D
The fourth letter of the Phoenician, the Hebrew, the Greek, the Roman, and of nearly all alphabets. In Hebrew it is Daleth, signifying the door of life, a representation of which was probably its original hieroglyph, as in the illustration. Here
1 shows the approximation to the Hebrew Daleth;
2 the Greek Delta, resembling the opening of a tent.
The numerical value of Daleth is four; as a Roman numeral it stands for 500.
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DA COSTA, HIPPOLYTO JOSEPH
A native of Colonia-do-Sacramento, on the river La Plata. He was made a Freemason in Philadelphia in the United States and afterward settled in Lisbon. He was subsequently persecuted by the Inquisition, and was rescued only in time to save his life by the aid of English Brethren who got him under the protection of the British flag. He then passed over into England, where he lived for several years, becoming a zealous Freemason and devoting himself to Masonic literature. In 1811, he published in London a Narrative of his persecution in Lisbon, by the Inquisition, for the pretended crime of Freemasonry, in two volumes. He wrote also a History of the Dionysian Artificers, in which he attempts to connect Freemasonry with the Dionysian and other mysteries of the ancients. He begins with the Eleusinian mysteries, assuming that Dionysus, Bacchus, Adonis, Thammuz, and Apollo were ail various names for the Sun, Whose apparent movements are represented by the death and resurrection referred to in the ceremonies. But as the sun is typified as being dead or hidden for three months under the horizon, he thinks that the mysteries must have originated in a cold climate as far north as latitude 66 , or among a people living near the polar circle. He therefore attributes the invention of these mysteries to the ancient Scythians or Massagetae, of whom he confesses that we know nothing. He afterward gives the history of the Dionysiac or Orphic mysteries of El eusis, and draws a successful parallel between the initiation into these and the Masonic initiation. His disquisition's are marked by much learning, although his reasoning may not always carry conviction.
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DACTYLI
Priests of Cybele, in Phrygia, of whom there were five, which number could not be exceeded, and alluded to the salutation and blessing by the five fingers of the hand. The word is from the Greek daktylos, meaning a finger.
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DADUCHOS
A torch-bearer. The title given to an officer in the Eleusinian mysteries, who bore a torch in commemoration of the torch lit by Ceres at the fire of Mount Etna, and carried by her through the wood in her search for her daughter.
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DAEDALUS
A famous artist and mechanician, whose genealogy is traced in the Greek myths as having sprung from the old Athenian race of kings, the Erechtheidae. He is said to have executed the Cretan Labyrinth, the reservoir near Megaris in Sicily, the Temple of Apollo at Capua, and the celebrated altar sculptured with lions on the Libyan coast. He is said to be the inventor of a number of the working Tools used in the various degrees of Freemasonry, the plumb-line and the ax, most of the tools used in carpentry, and of glue. Of him is told the fable of his flying safely over the Aegean by means of wings made by himself. His nephew, Perdix, is the reputed inventor of the third Great Light in Freemasonry, the Compasses, which are dedicated to the Craft. Through envy Daedalus is said to have hurled his nephew, Perdix, from the Temple Athena.
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DAGGER
In the advanced Degrees a symbol of Masonic vengeance, or the punishment of crime (see Vengeance).
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DAGRAIN, LOUIS
A miter in the Amsterdam Journal of November 3, 1735, of an article on the subject of Freemasonry, which caused an edict from the States General forbidding Masonic gatherings throughout the country (see Thory, Acta Latomorum 11, 306).
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DAGRAN, LOUIS
President of a General Assembly of thirty Lodges, held on Saint John's Day, 1756, at the Hague, for the formation of the Grand Lodge of Holland. It was at this December meeting that Baron Van Aerssen Beyeren Van Hogerheide was appointed Grand Master (see Thory, Acta Latomorum 1, 72).
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DAIS
From the French word dais, meaning a canopy. The raised floor at, the head of a banqueting room, or any ceremonial chamber or hall, designed for guests of distinction ; so called because it used to be decorated with a canopy. In Masonic language, the dais is the elevated portion of the eastern part of the lodge-room, which is occupied by Past Masters and the dignitaries of the Order. This should be elevated three steps above the floor. This station of the Junior Warden is raised one step, and that. of the Senior two.
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DAKOTA
Saint .John's Lodge was the first Lodge in Dakota. It received a Dispensation from the Grand Lodge of Iowa, December 5, 1862, and a Charter on June 3, 1863. Representatives of this Lodge and of Incense. Elk Point, Minnehaha, and Silver Star Lodges held a Convention on June 21, 1875, to consider the formation of a Grand Lodge.
Members of Mount Zion Lodge, U. D., were present but, owing to the fact that they had no Charter, did not take part, in the proceedings. A Constitution was adopted and Grand Officers; who were installed at another meeting on July 21, were elected. When in 1999 the territory of Dakota was divided by Act of Congress into North Dakota and South Dakota the Grand Lodge of Dakota became the Grand Lodge of South Dakota and certain Lodges in North Dakota were permitted to organize a Grand Lodge of North Dakota.
The General Grand Chapter of the United States chartered eight Chapters in Dakota, the first of which was Yankton, No. 1, at. Yankton, chartered on August 24, 1885. On February. 25, 1885, the Grand Chapter was organized by the following Chapters: Yankton, No. 1; Sioux Falls, No. 2; Dakota, No. 3; Siroc, No. 4; Casselton, No. 7; Cheyenne, No. 9, U. D. Huron, No. 10, U. D.; Keystone, No. 11, U. D.; Watertown, No. 12, U. D.; Jamestown, No, 13, U. D.; Aberdeen, No. 14, U. D. The first Annual Convocation was held June 8, 1885. When the division of the Territory took place the Grand Chapter of Dakota gave permission to the Lodges located in South Dakota to organize a Grand Chapter of South Dakota, under the Constitution of the General Grand Chapter. This was done on January 6, 1890. The Grand Chapter of North Dakota was organized three days later.
The first Council in Dakota, Fargo, No.1, was chartered by the General Grand Council on November 19, 1889. This Council was located in North Dakota and, therefore, after 1889, was considered the first. Council of that State. There was no Grand Council in Dakota until after the division of the Territory.
The Grand Commandery was organized at Sioux Falls on May 14, 1884, by representant of the four Commanderies. Dakota. No1; Cyrene, No. 2; De Molay; No. 3, and Fargo, No. 5. On June 16, 1890 the representatives of Tancered. No 4: Fargo, No. 5; Grand Forks, No. 8, and Wi-ha-ha, No . 12, organized the Grand Commandery of North Dakota. The Grand Commandery of North Dakota. The Grand Commandery of Dakota then changed its name to that of Grand Commandery of South Dakota.
A Consistory of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was chartered at Fargo, on May 26, 1886, as Dakota, No. 1; a Council of Kadosh, Fargo, No. 1, on December 8, 1883; a Chapter of Rosy Croix, Mackey, No.1, on February 27, 1882, and a Lodge of Perfection, Alpha, No. 1, on February 8, 1882.
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DALCHO, FREDERICK
One of the founders of the Supreme Council of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States. He was born in the City of London in the year 1770, of Prussian parents. His father had been a distinguished officer under Frederick the Great and, having been severely wounded, was permitted to retire to England for his health. He was a very earnest Freemason, and transmitted his sentiments to his son. At his death, this son was sent for by een uncle, who had a few years before emigrated to Baltimore. Here he obtained a good classical education, after which he devoted himself successfully to the study of medicine, including a more extensive course of botany than has been common in medical course. Having received his degree of Doctor of Medicine, he took a commission in the medical department of the American army. With his division of the army he came to South Carolina, and was stationed at Fort Johnson, in Charleston harbor. Here some diviculty arose between Doctor Dalcho and his brother officers, in consequence of which he resigned his place in the army in 1799. He then removed to Charleston, where he formed a partnership in the practice of physic with Isaac Auld, and he became a member of the Medical Society, and a trustee of the Botanic Garden, established through its influence, On the 12th of June, 1818, Doctor Dalcho was admitted to the priesthood of the Protestant Èpiscopal Church. On the 23d of February, he was elected assistant minister of Saint Michael's Church, in Charleston. He died on the 24d of November, 1836, in the sixty- seventh year of his age, and the seventeenth of his ministry in Saint Michael's Church. The principal published work of Doctor Dalcho is "An Historical Account of the Protestant Episcopal Church in South Carolina. He also published a work entitled " The Evidence from Prophecy for the Truth of Christianity and the Divining of Christ : besides several sermons and essays, some of which were the result of considerable labor and research. He was also the projector, and for a long time the principal conductor, of the Gospel Messenger, then the leading organ of the Episcopal Church in South Caroline.
The Masonic career of Doctor Dalcho closely connects him with a York Freemasonry in South Carolina, and the Scottish Rite throughout. the United States.
He was initiated in a York or Athol Lodge at the time when the Jurisdiction of South Carolina was divided by the existence and the dissension's of two Grand Lodges, the one deriving its authority from the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of England, and the other from the rival Atholl Grand Lodge.
His constant desire appears, however, to have been to unit these discordant elements, and to uproot the evil spirit of Masonic rivalry and contention which at that time prevailed -a wish which was happily gratified, at length, by the union of the two Grand Lodges of South Carolina in 1817, a consummation to which he himself greatly contributed.
In 1801 Doctor Dalcho received the Thirty.-third and ultimate Degree of Sovereign Grand Inspector of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite ; and May 31, 1801 he became instrumental in the establishment at Charleston of the Supreme Council for the Southern Jurisdiction of the United States, of which Body he was appointed Grand Secretary, and afterward Grand commander; which latter position he occupied until 1823, when he resigned. September 23, 1801, he delivered an oration before the Sublime Grand Body in Charleston. This and another delivered March 21, 1803, before the same Body, accompanied by a learned historical appendix, were published in the latter year under the general name of Dalcho's Orations. The work was soon after republished in Dublin by the Grand Council of Heredom or Prince Masons of that city; and McCosh says that there were other editions issued in Europe, which, however, Brother Mackey had never seen.
The oration of 1803 and the appendix furnish the best information that up to that day, and for many years afterward. was accessible to the Craft in relation to the history of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite in this country.
In 1807. at the request of the Grand Lodge of York Masons of South Carolina, he published an Ahiman Rezon, which was adopted as the code for the government of the Lodges under the jurisdiction of that Body. This work, as was to be expected from the character of the Grand Lodge which it represented, was based on the previous book of Laurence Dermott.
In 1808 he was elected Corresponding Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Ancient York Masons, and from that time directed the influences of his high position to the reconciliation of the Masonic difficulties in South Carolina.
In 1817 the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons and that of Ancient York Masons of South Carolina became united under the name of the Grand Lodge of Ancient Freemasons of South Carolina. Doctor Dalcho took a very active part in this reunion, and at the first annual communication he was elected Grand Chaplain. The duties of this office he faithfully performed. and for many years delivered a public address or sermon on the Festival of Saint John the Evangelist.
In 1822 he prepared a second edition of the Ahiman Rezon which was published the following year, enriched with many notes. Some of these notes he would have hardly written, with the enlarged experience of the present day; but on the whole the second edition was an improvement on the first. Although retaining the peculiar title which had been introduced by Dermott it ceased in a great measure to follow the principles of the "'Ancient Masons."' In 1822 Dalcho became involved in an unpleasant controversy with some of his Masonic associates, in consequence of difficulties and dissension's which at that time existed in the Scottish Rite; and his feelings were so wounded by the un-masonic spirit which seemed to actuate his antagonists and former friends, that he resigned the office of Grand Chaplain, and retired for the remainder of his life from all participation in the active duties of Freemasonry.
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DALMATIC
A robe worn by deacons in some Christian Churches. Originally made of linen, as shown by early Christian paintings on the walls of the catacombs at Rome, but now generally made of heavy woolen or silk material, as the planate or outer vestment worn by the priest. This article of dress has become quite common in many of the Degrees of various Rites.
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DAMASCUS
An ancient and important city of Syria, situated on the road between Babylon and Jerusalem, and said in Masonic tradition to have been one of the resting-places of the Freemasons who, under the proclamation of Cyrus, returned from the former to the latter city to rebuild the Temple. An attempt was made in 1868 to introduce Freemasonry into Damascus, and a petition, signed by fifteen applicants, for a Charter for a Lodge was sent to the Grand Lodge of England; but the petition was rejected on the ground that all the petitioners were members of Bodies under other Grand Lodge Jurisdictions.
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DAMBOOL
The vast rock temple of the Buddhists in Ceylon, containing a profusion of carvings, figures of Buddha of extraordinary magnitude. Monuments of this deity are, in the common Singhalese term, called Dagoba, but the more general name is Stupa or Tope (see Topes).
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DAME
In the York Roll No.4 and some of the other old manuscripts, we find the direction to the Apprentice that he shall not so act as to bring harm or shame, during his apprenticeship, "either to his Master or Dame." It is absurd to suppose that this gives any color to the theory that in the ancient Masonic gilds women were admitted. The word was used in the same sense as it still is in the public schools of England, where the old lady who keeps the house at which the pupils board and lodge, is called the dame. The Companions de la Tour in France called her la mére, or the mother. it must, however, be acknowledged, that women, under the title of sisters were admitted as members. and given the freedom of the company, in the old Livery Companies of London -a custom which Herbert ( History of the Livery Companies i, 83) thinks was borrowed, on the reconstitution of the companies by Edward III, from the religious gilds (see this subject discussed under the tittle Sisters of the Gild).
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DAMES OF MOUNT TABOR
An androgynous, both sexes, Masonic Society, established about the year 1818, under the auspices of the Grand Orient of France. Its design was to give charitable relief to destitute females.
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DAMES OF THE ORDER OF SAINT JOHN
Religious ladies who, from its first institution, had been admitted into the Fraternity of Knights Hospitalers of Saint John of Jerusalem. The rules for their reception were similar to those for the Knights, and the proofs of noble descent which were required of them were sometimes more rigid. They had many conventual establishments or asylums in France, Italy, and Spain.
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DAMES PLEIADES
See Feuillants
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DAMOISEL
A name sometimes given in the times of chivalry to a page or candidate for knighthood, but also used mean a young woman.
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DAN
One of the twelve tribes of Israel, whose blue banner, charged with an eagle, is borne by the Grand Master of the First Veil in a Royal Arch Chapter.
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DANGER
In all the old Constitutions and Charges, Freemasons are taught to exercise brotherly love, and to deal honestly and truly with each other, whence results the duty incumbent upon every Freemason to warn his Brother of approaching danger. That this duty may never be neglected, it is impressed upon every Master Mason by a significant ceremony.
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DANIEL
The old countersign with "Darius" formerly used in the Thirty-second Degree, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. A Hebrew prophet, contemporary of Ezekiel, about 600 B.C. Carried captive to Babylon in the fourth year of Jehoiakim, but selected for instruction in all the learning of the Chaldeans by order of the Court. His skill in the interpretation of dreams was famed. He became Governor of Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar, and the first ruler of the whole Medo-Persian Empire, inferior only to Darius, then the king. Under Cyrus he was Grand Master of the Palace and Interpreter of Visions, as suggested by the Fifteenth Degree, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.
He did not return with his countrymen to Judea when granted their liberty. It is a dispute as to when he died, or where, but the majority favor Sushan, in Persia, when he was ninety years of age. At the present day a tomb is shown in this ancient city bearing his name; in fact, it is the only standing structure there. Daniel was noted and famed for his piety, and as well for his worldly possessions.
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DANNEBROG
The banner of Denmark containing a white cross is founded upon the tradition, which reminds us of that of Constantine, that Waldemar II, of Denmark, in 1219 saw in the heavens a fiery cross, which betokened his victory over the Esthonians.
Brother Charles Schou, San Carlos, Occidental Negros, Philippine Islands, writes that the Danish flag is a white cross on a red field, the white cross dividing the background or field of the flag into four red squares. He says further that " the origin of this banner, or the legend of its origin as it was taught to me years ago when I went to school. in Denmark is as follows: 'During the Esthonian battle in 1219, the Danish army was being hard pressed and it looked as if it would lose the battle. Bishop Absolon who was with the Army, asked to be carried up on a hill nearby and there he prayed for victory for the Danes. The Bishop was old, he had just left his sickbed and he soon became exhausted and it was necessary for the monks to hold up his arms while praying. Suddenly the heavens opened up and a large red banner with a white cross was seen floating towards earth. It was immediately caught and carried to the front of the Danish Army. The sight of the cross inspired the Army with new courage and soon the Esthonians were fleeing for their lives.'
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DANTZIC
In the year 1768, on the 3d of October, the burgomaster and magistrates of the city of Dantzic commenced a persecution against Freemasonry, which Institution they charged with seeking to undermine the foundations of Christianity; and to establish in its place the religion of nature. Hence, they issued a decree forbidding every citizen, inhabitant, and even stranger sojourning in the city, from any attempt to reestablish the society of Freemasons, which was thenceforth to be regarded "as forever abolished," under penalties of fine and imprisonment.
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DAO
The Zen name for light, from Daer, meaning to shine.
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DARAKIEL
A responsive word in the Twenty-third Degree of the Scottish Rite. sometimes pronounced dar-kee-ale. The Latin expression is Directio Dei, meaning By direction of God.
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DARIUS
The successor of Cyrus on the throne of Persia, Babylon, and Medea. He pursued the friendly policy of his predecessor in reference to the Jews, and confirmed the decrees of that monarch by a new edict. In the second year of his reign, Haggai and Zechariah, encouraged by this edict, induced their countrymen to resume the work of restoring the Temple, which was finished four years afterward.
Darius is referred to in the Degrees of Princes of Jerusalem, the Sixteenth of the Scottish Rite, and Companion of the Red Cross in the American Rite.
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DARKNESS
Darkness has, in all the systems of initiation, been deemed a symbol of ignorance, and so opposed to light, which is the symbol of knowledge.
Hence the rule, that the eye should not see until the heart has conceived the true nature of those beauties which constitute the mysteries of the Order. In the Ancient Mysteries, the aspirant was always shrouded in darkness as a preparatory step to the reception of the full light of knowledge. The time of this confinement in darkness and solitude varied in the different mysteries. Among the Druids of Britain the period was nine days and nights; in the Grecian Mysteries it was three times nine days, while among the Persians, according to Porphyry, it was extended to the almost incredible period of fifth, days of darkness, solitude, and fasting. Because, according to all the cosmogonies, accounts of the universe, darkness existed before light was created, darkness was originally worshiped as the firstborn, as the progenitor of day and the state of existence before creation. The apostrophe of Young to Night embodies the feelings which gave origin to this debasing worship of darkness:
O majestic night!
Nature's great ancestor! Day's elder born!
And fated to survive the transient sun!
By morals and immortals seen with awe!
Freemasonry has restored darkness to its proper place as a state of preparation; the symbol of that antemundane chaos from whence light issued at the Divine command; of the state of nonentity before birth, and of ignorance before the reception of knowledge. Hence, in the Ancient Mysteries, the release of the aspirant from solitude and darkness was called the act of regeneration, and he was said to be born again, or to be raised from the dead. And in Freemasonry, the darkness which envelops the mind of the uninitiated being removed by the bright effulgence of Masonic light, Freemasons are appropriately called the sons of light. In Doctor Oliver's Signs and Symbols there is a lecture "On the Mysterious Darkness of the Third Degree.'' This refers to the ceremony of enveloping the room in darkness when that Degree is conferred-a ceremony once always observed, but now, in this country at least, frequently but improperly omitted. The darkness here is a symbol of death, the lesson taught in the Degree, while the subsequent renewal of light refers to that other and subsequent lesson of eternal life.
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DARMSTADT, GRAND LODGE OF
The Grand Lodge of Darmstadt, in Germany, under the distinctive appellation of the Grand Lodge zur Eintracht (meaning of Concord), was established on the 22d of March, 1846, by three Lodges, in consequence of a dissension between them and the Eclectic Union. The latter body had declared that the religion of Freemasonry was universal, and that Jews could be admitted into the Order. Against this liberal declaration a Lodge at Frankfort had protested, and had been erased from the roll for contumacy. Two other Lodges, at Mainz and at Darmstadt, espoused its cause, and united with it in forming a new Grand Lodge for Southern Germany, founded on the dogma "that Christian principles formed the basis on which they worked." It was, in fact, a dispute between tolerance and intolerance. Nevertheless, the Body had the Grand Duke of Hesse as patron, and was recognized by most of the Grand Lodges of Germany.
DASSIGNY, FIFIELD
A Freemason and physician of Dublin, Ireland, who published, in 1744, at that city, A Serious and Impartial Inquiry into the Cause of the present Decay of Freemasonry in the Kingdom of Ireland. It contained an abstract of the history of Freemasonry, and an allusion to the Royal Arch Degree, on account of which it has been cited by Dermott in his Ahiman Rezon. The work is important on account of its reference to Royal Arch Masonry, but is very scarce, only three copies of it being known to exist, of which one belongs to the Grand Lodge of Iowa, and one to the West Yorkshire Masonic Library, of which a facsimile was published in 1893, while a third copy was discovered in 1896.
The writer's name is spelled D'Assigny or Dassigny, but is given in the latter form on the title-page of the Serious Enquiry. Dr. W. J. Chetwode Crawley has investigated the history of the D'Assigny family (see Caelnentaria Hibernica. FascieulusII).
Both the spelling and the pronunciation of this name have been matters of some inquiry. The name is Dassigny on the title page of his famous Enquiry.
The Ahiman Rezon of Brother Laurence Dermott, 1764 (page 47), gives the name as D'Assigny. Kenning's Cyclopedia of Freemasonry spells the name Assigny and says of this spelling " generally so spelt, but his real name seems to have been Dassigny," though Brother Woodford (page 148) spells it D'Assigny, a choice of three ways. As for the sounds in the name the following is suggested as representative of common usage: Das, as in pass or class; sig, as in see or key, and ny, as in penny or many. Doctor E. B. de Sauzé prefers the following from a French point of view: Da, as the first a in lateral; ssi, as ci in city; gn, as in signor with the Spanish ñ, and y, as the French i. He also feels certain that the original spelling of the name was D'Assigny.
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DATES, MASONIC
See Calendar
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DATHAN
A Reubenite who, with Korah and Abiram, revolted against Moses and unlawfully sought the priesthood. In the first chapter of the Book of Numbers, where the whole account is given, it is said that as a punishment the earth opened and swallowed them up. The incident is referred to in the Order of High Priesthood, an honorary Degree of the . American Rite, which is conferred upon the installed High Priests of Royal Arch Chapters.
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DAUGHTER, MASON'S
See Mason's Wife and Daughter
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DAUGHTER OF A FREEMASON
The daughter of a Freemason is entitled to certain peculiar privileges and claims upon the Fraternity arising from her relationship to a member of the Craft. There has been some difference of opinion as to the time and manner in which the privileges cease. Masonic jurists, however, very generally incline to the opinion that they are terminated by marriage. If a Freemason's daughter marries a profane, she absolves her connection with the Fraternity. If she marries a Freemason, she exchanges her relation of a Freemason's daughter for that of a Freemason's wife.
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DAVID
David has no place in Masonic history, except that which arises from the fact that he was the father of King Solomon, and his predecessor on the throne of Israel. To him, however, were the Jews indebted for the design of a Temple in Jerusalem, the building of which was a favorite object with him. For this purpose he purchased Mount Moriah, which had been the threshing-floor of Oman the Jebusite; but David had been engaged in so many wars, that it did not seem good to the Lord that he should be permitted to construct so sacred an edifice. This duty, therefore, he left to his son, whom, before dying, he furnished with plans and with means to accomplish the task. Though David is a favorite subject among the Cabalistic and the Mohammedans, who relate many curious traditions concerning him, he is not alluded to in the legends or symbolism of Freemasonry except incidentally as the father of Solomon.
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DAVID I, KING OF SCOTLAND
1124--53; known as Protector of Freemasons and Patron of the building art (see Alexander lll).
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DAVID, SHIELD OF
See Shield of David
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DAZARD, MICHEL FRANÇOIS
Born at Chateaudun, in France, May 2, 1781. He was a devoted student of Freemasonry, and much occupied in the investigation of the advanced Degrees of ail the Rites.
He was an opponent of the Supreme Council, against which body he wrote, in 1812, a brochure in French of forty-eight pages entitled Eztrait des colonnes gravées du Père de Famille, vallée d'Angers ( meaning Extract from the Graven Columns of the Father of the Family, Valley of Angers). Kloss calls it an important and exhaustive polemic document. It attempts to expose, supported by documents, what the author and his party called the illegal pretensions of the Supreme Council, and the arrogance of its claim to exclusive Jurisdiction in France. Dazard was the author of several other interesting discourses on Masonic subjects.
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DEACON
In every Symbolic Lodge, there are two officers who are called the Senior and Junior Deacons. In America the former has been appointed by the Master and the latter by the Senior Warden, both have been elected according to the respective Codes of the Jurisdictions, Pennsylvania, for example, has the Deacons appointed, Ohio has them elected; in England both are appointed by the Master. It is to the Deacons that the introduction of visitors should be properly entrusted. Their duties comprehend, also, a general surveillance over the security of the Lodge, and they are the proxies of the officers by whom they are appointed Hence their jewel, in allusion to the necessity of circumspection and justice is a square and compasses. In the center, the Senior Deacon wears a sun, and the Junior Deacon a moon, which serve to distinguish their respective ranks. In the English system, the jewel of the Deacons is a dove, in allusion to the dove sent forth by Noah. In the Rite of Mizraim the Deacons are called acolytes.
The office off Deacons in Freemasonry appears to have been derived from the usage's of the primitive church. In the Greek church, the Deacons were always the wvxwpoí, the pylori or doorkeepers, and in the Apostolica Constitutions the Deacon was ordered to stand at the men's door, and the Subdeacon at the women's, to see that none came in or went out during the oblation In the earliest rituals of the eighteenth century, there is no mention of' Deacons, and the duties of those officers were discharged partly by the Junior Warden and partly by the Senior and Junior Entered Apprentices, and they were not generally adopted in England until the Union of 1813. Brother W,J. Chetwode Crawley has some comments upon the subject in Caementaria Hibernica (Fasciculus i, pages 9-10). He advises that:
"We must carefully distinguish between the Deacon of the early Scottish Minute Books, and the Deacon of Irish ritual. The former occupied almost, if not altogether, the highest post among his Brethren, and having precedence over the Warden and presiding over the meeting when occasion required. The latter corresponded to the Dean-that is Deacon-of Faculty ; the latter to the lost order of the Ministry, the Deacon in Ecclesiastical parlance. The similarity does not go beyond the name.
The appointing of Deacons served in latter days, as a distinction between Irish and English work, for the Lodges under the Constitution of the Ancient naturally followed the Irish use. It must be observed that the office of Deacon was confined to supporting Lodges. During the first one hundred and twenty years of its existence, the Grand Lodge of Ireland never elected Grand Deacons . when their services were required they were selected for the occasion from the Masters then present. Their first appearance as prominent Grand Officers is in the addition of the Irish Constitutions, promulgated in 1850, though thirty-seven years previously the United Grand Lodge of England had adopted the office, in deference to the usage of the Ancient. (See also references under Titles.)
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DEACON'S ROD
See Rod, Deacon's
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DEAF AND DUMB
Deaf mutes, as imperfect men, come under the provisions of the Old Constitutions, and are disqualified for initiation. At one time, however, a Lodge in Paris, captivated by the eclat of the proceeding, and unmindful of the ancient landmark, initiated a deaf mute, who was an intelligent professor in the Deal and Dumb Asylum. All the instructions were given through the medium of the language of the deaf mutes. lt. scarcely need be said that this cannot be recognized as a precedent.
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DEATH
The Scandinavians, in their Edda, describing the residence of Death in Hell, where she was east by her father, Loke, say that she there possesses large apartments, strongly built, and fenced with gates of iron. Her hall is Grief; her table, Famine Hunger, her knife; Delay, her servant; Faintness, her porch; Sickness and Pain, her bed ; and her tent, Cursing and Howling. But. the Masonic idea of death, like the Christian's, is accompanied with no gloom, because it is represented only as a sleep, from whence we awaken into another life. Among the ancients, sleep and death were fabled as twins. Old Gorgias, when dying, said, "Sleep is about to deliver me up to his brother''; but the death sleep of the heathen was a sleep from which there was no awaking. The popular belief was annihilation, and the poets and philosophers fostered the people's ignorance, by describing death as the total and irremediable extinction of live. Thus Seneca says-and he was too philosophic not to have known better-''that after death there comes nothing,'' while Vergil, who doubtless had been initiated into the Mysteries of Eleusis, nevertheless calls death "an iron sleep, an eternal night," yet the Ancient Mysteries were based upon the dogma of eternal live, and their initiations were intended to represent a resurrection. Freemasonry, deriving its system of symbolic teachings from these ancient religious associations, presents death to its neophytes as the gate or entrance to eternal existence. To teach the doctrine of immortality is the great object of the Third Degree. In its ceremonies we learn that live here is the time of labor, and that, working at the construction of a spiritual temple, we are worshiping the Grand Architect for whom we build that temple. 'But we learn also that, when that live is ended, it closes only to open upon a newer and higher one, where in a second temple and a purer Lodge, the Freemason will find eternal truth. Death, therefore, in Masonic philosophy, is the symbol of initiation completed, perfected, and consummated.
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DEATH IN THE ANCIENT MYSTERIES
Each of the ancient religious Mysteries, those quasi-Masonic associations of the heathen world, was accompanied by a legend, which was always of a funereal character representing the death, by violence, of the deity to whom it was dedicated, and his subsequent resurrection or restoration to life. Hence, the first part of the ceremonies of initiation was solemn and lugubrious in character, ,while the latter part was cheerful and joyous. These ceremonies and this legend were altogether symbolical, and the great truths of the unity of God and the immortality, of the soul were by them intended to be dramatically explained.
This representation of death, which finds its analogue in the Third Degree of Freemasonry, has been technically called the Death of the Mysteries. It is sometimes more precisely defined, in reference to any special one of the Mysteries, as the Cabiric death or the Bacchic death, as indicating the death represented in the Mysteries of the Cabiri or of Dionysus.
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DEBATE
Debates in a Masonic Lodge must be conducted according to the fraternal principles of the Institution. Masonic debate or discussion should not become wrangling disputes nor quarrelsome contention. in the language of Doctor Oliver, ''the strictest courtesy should be observed during a debate, in a Mason's Lodge, on questions which elicit a. difference of opinion; and any gross violation of decorum and good order is sure to be met by an admonition from the chair." It must be always remembered that the object of a Masonic: discussion is to elicit truth, and not simply to secure ,victory. When, in a debate, a Brother desires to speak, he rises and addresses the chair. The presiding officer calls him by' his name, and thus recognizes his right to the floor. while he is speaking, he is not to be interrupted by any other member, except on a point of order. If called to order by any member, the speaker is immediately to take his seat until the point is stated, when the Master will make his decision without debate. The speaker will then rise and resume his discourse, if not ruled out by the Master. During the time that he is speaking, no motion is permissible. Every member is permitted to speak once on the subject under discussion ; nor can he speak a second time, except by permission of the Master, unless there is a more liberal provision in the by-laws of the Lodge. There are to this rule two exceptions, namely, when a member rises to explain.
and when the mover of the resolution closes the debate by a second speech to which he is entitled by parliamentary law.
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DECALOGUE
The ten commandments of the Masonic law, as delivered from Mount Sinai and recorded in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, are so called. They are not obligatory upon a Freemason as a Freemason, because the Institution is tolerant and cosmopolite, and cannot require its members to give their adhesion to any, religious dogmas or precepts, excepting those which express a belief in the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul. No partial law prescribed for a particular religion can be properly selected for the government of an Institution whose great characteristic is its universality (see Moral Law).
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DECANUS
An officer in the Knights Templar system of Baron Hund, who, in the absence of the Grand Master and his Prior, possessed the right to preside in the Chapter.
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DECATUR, STEPHEN
There Were two of this name, father and son. 0ne, born at Newport, Rhode Island, exact date unknown, died in 1808, at Philadelphia. Captain in the United States Navy from its birth, Brother Decatur was in charge of the Delaware, sloop of war, and later on commanded the Philadelphia, until the close of the differences with France. He moved from Philadelphia to Sinnepuxent, Maryland, and there, January 5, 1779, his son, Stephen Decatur II, was born. In August, 1777, Brother Decatur, the father, was initiated in Lodge No. 16, at Baltimore, and later in the same year received the Second and Third Degrees. Baltimore Lodge No. 16 was chartered by the Provincial Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in 1770. In 1781 its Charter was forfeited but was restored in 1785 as Saint, Johns Lodge No. 20, Fells Point, Baltimore, and which later went out of existence. Grand Secretary John A. Perry, Pennsylvania, writes to us that on "revering to the Minute Book of Lodge No. 3, I find the signature of Stephen Decatur of the outside leaf. The minutes show:
Stated Lodge opened in due form April 18, 1780.
Brother Decatur of Lodge No. 16 in Maryland petitioned to become a member of this Lodge, was balloted or and unanimously approved of.
Lodge closed and a Master's Lodge opened.
Brothers Jackway and Decatur were raised to the sublime degree of Master Mason, returned and gave thanks.
Brother Decatur paid his fees $100.00 in the hands of the Treasurer.
" He no doubt previously received the Entered Apprentice Degree in Lodge No. 16, Baltimore, Maryland, whose Warrant was granted by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, September 21, 1779, but was not in existence very long." The claim is made but not fully proven that the younger Stephen Decatur was initiated in Saint Johns Lodge, either of Maryland or Rhode Island, October 12, 1799. He became a naval commander of prominence and met with great success in various enterprises (see History of Freemasonry in Maryland , E.T. Schultz volume 1, pages 60, 102; also Builder, George W. Baird, May, 1920).
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DECIUS
The nom de plume, meaning in French the pen name, of C. L. Reinhold, a distinguished Masonic writer ( (see Reinhold).
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DECLARATION OF CANDIDATES
Every candidate for initiation is required to make. "upon honor," the following declaration before an appropriate officer or committee.
That unbiased by the improper solicitation of friends, and uninfluenced by mercenary motives, he freely and voluntary offers himself as a candidate for the Mysteries Freemasonry: that he is prompted to solicit the privileges of Freemasonry by a favorable option conceived of the constitution and a desire of knowledge; and that he will cheerfully conform to all the ancient usage's and established customs of the Fraternity.
This form is very old. It is to be found in precisely the same words in the earliest edition of Preston. It is required by the English Constitution, that the candidate should subscribe his name to this declaration, But in America the declaration is made oral;, and usually before the Senior Deacon or the Stewards.
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DECLARATION OF THE MASTER
Every Master of a Lodge, after his election and before his installation, is required to give, in the presence of the Brethren, his assent to the following fifteen charges and regulations:
1. Do you promise to be a good man and true, and strictly to obey the moral law?
2. Do you promise to be a peaceable citizen, and cheerfully to conform to the laws of the country in which you reside?
3. Do you promise not to be concerned in plots and conspiracies against the government of the country in which you live, but patiently to submit to the decisions of the law and the constituted authorities?
4. Do you promise to pay proper respect to the civil magistrates, to work diligently , live creditably, and act honorably by all men?
5. Do you promise to hold in veneration the original rulers and patrons of' the Order of Freemasonry, and their regular successors, supreme and subordinate, according to their station ; and to submit to the awards and resolutions of your Brethren in Lodge convent , in every case consistent with the constitutions of the Order?
6. Do you promise, as much as in you lies, to avoid private piques and quarrels, and to guard against intemperance and excess.
7. Do you promise to be cautions in your behavior, courteous to your Brethren, and faithful to your Lodge?
8. Do you promise to respect genuine and true Brethren, and to discountenance impostors and all dissenters from the Ancient Landmarks and Constitutions of Masonry?
9. Do you promise, according to the best of your abilities to promote the general good of society, to cultivate the social virtues, and to propagate the knowledge of the mystic art, according to our statutes?
10. Do you promise to pay homage to the Grand Master for the time being, and to his officers when duly installed, and strictly to conform to every edict of the Grand Lodge or General Assembly of Masons that is not subversive of the principles and groundwork of Masonry'?
11. Do you admit that it is not in the power of any man or body of men, to make innovations in the Body of Masonry?
12. Do you promise a regular attendance on the committees and communications of the Grand Lodge, on receiving proper notice, and to pay attention to all the duties of Masonry , on convenient occasions?
13. Do you admit that no new Lodge can be formed without permission of the Grand Lodge; and that no countenance ought to be given to any irregular Lodge, or to any person clandestinely initiated therein, as being contrary to the ancient churches of the Order?
14. Do you admit that no person can be regularly made a Freemason in, or admitted a member of, any regular Lodge, without precious notice, and due inquirer into his characters
l5. Do you agree that no visitors shall be received into your lodge without due examination and producing proper vouchers of their having been initiated in a regular Lodge? With very slight differences, such as might properly be called editorial variations, these charges and regulations are generally in use.
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DECLARING OFF
When a brother ceases to visit and pay his monthly subscription, he thereby declares himself off the Lodge" (see the Symbolical Dictionary). In England, the Brother resigns. Various designations rule in the United States, the chief one being dropped from the roll. In some States the Brother is punished by suspension. If, however, in certain States, he is clear of the books, upon application he can receive a certificate to that effect, and be dropped from the roll. In England he gets a clearance certificate. in Scotland a demit is issued by the Daughter Lodge and countersigned by the Grand Secretary.
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DECORATIONS
A Lodge-room ought, besides its necessary furniture, to be ornamented with decorations which, while they adorn and beautify it, will not be unsuitable to its sacred character. On this subject, Doctor Oliver (in his Book of the Lodge, chapter v, page 70) makes the following judicious remarks: The expert Mason will be convinced that the walls of a Lodge room ought neither to be absolutely naked nor too much decorated. A chaste disposal of symbolical ornaments in the right places, and according to propriety, relieves the dullness and vacuity of a blank space and, though but sparingly used, will produce a striking impression and contribute to the general beauty and solemnity of the scene.
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DEDICATION OF A LODGE
Among the ancients every temple, altar, statue, or sacred place was dedicated to some divinity. The Romans, during the Republic, confided this duty to their consuls, pretors, censors, or other chief magistrates, and afterward to the emperors. According to the Papirian law, the regulations of a clan or group of Roman families, the dedication must have been authorized by a decree of the senate and the people, and the consent of the college of augurs. The ceremony consisted in surrounding the temple or object of dedication with garlands of flowers, whilst the vestal virgins poured on the exterior of the temple the lustral water. The dedication was completed by a formula of words uttered by the Pontiff, and the immolation of a victim, whose entrails were placed upon an altar of turf. The dedication of a temple was always a festival for the people, and was annually commemorated.
While the Pagans dedicated their temples to different deities—sometimes to the joint worship of several —the monotheistic Jews dedicated their religious edifices to the one supreme Jehovah. Thus, David dedicated with solemn ceremonies the altar which he erected on the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, after the cessation of the plague which had afflicted his people; and Calmet conjectures that he composed the thirtieth Psalm on this occasion. The Jews extended this ceremony of dedication even to their private houses, and Clarke tells us, in reference to a passage on this subject in be Book of Deuteronomy, house to God with prayer, praise, and thanksgiving; and this was done in order to secure the divine presence and blessing, for no pious or sensible man could imagine he could dwell safely in a house that was not under the immediate protection of God."
There is a noteworthy reproduction in the Symbolism of the Churches and Church Ornaments, a translation of the first book of the Rationale Divinorum Officorum written by William Durandus in the thirteenth century. Here we have the ritual of an ancient form of dedication. There is also quoted a brief but suggestive passage from Sugerius book on the dedication of the Church of St. Denis:
Right early in the morning, archbishops and bishops archdeacons and abbots, and other venerable persons who had lived of their proper expense, bore themselves right bishop fully and took their places on the platform raised for the consecration of the water, and placed between the sepulchers of the holy martyrs and S (the holy) Saviour's altar. Then might ye have seen and they who stood by saw, and that with great devotion, such a band of so venerable bishops, arrayed in their white robes, sparkling in their pontifical robes and precious orfreys, grasp their pastoral staves, call on God in holy exorcism pace around the consecrated enclosure, and perform the nuptials of the Great King with such care that it seemed as though the ceremony were performed by a chorus of angels not a band of men. The crowd, in overwhelming magnitude, rolled around to the door, and while the aforesaid Episcopal band were sprinkling the walls with hyssop, the king and his nobles drive them back, repress them, guard the portals.
Suger, or Sugerius, as the name is often Latinized, was born about 1081 A.D. and died on January 31, 1151. A Frenchman who has been deemed the foremost historian of his time, he was in his tenth year at school in the Priory of St. Denis near Paris. Later he became secretary to the Abbot of St. Denis, and after a sojourn at Rome succeeded to this office. At his death the Abbey possessed considerable property, including a new church of which he had written much, including the above item of interest in regard to the old ceremony of dedication.
According to the learned Selden, there was a distinction among the Jews between consecration and dedication, for sacred things were both consecrated and dedicated, while profane things, such as private dwelling-houses, were only dedicated. Dedication was, therefore, a less sacred ceremony than consecration. This distinction has also been preserved among Christians, many of whom, and, in the early ages, all, consecrated their churches to the worship of God, but dedicated them to, or placed them under, the especial patronage of some particular saint. A similar practice prevails in the Masonic Institution; and therefore, while we consecrate our Lodges "to the honor of God's glory," we dedicate them to the patrons of our Order.
Tradition informs us that Masonic Lodges were originally dedicated to King Solomon, because he was our first Most Excellent Grand Master. In the sixteenth century Saint John the Baptist seems to have been considered as the peculiar patron of Freemasonry; but subsequently this honor was divided between the two Saints John, the Baptist and the Evangelist; and modern Lodges, in the United States at least, are universally erected or consecrated to God, and dedicated to the Holy Saints John. In the Hemming lectures, adopted in 1813, at the time of the union of the two Grand Lodges of England, the dedication was changed from the Saints John to King Solomon, and this usage now prevails very generally in England where Lodges are dedicated to "God and His Service, also to the memory of the Royal Solomon, under chose auspices many of our Masonic mysteries had weir origin"; but the ancient dedication to the Saints John was never abandoned by American Lodges.
The formula in Webb which dedicates the Lodge to the memory of the Holy Saint John," was, undoubtedly, an inadvertence on the part of that lecturer, since in all his oral teachings Brother Mackey asserts he adhered to the more general system, and described a Lodge in his esoteric work as being "dedicated to the Holy Saints John." This is now the universal practice, and the language used by Webb becomes contradictory and absurd when compared with the fact that the festivals of both saints are equally celebrated by the Order, and that the 27th of December is not less a day of observance in the Order than the 24th of June.
In one old lecture of the eighteenth century, this dedication to the two Saints John is thus explained:
Q. Our Lodges being finished, furnished, and decorated with ornaments, furniture, and jewels, to whom were they consecrated?
A. To God.
Q. Thank you, Brother; and can you tell me to whom they were first dedicated?
A. To Noah, who was saved in the Ark.
Q. And by what name were the Masons then known?
A. They were called Noachidæ, Sasses, or Wise Men.
Q. To whom were the Lodges dedicated during the Mosaic Dispensation?
A. To Moses! the chosen of God, and Solomon, the an of David, king of Israel, who was an eminent patron of the Craft.
Q. And under what name were the Masons known during that period?
A. Under the name of Dionysias, Geometricians, or Masters in Israel.
Q. But as Solomon was a Jest, and died long before the promulgation of Christianity. to whom were they dedicated under the Christian Dispensation?
A. From Solomon the patronage of Masonry passed to Saint John the Baptist.
Q. And under what name were they known after the promulgation of Christianity?
A. Under the name of Essenes, Archaics, or Freeze masons.
Q. Why were the Lodges dedicated to Saint John the Baptists
A. Because he was the forerunner of our Savior, and, by preaching repentance and humiliation, drew the first parallel of the Gospel.
Q. Had Saint John the Baptist any equal?
A. He had; Saint John the Evangelist.
Q. Why is he said to be equal to the Baptist?
A. Because he finished by his learning what the other began by his zeal, and thus drew a second line parallel to the former- ever since which time Freemasons' Lodges in all Christian countries, have been dedicated to the one or the other, or both, of these worthy and worshipful men.
here is another old lecture, adopted into the Prestonian system, which still further developed
these reasons for the Johannite dedication, but with bight variations in some of the details. Brother
Mackey quotes it thus:
From the building of the first Temple at Jerusalem to the Babylonish captivity, Freemasons' Lodges were dedicated to King Solomon; from thence to the coming of the Messiah, they were dedicated to Zerubbabel, the builder of the second Temple, and from that time to the final destruction of the Temple by Titus, in the reign of Vespasian, they were dedicated to Saint John the Baptist; but owing to the many massacres and disorders which attended that memorable event, Freemasonry sunk very much into decay; many Lodges were entirely broken up, and but few could meet in sufficient numbers to constitute their legality; and at a general meeting of the Craft, held in the city of Benjamin, it was observed that the principal reason for the decline of Masonry was the want of a Grand Master to patronize it. They therefore deputed seven of their most eminent members to wait upon St. John the Evangelist, who was at that time Bishop of Ephesus, requesting him to take the office of Grand Master. He returned for answer, that though well stricken in years, being upwards of ninety, yet having been initiated into Masonry in the early part of his life, he would take upon himself the office. He thereby completed by his learning what the other Saint John effected by his zeal, and thus drew what Freemasons term a sine parallels ever since which time Freemasons Lodges in all Christian countries have been dedicated both to Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist.
So runs the tradition, but, as it lacks every claim to authenticity, a more philosophical reason may be assigned for this dedication to the two Saints John.
One of the earliest deviations from the pure religion of the Noachidae was distinguished by the introduction of sun worship. The sun, in the Egyptian mysteries, was symbolized by Osiris, the principal object of their rites, whose name, according to Plutarch and Macrobius, signified the prince and leader, the soul of the universe and the governor of the stars. Macrobius (Saturnalia, Book 1, chapter 18) says that the Egyptians worshiped the sun as the only divinity; and they represented him under various forms, according to the several phases, of his infancy at the winter solstice in December, his adolescence at the vernal equinox in March, his manhood at the summer solstice in June, and his old age at the autumnal equinox in September.
Among the Phoenicians, the sun was adored under the name of Adonis, and in Persia, under that of Mithras. In the Grecian mysteries, the orb of day was represented by one of the officers who superintended the ceremony of initiation; and in the Druidical rites his worship was introduced as the visible representative of the invisible, creative, and preservative principle of nature. In short, wherever the spurious Freemasonry existed, the adoration of, or, at least, a high respect for, the solar orb constituted a part of its system.
In Freemasonry, the sun is still retained as an important symbol. This fact must be familiar to every Freemason of any intelligence. It occupies, indeed, its appropriate position, simply as a symbol, but, nevertheless, it constitutes an essential part of the system. "As an emblem of God's power," says Hutchinson (Spirit of Masonry, Lecture IV, page 86), "His goodness, omnipresence, and eternity, the Lodge is adorned with the image of the sun, which he ordained to arise from the east and open the day; thereby calling forth the people of the earth to their worship and exercise in the walks of virtue."
"The government of a Mason's Lodge," says Oliver (Signs and Symbols of Freemasonry, pages 204), "is vested in three superior officers, who are seated in the East, West, and South, to represent the rising, setting, and meridian sun."
The sun, obedient to the all-seeing eye, is an emblem in the ritual of the Third Degree, and the sun displayed within an extended compass constitutes the jewel of the Past Master in the American system, and that of the Grand Master in the English.
But it is a needless task to cite authorities or multiply instances to prove how intimately the sun, as a symbol, is connected with the whole system of freemasonry.
It is then evident that the sun, either as an object of worship, or of symbolization, has always formed an important part of what has been called the two systems of Freemasonry, the Spurious and the Pure.
To the ancient sun worshipers, the movements of the heavenly bodies must have been something more than mere astronomical phenomena; they were the actions of the deities whom they adored, and hence were invested with the solemnity of a religious character. But, above allay the particular periods when the sun reached his greatest northern and southern declination, at the winter and summer solstices, by entering the zodiacal signs of Cancer and Capricorn, marked as they would be by the most evident effects on the seasons, and on the length of the days and nights, could not have passed unobserved. hut, on the contrary, must have occupied an important place in their ritual Now these important days fall respectively on the 21st of June and the 21st of December.
Hence, these solstitial periods were among the principal festivals observed by the Pagan nations. Du Pauw (Dissertations on Egyptians and Chinese in, page 159) remarks of the Egyptians, that "they had a fixed festival at each new moon; one at the summer, and one at the winter solstice, as well as the vernal and autumnal equinoxes "
The Druids always observed the festivals of midsummer and midwinter in June and December The former for a long time was celebrated by the Christian descendants of the Druids "The eve of Saint John the Baptist," says Chambers (information for the recopies Nose 89), "variously called Midsummer Eve, was formerly a time of high observance amongst the English, as it still is in Catholic countries. Bonfires were everywhere lighted, round which the people danced with joyful demonstrations, occasionally leaping through the flame.''
Godfrey Higgins (Celtic Druids, page 165) thus alludes to the celebration of the festival of midwinter he the ancient world:
The festival of the 25th of December was celebrated, by the Druids in Britain and Ireland, with great fires lighted on the tops of the hills. On the 25th of December, at the first moment of the day, throughout all the ancient world, the birthday of the god Sol was celebrated. This was the moment when, after the supposed winter solstice and the lowest point of his degradation below our hemisphere he began to increase and gradually to ascend. At this moment. in all the ancient religions, his birthday was kept; from India to the Ultima Thule. these ceremonies partook of the same character: everywhere the god was feigned to he born, and his festival was celebrated with great rejoicings.
See, also, Dudley Writrht's Druidism, the Ancient Faith of Britain (page 24).
Our ancestors finding that the Church, according to its usage of purifying Pagan festivals by Christian application, had appropriated two days near those solstitial periods to the memory of two eminent saints, incorporated these festivals by the lapse of a few days into the Masonic calendar, and adopted these worthies as patrons of our Order. To this change, the earlier Christian Freemasons were the more persuaded by the peculiar character of these saints. Saint John the Baptist, by announcing the approach of Christ, and by the mystic ablution to which he subjected his proselytes, and which was afterward adopted in the ceremony of initiation into Christianity, might well be considered as the Grand Hierophant of the Church; while the mysterious and emblematic nature of the Apocalypse assimilated the mode of instruction adopted by Saint John the Evangelist to that practiced by the Fraternity.
We are thus led to the conclusion that the connection of the Saints John with the Masonic Institution is rather of a symbolic than of a historical character In dedicating our Lodges to them, we do not so much declare our belief that they were eminent members of the Order, as demonstrate our reverence for the great Architect of the Universe in the symbol of His most splendid creation, the great light of day.
In conclusion it may be observed that the ceremony of dedication is merely the enunciation of a form of words, and this having been done, the Lodge is thus, by the consecration and dedication, set apart as something sacred to the cultivation of the principles of Freemasonry, under that peculiar system which acknowledges the two Saints John as its patrons. Royal Arch Chapters are dedicated to Zerubbabel, Prince or Governor of Judah, and Commanderies of Knights Templar to Saint John the Almoner. Mark Lodges should be dedicated to Hiram the Builder; Past Masters to the Saints John, and Most Excellent Masters to King Solomon.
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DEDICATION OF THE TEMPLE
There are five dedications of the Temple of Jerusalem which are recorded in Jewish history:
1. The dedication of the Solomonic Temple, 1004 B.C.
2. The dedication in the time of Hezekiah, when it was purified from the abominations of Ahaz, 726 B.C.
3. The dedication of Zerubbabel's Temple, 513 B.C.
4. The dedication of the Temple when it was purified after Judas Maccabaeus had driven out the Syrians, 161 B.C.
5. The dedication of Herod's Temple. 22 B.C.
The fourth of these is still celebrated by the Jews in their Feast of the Dedication. The first only is connected with the Masonic ritual, and is commemorated in the Most Excellent Master's Degree of the American Rite as the Celebration of the Capstone. This dedication was made by King Solomon in the blear of the World 3000, and lasted eight days, commencing in the month of Tisri, 15th day, during the Feast of Tabernacles. The dedication of the Temple is called. in the English system of Lectures, the third grand offering which consecrates the floor of a Mason s Lodge. The same Lectures contain a tradition that on that occasion King Solomon assembled the nine Deputy Gland Masters in the holy place, from which all natural light had been carefully excluded, and which only received the artificial light which emanated from the east, west, and south, and there made the necessary arrangements. The legend must be considered as a myth; but the inimitable prayer and in vocation which were offered up by King Solomon on e occasion are recorded in the eighth chapter of the first Book of Kings, which contains the Scriptural fount of the dedication.
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DEFAMATION
See Back
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DEFINITION OF FREEMASONRY
"The definitions of Freemasonry," says Oliver, in his historical Landmarks of Freemasonry, "have been numerous; but they all unite in declaring it to be a system of morality, by the practice of which its members may advance their spiritual interest, and mount by the theological ladder from the Lodge on earth to the Lodge in heaven. It is a mistake, however, to suppose that Freemasonry is a system of religion. It is but the handmaiden to religion, although it largely and effectually illustrates one great branch of it, which is practice."
The definition in the English Lectures is often quoted, which says that "Freemasonry is a peculiar system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated symbols."
But Brother Mackey believed that a more compressive and exact definition is that it is a science which is engaged in the search after Divine Truth, and which employs symbolism as its method of instruction.
Another definition is by Dr. S. Bein, who terms Freemasonry that religious and mystical society - hose aim is moral perfection on the basis of general quality and fraternity (see Vortaro de Esperanto, page 50).
A more elaborate definition is by Brother W. N. Pontone, P.G.M., of Canada, as follows Masonry is something more than a secret Society, though secrecy is an element in esoteric work, more than ritualism, though the ritual, simple in its dignity and quaint and rhythmic in expression, is a factor more than symbolism, though Symbolic teaching is significant and transfigures the commonplace; more than philosophy, though it speculatively teaches how to live wisely and well; more than religion, but not greater than religion, yet discerning the divinity in humanity; more than mere landmarks, though these have their defining, historical, and traditional place; more even than brotherhood, for as in the Pythagorean days, it is educational and intellectual as well as social and fraternal; more than constructive and practical philanthropy, though love crowns all; yet it is all of these together with that something more of which language is inadequate to express the subtle mystery, even to those few choice spirits who seek to penetrate to the heart of its often unconscious power, and the span of life too brief to enable those who endeavor to attain the ideal perfection of that living organism, whose countersign is manhood~ whose inspiration is the God-head—that Masonic edifice of which love and truth form base and spire—Nisi Dominus frustra (see Builder, volume viii, page 55).
The Latin phrase Nisi Dominus frustra may be expressed in English as meaning Except the Masler be cheated. Brother Roscoe Pound has contributed to the Dictionary of Religion and Ethics (Macmillan Company, 1921), the following definition of our Institution:
The art or mystery of the Freemasons or Free and Accepted Masons, a universal religious, moral, charitable and benevolent fraternal organization It is religious in requiring belief in God as a prerequisite of initiation and insisting on such belief as one of its unalterable fundamental points. Beyond this and belief in immortality it has no religious dogmas but expects the brother to adhere to some religion and obligates him upon the sacred oath of the religion he professes For the rest it seeks to promote morals by ceremonies, symbols and lectures, inculcating life measured by reason and performance of duties toward God, one's country, one's neighbor and oneself. It relieves needy Brothers, cares for their dependents, educates orphans, and insists upon duties of charity and benevolence.
.At the laying of a cornerstone with Masonic ceremonies, an old friend, the late Colonel Edward hi. L. Ehlers, Grand Secretary of New York, gave an eloquent oration in which he used with fine effect a magnificent tribute to Freemasonry as our gifted and beloved Brother understood the Masonic Institution. As a definition it may be appropriately inserted here and should be studied with a similar statement found elsewhere (see Charity).
Fraternities of men have existed in some shape or form during every period of the world s history. Doubtless in the primitive ages it became apparent that mutual protection would afford the greatest security against the unbroken forces of nature and the evil nature of man and secure sympathy, support and protection, to those whose bond of union was made a common cause. Hence originated Masonry.
The origin of Masonry, like other historical transactions, lies buried in the gloom of obscurity. Its philosophy may be traced to the remotest ages of the world's history. Its symbols are older than the Temple of Solomon and antedate the Pentateuch of Moses. Its ceremonials were practiced in the ancient mysteries when Egypt stood as the first and the most enlightened power of the then known world. Its tenets were known by the nomadic tribes of the East and transmitted from father to son, generation after generation, so that even today the Bedouin of the desert recognizes the hail of the Craftsman.
The mission of Masonry is to curb intemperate passions and to reconcile conflicting interests; to extend to nations these principles of humanity and benevolence which should actuate individuals, to destroy the pride of conquest and the pomp of war; to annihilate focal prejudices and unreasonable partialities; to banish from the world every Source of enmity and hostility, and to introduce those Social dealings which are better r adulated to preserve peace and good order than penal laws or political regulations.
The advantages which mankind in genera! reap from this master Science are beyond calculation. Its blessings are confined to no country, but are diffused with the Institution throughout the world. Men of all languages, of all religions, of the remotest nations, and of every habit and opinion, are united in a bond of brotherly affection..
A Mason is at home in every country and with his friends in every clime. What Society other than our own could make the proud boast that we know no foreign land On the plane of Masonry we only know God and man We know no royal blood or peasant stock. Men of wealth and simple toil, philosophers and men of low degree. royal heirs and hard-handed peasants, meet hers upon a common ground as brothers and God is Father of them all.
Live on for ever, thou Genius of Masonry ! Bring light and gladness, toleration and rational liberty, to those who dwell in darkness and superstition! reach the millions yet unborn thy Faith, thy Hope, thy Charity!
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DEFORMITY
The Old Constitutions declare that the candidate for Freemasonry must be a "perfect youth, having no maim or defect in his body." The Masonic law of physical qualifications is derived from the Mosaic, which excluded from the priesthood a man having any blemishes or deformities. The regulation in Freemasonry constitutes one of the landmarks, and is illustrative of the symbolism of the Institution. The earliest of the Old Constitutions, that of the Halliwell or Regius Manuscript (lines 153 to 156), has this language on the subject:
To the Craft it were great shame
To make a halt man and a lame,
For an imperfect man of such blood
Should do the Craft but little good.
This question is discussed in Doctor Mackey's Jurisprudence of Freemasonry.
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DEGREES
The word degree, in its primitive meaning, signifies a step. The degrees of Freemasonry are, then, the steps by which the candidate ascends from a lower to a higher condition of knowledge. It is now the opinion of the best scholars, that the division of the Masonic system into Degrees was the work of the revivalists of the beginning of the eighteenth century; that before that period there was but one Degree, or rather one common platform of ritualism; and that the division into Masters, Fellows, and Apprentices was simply a division of ranks, there being but one initiation for all.
In 1717 the whole body of the Fraternity consisted only of Entered Apprentices, who were recognized by the thirty-nine Regulations, compiled in 1720, as among the law-givers of the Craft, no change in those Regulations being allowed unless first submitted "even to the youngest Apprentice."
In the Old Charges, collected by Anderson and approved in 1722, the Degree of Fellow Craft is introduced as being a necessary qualification for Grand Master, although the word degree is not used. "No brother can be a Grand Master unless he has been a Fellow Craft before his election." And in the Manner of constituting a New Lodge of the same date, the Master and Wardens are taken from "among the Fellow Crafts," which Derrnott explains by saying that "they were called Fellow Crafts because the Masons of old times never gave any man the title of Master Mason until he had first passed the chair." In the thirteenth of the Regulations of 1720, approved in 1721, the orders or Degrees of Master and Fellow Craft are recognized in the following words: "Apprentices must be admitted Masters and Fellow Crafts only in the Grand Lodge." Between that period and 1738, the system of Degrees had been perfected; for Anderson, who, in that year, published the second edition of the Book of Constitutions, changed the phraseology of the Old Charges to suit the altered condition of things, and said, "a Prentice, when of age and expert, may become an Entered Prentice or a Free-Mason of the lowest degree, and upon his due improvements a Fellow Craft and a Master-Mason" (see Old Charge Ill, Constitutions, 1738, page 145).
No such words are found in the Charges as printed in 1723; and if at that time the distinction of the three Degrees had been as well defined as in 1738, Anderson would not have failed to insert the same language in his first edition. That he did not, leads to the fair presumption that the ranks of Fellow Craft and Master were not then absolutely recognized as distinctive degrees. The earliest ritual extant, which is contained in the Grand Mystery, published in 1725, makes no reference to any Degrees, but gives only what we may suppose was the common understanding of the initiation in use about that time.
The division of the Masonic system into three Degrees must have grown up between 1717 and 1730, but in 80 gradual and imperceptible a manner that we are unable to fix the precise date of the introduction of each Degree. In 1717 there was evidently but one Degree, or rather one form of initiation, and one catechism. Perhaps about 1721 the three Degrees were introduced, but the second and third were probably not perfected for many years. Even as late as 1735 the Entered Apprentice's Degree contained the most prominent form of initiation, and he who was an Apprentice was, for all practical purposes, a Freemason. It was not until repeated improvements, by the adoption of new ceremonies and new regulations, that the Degree of Master Mason took the place which it now occupies; having been confined at first to those who had passed the chair.
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DEGREES, ANCIENT CRAFT
See Ancient Craft Masonry
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DEGREES, ANDROGYNOUS
Degrees that are conferred on females as well as males (see Androgynous Degrees).
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DEGREES, APOCALYPTIC
See Apocalyptic Degrees
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DEGREES, HIGH
See High Degrees
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DEGREES, HONORARY
See Honorary Degrees
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DEGREES, INEFFABLE
See Ineffable Degrees
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DEGREES OF CHIVALRY
The religious and military orders of knighthood which existed in the Middle Ages, such as the Knights Templar and Knights of Malta, which were incorporated into the Masonic system and conferred as Masonic degrees, have been called Degrees of Chivalry. They are Christian in character, and seek to perpetuate in a symbolic form the idea on which the original Orders were founded. The Companion of the Red Cross, although conferred, in the United States of America, in a Commandery of Knights Templar, and as preliminary to that Degree, is not properly a Degree of chivalry.
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DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE
Fessler was desirous of abolishing all the advanced Degrees, but being unable to obtain the consent of the Royal York Grand Lodge, he composed out of them a new system of five Degrees which he called Degrees of Knowledge, the German being the words Erkenntnis-Stufen, to each of which was annexed a form of initiation. "The Degrees of Knowledge," says Findel (History of Freemasonry, page 496), "consisted of a regular detailed course of instruction in each system of the Lodges, whether extinct or in full activity, and were to end with at complete critical remodelling of the history of Freemasonry, and of the Fraternity of Freemasons from the most ancient period down to our own day" (see Fessler, Rite of).
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DEGREES, PHILOSOPHICAL
See Philosophic Degrees
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DEGREES, SYMBOLIC
See Symbolic Degrees
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DIASTOLE
The counterpart of Tuathal. Mackenzie, in the Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia, says: Deiseil is used by the Druids as a term for the circumambulation of the sacred cairns. Derived from dead south, and tub a course that is, in a southward direction following the course of the sun. The opposite is Tuathal, in a northward direction, as is observed at the present day in approaching the grave with a corpse.
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DEISM
In an abstract sense, Deism, or Theism, is the belief in God, but the word is generally used to designate those who, believing in God, reject a belief in the Scriptures as a revelation. The sect of Deists which, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, enrolled among its followers many great intellects, such as Toland, Collins, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Fume, Gibbon, and Voltaire—is said by Findel (History of Freemasonry, page 126) to have "necessarily exercised an important influence on the Fraternity of Masons"; and, he adds, that "we cannot doubt that it contributed essentially to its final transformation from an Operative to a universal Speculative Society." The refutation of this remarkable assertion is best found in the first of the Charges adopted at the revival in 1717, and which was published in the Constitutions of 1793. A Mason is obliged, by his tenure, obey the moral law; and if he rightly understands the art, he will never be a stupid atheist nor an irreligious libertine," where the words irreligious libertine refer to the Freethinkers or Deists of that period. It is evident, then, that the Deists could have had no influence at that time in molding the Masonic organization.
There is still better evidence to be found in the old records of Freemasonry during several preceding centuries, when the Operative was its dominant character, and when the dogmas of Christianity were fully recognized, which must necessarily have been the case, since Freemasonry during that period was under the patronage of the Church. There is, in fact, no evidence to sustain Findel's theory, that in the transition stage from the Operative to the Speculative, when such men as the deeply religious Ashmole were among its members, the Deists could have infused any If their principles into its organization or exercised any influence in changing its character.
Freemasonry, at that time sectarian, demanded almost a Christian belief—at all events, a Christian allegiance—from its disciples. It is now more tolerant, and Deism presents no disqualification for initiation. An atheist would be rejected, but none would now be refused admission on religious grounds who subscribed to the dogmas of a belief in God and a resurrection to eternal life.
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DEITY
See Great Architect of the Universe
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DeKALB, BARON
See Kalb Johann
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DELALANDE, CHARLES FLORENT JACQUES
A French litterateur of the last century, who was the author of many didactic and poetic articles on freemasonry inserted in the Mirror de la Vérité, the Annales Maçonniques, and other collections. He was also the author of the Defense et Apologia de la Franche-Maconnerie, ou Refutation des accusations dirigées contre elle à différentes Epoques et par divers Auteurs, meaning the Defense and Apology of Freemasonry, or Refutation of the Accusations directed against Her at several periods and by various Writers, a prize essay before a Lodge in Leghorn, published in 1814. He founded the archives of the Lodge of the Philosophic Rite at Douay, France.
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DELALANDE, JOSEPH JEROME
One of the most distinguished French astronomers of the eighteenth century. His name was Joseph Jérome Lefrançais but when quite a young man he was received at the Court of King Frederic II he called himself Lefrançais de la Lande, which has often been written as a surname Delalande and Lalande, the latter being used by his biographers Brother Louis Amiable. Delalande was born at Bourg-en-Bresse, France, July 11, 1732, and died at Paris, April 4, 1807. He founded a Lodge of the Sciences for uniting Freemasons especially devoted to scientific study and research. At the suggestion of Helvetius this scope was enlarged to those occupied with literature, science and the fine arts. The Lodge bore the name of the Nine Sisters, referring to the Muses, the Greek goddesses presiding over the arts and sciences. Of this Lodge Benjamin Franklin became Worshipful Masters Delalande was one of the founders of the Grand Orient of France and published. in 17~ n able memoir upon the History of Freemasonry, which was subsequently incorporated in the twentieth volume of the Encyclopedie Méthodique.
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DELAUNAY, FRANÇOIS H. STANISLAUS
A French litterateur and historian, and author of many works on Freemasonry, the principal of which is the Tuileur des trente-trois degrés de l'Ecossisme du Rite Ancien et Accepts meaning Handbook of the Thirty-three Degrees of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. This is a work of great erudition, and of curious research in reference to the etymology of the words of the Rite. These etymologies, however, are not always correct; and, indeed, some of them are quite absurd, betraying a want of the proper appreciation of the construction of Hebrew, from which language all of the words are derived.
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DELAWARE
There is some uncertainty about the first Lodge established in Delaware. The Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1764 is said to have issued a warrant to Union Lodge, No. 191, at Middletown, for General Marjoribank's Regiment. Failing this, Lodge No. 5, at Cantwell's Bridge, warranted on June 4, 1765, by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, was the pioneer Lodge of the State. The Grand Lodge of Delaware was established under rather unusual circumstances. Nine Brethren. said to re represent Lodge No. 31, Grand Lodge of Maryland and Nos. 33, 96, and 14, Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania resolved to form a Grand Lodge. On June 7, 1806. Grand Officers were appointed and, without any previous installation, opened the Grand Lodge. The Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania refused to recognize it as five Lodges were deemed necessary to form a Grand Lodge and three of the Lodges taking part were indebted to the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania for fees and dues. Not until 1816, when Lodge No. 5, at Cantwell's Bridge, joined it by permission of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, and made up the number of five constituent Lodges, was the new Grand Lodge fully recognized.
The first Chapter in the State was opened on January 24, 1806, by a Convention at which were present Charles Mareighny of New York; John Sellers, Wilmington; George Monroe, Edinburgh, James Jefferis, Belfast; Evan Thomas, Santa Cruz; and Edwin Roche, Virginia. In 1831, this Chapter amalgamated with Hiram, No. 6, as Washington and Lafayette Chapter, No. 1. On June 24, 1817, delegates from the seven Chapters in Delaware, namely Hope, No. 4; Union, No. 7; Temple, No. 3; Washington, No. 1; Hiram, No. 6; Washington, No. 5, and one at Newcastle, held a Convention at Wilmington and established a Grand Holy Royal Arch Chapter. About the year 1856, however, it ceased to meet and, except for an irregular Convocation held in 1859, nothing more was heard of a Grand Chapter of Delaware until January, 1868. A meeting of Royal Arch Masons was then held which finally- proceeded to eject Grand Officers and adopt a Constitution. A Charter was issued by the General Grand High Priest, and at a meeting on January 20, 1869, the Grand Chapter of Delaware was organized and the Officers installed. Delaware is one of the States which make the Order of High Priesthood an essential qualification to the installation of the High Priest elect.
Gunning Bedford Council, No. 1, at Wilmington, was granted a Dispensation on February 10, 1917, and a Charter on September 30, 1918. It has been said that Jeremy L. Cross, while on a lecture tour, conferred the Degrees on some of the Brethren in Wilmington and Newcastle, but of this there is no evidence.
A Commandery was organized in Delaware by the Grand Encampment of the United States at Wilmington. namely, Saint Johns? No. 1, which was chartered on September 18 1868. Delaware Lodge of Perfection, chartered on September 2, 1910; Wilmington Council of Princes of Jerusalem, chartered on September 91, 1911; Wilmington Chapter of Rose Croix. chartered on September 21, 1911, and Delaware Consistory, chartered on October 3, 1912 are all at Wilmington, under the Supreme Council, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Northern Masonic Jurisdiction.
DELEGATES
Past Masters or others, sent, by a Lodge to represent it in the Grand Lodge, in place of the Master and Wardens, if these are absent. have been in some of the American Jurisdictions called delegates. The word is a modern one, and without good authority. Those who represent a Lodge in the Grand Lodge, whether the Master and Wardens or their proxies, are properly representatives.
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DELIBERATION-, COUNCIL OF
See Grand Consistory
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DELTA
A triangle. The name of a piece of furniture in a Commandery of Nights Templar, which, being of a triangular form, derives its name from the Greek letter ~. delta. It is also the title given, in the French and Scottish Rites, to the luminous triangle which encloses the Ineffable Name (see
Triangle).
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DEMETER
The Greek name of Ceres, which see
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DEBIT
A Freemason is said to DEBIT from his Lodge when he withdraws his membership; and a DEBIT is a document granted by the Lodge which certifies that, that decision has been accepted by the Lodge, and that the demitting Brother is clear of the books and in good standing as a Freemason. To demit, which is the act of the member, is, then to resign; and to grant a demit, which is the act, of the Lodge, is to grant a certificate that the resignation has been accepted. lt. is derived from the French reflective verb se démettre, which. according to the dictionary of the Academy, means to withdraw' from an office, to resign an employment. Thus it gives as an example. Il s`est démis de la charge en faveur d`un tel. meaning that he resigned (demitted) his office in favor of such a one.
The application for a demit is a matter of form, and there is no power in the Lodge to refuse it, if the applicant. has paid all his dues and is free of all charges.. It is true that a regulation of 1722 says that no number of Brethren shall withdraw or separate themselves from the Lodge in which the were made, without, a dispensation; vet it is not plane how the la v can be enforced, for Freemasonry being a voluntary association, there is no power in any Lodge to insist on any Brother continuing a connection with it which he desires to sever (see, on this subject, Doctor Mackey's Jurisprudence of Freemasonry).
The usual object in applying for a DEBIT is to enable the Brother to join some other Lodge, into which he cannot be admitted without some evidence that he was in good standing in his former Lodge. This is in accordance with an old law found in the Regulations of 1663 in the following; words: "No person hereafter who shall be accepted a Freemason, shall be admitted into any Lodge or Assembly until he has brought a certificate of the time and place of his acceptation from the Lodee that accepted him unto the Master of that limit or division where such Lodge is kept."
Brother Hunt, Grand Secretary of Iowa, wrote to us (March 21, 1923) as follows: The word dimit I believe has never been used in England. and the word DEBIT is seldom used there the words withdrawal or resignation being the most common ones used. In the Regulations of 1723 the only restriction on the right of a Brother to withdraw is found in Section 8 of the General Regulations which provides that they should not withdraw in numbers unless the Lodge becomes too numerous etc. This restriction was later withdrawn, and at the present time the rule is that Freemasonry being quite voluntary a member of a Lodge may server his connection with it any moment he pleases even though his dues are unpaid or he is under charges.
When a Brother leaves a Lodge he is entitled to a certificate stating the circumstances under which he so left. This is provided by Section 213 of the Grand Lodge Constitution. It has been held that if a Brother leaves under a cloud whether this cloud be unpaid dues or charges that the Lodge issuing the certificate should state the circumstances under which he left but Section 212 provides that one who has been excluded or voluntarily withdraws from a Lodge without having complied with its By-laws or the General Regulations of the Craft shall not he eligible to Join any other Lodge until that Lodge shall be made acquainted with his former neglect. If any Lodge receives a petition and accepts him and fails to make due inquiry as to the conditions under which the Brother left his former Lodge they are liable to his former Lodge for any arrearages which he may have owed them at the time of his withdrawal or exclusion.
This practice seems rather strange to us in this country but I believe that in the early days the duty- of a Freemason to become affiliated with some Lodge was not emphasized as it was later or as it is at the present time. A Brother had a right to resign membership, or as it was usually called DEBIT from his Lodge at any time he pleased, and his letter of resignation had much the same effect as a request for a DEBIT does at the present time except that the moment this letter was filed with the Secretary the act became irrevocable and if he repented and desired to withdraw the letter. he could not do so but must petition for membership, the same as another non-affiliate.
In the Grand Lodge of England there is the case of a Brother who wrote to his local Lodge Secretary resigning membership in the Lodge The next day he changed his mind and asked to be allowed to withdraw the resignation. Both letters were received by the Secretary before the next meeting of the Lodge but the letter of resignation was held to be final. The Grand Lodge held that there was no other way in which the fact of the resignation could be undone except as a joining member. This decision also seems strange to us , because we hold that a request for a DEBIT is inoperative until it has been read to the Lode, and there would be nothing to prevent a secretary from returning a request for a dimit to a Brother requesting it provided such request was made before it had been read to the Lodge.
However it all goes to show that Masonically the term DEBIT is the same as a resignation of membership. The verb DEBIT denotes the act of the Brother and not the act of the Lodge the noun DEBIT is a Certificate issued by the Lodge, certifying that the brother's membership has terminated. at his own request. Therefore, there is practically no difference between a DEBIT and a resignation of membership (see dignity).
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DENDERAH
A ruined town of Upper Egypt, of great interest in consequence of its astronomical allusions on the ceiling of the main portico supported on twenty-four columns which is covered with figures and hieroglyphies. This is in the principal temple, which is 220 by 50 feet. The numerous mythological figures are arranged in zodiacal fashion. Recent archeological travelers doubt the reference to astronomy, in Consequence of the absence of the Crab. The temple dates from the period of Cleopatra and the earlier Roman emperors and is one of the finest and best preserved structures or the kind in Egypt. The chief deity was Athor, the goddess of night, corresponding with the Greek Aphrodite (see Zodiac).
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DENMARK
The first Masonic Lodge in Denmark was opened in Copenhagen, by Baron G. O. Munnich. on the 11th of November, 1743, umber a Charter, as he climbed from the Lodge of the Three Globes in Berlin. In the next year a new Lodge named Zerubbabel was formed by three members separating from the former Lodge. Both of these Bodies, Saint Martins received as No. 204, on October 9, 1749 a Warrant from Lord Byron, Grand Master of England. granted a Warrant to the second Lodge as No. 197 on the English Register. The two Lodges united in 1767 under the name of Zerubbabel of the North Star and worked alternately in Danish and in German. When a purely Danish Lodge was instituted in 1778, Zerubbabel Lodge confined itself entirely to the use of the German language. In 1749 Lord Byron granted a Patent to Count Danneskiold Laurvig as Provincial Grand Master of Denmark and Norway. A Lodge had been established at Copenhagen, by the Grand Lodge of Scotland under the name of Le petit Nombre, meaning the little number. and in 1703 its Master was elevated by that body to the rank of a Provincial Grand Master. In 1792 Prince Charles became the sole head of the Danish Lodges, and the Grand Lodge of Denmark may be considered to have been then established. He died in 1836, and the Crown Prince, afterward Christian VIII, became the Protector of the Danish Lodges. and his son and Successor Frederick VII, became Grand Master of the Grand Master. It was decreed on January 6, 1850, bv the Grand Master that the Swedish Rite should he used thenceforward in all Lodges. The Crown in Denmark is well disposed to the Craft, the King being Grand Master (see Norway and Sweden).
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D'EON, CHEVALIER
Born October 5, 1728, at Tonnerre in Burgundy, and christened Charles Genevieve Louise Auguste André Timothée Déon De Beaumont. Led most singular career. After living nearly forty years an active life as a man the Chevalier voluntarily testified in an English Court that he had been masquerading during this entire period and that he was actually a woman. After his death this testimony was found to be untrue. The Chevalier was born of parents who stood high among the nobility. His baptismal certificate asserts that the above names were those given the child in regular and usual form. The family name was Deon but King Louis XV in 1757 addressed a communication to the Chevalier as D'Eon.
D'Elon studied law and literature in Paris at the College Mazarin. Admitted an advocate after securing the License in Canon and Civil Law. A brilliant student, he was made a Censor Royal of works on history and letters. Even at this early age he published a book on Historical Finance. D'Eon took up fencing and it was said only five could hold their own against him in all Europe. The French King honored D`Eon with a commission in a cavalry regiment about 175 when the Chevalier rode from Vienna to Paris with important dispatches to the King in thirty-six hours less time than it took the special Austrian couriers and this notwithstanding the misfortune to break his leg while on the road. His Physical endurance proved rugged and masculine. Louis XV, who sent Chevalier Douglas and his young secretary, D'Eon after his twenty-sixth year, to Russia as confidential envoys to protect Louis' interests there as a keen rivalry existed between France and England for the support of Russia. So ably did D'Eon serve that he was openly made Secretary to the Embassy and privately admitted to the inner circle of the Secret Service. This he gave up in 1760, when he left Russia. Probably he used his effeminate appearance in secret service work which enabled him to assume the disguise of a woman. Many stories were told of his experiences although the Chevalier's personal conduct was not Subject to reproach. He left Russia in 1760 to join his regiment in the Seven Years War. D'Eon was wounded in head and thigh at Ultrop and rendered distinguished Service. The Treaty of 1763 ended the Seven Years War and was largely negotiated by D' Eon who went to England. The French ambassador soon returned to France and D'Eon was first appointed Chargé d'Affaires and later Minister Plenipotentiary. When he returned to France England entrusted to him its official ratification to the Court of Versailles. King Louis XV gave him the Royal and Military order of Saint Louis. and his proper title became the Chevalier D'Eon. He was superseded in the Embassy by an enemy, Count de Guerchy. The Chevalier refused to turn over some secret papers said to include charges of corruption against the Ministers who had concluded the Treaty and plans for the invasion of England. D'Eon retained the papers, but the death of Louis XV, 1774, put an end to the invasion of England and the documents lost their value. During this period of intrigue the Chevalier never lost the confidence of Louis XV although from the time the difficulty commenced in 1763 the question was constantly propagated as to the true sex of D'Eon. A pamphlet in the interests of De Guerchy was the first to print scurrilous statements reflecting upon D'Eon. Eliot Hodgkin, Richmond, Surrey, possessed the original manuscripts of D'Eon's account of his current expenditures from day to day. Several items clearly appear indicating his acceptance into the Masonic Fraternity and his receiving the first Three Degrees. Although the question of his sex had already begun to be discussed, he was admitted to the French Lodge, No. 376, on the Roll of the Grand Lodge of England, known as La loge de l'Immortalité, formed June 16, and formally constituted September 8, in 1766, at the Crown and Anchor in the Strand, London. Probably Worshipful Master M. de Vignoles presided at D'Eon's initiation and the first entry showing disbursement of funds on Freemasonry is dated May 18, 1768. In January, 1769, an item appears covering four shillings seven pence paid at time of receiving the Third Degree. Although this Lodge did not register in the Grand Lodge Books any members after 1767 and therefore the Chevalier's name does not appear on the records of the Grand Lodge, Brother Henry Sadler located in the old archives of Grand Lodge a document which supplies authoritative evidence that Chevalier D'Eon served as Junior Warden of this Lodge between 1769 and 1770. The number of the Lodge, originally 376, was about this same time changed to 303, and the records of the Grand Lodge show it was erased from the books in 1775 due to "not having contributed," etc. D'Eon, an exile from France then resided in England and was fortunate to have a sincere friend in Earl Ferrers, in 1762 to 1763 Grand Master of the Moderns in England, who offered shelter to the Chevalier which he gratefully accepted as he was subject to annoyance due to the notoriety given the question of his sex and the danger of kidnaping by persons financially interested. Betting on the question of the Chevalier's sex came to such a stage that a scheme of Insurance on the sex of M. Le Chevalier, or Mlle. La Chevaliere, D'Eon, resulted in the policies being taken up to the amount of 120,000 pounds. It was a practice, in the endeavor to put a legal aspect on certain forms of gambling, for the speculators to issue a sort of Insurance Policy covering certain mooted questions. Until 1845 the English courts held wagers as contracts and the winner of a bet could enforce payment through a Court of Law. So much money became involved about D'Eon and 80 many lawsuits were imminent that it was decided to bring the case to trial. In 1777, therefore, one of the insurance brokers presented two witnesses, one a doctor named Le Goux, and the other a journalist, M. de Morande, who swore that of their own personal knowledge D'Eon was a woman. Had the English Court, presided over by Lord Mansfield, been familiar with the history of these two witnesses, it would no doubt have returned a different verdict. The verdict by the jury was that the unfortunate Chevalier was a woman and, surprisingly, just at this time D'Eon himself, who had been negotiating through Beaumarchais for the restoration of the secret papers, made an official declaration to the French Ministers that he actually was a woman. He had also been negotiating with France for a pension and Louis XVI, then King, agreed to increase the pension and permit the return to France of the Chevalier only on the condition that "she resume the garments of her sex" and never appear in any part of the kingdom except in garments befitting a female. D'Eon, for some reason no one has been able to explain satisfactorily, accepted the condition without argument and thenceforward became La Chevaliere D'Eon.
The two contending Grand Lodges in England at that time. known as the Ancient and the Moderns, made much of this issue. The Ancient claimed that here was an evidence of modern laxity which permitted the admittance into the Masonic Order of a person not fulfilling all the physical requirements of the Old Charges and the controversy subjected the Fraternity to no little criticism and satire. The Chevalier, after accepting the condition that he discard male attire, never again attempted to enter a Masonic Lodge although, during the period from 1769 to 1774 at which time he spent twelve to fifteen hours a day at his desk and produced scores of Lettres, Piecés Justificatives, Memoires pour seruir, Documents Authentiques, and a thirteen-volume book entitled Les Loisirs do Chevalier de Beaumont, he also wrote a rough draft of an essay attempting to compare the merits of the Society of Freemasons and the Society of Friends. This manuscript is included in the collection owned by J. Eliot Hodgkin, from which the following is quoted:
Freemasonry and Quakerism. What I say here about Masonry is not meant to win the Gold or Silver Medal, advertised in the London Courier Français, No........of ....page ....... , but only to win, in my heart, a prize graven on the Masonic Compass and Triangles each point of which, like the Trinity, rests on Truth Virtue, and Benevolence, common foundations of Equality and Justice between Brothers by birth and by Christianity, as between Brethren by Mason, enlightened by the Sun of Truth, inasmuch as this is the Truth held by the primitive Christians of Jerusalem and Antioch. But since the Greek, Latin, Gallican, and Anglican Churches have organized themselves into formidable bodies, they deride, individually and collectively, the sombre Society of good Quakers, who are good only at whining, sniveling, and having no poor among them while the Freemasons have established themselves in Worshipful Lodges, in order to laugh, drink, sing at their ease, and display benevolence towards their Brethren and Fellows dispersed over the Earth, without (infringing) the Laws of Moses or of the Paschal (Covenant). They spread sunshine, God's consolation, and true happiness m the heart of all human beings capable of appreciating simple Virtue. The happiness of man kind and the well-being of the Material World are to be found in Nature, Reason, Truth, Justice, and Simplicity, and not in huge books compiled by Philosophy and Divinity. All the State-craft of Machiavelli is only fit to drag man to . . . to the cells at Bedlam- or to lead him to Montfaucon, to Tyburn, or to the underground Pantheodemonium of the Lower Empire of Pluto. Lord Chancellor Bacon, who, of all England, was the Doctor most stuffed with Greek, Latin and Law, was right when he said "Honesty best Policy." These two words em body all that is good. I hold the religion of the Quakers very beautiful, because it is so simple.
August 6, 1777, D'Eon for the first time in London appeared dressed as a woman and exactly a week later he donned his uniform as Captain of Dragoons for convenience in traveling, the last time he appeared in London in the garb of a man. He went to France immediately, was presented to Marie Antoinette, and took up residence with his mother in Tonnerre. It is said that he retired for a time to the Convent of Les Filles de Ste Marie and actually resided at La Maison des demoiselles de Saint Cyr. However, he tendered his services to the French Fleet when the American Revolution broke out, which offer the French Government hastily declined. He returned to England in November, 1785, to settle come financial affairs and resided there until his death, never discarding his feminine garb. The French Revolution stopped his pension and it is said that he received a small pension in England from George III but he was in straitened circumstances and maintained himself by his skill in fencing, but was compelled to sell his jewels, then his library, and other possessions. He died May 21, 1810, in seclusion and penury. After his death an autopsy was made by a celebrated surgeon, Thomas Copeland, who gave a professional certificate stating without question that the deceased had been of the male sex. This fact was confirmed by Pére Elisée, a surgeon of renown who had belonged to the Fathers of Charity at Grenoble but left France when his confreres emigrated and at the death of the Chevalier attended the Duke of Queensberry. In later years Pére Elisée became King's Surgeon to Louis XVIII. The Earl of Yarborough, Sir Sidney Smith and a number of friends inspected the body, and the question as to the sex of the Chevalier D'Eon was finally settled. Several authors have discussed this remarkable personage, as Andrew Lang, Historical Mysteries, and the encyclopedias devote space to him; but the most satisfactory account for Freemasons is a paper by Brother W. J. Chetwode Crawley transactions, Quatuor Coronati Lodge, volume xvi, 1903, pages 229-59).
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DEPOSITE
The deposit of the Substitute Ark is celebrated in the Degree of Select Master, and is supposed to have taken place in the last year of the building of Solomon's Temple, or 1000 B.C. This is therefore adopted as the date in Cryptic Freemasonry. In the legendary history of Freemasonry as preserved in the Cryptic Degrees, two deposits are spoken of; the deposit of the Substitute Ark, and the deposits of the Word, both being referred to the same year and being different parts of one transaction. They have, therefore, sometimes been confounded. The deposit of the Ark was made by the three Grand Masters; that of the Word by Hiram Abif alone.
*
DEPOSITE, YEAR OF
See Anno Depositionu
*
DEPTH OF THE LODGE
This is said to be from the surface to the center, and is the expression of an idea connected with the symbolism of the form of the Lodge as indicating the universality of Freemasonry. The oldest definition was that the depth extended to the center of the earth, which, says Dr. Oliver, is the greatest extent that can be imagined (see Form of the Lodge).
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DEPUTATION
The authority granted by the Grand Master to a Brother to act as Provincial Grand Master was formerly called a deputation. Thus, in Anderson's Constitutions (second edition, 1738, page 191) it is said, "Lovel, Grand Master, granted a Deputation to Sir Edward Matthews to be Provincial Grand Master of Shropshire." It was also used in the sense in which Dispensation is now employed to denote the Grand Master's authority for opening a Lodge. In German Freemasonry, a deputation is a committee of one Lodge appointed to visit and confer with some other Lodge.
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DEPUTE GRAND MASTER
Depute is a Scotticism used in the Laws and Regulations of the Grand Lodge of Scotland to designate the officer known in England and America as Deputy Grand Master. The word comes from the Latin deputo, meaning to cut off or select.
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DEPUTY
In French Freemasonry, the officers who represent a Lodge in the Grand Orient are called its deputies. The word is also wed in another sense. When two Lodges are affiliated, that is, have adopted a compact of union, each appoints a deputy to represent it at the meetings of the other. He is also called garant d'amitie, meaning in French the pledge of friendship, and is entitled to a seat in the East.
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DEPUTY GRAND CHAPTER
In the Constitution adopted in January, 1798, by the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the Northern States of Americans which afterward became the General Grand Chapter, it was provided that Grand Bodies of the system should be established in the several States, which should be known as Deputy Grand Royal Arch Chapters. But in the succeeding year, on the adoption of a new Constitution, the title was changed to State Grand Chapters.
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DEPUTY GRAND MASTER
The assistant and, in his absence, the representative of the Grand Master. The office originated in the year 1720, when it was agreed that the Grand Master might appoint both his Grand Wardens and a Deputy Grand Master (see Constitutions, 1738, page 111).
The object evidently was to relieve a nobleman, who was Grand Master, from troublesome details of office. The Constitutions give a Deputy Grand Master no other prerogatives than those which he claims in the Grand Master's right. He presides over the Craft in the absence of the Grand Master, and, on the death of that officer, succeeds to his position until a new election. In England, and the custom has been followed in a few States of America, he is appointed by the Grand Master; but the general usage in the United States of America is to elect him.
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DEPUTY LODGE
In Germany, a Deputations-Loge, or Deputy Lodge, was formed by certain members of a Lodge who lived at a remote distance from it, and who met under the name and by the authority of the mother Lodge, through whom alone it was known to the Grand Lodge, or the other Lodges. Such Bodies are not known in England or America, and have not been so common in Germany as formerly.
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DEPUTY MASTER
In England, when a Prince of the Blood Royal is Master of a Private Lodge, his functions are performed by an officer appointed by him, and called a Deputy Master, who exercises all the prerogatives and enjoys all the privileges of a regular Master. In Germany, the Master of every Lodge is assisted by a Deputy Master, who is either appointed by the Master, or elected by the members, and who exercises the powers of the Master in the absence of that officer.
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DERMOTT, LAURENCE
He was at first the Grand Secretary, and afterward the Deputy Grand Master, of that body of Freemasons who in 1751 formed the Grand Lodge of the Ancient, which see, stigmatizing the regular Freemasons as Moderns. In 1756, Dermott published the Book of Constitutions of his Grand Lodge, under the title of Ahiman Rezon; or a help to ad that are or would be Free and Accepted Masons, containing the quintessence of ad that has been published on the subject of Freemasonry. This work passed through several editions, the last of which was edited, in 1813, by Thomas Harper, the Deputy Grand Master of the Ancient Masons, under the title of The Constitutions of Freemasonry or Ahiman Rezon.
Dermott was undoubtedly the moving and sustaining spirit of the great conflict which, from the middle of the eighteenth to the beginning of the nineteenth century, divided the Freemasons of England; and his reputation has not been spared by the adherents of the constitutional Grand Lodge. Lawrie (History of Freemasonry, page 117) says of him: "The unfairness with which he has stated the proceedings of the moderns, the bitterness with which he treats them, and the quackery and vainglory with which he displays his own pretensions to superior knowledge, deserve to be reprobated by every class of Masons who are anxious for the purity of their Order and the preservation of that charity and mildness which ought to characterize all their proceedings."
There is perhaps much truth in this estimate of Dermott's character. As a polemic, he was sarcastic, bitter, uncompromising, and not altogether sincere or veracious. But in intellectual attainments he was inferior to none of his adversaries, and in a philosophical appreciation of the character of the Masonic Institution he was in advance of the spirit of his age. It has often been asserted that he invented the Royal Arch Degree by dismembering the Third Degree, but that this is entirely unfounded is proved by the fact that he was Exalted to the Royal Arch Degree in 1746, while the Degree was being conferred in London before 1744 (see Royal Arch Degree). Dermott was born in Ireland in 1720, initiated in 1740, installed Worshipful Master of Lodge No. 26 at Dublin in 1746, was Grand Secretary of the Ancient from 1752 to 1771 at London, the Deputy Grand Master from that year until 1771, then once more Deputy from 1782 to 1787, dying in 1791 An excellent, if brief, biography of his Masonic career has been written by Brother W. M. Bywater and was privately printed in 1884 at London under the title of Notes on Law: Dermott G. S. and His Work. Another essay, equally delightful, on Laurence Dermott, is by Brother Richard J. Reece, Secretary of the Grand Masters Lodge, No. 1, of England.
Brother Arthur Heiron's pamphlet, the Craft in the Eighteenth Century, says that "Dermott was musically inclined, and very fond of singing at the meetings of his Grand Lodge but that he was not always popular amongst the Ancient is proved by the fact that in 1752 four of their members accused him of having 'actually sung and lectured the Brethren out of their senses,' but in 1753 the W. M. in the chair at an Emergency held at the King and Queen, Cable Street, Rosemary Lane, thanked him for his last new song and 'hoped that the applause of his Brethren would induce Brother Dermott, G. S., to compose another against the next St. John's Day."'
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DERWENTWATER
Charles Radcliffe, titular Earl of Derwentwater, which title he assumed on the death of the unmarried son of his brother, James Radcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater, who was executed for rebellion in 1716, in London, was the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of France, to which office he was elected on the organization of the Grand Lodge in 1725. Charles Radcliffe was arrested with his brother, Lord Derwentwater, in 1715, for having taken part in the rebellion of that year to restore the house of Stuart to the throne. Both were convicted of treason, and the Earl suffered death, but his brother Charles made his escape to France, and thence to Rome, where he received a trifling pension from the Pretender.
After a residence at Rome of some few years, he went to Paris, where, with the Chevalier Maskelyne, Heguetty, and some other Englishmen, he established a Lodge in the Rue des Boucheries, which was followed by the organization of several others, and Radcliffe who had taken the title of Earl of Derwentwater on the death of his youthful nephew, the son of the last Earl, was elected Grand Master. Leaving France for a time, in 1736 he was succeeded in the Grand Mastership by Lord Harnouester.
So far we follow Brother Mackey but Brother Hawkins adds the substance of this paragraph: Such is the statement usually made, but R. F. Gould, in his Concise History of Freemasonry, suggests that Harnouester is a corruption of Darwentwater and that the two persons are identical, the Earl of Derwentmater being really elected Grand Master in 1736.
Radcliffe made many visits to England after that time in unsuccessful pursuit of a pardon. Finally, on the attempt of the young Pretender to excite a rebellion in 1745, he sailed from France to join him, and the vessel in which he had embarked having been captured by an English cruiser, he was carried to London and beheaded on December 8, 1746.
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DESAGULIERS, JOHN THEOPHILUS
Of all those who were engaged in the revival of Freemasonry in the beginning of the eighteenth century, none performed a more important part than he to whom may be well applied the epithet of the Father of Modern speculative Freemasonry, and to whom, perhaps, more than any other person, is the present Grand Lodge of England indebted for its existence. A sketch of his life, drawn from the scanty materials to be found in Masonic records, and in the brief notices of a few of his contemporaries, cannot fail to be interesting to the student of Masonic history.
The Rev. John Theophilus Desaguliers, LL.D., F.R.S., was born on March 12, 1683, at Rochelle, in France. He was the son of a French Protestant clergyman; and, his father having removed to England as a refugee on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he was educated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took lessons of the celebrated Keill in experimental philosophy. In 1719 he received the Degree of Master of Arts, and in the same year succeeded Doctor Keill as a lecturer on experimental philosophy at Hert Hall (now Hertford College). In the year 1713 he removed to Westminster, where he continued his course of lectures, being the first one, it is said, who ever lectured upon physical science in the metropolis. At this time he attracted the notice and secured the friendship of Sir Isaac Newton. His reputation as a philosopher obtained for him a Fellowship in the Royal Society. He was also about this time admitted to clerical orders, and appointed by the Duke of Chandos his Chaplain, who also presented him to the living of Whitchurch. In 1718 he received from the University of Oxford the degree of Doctor of Civil Law, and was presented by the Earl of Sunderland to a living in Norfolk, which he afterward exchanged for one in Essex. He maintained, however, his residence in London, where he continued to deliver his lectures until his death in 1744.
His contributions to science consist of a Treatise on the Construction of Chimneys translated from the French, and published in 1716; A System of Experimental Philosophy, of which a second edition was issued in 1719; .4 Course of Experimental Philosophy, in two volumes, published in 1734; and in 1735 he edited an edition of Gregory's Elements of Catoptrics and Dioptrics. He also translated from the Latin Gravesandes Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy.
In the clerical profession he seems not to have been an ardent worker, and his theological labors were confined to the publication of a single sermon unrepentance. He was in fact more distinguished as a scientist than as a clergyman, and Priestly calls him "an indefatigable experimental philosopher."
It is, however, as a Freemason that Doctor Desaguliers will most attract our attention. But nothing is known as to his connection with Freemasonry until 1719, when he was elevated to the throne of the Grand Lodge, succeeding George Payne, and being thus the third Grand Master after the revival. He paid much attention to the interests of the Fraternity, and so elevated the character of the Order, that the records of the Grand Lodge show that during his administration several of the older Brethren who had hitherto neglected the Craft resumed their visits to the Lodges, and many noblemen were initiated into the Institution.
Doctor Desaguliers was peculiarly zealous in the investigation and collection of the old records of the society, and to him we are principally indebted for the preservation of the Charges of a Freemason and the preparation of the General Regulations, which are found in the first edition of the Constitutions; which, although attributed to Doctor Anderson, were undoubtedly compiled under the supervision of Desaguliers. Anderson, we suppose, did the work, while Desaguliers furnished much of the material and the thought. One of the first controversial works in favor of Freemasonry, namely, A Detection of Dr. Plots' Account of the Freemasons, was also attributed to his pen; but he is said to have repudiated the credit of its authorship, of which indeed the paper furnishes no internal evidence.
In 1721 he delivered before the Grand Lodge what the records call "an eloquent oration about Masons and Masonry." It does not appear that it was ever published, at least no copy of it is extant, although Kloss puts the title at the head of his Catalogue of Masonic Orations. It is indeed, the first Masonic address of which we have any notice, and would be highly interesting, because it would give us, in all probability, as Kloss remarks, the views of the Freemasons of that day in reference to the design of the Institution.
After his retirement from the office of Grand Master, in 1720, Desaguliers was three times appointed Deputy Grand Master: in 1723, by the Duke of Wharton; in June of the same year, by the Earl of Dalkeith; in 1725, by Lord Paisley; and during this period of service he did many things for the benefit of the Craft; among others, initiating that scheme of charity which was subsequently developed in what is now known in the Grand Lodge of England as the Fund of Benevolence.
After this, Doctor Desaguliers passed over to the Continent, and resided for a few years in Holland. In 1731 he was at The Hague, and presided as Worshipful Master of a Lodge organized under a special Dispensation for the purpose of initiating and passing the Duke of Lorraine, who was subsequently Grand Duke of Tuscany, and then Emperor of Austria as well as of Germany. The Duke was, during the same year, made a Master Mason in England.
On his return to England, Desaguliers was considered, from his position in Freemasonry, as the most fitting person to confer the Degrees on the Prince of Wales, who was accordingly entered, passed, and raised in an Occasional Lodge, held on two occasions at Kew, over which Doctor Desaguliers presided as Master.
Doctor Desaguliers was very attentive to all his Masonic duties, and punctual in his attendance on the Communications of the Grand Lodge. His last recorded appearance by name is on the 5th of February, 1742, but a few years before his death.
Of Desaguliers' Masonic and personal character, Doctor Oliver gives, from tradition, the following description:
There were many traits in his character that redound to his immortal praise. He was a grave man in private life, almost approaching to austerity; but he could relax in the private recesses of a Tyled Lodge, and in company with brothers and fellows where the ties of social intercourse are not particularly stringent. He considered the proceedings of the Lodge as strictly confidential; and being persuaded that his brothers by initiation actually occupied the same position as brothers by blood, he was undisguisedly free and familiar in the mutual interchange of Unrestrained courtesy. In the Lodge he was jocose and free-hearted, sang his song, and had no objection to his share of the bottle, although one of the most learned and distinguished men of his day (see Revelations of a Square, page 10).
In 1713, Desaguliers had married a daughter of William Pudsey, Esq., by whom he had two sons Alexander, who was 3 clergyman, and Thomas, who went into the army, and became a colonel of artillery and an equerry to George III.
The latter days of Doctor Desaguliers are said to have been clouded with sorrow and poverty. De Feller, in the Biographic Universelle, says that he became insane, dressing sometimes as a harlequin, and sometimes as a clown, and that in one of these fits of insanity he died. Cawthorn, in a poem entitled The Vanity of Human Enjoyments, intimates, in the following lines, that Desaguliers was in very necessitous circumstances at the time of his death:
How poor, neglected Desaguliers fell!
How he who taught two gracious kings to view
All Boyle ennobled and all Bacon knew,
Died in a cell. without a friend to save
Without a guinea, and without a grave.
But the accounts of the French biographer and the English poet are most probably both apocryphal, or, at least, much exaggerated; for Nichols, who knew him personally, and has given a fine portrait of him in the ninth volume of his Literary Anecdotes, says that he died on February 29, 1744, at the Bedford Coffee House, and was buried in the Savoy.
To few Freemasons of the present day, except to those who have made Freemasonry a subject of especial study, is the name of Desaguliers very familiar.
But it is well they should know that to him, perhaps, more than to any other man, are we indebted for the present existence of Freemasonry as a living institution, for it was his learning and social position that gave a standing to the Institution, which brought to its support noblemen and men of influence, so that the insignificant assemblage of four London Lodges at the Apple-Tree Tavern has expanded into an association which now shelters the entire civilized world. And the moving spirit of all this was John Theophilus Desaguliers.
The sounds in the French name Desaguliers as pronounced by Brother McClenachan will be found in the list of words printed at the end of the second volume of this work. A few comments may be made here upon the matter. All that can well be done is to indicate accepted custom. Doctor E. B. de Sauzé, the leading American authority on modern languages, prefers the following from a French point of view: De, as in desecrate; sa, as za, the short a as in lateral; gu, as gu, the French or German u (the sound best imitated by shaping the lips as if to whistle and then uttering the u); li, as in lid or lit, and ers, as the French é, shorter than the first e in desecrate. The reader will note that the final letters rs are not pronounced. Another and a fairly common pronunciation of the name among English-speaking Brethren is heard thus: Des, as in days or pays; ag, as in lag or tags u, as in mute or lute; li, as in lid or lit, and ers, as in pears or bears. A French naturalist of the same name is listed with the indicated pronunciation in Spiers' and Surenne's Dictionary (page 175) and as nearly as we can reproduce the sounds by English words may be illustrated thus: De, as in pay and way; sa, as 20 in zone; gu, as in gulf or gum, the French or German u sound being understood; li, as in lit or listen, and ers, as the a in cat or mat. Practically there is no tonic accent in French beyond a slight stress on the final syllable pronounced.
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DESERT
The outer court of a tent in the Order of Ishmael, or of Esau and Reconciliation.
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DES ETANGS, NICHOLAS CHARLES
A Masonic reformer, who was born at Allichamps, in France, on the 7th of September, 1766, and died at Paris on the 6th of May, 1847. He was initiated, in 1797, into Freemasonry in the Lodge l'Heureuse Rencontre, meaning in French of the Happy Meeting. He subsequently removed to Paris, where, in 1822, he became the Master of the Lodge of Trinosophs, which position he held for nine years. Thinking that the ceremonies of the Masonic system in France did not respond to the dignity of the Institution, but were gradually being diverted from its original design, he determined to commence a reform in the recognized dogmas, legends, and symbols, which he proposed to present in new forms more in accord with the manners of the present age.
There was, therefore, very little of conservation in the system of Des Etangs. It was, however, adopted for a time by many of the Parisian Lodges, and Des Etangs was loaded with honors. His Rite embraced five Degrees, viz., 1, 2, 3, the Symbolic Degrees; 4, the Rose Croix Rectified; 5, the Grand Elect Knight Kadosh. He gave to his system the title of Freemasonry Restored to Its True Principles, and fully developed it in his work entitled veritable Lien; des Peuples, meaning True Bond of the Peoples, which was first published in 1823. Des Etangs also published in 1825 a very able reply to the calumnies of the Abbé Barruel, under the title of La Franc-Maçonnerie justifiée de toutes les calomnies répandues contre elle, meaning Freemasonry justified against all the falsehoods spread against her. In the system of Des Etangs, the Builder of the Temple is supposed to symbolize the Good Genius of Humanity destroyed by Ignorance, Falsehood, and Ambition; and hence the Third Degree is supposed to typify the battle between Liberty and Despotism in the same spirit, the justness of destroying impious kings is considered the true dogma of the Rose Croix. In fact, the tumults of the French Revolution, in which Des Etangs took no inconsiderable share, had infected his spirit with a political temperament, which unfortunately appears too prominently in many portions of his Masonic system. Notwithstanding that he incorporated two of the high Degrees into his Rite, Des Etangs considered the three Symbolic Degrees as the only legitimate Freemasonry, and says that all other Degrees have been instituted by various associations and among different peoples on occasions when it was desired to revenge a death, to re-establish a prince, or to give success to a sect.
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DESIGN OF FREEMASONRY
The purpose of Freemasonry is neither charity nor almsgiving, nor the cultivation of the social sentiment; for both of these are merely incidental to its organization; but it is the search after truth, and that truth is the unity of God and the immortality of the soul. The various Degrees or grades of initiation represent the various stages through which the human mind passes, and the many difficulties which men, individually or collectively, must encounter in their progress from ignorance to the acquisition of this truth.
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DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLE
The Temple of King Solomon was destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Chaldees, during the reign of Zedekiah, 3416 A.M., 588 B.C. and just four hundred and sixteen years after its dedication. Although the city was destroyed and the Temple burnt, the Masonic legends state that the deep foundations of the latter were not affected. Nebuchadnezzar caused the city of Jerusalem to be leveled to the ground, the royal palace to be burned, the Temple to be pillaged as well as destroyed, and the inhabitants to be carried captive to Babylon. These events are symbolically detailed in the Royal Arch, and, in allusion to them, the passage of the Book of Chronicles which records them is appropriately considered during the ceremonies of this part of the Degree.
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DETACHED DEGREES
Side or honorary Degrees outside of the regular succession of Degrees of a Rite, and which, being conferred without the authority of a supreme controlling Body, are said to be to the side of or detached from the regular regime or customary work. The word detached is peculiar to the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. Thus, in the Circular of the Southern Supreme Council, October 10, 1802, is the following: "Besides those degrees which are in regular succession, most of the Inspectors are in possession of a number of detached degrees, given in different parts of the world, and which they generally communicate, free of expense, to those brethren who are high enough to understand them."
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DEUCHAR CHARTERS
Warrants, some of which are still in existence in Scotland, and which are used to authorize the working of the Knights Templar Degree by certain Encampments in that country. They were designated Deuchar Charters, on account Alexander Deuchar, an engraver and heraldic writer, having been the chief promoter of the Grand Conclave and its first Grand Master. To his exertions, also, the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Scotland may be said to have owed its origin.
He appears to have become acquainted with Knight Templarism early in the nineteenth century through Brethren who had been dubbed under a Warrant emanating from Dublin, which was held by Fratres serving in the Shropshire Militia. This corps was quartered in Edinburgh in 1798; and in all probability was through the instrumentality of its members that the first Grand Assembly of Knights Templar was first set up in Edinburgh. Subsequently, this gave place to the Grand Assembly of High Knights Templar in Edinburgh, working under a Charter, No. 31, of the Early Grand Encampment of Ireland, of which in 1807 Deuchar was Grand Master. The Deuchar Charters authorized Encampments to install "Knights Templar and Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem" one condition on which these Warrants were held being "that no communion or intercourse shall be maintained with any Chapter or Encampment, or body assuming that name, holding meetings of Knights Templar under a Master Mason's Charter." In 1837 the most of these Warrants were forfeited, and the Encampments erased from the roll of the Grand Conclave, on account of not making the required returns.
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DEUS MEUMQUE JUS
Latin, meaning God and my right. The motto of the Thirty-third Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, and hence adopted as that also of the Supreme Council of the Rite. It is a Latin translation of the motto of the royal arms of England, which is the French expression Dieu et mon droit, and concerning which we have the following tradition: Richard Coeur de Leon, besieging Gisors, in Normandy, in 1198, gave, as a parole or watchword, Dieu et man droit, because Philip Augustus, King of France, had, without right, taken that city, which then belonged to England. Richard, having been victorious with that righteous parole, hence adopted it as his motto; and it was afterward marshaled in the arms of England.
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DEVELOPMENT
The ancients often wrote their books on parchment, which was made up into a roll, hence called a volume, from cohere, the Latin word meaning to roll up. Thus, he who read the book commenced by unrolling it, a custom still practiced by the Jews in reading their Sacred Law, and it was not until the whole volume had been unrolled and read that he became master of its contents. Now, in the Latin language, to unfold or to unroll was devolvere, whence we get our English word to develop. The figurative signification thus elicited from etymology may be well applied to the idea of the development of Freemasonry. The system of Speculative Freemasonry is a volume closely folded from unlawful eyes, and he who would understand its true intent and meaning must follow the old proverb, and "commence at the beginning." There is no royal road of arriving at this knowledge. It can be attained only by laborious research. The student must begin as an Apprentice, by studying the rudiments that are unfolded on its first page. Then as a Fellow Craft still more of the precious writing is unrolled, and he acquires new ideas. As a Master he continues the operation, and possesses himself of additional material for thought.
But it is not until the entire volume lies unrolled before him, in the highest Degree, and the whole speculative system of its philosophy is Lying outspread before him, that he can pretend to claim a thorough comprehension of its plan. It is then only that he has solved the problem, and can exclaim, "The end has crowned the work."
The superficial Freemason who looks only on the ornamental covering of the roll knows nothing of its contents. Freemasonry is a scheme of development; and he who has learned nothing of its design, and who is daily adding nothing to his stock of Masonic ideas, is simply one who is not unrolling the parchment. It is a custom of the Jews on their Sabbath, in the synagogue, that a member should pay for the privilege of unrolling the Sacred Law. So, too, the Freemason, who would uphold the law of his Institution, must pay for the privilege, not in base coin, but in labor and research, studying its principles, searching out its design, and imbibing all of its symbolism; and the payment thus made will purchase a rich jewel.
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DEVICE
A term in heraldry signifying any emblem used to represent a family, person, nation, or society, and to distinguish such from any other. The device is usually accompanied with a suitable motto applied in a figurative sense, and its essence consists in a metaphorical similitude between the thing representing and that represented. Thus, the device of a lion represents the courage of the person bearing it. The oak is the device of strength; the palm, of victory; the sword, of honor; and the eagle, of sovereign power. The several sections of the Masonic sodality are distinguished by appropriate devices.
1. Ancient Craft Masonry. Besides the arms of Speculative Freemasonry, which are described in this work under the appropriate head, the most common device is a square and compass.
2. Royal Arch Masonry. The device is a triple tau within a triangle.
3. Knight Templarism. The ancient device, which was borne on the seals and banners of the primitive Order, was two knights riding on one horse, in allusion to the vow of poverty taken by the founders. The modern device of Masonic Templarism is a cross pattée.
4. Scottish Rite Masonry. The device is a double headed eagle crowned. holding in his claws a sword.
5. Royal and select Masters. The device is a trowel suspended within a triangle, in which the allusion is to the tetragrammaton symbolized by the triangle or delta and the workmen at the first Temple symbolized by the trowel
6. Rose Croix Masonry. The device is a cross charged with a rose- at its foot an eagle and a pelican.
7. Knight of the Sun. This old Degree of philosophical Freemasonry has for its device rays of light issuing frown a triangle inscribed within a circle of darkness, which "teaches us," says Oliver, " that when man was enlightened by the Deity with reason, he became enabled to penetrate the darkness and obscurity which ignorance and superstition had spread abroad to allure men to their destruction."
Each of these devices is accompanied by a motto which properly forms a part of it. These mottoes will be found under the head of Motto.
The Italian heralds have paid peculiar attention to the subject of devices, and have established certain laws for their construction, which are generally recognized in other countries. These laws are: That there be nothing extravagant or monstrous in the figures.. That figures be never jointed together which have no relation or affinity with one another. That the human body should never be used. That the figures should be few in number, and that the motto should refer to the device, and express with it a common idea. According to P. Bouhours, the figure or emblem was called the today, and the motto the soul of the device.
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DEVOIR
The gilds or separate communities in the system of French compagnonage are called devoirs (see Compagnonage).
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DEVOIR OF A KNIGHT
The original meaning of devoir is duty; and hence, in the language of chivalry, a knight's devoir comprehended the performance of all those duties to which he was obligated by the laws of knighthood and the vows taken at his creation. These were: The defense of widows and orphans, the maintenance of justice, and the protection of the poor and weak against the oppressions of the strong and great. Thus, in one of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays (knight of the Burning Pestle. Act II, Scene 1), the knight says to the lady Madame if any service or devoir of a poor errant knight may right your wrongs, command it, I am pressed to give you succor, For to that holy end I bear my armor. The devoir of a Knight Templar was originally to protect pilgrims on their visit to the Holy Land, and to defend the holy places. The devoir of a modern Knight Templar is to defend innocent virgins, destitute widows, helpless orphans, and the Christian religion.
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DEVOTIONS
The prayers in a Commandery of Knights Templar are technically called the devotions of the knights.
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DEW DROP LECTURE
An eloquent and much admired elaboration of the monitorial charge appropriate for the Fellow Craft. This fine composition has been ascribed to the gifted General Albert Pike. Geometry, the first and noblest of sciences, is the basis Upon which the superstructure of Freemasonry is erected. Regarding man as a rational and intelligent being, capable of enjoyment and pleasure to an extent limited only by the acquisition of useful knowledge, our Order points him to the studio of the Liberal Arts and Sciences and to the possession of knowledge as the most befitting and proper occupation for the God-like endowments with which he is gifted. Indeed, all who frequent our Masonic Temple, are charged to labor faithfully in the wide and unbounded field of human improvement, from which they are assured of reaping a most glorious harvest, a harvest rich in happiness to the whole family of man, and in manifestation of the goodness of God. Your attention is especially directed to the science of Geometry. no royal road, is true, but to one prepared with an outfit it must prove more attractive than palace walks by regal taste adorned.
The ancient philosophers placed such a high estimate upon this science that all who frequented the groves of the Sacred Academy, were compelled to explore its heavenly paths, and no one whose mind was unexpended be its precepts was intrusted with the instruction of the young. Even Plato. justly deemed the first of the philosophers when asked as to the probable occupation of Deity, replied, "He geometries continually."
If we consider the symmetry and order which govern all the works of creation, we must admit that Geometry pervades the universe. If, by the aid of the telescope, we bring the planets within the range of our observation and by the microscope, view particles too minute for the eye, unaided, to behold, we find them all pursuing the several objects of their creation, in accordance with the fixed plan of the Almighty.
By Geometry we may curiously trace nature through her various windings to her most concealed recesses. By it we discover how the planets move in their respective orbits and demonstrate their various revolutions; by it we account for the return of the seasons and the variety of scenes which each season displays to the discerning eye; by it we discover the power, wisdom and goodness of the Grand Artificer of the Universe. and view with delight the proportions which connect the vast machine. Numberless worlds are around us, all framed by the same Divine Artist, which roll through the vast expanse and are all governed by the same unerring law of nature. Is there not more truth than fiction in the thought of the ancient philosopher, that God geometries continually?
By geometry He rounds the dew drop- points the pyramidal icicle that hangs from thatch-bound roof; bends into a graceful curve the foaming cataract; paints His bow of beauty upon the canvas of a summer shower; assimilates the sugar to the diamond, and in the fissures of the earth-bound rocks, forms gorgeous caverns, thickset with starry gems. Is it He taught the bee to store its honey in prismatic cells; the wild goose to range her fight, and the noble eagle to wheel and dart upon its prey, and the wakesome lark, God's earliest worshiper, to hymn its matin song in spiral flight. By it He forms the tender lens of the delicate eye, rounds the blushing cheek of beauty, curves the ruby lip and fashions the swelling breast that throbs in unison with a gushing heart. By it he paints the cheek of autumn's mellow fruit, forms in molds of graceful symmetry the gentle dove, marks the myriad circles on the peacock's gaudy train and decks the plumage of ten thousand warblers of His praise that animate the woody shade. By it He fashions the golden carp, decks the silvery perch, forms all fish of every fin and tribe that course the majestic ocean, cut the placid lake or swim in gentle brook. Nay, more, even the glassy element in which they dwell, when by gentle zephyrs stirred, sends its chasing waves in graceful curves by God's own finger traced in parallel above, beneath, around us, all the works of His hands, animate and inanimate, but prove that God geometries continually.
But if man would witness the highest evidence of geometer leal perfection, let him step out of the rude construction of his own hands and view the wide overspreading canopy of the stars, whether fixed as centers of vast systems or all noiselessly pursuing their geometrical paths in accordance with the never-changing laws of nature. Nay more, the vast fields of illimitable space are all formed of an infinitude of circles traced by the compass of the Almighty Architect, whose every work is set by the Level, adjusted by the Plumb, and perfected by the Square. Do this, my Brother, and you must admits with Plato, that God geometrizes continually, and be assured with Job, that He who stretcheth the earth upon emptiness and fixeth the foundation thereof upon nothing, so it cannot be moved, can bind the sweet influence of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion.
A survey of Nature, and the observation of her beautiful proportions, first determined man to imitate the Divine plan, and study symmetry and order. This gave rise to societies, and birth to every useful art. The architect began to design, and the plans which he laid down, being improved by experience and time, have produced works which are the admiration of every age. The lapse of time, the ruthless hand of ignorance, and the devastations of war, have laid waste and destroyed many valuable monuments of antiquity on which the utmost exertions of human genius have been employed. Even the temple of Solomon, so spacious and magnificent, and constructed by so many artists, escaped not the unsparing ravages of barbarous force. Freemasonry, notwithstanding, has still survived. The attentive ear receives the sound from the instructive tongue, and the mysteries of Freemasonry are safely Lodged in the repository of faithful breasts. Tools and instruments of architecture, and symbolic emblems, most expressive, are selected by the Fraternity to imprint on the mind wise and serious truths; and thus, through a succession of ages, are transmitted, unimpaired, the most excellent tenets of our Institution.
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DIALECTICS
That branch of logic which teaches the rules and modes of reasoning. Dialecticke and dialecticus are used as corruptions of the Latin dialectica in some of the old manuscript Constitutions, instead of logic, in the enumeration of the seven liberal arts and sciences.
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DIAMOND
A precious stone; in Hebrew, om. It was the third stone in the second row of the high Priest's breastplate, according to the enumeration of Aben Ezra, and corresponded to the tribe of Zebulun. But it is doubtful whether the diamond was known in the time of Moses; and if it was. its great value and its insusceptibility to the impression of a graving-tool would have rendered it totally unfit as a stone in the breastplate. The Vulgate more properly gives the jasper.
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DIDACTICAL
Hemming is credited with naming the fourth section of the first Masonic lecture, didactical, perceptive or instructive and he says that "'the virtuous Mason, after he has enlightened his own mind by those sage and moral precepts, is the more ready to enlighten and enlarge the understanding of others."
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DIDEROT, DENIS
French encyclopedist. Born October 5, 1713; died July 30, 1784. Credited with an address at Paris in 1778 before the famous Lodge of Nine Sisters, mentioned in the correspondence, published at Paris in 1812, between Grimm and Diderot. But the Histoire de la Franc-Masonnerie Française (Albert Lantoine, 1925, Paris, page 360) says Diderot was not a Freemason.
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DIESEA
A term used by the Druids to designate the circumambulation around the sacred cairns, and is derived from two words signifying on the right of the sun, because the circumambulation was always in imitation of the course of the sun, with the right hand next to the cairn or altar (see Circumambulation and Deiseil).
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DIEU ET MON DROIT
French, meaning God and my Right (see Deus Meunque Jus).
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DIEU LE VEUT
A French expression for God wills it. The war-cry of the opal Crusaders, and hence adopted as a motto in the Degrees of Templarism.
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DIGNITARIES
The Master, the Wardens, the Orator, and the Secretary in a French Lodge are called dignitaries. The corresponding officers in the Grand Orient are called Grand Dignitaries. In English and American Masonic language the term is usually restricted to high officers of the Grand Lodge
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DIMIT
In Brother Mackey's opinion this is a modern, American, and wholly indefensible corruption of the technical word Demit. As the use of this form is very prevalent among American Masonic writers, he considered it proper that we should inquire which is the correct word, Demit or Dimit, and so he continues thus:
The Masonic world had been content, in its technical language, to use the word demit. But within a few years, a few admirers of neologisms—men who are always ready to believe that what is old cannot be good, and that new fashions are always the best—have sought to make a change in the well-established word, and, by altering the e in the first syllable into an i, they make another word dimit, which they assert is the right one. It is simply a question of orthography, and must be settled first by reference to usage, and then to etymology, to discover which of the words sustains, by its derivation, the true meaning which is intended to be conveyed.
It is proper, however, to premise that although in the seventeenth century Sir Thomas Browne used the word DEBIT as a verb, meaning to depress, and Bishop Hall used dimit as signifying to send away, yet both words are omitted by all the early lexicographers. Neither of them is to be found in Phillips, in 1706, nor in Blunt, in 1707, nor in Bailey, in 1739. Johnson and Sheridan, of a still later date, have inserted in their dictionaries DEBIT, but not dignity but Walker. Richardson, and Webster give both words, but only as verbs. The verb to DEBIT or to dimit may be found, but never the noun a DEBIT or a dimit. As a noun substantive, this word, however it may be spelled, is unknown to the general language, and is strictly a technical expression peculiar to Freemasonry. As a Masonic technicality we must, then, discuss it. And, first, as to its meaning:
Doctor Oliver, who omits dimit in his Dictionary of Symbolical Masonry, defines remit thus: "A Mason is said to DEBIT from the Order when he withdraws from all connection with it." It will be seen that he speaks of it here only as a verb, and makes no reference to its use as a noun. Macoy, in his Cyclopaedia, omits DEBIT, but defines dimit thus: "From the Latin dimitto, to permit to go. The act of withdrawing from membership." To say nothing of the incorrectness of this definition, to which reference will hereafter be made, there is in it a violation of the principles of language which is worthy of note. No rule is better settled than that which makes the verb and the noun derived from it have the same relative signification. Thus, to discharge means to dismiss; a discharge means a dismission; to approve means to express liking; an approval means an expression of liking; to remit means to relax; a remission means a relaxation, and so with a thousand other instances. Now, according to this rule, if to demit means to permit to go, then a remit should mean a permission to go. The withdrawal is something subsequent and Consequent, but it may ever take place.
According to Macoy's definition of the verbs the granting of a limit does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the Freemason who received it has left the Lodge. He has only been permitted to do so. This is contrary to the universally accepted definition of the word. Accordingly, when he comes to define the word as a noun, he gives it the true meaning, which, however, does not agree with his previous definition as a verb.
To instituting the inquiry which of these two words is the true one, we must first look to the general usage of Masonic writers; for, after all, the rule of Horace holds good, that in the use of words we must be governed by custom or usage, whose arbitrary sway.
Words and the forms of language must obey.
If we shall find that the universal usage of Masonic writers until a comparatively recent date has been to employ the form demit, then we are bound to believe that it is the correct form, notwithstanding a few writers have more recently sought to intrude the form dimit upon us. Now, how stands the case? The first time that we find the word demit used is in the second edition of Anderson's Constitutions, 1738, page 153. There it is said that on the 25th of November, 1723, "it was agreed that if a Master of a particular Lodge is deposed, or demits, the Senior Warden shall forthwith fill the Master's Chair."
The word continued in use as a technical word in the Freemasonry of England for many years. In the editions of the Constitution published in 1756, page 311, the passage just quoted is again recited, and the word DEBIT is again employed in the fourth edition of the Constitutions published in 1767, page 345. In the second edition of Dermott's Ahiman Rezon, published in 1764, page 52, and in the third edition, published in 1778, page 58, the word DEBIT is employed. Oliver, it will be seen, uses it in his Dictionary, published in 1853. But the word seems to have become obsolete in England, and to resign is now constantly used by English Masonic writers in the place of to DEBIT.
In America, however, the word has been and continues to be in universal use, and has always been spelled, until recently, DEBIT. Thus we find it used by Tannehill, Manual, 1845, page 59; Morris, Code of Masonic Law, 1856, page 289; Hubbard, in 1851; Chase, Digest, 1859, page 104; Mitchell, Masonic History, volume ii, pages 556, 592, and by all the Grand Lodges whose proceedings Brother Mackey examined up to the year 1860. On the contrary, the word dimit is of recent origin. Usage, therefore, both English and American, is clearly in favor of demit, and dimit must be considered as an interloper, and ought to be consigned to the tomb of the Capulets. And now we are to inquire whether this usage is sustained by the principles of etymology. First, let us obtain a correct definition of the word. To demit, in Masonic language, means simply to resign. The Freemason who demits from his Lodge resigns from it. The word is used in the exact sense, for instance, in the Constitution of the Grand Lodge of Wisconsin, where it is said: "No brother shall be allowed to demit from any Lodge unless for the purpose of uniting with some other." That is to say: "No brother shall be allowed to resign from any Lodge."
Now what are the respective meanings of DEBIT and dimit in ordinary language? There the words are found to be entirely different in signification. To DEBIT is derived first from the Latin demittere through the French demettre. In Latin the prefixed particle de has the weight of down; added to the verb mittere, to send, it signifies to let down from an elevated position to a lower. Thus, Caesar used it in this very sense, when, in describing the storming of Avaricum (Commentary de bello Gallico, vii, 28), he says that the Roman soldiers did not let themselves down, that is, descend from the top of the wall to the level ground. The French, looking to this reference to a descent from a higher to a lower position, made their verb se demettre, used in a reflective sense, signify to Olive up a post, office, or occupation, that is to say, to resign it. And thence the English use of the word is reducible, which makes to demit signify Go region. We have another word in our language also derived from demettre, and in which the same idea of resignation is apparent. It is the word demise, which was originally used only to express a Loyal death. The old maxim was that "the king never dies." So, instead of saying the death of the king, they said the demise of the king, thereby meaning his resignation of the crown to his successor. The word is now applied more generally, and we speak of the demise of Pitt, or any other person. To dimit is derived from the Latin dimittere. The prefixed particle di or dis has the effect of off from, and hence dimittere means to send away. Thus, Terence uses it to express the meaning of dismissing or sending away an army.
Both words are now obsolete in the English language. They were formerly used, but in the different senses already indicated. Thus, Hollinshed employs demit to signify a surrender, yielding up, or resignation of a franchise. Bishop Hall uses dimit to signify a sending away of a servant by his master.
Demit, as a noun, is not known in good English; the correlative nouns of the verbs to demit and to dimit are demission and dimission. A demit is altogether a Masonic technicality, and is, moreover, an Americanism of recent usage. It is then evident that to demit is the proper word, and that to use to dimit is to speak and write incorrectly. When a Freemason demits from a Lodge, we mean that he residers from a Lodge, because to demit means to resign. But what does anyone mean when he says that a Freemason dimits from a Lodge?
To dimit means, as we have seen, to send away; therefore he dimits from the Lodge is equivalent to saying he sends away from the Lodge, which of course is not only bad English, but sheer nonsense.
If dimit is to be used at all, as it is an active, transitive verb, it must be used only in that form, and we must either say that a Lodge dimits a Mason, or that a Mason is dimitted by his Lodge. Brother Mackey believed he had discovered the way in which this blunder first arose. Rob Morris (Code of Masonic Law, page 289) has the following passage:
A demit, technically considered, is the act of withdrawing and applies to the Lodge and not to the individual. A Mason cannot demit in the strict sense, buff the Lodge may demit (dismiss) him. It is astonishing how the author of this passage could have crowded into so brief a space so many violations of grammar, law, and common sense. First, to demit means to withdraw, and then this withdrawal is made the act of the Lodge and not of the individual, as if the Lodge withdrew the member instead of the member withdrawing himself. And immediately afterward, seeing the absurdity of this doctrine, and to make the demission the act of the Lodge, he changes the signification of the word, and makes to demit mean to dismiss. Certainly it is impossible to discuss the law of Masonic demission when such contrary meanings are given to the word in one and the same paragraph.
But certain wiseacres, belonging probably to that class who believe that there is always improvement in change, seizing upon this latter definition o f Morris, that to demit meant to dismiss, and seeing that this was a meaning which the word never had, and, from its derivation from demittere, never could have changed the word from demit to dimit, which really does have the meaning of sending away or dismissing. But as the Masonic act of demission does not mean a dismissal from the Lodge, because that would be an expulsion, but simply a resignation, the word dimit cannot properly be applied to the act.
A Freemason demits from the Lodge; he resigns. He takes out his demit, a strictly technical expression and altogether confined to this country; he asks for and receives an acceptance of his resignation.
Thus far we have followed Brother Mackey who went into this matter in considerable detail. An equally impressive showing is to be found in the Builder (Volume v, page 308), where Brother C. C. Hunt discusses the same question. At the end of his article the editor, Brother H. L. Haywood, said, "A study of forty-nine codes of the Grand Lodges of the United States reveals the fact that forty-one used he word dimit while but eight used demit.
Brother Hunt (page 29, volume vi, Builder) comments upon this note, in brief, as follows: Dimit came into the English language through church usage, where a priest would be sent from one diocese to another. The bishop gave him a dimit, virtually an order to go. The priest had to accept dismissal. This word is obsolete since letter of dismissal, or dimissory letter takes its place. Demit came into the language from the same Latin word, but from the late Latin and the French, and meaning a voluntary resignation. It so came to be used by Freemasons, the thought being that a member of a Lodge, in good standing, had an absolute right to relinquish his membership and obtain a certificate to that effect. Until comparatively recently the word used was demit. History of the word has been lost and ecclesiastical rather than the Masonic sense attached to the word by those that use dimit.
The Lexicographer of the Literary Digest (July 9, 1927, page 68) has this to say of the distinction between demit and dimit: As a verb, the word demit designates to give up; lay down, or resign as an appointment; to drop or east down; depress. As a noun, it means a letter of dismissal, specifically, a recommendation given to a person removing from one Masonic Lodge to another. In the sense of to release or dimiss, demit is obsolete. The verb dimit means to permit or to go away; dismiss; to send or give forth; to grant or lease (see Demit).
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DIOCESAN
The Fifth Degree of Bahrdt's German Union
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DIONYSIAN ARCHITECTS
The priests of Bacchus, or, as the Greeks called him, Dionysus, having devoted themselves to architectural pursuits, established about 1000 years before the Christian era a society or fraternity of builders in Asia Minor, which is styled by the ancient writers the Fraternity of Dionystan Architects, and to this society was exclusively confined the privilege of erecting temples and other public buildings.
The members of the Fraternity of Dionysian Architects were linked together by the secret ties of the Dionysian mysteries, into which they had all been initiated. Thus constituted, the Fraternity was distinguished by many peculiarities that strikingly assimilate it to our Order. In the exercise of charity, the more opulent were sacredly bound to provide for the exigencies of the poorer brethren." For the facilities of labor and government, they were divided into communities called ouvoud each of which was governed by a Master and Wardens.
They held a general assembly or grand festival once a year, which was solemnized with great pomp and splendor. They employed in their ceremonial observances many of the implements which are still to be found among Freemasons, and used, like them, a universal language, by which one Brother could distinguish another in the dark as well as in the light, and which served to unite the members scattered over India, Persia, and Syria, into one common brotherhood.
The existence of this Order in Tyre, at the time of the building of the Temple, is universally admitted; and Hiram, the widow's son, to whom Solomon entrusted the superintendence of the workmen, as an inhabitant of Tyre, and as a skillful architect and cunning and curious workman, was, very probably, one of its members. Hence, we may legitimately suppose that the Dionysians were sent by Hiram, King of Tyre, to assist King Solomon in the construction of the house he was about to dedicate to Jehovah, and that they communicated to their Jewish fellow-laborers a knowledge of the advantages of their Fraternity, and invited them to a participation in its mysteries and privileges. In this union, however, the apocryphal legend of the Dionysians would naturally give way to the true legend of the Freemasons, which was unhappily furnished by a melancholy incident that occurred at the time.
The latter part of this statement is, it is admitted, a mere speculation, but one that has met the approval of Lawrie, Oliver, and our best writers; and although this connection between the Dionysian Architects and the builders of King Solomon may not be supported by documentary evidence, the traditional theory is at least plausible, and offers nothing which is either absurd or impossible. If accepted, it supplies the necessary link which connects the Pagan with the Jewish mysteries.
The history of this association subsequent to the Solomonic era has been detailed by Masonic writers, who have derived their information sometimes from conjectural and sometimes from historical authority. About 300 B.C., they were incorporated by the kings of Pergamos at Teos, which was assigned to them as a settlement, and where they continued for centuries as an exclusive society engaged in the erection of works of art and the celebration of their mysteries. Notwithstanding the edict of the Emperor Theodosius which abolished all mystical associations, they are said to have continued their existence down to the time of the Crusades, and during the constant communication which was kept up between the two continents passed over from Asia to Europe, where they became known as the Traveling Freemasons of the Middle Ages, into whose future history they thus became merged.
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DIONYSIAN MYSTERIES
These mysteries were celebrated throughout Greece and Asia Minor, but principally at Athens, where the years were numbered by them. They were instituted in honor of Baccus, or, as the Greeks called him, Dionysus, and were introduced into Greece from Egypt. In these mysteries, the murder of Dionysus by the Titans was commemorated, in which legend he is evidently identified with the Egyptian Osiris, who was slain by his brother Typhon. The aspirant, in the ceremonies through which he passed, represented the murder of the god and his restoration to life, which, says the Baron de Sacy (Notes on Saint-Croix, ii 86), were the subject of allegorical explanations altogether analogous to those which were given to the rape of Proserpine and the murder of Osiris.
The commencement of the mysteries was signalized by the consecration of an egg, in allusion to the mundane egg from which all things were supposed to have sprung. The candidate having been first purified by water, and crowned with a myrtle branch, was introduced into the vestibule, and there clothed in the sacred habiliments. He was then delivered to the conductor, who, after the mystic warning, meaning in English, Bygone, begone, all ye profane.' exhorted the candidate to exert all his fortitude and courage in the dangers and trials through which he was about to pass. He was then led through a series of dark caverns, a part of the ceremonies which Stobaeus calls "a rude and fearful march through night and darkness. " During this passage he was terrified by the howling of wild beasts, and other fearful noises; artificial thunder reverberated through the subterranean apartments, and transient flashes of lightning revealed monstrous apparitions to his sight.
In this state of darkness and terror he was kept for three days and nights, after which he commenced the aphanism or mystical death of Bacchus. He was now placed on the pastos or couch, that is, he was confined in a solitary cell, where he could reflect seriously on the nature of the undertaking in which he was engaged. During this time, he was alarmed with the sudden flood of waters, which was intended to represent the deluge. Typhon, searching for Osiris, or Dionvsus, for they are here identical, discovered the ark where Osiris had been secreted, and, tearing it violently asunder, scattered the limbs of his victim upon the waters. The aspirant now heard the loud lamentations which were instituted for the death of the god.
Then commenced the search of Rhea for the remains of Dionysus. The apartments were filled with shrieks and groans; the initiated mingled with their howlings of despair the frantic dances of the Corybantes; everything was a scene of distraction, until, at a signal from the hierophant, the whole drama changed—the mourning was turned to joy; the mangled boded was found; and the aspirant was released from his confinement, amid the shouts of Eyprksapeu, EU7XQLPUMel x meaning in Greek, We have found it; let us rejoice together. The candidate was nova made to descend into the infernal regions, where he beheld the torments of the wicked and the rewards of the virtuous.
It was now that he received the lecture explanatory of the Rites, and was invested with the tokens which served the initiated as a means of recognition. He then underwent a lustration, after which he was introduced into the holy place, where he received the name of epopt, and was fully instructed in the doctrine of the mysteries, which consisted in a belief in the existence of one God and a future state of rewards and punishments. These doctrines were taught by a variety of significant symbols. After the performance of these ceremonies, the aspirant was dismissed, and the Rites concluded with the pronunciation of the mystic words, Konx Ompax (which see elsewhere in this work). Sainte-Croix (Mysteries of Paganism ii, 90) says that the murder of Dionysus by the Titans was only an allegory of the physical revolutions of the world; but these were in part, in the ancient initiations, significant of the changes of life and death and resurrection.
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DIONYSUS
The Greek name of Bacchus (see Dionysian Mysteries)
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DIPLOMA
Literally means something folded. From the Greek;7rXoz. The word is applied in Freemasonry to the Certificates granted by Lodges, Chapters, and Commanderies to their members, which should always be written on parchment. The more usual word, however, is Certificate, which see. In the Scottish Rite they are called Patents.
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DIRECTOR OF CEREMONIES, GRAND
An officer in the Grand Lodge of England, who has the arrangement and direction of all processions and ceremonies of the Grand Lodge and the care of the regalia, clothing, insignia, and jewels belonging to the Grand Lodge. His jewel is two rods in saltire, or crossed! tied by a ribbon.
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DIRECTORY
In German Lodges, the Master and other officers constitute a Council of Management, under the name of Directorium or Directory.
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DIRECTORY, ROMAN HELVETIC
The name assumed in 1739 by the Supreme Masonic authority at Lausanne, in Switzerland (see Switzerland).
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DISCALCEATION, RITE OF
The ceremony of taking off the shoes, as a token of respect, whenever we are on or about to approach holy ground. It is referred to in Exodus (iii, 5), where the angel of the Lord, at the burning bush, exclaims to Moses: "Draw not nigh hither; put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." It is again mentioned in Joshua (v, 15), in the following words: "And the captain of the Lord's host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot; for the place whereon thou standest is holy." And lastly, it is alluded to in the injunction given in Eeclesiastes (v, 1): "Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God." The Rite, in fact, always was, and still is, used among the Jews and other Oriental nations when entering their temples and other sacred edifices. It does not seem to have been derived from the command given to Moses; but rather to have existed as a religious custom from time immemorial, and to have been borrowed, as Mede supposes, by the Gentiles, through tradition, from the patriarchs. The direction of Pythagoras to his disciples was in these words in Greek: Avvroonos AVf KQL TpoKvMeL that is, in English, Offer sacrifice and worship with they shoes off. Justin Martyr says that those who came to worship in the sanctuaries and temples of the Gentiles were commanded by their priests to put off their shoes. Drusius, in his votes on the Book of Joshua, says that among most of the Eastern nations it was a pious duty to tread the pavement of the temple w ith unshod feet. Maimonides, the great expounder of the Jewish aw, asserts (in the Beth Habbechirah, chapter vii) that "it was not lawful for a man to come into the mountain of God's house with his shoes on his feet, or with his staff, or in his working garments, or with dust on his feet." Rabbi Solomon, commenting on the command in Leviticus (xix, 30), "Ye shall reverence my sanctuary," makes the same remark in relation to this custom. On this subject, Oliver (Historical Landmarks ii, 471) observes: "Now the act of going with naked feet was always considered a token of humility and reverence, and the priests, in the temple worship, always officiated with feet uncovered, although it was frequently injurious to their health." Mede quotes Zago Zaba, an Ethiopian bishop, who was ambassador from David, King of Abyssini, to John III. of Portugal, as saying: "We are not permitted to enter the church except barefooted." The Mohammedans, when about to perform their devotions, always leave their slippers at the door of the mosque. The Druids practiced the same custom whenever they celebrated their sacred rites; and the ancient Peruvians are said always to have left their shoes at the porch when they entered the magnificent temple consecrated to the worship of the sun. Adam Clarke (Commentary on Elodus) thinks that the custom of worshiping the Deity barefooted, was so general among all nations of antiquity, that he assigns it as one of his thirteen proofs that the whole human race have been derived from one family. Finally, Bishop Patrick, speaking of the origin of this Rite, says, in his Commentaries: "Moses did not give the first beginning to this Rite, but it was derived from the patriarchs before him, and transmitted to future times from that ancient, general tradition; for we find no command in the law of Moses or the priests performing the service of the temple without shoes, but it is certain they did so from immemorial custom; and so do the Mohammedans and other nations at this day."
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DISCIPLINA ARCANl
See Discipline of the Secret
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DISCIPLINE
This word is used by Freemasons, in its ecclesiastical sense! to signify the execution of the laws by which a Lodge is governed and the infliction of the penalties enjoined against offenders who are its members, or, not being members, live within its jurisdiction. To discipline a Freemason is to subject him to punishment (see Jurisdiction and Punishments) .
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DISCIPLINE OF THE SECRET
There existed in the earlier ages of the Christian church a mystic and secret worship, from which a portion of the congregation was peremptorily excluded, and whose privacy was guarded, with the utmost care, from the obtrusive eyes of all who had not been duly initiated into the sacred rites that qualified them to be present. This custom of communicating only to a portion of the Christian community the more abstruse doctrines and more sacred ceremonies of the church, is known among ecclesiastical writers by the name of Disciplina Arcani, or the Discipline of the Secret.
Converts were permitted to attain a knowledge of all the doctrines, and participate in the sacraments of the church, only after a long and experimental probation. The young Christian, like the disciple of Pythagoras, was made to pass through a searching ordeal of time and patience, by which his capacity, his fidelity, and his other qualifications were strictly tested. For this purpose, different ranks were instituted in the congregation. The lowest of these were named the Catechumens, meaning in English, the beginners, those under instruction. These were occupied in a study of the elementary principles of the Christian religion. Their connection with the church was not consummated by baptism, to which rite they were not admitted, even as spectators, it being the symbol of a higher Degree; but their initiation was accompanied with solemn ceremonies, consisting of prayer, signing with the cross, and the imposition of hands by the priest. The next Degree was that of the Competentes. or seekers.
When a Catechumen had exhibited satisfactory evidences of his proficiency in religious knowledge, he petitioned the Bishop for the sacrament of baptism. His name was then registered in the books of the church. After this registration, the candidate underwent the various ceremonies appropriate to the Degree upon which he vas about to enter. He was examined by the bishop as to his attainments in Christianity, and, if approved, was exorcized for twenty days, during which time he was subjected to rigorous fasts, and, having made confession, the necessary penance was prescribed. He was then, for the first time, instructed in the words of the Apostles' Creed, a symbol of which the Catechumens were entirely ignorant.
Another ceremony peculiar to the Competentes was that of going about with their faces veiled. Saint Augustine explains the ceremony by saying that the Competentes went veiled in public as an image of the slavery of Adam after his expulsion from Paradise, and that, after baptism. the veils were taken away as an emblem of the liberty of the spiritual life which was obtained by the sacrament of regeneration. Some other significant ceremonies, but of a less important character, were used. and the Competent, having passed through them all, was at length admitted to the highest Degree.
The Fideles, or Faithful, constituted the Third Degree or Order. Baptism was the ceremony by which the Competentes, after an examination into their proficiency, were admitted into this Degree. "They were thereby," says Bingham, "made complete and perfect Christians, and were, upon that account, dignified with several titles of honor and marks of distinction above the Catechumens." They were called Illuminati, or Illuminated, because they had been enlightened as to those secrets which were concealed from the inferior orders.
They were also called Initiati, or Initiated, because they were admitted to a knowledge of the sacred mysteries; and so commonly was this name in use, that, when Chrysostom and the other ancient writers spoke of their concealed doctrines, they did so in ambiguous terms, so as not to be understood by the Catechumens, excusing themselves for their brief allusions, by saying, "the Initiated know what we mean." And so complete was the understanding of the ancient Fathers of a hidden mystery, and an initiation into them, that Saint Ambrose has written a book, the title of which is, Concerning those who are Initiated into the Mysteries. They were also called the perfect, to intimate that they had attained to a perfect knowledge of all the doctrines and sacraments of the church.
There were certain sprayers, which none but the Faithful were permitted to hear. Among these was the Lord's prayer, which, for this reason, was commonly called Oratio Fidelium, or, the Prayer of the Faithful. They were also admitted to hear discourses upon the most profound mysteries of the church, to which the Catechumens were strictly forbidden to listen. Saint Ambrose, in the book written by him to the Initiated, says that sermons on the subject of morality were daily preached to the Catechumens; but to the Initiated they gave an explanation of the Sacraments, which, to have spoken of to the unbaptized, would have rather been like a betrayal of mysteries than instruction.
Saint Augustine, in one of his sermons to the Faithful, says: "Having now dismissed the Catechumens, you alone have we retained to hear us, because, in addition to those things which belong to all Christians in common, we are now about to speak in an especial manner of the Heavenly Mysteries, which none can hear except those who, by the gift of the Lord, are able to comprehend them."
The mysteries of the church were divided, like the Ancient Mysteries, into the lesser and the greater. The former was called Missa Catechumenorum, or the Mass of the Catechumens, and the latter, Missa Fidelium, or the Mass of the Faithful. The public service of the church consisted of the reading of the Scripture, and the delivery of a sermon, which was entirely of a moral character. These being concluded, the lesser mysteries, or Mass of the Catechumens, commenced. The deacon proclaimed in a loud voice, " Ne quis audientium, ne quis infidelium," that is, the Latin meaning, Let none who are simply hearers, and let no infuiets be present. All then who had not acknowledged their faith in Christ by placing themselves among the Catechumens, and all Jews and Pagans, were caused to retire, that the Mass of the Catechumens might begin. For better security, a deacon was placed at the men's door and a subdeacon at the women's, for the deacons were the doorkeepers, and, in fact, received that name in the Greek church. The Mass of the Catechumens which consisted almost entirely of prayers, with the episcopal benediction was then performed.
This part of the service having been concluded, the Catechumens were dismissed by the deacons, with the expression, Catechumens, depart in peace. The Competentes, however, or those who had the Second or Intermediate Degree, remained until the prayers for those who were possessed of evil spirits, and the supplications for themselves, were pronounced. After this, they too were dismissed, and none now remaining in the church but the Faithful, the Missa Fidelium, or greater mysteries, commenced.
The formula of dismission used by the deacon on this occasion was: Sancta sanctis, foras canes, the Latin for Holy things for the holy, let the dogs depart, the word doff being a term of reproach for the unworthy, the hangers-on.
The Faithful then all repeated the creed, which served as an evidence that no intruder or uninitiated person was present; because the creed was not revealed to the Catechumens, but served as a password to prove that its possessor was an initiate. After prayers had been offered up—which, however, differed from the supplications in the former part of the service, by the introduction of open allusions to the most abstruse doctrines of the church, which were never named in the presence of the Catechumens the oblations were made, and the Eucharistical Sacrifice, or Lord's Supper, was celebrated. Prayers and invocations followed, and at length the service was concluded, and the assembly was dismissed by the benediction, "Depart in peace."
Bingham records the following rites as having been concealed from the Catechumens, and entrusted, as the sacred mysteries, only to the Faithful: the manner of receiving baptism; the ceremony of confirmation; the ordination of priests; the mode of celebrating the Eucharist; the Liturgy, or Divine Service; and the doctrine of the Trinity, the Creed, and the Lord's Prayer, which last, however, were begun to be explained to the Competentes.
Such was the celebrated Discipline of the Secret in the early Christian church. That its origin, so far as the outward form was concerned, is to be found in the Mysteries of Paganism, there can be no doubt, as has been thus expressed by the learned Mosheim:
Religion having thus, in both its branches the speculative as well as the practical, assumed a twofold charater - the one public or common, the other private or mysterious it was not long before a distinction of a similar kind took place also in the Christian discipline and form of divine worship; for, observing that in Egypt as well as in other countries, the heathen worshippers in addition to their public religious ceremonies to which everyone was admitted without distinction, had certain secret and most sacred rites, to which they gave the name of mysteries, and at the celebration of which none but persons of the most approved faith and discretion were permitted to be present, the Alexandrian Christians first. and after them others, were beguiled into a notion that they could not do better than make the Christian discipline accommodate itself to this model. No trace of the Disciptina Arcani is found until the end of the second century and it appears to have died rapidly near the close of the sixth century Strong traces of it are asserted by the encyclopedists to be even now in the Greek liturgy. Further details are given in the old works De Duciptini Arcani by Schelstrate, published at Rome in 1685, and that by Tentzel, published at Leipzig in 1692.
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DISCOVERY OF THE BODY
See Euresis
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DISCOVERY, THE YEAR OF THE
The Latin phrase Anno Inventionis, or in the Year of the Discovery, is the style assumed by the Royal Arch Masons, in commemoration of an event which took place soon after the commencement of the rebuilding of the Temple by Zerubbabel.
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DISMISSORIAL
The German name for what English Freemasons call a Certificate of Lodge Resignation. A Dimit.
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DISPENSATION
A permission to do that which, without such permission, is forbidden by the constitutions and usages of the Order.
Du Cange (in the Glossarium) defines a Dispensation to be a prudent relaxation of a general law, the Latin expression being Provida juris cmmmunis relaxatio. While showing how much the ancient eclesiastical authorities were opposed to the granting of Dispensations, since they preferred to pardon the offense after the law had been violated, rather than to give a previous license for its violation, he adds, "but, however much the Roman Pontiffs and pious Bishops felt of reverence for the ancient Regulations, they were often compelled to depart in some measure from them, for the utility of the church; and this milder measure of acting the jurists called a Dispensation."
This power to dispense with the provisions of law in particular cases appears to be inherent in the Grand Master; because, although frequently referred to in the old Regulations, it always is as if it were a power already in existence, and never by way of a new grant. There is no record of any Masonic statute or constitutional provision conferring this prerogative in distinct cords. The instances, however, in which this prerogative may be exercised are clearly enumerated in various places of the Old Constitutions, so what there can be no difficulty in understanding to what extent the prerogative extends.
The power of granting dispensations is confided to the Grand Master, or his representative, but should not be exercised except on extraordinary occasions, or for excellent reasons. The dispensing power is conned to four circumstances:
1. A Lodge cannot be opened and held unless a Warrant of Constitution be first granted by the (Grand Lodge; but the Grand Master may issue his Dispensation, empowering a constitutional number of Brethren to open and hold a Lodge until the next Communication of the Grand Lodge. At this communication, the Dispensation of the Grand Master is either revoked or confirmed.. A Lodge under Dispensation is not permitted to be represented, nor to vote in the Grand Lodge.
2. Not more than five candidates can be made at the same communication of a Lodge; but the Grand Master, on showing of sufficient cause, may extend to a Lodge the privilege of making as many more as he may think proper.
3. No brother can, at the same time, belong to two Lodges within three miles of each other. But the Grand Master may dispense with this regulation also.
4. Every Lodge must elect and install its officers on the constitutional night, which, in most Masonic Jurisdictions, precedes the anniversary of Saint John the Evans list. Should it, however neglect this duty, or should any officer die, or be expelled. or removed permanently no subsequent election or installation can take place, exept under Dispensation of the Grand Master.
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DISPENSATION, LODGES UNDER
See Lodge
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DISPENSATIONS OF RELIGION
An attempt has been made to symbolize the Pagan, the Jewish, and the Christian Dispensations by a certain ceremony of the Master's Degree which dramatically teaches the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul. The reference made in this ceremony to portions of the First, Second, and Third Degrees is used to demonstrate the differences of the three dispensations in the reception of these two dogmas. It is said that the unsuccessful effort in the Entered Apprentice's Degree refers to the heathen dispensation, where neither the resurrection of the body nor the immortality of the soul was recognized; at the second unsuccessful effort in the Fellow Craft's Degree refers to the Jewish dispensation, where, though the resurrection of the body was unknown, the immortality of the soul was dimly hinted; and that the final and successful effort in the Master's Degree symbolizes the Christian Dispensation, in which, through the teachings of the Lion of the tribe of Judah, both the resurrection of the body and the immortality of the soul were clearly brought to light. This symbolism, which is said by Brother Mackey to have been the invention of a peripatetic lecturer in the South many years ago, is so forced and fanciful in its character, that it did not long survive the local and temporary teachings of its inventor, and is only preserved here as an instance of how symbols, like metaphors, may sometimes run mad.
But there is another symbolism of the three Degrees, as illustrating three dispensations, which is much older, having originated among the lecture makers of the eighteenth century, which for a long time formed a portion of the authorized ritual, and has been repeated with approbation by some distinguished writers. In this the three Degrees are said to be symbols in the progressive knowledge which they impart of the Patriarchal, the Mosaic, and the Christian dispensations. The First, or Entered Apprentice's Degree, in which but little Masonic light is communicated, and which, indeed, is only preparatory and introductory to the two succeeding Degrees, is said to symbolize the first, or Patriarchal Dispensation, the earliest revelation, where the knowledge of God was necessarily imperfect, His worship only a few simple rites of devotion, and the religious dogmas merely a general system of morality.
The Second, or Fellow Craft's Degree, is symbolic of the second or Mosaic Dispensation, in which, while there were still many imperfections, there was also a great increase of religious knowledge, and a nearer approximation to Divine truth, with a promise in the future of a better theodicy. But the Third, or Master Mason's Degree, which, in its original conception, before it was dismembered by the innovations of the Royal Arch, was perfect and complete in its consummation of all Masonic light, symbolizes the last, or Christian Dispensation, where the great and consoling doctrine of the resurrection to eternal life is the crowning lesson taught by its Divine Founder. This subject is very fully treated by the Rev. James Watson, in an address delivered at Laneaster, England, in 1795, and contained in Jones's Masonic Miscellanies (page 245); better, in Brother Mackey's opinion, by him than even by Hutchinson.
Beautiful as this symbolism may be, and appropriately fitting in all its parts to the laws of symbolic science, it is evident that its origin cannot be traced farther back than to the period when Freemasonry was first divided into three distinctive Degrees; nor could it have been invented later than the time when Freemasonry was deemed, if not an exclusively Christian organization, at least to be founded on and fitly illustrated by Christian dogmas. At present, this symbolism, though preserved in the speculations of such Christian writers as Hutchinson and Oliver, and those who are attached to their peculiar school, finds no place in the modern cosmopolitan rituals. It may belong, as an explanation, to the history of Freemasonry, but can scarcely make a part of its symbolism. Here a brief note may be added to the above comments by Brother Mackey on this important subject to say that a notebook formerly in the possession of Brother John Barney, whose field of instruction in the Masonic ceremonies extended through Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Illinois, has a monitorial teaching pertaining to the three Dispensations concluding with Christianity, a lecture ready for use when desired but which could easily be omitted on other occasions. Such a lecture is unknown to the practice of-the present generation.
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DISPERSION OF MANKIND
The dispersion of mankind at the tower of Babel and on the plain of Shinar, which is recorded in the Book of Genesis, has given rise to a Masonic tradition of the following purport:
The knowledge of the great truths of God and immortality were known to Noah, and by him communicated to his immediate descendants, the Noachidae or Noachites, by whom the true worship continued to be cultivated for some time after the subsidence of the deluge; but when the human race were dispersed, a portion lost sight of the Divine truths which had been communicated to them from their common ancestor, and fell into the most grievous theological errors, corrupting the purity of the worship and the orthodoxy of the religious faith which they had primarily received.
These truths were preserved in their integrity by but a very few in the patriarchal line, while still fewer were enabled to retain only dim and glimmering portions of the true light. The first class was confined to the direct descendants of Noah, and the second was to be found among the priests and philosophers, and, perhaps, still later, among the poets of the heathen nations, and among those whom they initiated into the secrets of these truths.
The system of doctrine of the former class has been called by Masonic writers the Pure or Primitive Freemasonry of antiquity, and that of the latter class the Spurious Freemasonry of the same period. These terms were first used by Doctor Oliver, and are intended to refer—the word pure to the doctrines taught by the descendants of Noah in the Jewish line, and the word spurious to those taught by his descendants in the heathen or Gentile line.
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DISPUTE
The spirit of all the Ancient Charges and Constitutions is, that disputes among Freemasons should be settled by an appeal to the Brethren, to whose award the disputants were required to submit. Thus, in an Old Record of the fifteenth century, it is provided, among other charges, that: If any discord shall be between him and his fellows, he shall abey him mekely and be stylle at the byddyng of his Master or of the Wardeyne of his Master, in his Master's absent to the holy day following, and that he accorded then at the disposition of his fellows.
A similar regulation is to be found in all the other old Charges and Constitutions, and is continued in operation at this day by the Charges approved in 1799, which express the same idea in more modern language.
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DISSOLVED LODGES
A Lodge in England may be dissolved by the unanimous consent of its members and can be erased or suspended by proper vote of Grand Lodge. Should a majority of the members of any Lodge decide to retire from it the rest of the members have the power of assembling. Should, however, all the members withdraw, the Lodge becomes automatically extinct.
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DISTINCTIVE TITLE
In the rituals, all Lodges are called Lodges of Saint Johns but every Lodge has also another name by which it is distinguished. This is called its distinctive title. This usage is preserved in the diplomas of the Continental Freemasons, especially the French, where the specific name of the Lodge is always given as well as the general title of Saint John, which it has in common with all other Lodges. Thus, a Diploma issued by a French Lodge whose name on the Register of the Grand Orient would perhaps be La Vérité, meaning The Truth, will purport to have been issued by the Lodge of Saint John, under the distinctive title of La Vérité, or to use the full expression in French, par la Lope de St. Jeansous be titre distinctif de la Varité. The term is never used in English or American Diplomas.
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DISTRESS, SIGN OF
See Sign of Distress
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DISTRICT DEPUTY GRAND MASTER
An officer appointed to inspect old Lodges, consecrate new ones, install their officers, and exercise a general supervision over the Fraternity in the districts where, from the extent of the jurisdiction, the Grand Master or his Deputy cannot conveniently attend in person. He is considered as a Grand Officer, and as the representative of the Grand Lodge in the district in which he resides. In England, officers of this description are called Provincial Grand Masters.
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DISTRICT GRAND LODGES
In the Constitution of the Grand Lodge of England and some other Jurisdictions, Grand Lodges in colonies and other foreign parts are called Distract Grand Lodges, to distinguish them from Provincial Grand Lodges or the sovereign governing Masonic body.
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DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
The District of Columbia lies partly in the State of Maryland and partly in the State of Virginia. It was set apart by Act of Congress on July 16, 1790, for the capital of the United States. Some months previously, on April 21, 1769, Potomac Lodge, No. 9, had been organized in Georgetown by the Grand Lodge of Maryland but later it ceased work. Potomac Lodge, No. 43, warranted on November 11, 1806, was the first Lodge in the State to endure. A Convention was held on December 11, 1810, by five Lodges, namely Federal, No. 15; Brooke, No. 47; Columbia, No. 35; Washington Naval, No. 41, and Potomac, No.43. The organization of a Grand Lodge was fully completed on February 19, 1811.
The first Chapter or Encampment, as it was called in the District of Columbia, worked under the Charter of Federal Lodge, No. 15, F. A. A. M., of the Jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Maryland. A meeting took place on Monday, December 14, 1795, to make arrangements for the new Chapter. Two other meetings were held, one on December 16, 1795, and one on June 17, 1797, before the Chapter was finally constituted. In February, 1799, it was decided that the Royal Arch Encampment should be broken up. A Dispensation dated August 30, 1822, was issued by the General Grand High Priest to the Chapters in the District of Columbia to organize a Grand Chapter. Representatives of Federal Chapter, No. 3; Union, No. 4; Brooke, No. 6, and Potomac, No. 8, were present at a Convention held on Tuesday, February 10, 1824. Potomac Chapter, however, decided to continue under her old Charter. After January 8, 1833, the Grand Lodge of the District of Columbia no longer existed and the Chapters were placed under the Jurisdiction of the Grand Chapter of Maryland. In the year 1867 steps were taken to reorganize a Grand Chapter by Columbia, No. 15; Washington, No. 16; Mount Vernon, No. 20, and Potomac, No. 8, and it was duly constituted in Washington at the Opera House on May 23 1867. After encountering much trouble and opposition, the Grand Chapter of the District was admitted to the General Grand chapter in 1868 and a short time after was joined by 'Potomac Chapter, No. 8. The Select Degrees were at first conferred in Chapters. When the Grand Chapter of the District of Columbia was organized in 1867 it resolved to drop the Select Degrees from Chapter work, and Companion Benjamin B. French issued Dispensations to form three Councils for the District. These, however, ceased work after a short time.
Washington Council No. 1, chartered August 14, 1883; Adoniram Council No. 2, chartered November 9, 1909, and Columbia No. 3, chartered September 30, 1918, through their representatives at a Convention held at Washington on April 5, 1919, General Grand Master George A. Newell, presiding, formed the Grand Council, Royal and Select Masters of the District of Columbia, Companion George E. Corson being the first Grand Master and John A. Colborn, Grand Recorder.
The first Commandery organized was Washington, No. 1, in the City of Washington, December 1, 1824, chartered January 14, 1825. Representatives of Washington, No. 1; Columbia, No. 2; Potomac, No. 3; De Molay Mounted, No. 4, and Orient, No. 5, met in Convention, January 14, 1896, and constituted the Grand Commandery by authority of a Warrant dated December , 1895. The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite was first introduced to Washington when Mithras Lodge of Perfection, No. 1; Evangelist Chapter of Rose Croix, No. 1; Robert de Bruce Council of kadosh, No. 1, and Albert Pike Consistory, No. 1, were chartered on December 30, 1870; December 7, 1871; January 29, 1874, and January 12, 1876, respectively.
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DIU
Understood to be an abbreviation meaning the Shining Light of Heaven. An Indian word applied to the Supreme God, of the same signification as the Greek words Zeus and Theos, and the Latin Deus, Jupiter or Jovis; in Sanskrit, Dewas; in Lettish, Dews; in Gothic, Thius; and in North German, Tyr.
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DIVINING-ROD or PEDUM
The moderator, or Royal Master, was imaged with the ureas on his forehead, the pedum and the whip between his knees. The Divining-Rod or wand of divination, a magic wand, was a symbol of pn, Hek, signifies a law, a statute, or custom; and therefore ppl, a legislator, a scepter, a king, moderator, and a pedum. Hence, a staff. It is represented by a crook surmounted on a pole. The rod of the Rose Croix Knight is dissimilar; it is straight, white, like a wand, and yet may be used as a helping or leaning staff.
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DOCUMENTS, THREE OLDEST
See Krause
DODD, REVEREND WILLIAM
Born 1729, first Grand Chaplain of England, 1775, and died 1777. Weakness of character in money matters caused him to be tried for forgery, and executed. At the dedication of Freemasons Hall in London, 1776, he delivered an oration and he was also the author of many books and literary papers. His Beauties of Shakespeare was very popular.
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DODD'S CONSTITUTIONS
This is a printed pamphlet of twenty pages, in quarto, the title being The beginning and the first Foundation of the Most Worthy Craft of Masonry; with the Charges there unto belonging. By a deceased Brother, for the benefit of his widow. London: printed for Mrs. Dodd at the Peacock without Temple Bar. 1739. Price, sixpence.
Probably this pamphlet was printed from the Spencer Manuscript; it is very rare, but the Grand Lodges of England and Iowa each have a copy and so had Brother Enoch T. Carson of Cincinnati, who reprinted 125 copies of it in 1886; it has also been reproduced in facsimile by the Quatuor Coronati Lodge in volume iv of its Masonic Reprints.
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DOG
A symbol in the Advanced Degrees (see Cynocephalus).
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DOLMEN
A name given in France to the Celtic stone tables termed in England cromlechs.
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DOMATIC
At one time, especially in Scotland, Operative Freemasons were styled Domatic, while the Speculative ones were known as Geometric; but theorigin and derivation of the terms are unknown
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DOMINE DEUS MEUS
The Hebrew term for this Latin expression is ..... , pronounced as Ad-o-noy ' El-o-hay, signifying oh Lord, my God, and referring to the Third Degree of the Scottish Rite.
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DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
Freemasonry, in the Dominican Republic, had for its center the National Grand Orient, which possessed the supreme authority and which practiced the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. The Grand Orient was divided into a National Grand Lodge, under which have been fifteen Symbolic Lodges; a sovereign Grand Chapter General, under which are all Chapters; and a Supreme Council, which controlled the Advanced Degrees of the Rite. Santo Domingo was the headquarters of Morin (see further reference to him in this work) in 1763, when he was establishing the Scottish Rite in America.
Following the formation of the Republic of Santo Domingo in 1844, a Grand Orient was established in 1858 by Lodges originally chartered by the Grand Orient of Haiti. A Grand Lodge was organized in 1865 and later in that year there came into being a Supreme Council, the two uniting as a National Grand Orient on January 1, 1866.
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DOMINICANS, ORDER OF
Founded at Toulouse, in 1215, by Dominic, or Domingo, de Guzman, who was born at Calahorra, in Old Castile, 1170. He became a traveling missionary to convert the heretical Albigenses, and established the Order for that purpose and the cure of souls. The Order was confirmed by Popes Innocent III and Honorius III, in 1216. Dress, white garment, with black cloak and pointed cap. Dominic died at Bologna, 1221, and was canonized, given saintly standing in the church, by Gregory IX in 1233
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DONATS
A class of men who were attached to the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, or Knights of Malta. They did not take the vows of the Order, but were employed in the various offices of the convent and hospital. In token of their connection with the Order, they wore what was called the demi-cross (see Knights of Malta).
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DOOR
Every well-constructed Lodge-room should be provided with two doors—one on the left hand of the Senior Warden, communicating with the preparation room; the other on his right hand, communicating with the Tiler's apartment.
The former of these is called the Inner Door, and is under the charge of the Senior Deacon; the latter is called the outer Door, and is under the charge of the Junior Deacon. In a well-furnished Lodge, each of these doors is provided with two knockers, one on the inside and the other on the outside; and the outside door has sometimes a small aperture in the center to facilitate communications between the Junior Deacon and the Tiler. This, however, is a modern innovation, and its propriety and expediency are very doubtful. No communication ought legally to be held between the inside and the outside of the Lodge except through the door, which should be opened only after regular alarm duly reported, and on the order of the Worshipful Master.
Brother Mackey here describes the common practice in the United States of America, but the arrangement he advocates is by no means universal, Brother Clegg reporting instances found abroad where he entered at the left of the Senior Warden.
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DORIC ORDER
The oldest and most original of the three Grecian orders. It is remarkable for robust solidity in the column, for massive grandeur in the entablature, and for harmonious simplicity in its construction. The distinguishing characteristic of this order is the want of a base. The flutings are few, large, and very little concave. The capital has no astragal or molding, but only one or more fillets, which separate the flutings from the torus or bead. The column of strength which supports the Lodge is of the Doric order, and its appropriate situation and symbolic officer are in the West (see Orders of Architecture).
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DORMANT LODGE
A Lodge whose Charter has not been revoked, but which has ceased to meet and work for a long time, is said to be dormant. It can be restored to activity only by the authority of the Grand Master or the Grand Lodge on the petition of some of its members, one of whom, at least, ought to be a Past Master.
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DORMER
In the Lectures, according to the present English system, the ornaments of a Master Mason's Lodge are said to be the porch, dormer, and square pavement. The dormer is the window which is supposed to give light to the Holy of Holies. In the Glossary of Architecture, a dormer is defined to be a window pierced through a sloping roof, and placed in a small gable which rises on the side of the roof. This symbol is not preserved in the American system.
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DOTAGE
The regulations of Freemasonry forbid the initiation of an old man in his dotage; and very properly, because the imbecility of his mind would prevent his comprehension of the truths presented to him.
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DOUBLE CUBE
A cubical figure, whose length is equal to twice its breadth and height. Solomon's Temple is said to have been of this figure, and hence it has sometimes been adopted as the symbol of a Masonic Lodge. Doctor Oliver (Dictionary of Symbolic Masonry) thus describes the symbolism of the double cube:
The heathen deities were many of them represented by a cubical stone. Pausanius informs us that a cube was the symbol of Mercury because, like the cube, he represented Truth. In Arabia, a black stone in the form of a double cube was reputed to be possessed of many occult virtues. Apollo was sometimes worshiped under the symbol of a square stone; and it is recorded that when a fatal pestilence raged at Delphi, the oracle was consulted as to the means proper to be adopted for the purpose of arresting its progress, and it commanded that the cube should be doubled. This was understood by the priests to refer to the altar, which was of a cubical form. They obeyed the injunction, increasing the altitude of the altar to its prescribed dimensions, like the pedestal in a Masons Lodge, and the pestilence ceased.
We may here add a few comments upon what Brother Mackey says of the double cube because the account may be understood in a somewhat different way. In fact, the famous problem of antiquity concerning the cube was not so simple as to give it twice the dimensions of its edges but to produce a cube twice the volume of another one, which is an entirely different proposition.
The origin of the problem is not definitely known but probably it was suggested by the one credited to Pythagoras, namely, squat a square or constructing a square of twice the area of a Seen square.
The account given by Doctor Oliver is credited to Eratosthenes about 200 B.C. This authority in a letter to Ptolemy Euergetes tells the history of the problem. The Delphians, suffering a pestilence, consulted their oracles and were ordered to double the volume of the altar to be erected to their god, Apollo. An altar was built having an edge double the length of the original but the plague went on unabated, the oracles not having been obeyed. However, this story is a mere fable and is given no weight at the present time.
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DOUBLE-HEADED EAGLE
See Eagle Double headed
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DOUGLAS, STEPHEN ARNOLD
American statesman, born at Brandon, Vermont, April 23, 1813, and died June 3, 1861, at Chicago. Resourceful in political leadership, his rise to national prominence was rapid. Representative from Illinois, 1843, he became Senator in 1847, unsuccessful candidate for President, 1852 and 1856, and in 1858 ably debated with Abraham Lincoln in seven cities. His petition to Springfield Lodge No. 4, at Springfield, Illinois, is reproduced in this world The original hangs in the Lodge-room and the photograph was kindly furnished us by Brother H. C. McLoud.
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DOVE
In ancient symbolism's the dove represented purity and innocence; in ecclesiology, especially in church decoration, it is a symbol of the Holy Spirit. In Freemasonry, the dove is only viewed in reference to its use by Noah as a messenger. Hence, in the Grand Lodge of England, doves are the jewels of the Deacons, because these officers are the messengers of the Masters and Wardens.
They are not so used in America. In an honorary or side Degree formerly conferred in America, and called the Arks roll of parchment, in a very clear hand, apparently and Dove, that bird is a prominent symbol.
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DOVE, KNIGHTS AND LADIES OF THE
An Brother extinct secret society, of a Masonic model, but androgynous, including both sexes, instituted at Versailles, France in 1784.
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DOWLAND MANUSCRIPT
First published by James Dowland, in the Gentelman's Magazine, May, 1815 (volume lxxxv, page 489). "Written on a long roll of parchment in a very clear hand , apparently early in the seventeenth century, and very probably is copied from a manuscript of earlier date." Brother William J. Hughan says: "Brother Woodford, Mr. Sims, and other eminent authorities, consider the original of the copy, from which the manuscript for the Gemtelman's Magazine was written, to be a scroll of at least a century earlier than the date ascribed to Mr.Dowland's manuscript, that is, about 1550."
The original manuscript from which Dowland made his copy has not yet been traced. Hughan's Old Charades, the edition of 1872, contains a reprint of the Douwland Manuscript.
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DRAESEKE, JOHAN HEINRICH DERNHARDT
A celebrated pulpit orator of great eloquence, born at Brunswick, 1774, and died at Potsdam, 1849, who presided over the Lodge named Oelzweig, meaning, the Olive Branch, in Bremen, for three years, and whose contributions to Masonic literature were collected and published in 1865, by A. W. Muller, under the title of Bishop Dräseke as a Mason, in German Der Bischof Draseke als Maurer. Of this work Findel says that it "contains a string of costly pearls full of Masonic eloquence."
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DRAKE, FRANCIS
Francis Drake, M.D., F.R.S., a celebrated antiquary and historian, was initiated in the city of York in 1725, and, as Hughan says, "soon made his name felt in Masonry." His promotion was rapid; for in the same year he was chosen Junior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of York, and in 1726 delivered an address, which was published with the following title: A Speech delivered to the Worshipful and Ancient Society of Free and Accepted Masons, at a Grand Lodge held at Merchants' Hall, in the city of York, on St. John's Day, December the 27th, 1726. The Right Worshipful Charles Bathurst, Esq., Grand Master. By the Junior Grand Warden. Olim meminisse Juvabit. York.
The Latin expression here is quoted from the Poet Vergil, recalling the joys of other times. The address was published in York without any date, but probably in 1727, and reprinted in London in 1729 and 1734. It has often been reproduced since and can be found in Hughan's Masonic Sketches and Reprints. In this work Brother Drake makes the important statement that the first Grand Lodge in England was held at York; and that while it recognizes the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge in London as Grand Master of England, it claims that its own Grand Master is Grand Master of all England. The speech is also important for containing a very early reference to the three Degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason.
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DRAMA
See Scenic Representations; Mysteries, Ancient, and Master Mason
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DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF FREEMASONRY
Freemasonry has frequently supplied the play writers with a topic for the exercise of their genius. Kloss (Bibliographic, page 300) gives the titles of no less than forty-one plays of which Freemasonry has been the subject. Brother William Rufus Chetwood wrote the libretto of an opera entitled The Generous Freemason and this was given a first performance in London in 1730. An account of it has been printed by Brother Richard Northcott of the Covent Garden Theater, London, England. The earliest Masonic play is noticed by Thory (Annales Oripnis Magni Galliarum Orientis, ou Histoire de la Fondation du Grand Orient de France, meaning the History of the Foundation of the Grand Orient of France, page 360), as having been performed at Paris, in 1739, under the title of Les freemasons. Editions of it were subsequently published at London, Brunswick, and Strasbourg. In 1741, we have Das Geheimniss der Freimaurer, the Freemason's Secret, at Frankfort and Leipzig.
France and Germany made many other contributions to the Masonic drama. Even Denmark supplied one in 1745, and Italy in 1785. The English dramatists give us only a pantomime, Harlequin Freemasons which was brought out at Covent Garden in 1781, and Solomon's Temple, an oratorio. Templarism has not been neglected by the dramatists. Kalchberg, in 1788, wrote Die Tempelherren, meaning The Templars, a dramatic poem in the German language in five acts. Odon de Saint-Amand, Grand Maître des Templiers, the latter title meaning Grand Master of the Templars, a melodrama in three acts, was performed at Paris in 1806. Jacques Molai, a melodrama, was published at Paris in 1807, and La Mort de Jacques Molai, meaning in English the Death of James Molai, a tragedy, in 1812. Some of the plays on Freemasonry were intended to do honor to the Order, and many to throw ridicule upon it.
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DRESDEN, CONGRESS OF
A General Congress of the Lodges of Saxony was held in Dresden, in 1811, where the representatives of twelve Lodges were present. In this Congress it was determined to recognize only the Freemasonry of Saint John, and to construct a National Grand Lodge. Accordingly, on September 28, 1811, the National Grand Lodge of Saxony was established in the city of Dresden, which was soon joined by all the Saxon Lodges, with the exception of one in Leipzig. Although it recognized only the Symbolic Degrees, it permitted great freedom in the selection of a ritual; and, accordingly, some of its Lodges worked in the Rite of Fessler, and others in the Rite of Berlin.
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DRESS OF A FREEMASON
See Clothed
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DROP CLOTH
A part of the furniture used in the United States of America in the ceremony of the Third Degree.
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DROPS, THREE
Refers to mystic number of drops of blood from the White Giant, that in the Persian mysteries restored sight to the captives in the cell of horrors when applied by the conqueror Rustam. In India, a girdle of three triple threads was deemed holy; 80 were three drops of water in Brittany, and the same number of drops of blood in Mexico.
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DRUIDICAL MYSTERIES
The Druids were a sacred order of priests who existed in Britain and Gaul, but whose mystical rites were practiced in most perfection in the former country, where the isle of Anglesea was considered as their principal seat. Godfrey Higgins thinks that they were also found in Germany, but against this opinion we have the positive statement of Caesar.
The meanings given to the word have been very numerous, and most of them wholly untenable. The Romans, seeing that they worshiped in groves of oak, because that tree was peculiarly sacred among them, derived their name from the Greek word, apes, drus thus absurdly seeking the etymology of a word of an older language in one comparatively modern. Their derivation would have been more reasonable had they known that in Sanskrit druma is an oak, from dru, meaning wood. It has also been traced to the Hebrew with equal incorrectness, for the Druids were not of the Semitic race. Its derivation is rather to be sought in the Celtic language. The Gaelic word Druiah signifies a holy or wise man; in a bad sense a magician; and this we may readily trace to the Aryan druh, applied to the spirit of night or darkness, whence we have the Zend dru, a magician. Druidism was a mystical profession, and in the olden time mystery and magic were always confounded. Charles Vallencey (Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicus, iii 503) says: "Walsh, Drud, a Druid, that is the absolver or remitter of sins; so the Irish Drui, a Druid, most certainly is from the Persic duru, meaning a good and holy man"; and Ousely (Collectanea Oriental iv, 302) adds to this the Arabic dari, which means a wise man. Bosworth (Anglo-Saxon Dictionary) gives dry, pronounced dru, as the Anglo-Saxon for a magician, sorcerer, druid. Probably with the old Celts the Druids occupied the same place as the Magi did with the old Persians.
Druidism was divided into three orders or Degrees, which were, beginning with the lowest the Bards, the Prophets, and the Druids. Godfrey Higgins thinks that the prophets were the lowest order, but he admits that it is not generally allowed. The constitution of the Order was in many respects like that of the Freemasons. In every country there was an Arch-Druid in whom all authority was placed. In Britain it is said that there were under him three arch-flamens or priests, and twenty-five flamens. There was an annual assembly for the administration of justice and the making of laws, and, besides, four quarterly meetings, which took place on the days when the sun reached his equinoctial and solstitial points. The latter two would very nearly correspond at this time with the festivals of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist. It was not lawful to commit their ceremonies or doctrines to writing, and Caesar says (Commentarii de bello Gallico vi, 14) that they used the Greek letters, which was, of course, as a cipher; but Godfrey Higgins (page 90) says that one of the Irish Ogum alphabets, which Toland calls secret writing, "was the original, sacred, and secret character of the Druids."
The places of worship, which were also places of initiation, were of various forms: circular, because a circle was an emblem of the universe; or oval, in allusion to the mundane egg, from which, according to the Egyptians, our first parents issued; or serpentine, because a serpent was a symbol of Hu, the druidical Noah; or winged, to represent the motion of the Divine Spirit; or cruciform, because a cross was the emblem of regeneration.
Their only covering was the clouded canopy, because they deemed it absurd to confine the Omnipotent beneath a roof; and they were constructed of embankments of earth, and of unhewn stones, unpolluted with a metal tool. Nor was anyone permitted to enter their sacred retreats, unless he bore a chain.
The ceremony of initiation into the Druidical Mysteries required much preliminary mental preparation and physical purification. The aspirant was clothed with the three sacred colors, white, blue, and green; white as the symbol of Light, blue of Truth, and green of Hope. When the rites of initiation were passed, the tri-colored robe was changed for one of green; in the Second Degree, the candidate was clothed in blue; and having surmounted all the dangers of the Third, and arrived at the summit of perfection, he received the red tiara and flowing mantle of purest white. The ceremonies were numerous, the physical proofs painful, and the mental trials appalling. They commenced in the First Degree, with placing the aspirant in the pastes, bed or coffin, where his symbolical death was represented, and they terminated in the Third, by his regeneration or restoration to life from the womb of the giantess Ceridwin, and the committal of the body of the newly born to the waves in a small boat, symbolical of the ark. The result was, generally, that he succeeded in reaching the safe landing-place, but if his arm was weak, or his heart failed, death was the almost inevitable consequence. If he refused the trial through timidity, he was contemptuously rejected, and declared forever ineligible to participate in the sacred rites. But if he undertook it and succeeded, he was joyously invested with all the privileges of Druidism.
The doctrines of the Druids were the same as those entertained by Pythagoras. They taught the existence of one Supreme Being; a future state of rewards and punishment; the immortality of the soul, and a metempsychosis; and the object of their mystic rites was to communicate these doctrines in symbolic language, an object and a method common alike to Druidism, to the Ancient Mysteries and to Modern Freemasonry (see also Druidism, Dudley Wright, London, 1924, containing a bibliography of the subject).
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DRUMMOND, JOSIAH HAYDEN
Born 1827, Brother Drummond was made a Freemason in 1849, and died on October 25, 1902, aged seventy-five. He served at the head of all the Masonic Bodies of his State, Maine, and had also been Grand High Priest of the General Grand Chapter, Grand Master of the General Grand Council, and Grand Commander of the Supreme Council, Northern Masonic Jurisdiction, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. A Freemason for fifty-four years, this Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Maine, 1860 to 1862, was for thirty-eight y ears a vigorous writer of the Foreign Correspondence Reports and of other valuable works on Freemasonry. Christopher Diehl of the Grand Lodge of Utah wrote of him in the Proceedings of 1903, "His whole life was devoted to Freemasonry and for it he did his best work and because of that work he will live in the hearts of his Brethren for all time to come. The world is better off because he lived. His fame is secure. May his last sleep be sweet." At the anniversary of the one hundred years since the death of Washington, conducted by the Grand Lodge of Virginia at Mount Vernon on December 14, 1899, when no less than seventeen Grand Masters were present together with the President of the United States, Brother Drummond was introduced by the Grand Master as follows:
"First of all I wish to call upon one whom Freemasonry delights to honor. The most erudite and accomplished Masonic scholar our century has known, the charm of whose personality and the strength of whose character, coupled with a conservative, calm and judicial mind, has made him not only beloved but a power of usefulness throughout the whole Masonic Fraternity" (see` Proceedings of the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, 1900).
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DRUSES
A sect of mystic religionists who inhabit Mounts Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon, in Syrian 294. They settled there about the tenth century, and are said to be a mixture of Cuthites or Kurds, Mardi Arabs, and possibly of Crusaders; all of whom were added, by subsequent immigrations, to the original stock to constitute the present or modern race of Druses.
Their religion is a heretical compound of Judaism, Christianity, and Mohammedism; the last of which, greatly modified, predominates in their faith. They have a regular order of priesthood, the office being filled by persons consecrated for the purpose, comprising principally the emirs and sheiks, who form a secret organization divided into several Degrees, keep the sacred books, and hold secret religious assemblies. Their sacred books are written in antiquated Arabic. The Druses are divided into three classes or Degrees, according to religious distinctions. To enable one Druse to recognize another, a system of passwords is adopted, without an interchange of which no communication is made that may give an idea of their religious tenets (see Tien's Druse Religion Unveiled). Doctor Clarke tells us in his Travels that "one class of the Druses are to the rest what the initiated are to the profane, and are called Okkals, which means spiritualists; and they consider themselves superior to their countrymen. They have various degrees of initiation."
Colonel Churchill in his Ten Years' Residence on Mount Lebanon, tells us that among this singular people there is an order having many similar customs to the Freemasons. It requires a twelve months' probation previous to the admission of a member. Both sexes are admissible. In the second year the novice assumes the distinguishing mark of the white turban, and afterward, by Degrees, is allowed to participate ;,n the whole of the mysteries. Simplicity of attire, self-denial, temperance, and irreproachable moral conduct are essential to admission to the order. All of these facts have led to the theory that the Druses are an offshoot from the early Freemasons, and that their connection with the latter is derived from the Crusaders, who, according to the same theory, are supposed to have acquired their Freemasonry during their residence in Palestine. Some writers go so far as to say that the Degree of Prince of Libanus, the Twenty-second in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, refers to the ancestors of these mystical mountaineers in Syria.
Several chapters deal with the Dresses in the Secret Sects of Syria and the Lebanon, by Brother Bernard H. Springett, London.
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DUAD
The number two in the Pythagorean system of numbers.
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DUALISM
The state of being two-fold, as good and evil, for example. In the old mythologies, there was a doctrine which supposed the world to have been always governed by two antagonistic principles, distinguished as the good and the evil principle. This doctrine pervaded all the Oriental religions. Thus in the system of Zoroaster, one of the great religious teachers of the East we have Ahriman and Ormuzd, and in the Hebrew cosmogony, their explanation of the system of the universe, we find the Creator and the Serpent. There has been a remarkable development of this system in the three degrees of Symbolic Freemasonry, which everywhere exhibit in their organization, their symbolism, and their design, the pervading influences of this principle of dualism. Thus, in the First Degree, there is Darkness overcome by might; in the Second, Ignorance dispersed by Snout e, and in the Third, Death conquered by Eternal Life
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DUB
In the ancient ceremonies of chivalry, a knight was made by giving him three strokes on the neck with the flat end of the sword, and he was then said to be dubbed a knight. Dubbing is from the Saxon, dubban, meaning to strike with a blow. sir Thomas Smith (English Commonwealth), who wrote in the sixteenth century, says:
And when any man is made a knight, he, kneeling down, is strooken of the prince, with his sword naked, upon the back or shoulder the prince saying, Sus or sois chevalier au nom de Dieu, the two expressions in French meaning Be of good cheer, Knight, in God's name, and in times past they added St. George, and at his arising the prince sayeth, Avancey. This is the manner of dubbing of knights at this present; and that term dubbing was the old term in this point, and not creation.
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DUE EAST AND WEST
A Lodge is said to be situated due east and west for reasons which have varied at different periods in the ritual and lectures (see Orientation).
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DUE EXAMINATION
That sort of examination which is correct and prescribed by law. It is one of the three modes of proving a strange Brother; the other two being strict trial and lawful information (see Vouching).
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DUE FORM
When the Grand Lodge is opened, or any other Masonic ceremony performed, by the Deputy Grand Master in the absence of the Grand Master, it is said to be done in due form. Subordinate Lodges are always said to be opened and closed in due form. It is derived from the French word du, and that from devoir, meaning to owe, that which is owing or ought to be done. Due form is the form in which an act ought to be done to be done rightly. The French expression is En due form (see Ample Form).
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DUE GUARD
A mode of recognition which derives its name from its object, which is to duly guard the person using it in reference to his obligations, and the penalty for their violation. The Due Guard is an Americanism, and of comparatively recent origin, being unknown to the English and Continental systems. In some of the old books of the date of 1757, the expression is used, but only as referring to what is now called the Sign. Dieu garde is similar in pronunciation to Due Guard and means God preserve. This similarity is worth consideration.
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DUELING
This has always been considered a Masonic crime, and some of the Grand Lodges have enacted statutes by which Freemasons who engage in duels with each other are subject to expulsion. The Monde Maçonnique, the Masonic World, a French publication, May, 1858, gives the following correct view on this subject:
A Freemason who allows himself to be involved in :3 duel and who possesses not sufficient discretion to be able to make reparation without cowardice and without having recourse to this barbarous extremity destroys by that impious act the contract which binds him to his brethren. His sword or his pistol, though it may seem to spare his adversary, still commits a murder for it destroys his brothers from that time fraternity no longer exists for him.
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DUES
The payment of annual dues by a member to his Lodge is a comparatively modern custom, and one that certainly did not exist before the revival of 1717. As previous to that period, according to Preston, Lodges received no Warrants, but a sufficient number of Brethren meeting together were competent to practice the Rites of Freemasonry, and as soon as the special business which called them together had been accomplished, they separated; there could have been no permanent organization of Speculative Freemasons, and no necessity for contributions to constitute a Lodge fund.
Dues must therefore have been unknown except in the Lodges of Operative Freemasons, which, as we find, especially in Scotland, had a permanent existence.
There is, accordingly, no regulation in any of the old Constitutions for the payment of dues. Brother Mackey held that it is not a general Masonic duty, in which the Freemason is affected to the whole of the Craft, but an arrangement between himself and his Lodge, with which the Grand Lodge ought not to interfere. As the payment of dues is not a duty owing to the Craft in general, so, in his opinion, the non-payment of them is not an offense against the Craft, but simply against his Lodge, the only punishment for which should be striking from the roll or discharge from membership.
Brother Mackey reports that in his day it was the almost universal opinion of Masonic jurists that suspension or expulsion from the Order is a punishment that should never be inflicted for non-payment of dues. However, the reader must be referred to the Masonic Code of his own Jurisdiction for the practice prevailing there.
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DUMBNESS
Inability to speak. Although the faculty of speech is not one of the five human senses, it is important as the medium of communicating instruction, admonition, or reproof, and the person who does not possess it is unfitted to perform the most important duties of life. Hence dumbness disqualifies a candidate for Masonic initiation.
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DUMM
A word that has been used in the Grand Chapter of Minnesota to signify what is more usually called a substitute in the Royal Arch Degree.
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DUNCKERLEY, THOMAS
No one, among the Freemasons of England, occupied a more distinguished position or played a more important part in the labors of the Craft during the latter part of the eighteenth century than Thomas Dunckerley, whose private life was as romantic as his Masonic career was honorable. Thomas Dunckerley was born in the city of London on the 23d of October, 1724. He was the reputed son of a Mr. and Mrs. (Mary) Dunekerley, but really owed his birth to a personage of a much higher rank in life, being the natural son of the Prince of Wales, afterward George II, to whom he bore, as his portrait shows, a striking resemblance. It was not until after his mother's death that he became acquainted with the true history of his birth; so that for more than half of his life this son of a king occupied a very humble position on the stage of the world, and was sometimes even embarrassed with the pressure of poverty and distress.
At the age of ten he entered the navy, and continued in the service for twenty-six years, acquiring, by his intelligence and uniformly good conduct, the esteem and commendation of all his commanders. But having no personal or family interest, he never attained to any higher rank than that of a gunner. During all this time, except at brief intervals, he was absent from England on foreign service.
He returned to his native country in January, 1760, to find that his mother had died a few days before, and that on her death-bed she had made 3 solemn declaration, accompanied by such details as left no possible doubt of its truth, that Thomas was the illegitimate son of King George II, born while he was Prince of Wales. The fact of the birth had, however, never been communicated by the mother to the prince, and George II died without knowing that he had such a son living.
Dunckerley, in the account of the affair which he left among his posthumous papers, says: "This information gave me great surprise and much uneasiness; and as I was obliged to return immediately to my duty on board the Vanguard, I made it known to no person at that time but Captain Swanton. He said that those who did not know me would look on it to be nothing more than a gossip's story. We were then bound a second time to Quebec, and Captain Swanton did promise me that on our return to England he would endeavor to get me introduced to the king, and that he would give me a character; but when we came back to England the king was dead." Dunckerley had hoped that his case would have been laid before his royal father, and that the result would have been an appointment equal to his birth. But the frustration of these hopes by the death of the king seems to have discouraged him, and no efforts appear for some time to have been made by him or his friends to communicate the facts to George III, who had succeeded to the throne.
In 1761 he again left England as a gunner in Lord Anson's fleet, and did not return until 1764, at which time, finding himself embarrassed with 3 heavy debt, incurred in the expenses of his family, for he had married in early life, in the year 1744, knowing no person who could authenticate the story of his birth, and seeing no probability of gaining access -to the ear of the king, he sailed in a merchant vessel for the Mediterranean. He had previously been granted superannuation in the navy in consequence of his long services, and received a small pension, the principal part of which he left for the support of his family during his absence.
But the romantic story of his birth began to be publicly known and talked about, and in 1766 attracted the attention of several persons of distinction, who endeavored, but without success, to excite the interest of the Princess Dowager of Wales in his behalf.
In 1767, however, the declaration of his mother was laid before the king, who was George III, the grandson of his father. It made an impression on him, and inquiry into his previous character and conduct having proved satisfactory, in May 7, 1767, the king ordered Dunckerley to receive a pension of £100, which was subsequently increased to £800, together with a suite of apartments in Hampton Court Palace. He also assumed, and was permitted to bear, the royal arms, with the distinguishing badge of the bend sinister, and adopted as his motto the appropriate words Fato non merito, meaning By destiny, not merit. In his familiar correspondence, and in his book-plates, he used the name of Fitzy George.
In 1770 he became a student of law, and in 1774 was called to the bar; but his fondness for an active life prevented him from ever making much progress in the legal profession.
Dunckerley died at Portsmouth in the year 1795, at the ripe age of seventy-one; but his last years were embittered by the misconduct of his son, whose extravagance and dissolute conduct necessarily afflicted the mind while it straitened the means of the unhappy parent. Every effort to reclaim him proved utterly ineffectual; and on the death of his father, no provision being left for his support, he became a vagrant, living for the most part on Masonic charity. At last he became a bricklayer's laborer, and was often seen ascending a ladder with a hod on his shoulders. His misfortunes and his misconduct at length found an end, and the grandson of a king of England died a pauper in a cellar at St. Giles.
Dunckerley was initiated into Freemasonry on January 10, 1754, in a Lodge, No. 31, which then met at the Three Tuns, Portsmouth; in 1760 he obtained a Warrant for a Lodge to be held on board the Vanguard, in which ship he was then serving; in the following year the Vanguard sailed for the West Indies, and Dunckerley was appointed to the Prince, for which ship a Lodge was warranted in 1762; this Warrant Dunckerley appears to have retained when he left the service, and in 1766 the Lodge was meeting at Somerset House, where Dunckerley was then living. In 1768 the Vanguard Lodge was revived in London, with Dunckerley as its first Master, and it exists to the present day under the name of the London Lodge, No. 108.
In 1767 he joined the present Lodge of Friendship; in 1785 he established a Lodge at Hampton Court, now No. 255. In 1767 he was appointed Provincial Grand Master of Hampshire, and in 1776 Provincial Grand Master for Essex, and at various dates he was placed in charge of the provinces of Bristol, Dorsetshire, Gloucestershire, Somersetshire, and Herefordshire. In Royal Arch Masonry Dunckerley displayed equal activity as in Craft Masonry; he was exalted at Portsmouth in 1754 and in 1766 joined the London Chapter, which in the following year became a Grand Chapter.
He was especially active in promoting Arch Masonry all over the country and was in charge of the English counties of Essex, Hants, Kent, Wilts, Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Gloucester, Suffolk, Sussex and Durham.
He was also a most zealous Knight Templar, being in 1791 the first Grand Master of the Order when the Grand Conclave was formed in London.
He was also a Mark Mason. A Charge, or Oration, is still extant, which was delivered by him at Plymouth in April, 1757, entitled The Light and Truth of Masonry Explained. He was also the author of A Song for the Knights Templar, and of an Ode for an Exaltation of Royal Arch Masons. These will be found in Thomas Dunckerley—his Life, Labors and Letters, by H. Sadler, 1891. Brother Hawkins in submitting the foregoing article points out that it is often asserted that Dunckerley revised the Craft Lectures and reconstructed the Royal Arch Degree, but there is no proof forthcoming of these statements. However, we may add to the comment by Brother Hawkins an observation by Brother Sadler (page 224) where he tells us that the publication of the various Charges, etc., by Brother Dunckerley are of such a character that they not unlikely thereby originated the tradition that he had revised or remodeled the Craft Lectures; but to Brother Sadler it seemed more than probable that the compiler of the Lectures made a very free use of Dunckerley's brains in the work of compilation.
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DUPATY, LOUIS EMANUEL CHARLES MERCIER
The author of many Masonic songs and other fugitive pieces inserted in the Annales Maçonniques. He wrote in 1810, with Révéroui de Saint-Cyr a comic opera entitled Cagliostro ou les Illuminés In 1818 he published a Masonic tale entitled l'Harmonie. He was a poet and dramatic writer of some reputation. He was born in the Gironde in 1775, elected to the French Academy in 1835, and died in 1851.
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DURER, ALBRECHT
Famous German painter and engraver. Born at Nuremberg, May 21, 1471 died April 6, 1528. His mystically symbolic copper plates are particularly interesting and significant. The most important from a Masonic point of view is probably one entitled Melancholy (see illustration) in which is seen an exposition of medieval Freemasonry which suggests that Durer was familiar with the Fraternity of his time, possibly associated with the Nuremberg Lodge, and may have been a member of it (see American Freemason, November, 1911, page 21).
A suggestive examination of the symbolism of this 1514 copper-plate engraving was made by W. P. Tuckerman and translated by R. T. House, appeared in the Open Court, July, 1911, and extracts from it are by permission of the editor, Brother Paul Carus, given as follows: "A promising field for investigation is furnished by Albrecht Durer's copper-engravings, etchings and wood-cuts which, in addition to their other great merits in the faithful portrayal of the life of his time, have caught and handed on to us many old traditions. Real mines of information are Durer's mystically symbolic copper-plates. Of these puzzling will-o-the-wisps the most important is the one entitled 'Melancholy', which was formerly considered the first picture in a cycle representing the various moods of the soul but which now, viewed in the light of the Nuremberg developments, is seen to be an exposition of medieval Freemasonry. In Strasbourg, 1598, Emperor Maximilian gave to German Lodges, whose patron and honorary brother he was, a new organization, charter, and coat of arms.
The years from 1439 to 1477 were occupied in the Construction of the choir of the Church of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg, with its rich, artistic Gothic vaulted roof; and when we remember the dates of Durer's birth and death, 1471 and 1528, the figures fit together so well that the probabilities seem to point to Durer's personal contact with the Nuremberg fraternity, and his knowledge of their teachings; and a closer examination of his engraving 'Melancholy' will show very clearly that he is enforcing the ethical doctrines of Freemasonry by conventional symbolic formulas.
"Symbolism, that double form of expression, having a naive and innocent form for the larger public and a hidden meaning for the intelligent initiated, is well known to have been the resource of the medieval freethinking teacher who was forced to pick his way with the utmost care among the rocks of the Inquisition. Victor Hugo calls the images on the portals of Notre Dame the 'freedom of the press' of that epoch. It was natural that the architects, sculptors and painters of the Middle Ages, in their criticisms and satires directed at social evils, should have shielded themselves from the Church, which, moreover, employed symbolism in the promulgation of her own mystic dogmas. Hence it is that Durer avails himself of this stratagem in the promulgation of his humanistic ideas by his drawings, which were sold at the fairs under the inquisitorial eye of the Church; although the Church, in spite of her severe punishment of humanistic activities, was unable to prevent the public appearance of the Reformation in Nuremberg after the year 1524. "During Durer's stay in Italy as a student in 1505, which took him to Bologna, he undoubtedly made the acquaintance of the academies there, as appears clearly from copper-plates like 'Great and Little Fortune.' On the other hand, in view of his extensive knowledge of mathematics and engineering he must have been associated with the Nuremberg Lodge, and was probably even a member of it. That he publicly handled the ethical doctrines of the latter, which through their agreement with teachings of the humanists were already known to a large circle of the uninitiated, in the regular symbolic language, indicates that the most severely kept secrets in the Lodge were not these teachings, but some ritual which is known no longer.
"When we examine the picture of 'Melancholy' in a purely objective fashion, we come to the conclusion, from a view of the most elevated figure, that of the writing angel, that the theme is some divine command which this being is communicating, a revelation or an ethical teaching. The content of the latter is drastically brought out, as always with Durer, by a sharp contrast, the contrast in this ease being the lower material handicraft and the higher symbolic labor, so that in the arrangement of figures the former is placed on a lower level, the latter on an elevated platform. On this level appears the prominent figure of the whole picture, a genius with mighty wings, much larger than the little angel, who in accordance with the old symbolism is represented as a small winged child.
The leading figure is a woman in rich festal attire, a garland on her loosened hair, her head supported thoughtfully on her left arm. Her right arm rests on a book, probably the Bible, and in her right hand she holds an open pair of ornamented compasses with which she is drawing figures on the tablet on her knees suggested by the form into which her skirt is drawn. Humanistically interpreted, this genius is the personification of some virtue operating with the writing angel, and the use of the compasses suggests the activity of the Masons. The explanation is given added weight by the polygonal structure with the ladder and the great building-stone leaning against it. But all this does not mean the completion of the work; it has only symbolical significance. In this the three great Platonic virtues, beauty, wisdom and strength, play a leading part as the means to human perfection just as Raphael, for instance, treats them in the Segaatura and are here evident as the content of the three main elements in the picture. First the angel, who sits on a round stone hung with a rich fringed cover, symbolizes wisdom because he is the means of divine revelation. At his left the great winged genius, the prominent person in the picture is Beauty. In her is symbolically represented the main interest of the fraternity; she is their guide and adviser, who teaches them to handle the compasses in the production of beautiful architectural figures. Finally, at the right of Wisdom, Strength is represented, not in a personification, but by an indication of the result, by a symbolizing of labor as the principal object of the effective Masonic Lodge. This lesson is taught by the great, many-sided building stone, with the shaping-hammer at its side, the conventional symbol of labor. The logical conclusion of this ethical teaching is the landscape in the background, with a sun breaking forth from rain-clouds and a diabolical creature who has no place in the calm scene and who is hastening to leave it, bearing a sign which labels him Melancholy.
"This sad attitude of soul, which would today be called pessimism, is ascribed only to the fleeing, banished devil, not to the genius of Beauty serious as this personage, in common with Durer's characters in general, appears nor to the picture as a whole, which is thus wrongly named. The general characterization of the engraving as the ethical content of Freemasonry is borne out by the symbolic additions. In the first place it is significant that exactly over the angel on the outer wall of the polygonal structure the scales are hung, the well-known symbol for the judgment of the world and divine justice. This arrangement therefore characterizes the polygonal structure as a temple, the symbol for the perfection of all humanity. Only two faces of the building are represented, before whose broader front sits the genius of Beauty. Beauty, according to the Platonic conception, is moderation and harmony of the soul; in technical Masonry it is rhythm in architectural proportions.
This genius has a secret to guard, as is indicated by the bunch of keys and the bag suspended from her girdle. The subject of the secret is indicated again by the articles on the temple wall, especially the hour glass, the symbol of our fast fleeting life and the careful valuing of earthly and heavenly goods. On the dial above the hour-glass the hand stands between the figures three and four, which can be distinctly seen with a magnifying glass. These two numbers play an important part in the figure that follows, which is a so-called magic square hung up likewise on the temple wall, and reading 34 in every direction. If the reader will make the trial with the numbers from 1 to 16 written in the sixteen squares he will be astonished at the result. The same sum, 34, is obtained not only in the horizontal and vertical rows, but also in the diagonals, in the four smaller squares, in the middle square, etc. In the symbolism of numbers, three is the number of completeness and four indicates the extension of space in four directions, to the right, to the left, upward and downward.
Hence four is the symbol for the world and the house, moreover, for the Masonic Lodge and the Masonic fraternity. If these symbols are combined with the bell symbol above, the meaning is this, and may be put into the mouth of the genies as follows: Here sits the genius of Beauty, whose efforts are directed toward securing harmony between God and the world, and in view of the transitory nature of life she invites an active interest in the symbolic temple structure, which represents a perfected world.
" All these explanations are taken from well-known works on Christian symbolism and the symbols of the old Christian catacombs. The seven-runged ladder also, which leads into the temple, has its significance, as have the surfaces of the great building stone. We must assume that Durer, the accurate draughtsman, has made a correct picture; and in fact anyone who goes scientifically to work to procure the projections of this stone will be surprised at the many conclusions to be derived from a study of this traditional piece of apprentice work. one surface is an equilateral triangle, another a regular pentagon, two are trapezoids and two irregular pentagons. An architect acquainted with old buildings recognizes the block as the keystone for the vaulted ceiling of a six-sided cloister room, a chapel with a round aspe in which belongs the flat circular stone, whose center where the altar stands is cut with a double opening, all with symbolic significance. The keystone is to be so placed that the triangular side comes underneath, with the point toward the altar and the base toward the entrance. It is easy to reconstruct such a building, and the result opens up a wonderful perspective into some as yet unknown connection between the Masons and the Templars, the Order which was destroyed in 1313 and whose prototype for all their chapel structures is just the plan we have described. One more symbol is to be mentioned, the melting-pot which stands beside the stone, burning vigorously and ready to fuse the lead. This symbol is unknown elsewhere, but can reasonably be assumed to indicate the Brotherhood fused together in love, as the clamps and braces are leaded and secured by the help of the flame. "We have already spoken of the landscape in the background, but we must add that there is no evidence of a comet, as some commentators insist; it is the sun breaking through rain-clouds and sending out somewhat exaggerated beams. If it were not the sun the rainbow could not be where it is, seen by the spectator with his back to the sun, so that he looks out of the picture. According to the old Christian symbolism the rainbow is a sign of peace and the covenant between God and men. When this alliance with the Most High is perfected, the bat like, nocturnal devil's imp, Melancholy, flees from the temple and the scene. On the label there appears after the word which has led to so mistaken a conclusion, a figure 1 or an i. The scholars who insist on a series of four pictures dealing with moods of the soul, considered this drawing the first because they read a 1; but if it is the letter i, it indicates an abbreviated Latin word, appropriate to the general tone of the picture, for example iacet. Then it reads 'Melancholia iacet', Melancholy falls in defeat or flees, which indicates the thought of the picture as a whole. Now if the old interpretation of the engraving, which makes the great winged genius the personification of Melancholy, is abandoned, and the new one accepted, the meaning of the articles scattered about on the ground is clear. They are the carelessly dropped, as it were discarded, tools of the trade at the feet of the winged genius, just as in Raphael's celebrated picture, Saint Cecilia, discards the musical instruments which seem to her inadequate.
"In contrast to the higher symbolic spiritual instruments, these tools, pliers, beveling tool, plumb line, plane, iron band, saw and nails, represent incompleteness. But among them we see the sleeping dog, the ball, and an article which is not absolutely clear, but which is perhaps a vessel for incense. The dog, who lies very significantly under the round altarstone, represents in Christian symbolism, on account of his watchfulness and fidelity, the priestly order, as is indicated by the phrase Domini canes. When this order disregards its duty and, like the dog here, falls asleep, it belongs among the discarded tools and gives the laity who constitute the Masonic fraternity the right to open communication with the Most High without clerical mediation. As a pendant to this, could not the article lying near, an unused incense vessel, the symbol for the prayers which are pleasing to God, indicate that this vessel, belonging to the priesthood, is also discarded and that in its place we have the loving alliance of those who seek perfection through their own efforts, symbolized by the melting pot? The ball, elsewhere a mathematical sign of completeness, here standing for the earth, is probably also a symbol of earthly imperfection, in view of which the flight into purer regions of the spirit seems all the more necessary.
" Many scholars undervalue Durer's inventive independence. Thus we read in Dohne's Runst und Kunst 'There is no reason for imputing profound thoughts to him; Durer was no nineteenth century philosophical thinker, but his was a genuine artist nature, and in works like "Melancholy," "Nemesis," and others, we may be sure that he was working under the orders of learned patrons.' Who of the Nuremberg humanists Pirkheimer perhaps, or the townclerk Lazarus Spengler—could have coupled with his philosophical training so intimate a knowledge of the practical demands of stone-masonry? It is just here we have an evidence of Durer's peculiar nature, which this ethically symbolic material, appealing to his mystic bent, fitted exactly. Hence this profound artist-philosopher, who sought to train his contemporaries in wisdom and beauty to strength, becomes for us a still far from exhausted source of the highest pleasure and the noblest teaching."
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DUTCH GUIANA
See Surinam
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DUTY
The duty of a Freemason as an honest man is plain and easy. It requires of him honesty in contracts, sincerity in affirming, simplicity in bargaining, and faithfulness in performing. To sleep little, and to study much; to say little, and to hear and think much; to learn, that he may be able to do; and then to do earnestly and vigorously whatever the good of his fellows, his country, and mankind requires, are the duties of every Freemason.
Northern Freemason is quoted in Palmer Templegram. September, 1926, to the following effect: The very first duty that an Entered Apprentice acknowledges is to improve himself in Masonry. How many truly and sincerely attempt to discharge that duty? What would be the success of a lawyer who ever again looked into a law book after his admission D the bar- a minister of the Gospel, who never read the Bible after his ordination; a doctor who never took up medical work after securing his sheepskin; or that f any other profession, who does not take up post graduate studies?
And yet you find Freemasons pretending to be Masonic lights, who never read a Grand Lodge Proceedings a report on Foreign Correspondence, or a Masonic periodical Some of them, perhaps, can glibly repeat certain portions of the ritual, but could not give an intelligent interpretation of the same to save their lives.
Masonic reading is an essential part of the education of a Freemason, and it is never too late to begin, but it is always better to begin early. It is the duty of the Worshipful ;Master to impress this fact upon newly-made Masons, but if they themselves are in the class of nonreaders. how can we expect from them such wholesome advice?
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DYAUS
Sanskrit for sky; Might; exalted. Therefore the word becomes significant of the Deity, the sun, the celestial canopy, the firmament.
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DYE NA SORE
or Die Wanderer aus dem Sanskrit Ubersetzt. A Masonic romance, by Von Meyern, which appeared at Vienna in 1789, and contains a complete account of Masonic festivities.
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