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Augustin Barruel, generally known as the Abbé Barruel, who was born, October 2, 1741, at Villeneuve de Berg in France, and who died October 5, 1820, was an implacable enemy of Freemasonry. He was a prolific writer, but owes his reputation principally to the work entitled Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire du Jacobinisme, or Recollections to serve for a History of Jacobinism, in four volumes, octavo, published in London in 1797. In this work he charges the Freemasons with revolutionary principles in politics and with infidelity in religion. He seeks to trace the origin of the Institution first to those ancient heretics, the Manicheans, and through them to the Templars, against whom he revives the old accusations of Philip the Fair and Clement V. His theory of the Templar origin of Freemasonry is thus expressed (11, 382):
"Your whole school and all your Lodges are derived from the Templars. After the extinction of their Order, a certain number of guilty knights, having escaped the prosecution, united for the preservation of their horrid mysteries. To their impious code they added the vow of vengeance against the kings and priests who destroyed their Order, and against all religion which anathematized their dogmas. They made adepts, who should transmit from generation to generation the same mysteries of iniquity, the same oaths, and the same hatred of the God of the Christians, and of kings, and of priests. These mysteries have descended to you, and you continue to perpetuate their impiety, their vows, and their oaths. Such is your origin. The lapse of time and the change of manners have varied a part of your symbols and your frightful systems; but the essence of them remains, the vows, the oaths, the hatred, and the conspiracies are the same".
It is not astonishing that Lawrie (History of Freemasonry, page 50) should have said of the writer of such statements, that:
"That charity and forbearance which distinguish the Christian character are never exemplified in the work of Barruel, and the hypocrisy of his pretensions is often betrayed by the fury of his zeal. The tattered veil behind which he attempts to cloak his inclinations often discloses to the reader the motives of the man and the wishes of his party".
Although the attractions of his style and the boldness of his declamation gave Barruel at one time a prominent place among anti-masonic writers, his work is now seldom read and never cited in Masonic controversies, for the progress of truth has assigned their just value to its extravagant assertions.
BARTOLOZZI, FRANCESCOA famous engraver who lived for some time in London and engraved the frontispiece of the 1784 edition of the Book of Constitutions. He was initiated in the Lodge of the Nine Muses in London on February 13, 1777. Born at Florence in Italy, he studied in Venice, and then at Rome and Mi1an, practiced his art most successfully, settling at London in 1764. After forty years in England he went to Portugal and died in Lisbon. Brother Hawkins gives the year of his birth as 1728, and that of his death as 1813. Others give the dates as from 1725 to 1830, and 1813 to 1815. But all authorities agree in their high estimate of his ability. |
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American philanthropist. Born at Oxford, Massachusetts, December 25, 1821; died at Glen Echo, Maryland, April 12, 1912. During Civil War distributed large quantities of supplies for the relief of wounded soldiers and later organized at Washington a Bureau of Records to aid in the search of missing men. She identified and marked the graves of more than twelve thousand soldiers at Andersonville, Georgia. She took part in the International Committee of the Red Cross in Franco-Prussian War, and was first president of the American Red Cross until 1904. She was the author of the American Amendment providing that the Red Cross shall distribute relief not only in war but in times of other calamities.
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She later incorporated and became president of the National First Aid of America for rendering first aid to the injured. There is a reference to her in Masonic Tidings, Milwaukee, December 1927, page 19, entitled Son of founder of Eastern Star tells of beginnings of Order, in the course of which he says:
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There is also another reference in the New Age (March, 1924, page 178), where Clara Barton is said to have observed when becoming a member of the Order of the Eastern Star, "My father was a Mason; to him it was a religion, and for the love and honor I bear him, I am glad to be connected with anything like this". However, Mrs. Minnie E. Keyes, Grand secretary, Order of the Eastern Star, letter of May 2nd, 1928, informs us that:
"The Chapter in Oxford, Massachusetts, was named for her and With her permission in 1898, but she herself did not join until June, 1906.
"The Secretary tells me the Minutes of the meeting of June 29, 1906, show. After a short intermission this Chapter received the great honor of being allowed to confer the degrees of this Order upon our illustrious namesake, Miss Clara Barton. It was an occasion long to be remembered as with feelings of pride and pleasure we witnessed the work so impressively and gracefully rendered and received.
"It was with quite reverential feeling that at its close we were privileged to take her by the hand as our sister".
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Literally and originally a royal palace. A Roman pagan basilica was a rectangular hall whose length was two or three times its breadth, divided by two or more lines of columns, bearing entablatures, into a broad central nave and side aisles. It was generally roofed with wood, sometimes vaulted. At one end was the entrance. From the center of the opposite end opened a semicircular recess as broad as the nave, called in Latin the Tribuna and in Greek the Apsis. The uses of the basilica were various and of a public character, courts of justice being held in them. Only a few ruins remain. The significance of the basilica to Freemasons is that it was the form adopted for early Christian churches, and for its influence on the building gilds. For the beginning of Christian architecture, which is practically the beginning of Operative Freemasonry, we must seek very near the beginning of the Christian religion. For three centuries the only places in pagan Rome where Christians could meet with safety were in the catacombs, long underground galleries. When Constantine adopted Christianity in 324, the Christians were no longer forced to worship in the catacombs. They were permitted to worship in the basilica and chose days for special worship of the Saints on or near days of pagan celebrations or feast days, so as not to attract the attention or draw the contempt of the Romans not Christians. Examples of this have come down to us, as, Christmas, St. John the Baptist's Day, St. John the Evangelist's Day, etc. |
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The Christian basilicas spread over the Roman Empire, but in Rome applied specially to the seven principal churches founded by Constantine, and it was their plan that gave Christian churches this name. The first builders were the Roman Artificers, and after the fall of the Western Empire, we find a decadent branch at Como that developed into the Comacine Masters, who evolved, aided by Byzantine workmen and influence Lombardian architecture (see Como).
The basket or fan was among the Egyptians a symbol of the purification of souls. The idea seems to have been adopted by other nations, and hence, "initiations in the Ancient Mysteries", says Rolle (Culte de Bacchus,1, 30), "being the commencement of a better life and the perfection of it, could not take place till the soul was purified. The fan had been accepted as the symbol of that purification because the mysteries purged the soul of sin, as the fan cleanses the grain".
John the Baptist conveys the same idea of purification when he says of the Messiah, "His fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor" (Matthew iii, 12; Luke iii, 17).
The sacred basket in the Ancient Mysteries was called the xikvov, and the one who carried it was termed the xwv or basket-bearer. Indeed, the sacred basket, containing the first fruits and offerings, was as essential in all solemn processions of the mysteries of Bacchus and other divinities as the Bible is in the Masonic procession. As lustration was the symbol of purification by water, so the mystical fan or winnowing-basket was, according to Sainte Croix (Mystéres du Paganisme, tome ii, page 81), the symbol in the Bacchic rites of a purification by air.
What Bible did the Masons use before 1717 ? Prior to 1611 it is almost certain that the majority of them used the famous Geneva Bible, published in 1560. It was the first issue of the Book to cut the text into chapters and numbered verses; its cost was low ; it was the Bible of the Reformation. Because in the Book of Genesis it printed the line "made themselves breeches" instead of "made themselves aprons" it was everywhere popularly called The Breeches Bible. The Authorized, or King James, Version was first printed in 1611, in Black Letter, large folio, with 1400 pages. Because of a typographical error Ruth, III, verse 15, was printed with a "he" instead of a "she", and for that reason it was everywhere called The "He" Bible. The title page was a copper plate, sumptuously designed, semi-architectural in conception, with a symbolic scene representing the Scheme of Redemption across the top; Moses and the High Priest in panels at either side of the mid-page; and in the lower corner two figures representing the writers of the Old and the New Testament, with a symbolic picture of the phoenix between them. At the extreme top were the Hebrew Letters JHWH; immediately beneath it a dove.
Copies of the now very rare first edition, if in good condition, sell for 53,000 to 55,000. In the Second Issue this Version contained another famous misprint, Matthew XXVI, 36, where "Jesus" is printed as "Judas".
(Printers sometimes made these typographical errors out of malice. The "Wicked Bible" is the most notorious example; in it the "not" was purposely omitted from certain of the Ten Commandments, for which Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, the King's Printers, were haled into Star Chamber, were fined £300 by Archbishop Laud, and the edition of 1000 copies confiscated). For a century the Authorized Bible was no doubt used by Masons as it was by everybody else, almost to the exclusion of any other version.
In 1717, the year in which the first Grand Lodge was constituted, John Baskett, an Oxford printer, published an edition of his own, which came to be named after him, although it was dubbed The Vinegar Bible because in Luke XX the word "vineyard" was misprinted "vinegar". The title page, and for the first time in any Bible, consisted of a prospect of buildings. For this reason, and also perhaps because it had been published in 1717, or for both, it became popular among Masons, in America and Australia as well as in England; more often than any other it is mentioned in the Inventories which were incorporated in old Lodge Minutes.
NOTE.
The Baskett should not be confused with the Baskerville Bible. In 1750 John Baskerville became a designer of
type, a rival to the famous Caslon whose type faces are standard today. In 1758 Baskerville was elected printer to Cambridge
University. In 1763 he produced his edition of the Bible, called after his name, and at a cost of some 510,000. It was not
appreciated at the time, and did not sell well, but has since become one of the classics of type design. Baskerville died in 1775.
Any Lodge possessing a copy of his Edition of 1763 may treasure it as highly as a Baskett first edition even though the latter is
older by 46 years.
A Masonic Congress was held September 24, 1848, at Basle, in Switzerland, consisting of one hundred and six members, representing eleven Lodges under the patronage of the Swiss Grand Lodge Alpina. The Congress was principally engaged upon the discussion of the question:
"What can and what ought Freemasonry to contribute towards the welfare of mankind locally, nationally, and internationally?"
The conclusion to which the Congress appeared to arrive upon this question was briefly this:
"Locally, Freemasonry ought to strive to make every Brother a good citizen, a good father, and a good neighbor; whilst it ought to teach him to perform every duty of life faithfully. Nationally, a Freemason ought to strive to promote and to maintain the welfare and the honor of his native land, to love and to honor it himself, and, if necessary, to place his life and fortune at its disposal; Internationally, a Freemason is bound to go still further: he must consider himself as a member of that one great family,-the whole human race,-who are all children of one and the same Father, and that it is in this sense, and with this spirit, that the Freemason ought to work if he would appear worthily before the throne of Eternal Truth and Justice".
The Congress of Basle appears to have accomplished no practical result.
The question of the ineligibility of bastards to be made Freemasons was first brought to the attention of the Craft by Brother Chalmers I Paton, who, in several articles in The London Freemason, in 1869, contended that they were excluded from initiation by the Ancient Regulations.
Subsequently, in his compilation entitled Freemasonry and its Jurisprudence, published in 1872, he cites several of the old Constitutions as explicitly declaring that the men made Freemasons shall be "no bastards". This is a most unwarrantable interpolation not to be justified in any writer on jurisprudence; for on a careful examination of all the old manuscript copies which have been published, no such words are to be found in any one of them.
As an instance of this literary disingenuousness, to use no harsher term, we quote the following from his work (page 60). The charge in this second edition [of Anderson's Constitutions is in the following unmistakable words:
"The men made Masons must be freeborn, no bastard (or no bondmen), of mature age and of good report, hale and wund, not deformed or dismembered at the time of their making".
Now, with a copy of this second edition lying open before him, Brother Mackey found the passage thus printed:
"The men made Masons must be freeborn (or no bondmen), of mature age and of good report, hale and sound, not deformed or dismembered at the time of their making".
The words "no bastard" are Patos's interpolation.
Again, Patos quotes from Preston the Ancient. Charges at makings, in these words:
"That he that be made be able in all degrees; that is, freeborn, of a good kindred, true, and no bondsman or bastard, and that he have his right limbs as a man ought to have".
But on referring to Preston (edition of 1775, and all subsequent editions) we find the passage to be correctly thus:
"That he that be made be able in all degrees; that is, freeborn, of a good kindred, true, and no bondsman, and that he have his limbs as a man ought to have".
Positive law authorities should not be thus cited, not merely carelessly, but with designed inaccuracy to support a theory.
But although there is no regulation in the Old Constitutions which explicitly prohibits the initiation of bastards, it may be implied from their language that such prohibition did exist. Thus, in all the old manuscripts, we find such expressions as these:
He that shall be made a Freemason "must be freeborn and of good kindred" Sloane Manuscript (No. 3323), or "come of good kindred" Edinburgh Kilwinning Manuscript, or, as the Roberts Print more definitely has it "of honest parentage".
It is not, we therefore think, to be doubted that formerly bastards were considered as ineligible for initiation, on the same principle that they were, as a degraded class, excluded from the priesthood in the Jewish and the primitive Christian church. But the more liberal spirit of modem times has long since made the law obsolete, because it is contrary to the principles of justice to punish a misfortune as if it was a crime.
The reader should note in addition to what Brother Mackey has said in the above article that the Illustrations of freemasonry, by William Preston, edition of 1812 (page 82), reprints a series of charges said to be contained in a manuscript in the possession of the Lodge of Antiquity at London, and to have been written in the reign of James the Second- The third charge says in part:
"And no master nor fellow shall take no apprentice for less than seven years. And that the apprentice be free-born, and of limbs whole as a man ought to be, and no bastard. And that no master nor fellow take no allowance to be made Mason without the assent of his fellows, at the least six or seven".
The fourth charge now goes on to say:
"That he that be made be able in all degrees; that is, free-born, of a good kindred, true, and no bondsman, and that he have his right limbs as a man ought to have".
These charges may well be studied in connection with what Brothers Paton and Mackey have discussed in the foregoing.
Born of English parents in Quebec, Canada, July 10, 1818. His parents removed during his infancy to New York. Then he received a high school education in Saint Louis, studied medicine in New Orleans, and especially distinguished himself during the yellow fever epidemic there. He received his First Degree in Freemasonry at Montgomery, Alabama, on April 11, 1846, the Honorary Thirty-third in 1857, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and became an Active in 1859. For twenty-four years he was Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Louisiana. He succeeded General Albert Pike, who died April 2, 1891, as Grand Commander, the Southern Jurisdiction, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Brother Batchelor died on July 28, 1893.
The truncheon or staff of a Grand Marshal, and always carried by him in processions as the ensign of his office. It is a wooden rod about eighteen inches long. In the military usage of England, the baton of the Earl Marshal was originally of wood, but in the reign of Richard II it was made of gold, and delivered to him at his creation, a custom which has been continued. In the patent or commission granted by that monarch to the Duke of Surrey the baton is minutely described as baculum aureum circa utramque finem de nigro annulatum, meaning a golden wand, having black rings around each end a description that will very well serve for a Masonic baton.
BATS, PARLIAMENT OFThe Parliament which assembled in England in the year 1426, during the minority of Henry VI, to settle the disputes between the Duke of Gloucester, the Regent, and the Bishop of Winchester, to be guardian of the young king's person, and which was so called because the members, being forbidden by the Duke of Gloucester to wear swords, armed themselves with clubs or bats. It has been stated by Preston (Illustrations of Masonry, edition of 1812, page 165), that it was in this Parliament that the Act forbidding Freemasons to meet in Chapters or Congregations was passed; but this is erroneous, for that act was passed in 1425 by the Parliament at Westminster, while the Parliament of Bats met at Leicester in 1426 (see Laborers, Statutes of). |
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A given number of blows by the gavels of the officers, or by the hands of the Brethren, as a mark of approbation, admiration, or reverence, and at times accompanied by the acclamation.
BAVARIAFreemasonry was introduced into Bavaria, from France, in 1737. However, the Handbuch of Schletter and Zille declares that 1777 was the beginning of Freemasonry in Bavaria proper. The meetings of the Lodges were suspended in 1784 by the reigning duke Charles Theodore, and the act of suspension was renewed in 1799 and 1804 by Maximilian Joseph, the King of Bavaria. The Order was subsequently revived in 1812 and in 1817. The Grand Lodge of Bayreuth was constituted in 1811 under the appellation of the Grossloge zur Sonne. In 1868 a Masonic conference took place of the Lodges under its jurisdiction, and a constitution was adopted, which guarantees to every confederated Lodge perfect freedom of ritual and government, provided the Grand Lodge finds these to be Masonic. |
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American Masons have a fondness for Harold Bayley's two books which English Masons might find it difficult to explain; at least so it would be guessed from comparing the circulation of them here with their circulation there. Perhaps it is because he has let a fresh, new light into Masonic symbols, and done so with no pseudo-occultistic obscurantism (a thing for which American Masons have no stomach, even if it is published in A. Q. C.) perhaps it is because with short, bold brush strokes he makes intelligible to us Americans what doubtless already is familiar to Europeans.
He writes about the Albigensians and the Huguenots, who carried on a sort of Protestant underground movement for many years, in regions where any deviation from strict Roman Catholic orthodoxy was examined by the Inquisition and punishable by burning. These men were, many of them, makers of paper, which they produced in little water-driven mills, in far-off places among the hills. They had modes of recognition, passwords, tokens, secret words, etc., by which they sent messages here and there. After they discovered how to lay in watermarks in the sheets of paper they sent out to the cities they turned the marks into symbols, which would "be understanded" by their friends and sympathizers and would thus help to keep certain ideas alive. It is about these fraternities, or half-fraternities, their secrets and their symbols, that Mr. Bayley writes in A New Light on the Renaissance; J. M. Dent & Co., London; and The Lost Language of symbolism; J. B. Lippincott; New York; 1913. The latter has many references to Freemasonry in chapters on Searching for the Lost, Theological Ladder, King Solomon and Pillars, All-Seeing Eye, Tree of Life, Clasped Hands, etc. (It can be remembered in connection with these books that Dr. J. T. Desaguliers, architect of the first Grand Lodge, was a Huguenot refugee). Brother Frederick Foster's essay on "The Due Guard" which he contributed to The Treasury of Masonic Thought (compiled by George M. Martin and John W. Callaghan; David Winter & Son; Dundee; 1924), was based on Bayley's works.
BAY-TREEAn evergreen plant, and a symbol in Freemasonry of the immortal nature of Truth. By the bay-tree thus referred to in the old instructions of the Knight of the Red Cross, is meant the laurel, which, as an evergreen, was among the ancients a symbol of immortality. It is, therefore, properly compared with Truth, which Josephus makes Zerubbabel say is "immortal and eternal". |
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A French Masonic writer, born at Nievre, March 31, 1782. He published at Paris a Vocabulaire des Francs-Maçons in 1810. This Freemasons' Dictionary was translated into Italian. In 1811 he published a Manuel du Franc-maçon, or Freemason's Manual, one of the most judicious works of the kind published in France.
He was also the author of Morale de la Franc-maçonnerie, or Masonic Ethics, and the Tuileur Expert des 33 degrés, or Tiling for Thirty-three Degrees, which is a complement to his Manuel. Bazot was distinguished for other literary writings on subjects of general literature, such as two volumes of Tales and Poems, A Eulogy on the Abbé de l'Epée, and as the editor of the Biographic Nouvelle des Contemporaries, in twenty volumes.
In the French instructions of the Knights of the East and West, these letters are the initials of Beauté, Divinité, Sagesse, Puissance, Honneur, Gloire, Force, which correspond to the letters of the English monitors B. D. W.P.H.G.S., which are the initials of equivalent words, Beauty, Divinity, Wisdom, Power, Honor, Glory, Strength.
BEADLEAn officer in a Council of Knights of the Holy Sepulcher, corresponding to the Junior Deacon of a Symbolic Lodge. The Beadle is one, say‚ Junius, who proclaims and executes the will of superior powers. The word is similar to the old French bedel, the Latin bedellus, and is perhaps a corrupted form of the Anglo-Saxon bydel, all of which have the meaning of messenger. |
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One of those fortunate female‚ who are said to have obtained possession of the Freemasons' secrets. The following account of her is given in A General History of the County of Norfolk, published in 1829 (see volume ii, page 1304):
"Died in St. John's, Maddermarket, Norwich, July, 1802, aged 85, Mrs. Beaton, a native of Wales. She was commonly called the Freemason, from the circumstance of her having contrived to conceal herself one evening, in the wainscoting of a Lodge-room where she learned the secret-at the knowledge of which thousands of her sex have in vain attempted to arrive. She was, in many respects, a very singular character, of which one proof adduced is that the secret of the Freemasons died with her".
There is no official confirmation of this story.
From Beauseant, and fero meaning to carry. The officer among the old Knight Templar whose duty it was to carry the Beausean in battle. The office is still retained in some of the high Degrees which are founded on Templarism.
The Chevalier Beauchaine was one of the most fanatical of the irremovable Masters of the Ancient Grand Lodge of France. He has established his Lodge at the Golden Sun, an inn in the Rue St. Victor, Paris, where he slept, and for six francs conferred all the Degrees of Freemasonry. On August 17, 1747, he organized the Order of Fendeurs or Woodcutters, at Paris.
The vexillum belli, or war-banner of the ancient Templars, which is also used by the modem Masonic Order. The upper half of the banner was black, and the lower half white: black, to typify terror to foes, and white, fairness to friends. It bore the pious inscription, Non nobis, Domine, non nobis sed nomini tuo da gloriam. This is the beginning of the first verse of Psalm cxv, "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory".
The Templar Beauséant |
The Beauseant is frequently, says Barrington in his Introduction to Heraldry (page 121), introduced among the decorations in the Temple Church, and on one of the paintings on the wall, Henry I is represented with this banner in his hand. As to the derivation of the word, there is some doubt among writers. Bauseant or bausant was, in old French, a piebald or party-colored horse; and the word bawseant is used in the Scottish dialect with similar reference to two colors. Thus, Burns says:
It is also supposed by some that the word bauseant may be only a form, in the older language, of the modern French word bienséant, which signifies something decorous or becoming; but the former derivation is preferable, in which bealmeant would signify simply a party-colored banner. |
With regard to the double signification of the white and black banner, the Orientalists have a legend of Alexander the Great, which may be appropriately quoted on the present occasion, as given by Weil in his Biblical Legends ( page 70).
"Alexander was the lord of light and darkness, when he went out with his army the light was before him, and behind him was the darkness, so that he was secure against all ambuscades; and by means of a miraculous white and black standard he had also the power to transform the clearest day into midnight and darkness, or black night into noonday, just as he unfurled the one or the other. Thus he was unconquerable, since he rendered his troops invisible at his pleasure, and came down suddenly upon his foes. Might there not have been some connection between the mythical white and black standard of Alexander and the Beauseant of the Templars? We know that the latter were familiar with Oriental symbolism".
Beauseant was also the war-cry of the ancient Templars and is pronounced bo-say-ong.
Said to be symbolically one of the three supports of a Lodge. It is represented by the Corinthian column, because the Corinthian is the most beautiful of the ancient orders of architecture; and by the Junior Warden, because he symbolizes the meridian sun the most beautiful object in the heavens. Hiram Abif is also said to be represented by the Column of Beauty, because the Temple was indebted to his skill for its splendid decorations. The idea of Beauty as one of the supports of the Lodge is found in the earliest rituals of the eighteenth century, as well as the symbolism which refers it to the Corinthian column and the Junior Warden. Preston first introduced the reference to the Corinthian column and to Hiram Abif.
Beauty, in the Hebrew, n~x~n, pronounced tif-eh-reth, was the sixth of the Cabalistic Sephiroth, and, with Justice and Mercy, formed the second Sephirotic triad; and from the Cabalists the Freemasons most probably derived the symbol (see Supports of the Lodge).
The names of the two rods spoken of by the prophet Zechariah ( xi, 7, 10, 14), as symbolic of his pastoral office. This expression was in use in portions of the old Masonic ritual in England; but in the system of Doctor Hemming, which was adopted at the union of the two Grand Lodges in 1813, this symbol, with all reference to it, was ex-expunged. As Doctor Oliver says in his Dictionary of symbolic Masonry:
"It is nearly forgotten, except by a few old Masons, who may perhaps recollect the illustration as an incidental subject of remark among the Fraternity of that period".
See Johnson
A very zealous Freemason of Gotha, who published, in 1786, a historical essay on the Bavarian Illuminati, under the title of Grundsatze Verfassung und Schicksale in Illulninatens Order in Baiern. He was a very popular writer on educational subjects; his Instructive Tales of Joy and Sorrow was so highly esteemed, that a half million copies were printed in German and other languages. He died in 1802.
Mackey was convinced that the Brothers Marc, Michel, and Joseph Bédarride were Masonic charlatans, notorious for their propagation of the Rite of Mizraim, having established in 1813, at Paris, under the partly real and partly pretended authority of Lechangeur, the inventor of the Rite, a Supreme Puissance for France, and organized a large number of Lodges.
In this opinion Brother Mackey is supported by Clavel who says the founders, including Marc Bédarride, were not of high character. This is repeated by Brother Woodford in the Cyclopedia of Freemasonry. But Brother Mackenzie, Royal Masonic Cyclopedia, says the evidence is insufficient to prove them charlatans. He further asserts:
"There is nothing to distinguish in point of verity between the founder or introducer of one rite above another. It must depend upon the coherence and intellectual value of the rite, which becomes quite superfluous where there is no substantial advantage gained for the true archeological and scientific value of Freemasonry, under whatever name the rite may be formulated. It is in this sense that the authorities of the Grand Lodge of England - ever the honorable custodians of Freemasonry - have most properly resisted innovations. But there are several quasi-Masonic bodies in this country, England, let in as it were by a side door. Hence the brethren Bédarride had as much right to carry their false ware to market as these".
Of these three brothers, Bédarride, who were Jews, Michel, who assailed the most prominent position in the numerous controversies which arose in French Freemasonry on account of their Rite, died February 16, 1856. Marc died ten years before, in April, 1846.
Of Joseph, who was never very prominent, we have no record as to the time of his death (see Mizraim Rite of).
The bee was among the Egyptians the symbol of an obedient people, because, says Horapollo, "of all insects, the bee alone had a king". Hence looking at the regulated labor of these insects when congregated in their hive, it is not surprising that a beehive should have been deemed an appropriate emblem of systematized industry. Freemasonry has therefore adopted the beehive as a symbol of industry, a virtue taught in the instructions, which says that a Master Mason "works that he may receive wages, the better to support himself and family, and contribute to the relief of a worthy, distressed brother, his widow and orphans"; and in the Old Charges, which tell us that "all Masons shall work honestly on working days, that they may live creditably on holidays".
There seems, however, to be a more recondite meaning connected with this symbol. The ark has already been shown to have been an emblem common to Freemasonry and the Ancient Mysteries, as a symbol of regeneration of the second birth from death to life. Now, in the Mysteries, a hive was the type of the ark. "Hence", says Faber (Origin of Pagan Idolatry, volume ii, page 133), "both the diluvian priestesses and the regenerated souls were called bees; hence, bees were feigned to be produced from the carcass of a cow, which also symbolized the ark; and hence, as the great father was esteemed an infernal god, honey was much used both in funeral rites and in the Mysteries". This extract is from the article on the bee in Evans' Animal Symbolism in Ecclesiastical Architecture.
In our Twentieth Century America, the word "industry" denotes manufacturing and factories, classified as heavy industry and light industry; and connotes machines and factory workers. When the Beehive is said to be an emblem of industry the word is not used in that sense, indeed, is used with an almost opposite meaning for it is used in the sense of centuries ago, which was the true sense.
Industry was the employment of a very large number of men, tens of thousands in many instances, on one undertaking at one place and at the same time, and they might or might not use machinery. It was the method by which in the ages before heavy machinery vast building enterprises were accomplished, some of which have so long mystified modern men, the building of the pyramids, of the ancient Egyptian canals, of the hanging gardens of Babylon, of the Ziggurats, of vast Hindu temples, of the Chinese Great Wall and Grand canal of the Mayas' City of Chichen-Itza, etc. the same method by which in World War II the Burma and Ledo roads were constructed as well as great airfields in the remote hills of China; and the method by which from Caesar's time until modern times the Dutch have built their hundreds of miles of dykes. The Beehive is the perfect emblem, or typical instance of the power of industry, because what no one bee'or succession of separate bees could accomplish is easy where hundreds of them work together at one task at one time.
The Medieval Freemasons did not study and think about the same subjects that architects and builders now except in fundamentals, did not secure the elements of a building ready-made from factories, had no steam or electric or magnetic tools to use; chemistry and physics were forbidden sciences, and could be studied by the initiate only in secret or under a heavy camouflage of symbolism. They had two great subjects: materials and men. A modern architect knows far more about materials than the Medieval builder because he has universities, literature, laboratories, and factories to draw on; but he knows far less about men, indeed, he knows almost nothing about men.
Where a modern builder looks to machines as the means to accomplish his results, the Medieval builder who had no power-driven machines had to look to men. For this reason the Medieval builder knew far more about work than his modern counterpart because work is nothing other than a man making use of himself as a means to get something made or produced or accomplished. Where a modern foreman thinks of himself as a supervisor of a building full of machines the Medieval foreman thought of himself as a Master of workmen. By the same token a workman had to know himself, instead of a machine, because he was his own machine. Skill is the expert use of one's self.
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It was for such reasons that Medieval Freemasons thought much about and had a wide knowledge of the forms of work. There are some fifty-two of these. Industry itself is one of them, the most massive and most dramatic, but not the most important. Where a man makes everything by himself from the raw materials to the finished product, is another. Where a number of men work in a line at the same bench and where the first does one thing to the "job", the second does another, and so on until the "job" is completed by the last man, so that it is the job and not the men who move, is another form of work. Where one man completes one thing, another, perhaps in another place, completes another, and so on, and where finally a man combines a number of completed things to make one thing, is another form of work; etc. |
The general organization of a Lodge is based on the principle of forms of work; so are the stations and places of officers. Though as an emblem of the form of work called industry the Beehive symbolizes only one in Particular it at the same time represents the system of forms of work, is, as it were, an ensemble of them; and from it a sufficiently well informed thinker could think out the system of Masonic Philosophy. In our Craft the whole of fraternalism is nothing other than the fellowship required by the forms of work, because the majority of them require men to work together in association, in stations and places, and therefore in co-operation.
It is strange that in its present-day stage of development the so-called science of economics should concern itself solely with such subjects as wages, machines, money, transportation because these are but incidentals and accidentals. Work is the topic proper to economics; and the forms of work are its proper subject-matter. Any scholar or thinker who chances to be a Mason could find in his own Fraternity a starting point for a new economics, as fresh and revolutionary and revealing as was the work of Copernieus in astronomy, of Newton in physics, of Darwin in biology. A beehive itself is a trifle, and scarcely worth ten minutes of thought; what it stands for is one of the largest and most important subjects in the world, and up until now one of the least understood.
Georg Emil Wilhelm Begemann was born in 1843; died in 1914 in Berlin, where he had lived since 1895. After having been made a Mason in Rostock, Mecklenburg, he was instantly attracted to the study of the Old Charges.
From 1888 until his removal to Berlin he was Provincial Grand Master, the Grand National Lodge of Berlin. From 1887 until his death he was a member of the Correspondence Circle of Quatuor Coronati Lodge of Research, No. 2076, contributed much to Ars Quatuor Coroiatoruni, and was among the most learned of specialists in Masonic archeology and the study of the text of the Old Charges.
He published Vorgeschichte und Aufänge der Freimaurerei in Ireland, in 1911; a book of similar title on Scotland, in 1914; his principal work was Aufänge der Freimaurerei in England; Vol. I, in 1909; Vol. II, in 1910. This latter work was to have been translated and published by Quatuor Coronati Lodge, with Bro. Lionel Vibert, Secretary, as translator-in-chief, but was stopped by the latter's death; it is on the market in the United States in German.
German Freemasonry was begun under the patronage of the nobility and members of the upper brackets of the aristocracy, and had its source in French Masonry; and therefore departed in the main from many Ancient Landmarks, so that oftentimes the Craft Degrees were under jurisdiction of High Grades; High Grades and Rites proliferated; Rites not Masonic in any sense were suffered to attach themselves to Freemasonry; and racial and religious discriminations were allowed. Begemann was one of the greatest in a line of German Masonic scholars whose work was aimed at restoring the German Craft to the original design. (See articles by and about Begemann in A,Q,C., especially the paper by Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones in 1941).
See Turkey
The subject of a Freemason's behavior is one that occupies much attention in both the ritualistic and the monitorial instructions of the Order. In the Charges of a Freemason, extracted from the ancient records, and first published in the Constitutions of 1723, the sixth article is exclusively appropriated to the subject of Behavior. It is divided into six sections, as follows:
The whole article constitutes a code of moral ethics remarkable for the purity of the principles it inculcates, and is well worthy of the close attention of every Freemason.
It is a complete refutation of the slanders of anti-Masonic revilers. As these charges are to be found in all the editions of the Book of Constitutions, and in many Masonic works, they are readily accessible to everyone who desires to read them.
When, in the installation services, the formula is used, "Brethren, behold your Master," the expression is not simply exclamatory, but is intends as the original use of the word behold implies, to invite the members of the Lodge to fix their attention upon the new relations which have sprung up between them and him who has just been elevated to the Oriental Chair, and to impress upon their minds the duties which they owe to him and which he owes to them. In like manner, when the formula is continued, "Master, behold your brethren", the Master's attention is impressively directed to the same change of relations and duties.
These are not mere idle words, but convey an important lesson, and should never be omitted in the ceremony of installation.
Spelled Bel, is usually pronounced bell but both Strong in his Hebrew Dictionary, and Feyerabend in his, prefer to say bale. The word is probably the contracted form of v, commonly pronounced bay-ahl and spelled Baal, and he was worshiped by the Babylonians as their chief deity. The Greeks and Romans so considered the meaning and translated the word by Zeus and Jupiter.
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Bel was one of the chief gods of the Babylonians perhaps their supreme deity, and the word has been deemed a Chaldaic form of Baal. Note Isaiah, xlvi, 1, "Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, their idols were upon the beasts, and upon the cattle". Baal signifies Lord or Master and occurs several times in the Bible as a part of the names of various gods. Alone, the word applies to the sun-god, the supreme male deity of the Syro-Phoenician nations. For an account of his worship read First Kings xviii. With Jah and On, it has been introduced into the Royal Arch system as a representative of the Tetragrammaton, which it and the accompanying words have sometimes ignorantly been made to displace. At the session of the General Grand Chapter of the United States, in 1871, this error was corrected; and while the Tetragrammaton was declared to be the true omnific word, the other three were permitted to be retained as merely explanatory. |
BELCHER, JONATHANAmerican Colonist, born January 8, 1681; graduated from Harvard University, 1699; died August 31, 1757. He was made a Freemason at London in 1704, according to a letter he wrote to the First Lodge in Boston on September 25, 1741, and therefore Brother M. M. Johnson names him the Senior Freemason of America. Brother Belcher served as Colonial Governor of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New Jersey (see New Age, August,1925; Beginnings of Freemasonry in America, Melvin M. Johnson, 1924, page 49; History of Freemasonry in the State of New York, Ossian Lang, page 6; Builder, volume x, page 312). |
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