ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FREEMASONRY AND ITS KINDRED SCIENCES
by ALBERT C. MACKEY M. D.

B

BERITH

The Hebrew Word meaning a covenant. A significant word in several of the advanced degrees.

BERLIN

Capital of the old kingdom of Prussia, and the seat of three Grand Lodges, namely: the Grand National Mother Lodge, founded in 1744; the Grand Lodge of Germany, founded in 1770, and the Grand Lodge of Royal York of Friendship, founded in 1798 (see German y).

BERMUDAS

A small group of islands in the West Atlantic Ocean. The first Provincial Grand Master of the Bermudas was Brother Alured Popple, appointed by Lord Strathmore in 1744. A Lodge was chartered in 1761 by the Grand Lodge, “Moderns,” of England as Union Lodge, No. 266. The first to be warranted by the Athol Grand Lodge was Saint George, No. 307.

The English Provincial Grand Lodge did not long survive but in 1803 a Province under the Grand Lodge of Scotland was established in the Bermudas. Two Lodges, Saint George’s and Civil and Military, are still active under the Grand Lodge of Scotland.

It was discovered in 1813 that the Lodges instituted by the “Ancient” were still working but those chartered by the ”Moderns” had ceased all activity. There is a Lodge, Atlantic Phoenix, at Hamilton, at work , since 1797.

BERNARD, DAVID

An expelled member under whose name was published, in the year 1829, a pretended exposition entitled Light on Masonry. The book was one of the fruits of the anti-Masonic excitement of the day. It is a worthless production, intended as a libel on the Institution.

BERNARD, SAINT

A famous preacher and Theologian, born in France in 1090, was the founder of the Order of Cistercian Monks. He took great interest in the success of the Knights Templar, whose Order he cherished throughout his whole life. His works contain numerous letters recommending them to the favor and protection of the great. In 1128, he himself is said to have drawn up the Rule of the Order, and among his writings is to be found a Sermo exhortatorius ad Milites Templi, or an Exhortation to the Soldiers of the Temple, a production full of sound advice. To the influence of Bemard and his untiring offices of kindness, the Templars were greatly indebted for their rapid increase in wealth and consequence. He died in the year 1153.

BERYL

The Hebrew name is pronounced tar-sheesh. A precious stone, the first in the fourth row of the high priest’s breastplate. Color, bluish-green. It has been ascribed to the tribe of Benjamin.

BEYERLE, FRANÇOIS LOUIS DE

A French Masonic writer of some prominence toward the close of the eighteenth century. He was a leading member of the Rite of Strict Observance, in which his adopted name was Eques à Flore. He wrote a criticism on the Masonic Congress of Wilhelmsbad, which was published under the title of Oratio de Conventu generali Latomorum apud aquas Wilhelminas, prope Hanauviam. He also wrote an Essai sur la Franc-Maçonnerie, ou du but essential et fondamenal de la Franc-Maçonnerie, Essay on Freemasonry, or the essential and fundamental purpose of Freemasonry; translated the second volume of Frederic Nicolai’s essay on the crimes imputed to the Templars, and was the author of several other Masonic works of less importance. He was a member of the French Constitutional Convention of 1792. He wrote also some political essays on finances, and was a contributor on the same subject to the Encyclopédie Méthodique.

BEZALEEL

One of the builders of the Ark of the Covenant (see Aholiab).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In French, we have a Bibliographie des Ouvrages, Opuscules, Encycliques ou écrits les p1us remarquables, publiés sur l’histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie depuis 1723 jusqu’en 1814, Bibliography of the Works, Booklets, Circulars, or more remarkable writings, published on the History of Freemasonry since 1725, as far as 1814. It is by Thory, and is contained in the first volume of his Acta Latotnorum. Though not full, it is useful, especially in respect to French works, and it is to be regretted that it stops at a period anterior to the Augustan age of Masonic literature. In German we have the work of Dr. Georg B. F. Kloss, entitled Bibliographie der Freimaurerei, published at Frankfort in 1844. At the time of its publication it was an almost exhaustive work, and contains the titles of about 5,400 items classified according to the subject matter of the works listed. Reinhold Taute published his Maurerische Buecherkunde at Leipzig in 1886. In 1911 begun the publication of the three volumes of August Wolfstieg’s Bibliographie der Freimauerischen Literatur listing 43,347 titles of works treating of Freemasonry. The three volumes of Wolfstieg’s elaborate compilation, appearing respectively in 1911, 1912, and 1914, listing and briefly describing over forty-three thousand items, was continued by Brother Bernhard Beyer of the Grand Lodge Zur Sonne in Beyreuth, Germany, whose 1926 volume adds over eleven thousand references.

Brother Silas H. Shepherd, Wisconsin Grand Lodge Committee on Masonic Research, has prepared a list of Masonic Bibliographies and Catalogues in the English Language, 1920, and the Committee has also published a selected List of Masonic Literature, 1923, and these have been made all the more useful by An Essay on Masonic History and Reference Works by Brother Shepherd. Brother William L. Boyden, Librarian, Supreme Council, Southern Jurisdiction, Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, has described the method used in the great Library under his charge at Washington, District of Columbia, in a pamphlet, Classification of the Literature of Freemasonry, 1915, a plan peculiarly applicable to Masonic libraries. In this connection we are reminded of the late Brother Frank J. Thompson, Grand Secretary, Grand Lodge of North Dakota, and a greatly esteemed correspondent of ours. He published about 1903 a System of Card Membership Record for Masonic Bodies and a Scheme of Classification for Masonic Books, the latter being an extension of the Dewey decima1 system.

BIELFELD, JACOB FREDERICK

Baron Bielfeld was born March 31, 1717, and died April 5, 1770. He was envoy from the court of Prussia to The Hague, and a familiar associate of Frederick the Great in the youthful days of that Prince before he ascended the throne. He was one of the founders of the Lodge of the Three Globes in Berlin, which afterward became a Grand Lodge. Through his influence Frederick was induced to become a Freemason. In Bielfeld’s Freundschaftlicher Briefe, or Familiar Letters, are to be found an account of the initiation of the Prince, and other curious details concerning Freemasonry.

BINNING, LORD

Deputy Grand Master, Scotland, 1789.

BIRKHEAD, MATTHEW

A Freemason who owes his reputation to the fact that he was the author of the universally known Entered Apprentice’s song, beginning:

Come let us prepare
We Brothers that are.
Met together on merry Occasion;
Let’s drink, laugh, and sing;
Our wine has a spring.
‘Tis a Health to an Accepted Mason.

This song first appeared in Read’s Weekly Journal for December 1, 1722, and then was published in the Book of Constitutions in 1723, after the death of its author, which occurred on December 30, 1722.

Birkhead was a singer and actor at Drury Lane Theater in London, and was Master of Lodge V when Doctor Anderson was preparing his Constitutions, His funeral is thus described in Read’s Weekly Journal for .January 12, 1723. “Mr. Birkhead was last Saturday night carried from his Lodgings in Which-street to be interred at St Clements Danes; the Pall was supported by six Free-Masons belonging to Drury-Lane Play-house; the other Members of that particular Lodge of which he was a Warden, with a vast number of other Accepted-Masons, followed two and two; both the Pall-bearers and others were in their white-aprons”

(see also Entered Apprentices’s Song and Tune, Freemasons’).

BLACK

Black, in the Masonic ritua1, is constantly the symbol of grief. This is perfectly consistent with its use in the world, where black has from remote antiquity been adopted as the garment of mourning.

In Freemasonry this color is confined to but a few degrees, but everywhere has the single meaning of sorrow. Thus in the French Rite, during the ceremony of raising a candidate to the Master’s Degree, the Lodge is clothed in black strewed with the representations of tears, as a token of grief for the loss of a distinguished member of the fraternity, whose tragic history is commemorated in that degree.

This usage is not, however, observed in the York Rite. The black of the Elected Knights of Nine, the Illustrious Elect of Fifteen, and the Sublime Knights Elected, in the Scottish Rite, has a similar import.

Black appears to have been adopted in the degree of Noachite, as a symbol of grief, tempered with humility, which is the virtue principally dilated on in the ceremony.

The garments of the Knights Templar were originally white, but after the death of their martyred Grand Master, James DeMolay, the modern Knights assumed a black dress as a token of grief for his loss.

The same reason led to the adoption of black as the appropriate color in the Scottish Rite of the Knights of Kadosh and the Sublime Princes of the Roya1 Secret.

The modern American modification of the Templar costume abandons all reference to this historical fact.

One exception to this symbolism of black is to be found in the degree of Select Master, where the vestments are of black bordered with red, the combination of the two colors showing that the degree is properly placed between the Royal Arch and Templar degrees, while the black is a symbol of silence and secrecy, the distinguishing virtues of a Select Master.

BLACKBALL

The ball used in a Masonic ballot by those who do not wish the candidate to be admitted. Hence, when an applicant is rejected, he is said to be “blackballed.”

The use of black balls may be traced as far back as the ancient Romans. Thus, Ovid says in the Metamorphoses (xv, 41), that in trials it was the custom of the ancients to condemn the prisoner by black pebbles or to acquit him by white ones: Mos erat antiquus, niveis atrisque lapillis, His dammare reos, illis absolvere culpae.

BLACKBOARD

In German Lodges the Schwarze Tafel, or Blackboard, is that on which the names of applicants for admission are inscribed, so that every visitor may make the necessary inquiries whether they are or are not worthy of acceptance.

BLACK BROTHERS, ORDER OF THE

Lenning says that the Schwarze Brüder was one of the College Societies of the German Universities. The members of the Order, however, denied this, and claimed an origin as early as 1675. Thory, in the Acta Latomorum (1, 313), says that it was largely spread through Germany, having its seat for a long time at Giessen and at Marburg, and in 1783 being removed to Frankfort on the Oder.

The same writer asserts that at first the members observed the dogmas and ritual of the Kadosh, but that afterward the Order, becoming a political society, gave rise to the Black Legion, which in 1813 was commanded by M. Lutzow.

BLAÉRFINDY, BARON GRANT DE

Scottish officer in French army; prominent in the French high grades and Scottish Philosophic Rite and credited by some (see Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie Française, Albert Lantoine, 1925, Paris, page 221) as the founder of the grades of the Sublime Master of the Luminous Ring (Académie des Sublimes Maitres de l’Anneau Lumineux), a system in which Pythagoras is deemed the creator of Freemasonry.

BLAVATSKY, HELENA PETROVNA

Russian theosophist, born July 31, 1831; died May 8, 1891, established at New York in 1875 the Theosophica1 Society. A sketch of the history of the Ancient and Primitive Rite of Masonry, published by- John Hogg at London, 1880, says on page 58 that “The 24th of November, 1877, the Order conferred upon Madam H. P. Blavatsky the Degrees of the Rite of Adoption. ”

BLAYNEY, LORD

Grand Master of the English Grand Lodge of the Moderns, 1764-6.

BLESINTON, EARL OF

Grand Master of Ire1and, 1738-9; also of the English Grand Lodge of the Ancient, 1756-9. The name Blesinton has been variously spelled by members of the family but the spelling here given is taken from the signature of the Brother in the records of his Grand Lodge.

BLESSING

See Benediction

BLIND

A blind man cannot be initiated into Freemasonry under the operation of the old regulation, which requires physical perfection in a candidate. This rule has nevertheless been considerably modified in some Jurisdictions.

BLINDNESS

Physical blindness in Freemasonry, as in the language of the Scriptures, is symbolic of the deprivation of moral and intellectual light. It is equivalent to the darkness of the Ancient Mysteries in which the neophytes were enshrouded for periods varying from a few hours to many days. The Masonic candidate, therefore, represents one immersed in intellectual darkness, groping in the search for that Divine light and truth which are the objects of a Freemason’s1abor (see Darkness).

BLOW

The three blows given to the Builder, according to the legend of the Third Degree, have been differently interpreted as symbols in the different systems of Freemasonry, but always with some reference to adverse or malignant influences exercised on humanity, of whom Hiram is considered as the type. Thus, in the symbolic Degrees of Ancient Craft Freemasonry, the three blows are said to be typical of the trials and temptations to which man is subjected in youth and manhood, and to death, whose victim he becomes in old age. Hence the three Assassins are the three stages of human life. In the advanced Degrees, such as the Kadoshes, which are founded on the Templar system commonly credited to Ramsay, the reference is naturally made to the destruction of the Order, which was effected by the combined influences of Tyranny, Superstition, and Ignorance, which are therefore symbolized by the three blows; while the three Assassins are also said sometimes to be represented by Squin de Florean, Naffodei, and the Prior of Montfaucon, the three perjurers who swore away the lives of DeMolay and his Knights. In the astronomical theory of Freemasonry, which makes it a modern modification of the ancient sun-worship, a theory advanced by Ragon, the three blows are symbolic of the destructive influences of the three winter months, by which Hiram, or the Sun, is shorn of his vivifying power. Des Etangs has generalized the Templar theory, and, supposing Hiram to be the symbol of eternal reason, interprets the blows as the attacks of those vices which deprave and finally destroy humanity. However interpreted for a special theory, Hiram the Builder always represents, in the science of Masonic symbolism, the principle of good; and then the three blows are the contending principles of evil.

“BLUE BANNER, THE” LODGE

Gould, Hughan, Lane, and others who in the 1875-1890 period began the writing of Masonic history according to the canons of scholarly work which elsewhere governed professional historians, always hoped to find evidence of a great antiquity for pre-1717 Lodges but insisted on documentary proof, and refused to accept traditions, as they were right in doing, though it is now believed that they were somewhat more skeptical than they needed to have been. Also, present-day scholars know , they sometimes overlooked data which belonged neither to the class of traditions nor to the class of documents ; these data are present Lodge facts, customs, or possessions which in themselves, and necessarily, imply a long period of time.

A datum of this kind, an exceptionally interesting one, is the Blue Banner which was possessed by an Edinburgh Lodge, the history of which is given in Annals of Journeyman Masons, No. 8, by Seggie and Tumbull; Thomas Allan and Sons; Edinburg; l930. This Lodge began as a sort of offshoot, or Side Order, of an old Operative Lodge, and is therefore reminiscent of the “Acception” in the Mason Company of London. The history of the Blue Banner goes back for about eight centuries ; it was given to the Scottish Trade Gilds when they joined the Crusade under Pope Urban A, and for centuries entitled its possessors not only to special honors but to special privileges, and is more than once mentioned in the early records of the burgh.

This history contains one entry of a special interest to American Masons. In September, 1918, the Lodge was visited by Bro. Sam Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor; he received the distinction for that Lodge a rare one, of being elected an Honorary Member. His home Lodge was Dawson’s No 16 Washington D. C.

See also An Historical Account of the Blue Blanket; or Crafts-Men’s Banner. Containing the Fundamental Principles of the Good-Town, u¤th the Powers and Prerogatives of the Crafts of Edinburgh, Etc., by Alexander Pennecuik; Edinburgh; 1722. There were 14 incorporated Crafts in Edinburgh in 1722.

BOOK OF CONSTITUTIONS

In England of the Eighteenth Century a permanent association or society was required to have a sponsor, the more exalted in the rank the better, who was named as its Patron – as the King himself was Patron of the Royal (scientific) Society; it was also expected to have authorization in the form of a charter, or deputation, or some similar instrument ; and the older one of these written instruments might be, other things being equal , the more weight it possessed. The old Masonic Lodges in London at the beginning of the Century had Sir Christopher Wren as their patron (so tradition affirms) and for written charter each one had a copy of the Old Charges ; these documents attested that their original authority had been a Royal Charter granted by a Prince Edwin seven centuries before ; and though historians , for sound reasons, question this particular claim, it is important to remember that neither the Lodges nor the public between 1700 and 1725 ever questioned it.

In 1716 representatives of some four or five old Lodges, and Probably after discussions with other Lodges not represented, decided to set up a Body in which each Lodge could be a member, and which would be a central meeting place and at the same time could bring the Lodges into a unity of work and practice. This they called a Grand ( or chief) Lodge; and in 1717 they erected it by official action, and put Anthony Sayer in the Chair as Grand Master.

This new Grand Lodge was itself a Lodge and therefore needed both a Patron and a Charter, or Old Charges, of its own, and suitable for needs not identical with those of a member Lodge. It found a Patron in the person of the Duke of Montague, elected Grand Master in 1721, after a time, and especially after the sons of George A had become Masons, it was under the patronage of the Royal Family and has been so ever since (Queen Victoria officially declared herself its Patroness).

To prepare a Grand Lodge equivalent of the Old Charges was a more difficult matter. Veteran Masons were consulted ; old manuscripts were borrowed from Lodges (and sometimes not returned, as when Desaguliers forgot to return documents to the Lodge of Antiquity). Some of the Lodges which were opposed to the whole Grand Lodge plan destroyed their documents. An unknown group of Masons forestalled the Grand Lodge by having J. Roberts print a version, now called the Roberts Constitutions, dated 1722 (of the two existing copies one is in the Iowa Masonic Library). From the Lodges in favor of the Grand Lodge plan fourteen veteran Masons acted as an advisory committee. By 1722 George Payne, a Grand Master, had prepared an acceptable version of that part of the Old Charges, the important half, which was called the Old Regulations. By the following year, Grand Lodge, reporting through a Committee headed by James Anderson, adopted a completed manuscript, entitled it The Constitution of Freemasons, and had James Anderson print it. Why this book has been accredited to the authorship of James Anderson is a mystery; he is called “author” at one or two places but as then used the word could mean “editor” or “scribe”; and his name does not appear on the title page. Payne wrote about one-half of it. J. T. Desaguliers wrote the dedication; the rest of it was the joint work of many hands and at least two Committees. The so-called historical part was collected-the record says “collated”-from Lodge copies of the Old Charges which differed much among themselves in detail. The title is a complete description of the book :

“The Constitution, History, Laws, Charges, Orders, Regulations, and Usages of the Right Worshipful FRATERNITY of Accepted Free MASONS; collected From their general RECORDS and their faithful TRADITIONS of many Ages.

To be Read At the Admission of a NEW BROTHER, when the Master or Warden shall begin, or order some other Brother to read as follows.”then follows the text, in the first sentence of which reference is made to ”God, the great Architect of the Universe,” and Geometry is named as the Masonic art par excellence, because it was the art used in architecture.

The publisher’s signature on the title page :

“London, Printed by William Hunter, for John Senex at the Globe, and John Hooke at the Flower-de-luce over against St. Dunstan’s Church, in Fleet-Street. In the Year of Masonry 5723. Anno Domini 1723.”

This dating is a fact of prime importance, for it proves that the Freemasons identified their Fraternity with architecture which they rightly assumed to be as old as man. Theorists who have argued for another origin’ of Freemasonry, among the Ancient Mysteries, or in occult circles, or in political circles, etc., will first have to explain why the founders of the Speculative Craft had not even heard of such origins ; and one may safely assume that they knew more about the founding of Speculative Masonry than theorism two hundred years afterwards. As time passed, and Lodges increased, amendments and revisions were called for; this was satisfied by the issuance of new editions.

NOTE. The Fifth, or 1784, Edition is there accredited to John Northouck, in reality it should have been named after William Preston because he did the work on it. As each new Grand Lodge was erected in one Country after another, and in America in one State after another, it wrote or adopted a Book of its own. Such a Book dated as of today bears on the face of it little resemblance to the Edition of 1723 ; but the change from decade to decade has been a gradual one, always made in response to new needs, and in their principles and every other fundamental any regular Constitution of today is a direct descendant of the Constitution of 1723. The Ancient Grand Lodge, erected in London in 1751, which was to become a rival of the 1717 Grand Body until 1813, published in 1756 a Book of its own, which it called Ahiman Rezon ; this also was in substance a repetition of the Book of 1723. Considered as a work of literature the most masterly version is the original Constitution of Ireland, a re-writing of the 1723 Edition by John Pennell, published in 1730.

A half century ago a number of writers proposed the theory that “Operative” Masonry had become defunct; that Desaguliers, Anderson, Payne, Montague, and a number of other ”gentlemen,” “captured” the machinery of organization, and turned it into a Speculative Fraternity. This theory went to pieces against such facts as: first, that the Grand Lodge began in 1716-not 1717- and that those gentlemen were not Masons for some time afterwards, at least not London Masons, and were not among the founding fathers, second, the old Lodges were not “Operative” but only partly so, and one of them was wholly composed of Speculatives. Desaguliers and his colleagues were architects of the Grand Lodge system; they did not create anything new, they only found a new way for carrying on what was already very old. This is made clear by the Book of 1723 itself, and by the circumstances under which it was prepared.

BOOKPLATES, MASONIC

Masonic Bookplates, by J. Hugo Tatsch and Winwood Prescott (The Masonic Bibliophiles; Cedar Rapids, Ia. ; 1928), lays down the accepted rules for a correct and (by connoisseurs) acceptable Masonic Ex Libris, or bookplate. Taking it for granted that a skilled artist will draw or paint it, and that it will be well engraved, the two authors advise: first, that the Mason who is to use it shall include in it only such emblems and symbols as represent the Rite (or Rites) to which he belongs ; second, that it be “personalized” by including in the design something to represent his own vocation, avocation, hobby, special interest, etc.

Shute, who wrote and published the first book on architecture ever to be printed in England, is said to have been also the first engraver in England. After the Grand Lodge was formed in 1717 a long line of famous engravers were active members of the Craft; John Pine, William Hogarth, Francesco Bartolozzi, John Baptist Cipriani, Benjamin and John Cole, and our American Grand Master, inventor of a new process of engraving, Paul Revere. Their work, and especially their Masonic designs, should be studied by Masonic bookplate engravers. A Grand Lodge usually employs its own coat-of-arms in its bookplate. Pine was the first to make an engraved list of Lodges. (See also Book Plates and Their Value, J. H. Slater, Henry Grant; 1898. In addition to collectors’ prices it contains a history of the development of Ex Libris art. Some publishers spell ”bookplate” as one word, others as two. The Tatsch and Prescott volume contains a full bibliography. Ex Libris Lodge, No. 3765, was founded . in London, 1915, by bookplate enthusiasts.)

BOONE, DANIEL

Ray V. Denslow, specialist in early Middle Western Masonry, reported to The Builder, January, 1925, that “in his opinion” Boone had not been a Mason. He added however that “a very good friend” had in earlier days heard Boone spoken of as a Mason. Both the Grand Lodges of Kentucky and of Tennessee have searched the old membership rolls but have not found his name. When appropriating a sum toward the Boone monument at Frankfort the resolution passed by the Grand Lodge of Kentucky made no mention of Boone’s possible membership. At least one pall-bearer at Boone’s funeral wore a Masonic collar. (It is interesting to note that “Boone” is a corruption of “Bohun,” a family name of King Henry VAI.)

BOYDEN LIBRARY CLASSIFICATION

Brother William L. Boyden, librarian for the Supreme Council, A.&A.S.R.,S.J., at Washington, D.C., after years of experience and experiment, perfected a library classification system for Masonic books. He divided titles under ten general heads, in 400 classes and subclasses. He made the system available to Masonic librarians in a brochure of twenty-two pages, a working manual: Classification of the Literature of Freemasonry and Related Societies, by W. L. Boyden; Washington, D.C., 1915; e/o The Supreme Council A.&.A.S.R.,S.J.

BOYDEN MS., THE

A manuscript of the Old Charges, nine feet long and about eight and one-half inches wide, belonging to the Supreme Council, A.& A.S.R.,S.J., and in the vaults of the House of the Temple, Washington, D.C.; it was discovered (presumably in 1925) by the late W. L. Boyden, Librarian of the Supreme Council Library at the time, in North Riding of Yorkshire near Yorkshire, Eng. Boyden published the text in The New Age, February, 1926; page 77. The text accompanied by critical notes is given in The Old ‘Yorkshire’ Old Charges of Masons, by H. Poole and F. R. Worts; published by Installed Masters’ Association, Leeds, England ; 1935 ; page 171.

Some English Brothers have expressed regret (and not always un-spiced with resentment) that a Yorkshire MS. should “have been sold off to America.”

American Masons can understand that feeling, and the more so in the case of Yorkshire which was the favorite field of Hughan and of Thorp, who are both as well remembered and as much revered by Masons on this side of the Atlantic as on that ; but at the same time they feel that the strictures often expressed, and especially the harshness in some instances, by Whymper, Gould, and Lane, are based on a misunderstanding of facts. The strictures have arisen from the assumption that a sizable number of precious, old, and oftentimes unique Masonic books and MSS. have been drained off out of England into America; but there has never been such a drain. The Boyden is the only MS. of which there is not at least one copy left in England. The printed Roberts MS. owned by the Grand Lodge of Iowa is one of two copies. The Carmick MS. owned by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania was written in Pennsylvania. The American craft, and considering that save for a very few years it is as old as the English Craft, and is in the same Masonic family, is peculiarly poverty-stricken in MSS. and rare books. Nor have the great and wealthy American collectors Huntington, Morgan, etc., collected Freemasoniana; Rosenbach, famous for so many years as their agent, told the writer that he had never included Masonic items in his search lists. If harsh complaints were in order American Masons themselves have a large ground for them ; during the French and Indian wars, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812 America was “drained” of the larger part of its early Masonic records, a fact which helps to account for the emptiness of the history of pre-Revolutionary Masonry in America.

The same holds for the old charge of “piracy.” A small number of Eighteenth Century books (Oliver, presston, etc.) were published here without permission and without payment to their British authors ; to do so was both piratical and inexcusable. But there was as quite as much piracy from the British end. Books by Harris Town, Mackey, Morris, etc., were extensively pirated in England right down to the middle of the Nineteenth Century : this Encyclopedia was pirated a in half dozen languages.

BRIDGE BUILDERS

In the article which begins on page 151 it is stated that the Gild of Bridge Builders was a religious fraternity. Since that article written (it was based on the then most reliable authorities) what may be called the archeology of bridge building has put that ancient craft in a new light. Just as some bishop or abbot was given credit for almost every cathedral, large church, or abbey, and even though the prelate might not have been born when the construction was begun, so did the same chroniclers make out that almost every other concerted public activity, association, etc., had been either an action by the Church or else one directed by it.

Even a local gild of six or seven blacksmiths in a French town of the year1200 A.D. may appear in the monkish chronicles as having been a Holy Brotherhood of the Church of St. Paul Dedicated to St. Dominic, etc., the whole of it sounding as if black smithing had been a holy rite. Everything in the Twelfth Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Centuries was, as it were, asserted with the appearance of religion-it was then as it is now with the Mexican language in which “good-bye” becomes “God go with you,” and a man asks for a match “in the name of God,” and a mother names a son Jesus and a Daughter Holy Annunciation.

There were fraternities of Bridge Builders in the Middle Ages ; they had their Patron Saints; they went by religious names; but bridge building per se was no more religious than it is now. A bridge was build at need, and often at the expense of the taxpayers in a town; its construction might be entrusted to a special gild formed for the purpose; it might be paid for by gifts or by tolls; but the Masons who built it usually were ordinary Masons. Its was only when great bridges were built, like London Bridge (which was a row of buildings erected across the Thames) or when one was ornamented with carving or with Sculpture, or involved difficult problems of engineering, that Freemasons were called in; but it is doubtful if in many instances they formed fraternities qua bridge builders, after the fashion of the separate associations of castle builders, military architects, tilers, etc.

It is of interest that the first great Modern bridge (at least it is so claimed by historians of it) was to a peculiar extent almost an event in the history of Speculative Freemasonry. The engineer and constructor of the famous Wearmouth Bridge in England (pages are given to it in a number of histories of engineering) was Bro. Rowland Burdon. He was made a Mason in Phoenix Lodge, no. 94, Sunderland ; he joined Palatine Lodge in 1791; in 1793 was elected Master, and served several years. The foundation of the Bridge was laid with Masonic ceremonies by the Provincial Grand Lodge, September 24, 1793; its completion was also celebrated by ceremonies by the Provincial Grand Lodge on August 9, 1796 (during Washington’s second term, it may be said to help Americans to place the date).

(It happens that the builders of the Brooklyn Bridge were Masons, as may be found in an article in the New York Masonic Outlook. See History of Phoenix Lodge; see also other bridge items in History of Britannia Lodge, page 104.)

NOTE. Apropos of the typical Medieval custom of clothing everything with a religious guise it is interesting to observe that ordinary business documents such as deeds, bills of sales, contracts, or legal documents, or a physician’s prescription, or a parchment roll of kitchen recipes might be decorated with religious emblems and begin-like the Old Charges-with a religious invocation.

Bishops often were educated and trained in cathedral schools at a prince’s or king’s expense expressly to hold positions in what is now the civil service. Even the since-canonized Thomas à Beeket served for years in that capacity, and was made a bishop for political reasons! Thousands of tonsured clerics were trained to work in offices, government bureaus, etc., as clerks, bookkeepers, etc., and never performed religious services in their lives. It is not out of any desire to disparage religion, or to discredit the church, but solely in obedience to the facts as found, that historians are agreed that the Ages of Faith were not more faithful than other ages, and that the men were in their spirit, thought, and conduct no more religious, or pious, in the Thirteenth Century than they are now. The fact is important for Masonic history, because a reader of it may gain the impression that because so many Medieval Freemasons worked on churches, cathedrals, abbeys, priories, monasteries, chapels, etc., they were in some peculiar sense a religious fraternity. They were men in religion, but no more so than other men; ran their own affairs ; excluded priests from control over their Lodges ; and had no religious rites, practices, or doctrines peculiar to themselves.

BLUE BLANKET

The Lodge of Journeymen, in the city of Edinburgh, is in possession of a blue blanket which is used as a banner in Masonic processions. The history of it is thus given in the London Magazine: “A number of Scotch mechanics followed Allan, Lord Steward of Scotland, to the holy wars in Palestine, and took with them a banner, on which were inscribed the following words from the 5lst Psalm, the eighteenth vers, ‘In bona voluntate tua edificentur muri Hierosolymae,’ meaning’ln Thy good pleasure build Thou the walls of Jerusalem.’ Fighting under the banner, these valiant Scotchman were present at the capture of Jerusalem, and other towns in the Holy Land; and, on their return to their own country, they deposited the banner, which they styled The Banner of the Holy Ghost, at the altar of St. Eloi, the patron saint of the Edinburgh Tradesmen, in the church of Saint Giles. It was occasionally unfurled, or worn as a mantle by the representatives of the trades in the courtly and religious pageants that in former times were of frequent occurrence in the Scottish capital. “In 1482, James III, in consequence of the assistance which he had received from the Craftsmen of Edinburgh, in delivering him from the castle in which he was kept a prisoner, and paying a debt of 6,000 Marks which he had contracted in making preparations for the marriage of his son, the Duke of Rothsay, to Cecil, daughter of Edward IV, of England, conferred on the good town several valuable privileges, and renewed to the Craftsmen their favorite banner of The Blue Blanket. ”James’s queen, Margaret of Denmark, to show her gratitude and respect to the Crafts, painted on the banner, with her own hands, a Saint Andrew’s cross, a crown, a thistle, and a hammer, with the following inscription : ‘Fear God and honor the king ; grant him a long life and a prosperous reign, and we shall ever pray to be faithful for the defense of his sacred majesty’s royal person till death.’ The king decreed that in all time coming, this flag should be the standard of the Crafts within burgh, and that it should be unfurled in defense of their own rights, and in protection of their sovereign. The privilege of displaying it at the Masonic procession was granted to the journeymen, in consequence of their original connection with the Freemasons of Mary’s Chapel, one of the four men incorporated trades of the city. “The Blue Blanket was long in a very tattered condition ; but some years ago it was repaired by lining it with blue silk, so that it can be exposed without subjecting it to much injury. ” An interesting little book was written by Alexander pennecuik, Burgess and Guild-Brother of Edinburgh, and published with this title in 1722 and in later editions describing the Operative Companies of Edinburgh. The above particulars in the London Magazine are found in Pennecuik’s work with other details.

BLUE DEGREES

The first three degrees of Freemasonry are so called from the blue color which is peculiar to them.

BLUE LODGE

A Symbolic Lodge, in which the first three degrees of Freemasonry are conferred, is so called from the color of its decorations.

BLUE MASONRY

The degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason an sometimes called Blue Masonry.

BLUE MASTER

In some of the advanced degrees, these words are used to designate a Master Mason.

BOARD OF GENERAL PURPOSES

An organization attached to the Grand Lodge of England, consisting of the Grand Master, Pro Grand Master, Deputy Grand Master, the Grand Wardens of the year, the Grand Treasurer, the Grand Registrar, the Deputy Grand Registrar, a President, Past Presidents, the President of the Board of Benevolence, the Grand Director of Ceremonies, and twenty-four other members. The President and six of the twenty-four members are annually nominated by the Grand Master, and the remaining eighteen are elected by the Grand Lodge from the Masters and Past Masters of the Lodges. This board has authority to hear and determine all subjects of Masonic complaints, or irregularity respecting Lodges or individual Freemasons, when regularly brought before it, and generally to take cognizance of all matters relating to the Craft.

BOARD OF RELIEF

See Relief, Board of

BOAZ
BOAS

The name of the left hand (or north) pillar that stood at the porch of King Solomon’s Temple. It is derived from the Hebrew pronounced bo’-az, and signifies in strength. Though Strong in his Hebrew and Chaldee Dictionary says the root is unused and of uncertain meaning (see Pillars of the Porch).

BOCHIM

a Hebrew word pronounced bokeem and meaning the weepers. A password in the Order of Ishmael. An angel spoke to Hagar as she wept at the well when in the wilderness with her son Ishmael.

The angel is looked upon as a spiritual being, possibly the Great Angel of the Covenant, the Michael who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, or the Joshua, the captain of the hosts of Jehovah.

BODE, JOHANN JOACHIM CHRISTOPH

Born in Brunswick, 16th of January, 1730. One of the most distinguished Freemasons of his time. In his youth he was a professional musician, but in 1757 he established himself at Hamburg as a bookseller, and was initiated into the Masonic Order. He obtained much reputation by the translation of Sterne’s Sentimental Journey and Tristram Shandy, of Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield; Smollett’s Humphrey Clinker; and of Fielding’s Tom Jones, from the English; and of Montaigne’s works from the French. To Masonic literature he made many valuable contributions; among others, he translated from the French Bonneville’s celebrated work entitled Les Jésuites chassés de la Maçonnerie et leur poignard bris par les Maçons, meaning The Jesuits driven from Freemasonry and their weapon broken by the Freemasons, which contains a comparison of Scottish Freemasonry with the Templarism of the fourteenth century, and with sundry peculiar practices of the Jesuits themselves.

Bode was at one time a zealous promoter of the Rite of Strict Observance, but afterward became one of its most active opponents. In 1790 he joined the Order of the Illuminati, obtaining the highest Degree in its second class, and at the Congress of Wilhelmsbad he advocated the opinions of Weishaupt,. No man of his day was better versed than he in the history of Freemasonry, or possessed a more valuable and extensive library; no one was more diligent in increasing his stock of Masonic knowledge, or more anxious to avail himself of the rarest sources of learning. Hence, he has always held an exalted position among the Masonic scholars of Germany. The theory which he had conceived on the origin of Freemasonry–a theory, however, which the investigations of subsequent historians have proved to be untenable–was, that the Order was invented by the Jesuits, in the seventeenth century, as an instrument for the re-establishment of the Roman Church in England, covering it for their own purposes under the mantle of Templarism. Bode died at Weimar on the 13th of December, 1793.

BOEBER, JOHANN

A Royal Councilor of State and Director of the School of Cadets at St. Petersburg, during the reign of Alexander I. In 1805 he induced the emperor to revoke the edicts made by Paul I and himself against the Freemasons. His representations of the true character of the Institution induced the emperor to seek and obtain initiation.

Boeber may be considered as the reviver of Freemasonry in the Russian dominions, and was Grand Master of the Grand Lodge from 1811 to 1814.

BOEHMEN, JACOB

The most celebrated of the Mystics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, born near Gorlitz, in 1575, and died in 1624. His system attracted, and continued to attract long after his death, many disciples in Germany. Among these, in time, were several Freemasons, who sought to incorporate the mystical dogmas of their founder with the teachings of Freemasonry, so as to make the Lodges merely schools of theosophy. Indeed, the Theosophic Rites of Freemasonry, which prevailed to a great extent about the middle of the last century in Germany and France, were indebted for most of their ideas to the mysticism of Jacob Boehmen.

BOHEMANN, KARL ADOLF ANDERSON

Born in 1770, at Jönköping in the south of Sweden. He was a very zealous member of the Order of Asiatic Brethren, and was an active promulgator of the advanced Degrees. Invited to Sweden, in 1802, by the Duke of Sudermania, who was an ardent inquirer into Masonic science, he was appointed Court Secretary.

He attempted to introduce his system of advanced Degrees into the kingdom, but having been detected in the effort to intermingle revolutionary schemes with his high Degrees, he was first imprisoned and then banished from the country, his society being interdicted. He returned to Germany, but is not heard of after 1815, when he published at Plymouth a justification of himself. Findel in his History of Freemasonry (page 560), calls him an impostor, but he seems rather to have been a Masonic fanatic, who was ignorant of or had forgotten the wide difference between Freemasonry and political intrigue.

BOHEMIA

A Lodge named The Three Stars is said to have been established at Prague in 1726, and other Lodges were subsequently constituted in Bohemia, but in consequence of the French Revolution they were closed in 1793 by the Austrian Government.

BOHMANN, F. OTTO

A merchant in Stockholrn, 1695-1767, who left a legacy of 100,000 thalers to the Asylum for the Orphans of Freemasons that was founded in Stockholm in 1753. A medal was struck in his honor in 1768 (see Marvin’s Masonic Medals, page 172).

BOLIVIA

The third largest political division of the continent of South America. A Lodge was chartered in Bolivia in 1875. Three others have since been established and all four pay allegiance to the Grand Lodge of Peru.

Brother Oliver Day Street says in his 1922 Report on Correspondence to the Grand Lodge of Alabama: “So far as we have been able to ascertain this State has never been able to boast a Grand Lodge, Grand Orient or Supreme Council of its own. Its only Masonic organizations have been Lodges chartered by some of the Grand Lodges of the neighboring states. Indeed, Peru and Chile are the only ones we can ascertain which have even done this. Bolivia can scarcely be said to have a Masonic history.”

BOMBAY

A seaport on the west coast of India. The first Lodge to be established in Bombay was opened in 1758 but it disappeared from the register in 1813. In 1763 James Todd was appointed Provincial Grand Master.

A Provincial Grand Master of Western India and its Dependencies, Brother James Burnes was appointed in 1836 by the Grand Lodge of Scotland. None had been appointed by England since the time of Brother Todd. Brother Burnes was a very active Freemason and it is a curious fact that Brethren even left the English Lodges to support the new Scotch Bodies.

English Freemasonry became less and less popular and finally ceased to be practiced until 1848 when Saint George Lodge No. 807, was revived.

In 1886 Scotland had issued nineteen Charters to Lodges in Bombay and twelve years previously Captain Morland, successor to Brother Burnes, was raised to the position of Grand Master of all Scottish Freemasonry in India.

The Craft took no firm hold on the natives of India.

Several of the princes were initiated but the Parsees made the first real advance in the Order when Brother Cama, one of their number, was elected Treasurer of the Grand Lodge of England. The first Hindu to hold important office was Brother Dutt who became head of a Lodge in 1874 (see India and Madras).

BONAIM

Brother Hawkins was of the opinion that the word is really an incorrect transliteration of the Hebrew word for builders, which should be Bonim; the construct form of which Bonai is used in 1 Kings (v, 18), to designate a portion of the workmen on the Temple: “And Solomon’s builders and Hiram’s builders did hew them.” Brother Hawkins continues to the effect that Oliver, in his Dictionary and in his Landmarks (1, 402), gives a mythical account of them as Fellow Crafts, divided into Lodges by King Solomon, but, by a slip in his grammar he calls them Benai, substituting the Hebrew construct for the absolute case, and changing the participial o into e. The Bonaim seem to be distinguished, by the author of the Book of Kings, from the Gibalim, and the translators of the authorized version have called the former builders and the latter stone-squarers. It is probable that the Bonaim were an order of workmen inferior to the Gibalim. Anderson, in both of his editions of the Book of Constitutions, errs like Oliver, and calls them Bonai, saying that they were “setters, layers, or .builders, or light Fellow Crafts, in number 80,000.”

This idea seems to have been perpetuated in the modern rituals. From this construct plural form Bonai some one has formed the slightly incorrect form Bonaim.

BONAPARTE, JEROME

Brother of Napoleon I. Born November 15, 1784, and died June 24, 1860. King of Westphalia from 1807 to 1813 and afterwards known as the Duc de Montfort. Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Westphalia. After 1847 he became successively Governor of the Invalides, Marshal of France and President of the Senate (see also Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie, Albert Lantoine, 1925, Paris). Jerome, son of the above, also given as a Freemason.

BONAPARTE, JOSEPH

Elder brother of Napoleon I. Born January 7, 1768. Sent to Naples as King in 1806 and made King of Spain in 1808. After 1815 known as Comte de Survilliers. He was a Freemason. Appointed by Napoleon I to the office of Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France in 1804. He died July 28, 1844.

BONAPARTE, LOUIS

Born September 2, 1778; died July 25, 1846. Brother of Napoleon I. King of Holland in 1806. Grand Master Adjoined of the Grand Orient of France in 1804. In 1805 became Governor of Paris.

BONAPARTE, LUCIEN

Brother of Napoleon I. Born May 21, 1775, and died at Rome, June 29, 1840. November 10, 1799, when Napoleon I overthrew the National Councils of France at the Palace of Saint Cloud, Lucien was President of the Council of Five Hundred and able to turn the scale in favor of his brother. In 1800 was Ambassador at Madrid, Spain. A member of the Grand Orient of France,

BONDMAN

In the fourth article of the Halliwell or Regius Manuscript, which is the earliest Masonic document known, it is said that the Master shall take good care that he make no bondman an apprentice, or, as it is in the original language :

The fourth artycul thys moste be,
That the Mayster hymn wel be-se,
That he no bondemon prentys make.

The regulation is repeated in all the subsequent regulations, and is still in force (see Freebom).

BONE

This word, which is now pronounced in one syllable, is the Hebrew word bo-neh, , builder, from the verb banah, to build. It was peculiarly applied, as an epithet, to Hiram Abif, who superintended the construction of the Temple as its chief builder. Master Masons will recognize it as part of a significant word. Its true pronunciation would be, in English letters, bo-nay; but the corruption into one syllable as bone has become too universal ever to be corrected.

BONE BOX

In the early lectures of the eighteenth century, now obsolete, we find the following catechism:

• Q. Have you any key to the secrets of a Mason?
• A. Yes.
• Q. Where do you keep it?
• A. In a bone box, that neither opens nor shuts but with ivory keys. The bone box is the mouth, the ivory keys the teeth. And the key to the secrets is afterward said to be the tongue.

These questions were simply used as tests, and were subsequently varied. In a later lecture it is called the Bone-bone Box.

BONNEVILLE, CHEVALIER DE
BONNEVILLE, NICOLAS DE

On the 24th of November, 1754, he founded the Chapter of the Advanced Degrees known as the Chapter of Clermont.

A1l the authorities assert this except Rebold, Histoire des Trois Grandes Loges, meaning the History of the Three Grand Lodges, page 46, who says that he was not its founder but only the propagator of its Degrees.

BONNEVILLE, NICOLAS DE

A bookseller and man of letters, born at Evreux, in France, March 13, 1760. He was the author of a work, published in 1788, entitled Les Jésuites chassés de la Maçonnerie et leur poignard brisé par les Maçons, meaning The Jesuits driven from Freemasonry and their weapon broken by the Freemasons, a book divided into two parts, of the first of which the subtitle was La Maçonnerie écossaise comparée avec les trois professions et le Secret des Templiers du 14e Siécle, meaning Scottish Freemasonry compared with the three professions and the Secret of the Templars of the Fourteenth Century, and of the second, Mémeté des quatre voeux de la Compagnie de S. Ignace, et des quatre grades de la Maçonnerie de S. Jean, meaning the Identity of the four pledges of the Society of Saint Ignace, and of the four steps of the Freemasonry of Saint John. He also translated into French, Thomas Paine’s Essay on the Origin of Freemasonry; a work, by the way, which was hardly worth the trouble of translation.

De Bonneville had an exalted idea of the difficulties attendant upon writing a history of Freemasonry, for he says that, to compose such a work, supported by dates and authentic facts, it would require a period equal to ten times the age of man; a statement which, although exaggerated, undoubtedly contains an element of truth.

His Masonic theory was that the Jesuits had introduced into the symbolic Degrees the history of the life and death of the Templars, and the doctrine of vengeance for the political and religious crime of their destruction; and that they had imposed upon four of the higher Degrees the four vows of their congregation. De Bonneville was imprisoned as a Girondist in 1793. The Girondists or Girondins were members of a political party during the French Revolution of 1791 to 1793, getting their name from twelve Deputies from the Gironde, a Department of Southwestern France. He was the author of a History of Modern Europe, in three volumes, published in 1792. He died in 1828.

BOOK OF CHARGES

There seems, if we may judge from the references in the old records of Freemasonry, to have formerly existed a book under this title, containing the Charges of the Craft; equivalent, probably, to the Book of Constitutions. Thus, the Matthew Cooke Manuscript of the first half of the fifteenth century (line 534) speaks of “othere chargys mo that ben wryten in the Boke of Chargys.”

BOOK OF CONSTITUTIONS

The Book of Constitutions is that work in which is contained the rules and regulations adopted for the government of the Fraternity of Freemasons. Undoubtedly, a society so orderly and systematic must always have been governed by a prescribed code of laws; but, in the lapse of ages, the precise regulations which were adopted for the direction of the Craft in ancient times have been lost. The earliest record that we have of any such Constitutions is in a manuscript, first quoted, in 1723, by Anderson( Constitutions, 1723, pages 32-3), which he said was written in the reign of Edward IV.

Preston (page 182, edition of1788) quotes the same record, and adds, that “it is said to have been in the possession of the famous Elias Ashmole, and unfortunately destroyed,” a statement which had not been previously made by Anderson. To Anderson, therefore, we must look in our estimation of the authenticity of this document ; and that we cannot too much rely upon his accuracy as a transcriber is apparent, not only from the internal evidence of style, but also from the fact that he made important alterations in his copy of it in his edition of 1738. Such as it is, however, it contains the following particulars: “Though the ancient records of the Brotherhood in England were many of them destroyed or lost in the wars of the Saxons and Danes, yet King Athelstan (the grandson of King Alfrede the Great, a mighty Architect), the first anointed king of England, and who translated the Holy Bible into the Saxon tongue, 930 A. D., when he had brought the land into Rest and Peace, built many great works, and encouraged many Masons from France, who were appointed Overseers thereof, and brought with them the Charges and Regulations of the Lodges preserved since the Roman times, who also prevailed with the King to improve the Constitution of the English Lodges according to the foreign Model, and to increase the Wages of Working Masons.

“The said king’s youngest son, Prince Edwin, being taught Masonry, and taking upon him the Charges of a Master Mason, for the love he had to the said Craft and the honorable Principles whereon it is grounded, purchased a free charter of King Athelatan his Father, for the Masons having a Correction among themselves (as it was anciently expressed), or a Freedom and Power to regulate themselves, to amend what might happen amiss, and to hold a yearly Communication and General Assembly.

“Accordingly, Prince Edwin summoned all the Masons in the Realm to meet him in a Congregation at York, who came and composed a General Lodge, of which he was Grand Master; and having brought with them all the Writings and Records extant, some in Greek, some in Latin, some in French, and other languages, from the Contents thereof that Assembly did frame the Constitution and Charges of an English Lodge, and made a law to preserve and observe the same in all time coming, and ordained good Pay for Working Masons, ac.”

Other records have from time to time been discovered, most of them recently, which prove beyond a1l doubt that the Fraternity of Freemasons was, at least in the fourteenth, fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, in possession of manuscript Constitutions containing the rules and regulations of the Craft.

In the year 1717, Freemasonry, which had somewhat fallen into decay in the south of England, was revived by the organization of the Grand Lodge at London; and, in the next year, the Grand Master having desired, says Anderson, “any brethren to bring to the Grand Lodge any old writings and records concerning Freemasons and Freemasonry, in order to show the usages of ancient times, several old copies of the Gothic Constitutions were produced and collated” (see Constitutions, 1738, page l10).

But these Constitutions having been found to be very erroneous and defective, probably from carelessness or ignorance in their frequent transcription, in September, 1721, the Duke of Montagu, who was then Grand Master, ordered Brother James Anderson to digest them “in a new and better method” (see Constitutions, 1738, page 113).

Anderson having accordingly accomplished the important task that had been assigned him, in December of the same year a committee, consisting of fourteen learned Brethren, was appointed to examine the book ; and, in the March Communication of the subsequent year, having reported their approbation of it, it was, after some amendments, adopted by the Grand Lodge, and published, in 1723, under the title of The Constitutions of the Freemasons, containing the History, Charges, Regulations, etc., of that Most Ancient and Right Worshipful Fraternity. For the use of the Lodges. A second edition was published in 1738, under the superintendence of’ a committee of Grand Officers (see the Constitutions of that year, page 133). But this edition contained so many alterations, interpolations, and omissions of the Charges and Regulations as they appeared in the first, as to show the most reprehensible inaccuracy in its composition, and to render it utterly worthless except as a literary curiosity. It does not seem to have been very popular, for the printers, to complete their sales, were compelled to commit a fraud, and to present what they pretended to be a new edition in 1746, but which was really only the edition of 1738, with a new title page neatly pasted in, the old one being canceled.

In 1754, Brother Jonathan Scott presented a memorial to the Grand Lodge, ”showing the necessity of a new edition of the Book of Constitutions.” It was then ordered that the book “should be revised, and necessary alterations and additions made consistent with the laws and rules of Masonry” ; all of which would seem to show the dissatisfaction of the Fraternity with the errors of the second edition. Accordingly, a third edition was published in 1756, under the editorship of the Rev. John Entick. The fourth edition, prepared by a Committee, was published in 1767.

In 1769, G. Kearsly, of London, published an unauthorized edition of the 1767 issue, with an appendix to 1769 ; this was also published by Thomas Wilkinson in Dublin in the same year, with several curious plates ; both issues are now very scarce. And an authorized supplement appeared in 1776.

John Noorthouck published by authority the fifth edition in 1784. This was well printed in quarto, with numerous notes, and is considered the most valuable edition ; it is the last to contain the historical introduction.

After the Union of the two rival Grand Lodges of England (see Ancient Masons) in 1813, the sixth edition was issued in 1815, edited by Brother William Williams, Provincial Grand Master for Dorsetshire; the seventh appeared in 1819, being the last in quarto ; and the eighth in 1827; these were called the Second Part, and contained only the Ancient Charges and the General Regulations. The ninth edition of 1841 contained no reference to the First or Historical Part, and may be regarded as the first of the present issue in octavo with the plates of jewels at the end.

Numerous editions have since been issued. In the early days of the Grand Lodge of England in all processions the Book of Constitution was carried on a cushion by the Master of the Senior Lodge (Constitution, 1738, pages 117-26), but this was altered at the time of the union and it is provided in the Constitutions of 1815 and in the subsequent issues that the Book of Constitutions on a cushion shall be carried by the Grand Secretary.

BOOK OF CONSTITUTIONS GUARDED BY THE TILER’S SWORD

An emblem painted on the Master’s carpet, and intended to admonish the Freemason that he should be guarded in all his words and actions, preserving unsullied the Masonic virtues of silence and circumspection. Such is Webb’s definition of the emblem in the Freemasons monitor (edition of 1818, page 69), which is a very modern one, and Brother Mackey was inclined to think it was introduced by that lecturer. The interpretation of Webb is a very unsatisfactory one in the opinion of Brother Mackey. He held that the Book of Constitutions is rather the symbol of constituted law than of silence and circumspection, and when guarded by the Tiler’s sword it would seem properly to symbolize regard for and obedience to law, a prominent Masonic duty.

BOOK OF GOLD

In the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, the volume in which the transactions, statutes, decrees, balusters, and protocols of the Supreme Council or a Grand Consistory are contained is called the Book of Gold.

BOOK OF MORMON

This sacred book of the Mormons was first published in 1830 by Joseph Smith, who claimed to have translated it from gold plates which he had found under Divine guidance secreted in a stone box. The seat of their organization is at Salt Lake City, Utah. In this connection, Mormonism and Masonry, by Brother S. H. Goodwin, Grand Secretary of Utah, is a detailed and excellent work of reference.

BOOK OF THE DEAD

By some translated the Book of the Master, containing the ancient Egyptian philosophy as to death and the resurrection. A portion of these sacred writings was invariably buried with the dead. The book in facsimile has been published by Doctor Lepsius, and translated by Doctor Birch. The story of the judgment of Amenti forms a part of the Book of the Dead, and shadows forth the verities and judgments of the unseen world.

The Amenti was the Place of Judgment of the Dead, situated in the West, where Osiris was presumed to be buried. There were forty-two assessors of the amount of sin committed, who sat in judgment, and before whom the adjudged passed in succession.

There seems to be a tie which binds Freemasonry to the noblest of the cults and mysteries of antiquity.

The mos