compiled a useful and stimulating pamphlet, George Washington, the Man and the Mason, 1921, and there are numerous other references, Brother August Wolfsteig, Bibliography, 1913, listing nearly fifty of them.
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WASHINGTON MEMORIAL
The full name is The George Washington Masonic National Memorial and this is also the title of a pamphlet by Brother Louis Arthur Watres, Past Grand Master of Pennsylvania, and President of the George Washington Masonic National Memorial Association. General Washington was the only President of the United States, who, while Chief Executive, was Worshipful Master of his Lodge.
That Lodge was Alexandria-Washington Lodge No. 22, at Alexandria, Virginia The chair he sat on, the implements he used, the apron he wore, and many relics that are filled with interest are still carefully cherished by Alexandria-Washington Lodge. The Brethren of Alexandria, Virginia, bought and paid for a site on the Potomac River for a Memorial Temple. An interesting fact in connection with the location is that Jefferson chose it for our national capitol building but Washington vetoed the selection because he owned the surrounding land and feared that his motives might be misunderstood were this site to be selected. There met in 1910 at Alexandria, Freemasons from several Grand Jurisdictions. Sitting in the Lodge room of Alexandria-Washington Lodge the Brethren resolved that the Freemasons of the United States should erect at Alexandria a suitable memorial to Brother Washington. The assembled Brethren decided to become incorporated under the laws of the State of Virginia and Brother Thomas J. Shryock who was Grand Master of Maryland for thirty-three years was elected President, a position he occupied until his death in 1917. Brother Watres says:
We are to erect this memorial not because we can add to the renown of Washington, but because he was one of the brightest luminaries in the Masonic constellation; not because we can add to his fame by brick and mortar but because in the world s strife he stands serene as the great American whom we are all proud to hail and revere as a great Mason, neither are we to build it to add to his greatness; but because in the lofty attributes which made hum great we clearly discern the ideals of Masonry. Were our memorial as enduring as the pyramids it could not exceed our esteem for him who embodied in himself the attributes of a true Mason and a great patriot.
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WATCHWORDS
Used in the Thirty-second Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite because that Degree has a military form, but not found in other Degrees of Freemasonry.
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WATERFALL
Used in the Fellow Craft's Degree as a symbol of plenty, for which Doctor Mackey held the word waterford is sometimes improperly substituted (see Shibboleth).
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WAYFARING MAN
A term used in the legend of the Third Degree to denote the person met near the port of Joppa by certain persons sent out on a search by King Solomon. The part of the legend which introduces the Wayfaring Man, and his interview with the Fellow Crafts, was probably introduced into the American system by Webb, or found by him in the older ceremonies practiced in the United States. It is not in the old English instructions of the eighteenth century, nor is the circumstance detailed in the present English lecture. A wayfaring man is defined by Phillips as "one accustomed to travel on the road." The expression Ls becoming obsolete in ordinary language, but it is preserved in Scripture—"he saw a wayfaring man in the street of the city" (Judges xix, 17)—and in Freemasonry, both of which still retain many words long since disused elsewhere.
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WAYNE, GENERAL ANTHONY
Born at East town, Pennsylvania, January 1, 1745, died at Erie, Pennsylvania, December 15, 1796. A surveyor in native State and in Nova Scotia, he recruited and led a Pennsylvanian regiment in the American Revolution and became a Brigadier-General in 1777. His bravery earned the name of "Mad Anthony" and he was in 1792 appointed by Washington the Major General in command of the regular army and by his military victories and successful negotiations with the Indians, opened the Northwestern United States to civilization. Reputed to be a Freemason but his Lodge not identified with certainty. Brother Julius F. Sachse in General Lafayette's Fraternal Connections, 1916, page 5, alludes to "Brothers A. Saint Clair, William Irving and General Anthony Wayne." Brother Phil A. Roth, Masonry in the Formation of Our Government, 1927, page 82, says "He was a member of Winchester Lodge No. 12, according to some statements but they do not mention the State. We believe he was a member, having often been mentioned.
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WEARY
in toasts in Masonic Lodges in the East at that time. There is a monument over his grave, placed there by the Grand Lodge."
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WEARY SOJOURNERS
Spoken of in the American legend of the Royal Arch as three of the captives who had been restored to liberty by Cyrus, and, after sojourning or remaining longer in Babylon than the main body of their Brethren, had at length repaired to Jerusalem to assist in rebuilding the Temple.
While the workmen were engaged in making the necessary excavations for laying the foundation, and while numbers continued to arrive at Jerusalem from Babylon, these three worn and weary sojourners, after plodding on foot over the rough and devious roads between the two cities, offered themselves to the Grand Council as willing participants in the labor of erection. Who these sojourners were, we have no historical means of discovering; but there is a Masonic tradition, entitled, perhaps, to but little weight, that they were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, three holy men, who are better known to general readers by their Chaldaic names of Shadrach, Meshech, and Abednego, as having been miraculously preserved from the fiery furnace of Nebuchadnezzar. Their services were accepted, and from their diligent labors resulted that important discovery, the perpetuation and preservation of which constitutes the great end and design of the Royal Arch Degree.
Such is the legend of the American Royal Arch. It has no known foundation in history, and is therefore altogether mythical. But it presents, as a myth the symbolic idea of arduous and unfaltering search after truth, and the final reward that such devotion receives.
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WEBB-PRESTON WORK
The title given by Doctor Rob Morris to a system of lectures which he proposed to introduce, in 1859, into the Lodges of the United States, and in which he was partly successful. He gave this name to his system because his theory was that the lectures of Thomas Smith Webb and those of Preston were identical. But this theory is untenable, for it has long since been shown that the lectures of Webb were an abridgment, and a very material modification of those of Preston. In 1863, and for a few years afterward, the question of the introduction of the "Webb-Preston Work" was a subject of warm, and sometimes of intemperate, discussion in several of the Western Jurisdictions. It has, however, at least as a subject of controversy, ceased to attract the attention of the Craft. One favorable result was, however, produced by these discussions, and that is, that they led to a more careful investigation and a better understanding of the nature and history of the rituals which have, during the nineteenth century, been practiced in America. The bitterness of feeling has passed away, but the knowledge that it elicited remains.
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WEBB, THOMAS SMITH
No name in Freemasonry is more familiar to the American Freemason than that of Webb, who is generally credited with being really the inventor and founder of the system sf work which, under the appropriate name of the American Rite, although often improperly called the York Rite, is universally practiced in the United States. The most exhaustive biography of him that has been written is that of Brother Cornelius Moore, in his Leaflets of Masonic Biography, and from that, with a few additions from other sources, the present sketch is derived.
Thomas Smith Webb, the son of parents who a few years previous to his birth had emigrated from England and settled in Boston, Massachusetts, was born in that city, October 13, 1771. He was educated in one of the public schools, where he acquired such knowledge as was at that time imparted in them, and became proficient in the French and Latin languages.
He selected as a profession either that
of a printer or a bookbinder, his biographer is uncertain which,
but inclines to think that it was the former. After completing
his apprenticeship he removed to Keene, in New Hampshire, where
he worked at his trade, and about the year 1792, the precise date
is unknown, was initiated in Freemasonry in Rising Sun Lodge in
that town.
While residing at Keene he married Miss Martha Hopkins, and shortly
afterward removed to Albany, New York, where he opened a bookstore.
When and where he received the advanced Degrees has not been stated,
but we find him, while living at Albany, engaged in the establishment
of a Chapter and an Encampment.
It was at this early period of his life that Webb appears to have commenced his labors as a Masonic teacher, an office which he continued to fill with great influence until the close of his life. In 1797 he published at Albany the first edition of his Freemasons Monitor; or Illustrations of Masonry It purports to be "by a Royal Arch Mason, K. T., K. M., etc." He did not claim the authorship until the subsequent edition; but his name and that of his partner, Spencer, appear in the imprint as publishers.
He acknowledges in the preface his indebtedness to Preston for the observations on the first three Degrees. But he states that he has differently arranged Preston's distributions of the sections, because they were "not agreeable to the mode of working in America." This proves that the Prestonian system was not then followed in the United States, and ought to be a sufficient answer to those who at a later period attempted to claim an identity between the lectures of Preston and Webb. About the year 1801 he removed to Providence, Rhode Island, where he engaged in the manufacture of wall-paper on a rather extensive scale. By this time his reputation as a Masonic teacher had been well established, for a committee was appointed by Saint John's Lodge of Providence to wait upon and inform him that this Lodge, for his great exertions in the cause of Freemasonry, "wish him to become a member of the SarAe." He accepted the invitation, and passing through the various gradations of office was elected, in 1813, Grand Master of the Frees masons of Rhode Island.
But it is necessary now to recur to preceding events. In 1797, on October 24th, a Convention of Committees from several Chapters in the Northern States was held in Boston for the purpose of deliberating on the propriety and expediency of establishing a Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons for the Northern States. Of this convention Webb was chosen as the chairman. Previous to this time the Royal Arch Degrees had been conferred tn Masters Lodges and under a Lodge Warrant. It is undoubtedly to the influence of Webb that we are to attribute the disseverance of the Degree from that Jurisdiction and the establishment of independent Chapters. It was one of the first steps that he took in the organization of the American Rite. The circular addressed by the Convention to the Chapters of the country was most probably from the pen of Webb.
The Grand Chapter having been organized in January, 1798, Webb was elected Grand Scribe, and reelected in 1799, at which time the Body assumed the title of General Grand Chapter. In 1806 he was promoted to the office of General Grand King, and in 1816 to that of Deputy General Grand High Priest, which he held until his death.
During all this time, Webb, although actively engaged in the labors of Masonic instruction, continued his interest in the manufacture of wall-paper, and in 1817 removed his machinery to the West, Moore thinks, with the intention of making his residence there. In 1816 he visited the Western States, and remained there two years, during which time he appears to have been actively engaged in the organization of Chapters, Grand Chapters, and Encampments. It was during this visit that he established the Grand Chapters of Ohio and Kentucky, by virtue of his powers as a General Grand Officer.
August, 1818, he left Ohio and returned to Boston. In the spring of 1819, he again began a visit to the West, but he reached no farther than Cleveland, Ohio, where he died very suddenly, it is supposed in a fit of apoplexy, on July 6, 1819, and was buried the next day with Masonic honors. The body was subsequently disinterred and conveyed to Providence, where, on the 8th of November, it was reentered by the Grand Lodge of Rhode Island. Webb's influence over the Freemasons of the United States, as the founder of a Rite, was altogether personal. In Masonic literature he has made no mark, for his labors as an author are confined to a single work, his Monitor, and this is little more than a syllabus of his lectures. Although, if we may judge by the introductory remarks to the various sections of the Degrees, sand especiall